Speaker 1: Native Lampard is a production of iHeart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Reason Choice Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. Ours into.
Speaker 1: Remembering is indeed an act of resistance. This is Angela
Speaker 1: Riot's Native Lampid. It's the solo pod day on Tuesday, y'all,
Speaker 1: and I am thrilled to be joined today by someone
Speaker 1: who's a dear brother, a gifted writer and author, a
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author in fact of the grift.
Speaker 1: He has just released a novel called Burn Down Master's House.
Speaker 1: And y'all know that this is so timely. It is
Speaker 1: my privilege and honor to bring to Native Lampid my
Speaker 1: dear friend Clay Caine.
Speaker 3: What's up. It's such an honor to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I love Native Lampod and Angela, thank you for doing
Speaker 3: this on this pub day release date means so much
Speaker 3: to me. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so thrilled to do it.
Speaker 1: So first of all, can we talk about how this
Speaker 1: book is prophetic, Like the fact that I don't know
Speaker 1: if you were thinking of all this when you wrote
Speaker 1: it or when you started, but I'd love to know
Speaker 1: when you started and how much of this that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing now, this and I'm saying this, I'm in Minnesota
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how much of this were.
Speaker 1: We experiencing when you started writing this incredible novel?
Speaker 3: Well, I began writing it when I was in college,
Speaker 3: like twenty four years ago. So I began writing versions
Speaker 3: of it. But you know how publishing is, Angela, you
Speaker 3: know how media is. People said, no, that's not going
Speaker 3: to work, that's not you know, no one wants to
Speaker 3: read that. So when The Griff came out, I was
Speaker 3: able to have some aton me of what what I
Speaker 3: could do next, and some folks wanted me to do
Speaker 3: like The Griff Part two. I said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I want to do something different. Because I went to Rutgers.
Speaker 3: My major was Black Studies and I was so inspired
Speaker 3: by historical fiction books. It helped me to learn better,
Speaker 3: to digest this knowledge better. So when I was writing it,
Speaker 3: though in full last year, Trump had just won and
Speaker 3: I just felt like I could see what was happening.
Speaker 3: Because I know our history, the history rhymes. I knew
Speaker 3: at some point people would would rise up, and it
Speaker 3: pretty much happened immediately. And then I'm thinking about what's
Speaker 3: happening right now in Minnesota. And this book ultimately is
Speaker 3: about the people who rise up against their government that's
Speaker 3: enacting hell on them. They're called the terrorists, enslaved people
Speaker 3: who fought back, they were called the domestic terrorists. They
Speaker 3: were called unpatriotic, they said, they were called animals. Right,
Speaker 3: So all of this kind of rhymes. It all kind
Speaker 3: of connects. There's a connectivity there. And the thing is
Speaker 3: is what I've learned from these characters, based on real
Speaker 3: people who have been erased in our history, is if
Speaker 3: they lead you to believe there's no point in fighting back,
Speaker 3: you won't even try. If they convince you that resisting
Speaker 3: is futile, you're going to give up. So in these people,
Speaker 3: in the worst of circumstances, they found radical hope, They
Speaker 3: found a light. And I think that there's so many
Speaker 3: blueprints throughout history. These people that I unearthed from the archives.
Speaker 3: I think they represent that we have to believe that
Speaker 3: we could fight. It starts here in our mind. How
Speaker 3: we're going to burn down Master's House today. Master's House
Speaker 3: is these tech bros, the billionaire CEOs, these rich guys
Speaker 3: at the top. That's Master House right now. And what
Speaker 3: can we do to burn it down, to reinvent it,
Speaker 3: to start from the ashes? So it all made sense,
Speaker 3: and you're right in this moment, it's just hitting me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm curious because you have on that trailer
Speaker 1: remembering is resistance is a form of resistance, And I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know your thoughts on you know, young people especially,
Speaker 1: you'll say like, I'm not my ancestors, and.
Speaker 2: We like you really not like we see that one way.
Speaker 1: They see it a completely different way that like they're like,
Speaker 1: run up on me if you want to, and we're like,
Speaker 1: you can run up on them either. So I want
Speaker 1: to know for like the young folks who would feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not inspired by you know, a narrative about an
Speaker 1: ensulaved person. It makes me feel like, you know, I
Speaker 1: can't ever overcome. What do you say to that narrative,
Speaker 1: especially because a lot of that comes from the grifters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you say? What do you say to that?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, listen, that's intentional them to think that way.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to tell you something. I'm forty eight
Speaker 3: years old. When I was a young kid in West Philly,
Speaker 3: I thought the same thing. You know, why because nobody
Speaker 3: taught me anything else. I didn't know about these people.
