Interview with Gloria Naylor

Rn · i.1tu de Estudios Norteamerirnuos. 11." I ( 1991 ), pp. 23-35 INTERVIEW WITH GLORIA NAYLOR ANGELS CARABÍ Universidad de Barcelona ANGELS CARABI: I understand that your parents migrated from Robinson, Mississippi. GLORIA NA YLOR: That's right. A.C.: And that your mother was in a state of advanced pregnancy when she moved to the north. G.N.: Yes. my mother was eight months pregnant when she moved with my father from Robinson, Miss. to New York City. She decided to travel before I was born because she was adamant that none of her children would be born in the South. You see, we 're talking now about the late l 940s. My parents were both raised in the South in the l 930 's and they were poor people. they were farmers, share-croppers. This meant that you farmed somebody else's land and you gave 40% of the crops that you cultivated. My mother loved toread but she could not afford to buy books because at that time, books were a luxury for anyone. So the only access to rcading were the public libraries whose entrancc. due to the política! and social situation in Mississippi, was forbidden to black people. To be able to buy books, my mother had to work extra hours. On Saturdays, which were her free days, she would go in somebody else's fi eld and do day labor for which she would get 50 c. At thc end of the month she would have about $2. 00 that she would send to book clubs. She was not a formally cducatcd woman because schools went up to 9th grade and childrcn were supposcd to start working afterwards. Yet she was a kind of visionary and she wanted her childrcn to grow up in a place where they could read. if nothing else. She was so determincd to accomplish her goal that to anybody who wanted to date her. she would say: "If you marry me and if we have children. 1 want to lea ve the South." 24 Ang el.\ Carahí So when she married my father she reminded him of the promise he had made to her. Besides, my grandparents had left the South a few months befare and it was easier for her to make that move; she was going where her mother had al ready gone. Thcy carne to New York in 1949and1 was bom in 1950. A.C.: How did that move affect the whole family? G.N.: It affected the family in sorne ways and in sorne ways it didn't. Often people ask me why I write about the South having been bom in New York. The reason is that, in spite of living in the North, 1 grew up in a Southern home. A month after my parents moved, they were still Southemers. The food, the language I grew up with was from the South. It's called behavior. People change their geographical location but they don 't really change. The difference was that they grownups no longer worked in the fields but did manual labor. My father, for instance, started working in the garment district and then he ended as a frame finisher. My mother did not work full time until the 60's , when my sisters and I were a bit older. We lived first in Harlem, then we moved to a housing project in the Bronx but we went back to Harlem. My parents wanted a nicer place for the children to grow up in and go to good schools but they discovered that, because of our race, we encountered the same silly things that were taking place in the South, except that in New York it was harder to figure out. Racism here was more subtle. Whcn you were looking for a job, discrimination was not openly stated in the newspapers as it was in the South, but the truth is that, even though you were educated, you would not be able to find jobs or live in certain neighborhoods where the rents were very expensive. Only middle class black people fought against this policy because they were educated and they had money but. still. they were notable to obtain what they wanted. And I am talking about New York. about the North. As far as my fo lk s is concemed, they knew which were their priorities, that is, to work extremely hard so their children would not have to go throu gh what they had experienced in the South. A.C.: Toni Morrison told me that, in spite of growing up in the North, she was surrounded by grandmothers, aunts who told stories from the South. Did you havc a similar experience? G.N .: Yes, exactly. 1 listened to them tell stories. So I heard about the fishing and going to the woods and picking berries. And I heard about working in the cotton fields and about the various people, the different characters who were in Robinsonville ... the women who worked with roots and herbs ... the guy who ran the church ... the man who was always drunk. A whole microcosm of people lived in that little hamlet. I listened to ali the stories because 1 was a quiet and shy child and 1 would be the one kid in the comer listening when they were talking about themselves. And 1 was a reader. Very much so a reader. So my mother got paid off with her oldest daughter in that way. I loved books with passion. f11terrie l1' wit h Glor ia Nuylor 25 A.C.: You received your Master's Degree at Yale . Wa s it common among the women of yo ur generation to pursue college education? G.N.: 1 went to school later than the people in my generation. Normally the young women who were with me in high school we nt directly into college. they would ent er their professions and a great <leal of them married. But it was different for me because I was a bit of a rebel. I chose not to go directly to