{"id":60846,"date":"2013-10-03T11:16:04","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T15:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=60846"},"modified":"2018-04-25T15:50:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T19:50:36","slug":"future-tense-an-interview-with-kiese-laymon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/03\/future-tense-an-interview-with-kiese-laymon\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Tense: An Interview with Kiese Laymon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kiese_laymon_large\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Right across the street from my apartment in Bedford Stuyvesant, there\u2019s a bookstore, True South Books. <\/em>BOOKS ARE BETTER THAN TV<\/small>, reads a sign in the window, in bold, black, hand-drawn letters. Another one reminds, <\/em>DO THE READING<\/small>. From open to close there\u2019s a stereo that sits on a stool out front. The sounds of Boyz II Men or Nina Simone or Bob Marley often drift across the street and through my window. A few weeks ago, there was a reading there to celebrate two books published this year by Kiese Laymon: his first novel, <\/em>Long Division, and a book of essays, <\/em>How to Slowly Kill Yourself in America. The bookstore was packed that night. (Bookstore\/barber shop, I should say; there was a haircut in progress well into the reading.) In spite of all the questions directed at Laymon, he did his best to make the night about\u00a0community rather than himself, sharing the stage with several other young writers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Laymon was born and raised in Mississippi, but now lives upstate, teaching at Vassar College, where he\u2019s an associate professor of English and Africana studies. He\u2019s also a contributing editor at Gawker and writes regularly for ESPN. He has a lot to say about race, gender, sexuality, love, and how to survive as a young black man in America.<\/em><\/p>\n

Long Division tells the story of fourteen-year-old City. After telling off the judges at a sentence competition (like a spelling bee) for asking him to use the word <\/em>niggardly in a sentence, he finds himself a viral video sensation and arouses the ire of his mother, who dumps him at his grandmother\u2019s in rural Mississippi. There he starts reading a paperback novel about a fourteen-year-old boy also named City, set in 1985. And through the book and a hole in the ground in the woods, both Cities travel in time between 1964, 1985, and 2013. Laymon notes this isn\u2019t <\/em>The Invisible Man. Neither City is in this hole alone\u2014Shaylala Crump (City loves the way she smells) and a couple of other teenagers jump back and forth in time with him.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I called Laymon to talk about <\/em>Long Division, he remembered me. I was the one sitting cross-legged in the front row, wasn\u2019t I? He was genuinely interested in asking me about me, where I\u2019m from, what I do. Finally we got around to talking about him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ever since that event, I\u2019ve\u00a0been reading your novel and everything you\u2019ve written for ESPN.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just weird when anyone reads anything that you write. It\u2019s crazy. Don\u2019t you think so? Any time you think about people sitting alone or in moving spaces like trains reading some shit that you wrote? It\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re writing, are you thinking about an audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I think about audience, it\u2019s strange. I think about people in a theater. In my mind, I\u2019m always thinking about what groups of people are going to take turns sitting in the front row. Who is going to be at the front? Who is going to be at the back? Who is going to be on the balcony? Things like that. Even though reading is not like that. It\u2019s so personal and individualized, but in my mind when I\u2019m creating, I think about all these different people in a theater. So when I hear about people reading or when people take pictures of people reading\u2014which is what my friends have been doing, taking pictures of people reading the book that they see different places\u2014it\u2019s beautiful and wonderful, but it\u2019s really disorienting because people are just spending time with themselves and this book. That\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n

When you were writing Long Division<\/em>, who were you thinking was in the front row of that audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It changes. The people in the front row the most often are the characters in the book, the kids like City and Shaylala. They are the primary audience. They are in the front the most. But sometimes they\u2019re in the back and I\u2019m thinking about people who have written shit that I\u2019ve read that has inspired me. Those people are in the audience. And then I\u2019m thinking about people like fucked-up English teachers who told me I\u2019d never be shit. They\u2019re in the audience. All these people occupy part of my imagination. It\u2019s really like you\u2019re writing to different parts of your imagination, but they\u2019re dressed up in the form of characters or memories or whatever. Different sections have different audiences, are differently audience specific, but the characters are always really close to being at the front.<\/p>\n