Speaker 3: Everybody in the world should know who Charity Butler is,
Speaker 3: who's in this book, who Josephine Webb is, who's in
Speaker 3: this book. We should know who these people are. So
Speaker 3: they think that because they've been taught to think that
Speaker 3: white supremacy begins in the home, solidified in the school,
Speaker 3: and etched and stone immedia, you got people on CNN
Speaker 3: fitness influencers babbling about slavery like she knows something. So
Speaker 3: it don't surprise me that some people think I am
Speaker 3: not because you don't know your ancestors. My family was
Speaker 3: enslaved in Gooshland, Virginia. The book begins in Gooshland as
Speaker 3: a tribute to my family. That's where my family was enslaved,
Speaker 3: and I learn so much about me. So my hope
Speaker 3: is with this book is that you will know who
Speaker 3: your ancestors are. It wasn't and you know, we love
Speaker 3: Nat Turner and Denmark VC, but it wasn't just them,
Speaker 3: that's right. It was every day fighting back. So that's
Speaker 3: what I say to that you think that because you
Speaker 3: don't know, and you've been taught to not know, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, we grown Angela. When I was younger, there
Speaker 3: was no Google, there was no Internet, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. I didn't know a lot of stuff until
Speaker 3: I went to until I went to college at Rutgers University,
Speaker 3: and that changed my life. So then, when you know,
Speaker 3: remembering is an act of resistance, and that's one of
Speaker 3: the themes in the book. The other theme in the book
Speaker 3: is a lie that all the characters say. Don't let
Speaker 3: them take what they can't touch. Don't let them take
Speaker 3: what they can't touch. There are certain things they can't
Speaker 3: touch when you remember. When you know, maybe a nonfiction
Speaker 3: book is too much for you to read. But this
Speaker 3: here through storytelling, which is very ancestral. Using storytelling to teach, right,
Speaker 3: I think it can liberate you. I think it can
Speaker 3: make you say things through a different lens. And speaking
Speaker 3: of grifters, I do have a black Enslaver in this book.
Speaker 3: And let me just say there's some similarities into Congress.
Speaker 3: There are some similarities there. So there's layers in this.
Speaker 3: There's always been a grift, there's always been a hustle,
Speaker 3: even in the worst of times. So I think people
Speaker 3: think that and I thought that once because I just
Speaker 3: didn't know. And I hope this historical fiction does that
Speaker 3: work to teach for the.
Speaker 1: People who, especially in this era right now, are feeling
Speaker 1: hopeless like Okay, well I went out to vote in
Speaker 1: my circumstances didn't change, or they never changed. I didn't
Speaker 1: go to vote this time, and now they're way worse.
Speaker 1: And no matter what, inspite of all of it, my
Speaker 1: ad prices are still too high. When you said, when
Speaker 1: you think about what it means, like the fabric of
Speaker 1: who we are, the tapestry of who we are, don't
Speaker 1: let them take what they can't touch. What are some
Speaker 1: examples of that without giving you know too much away,
Speaker 1: what are some examples of the things that we hold
Speaker 1: that they can't touch? Besides our truths, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year of
Speaker 1: the Declaration of independence, So we hold these truths, but
Speaker 1: our truths look a little different.
Speaker 2: So with us, can they.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things I explain how one flame,
Speaker 3: one spark can light a thousand flop fires. So a
Speaker 3: caller on my Serious XM show said this, that knowledge
Speaker 3: manages terror, seem I'm outraged by what's going on. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you are as well, Angela. But my knowledge manages
Speaker 3: my anxiety and manages my terror. I'm able to see
Speaker 3: the similarities. You know, we know how reconstruction ended, right,
Speaker 3: we know the backlash to the civil rights movement. But
Speaker 3: what I say to people who are upset about, well,
Speaker 3: I voted and it didn't work out. First voting is
Speaker 3: a long game. Just to be clear. You know, when
Speaker 3: I was in Congress, when I'm sorry, when I was
Speaker 3: a kid, there was no Jasmine Crockett, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: you have backseat waters in there, but she was few
Speaker 3: and far in between. There was no Ayata Presley, there
Speaker 3: was no ilhan Omar. So there is some progress there.
Speaker 3: But you know, what I tell people is that there
Speaker 3: is the long game and believing that things are a
Speaker 3: journey and they kind of come back and forth, right,
Speaker 3: But you also have to not let them believe that
Speaker 3: we're never going to get out of this. It just
Speaker 3: we can't go from there. I get the frustration, but
Speaker 3: the idea that we're never going to get out or
Speaker 3: they've got all this lockdown. The only reason why the
Speaker 3: Civil War ends isn't because good white folks got a
Speaker 3: conscience woke up. It's because black folks said no more.