college and try my wings out in the world. I felt at that time that if 1 went into high ed ucation, I would be entering a system that 1 did not believe in. But the young women of my generation growing up in the 60' s had opportunities that were opening up because of the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement. The black female profited from both to a certain d eg ree. Those who were talented and determined could now push their way through. Before the 60 's it was very different. No matter whether you were talented or not you always encountered a stone wall in front of you. Besides the assumption was no longer that your goa l in lif e was to find a "good man" ( Gloria laug hs heartily) and take care of the home and the kid s. Women were being shown that there were other options. You had a choice. A.C.: How did you live the period of the 60's? How did it affect you as a pcrson? G.N.: It affected me because it showed me h ow deep the problems were, not o nl y in my country but in the whole planet. The problems were so many and deep that they could not be solv ed with just marching and demonstrating. I believed that I had to rebuild all our social system. Th ere was the war in Southeast Asia, a war for which I could see no reason, a war against children and women. 1 thought there was something wrong. Then in 1968 the assassination of Martin Luther King ... I could not understand that. He was a man that had been preaching peace and !ove and brotherhood ... When Malcom X was assassinated I was able to understand his death because his philosophy a nd his action po se d a direct thr ea t. But Ma rt ín Luther King was preaching about brotherhood. I thought that therc was not much hope. So 1 decided 1 should not go to co ll ege and le am about what I think is rotten. Instead I went around with this religious group that preached about a theocracy, about the coming of the gove mm e nt by God. I bccame a sort of ra di cal, praying for the Earth to be cleansed. 1 was with them during seven year s. In 1975 this n ew th eocracy still had not taken place, and 1 was 25 with no remarkable skills. 1 decided to go back to schoo l. A.C.: In the last two decades there has been an eclosion of Afro-American wr it ers, specially of women writers. Can you talk about this phenomenon? G.N.: The phenomenon basically lies in the exposure of what has been taking place for quite a while in this country. Because a writer will write, a singcr will sing, a dancer will dance. You do that because you have no choice. It's eith er you create or you explode. Black women have been writing in this country for over a hundred years. And they began to proliferate in the 30's 26 Angels Carahí during the Harlem Renaissance and they continued to grow and build on each other. In the mid 60 's and the 70's we began to question what American literature is. Is it just simply the literature produced by the white upper-middle class male? Orare there other realities that constitute this country? Because you have to look at these other factions. Look at these invisible black people who make ali that noise ... at those invisible black females making ali that noise. Do they have a history? Do they have a reality? And yes, definitely, they do . They slowly b eg an to enter the institutions. 1 had read Faulkner, Hemingway, the Brontes, Dick ens, Thackeray, Emerson, Melville, Poe, Hawthome and it had been wonderful and fine. 1 loved that kind of literature and it taught me about language but it did not teach me about my reality. When the black Americans and the females found their way in the institutions, we realized that there were other books, that t here was another history, another meaning. So that's how we started to change our vision of American literature. Then this trcnd infiltrated itself into the publishi ng industry finding space in joumals and newspapers. So attention is now being paid to an effort that has always been made. 1 don 't think that mor e black women are writing now. I just know there' s a difference in perspective. A.C.: The black woman is enriching American literature by bringing he r unique point of view. Can you talk about sorne of the aspects that you consider specifically relevant? G.N.: Oh my God! What the black woman is bringing is a whole hidden part of American history, a whole hidden part of the female experience. What is so rich about it, l think, is that the black woman brings both h er history as a black and her living reality as a female. They make drama out of those ca lled "s mall matters" of life. They bring the irony of what it 's been like to have a dual existence in this country. And it becomes a celebration of the self, of transcendi ng things. Y es, the black woman brings the merging of two hidden realities. A.C.: 1 would like to talk about your books now. From th e very beginning you create a sense of place, a sense of community where people interac t. G.N.: Yes, that's ri ght. You know, you 're asking good questions and it is not easy to answer them quickly. I'm so drawn to this sense of community. 