Did you talk to kids while writing the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would talk to kids about it a lot,\u00a0kids between ninth grade and twelfth grade. And even when they didn\u2019t know I was talking about it, I\u2019d be talking about it. You have to listen to kids nowadays and see you know how they are talking, how they are using verbs. I definitely had to talk to a lot of kids for the 2013 part. Because of the Internet, they just know so much language. Right? They just know so much language. You ask them a question, and sometimes you get these wonderful, thoughtful answers, but sometimes when you ask a kid a question, you get answers that they pull from things that they\u2019ve seen or they\u2019ve watched or whatever. With the Internet and all these channels on cable TV, you get so much that older people don\u2019t have. I\u2019m kind of obsessed with how kids talk and think and feel and treat each other now, given the Internet.<\/p>\n

I guess that\u2019s what the time travel in your book is a metaphor for, that kids have access to multiple times at the same time because of the Internet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the things the book was trying to do. The section of the book when the kid goes to 2013,\u00a0he\u2019s talking about Baize\u2019s relationship with so many channels but the fact that with her, her main form of time travel is the Internet. And she can\u2019t access the Internet because he stole her device. And not only is her device the way for her to move back and forth in time through the Internet, but also writing. The whole big metaphor is that writing and reading can be forms of time travel. But the question is, what can we do with the time we can travel? We can<\/em> go back, so what do you do with that?<\/p>\n

Did you answer that question in writing the book? Did you work through what you can do with that access to different times?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I definitely think I have a better sense of what I should be doing with it, personally. What I should be doing with time is always being present, and come to an acceptance of the fact that people fought and died for me to be here. And in terms of going forward, what am I going to do to make sure people, particularly black folks in the South, have more options and more choices? How am I going to make the future better?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of overwhelming when you think of it in that way, when you think of all of the choices you make in the moment affecting more choices for people in the future. But I think it really does come down to that\u2014whatever we do today is going to not only impact how we live tomorrow, but also how other people live tomorrow, and if<\/em> they live tomorrow. All of that is really clich\u00e9d, but it\u2019s kind of just true.<\/p>\n

People end up in these unhealthy relationships with everything, from food to alcohol to sex to whatever, because it\u2019s overwhelming. Thinking about tomorrow is kind of overwhelming and the only thing more overwhelming than thinking about tomorrow is thinking about the fucked-up shit we\u2019ve done in the past. You\u2019re fucked on both ends. What are we going to do? I think that most of us try to opt out in some way. But you can\u2019t really, because whatever you do, you\u2019re affecting the future.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re obviously interested in doing progressive work in your writing, but you\u2019re also careful to call out artificial progress. In one of your pieces for ESPN,\u00a0you used the phrase \u201chollowing someone out and turning them into a symbol of progress.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

We just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. And that was a lot of things, and a lot of great\u00a0things. But it was also this hollowed-out pep rally where people attempted to make a complicated, sweaty human being into a mascot. Martin Luther King Jr., we hollow him out for our wishes and desires. We can sit here and talk about \u201cI have a dream\u201d and make a big deal about it, but if we look\u2013we don\u2019t even have to look hard\u2013we see that a few years later the cat literally was like, I\u2019m pessimistic about the dream, everything that the nation got in regards to civil rights, we got without giving up anything, which means it hasn\u2019t really done anything. We\u2019re not being held accountable to that \u201cI have a dream.\u201d That\u2019s the thing about that \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech\u2014it doesn\u2019t really hold people, real people, accountable. But he says some other things, a lot of other things, that do<\/em>. And the point is that you can just hollow people out and you infuse them with reflections of innocence, which is what most of us do to get through the day. And then you can\u2019t be surprised when shit ends up the way it ends up.<\/p>\n

