Speaker 1: Pushing. Oh, I usually bring the dog in so that
Speaker 1: I can control his barking. So I'm professional best friends
Speaker 1: or dogs. Yeah, that's why he's not making it to
Speaker 1: season three. Khalil, you know co host? All Right, I'm back.
Speaker 1: Is also my audition. I'm Khalil Jibrad Muhammad. I'm Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: We're two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a
Speaker 1: historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are some of my best friends are Hey.
Speaker 1: On this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the
Speaker 1: absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: talk about deeply divided. I mean today we're talking to
Speaker 1: Clint Smith, a poet and a writer. He is helping
Speaker 1: us unpack some of the most divisive, nasty stuff in
Speaker 1: our collective memory, going to historical sites. He's using poetry
Speaker 1: to really unpack the meaning and emotion behind how we
Speaker 1: talk about the past. Yeah. Yeah, so Clint Smith. He
Speaker 1: has a new collection of poetry out Above Ground. It's
Speaker 1: out in March. He's also a staff writer for the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and he also wrote this book of nonfiction called How
Speaker 1: the Word Has Passed And You talked about him sort
Speaker 1: of you know, grappling with the most divisive stuff. But
Speaker 1: he's such a beautiful writer. Like when you read his writing,
Speaker 1: it feels moving and even uplifting, like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: enjoyable to engage with all of his writing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk to Clint. This is going to be great.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about the first time I met Khalil.
Speaker 1: It was on the train from the airport, that's right.
Speaker 1: And I remember because you were very serious, you know,
Speaker 1: like like well I was, you know, I was like, oh, snap,
Speaker 1: that's Khalil Jabrah Muhammed. I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have my book on me because so I was
Speaker 1: like I had to. I try to. I was trying
Speaker 1: to be too cool for school. So so today we're
Speaker 1: talking to Clint Smith, who has a new book out
Speaker 1: Above Ground. It's a book of poetry, a wonderful book
Speaker 1: of poetry that in so many ways continues your meditation
Speaker 1: on how to reconcile sort of the realities of a
Speaker 1: of a world that doesn't guarantee a whole lot, and
Speaker 1: what that means to think about the stories we pass on, which,
Speaker 1: of course, to me, the continuity between your your your
Speaker 1: first first book of nonfiction, not your first book of poetry,
Speaker 1: but your first book of nonfiction, which precedes Above Ground,
Speaker 1: which comes out this month, is how the word has passed.
Speaker 1: And I'm just so so excited you know that you're
Speaker 1: doing this work. I remember talking to you about your
Speaker 1: dissertation and thinking about the many choices and past you
Speaker 1: could travel down. Yeah, and maybe Clint, I'll just add
Speaker 1: to that. I mean, I think of the three of
Speaker 1: us being writers, all of us writing and kind of
Speaker 1: grappling with this country and invariably grappling with race in
Speaker 1: this country, and doing it in different ways and with
Speaker 1: different kinds of writing. And just to throw it on
Speaker 1: you like to, let's talk about poetry. Like like Khalil
Speaker 1: and I write nonfiction. Also, we don't write poetry. You know,
Speaker 1: why do you turn to poetry? You know? How is
Speaker 1: that part of your writing? Your writing self? For me,
Speaker 1: poetry is the act of paying attention. Forces me to
Speaker 1: pay attention to a moment, an idea, a feeling, a sentiment,
Speaker 1: a period of time in ways that I might not
Speaker 1: otherwise do if it is both the creation of art,
Speaker 1: but it is also the mechanism through which I do
Speaker 1: my best thinking. It's the sort of excavation of again
Speaker 1: a moment in time and allows me to sort of
Speaker 1: create a time capsule of how who I was and
Speaker 1: how I was thinking about these ideas, these moments. And
Speaker 1: it's almost the same way that like a photographer, you know,
Speaker 1: might take a photo of a tree. Right. It can
Speaker 1: be a tree that you walk by every single day
Speaker 1: of your life. But if you stop and you take
Speaker 1: a photograph of the tree, or you zoom in on
Speaker 1: a specific leaf on that tree, you'll see that it's actually,
Speaker 1: you know, several different shades of green. You'll see the
Speaker 1: whole that a caterpillar bit through. I'll see the edges,
Speaker 1: you know that the us as like you know, summer
Speaker 1: turns to fall. It just allows you to to pay
Speaker 1: attention to that which you otherwise might encounter every day,
Speaker 1: but with a different level of intentionality. Bring it, Clint,
Speaker 1: bring it. Yeah, that is some impressive wordsmithing, but really,
Speaker 1: I mean all jokes aside. What you're saying is poetry
Speaker 1: is your first draft of expressing what you're living. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right, Khalil. I mean in your new collection above Ground,
Speaker 1: so much of that where you just said that careful observation,
Speaker 1: the commemorating of a moment is about your children. And
Speaker 1: many of the poems are written in second person to
Speaker 1: are you? Who are are your two children? And Khalil
Speaker 1: and I are both parents, are both fathers. Our kids
Speaker 1: are older than yours now and yeah, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: why do that? I mean, you know, what does it
Speaker 1: mean that you're doing that as a parent and sort
Speaker 1: of you know, taking care. It's not a leaf, it's
Speaker 1: your child. And how you read to them at night,
Speaker 1: or how you how you see them process a certain moment,
Speaker 1: These these fleeting aspects of parenthood. Yeah, for sure. You know,
Speaker 1: I think coming out of my last book, How the