Speaker 3: The reason why we have a civil rights movement isn't
Speaker 3: because linthe By Johnson was a great guy. He was
Speaker 3: a fucking racist. Black folks said no, we're going to
Speaker 3: hold you a acountable a Philip Randolph by ourd rustin.
Speaker 3: They said no more. The reason why white women got
Speaker 3: the right to vote through the suffrage movement is because
Speaker 3: white women said no more. Right, So it's it's about us.
Speaker 3: It's not the rich guy at the top. There's always
Speaker 3: gonna be somebody pushing back. There's always gonna be somebody
Speaker 3: uh uh saying this, this isn't gonna work. And the
Speaker 3: other thing too, is then we have our internal fissures.
Speaker 3: We have our internal divisions that really tear us apart.
Speaker 3: You saw that with Kamala Harris. I don't got to
Speaker 3: get into all the identity bullshit that went down in
Speaker 3: this book. And this is gonna piss some people off.
Speaker 3: I do have characters in here who we would now
Speaker 3: say are gay or queer, right, And I guess some
Speaker 3: folks think gay folks has popped up when Dinah Ross
Speaker 3: had their first hit song. I don't know, but you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, but there are gay people in
Speaker 3: these in these story what we would now call gay,
Speaker 3: and that's important to see, like you said, the tapestry
Speaker 3: of who we are. So I think if we lean
Speaker 3: into all that and not get caught up in these
Speaker 3: fissures and these divisions that divide us, I think that
Speaker 3: can bring us a lot more, a lot more hope,
Speaker 3: that can spark us.
Speaker 2: You know the other thing that came to mind.
Speaker 1: When just thinking about burning down Master's house, which is
Speaker 1: figure TOI yeah, in this day and age, because you
Speaker 1: know that's the meta with the insurrection. So I would
Speaker 1: just say, when you think about actual burning down, I'm
Speaker 1: sure we had ancestors who rebelled and took their power
Speaker 1: back in that way. But where I have heard about
Speaker 1: the burning down of things more often is from the
Speaker 1: bullies from the insurrection. It's the actual domestic terrorists, which
Speaker 1: are you know, slaveholders and the people who were poor
Speaker 1: and white who aided and embedded slaveholders. Of course, there
Speaker 1: were some black folks who did that too, but it's
Speaker 1: few and far between. So I'm curious, you know, how
Speaker 1: do we in this era where we have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to burn something down and by that we mean, take
Speaker 1: something apart that is not serving citizens period, not just
Speaker 1: black folks, but citizens period, and to rebuild and reimagine
Speaker 1: and redevelop and reconstruct something that feels like it is
Speaker 1: more in service to us.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like the thing that's the top of mind is
Speaker 1: my good brother Damio Solomon Simmons is represented the Tulsa
Speaker 1: survivors for a long time and their descendants. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we just lost mother Fletcher, so there is
Speaker 1: one remaining survivor. They burned that place up, burned it down,
Speaker 1: and we've said that you want to have your own space,
Speaker 1: no problem, we'll create our own space. That isn't sufficient either, culaid.
Speaker 1: So we burn whatever this is down and we go
Speaker 1: to rebuild and reconstruct and reimagine for us. How do
Speaker 1: we preserve it this time? I feel like that's part
Speaker 1: of the lesson. Our folks would want us to inherit,
Speaker 1: you know, and like do something different with.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. We I feel like we had
Speaker 3: less power than after the Civil War before the Civil
Speaker 3: War during reconstruction and used our power more. I feel
Speaker 3: like we have more power now and use our power less. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So how can we maintain these things. I think it's
Speaker 3: about knowing your power, even in the margins. I always
Speaker 3: get this stab. In eighteen sixty eight, and this is
Speaker 3: before the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, but there was reconstruction
Speaker 3: acts that allowed some black folks to vote in the
Speaker 3: former Confederacy only black men. Sadly, we had eighty percent
Speaker 3: black voter turnout. Yes, can you imagine that? Eighty percent
Speaker 3: black in Mississippi, in Louisiana, eighty percent black voter churnout.
Speaker 3: That completely reinvents the South locally locally now. So one
Speaker 3: of the things when I tell people like you were
Speaker 3: saying earlier that things never changed, I said, but we're
Speaker 3: not using our full capacity. We're not even using it
Speaker 3: to the margins. Yeah, right, we're not even So there's
Speaker 3: that element of using our full capacity once you get
Speaker 3: the power. Some people have described the era of Barack
Speaker 3: Obama being a reconstruction type era. You know, I get that,
Speaker 3: But if you believe in that, were you using your
Speaker 3: full capacity during that time? I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 3: hard to fully was he was he using his full capacity?