And what also happens when people celebrate progress in that way, like it\u2019s over, like it\u2019s happened, is that no one thinks about the work to do for the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to show in the book, the whole metaphor of work. That\u2019s the thing about long division\u2014the work is always shown. Going backwards, the work is there. In the present, the work is there. Going forward,\u00a0the work has to be there. And we can\u2019t ever think that we are delivered\u2014not in this country. But a lot of people want to feel like we are<\/em> delivered. And if people fail in this country, it\u2019s their fault, because we have all been delivered to this postrace, multicultural society. If you fail, it\u2019s all on you. But that\u2019s bullshit. No, we haven\u2019t all been delivered.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still mad work to do, and, most worryingly, what I\u2019m seeing is people doing a lot of work to make sure that some people don\u2019t have healthy choices and second chances. That\u2019s the bedrock of celebratory, productive, revolutionary citizenship\u2014healthy choices and second chances, and progressive education. And we\u2019re doing everything we can to not grant certain people healthy choices and not grant certain people second chances. So we\u2019re losing, but we\u2019re telling ourselves we\u2019re winning, or we\u2019re telling ourselves we\u2019re better than other countries. I haven\u2019t even been to other countries, so maybe we are. I just got a passport.<\/p>\n

Did you have an early editor at a different publishing house that asked you to tone down the racial politics of the novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had the book at Penguin. (It was at two different places before this, but the last place it was at was Penguin.) And one of the things the editor said was that the racial politics were way too explicit and I needed to do something different with Katrina. And then she was saying things that I thought were just disrespectful to the characters, and people in Mississippi generally. She said, Nobody\u2019s going to believe these kids talking about this stuff, you need to focus more on the apparatus of time travel. And I was like, Well, I\u2019m kind of trying to do something different here. I don\u2019t want to make it more science fiction\u2013y. So I took the book away and I told her I wasn\u2019t going to do it. And so, they kept the name. Initially it was called My Name Is City<\/em>. And so if I ever want to use that name, I have to pay them a certain amount of money. So I placed it with this independent press, Agate Bolden, because they had worked with Jesmyn Ward, who wrote Where the Line Bleeds<\/em> and Salvage the Bones<\/em>, which won a National Book Award. And she\u2019s from Mississippi. And I just figured, if they got her, they\u2019re gonna get me. And it\u2019s been pretty amazing how it\u2019s worked out so far.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t surprise me that someone would be concerned with how explicit the racial politics are. But does anyone talk about the gender politics and the politics around sexuality that are so much in the book too? Do people focus more on race than these other things?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s interesting because most of the people who talk to me about this book, they don\u2019t talk to me about race and they don\u2019t talk about gender; they don\u2019t talk really about identity at all. Which is weird. All these interviews are about to come out, and that\u2019s not what people ever want to talk about, so when people do<\/em> want to talk about it, I get excited. To me there is so much about bodies and sexual politics and gender politics in that book\u2013so much. I\u2019m a child of what people called intersectionality in the eighties and nineties, so I learned from that. I\u2019m trying to be wholly aware of the way that sexuality, gender, race, geography are consistently mingling all the time. There is no scene in the book that\u2019s not raced. There\u2019s no scene in the book that\u2019s not overtly gendered, you know? But the people who end up wanting to do these interviews rarely want to talk about that. I wonder, why y\u2019all even talking to me?<\/p>\n

People want to talk about literacy. People want to talk about what the book is commenting on in terms of kids writing themselves into a space that they\u2019ve been written out of. And yeah, that\u2019s there too. But there\u2019s a lot of gender and sexuality stuff in that book that I\u2019m surprised no one\u2019s talking about. But then, I\u2019m shocked anybody\u2019s talking about the book at all.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much social media in this book. When City is writing a will, he decides who gets his Twitter password. Social media obviously has been really revolutionary, especially so for people who have felt like they\u2019ve been written out of mainstream media. I think I read in Harper\u2019s<\/em> Index that black Americans are on Twitter at a much higher percentage than white Americans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great statistic, dude. Can I steal that?<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know you\u2019re Canadian, but what do you think that means?<\/p>\n