Speaker 1: Word Has Passed, which is thinking about how different historical
Speaker 1: sites across the country reckon with or failed reckon with
Speaker 1: their relationship to the history of slavery. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I I spent several years thinking about and researching and
Speaker 1: traveling to sites of of enslavement. You know, it was
Speaker 1: sites of torture, sites of trauma, sites of of a
Speaker 1: sort of inexplicable human suffering. And what happened is that
Speaker 1: as I was researching How the Word Has Passed, and
Speaker 1: traveling all these different places, my wife and I were
Speaker 1: starting our family. So now my son is five going
Speaker 1: on six, my daughters three going on four. And when
Speaker 1: I was in these places, inevitably, and people who've read
Speaker 1: how the words passle know inevitably, so much of how
Speaker 1: I was processing these spaces was tied to and animated
Speaker 1: by being a father and being like and having that
Speaker 1: become a new part of my identity. So when I'm standing,
Speaker 1: you know, in a cabin at Whitney Plantation in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about what it means to stand in
Speaker 1: and have my feet on the same wooden planks, within
Speaker 1: the same structure that generations of enslaved people slept in themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking now of, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of torture of slavery, not only through the prism of
Speaker 1: the spectacle of physical brutality, but also family separation, right
Speaker 1: And I remember specifically standing in that place and thinking
Speaker 1: about what would it be like if I put my
Speaker 1: kids to sleep and I woke up the next day
Speaker 1: and my children were gone, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: what had happened to them. I had no idea where
Speaker 1: they went, I had no idea if I would ever
Speaker 1: see them again. And it's a sort of unfathomable sort
Speaker 1: of cruelty, a sort of unfathomable sort of emotional terrain
Speaker 1: to even have to imagine. And I had those sorts
Speaker 1: of moments that all these different types of places all
Speaker 1: across the country. And part of what shape the desire
Speaker 1: to write Above Ground is that I was thinking so
Speaker 1: much about the experience of parenting in the context of
Speaker 1: enslavement that I wanted to and in the context of
Speaker 1: what it means to be part of a lineage of
Speaker 1: enslaved people and the descendants of enslaved people, and how
Speaker 1: to what it means that my children are the descendants
Speaker 1: of these people who are in these cabins, who are
Speaker 1: on this land. But I think all the time about
Speaker 1: how the black experience in this country, as much as
Speaker 1: it is fundamentally important, as you all know and think
Speaker 1: about all the time, it is fun mentally important to
Speaker 1: take seriously and engage with and struggle with the history
Speaker 1: of violence and oppression that's been enacted on black people.
Speaker 1: And the experience of being a black person in this
Speaker 1: country is not singularly defined by that trauma, by that violence,
Speaker 1: by that oppression. It's far more expansive than that. It's
Speaker 1: far more diverse than that. It's far more It stretches
Speaker 1: into joy, it stretches into wonder. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that I was writing poems that reflected the
Speaker 1: totality of my own thinking. Right, So I do take
Speaker 1: seriously and think about this history all the time. And
Speaker 1: like I love watching my kids watch a ladybug take
Speaker 1: flight for the first time. I love having a dance
Speaker 1: party with my kids in the middle of the kitchen,
Speaker 1: like I love you know, all of these different parts
Speaker 1: of of who I am and how I make sense
Speaker 1: of my own experience in the world. And so this
Speaker 1: was an attempt to think about how we hold both
Speaker 1: the social tumults and historical suffering alongside a sense of wonder,
Speaker 1: a sense of awe, a sense of joy. Um, And
Speaker 1: what it means to watch your kids, you know, these
Speaker 1: tiny little humans here sort of discover the world for
Speaker 1: the first time. Yeah, now that's a that's very powerful
Speaker 1: and evocative. So could you share, um? Could you could
Speaker 1: you read one of the poems from from Above Ground Force.
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to given that I was talking about
Speaker 1: the sort of writing into a space of joy. Um,
Speaker 1: let me just do this this other one. That's all right.
Speaker 1: Dance party. Sometimes in the evening, after dinner, after spaghetti
Speaker 1: has been slurped and I have bribed the broccoli into
Speaker 1: their bellies, I give both of my children the look
Speaker 1: when my eyes meet theirs. They know what time it is.
Speaker 1: They push in their chairs, they stretched their legs, and
Speaker 1: we moved the table to the far end of the
Speaker 1: dining room to clear space for what we all know
Speaker 1: is coming. Alexa play the post dinner dance party playlist,
Speaker 1: and within seconds, Martha WASH's booming voice rolls like thunder
Speaker 1: over our bodies. Everybody danced. Now. The electronic keyboard and
Speaker 1: the drums meet in the middle of the room like
Speaker 1: two dinosaurs ready to claim this kitchen as their own.
Speaker 1: Immediately the jumping begins, and my daughter is flinging her
Speaker 1: limbs like an offbeat octopus, hands slapping the air behind
Speaker 1: her as if she is trying to smack anyone who
Speaker 1: enters her sacred space. I turned around and my son
Speaker 1: is doing the robot or is being eaten by a robot,
Speaker 1: or is trapped in a universe where robots take over
Speaker 1: the bodies of little boys and peanut butter pajamas. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: there is a robot somewhere, and my children, bless them,
Speaker 1: have not yet learned how to clap on the two
Speaker 1: and four, So I laugh but also cringe as their
Speaker 1: small bodies make a mockery of the melody around them.