1 guess for various reasons. What makes a writ er do what he or she does is so many ri vu lets of influences. I come from a very large closely knitted and extended family. My parents were both from families of nine children each and I grew up with about twenty cousins around on my mother 's side (on my father's side they were in other parts of the country). I also come from the working class, the poor black Am er ican working class and in my generation they tended to co nverge in communities. So I grew up with that feeling of family community and class community. Besides, there is my communal history as a black Ameri ca n. Our survival today has depended upon our nurturing each other, finding our resources from within ourselves. The women in Robinson, Miss. who dealt with herbs, for instance, played a crucial role in our lnterl'iew with Gloria Naylor 27 community. They weren't just magical women but they had a definite medical purpose. Because, once again, you could not depend on the outside hospitals to take care of your needs. So people grew up within a community who birthed you, who laid you away when you died. And you took care about the other's illnesses between your birth and your death. That sense of self-determination, taking care of your own is in my racial blood, meaning just my whole history. It's in my personal life because of the type of family 1 had and the class of people that I grew up around with. 1 think that all those factors explain why I tend to work with communities. It's what I know and it's what I feel more comfortable with. A.C.: Brewster Place in your novel The Women of Brewster Place (1980) is an urban island where only black people live. It seems to me that, by isolating the place from white people, you are more able to concentrate your attention on the black community, instead of analysing the effects of racism u pon bla ck people. G.N.: That is a trend you can find when you look at black female literature in general, as opposed to the literature that black males produce. And 1 think it's a gender fact. Men have a need to somehow confront the world, to flex their muscles, if you will. The female confronts what is around her. Personally, 1 knew that there was so much richness to be found within the black community. I'm not concemed with the reaction of white Americans to me. And that goes back to how I was raised in the 50's and 60's . Al home we were told that no one can tell you who and what you are, whether you have a worth or not. You must tell that to yourself. 1 leamed to look inwardly and explore the problems "we" have and what the realities are. A.C.: To talk about the black experience is to engage yourself into a vast field. It seems that a way you deal with it is by providing a variety of characters who come from different backgrounds, with different problems that illustrate individual aspects of that experience. By bringing together these disconnected lives you try to focus on a unity. G.N.: Exactly. By exploring the lives of different women in Brewster Place, I'm attempting to create a little microcosm of a certain experience, the black female experience in America. This is why the book is structured the way it is, with the women on different levels in those apartments buildings which are intentional. Where I placed them and how they lived meant something in relationship to the wall in Brewster Place. People tend to talk about "the black experience" lumping it ali as one mass searching for something to represe nt it. But there is nothing that can do that because it is indeed so rich and so varied. This is done for the sake of expediency and also because it 's something that they don't want to think about much. So they pick one or two examples and they figure that they have thought about the whole problem. lt 's intellectual laziness and moral laziness. So yes, in Brewster Place 1 was hoping to give a little sample of different black females. 28 Ange/.1· Carabi A.C.: Let's look at sorne of the distinct characters that you create in Brewster Place. For instance, Mattie Michael. To me she is a woman who retains the aromas of the South. When she arrives in Brewster Place it's the smell of the herbs that brings her the memories of the South. So a sense of the South is ali ve in her and maybe it is that sense that encourages her to live the idea of community. It is Mattie who holds the place together. G.N.: Which is why she is the first to arrive. Yes, she does do that. The South has taught her that. Her personal experience is with her son. Mothering ha s taught her the bad and the good of it. Mattie, for me, overcame one of the most painful things a woman can overcome, the loss of a child. l'm talking about women who are not professional women, the traditional woman where the home is primary and the nurturing of the children is primary. She lost her home, she Iost her son and by coming to Brewster Place she creates a new home and a new family. I have never been a mother and I was worried about how my story wo uld develop. I always worry about my characters coming toan experience that 1 had never had because 1 want to do justice. 1 know 1 have the power of the language and 1 know this can be abused so I worried about whether 1 could write about a mother. 