Speaker 1: On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Speaker 1: Friends Media, December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: know I go places in the diary that take my
Speaker 1: breath away, as if there were someone else living inside me,
Speaker 1: with her own determined will to see and speak clearly.
Speaker 1: Because I don't write to protect myself or to say
Speaker 1: things I don't dare say to others. I don't cater
Speaker 1: to any pampered image of myself as a too sensitive
Speaker 1: soul for whom the world is too much. In the
Speaker 1: Diary her only friend, neither too fragile nor too sensitive.
Speaker 1: I have many true friends, and the portrayals I have
Speaker 1: known I have asked for. I don't write to hide
Speaker 1: from the world. Today's episode Diary dialogues I'm Katie and
Speaker 1: I'm Eves. Kathleen Collins was a writer, filmmaker, and activist.
Speaker 1: She's known for works like the nineteen eighty two film
Speaker 1: Losing Ground, as well as the plays In the Midnight
Speaker 1: Hour and The Brothers. Sadly, Kathleen died from breast cancer
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight at the tender age of forty six,
Speaker 1: before most of her work could be published, so Kathleen's daughter,
Speaker 1: Nina Collins, took to the task of diligently gathering her
Speaker 1: mom's work and releasing it.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, Echo Press posthumously published a collection of
Speaker 2: Kathleen's stories called Whatever Happened to Interracial Love, and in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, Notes from a Black Woman's Diary was published.
Speaker 2: It features a selection of her fiction, letters and diary entries,
Speaker 2: including the diary entry that you heard at the beginning
Speaker 2: of this episode.
Speaker 1: Now, it was a diary entry, but it was also
Speaker 1: a kind of commentary. She's actually reflecting on some of
Speaker 1: her older diary entries, pausing to think about why she
Speaker 1: wrote and what the diary meant to her. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: this is a brave act. The other day, I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about going back to look at some of
Speaker 1: my old journals, and I was already starting the sweat. Girl.
Speaker 2: You know, I've thrown away and ripped up all my
Speaker 2: old journals and I regret it. Yeah, like especially the
Speaker 2: ones I've had when I was really young. But they're
Speaker 2: just so embarrassing, and I'm like, I want to make
Speaker 2: sure no one ever sees these, including myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I feel about looking at my own
Speaker 1: and not even once I were that old. How old
Speaker 1: were the ones that you were?
Speaker 2: It was that you ripped up the last ones I
Speaker 2: think I ripped up. I was truly like in like
Speaker 2: middle school or something, which now I'm like, oh, it
Speaker 2: would be like funny to like go back and look
Speaker 2: at them. I have someones from like twenty sixteen, twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen era. I haven't ripped those up, but baby, I will,
Speaker 2: I will.
Speaker 1: I haven't learned you just said.
Speaker 2: She did it. No, because like the closer I am
Speaker 2: to that age, I'm like, nah, that's embarrassing, Like you know,
Speaker 2: I can't have it nobody looking at me late that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I have some diary entries from you know, this
Speaker 2: year that I will likely you rip up later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know I got something from last year.
Speaker 2: Girl.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of them in there that I don't
Speaker 1: want to see, and I just couldn't imagine publishing them
Speaker 1: of my own volition. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then even the fact that she's like commenting on
Speaker 2: herself that makes me like, I don't know if I would.
Speaker 1: No, I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't
Speaker 1: think I would. I mean, when I go back when
Speaker 1: I was wanting to go back and look at my
Speaker 1: old journal entries, it was for practical reasons. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I put some story ideas in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: I had some notes that I took about yoga or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I knew I was gonna come
Speaker 1: across other stuff while I was in there. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to sift through all that to find
Speaker 1: what I need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even not even like diaries, but the pictures you
Speaker 2: take and then your phone like makes a little video
Speaker 2: of like the status fucking day.
Speaker 1: Of coming up.
Speaker 2: You know what it is? Yeah, yes, same energy, same energy,
Speaker 2: but almost a little worse because AI is doing that
Speaker 2: to you, and you're doing it to yourself when you're
Speaker 2: going back to the journals, putting yourself through that mess.