Speaker 1: Now halfway through the song, everyone is jumping, and I,
Speaker 1: caught up in the ecstasy of this moment, fall to
Speaker 1: the ground and convince this no longer young body that
Speaker 1: it is a good idea to start doing the worm.
Speaker 1: And when my children see me, their eyes become pools
Speaker 1: of possibilities, and it is clear that they see this
Speaker 1: as a clarion call to climb onto my back. And
Speaker 1: now here we are. This strange trifecta is unlikely trio
Speaker 1: a robot and an octopus riding the back of a
Speaker 1: worm who will certainly need some tylan, all before bed.
Speaker 1: And it is in this moment that their mother comes home.
Speaker 1: And when she opens the door, everyone is screaming. The
Speaker 1: speakers are blasting, and the percussion is shaking every wall
Speaker 1: around us. We look up at her, and she looks
Speaker 1: down at us, and we have no explanation for this
Speaker 1: strange scene. Only an invitation for her to join. Right,
Speaker 1: but we're going to take a quick break. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more Clint Smith in a minute. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back on Some of my best friends are Clint.
Speaker 1: That that poem is is all the things you said
Speaker 1: about sort of being immersed in your in the life
Speaker 1: of your family and to find the beauty and joy
Speaker 1: in these details and how they're I don't know they
Speaker 1: but they're expanded. Um. It makes me think too of
Speaker 1: a recent essay you wrote for The Atlantic where you
Speaker 1: wrote about Tyree Nichols, who was recently murdered. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so this this essay you're talking about is about um
Speaker 1: for those who might not be familiar, it's it's thinking
Speaker 1: about Tyree Nichols um and his love of sunsets, you know,
Speaker 1: And he and his life are a reminder of the
Speaker 1: plurality and the heterogeneity of the black experience in this country. Right.
Speaker 1: I think it will be so easy for somebody maybe
Speaker 1: to hear his name and to make a set of
Speaker 1: assumptions about who he is, where it comes from, what
Speaker 1: his interests are, what he was into, and that largely
Speaker 1: for him is not the case. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I was most struck by,
Speaker 1: and the sort of aftermath of his death and the
Speaker 1: subsequent video was this quote from his mother where she
Speaker 1: talked about how much he loved going to the skate
Speaker 1: park in the evening at dusk and watching the sunset.
Speaker 1: And there was this photo that his brother had started
Speaker 1: sharing of Tyree taking a getting out of his car
Speaker 1: as the sun was setting just beyond the horizon and
Speaker 1: sort of taking a selfie with this sunset in the background.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, as I talked about in the essay,
Speaker 1: it made me think about this painting by Van Gogh
Speaker 1: that I had seen. And van Gogh similarly had this
Speaker 1: love of sun sets and tried to capture them in
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways. And and I there was a
Speaker 1: moment where I had stumbled on it, not because I'm
Speaker 1: you know, a well learned art historian or anything. It's
Speaker 1: because I was googling sunsets to draw with my with
Speaker 1: my kids, and and there was you know, his van
Speaker 1: Gogh wrote this letter to his brother where he talked
Speaker 1: about attempting to capture the beauty of the sun setting
Speaker 1: before it crossed over the horizon, before you know, this
Speaker 1: fleeting thing that is both so quotitian and yet so miraculous,
Speaker 1: wanting to capture that through his work. And I saw
Speaker 1: the same thing in Tyree, and heard the same thing,
Speaker 1: and saw it in his photo, and heard it in
Speaker 1: his mother's voice when she talked about his love of
Speaker 1: going to the skate park to watch the sunset every evening.
Speaker 1: And so I think in in these moments, I try
Speaker 1: to I try my best to say something that is
Speaker 1: less centered on though who murdered this person, and more
Speaker 1: on an attempt to remember the person as a person,
Speaker 1: remember the person as a human. Yeah, yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for that, Clint, that essay, it is extremely powerful. I
Speaker 1: actually want to shift gears a little bit, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about another work of yours, the book
Speaker 1: you released in twenty twenty one, a work of nonfiction,
Speaker 1: How the Word Is Passed, a reckoning with the history
Speaker 1: of slavery across America. You know, it's this series of essays,
Speaker 1: like these trips you go on, you go to these
Speaker 1: sites of memory, these sites of memorializing. And for me,
Speaker 1: you know, as somebody who writes long form features, magazine features,
Speaker 1: reading this book, it felt a lot like like eight
Speaker 1: reporting trips You know, for a magazine and where you're
Speaker 1: there as the the seeing eye of the reporter that
Speaker 1: we can do in those kind of pieces, and so
Speaker 1: the experiences could be kind of you you're both bringing
Speaker 1: back the information of a place, but also this kind
Speaker 1: of seeing eye of taking everything and it's immediated through
Speaker 1: your own experiences. I wondered how you conceived of the
Speaker 1: book in that sense. Did you did you think of it,
Speaker 1: you know, related to your magazine work, did you think
Speaker 1: of it related to um, you know, how your role
Speaker 1: would be and sort of using yourself in this sense,
Speaker 1: like like even in a kind of move, a narrative,
Speaker 1: a storytelling move. Yeah. No, I really appreciate that question.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because so the book came out in