I think it has to do with people feeling unrepresented. Last night I was waiting for the subway and I looked at the magazine rack, and the top two rows, the only face that wasn\u2019t white was Oprah. And then they have other magazines smushed at the bottom. It\u2019s Brooklyn, so they do have the black women\u2019s magazines with Kerry Washington on the cover, but they\u2019re on the bottom rows. I imagine if I was a young black woman and I looked at that magazine rack and didn\u2019t see myself, I might be more enthusiastic about using Twitter and Instagram because you can make your own media that you actually feel a part of.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s something that I always thought but I never had numbers to corroborate what I assumed. I don\u2019t really do Twitter yet. I got on Twitter probably a month ago, but I\u2019m on Facebook\u2014that\u2019s old now\u2014and most of my friends on Facebook are black and they are posting shit like every minute of the day in a way that my white Facebook friends don\u2019t. So, I assumed black Twitter was proportionately bigger, but I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

What the effect of growing up with a lot of books in the house? Your mom was a professor, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The primary effect was just a healthy relationship with books. I didn\u2019t have this blind reverence and I didn\u2019t have this \u201coh, I\u2019m so intimidated\u201d feeling that I had to read a whole lot of\u00a0before I was allowed to go do whatever I wanted to do, and I was mad critical of the stuff I was reading, and I was encouraged to be. I always knew if I wanted to write a book, I\u2019d write a book, because there are so many books<\/em>, man. And then you start thinking about how books are constructed\u2014there\u2019s so many chapters, and there\u2019s so many paragraphs, and there\u2019s so many sentences. I always knew I could write some sentences, I knew I could write some paragraphs, so I knew I could write a book. I didn\u2019t know I would write books that people who inspired me would be inspired by. And that\u2019s a thing that\u2019s been shocking to me\u2014specific creators who have inspired me have reached out to me, and said, Man, that shit inspired me. That sort of reciprocal relationship was not something I thought I would experience, but I knew I could write books if I wanted to. Because most books aren\u2019t good books.<\/p>\n

I gave a reading in Miami and people were already waiting for Justin Bieber\u2019s mom to come\u2014the next day\u2014because she wrote a book. I\u2019m not dissing that book because I haven\u2019t read it. But, Justin Bieber\u2019s mom has a book. You know what I\u2019m saying? That guy who invented, like, Tae Bo or like Hip Hop Abs, he<\/em> could come out with a book tomorrow. And more importantly, people who write literary stuff for a living, they\u2019re<\/em> writing books and they\u2019re not thinking at all about my little cousin, maybe your little cousin. They\u2019re not thinking at all about important readers in the world. You just see so many whack-ass books and so many whack paragraphs and\u00a0you just know, this shit ain\u2019t even that hard. You could do it. But the question is, do you do it in a way that builds on the traditions that came before you? Do you do it in a way that inspires other people to create going forward? Those to me are the questions.<\/p>\n

You have said you have disdain for American literature.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For real. That\u2019s just the truth. One of the reasons I create novels is because I think American novel writing is whack. My problem is that I get mad that it\u2019s so bad. Because one of the reasons it\u2019s bad, just one of the reasons, is that a lot of the people who are hoisted up there as the carriers of American lit never conceived of other people\u2013particularly of different races, geographies, genders, and classes\u2013reading the shit they write. Which means they get a pass. They can create particular sentences and paragraphs that don\u2019t have to be accountable to massive groups of people. And there\u2019s a few problems with that. One is that I think if you want people to write, you have to, in some way, write to them.<\/p>\n

So a lot of black kids I know don\u2019t write, partially\u2013and they\u2019ll tell you this\u2013because they feel like they\u2019ve rarely been written\u00a0to<\/em>.\u00a0And they didn\u2019t have the luxury or the privilege of growing up with books in the house, so they don\u2019t even know that they could be, like, Most American lit ain\u2019t shit. They just think it\u2019s boring.<\/p>\n