Speaker 1: But I'm on the same page as you. So there
Speaker 1: aren't many diary entries in Notes from a Black Woman's Diary,
Speaker 1: but you get the best of both worlds. You get
Speaker 1: some of the original entries, and you get this meta
Speaker 1: narrative where the author gets to analyze her past self
Speaker 1: with more context and insight. Kathleen's entries give us a
Speaker 1: peek at contemporary published diaries, but they're a tiny sliver
Speaker 1: of a long history of black women writing their innermost
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings on paper that includes their history of
Speaker 1: slave narratives, letters, and autobiographies. And through all of these
Speaker 1: published and unpublished diaries, we get to learn more about
Speaker 1: historical eras and culture, about the biographies of our ancestors,
Speaker 1: and about the day to day experiences of communities. Plus
Speaker 1: we get a sneak peek into the private, interior worlds
Speaker 1: of everyday people, unmarred by the specter of surveillance. And
Speaker 1: to be honest, it feels a little voyeuristic, but we're
Speaker 1: lucky to have the diaries that we do. So let's
Speaker 1: grab our tiny keys and crack open the padlocks on
Speaker 1: a few diaries. First up, Francis and Rowlin Whipper. Francis
Speaker 1: was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and she was the oldest of five girls. Her father
Speaker 1: dealt in lumber. Not much is known about her mother,
Speaker 1: but the family had a fair amount of social and
Speaker 1: political status in black circles in the city, and they
Speaker 1: were considered free people of color. Frances was well educated
Speaker 1: and she and her sisters were proponents of women's rights
Speaker 1: and suffrage. Was a teacher, and she was a writer,
Speaker 1: and she was so good at her jobs that abolitionist
Speaker 1: and politician Martin Delaney commissioned her to write his official biography.
Speaker 1: That made her the author of the first biography of
Speaker 1: a freeborn Black American man.
Speaker 2: As an avid writer, Francis also kept a diary in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty eight that still exists today. It's one of
Speaker 2: the oldest by a black woman from the South, and
Speaker 2: it's housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
Speaker 2: History and Culture. But I just called that the Blacksonian Trial.
Speaker 2: In her diary, she writes about what she's reading, Dante, Shakespeare,
Speaker 2: Thomas Carlisle. She talks about writing her book, finishing it,
Speaker 2: and about its publishers and the pay for it. There's
Speaker 2: a little name dropping here and there on lectures and
Speaker 2: readings that she attended, like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Speaker 2: In this diary entry, she talks about famous abolitionists and
Speaker 2: journalist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the anti slavery newspaper
Speaker 2: The Liberator. Wednesday, February twelfth, eighteen sixty eight, mister William
Speaker 2: Lloyd Garrison spent the morning with me.
Speaker 1: I thank him a grand, noble soul, a singularly perfect
Speaker 1: development of God's highest humanity, a great intellect consecrated to
Speaker 1: one idea. I felt a reverence while in the presence
Speaker 1: of this great man who came to the rescue of
Speaker 1: a gaped and helpless people. God marked him out from
Speaker 1: the number to his truths. But is he a humanitarian?
Speaker 1: How can his practiced pen and ready heart remain uninterested
Speaker 1: while the same wrong exists under another form. God knoweth
Speaker 1: his purposes and the instruments best adapted. She mentions the
Speaker 1: anti slavery meetings that she goes to, and we learn
Speaker 1: a little bit about how anti black violence is showing
Speaker 1: up in current events that affect her. Sunday, August second, Columbia,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
Speaker 1: me at the depot with his buggy and took me
Speaker 1: to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
Speaker 1: awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend mister Adams
Speaker 1: was in to see me. Very soon after my arrival.
Speaker 1: Charlotte came to see me in the morning but Kate
Speaker 1: did not went to church in the morning with Harry
Speaker 1: Maxwell and mister Adams, the governor, and all the members
Speaker 1: were there. Quite an excitement created on account of the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku
Speaker 1: klups Klan at night, and we get some insight into
Speaker 1: some of our socio political opinions. Saturday, February twenty second,
Speaker 1: Washington's birthday. But if things continue as they are, there
Speaker 1: will be but little country left to celebrate it. For myself,
Speaker 1: I am no enthusiast over patriotic celebrations, as I am
Speaker 1: counted out of the way politic. I wrote very satisfactory today.