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty one, and it was fascinating when when
Speaker 1: all the reviews started coming out, there was this everybody
Speaker 1: started saying like poet and journalist Clint Smith goes to
Speaker 1: these different historical sites. And I was like, who's a
Speaker 1: journalist talked about? Like what? Like it was like like
Speaker 1: a magazine, right, I was like, what like it? It's
Speaker 1: so interesting because like I I only started working at
Speaker 1: the Atlantic in twenty twenty September twenty twenty. And this
Speaker 1: was after I turned in the book. And I had
Speaker 1: never I hadn't worked in media before, Like I was
Speaker 1: a graduate student, uh my PhD at Harvard. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what so what were your models? Like? What then? What
Speaker 1: were you what were you thinking about as models for
Speaker 1: this trip? Yeah, for these eight trips? I should say,
Speaker 1: I think that writing this book taught me how to
Speaker 1: be a journalist. It taught me how to be a
Speaker 1: writer of narrative nonfiction. It taught me and I think
Speaker 1: what I what I tried to do was just I
Speaker 1: kind of just looked up, like, what are the best
Speaker 1: examples of narrative nonfiction UM that have been published? And
Speaker 1: so spent a lot of time, you know, reading the
Speaker 1: work of folks like obviously the one of the other
Speaker 1: Sons as Bell Wilkinson, sort of stands on its own
Speaker 1: at the at the zenith of the genre UM and
Speaker 1: and I kind of was learning as I go. And
Speaker 1: because originally it wasn't imagined as a narrative nonfiction book,
Speaker 1: I thought that it was going to be my second
Speaker 1: collection of poetry, the first being Counting Descent, right, the
Speaker 1: first being Counting Descent, And I thought that this one
Speaker 1: would be my next collection, because the origin story of
Speaker 1: the book is that in twenty seventeen, I watched several
Speaker 1: Confederate statues come down in my hometown in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: statues with PGT. Buregard, Jefferson Davis, Roberty Lee. And as
Speaker 1: I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about what it meant that I grew up in a
Speaker 1: majority of black city in which there were more homages
Speaker 1: to enslavers than there were to enslave people, and thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: what are the implications that what does it mean that
Speaker 1: to get to school I had to go down Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee Boulevard, to get to the grocery store, I had
Speaker 1: to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway, that my middle school
Speaker 1: was named after a leader of the Confederacy, that my
Speaker 1: parents still live on a street today named after someone
Speaker 1: who owned over one hundred and fifteen slave people. Because
Speaker 1: the thing is, we know that symbols and names and
Speaker 1: iconography aren't just symbols. They're reflective of the stories the
Speaker 1: people tell, and those stories shaped the narratives that communities
Speaker 1: car times. Narratives shape public policy, and public policy is
Speaker 1: what shapes the material conditions of people's lives. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, and that's not to say that you just
Speaker 1: take down a statue of Roberty Lee and sudden, suddenly
Speaker 1: you'll raise the racial wealth gap. But I do think
Speaker 1: it helps us, helps us recognize the sort of ecosystem
Speaker 1: of ideas and narratives that help ground our understanding of
Speaker 1: American history and help us understand the way certain communities
Speaker 1: have been disproportionately intentionally harmed throughout American history. And a
Speaker 1: simple point, I just want to echo this here because
Speaker 1: you said it, I just want to say it, say
Speaker 1: it slightly differently. These symbols matter, which is why they
Speaker 1: went up in the first place. Yes, and if you
Speaker 1: engage yeah, and as and as you and so many
Speaker 1: others have written about, like if you think about the
Speaker 1: context in which they were erected, correct, it is real
Speaker 1: to be very clear what the intention behind them were, right.
Speaker 1: And so I think watching the monuments come down for
Speaker 1: me was a catalyst to a sort of personal reckoning,
Speaker 1: right and me being like, man, like I grew up
Speaker 1: in this city. I'm the descendant of enslaved people, right,
Speaker 1: Like my grandfather's grandfather was enslaved and yet my own
Speaker 1: understanding of the history of slavery in New Orleans, in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and really across this country is not actually commensurate
Speaker 1: with the impact and residue that it has had on
Speaker 1: this country today. And so at first I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this book. I'm going to write a book of
Speaker 1: poetry that's about all of these different statues in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: And so I started with poems, and then it was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I need more space. And so
Speaker 1: then I started writing these sort of extended lyrical, sort
Speaker 1: of meditative essays, and then I was like, I think
Speaker 1: I need additional voice, Like if I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: about how different parts of this country think about this history,
Speaker 1: then I need more voices beyond my own. So then
Speaker 1: I started incorporating other people. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I have to bring in the sort of historiography that shapes,
Speaker 1: you know, the things that I'm wrestling with. And so
Speaker 1: then you bring in the archive, then you bring in
Speaker 1: all of these scholars and so you know what's true.
