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Did you expect to have your first book nominated for a National Book Award?Definitely not.
It always feels good to have some affirmation.
The men in a couple of your stories are, lets say, sympathetically creepy.
That complicates something people have read into your stories toxic masculinity.
Its topical:toxicwas Oxford Dictionariesword of 2018.
But theres something reductive about calling these characters toxic.Obviously, masculinity is part of what the book is about.
It was published in a moment where we were already having a certain conversation.
Its really about smaller things: relationships between brothers or between parents and children, intimacy, vulnerability.
Those kinds of things.
Relationships between brothers or male friends recur a lot.
That what you have in common can actually be a source of friction.
I think about either bending myself toward their conception of masculinity or bending myself away from it.
Before that, I wrote a horrible novel really horrific 700 pages of just trash.
It was just this word vomit.
I thought, Im not good at this, Im gonna stop.
I did stop for a couple of years.
But the writing bug came back.
At that point I realized I wanted structure and community.
Around this time I learned about MFA programs.
My friends and I had all scoffed at them: James Baldwin didnt need an MFA program.
We were regurgitating a lot of the straw-man arguments.
Writing workshops have by and large been extraordinary and helpful for me.
You once said that you write with an African-American reader in mind.
And theres something intimate about that.
That feels true to me.
I dont have to over-explain things to you, I dont have to hold your hand.
Its a gesture of trust toward readers of all kinds.
Its absolutely true that mass incarceration is a big issue.
Its true that police brutality is a big issue.
Its true that gentrification is a big issue.
But I dont want to write stories about those things.
I want to write about people people who, in many cases, are affected by those things.
If you experience racism or sexism, youre not merely a victim of that thing.
Youre a person who experiences that thing, and youre experiencing all the other things.
You got to pay the rent.
So he takes away the euphemism and turns up the dial.
Thats not the way I write, and its okay.
Its great that we have this spectrum.
Your story Cliftons Place is about a black-owned bar being rapidly taken over by white people.
Was that based onFranks Cocktail Loungein Fort Greene?Everybody thinks its Franks.
It was actually based onThe Tip Top Barin Bed-Stuy.
There are some descriptions of gentrification that describe young college graduates of color as the vanguard of it.
But I think my fondest memories of New York are definitely from the 90s.
That story fits the mood of the collection, though.
Theres a lot of absence in your booksof people and of places.Yeah.
Its like a ghost something that is haunting.
The loss of the place is attached to the loss of an identity.
Think about the frame of a painting.
If a space is disappearing, then it has an effect on the people, too.
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