Speaker 1: Matthews brought me the Commonwealth and other papers. There was
Speaker 1: a grand description of Reverend to Bartell, Charles Elliot Norton
Speaker 1: and O. Bronson Alcott appear of the finest spiritual essence.
Speaker 1: I heard him at the Anti Slavery meeting. Also GB Fothenham.
Speaker 1: But she gets into some Monday moments too. She talks
Speaker 1: about her travels and snowstorms and all the folks she
Speaker 1: knew who were getting married while she was alone, and
Speaker 1: she talked about her later relationship with lawyer and legislator
Speaker 1: William James Whipper. Thursday August twentieth woke early wondering whether
Speaker 1: to throw up the sponge or accept a loveless life
Speaker 1: or not, felt as though w could not love anyone.
Speaker 1: A letter came from him today which restored me, A
Speaker 1: real love letter. What does throw up the sponge mean?
Speaker 1: I mean, I get the gist, but I was like,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that idiom before.
Speaker 2: Maybe like, oh, I'm just an old maid cleaning my house.
Speaker 1: I'm throwing up the spode.
Speaker 2: Actually that makes sense, that's probably it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were a lot of domestic workers at
Speaker 1: the time. That was a lot of black women's jobs.
Speaker 2: I was also thinking it meant something about like birth control.
Speaker 2: I feel like it wasn't there some type of sponge?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Or is I don't know. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: was a method of birth control back then. Yeah. Still,
Speaker 1: those are two guesses. Yeah. I was thinking when I
Speaker 1: was going through all of her stuff, like, I feel
Speaker 1: like I wanted to be her friend when I was
Speaker 1: reading her diaries. I mean that might just be my delusion,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but I just loved how much she cared
Speaker 1: about writing and about learning and just about all the
Speaker 1: works she was reading, like actually critiquing it and having
Speaker 1: thoughts on it. There were moments where she was like,
Speaker 1: I was talking to I can't remember the person's name,
Speaker 1: but ostensibly a friend or an associate. I was talking
Speaker 1: to him and he said this about this piece, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't handle it. He
Speaker 1: was wrong. I liked her remarks and her reflections on
Speaker 1: how she felt about the work. I liked how she
Speaker 1: was like, that person needs to do some more work,
Speaker 1: like their writing needs to be tightened up, or their
Speaker 1: lecture needs to be tightened up. I really appreciated that
Speaker 1: element of her work, and she wrote so much about it.
Speaker 1: And I know this was just one year of writing,
Speaker 1: of detailed writing about her life, but you could tell
Speaker 1: she spent a lot of time in the books in
Speaker 1: the weeds, and she really enjoyed the knowledge, gathering, consciousness,
Speaker 1: raising elements of everything.
Speaker 2: So she wrote that biography of that man. Did she
Speaker 2: write more public facing work that would kind of get
Speaker 2: into her cultural critic bag or was it all in
Speaker 2: her diary.
Speaker 1: I think it was mostly in her diary. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: I might be wrong about that, but she didn't do
Speaker 1: a ton of public writing that I know of.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a testament of the time that
Speaker 2: she was writing into, because now I can't really imagine
Speaker 2: someone like her just writing that stuff in their diary.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's just like the bubble I'm in, but
Speaker 2: it seems like nowadays, if you are really in the
Speaker 2: books and you got a little pin you can push,
Speaker 2: you're pitching the Atlantic, you're pitching the New York Times,
Speaker 2: you're pitching the Cut, you know, yeah, and you're not
Speaker 2: going to just like keep that to yourself. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting too, because I imagine she didn't think about having an
Speaker 2: audience for this diary, but now we like write for
Speaker 2: an audience. I feel like even in our diaries, we
Speaker 2: write for like thinking like, oh somebody might read this,
Speaker 2: like not even just like oh yo, man, going through
Speaker 2: your stuff, but like, oh later when I'm the famous
Speaker 2: and people want to read my diaries, like let me,
Speaker 2: let me put a little funk on this, you know,
Speaker 2: instead of just like writing normal like you would. Right,
Speaker 2: Do you feel that way, because I feel like i'd
Speaker 2: be like, I feel that way. We write a little better.