Speaker 1: And I tell this to young writers all the time,
Speaker 1: like what you the fully formed book that you see,
Speaker 1: Like I spent probably like a year and a half
Speaker 1: writing over and over again what I thought would be
Speaker 1: the first chapter of that book, right, and I probably
Speaker 1: wrote like four versions of it. Yeah. Man, the beginnings,
Speaker 1: the beginnings of those kinds of books are always the
Speaker 1: hardest because you're like trying to figure out the mode
Speaker 1: of storytelling. I mean absolutely, yeah. My last book, same thing,
Speaker 1: six months just on that first chapter and many many
Speaker 1: efforts that are failed, complete wrong approaching. And the thing
Speaker 1: that I always try to tell people is that, like,
Speaker 1: the way I think about it is it's like you
Speaker 1: can think of it as failure in some way or
Speaker 1: like a sort of necessary failure process I think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and and let's not say that's how you were saying,
Speaker 1: but like I think of it as practice, right, Like
Speaker 1: because I played sports my whole life. You know, I
Speaker 1: played soccer. You all played tennis, I and you know
Speaker 1: you know that you don't just show up to the
Speaker 1: game right and like and play and like are good? Right,
Speaker 1: You have to put in hours and hours years of
Speaker 1: work that people never see, so that when you show
Speaker 1: up to the court or the field, people are seeing
Speaker 1: the manifestation of the work that you put in previously
Speaker 1: and I think of writing the same way. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I spent a year writing, you know, fifty
Speaker 1: thousand words that will never leave my computer. That's right.
Speaker 1: So Claion, let's talk. Let's talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what's in the book, because Ben and I are
Speaker 1: both fascinated by some of the places you visited for
Speaker 1: personal reasons, and and I'll start. Obviously, you're reporting on
Speaker 1: the Whitney Plantation, which is an extension of your hometown.
Speaker 1: It is today the only museum dedicated to the history
Speaker 1: of enslaved people at a plantation, in this case, a
Speaker 1: plantation about sugar. It's surrounded by plantations that are often
Speaker 1: sites of museums and tours. So in the country there's
Speaker 1: no other museum dedicated to the history of slavery or
Speaker 1: enslaved people sugar, slavery for sugar. And there are other
Speaker 1: sites that tell the history of slavery and even have
Speaker 1: our artifacts. But as a plantation, best I know, this
Speaker 1: is the only one that is centering the experience of
Speaker 1: the enslaved. And so wrote it. You wrote about this
Speaker 1: for sixteen nineteen. Yeah, yeah, I wrote about it for
Speaker 1: sixteen nineteen. In any case, I was fascinated to read
Speaker 1: your own experience on it. I really appreciate it the
Speaker 1: more expansive treatment that you gave it, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to hear you talk, you know, at least a
Speaker 1: little bit about something that you took away from the surprise.
Speaker 1: I guess the question, you know, for me to you is,
Speaker 1: you know what surprised you about the Whitney Plantation as
Speaker 1: opposed to what you expected? Yeah, you know, I had.
Speaker 1: I had previous to that. I went to the Whitney
Speaker 1: in the first time I went would have been late
Speaker 1: two thy eighteen, and I had never been to a
Speaker 1: plantation that centered, as you kind of as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: that centered the lives and experiences of enslaved people, And
Speaker 1: so it went to this place. I had heard a
Speaker 1: lot about it, obviously, given um some of the fanfare
Speaker 1: that it had opened to, given its unique role in
Speaker 1: the sort of landscape of American museums, I had. What
Speaker 1: I will say is that part of the issue I
Speaker 1: recognized later was that the only first person accounts that
Speaker 1: I had encountered of enslaved people were like Frederick Douglas
Speaker 1: and and you know, sort of secondhand versions of like
Speaker 1: Harriet Tubman you know, the sort of the kind of
Speaker 1: superstars of slavery, you know, in the way that we
Speaker 1: think about them and talk about them. And what happened
Speaker 1: that the Whitney is that it gave me insight into
Speaker 1: a set of experiences and voices from ordinary enslave people.
Speaker 1: You know, enslave people who did not escape, enslave people
Speaker 1: who did not teach themselves how to read or write,
Speaker 1: enslave people who did not rescue. You know, dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of people coming back and forth. And I understand
Speaker 1: why the stories of Frederick Douglas and Harry Tummen are
Speaker 1: told because they are remarkable. I mean, like they are
Speaker 1: not just remarkable enslave people. The universe doesn't make many
Speaker 1: people like a Frederick Douglas, like a Harria Tummin. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are remarkable people in human history. And what the
Speaker 1: Whitney House makes clear is that the experiences of folks
Speaker 1: like that are not reflective of the experiences of the
Speaker 1: vast majority of enslave people, many of whom were simply
Speaker 1: trying to make create a meaningful life amid the unfathomable
Speaker 1: conditions that they lived in. Ye can I can I
Speaker 1: interrupt you? On that point, because I think that's that's
Speaker 1: such a powerful connection to your choices as a writer.
Speaker 1: And what I know we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: is like how do we choose to explain things and
Speaker 1: the enormity of the crimes against humanity? And what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you say is that part of the inspiration and
Speaker 1: the surprise of being at Whitney is that people who
Speaker 1: live through this had the first words themselves. And that's
Speaker 1: such a powerful reminder for you know, for writers in general,
Speaker 1: is that we often discount that the people we're writing
Speaker 1: about do have a voice and can speak and do
Speaker 1: speak for themselves U and even sometimes get it wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, like a interesting unexpected ways, which you you know,
Speaker 1: you also write about in this book, particularly in your
Speaker 1: trip to Gorrie Island. Yeah, I actually wanted to I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about that for a minute, Khalil, because
Speaker 1: I also took that trip. The last chapter of Clint
Speaker 1: of your book, you go to Gorey Island off the
Speaker 1: coast of Senegal, and I took a trip there as well.