I do have disdain for American literature. But it\u2019s healthy, because I believe in creating alternative art as a mode of critiquing the art that came before. I think most writing is so terrible. I think television writing, for example, is so far ahead of what we\u2019re creating in terms of literature. I think music across the board\u2013I\u2019m not just talking about pop music\u2013is so far ahead of what we are creating in lit. One of the reasons I think that is because the creators in those genres and in those forms have had to democratize their art. And what writers think that means is, Dumb that shit down. Writers think, If you\u2019re going to write a paragraph that\u2019s going to take into consideration the life of fourteen-year-old girl who lives in Belzoni, Mississippi, right next to a creek, they think, Oh, I\u2019m going to have to dumb down my writing. But that\u2019s bullshit. The problem is, you don\u2019t have to dumb it down. You have to do the reverse of dumb it down.<\/p>\n

I also want to say that there are some people, especially some younger people, who are creating some incredible paragraphs and sentences and a lot of it is being shared through social media. I think people are really creating incredible stuff now\u2013a lot of people who have been taken for granted by the American literary enterprise. But these people are still creating dope sentences\u2013whether it\u2019s in the form of a tweet or Tumblr, whether it\u2019s in the form of fan fiction, or essays\u2013people are creating incredible stuff right now. And that\u2019s one of the best things about the Internet, you don\u2019t have to wait for somebody to give you some magazine article or a book, you can find great writing about everything in the country.<\/p>\n

How important is it to the alternative art you want to make to have a community?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To me that is one of the most important things ever. Because if you have a nation that has suspect elected officials, at the national level and the local level, one of the things you have to rely on is community. And I think this daring kind of art that inspired me and that I see other people creating, it\u2019s really kind of sustained and created by one mind, but that mind is often fueled and nurtured by a community.<\/p>\n

The reading you came to the other day was an example of that community. We were all writing in our own individual places before we got together. And we all got together via art, via activism. But I think the community has to be critical of everybody in it. It has to be loving, it has to be supportive, and it has to always be willing to learn from its mistakes. And luckily, I\u2019ve found some artistic communities like that just in the past two or three years. Before that, I can\u2019t say I actually had those communities. I teach at Vassar and I\u2019ve got some colleagues that I trust, but I never would say I had an artistic or academic community there. But I found that online.<\/p>\n

And this other book you\u2019ve just come out with, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America<\/em>, it\u2019s conversations, letters amongst this community of yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. My aunt writes letters to me and I\u2019m writing to my uncle and my grandmother comes up in like every piece and my mum comes up. The book is about a lot, but it\u2019s definitely about community.<\/p>\n

How autobiographical is City?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother was young when she had me, and when she couldn\u2019t deal with me, she\u2019d send me to stay with my grandmother. I stayed with my grandmother a lot, and there were some woods across the street. There was a point when I was writing that I could say to myself that City, this character, he\u2019s not me. And for me, that\u2019s when the book just kind of took off. Some of the things I saw, felt, experienced, I wanted to write. Particularly the relationship he has with his grandmother. My grandmother was the first woman I remember seeing naked. And I remember saying, Damn, my gramama look good. You know what I\u2019m saying? And I hadn\u2019t read much where somebody was talking about their grandmother in these really wonderful, intimate ways. Like he loves the way he feels when his grandmother looks at him, and I felt that. But the plot, all the stuff those kids say in that book, that\u2019s not me.<\/p>\n

But was the idea of the time travel and the holes was that inspired by your childhood imagination?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing this story since I was like six. There were kids in these holes, and when I was a kid, I convinced myself that they were real, I convinced myself that I could see them in the forest when I was sitting on the porch. So from forever ago, the question was, How did they get there? Who are they? What are their personalities like? What would they think of me? And really Long Division<\/em> is the story of those kids in that hole. How did they get there? What do they see? What do they feel? And why are they in those holes? That\u2019s a story I\u2019ve been writing since I was six, when I was convinced that there were kids living across the street in this hole in the ground. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s autobiographical or not, but it\u2019s definitely a story I\u2019ve been writing for years, for decades.<\/p>\n

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