Speaker 1: I feel that way for myself. So for me, when
Speaker 1: I write in my journals today, it's more about I
Speaker 1: don't want if anybody finds it, I don't want them
Speaker 1: to read this. Sometimes I be leaving out names because
Speaker 1: of that. But then I have to check myself and
Speaker 1: be like, girl, be honest, you are writing this for you,
Speaker 1: so just get it out here, like you don't have
Speaker 1: many places you can do that. I don't really think
Speaker 1: about that in my journals from a larger perspective of
Speaker 1: like what society would read later. However, I do know
Speaker 1: that I have this self surveillance of thinking about what
Speaker 1: if this goes into the archives one day? So it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily conscious for me, but I can't see it
Speaker 1: being unconscious because the reality of it is that I
Speaker 1: have a podcast, I write things, you know, So I
Speaker 1: have things that will exist already in the public sphere
Speaker 1: in some way potentially on the internet for eternity until
Speaker 1: the Internet blows up. So I do probably un blove
Speaker 1: next week, next week, thank god, because some of that
Speaker 1: stuff needs to go away. Yeah, so I do. I
Speaker 1: don't find myself self censoring like for that reason per se,
Speaker 1: But I have an awareness that like, I mean, do
Speaker 1: I want archives, you know? Do I want my estate
Speaker 1: to put some of things in the archives. Do I
Speaker 1: want to be worthy of that? Yes, I think that's
Speaker 1: the thing I would like to be worthy of that,
Speaker 1: Like my work will actually be meaningful to people in
Speaker 1: the future. But do I want my journals and diaries
Speaker 1: to go there? No, absolutely not. But that is what
Speaker 1: happened with Francis, and her eighteen sixty eight diary gives
Speaker 1: us a pretty detailed view of life in Boston and
Speaker 1: South Carolina in the reconstruction era, so it goes beyond
Speaker 1: just her personal reflections about her life. When we get
Speaker 1: back from the break, we'll jump forward about half a
Speaker 1: century to the lively generative period that was the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 1: Up next, Alice Dunbar Nelson. Like Francis, Alice advocated for
Speaker 1: political and social causes. She was in wom men's clubs,
Speaker 1: organized for suffrage and focused her journalistic efforts on topics
Speaker 1: like World War One, racial equality, and education. And she
Speaker 1: wrote essays, short stories, and poems. So she shared a
Speaker 1: lot of her thoughts in public. But her diary was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen eighty five, and it was the second
Speaker 1: book length diary of a black woman to be published.
Speaker 1: The first was activist writer and educator Charlotte Forton's in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. Alice's diary provides an unfiltered look into
Speaker 1: her raw emotions as she endured personal ups and downs.
Speaker 1: As doctor Akasha Gloria Hall says in the book Give
Speaker 1: Us Each Day, the Diary of Alice Dunbar Nelson. During
Speaker 1: the periods when she kept the diary, Dunbar Nelson's life
Speaker 1: was in flux or crisis. Alice started writing her diary
Speaker 1: entries in nineteen twenty one, and her last entry is on,
Speaker 1: as she put it, the last night of a disastrous
Speaker 1: year of nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2: But a big chunk of her entries are missing from
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1: Five mm hm, because we don't have evidence of them.
Speaker 1: We don't know if Alice wrote during this period, but
Speaker 1: it is likely that she did, so we'll just have
Speaker 1: to be okay with that gap. But beyond that, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of her thoughts and sometimes she even
Speaker 1: typed entries on separate sheets and stuck them on the
Speaker 1: pages in her diary. Sometimes she put flyers, cards and
Speaker 1: invitations in the diary. Here's the first entry. In a preface,
Speaker 1: she wrote just after she began keeping her diary. Had
Speaker 1: I had sense enough to keep a diary all these
Speaker 1: years that I have been traveling around, particularly that memorable
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen eighteen when I did my bit traveling
Speaker 1: through the South for the Council of Defense, well there
Speaker 1: would be less confusion in my mind about lots of things.