1 have been mothered and 1 had mothers around but 1 lacked my own experience of motherhood. So 1 talked to severa! friends. One of them is Amanda, a single parent who has two children but one of them, the boy, 1 could tell that he was the heart. It 's not that she loved one more than the other but she had that attraction for her son. We spoke about that and she thought about it for a long time. Finally she told me: "I think the boy is so special to you because you know that's the one man that could never leave you". And I never forgot that. This is how Mattie's story got structured. She lost her father, and Butch, her lover. But she could keep this boy and I think there's a line in the story when she re a li zes that her son Basil is empty and selfish and she says something like "she got what she prayed for, a little boy who would always need her, except that now he was a grown man". A.C.: What is extraordinary about Mattie is that, in spite of having ali these problems, she 's generous, calm, almost magic and very human. She allows people to feel free in her presence, she embraces the community. G.N.: Like an earth-mother, 1 guess. A.C.: Your characters are dreamers. G.N.: Yes, they are. And the book opens with Langston Hughes' poem "'A dream deferred". Every single one is a dreamer. l have always been a dreamer, a day-dreamer. And 1 come from a family of dreamers. I'm of a nation of people who are dreamers and l speak of the black nation. Dreams are important to me. l hada dream about writing, l always dreamed that 1 would be a writer and now 1 know what it takes to have dreams come true. Now I'm dreaming to be a lllterl'iew with Clona Naylor 29 producer and I will become one. But I know the work that goes into it. So in Brewster Place, each of the women has a dream of h er own. A.C.: However, sorne of their dreams are unattainable. Etta, for instance, dreams to achieve respectability by marrying the reverend; Ciel dreams that her husband will change; Kiswana is dreaming to become a revolutionary and change the social situation of the black community. G.N.: 1 guess they all have a dream they never quite realize. The idea was just to see them attempting, to see them going after their dreams. You see, Iife often tells you "hey!, this is not for you!", but there's still validity in the fact that yo u do dream and you do try. A.C.: Let's talk about Kiswana. She's from a bourgeois family, she's a black poet activist, a social worker and she dreams that she will be able to help the poor people. However, at the beginning of the book, you present the image of a bird that is bent to fly to the center of the universe and this image is associated to Kiswana. The bird, of course, cannot fly that high. Can you talk about this? G.N.: That was on purpose. And then, I think that there's bird dropping or something on the fire escape. (Gloria laughs heartily) Yes, that was a sort of Kiswana. You know, she was doing ali the bad dreaming that wasn't going to be reality. The bird couldn't fly that high. But she's brought back to base, 1 think, in a softer way and she, ultimately, begins to work with what she has. And the people show that to her. They tell her that it's not for her to tell them what to do, but that she should work with them. So yes, the bird image was intentional. A.C.: And what about Ciel's dream about her husband reforming? G.N.: Yes, once again (Gloria laughs) she couldn't, she simply couldn't see the handwriting on the wall. Ciel dreams what women have been told to dream: that women have no choice but to believe that they only exist and have a meaning in the context of a home, a man and a family. This is how Ciel defines her identity. So, of course, she keeps on straining to make this real and it isn't true. You know, it's something like this in this country. You should look at the commercials and you would see the mother making a cake mix, or using the tloor detergent and the father coming with the briefcase. Reality for American women had started to change back in the late 60's, early 70's. Now we have more females as households than we ever had before but the ideology is that the woman is still baking the cake and daddy is bringing home the cake mix. So many women who had to work, who were divorced and had children fe lt that there was something wrong with them or with their situation. It was not supposed to be like that. So Ciel, you see, had a reality that was really hers. That was the women 's reality and being unable to adapt herself to these changes, she gives up. She gives up her unbom child and, trying to keep him, she gives up the living child and ultimately she tries to commit suicide. She thinks that she has absolutely nothing to live for. Because she has no sel f. People who say "l have myself' do not commit suicide. And so, Mattie takes her on a metaphysical joumey to show 30 Angels Curahí her examples of female pain and how women have over co me that pain and had gone on living. Ma tti e takes her within and pulls out that so re and exorcises i t. A baptism scene follows and after that, Ciel is b om anew. She can moum that but she will make it in the moming. And she, Ciel herse lf , will do that. A.C.: Extraordinary, this scene is so powerful a nd so full of Jo ve and tenderness and friendship. Beautifu l. Let me ask yo u another question about Kiswana. She changes her name, from Melanie to Kiswan a, an African name. G.N.: Often in the 60's people tumed away from what they thought was oppression. Our names were associated wi th a past of slavery and people beg an looking at Africa for a sense of worth and pride. But ac tually, in the cotton fields and within th e slavery system, there were many people who found strategies that