Speaker 1: And actually my father is an African historian, he's now emeritus,
Speaker 1: and I had tagged along as a young adult with
Speaker 1: a group of African historians and africanists. There was like
Speaker 1: a conference in the Gambia, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: seems like a really interesting way to explore the world.
Speaker 1: I remember that it was nineteen ninety eight because the
Speaker 1: Bulls just won their second three pet and we watched
Speaker 1: it in a bar and the Gambia. Um. Oh man,
Speaker 1: never forget. It was like one of the greatest nights
Speaker 1: of my life of my dad and I in this
Speaker 1: bar watching it and then swimming at night in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean together. It was beautiful. I heard that story
Speaker 1: if I was if I was Clint, I would turn
Speaker 1: it into a poem because it was really it was
Speaker 1: like um. But then so then you know, you we
Speaker 1: we traveled to Senegal to Dakar, and we get on
Speaker 1: this boat just like you did, and you go to
Speaker 1: this island and we went to uh the the Maison
Speaker 1: des Esclaves, the House of Slaves, this this memorial to
Speaker 1: the slave trade. And there you know, there's the it's
Speaker 1: called the Door of No Return, is that right? And
Speaker 1: the little door and you look out into the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean and this place tells this story of you know
Speaker 1: that millions of enslaved people of Africans were taken here
Speaker 1: from from the continent and taken to the United States
Speaker 1: and taken to the Americas. And as you write in
Speaker 1: the book, you know, I'm there with all these historians
Speaker 1: who were like, you know, listening and also assessing. And
Speaker 1: my dad I remember saying to me, he was like,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere to dock a ship out this window. It
Speaker 1: was like there was there was you know, this wasn't
Speaker 1: a spot where where where where human beings where Like
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands, if not millions of human beings were
Speaker 1: taken out this door. Um, you know, was like it's
Speaker 1: physically impossible. It was physically power there's nowhere. There was
Speaker 1: nowhere to like dock a ship. And like you're still
Speaker 1: looking out at the ocean and you're thinking about this
Speaker 1: and as you write, like, you know, some of that
Speaker 1: memorial sites facts were inaccurate. You know, maybe there were
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people taken from Gray Island. They
Speaker 1: were sort of stored there before been on this journey.
Speaker 1: And I got to say that neither from my dad
Speaker 1: nor the other historians there, they weren't dismissive. This was
Speaker 1: still loaded with meaning. But they also were pointing out
Speaker 1: the inaccuracies they actual like the impossibility of this actual
Speaker 1: site being this this major transportation hub, because that's also
Speaker 1: what they do. They're like telling history and and in
Speaker 1: your book, I mean, it's so striking to talk about
Speaker 1: these memorials and what memory is and what what symbolism
Speaker 1: is too, because you know, you're deep inside of that
Speaker 1: at the end of this book, like what do we
Speaker 1: really want? What do we even need from our these
Speaker 1: memorial sites? I think, Um, I'm so glad, I thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing that story. Um it sounds like a
Speaker 1: really um special inform of experience. Amazing. Yeah, it truly was.
Speaker 1: You know, I think about what I think about with
Speaker 1: Gorey and Gave. I kind of put it in conversation
Speaker 1: with the chapter that starts the book, Monicello, because part
Speaker 1: of what Monticello reveals to me is that these sites
Speaker 1: of history and of memory are not static, and the
Speaker 1: way they tell the story, the way they once told
Speaker 1: the story, is not how they necessarily have to always
Speaker 1: tell the story. And I think Manicello is a place
Speaker 1: that I think really is a reflection of the abilities
Speaker 1: for places and sites of memory to evolve in how
Speaker 1: they tell the story of themselves, because how Manicello told
Speaker 1: the story of itself ten twenty, thirty, forty fifty years
Speaker 1: ago is fundamentally different than five years ago. Right, It's
Speaker 1: like very different than how it tells the story of itself.
Speaker 1: This is the Thomas Jefferson, Yeah, Thomas Jefferson's plantation. And
Speaker 1: and you know, it's because of the work of scholars
Speaker 1: like a. Net Gordon read. It's because of the descendants
Speaker 1: of people who were enslaved there and insisting that those
Speaker 1: stories of their ancestors be told, right, Because part of
Speaker 1: what we have to remember is that like that Senegal
Speaker 1: was colonized until the sixties, right, and so many of
Speaker 1: the documents, so many of the archives, so many of
Speaker 1: the histories, so many of the stories that would inform
Speaker 1: how that place is able to tell the story of
Speaker 1: itself were taken away or we're dismissed, right, And so
Speaker 1: it's a place that I think is still learning how
Speaker 1: to tell the story of itself while while at the
Speaker 1: same time honoring the tradition of the histories that have
Speaker 1: been passed down in that space. Yeah, we are going
Speaker 1: to take another break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about how we write through analogies, historical
Speaker 1: analogies to make sense of the different choices that Americans
Speaker 1: have made to talk about their past and Germans have
Speaker 1: made to talk about their past. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: after the break. Recently, Clint you published a cover story
Speaker 1: in Atlantic, and I was so eager to read it
Speaker 1: because I saw this as the ninth trip of how
Speaker 1: the word has passed, but this time not just leaving
Speaker 1: the United States. I mean, obviously we just talked about Senegal,
Speaker 1: but leaving the black white story, leaving the story of
Speaker 1: what happened to black people, And it's such a powerful
Speaker 1: way to reveal the water we swim in the United States,
Speaker 1: the way in which we are trapped in a debate
Speaker 1: about how we should remember a past which has mostly
Speaker 1: been soaked through with white supremacy and Confederate monument men,
Speaker 1: and the erasier and the ongoing right now erasier of
Speaker 1: black history and black studies, whether it's anti CRT bills
Speaker 1: or whether it's the now meddling with and altering of
Speaker 1: an ap African American studies class. And so share a
Speaker 1: little bit about the insights you gleaned when you walked
Speaker 1: to the streets of Berlin and saw up close to
Speaker 1: witness and to write about what happened during the Holocaust
Speaker 1: in that country. Yeah, I mean, there's, man, there's so
Speaker 1: much to say. But you know, one of the reason
Speaker 1: that I went to Germany is because as I was
Speaker 1: on book tour for How the Words Passed, people would
Speaker 1: often say, you know, well, you talk about America sort
Speaker 1: of largely failing to reckon with this relationship to the
Speaker 1: history of chattel slavery and indigenous genocide, and well, what's
Speaker 1: the place that's doing it well? And I would always
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you know, Germany is doing this, Germany
Speaker 1: is doing that. Germany has this memorial, Germany has that monument.