Speaker 1: Now I begin this day to keep the record that
Speaker 1: should have been kept long since that flux that doctor
Speaker 1: Hale mentioned, the confusion that Alice mentioned that's present across
Speaker 1: the entries. She talked about her writing, her social advocacy,
Speaker 1: and her teaching, but she also wrote about how she
Speaker 1: struggled financially and how she was quote forty six years
Speaker 1: old in nowhere Yet. Nine years after that comment, she
Speaker 1: wrote the following Saturday, September sixth, nineteen thirty, lay in
Speaker 1: bed and finished per roots is the master of the
Speaker 1: day of judgment and have been wanting to commit suicide
Speaker 1: all day. Life is such a god awful mess and
Speaker 1: I'm such a total and complete failure. God.
Speaker 2: We have more suicidal ideation, losing jobs, business and publishing struggles,
Speaker 2: health complications.
Speaker 1: Spiritual development, romantic flings, learning to drive deaths in the family,
Speaker 1: celebrations of spring. She takes us on a whole rollercoaster.
Speaker 1: We get to learn about her writing submissions and subsequent rejections,
Speaker 1: which we're getting her down. Monday, November two, nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: sent Harlem John Henry to The Crisis Today. She had
Speaker 1: sent the poem to the Bookmen, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and
Speaker 1: other places. According to Alice, the rejection from the Bookmen
Speaker 1: came back quote disgustingly prompt and yeah, I can relate,
Speaker 1: but anyway, Harlem John Hemn Reviews. The Armada was eventually
Speaker 1: published in the NAACP's official magazine, The Crisis in January
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty two. At the time, writing was a
Speaker 1: boys club that was hard for black women to break into,
Speaker 1: and it was hard for Alice to balance keeping up
Speaker 1: with her work and her activism. Her work did grow
Speaker 1: more popular over time, but her funds did not reflect that.
Speaker 1: She started her journal entry on August nineteenth, nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: This way, I am so flat broke that it is funny.
Speaker 1: An epidemic of poverty seems to have struck us all.
Speaker 2: It wasn't all doom and gloom, though there were bright spots,
Speaker 2: moments where she drank and danced and hot from party
Speaker 2: to party.
Speaker 1: Thursday, December eighth, Well, here sitting in the little bear
Speaker 1: dressing room of Robinson's famed Colosseum, while outside, a jazz
Speaker 1: band consisting of five slim black youths are discoursing about
Speaker 1: the snappiest rendition of don't We Have Fun? One Shimmy's automatically.
Speaker 1: Even in my big coat, huddled with the proper missus Miller,
Speaker 1: mine Hostess, and the no less proper Missus Robinson, I
Speaker 1: let go hoarse, voice and all, and shake a shoulder
Speaker 1: and croake a line or two to help on the
Speaker 1: jazz noise. As her diary shows, Alice had quite a
Speaker 1: complicated life. It's disheartening to see how Alice went through
Speaker 1: that same rejection and struggle that so many other black
Speaker 1: women writers did at the time. It's also hard to
Speaker 1: see the mental challenges that she faced in her own words.
Speaker 1: But at the same time we see that Alice lived
Speaker 1: a full life and worked hard and played hard, and
Speaker 1: just like so many artists today, she questions the strength
Speaker 1: of her work and her self worth my diary it's
Speaker 1: going to be a valuable thing one of these days.
Speaker 1: She said on September twenty first, nineteen twenty eight. And
Speaker 1: I'd say she was right.
Speaker 2: So she was pretty cognizant that people would be reading
Speaker 2: this afterwards. Yes, I think she was. I think she
Speaker 2: knew that there was a possibility of that, and hers
Speaker 2: was entertaining to me. So I wonder if she was
Speaker 2: kind of doing that for the future gaze she.
Speaker 1: Could have been she might've known her life was kind
Speaker 1: of a reality show in a lot of ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were a romantic there were love interests on the side.