Speaker 3: Was Eric Holder using his full capacity right during that
Speaker 3: And if they're not, how are you going to hold
Speaker 3: them accountable. So I think the way the reason why
Speaker 3: reconstruction fails isn't because you know, black folks were incompetent,
Speaker 3: of course not. It's because there were powers that be
Speaker 3: that wanted to pull back. And I believe we have
Speaker 3: a better infrastructure now where we can uphold that. And
Speaker 3: this may feel like too much work, whether it's a
Speaker 3: city council meeting, a town hall meeting, your local nonprofit.
Speaker 3: Nonprofits are everything. When I was a kid, I have
Speaker 3: my first HIV test at Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia. These
Speaker 3: things being as involved in our communities as possible, whatever
Speaker 3: way you could do it. You know, for me, this
Speaker 3: book is an act of literary resistance, but I understand
Speaker 3: for other people it could be something else. You got
Speaker 3: to find out what your superpower is. Yes, and listen,
Speaker 3: that don't mean there's going to be casualties. There's going
Speaker 3: to be losses. This country is going to be different.
Speaker 3: But as Sweet Honey in the Rock says, if you
Speaker 3: want change in your life, you got to walk in
Speaker 3: the storm. If you make it out through the other side,
Speaker 3: you're going to be different. Right, So it's all of that,
Speaker 3: and listen, it doesn't mean if we get things back
Speaker 3: to you know, progress, that it's going to stay that
Speaker 3: way forever. I think one of the things that messes
Speaker 3: me up, Angela is that a lot changed during COVID
Speaker 3: and we were and I think I heard Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: say this. One of the steps that we're doing is
Speaker 3: some folks are trying to go back to what it
Speaker 3: was like before COVID, and I'm like, no, I want
Speaker 3: to be innovative. I want to be different, I want
Speaker 3: to move forward. So now we're packing everybody back in
Speaker 3: the office again, knowing that you shouldn't have to drive
Speaker 3: an hour and a half to work and lose time
Speaker 3: with your family and your kids. We're trying to just
Speaker 3: make it how it was before. All I want to
Speaker 3: do is progress. That's why I always say conservatism, what
Speaker 3: are we trying to conserve? How can we progress forward?
Speaker 3: So it's it's so many things there. It's for us
Speaker 3: to work collectively. This book is not one point of view.
Speaker 3: It's a collective of people. And lastly, I'll say as
Speaker 3: far as that, as far as how do we maintain it,
Speaker 3: we have to have radical hope. I know what may
Speaker 3: sound cheesier and easier, said than done. But that is truth.
Speaker 3: We got to have radical hope. Man, We can't we
Speaker 3: how can you? It's like jumping into a relationship. You're like, well,
Speaker 3: this shit ain't gonna work out, and then it falls
Speaker 3: apart in six months. Well, obviously you doomed it from
Speaker 3: the start. We got to have radical hope. And I
Speaker 3: know it's hard, and I have friends who are struggling.
Speaker 3: I have friends who've lost access to medication. It's definitely hard,
Speaker 3: and you should more and be able to grieve and
Speaker 3: go through that process. But where you're going to find
Speaker 3: your hope, Where you're going to find community? Where are
Speaker 3: you going to find that? So it's a collective.
Speaker 1: You mentioned one of your communities a few times in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and of course, just this past weekend we saw I
Speaker 1: don't know who these white men were, but they were
Speaker 1: authorized allegedly to take down this these plaques that communicate
Speaker 1: the story of the enslaved people who George Washington owned,
Speaker 1: and a number of other stories related to the Transatlantic
Speaker 1: slave trade and the horrors of slavery. Your book basically
Speaker 1: spits in the eye of the work that they were
Speaker 1: doing to destroy and dismantle our history. I want you
Speaker 1: to talk to the authors who would be scared right
Speaker 1: now to write their conscience right, to really tell the
Speaker 1: stories that we know need to be told for us,
Speaker 1: hold on to that kind of hope that you just
Speaker 1: talked about. They're like, oh, well, if I do this,
Speaker 1: my book is going to be banned. They may come
Speaker 1: after me. I may be black or blacklisted. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: deport media Uganda. They want to get me out of here,
Speaker 1: which you know, it could happen. Crazier things, Crazier things
Speaker 1: have happened. But what do you say to those folks
Speaker 1: who are like, how can I lean into that type
Speaker 1: of resistance in writing on paper, especially in this hour
Speaker 1: when it is needed so much.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to know your craft. You have to
Speaker 3: know your work. You have to know your history. If
Speaker 3: you're going to lean into this kind of writing, or
Speaker 3: whether it's writing about apartheid or whether it's about the Holocaust,
Speaker 3: you have to know your shit. To be frank, you
Speaker 3: got to know what you're doing. You got to do
Speaker 3: your research. You know, I'm a Black studies major. I've
Speaker 3: been writing about culture and history for a very very
Speaker 3: long time. I have a radio show, So there's that
Speaker 3: you got to know how to sing in tune and
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Like, if you're going to try
Speaker 3: to hit some notes, you got to know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: So there's that. There's being able, there's knowing and being informed.