Speaker 1: And there came a point where I was like, I
Speaker 1: keep talking about the memorials in Germany, and I've never
Speaker 1: been to the memorials in Germany, right, And so it
Speaker 1: felt disingenuous to me to continue to talk about this
Speaker 1: thing that I hadn't encountered myself. And so went over
Speaker 1: to Germany initially spent a week there and traveled to
Speaker 1: all these different sites of memory, the train stations from
Speaker 1: which Jewish people were deported and sent to death camps,
Speaker 1: the memorial to the murder Jews of Europe, this massive
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand square foot monument in the middle of
Speaker 1: downtown Berlin. You know. Then there's the Stolperstein or the
Speaker 1: Stumbling Stones, the largest decentralized memorial in the world, the
Speaker 1: seventy thousand brass stones across thirty different European countries that
Speaker 1: are placed in front of the homes where Jewish people
Speaker 1: and others who were persecuted by the Nazis were taken
Speaker 1: from before they were sent to these death camps. I
Speaker 1: wanted to understand how Germany tells the story of its past,
Speaker 1: and part of what it was revealed is that there
Speaker 1: is a level of complexity and nuance in the sense
Speaker 1: that many Jewish people in Germany have very different ideas
Speaker 1: about the efficacy and the texture of these different memorials.
Speaker 1: There are some who really love the Stumbling Stones and
Speaker 1: who think it's so meaningful to place these intimate objects
Speaker 1: that sort of symbolize individual Jewish people on the ground
Speaker 1: in front of the places where they once lived. Other
Speaker 1: people think it's fundamentally disrespectful to place the names of
Speaker 1: Jewish people on the ground. Some people think that the
Speaker 1: memorial to the murder Jews of Europe is the size
Speaker 1: and scale of it conveys the horror of mity, worse
Speaker 1: genocide in modern history, and the enormity of it. Other
Speaker 1: people think it's too abstract and too passive, and this
Speaker 1: was really important for me because obviously no group of
Speaker 1: people is homogeneous in their sensibilities and their thinking. But
Speaker 1: it was just important to be reminded there like, oh,
Speaker 1: even there is no consensus, so to speak, on what
Speaker 1: these monuments are, how they work. And the other thing too,
Speaker 1: that I hadn't fully considered until I was there, was
Speaker 1: that one of the primary differences between how Germany grapples
Speaker 1: with his past and how the United States grapples with
Speaker 1: his past is that there just aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: Jewish people left in Germany. Yeah. You use this great
Speaker 1: example of Angola Prison, which was a former plantation, and
Speaker 1: you're like, it'd be like if there was a prison
Speaker 1: built on top of concentration camp and the two thirds
Speaker 1: of the population of the people in carcer there were Jewish.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but you know, that's that's Louisiana. But in
Speaker 1: in Germany, they're just aren't that many Jews around. It's
Speaker 1: an abstraction, as you said, yeah, yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's I think Jewish people are less than a quarter
Speaker 1: of a percent of the population, right Like, there are
Speaker 1: more Jewish people in the city of Boston than there
Speaker 1: are in all of Germany. And I don't think I
Speaker 1: fully understood that. And so the thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the women I was talking to that I
Speaker 1: talk about in the piece, she was like, it's easy
Speaker 1: for Germans to build monuments and memorials to Jewish people
Speaker 1: and to the Holocaust because we're more of a historical
Speaker 1: abstraction than we are actual people, right Like, most Germans
Speaker 1: don't know a Jewish person. And as this woman put it,
Speaker 1: this Jewish historian, she was saying, you know, Judaism is
Speaker 1: almost an empty canvas upon which Germans can paint their contrition. Right.