Speaker 2: There was party, yeah, the party, all the rejections, the drinking.
Speaker 1: People love a little.
Speaker 2: A good little underdog David and Goliath moment. She's getting
Speaker 2: all these rejections. But I mean she's known as a
Speaker 2: big deal of the Harlem renaissance now. But if she
Speaker 2: hadn't been writing all those things like who would know
Speaker 2: that you're I say, got rejected seven times and from
Speaker 2: which places? Right?
Speaker 1: She was like, let it be know. Yeah, they played
Speaker 1: in my face. And that's my favorite part about reading journals.
Speaker 1: I mean you really get that insight into what they
Speaker 1: were truly thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what mattered because there's a million things that
Speaker 2: happened to you that even if you do keep a journal,
Speaker 2: you're not writing about like you could step on somebody
Speaker 2: foot at the intersection. You probably not going to write
Speaker 2: about that in your journal, but they're gon'll be like
Speaker 2: this bitch stepped on my lubitus.
Speaker 1: And you also get an insight into, like I guess
Speaker 1: if you want to do some cycle analyzing, into what
Speaker 1: they choose to include and what they don't choose to include.
Speaker 1: So there might be things that we now in hindsight,
Speaker 1: you know about them, and we know those things happen,
Speaker 1: and they may have represented it a different way in
Speaker 1: their diaries or they might not have included it at all.
Speaker 1: But there's also those moments where you read through stuff
Speaker 1: like this and I say, and I think, why did
Speaker 1: they say it like that? Why does she say did
Speaker 1: my bit? What does that mean? What's behind that? You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of subtext behind certain things and things
Speaker 1: where you can see the brackets there, you can see
Speaker 1: the parentheses, and something else happened. We might not get
Speaker 1: to know about it through the diaries, especially because there
Speaker 1: are probably some she wrote that are completely missing for
Speaker 1: many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and things that also can't be like really cooperated,
Speaker 2: like Okay, you went on these travels. There weren't like
Speaker 2: as many pictures back then, videos like maybe no one
Speaker 2: knew you were traveling like this, or maybe you had
Speaker 2: like a few official stops, but you was going off
Speaker 2: to little joy it on the side, you know. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting to hear that, But it's like, I guess
Speaker 2: it's kind of the same way now for people who
Speaker 2: are not famous. I don't think someone like of her
Speaker 2: caliber could do that now could do what like say,
Speaker 2: like I'm trying to think of like a well known
Speaker 2: writer now, Tana hose Coats people know where that at,
Speaker 2: Like he don't want people know where he at, and
Speaker 2: people trying to picture. We saw Tanahsey here. You know,
Speaker 2: he bought a house in Brooklyn. You know, I was
Speaker 2: just trying to be normal buying house. They plastered that
Speaker 2: in like a publication. He's like, I can't live in
Speaker 2: this house anymore, Like I ain't want the streets to
Speaker 2: know where I'm at.
Speaker 1: Oh, And it goes deep. It's not even just seeing
Speaker 1: you in public. They see this plant in the background
Speaker 1: in this corner and this stop light on this street,
Speaker 1: and they're like, let me zoom in. I can find
Speaker 1: out where that is Google maps. Let me go check.
Speaker 2: I bet his diary it's good, but I know maybe
Speaker 2: he would keep it for people to see, maybe he
Speaker 2: have some directions or I don't know, but I just
Speaker 2: don't think that in the time period we're living in,
Speaker 2: writers can have like that anonymity. We just have to
Speaker 2: go by the word of their diary, like there's other
Speaker 2: ways to check and fact check what they said and
Speaker 2: get some corroboration that wasn't available back then. And that
Speaker 2: happens so often for historians and scholars who are going
Speaker 2: back and looking through people's work. And when I'm going
Speaker 2: back and looking at people's biography, sometimes that'll be the
Speaker 2: only work. Sometimes it's an autobiography. Sometimes it's biography that
Speaker 2: was an official biography that where they specifically talk to
Speaker 2: the person and wrote the biography for them. And you
Speaker 2: have to go on their word for us today because
Speaker 2: we don't have any other sources to be able to
Speaker 2: fact check. So you end up with inaccurate information. And
Speaker 2: some of that information is like more key, some of
Speaker 2: its small things. But like for instance, like with birth dates,
Speaker 2: people lied about their birthdates all the time. They be
Speaker 2: lying by decades by decades, location child.