kept them mentally and physically strong. This recent past has been given back a dignity and I believe that you take from what is really yo ur s. We are not Africans, we are Americans of African descent. Therefore, one has to root oneself in this country and find pride in what happened here. And yes, th ere can be sorne pride in what happened in Africa, but ther e's so much glorious history here in black histor y. So this is why Kiswana changed her name. She had every right to do so. But Melanie was n ot a bad na me and con si dering the type of Melanie she was named a ft er, a woman that would stand on her ground, she should actually be very proud of having such a name. And this is what her mother is trying to tell her. A.C.: How about the rest of her mother 's di scourse? Telling Kiswana that the best way she can help the people in Brewster Place is by going to school and oc up ying a position of po wer. G.N.: I think a woman from her background could say little else than that (Gloria laughs). 1 believe though that there are two ways of empowering people. You can be in a po sition where you can influence national policy or you can work at the grass roots. You don 't need to be in such a power position. You can open a social center, teach people how to register a nd vote .. . so both ways are equally meaningful. A.C.: Even though your characters don't always fulfill their dreams, th ey are able to react at sorne point of their Jives and go on li ving with dignity. I'm thinking of Etta finding h er way through Mattie's fri endship, of Kiswana going to night school and helping the people, or Ciel cleansing herse lf with Mattie's help or Cora Lee taking her children to a summ er sch oo l. So, 1 think that th e message that you are addressing the women is very important; that they ar e not lost and that th ey are able to take responsibility over their lives. G.N.: Yes, you are indeed able each day to decide how you will Jive that day. You can decide whether or not your dr eams die. You really can. So you see them doing something which is what 1 saw women do ali my lif e. The poor women that I grew up with knew it was Monday moming because they had to get up , get the kids bathed, get themselves dressed and go out to that Jaundry and ///ten'Íew wilh Gloria Nt1ylor 31 work for eight hours. And then they had to pick up a chicken on their way home and stretch it for six people ... they had to sweep up, get homework done, go to bed that night, get up in the moming and do it ali again. And each day when they would bathe their kids they would be dreaming of the day that the children would go to college and they would not have to work so hard. And there was laughter in ali that. They had good times. I saw more people depressed in graduate school than in Harlem (Gloria laughs). Only the privileged people have the luxury of fceling depressed. My mother did not know such a word. She startcd using it when the children began to grow up and we would get depressed (We both laugh hcartily). A.C.: I think this attitude is reflected in your work, in the sense that your characters do not allow themselves to play the role of victims. G.N.: You cripple yourself when you think of yourself as a victim. You could very well be victimized but if this were the case, you still could go on with your own life. Although now 1 see that things have changed. When 1 walk the streets of Harlem I think about the people with whom I grew up and about the people that are now there. They are very different. There were more men in the homes then. there were two parents in the houses with a sense of caring for the future of their children. There was more of a community. Those very streets are very different. I kept thinking what was lacking. What is it'? I kept saying to myself. And I realized that there's a lack of hope. Because now what we have is women that younger and younger are having children, and those children are having other children and they stay right there in a sort of vicious circle. They see no way out. A.C.: Is this happening primarily in Harlem? G.N.: Oh no! It's happening in the inner cities ali over America. I mentioned Harlem as an example of the situation. Young people don't have jobs and one thing is to be unemployed because you aren't qualified for certain jobs but now pcople are unemployable; this means that ali your values, the way you think of yourself make you totally unable to work in any type of job. This has been the shift with the young black males. They have moved from being chronically unemployed to becoming unemployable. Where are the values? The work ethic is not there, the sense that if 1 work for this I'll get something in retum and I'll take that and build on it, is gone. Besides, in my parents' time it was the female who in stilled this kind of values. Now the mothers are so young, rnaybe 15, 16 years old, that you wonder what values they can instill to their children. And what do they have out there? Drug trade, a deteriorated school system so they drop out. Tt's an awful kind of cycle that is going on. Arnerica has moved from a manufacturing society to a service society. So thesc people don't have work and there 's a pcrvasive mood of helplessness. A.C.: How can the writer help to irnprove this situation? G.N.: I want to be very honest. I think that writing. as ali of the arts. is an