Speaker 1: And then in the United States that's very different. There's
Speaker 1: tens of millions of us who are the descendants of
Speaker 1: enslaved people. So you can't simply lay down a wreath
Speaker 1: or build a memorial, or build a monument and say,
Speaker 1: oh man, this was really terrible, We're so sorry that
Speaker 1: this happened. If you're not going to also engage in
Speaker 1: material interventions that make amends for the harm that has
Speaker 1: been done because those people are still year and so
Speaker 1: that creates a lack of willingness with which to even
Speaker 1: begin to engage that history. And I think it's fundamentally
Speaker 1: tied to so much of what we see um happening
Speaker 1: in our sort of in the landscape of education around
Speaker 1: these That's right, that's right man. I will say Clint,
Speaker 1: that that reading that piece and and wrestling with myself
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying, like the absurdity that in the
Speaker 1: United States that we don't we don't grapple with our
Speaker 1: with our past of chattel slavery, of indigenous genocide. That
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it is that it is our
Speaker 1: past and we should be wrestling with it. And at
Speaker 1: the same time it shows like that it's whatever ways
Speaker 1: we do, it's going to be complicated. Um. Also, in
Speaker 1: this conversation with you two guys, both of whom have
Speaker 1: gotten to these memorial sites, like I'm the one person
Speaker 1: who is not only Jewish, but whose father was born
Speaker 1: in Nazi Germany and escaped as a child at three
Speaker 1: year old with his parents, Like I gotta go, I
Speaker 1: can't be out here like this, like I can't have
Speaker 1: YouTube guys like like like I'm feeling like how you felt, Clint,
Speaker 1: Like I'm talking about this, but I've never been to Germany. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of one of the ways. Even
Speaker 1: but even that, like that's that's so interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I met so many people who are like that,
Speaker 1: and not because they haven't thought about it, because they
Speaker 1: were like, no, none, like we don't go to Jaman
Speaker 1: like their parents had instilled in them. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the case for you, but it
Speaker 1: just makes me think of all the people I talked
Speaker 1: to who are like, why would I ever go back
Speaker 1: to that place? Yea. And so it's just interesting the
Speaker 1: way that those sort of messages, either explicitly or more subtly,
Speaker 1: sort of get passed down across generations. Yeah, man, Clint,
Speaker 1: I am so glad that we got to do this,
Speaker 1: that we got to sit down and have this conversation.
Speaker 1: You are doing amazing work and it's just, uh, it's
Speaker 1: making me think of all kinds of things and it's
Speaker 1: inspiring my own work. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah, same
Speaker 1: here man, And the power of your work and the
Speaker 1: stories you're telling and the way you're reaching from the
Speaker 1: youngest who can hear and learn something in your poetry,
Speaker 1: to the oldest who's reading the Atlantic or reading your books,
Speaker 1: is in reminding us that we all have choices and
Speaker 1: we can change those choices too, And so that's the
Speaker 1: hope in all of this, that we can choose differently,
Speaker 1: and I am hopeful that as people encounter your work
Speaker 1: they will make different choices in the future. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: It's very generous of you. It's been a real pleasure. Wow,
Speaker 1: what a powerful conversation, and what an amazing speaker and writer.
Speaker 1: Just really lovely person, lovely person and just very moving
Speaker 1: and something I was really struck by when he talked
Speaker 1: about the fact that so much of what he has
Speaker 1: seen in Germany turns on the fact that there are
Speaker 1: just very few Jews there, and you know, you talked
Speaker 1: about not having been there yourself, and I just I
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, you know, is this something that
Speaker 1: you've struggled with. I mean, have you had a conversation
Speaker 1: with your parents, have you have you thought about this
Speaker 1: beyond just this conversation. Yeah. Yeah, Clint had said that
Speaker 1: there he ran into a lot of Jewish people who
Speaker 1: are like I'll never go back to Germany. For me,
Speaker 1: it's mostly like I just have money for the plane ticket.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, No, no, you visited South Africa, you
Speaker 1: can't get to Germany. Come on. So, So the truth
Speaker 1: is my grandparents who fled Nazi Germany with my father
Speaker 1: when he was a little boy. They moved to the
Speaker 1: United States. When I was a kid, they decided to
Speaker 1: leave America and moved back to Europe, and so they
Speaker 1: they ended up living in Switzerland and visited Germany many times.
Speaker 1: And my father also has visited Germany more than once,
Speaker 1: many times. I just haven't been. I'm actually curious. I
Speaker 1: want to go. So it's not a choice that I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, this is a place like its
Speaker 1: verboden to use a German word, that I shouldn't go there. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to to extend this one one minute further, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, given that your grandparents moved back to Europe
Speaker 1: and your father's been multiple times, so like, what is
Speaker 1: the story for that's passed on? How How has the
Speaker 1: word been passed on to you about that history? Man?
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I mean, in a way, it's there,
Speaker 1: it's not spoken in some ways, and it's when it
Speaker 1: is there are sort of these gaps. I think as well.
Speaker 1: You know my dad who was very little, and he
Speaker 1: fills in some of these stories. He doesn't talk about
Speaker 1: it in a way that that this is something we
Speaker 1: should avoid. And I don't think there's anything in my
Speaker 1: family like this is off limits. Um, but it's still
Speaker 1: you know, there is this. It's part of being Jewish,
Speaker 1: is that this is you know, Jewish in the twentieth
Speaker 1: and twenty first century, that this is this is part
Speaker 1: of this immense experience that that we have, that this
Speaker 1: is this is this trauma, this genocide is there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ooh well, um, I'm gonna look forward to either being
Speaker 1: there with you when you go or being the first
Speaker 1: to hear about it. No. I was when you were
Speaker 1: telling me about your trip, I again thought I needed
Speaker 1: to go, and I will. I mean, I think Pushkin's
Speaker 1: gonna pay for it. They're willing to send us. Let's go.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, man, all right, love you, love
Speaker 1: you too. Some of My Best Friends Are is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Khalil Gibran Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
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