Speaker 1: They just be making stuff up and knowing they don't know,
Speaker 1: which I love. That's one of my favorite parts about
Speaker 1: reading biographies. But one thing I did like was that
Speaker 1: first diary entry that I read, when she talked about
Speaker 1: how she wished she would have written journals before. I
Speaker 1: really love that because she's commenting on the significance of
Speaker 1: diary writing just for herself. Because so we were talking
Speaker 1: about how she probably knew that there would be some
Speaker 1: observation of her diary entries at some point, or imagine
Speaker 1: there might be, or assumed there would be, but it
Speaker 1: clearly was doing something for her mental state, and she
Speaker 1: acknowledged that, and she said, you know, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had the confusion now if I think that was the truth.
Speaker 1: I think this is a moment of an unreliable narrator.
Speaker 1: I think she was still confused because life is life,
Speaker 1: and life was life and for her, because we haven't
Speaker 1: even gotten into Paul Laurence Dunbar who he had tuberculosis
Speaker 1: I think it was, and he was prescribed alcohol for
Speaker 1: it and got hooked on alcohol. So I mean not
Speaker 1: laughing because it's a funny, funny thing, but it's just
Speaker 1: like it's really dramatic, Like her life is really dramatic
Speaker 1: in a lot of that is shown in this diary.
Speaker 1: And she'll end some of the years like it'll be
Speaker 1: the way the book is organized as chronologically, and doctor
Speaker 1: Hole will give this kind of overview of what's to come.
Speaker 2: In the year, which is saucy. Just read those and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh my god. But you get to the
Speaker 2: end and she'll be like, this year was terrible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, girl, you're still confused. And that's okay
Speaker 2: or is just her perception of things, because I know,
Speaker 2: like I'll be complaining about stuff and people be like girl,
Speaker 2: and they'll like be like boom boom boom, like laying
Speaker 2: out all this stuff about my life that they see
Speaker 2: from a different perspective. But I'm just complaining about like
Speaker 2: this one thing that's getting on my nerves. And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: just how I feel like you can see all this
Speaker 2: stuff like oh you pop in blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Well I don't feel that way.
Speaker 2: It was that terrible year.
Speaker 1: I am one there with you. I feel you on that.
Speaker 1: I think it's because the negatives often outweigh how the
Speaker 1: positives feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you feel them more. You feel them one
Speaker 2: hundred percent more. It's so easy for me to go
Speaker 2: back and lay out all the really bad things that
Speaker 2: happen rather than the ups and I have to in
Speaker 2: my own life. I check myself on that a lot
Speaker 2: of the time and definitely make sure that I acknowledge
Speaker 2: those things and offer myself gratitude. I got to come
Speaker 2: back to earth sometimes. But she did go through a lot.
Speaker 1: She had deaths in the family and dealt with the
Speaker 1: marital issues, stepping out, her, stepping out, him, stepping out,
Speaker 1: step step.
Speaker 2: Stepside to side, front to back, double dishes.
Speaker 1: Girl, they was doing line dances at a cookout. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was her perception of how things went.
Speaker 1: And there were ups and downs in her life, and
Speaker 1: we got to read about it, and we got to
Speaker 1: read about it, and I am grateful for it. I
Speaker 1: think there are many stories that could come out of
Speaker 1: her life, like dramatize or fictionalized stories that could come
Speaker 1: out of her life. Yeah, that is clear from her diary.
Speaker 2: Oh it could be like you know how Moesha had
Speaker 2: the diary, okah diary. It could be her doing a
Speaker 2: little voiceover and then it like goes into the little
Speaker 2: vignette of what she wrote about.
Speaker 1: Okay, next production coming up from.