Speaker 3: So you know your shit and you're on it. And
Speaker 3: if anybody tries to, you know, clap back at you,
Speaker 3: you know what you're talking about. So there's that. You
Speaker 3: got to have a passion in the feel for it.
Speaker 3: You know. I love this quote by James Baldwin. You
Speaker 3: have to go the way your blood boils. And if
Speaker 3: you go the way your blood boils, man, then everything
Speaker 3: else will come, an audience will come, and you got
Speaker 3: to be unapologetic about it. There was a fire in
Speaker 3: me with this book, partly because my best friend was
Speaker 3: dying of lupus when I was writing this book and
Speaker 3: she was editing the book. She was an amazing editor.
Speaker 3: She was an English lip major and she was editing
Speaker 3: this book in her hospital bed. And this book is
Speaker 3: out now, and although I'm a New York Times bestseller
Speaker 3: and I have some good credentials, I'm not getting the
Speaker 3: kind of media press that I should get, right because
Speaker 3: of what you just said, Angela, there are people who
Speaker 3: are afraid of the story, right, But in the name
Speaker 3: of my dear friend Alexemonios, I am going to fight
Speaker 3: for this story. I'm going to push this story. Her blood,
Speaker 3: her soil, her root is in this story. And so
Speaker 3: once I go on that path, and if you're an
Speaker 3: author out there or any kind of creator, then I
Speaker 3: just can't go wrong. I just can't go wrong because
Speaker 3: they're always going to find a reason to come after you.
Speaker 3: They're always going to find a reason to be angry
Speaker 3: unless you're tap dance and then you're good. But eventually
Speaker 3: that expires. Look at Kanye West, he's apologizing. Now, Nicki Minajs,
Speaker 3: that's you. In a few years, it's coming, Nikki. You
Speaker 3: see what Kanye just did. You might might be like
Speaker 3: six months and six days, right, Oh, I changed my mind.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so when I'm with that, I just feel unstoppable,
Speaker 3: preight up covered. And like I said, this book is
Speaker 3: based on real people, but all the secondary characters are
Speaker 3: named after my ancestors in Gooselin, Virginia, So there is
Speaker 3: something in there. So if you want to do this work,
Speaker 3: it's a risk. A lot of folks wanted. Like I
Speaker 3: said before the Griff Part two from me. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to do that, but you gotta go the way
Speaker 3: your blood boils. Any other way it'll be inauthentic. Any
Speaker 3: other way, it won't even be real. So that's what
Speaker 3: I say to that, and go for it.
Speaker 2: I love this. I love it, Clay.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you that one I'm going to
Speaker 1: speak into existence that this is going to be a
Speaker 1: Golden Globe winning Oscar winning film. Ryan Coogler holler at us.
Speaker 1: I want to be the connector of these things, like,
Speaker 1: come on, like we might have to rename.
Speaker 2: It so they can get it out from distribution, but we'll.
Speaker 1: Know that it is inspired by right, right right, and
Speaker 1: you're an incredible editor, and we know that the spirit,
Speaker 1: her spirit is going to take you right through.
Speaker 2: And if there's anything we can do.
Speaker 1: Press y'all better pick him up because you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: bad when he's on this New York Times best sellers
Speaker 1: list next week and you missed it. So come on,
Speaker 1: come on, press for y'all at and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we're gonna definitely lift it up on our page. I
Speaker 1: love this trailer. If y'all miss it. At the top
Speaker 1: of this Live stream. Please check it out. This is
Speaker 1: my dear brother friend Play Caine, and he is talking
Speaker 1: about burning down Master's house.
Speaker 2: That is his new book.
Speaker 1: It is a novel, It is timely, it is prophetic.
Speaker 1: Y'all gotta check it out. And in the meantime, we
Speaker 1: gotta hold on the hope. Play gotta get out of
Speaker 1: here because you gotta sell some books. Until next time,
Speaker 1: Welcome home, y'all. Native Lampard is a production of iHeart
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