Speaker 2: Eves and Katie, somebody give me a studio. So after
Speaker 2: the break, our last diarist brings us home. Last, but
Speaker 2: definitely not least, Alice Walker. Yeah, another Alice, So we'll
Speaker 2: call her by her last name. She's a little different
Speaker 2: than our last two diarists because she's still living and
Speaker 2: because her journals were published recently.
Speaker 1: Yep, Valerie Boyd edited Gathering Blossoms under Fire, The Journals
Speaker 1: of Alice Walker nineteen sixty five to two thousand. It
Speaker 1: was published in twenty twenty two, so we get a
Speaker 1: kind of real time look at how Walker changed as
Speaker 1: a person and as an artist over time. There's a
Speaker 1: good chance y'all know her, especially with the release of
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three version of The Color Purple film.
Speaker 1: But Alice Walker is a writer and activist, best known
Speaker 1: for writing the novel The Color Purple. The book made
Speaker 1: her the first black woman to win the Police Surprize
Speaker 1: for Fiction, but she also wrote the novel The Temple
Speaker 1: of My Familiar, the nonfiction book In Search of Our
Speaker 1: Mother's Gardens, and many poetry collections, along with dozens of
Speaker 1: other works. Suffice it to say she has classics in
Speaker 1: the literary canon. So it makes sense that now, as
Speaker 1: she enters her eighties, we get to take a peek
Speaker 1: behind the curtain and see how she thinks about the
Speaker 1: big capital eye issues and the small joys of life.
Speaker 1: She wrote about her discovery of Zora Neil Hurston, her Grave,
Speaker 1: and other black women authors whose quote lives ended in
Speaker 1: poverty and obscurity. As she put it August twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, I did not return to this notebook
Speaker 1: to write about the Caribbean cruise in July, but to
Speaker 1: write my impressions of Eatonville and my hurt and horror
Speaker 1: at the neglect of Zora's memory as evidenced by her Grave.
Speaker 1: I still can't write about it, but I must. She
Speaker 1: wrote a lot about love, relationships, and romance. July sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. The Mother Piece says the sun will
Speaker 1: shine again soon, that there is a chance to be
Speaker 1: lovers in a way that heals old wounds. That I
Speaker 1: can handle complexity except when I'm tired. I want a
Speaker 1: simpler life, fewer things, more quality, time with people I love.
Speaker 1: She also wrote about how her work made her feel.
Speaker 1: June sixteenth, nineteen seventy three. I'm glad, I wrote in
Speaker 1: Search of our Mother's Gardens to read at the Ratcliffe
Speaker 1: Symposium on Black Women. But why did I have to
Speaker 1: burst into tears in the forum later? The truth is
Speaker 1: that in a way, I am not embarrassed by tears
Speaker 1: if they are speaking to feeling in life, as opposed
Speaker 1: to abstractions which the forum presenters were indulging in June
Speaker 1: was wonderful. She hugged me. And after Barbara and tear said,
Speaker 1: you're trying to carry your mother and the weight is
Speaker 1: too heavy. June said, but why shouldn't you carry your mother?
Speaker 1: She carried you, didn't she? That is perfection? In a
Speaker 1: short response, it is just that I learn as I
Speaker 1: write about her, all our mothers, just how fantastic they
Speaker 1: were and are. Sometimes I want to write about smashing
Speaker 1: a white face, but it always comes to this. I
Speaker 1: would rather write about our mothers, write up until time
Speaker 1: to smash. Then I just smash, and then if I
Speaker 1: live to tell the tale, I probably wouldn't even bother
Speaker 1: to tell it. I go back to describing our mother's face,
Speaker 1: And that same day questions came up related to her
Speaker 1: social and political ideologies. I am upset deeply about the
Speaker 1: subservient condition of African women. I wonder how other women
Speaker 1: feel about this. In an undated nineteen eighty entry, Walker
Speaker 1: said the following, what do we want, my god, what
Speaker 1: do black women writers want? We want freedom? Freedom to
Speaker 1: be ourselves, to write the unwriteable, to say the unsayable,
Speaker 1: to think the unthinkable, to dare to engage the world
Speaker 1: in a conversation it has not had before. So Katie,
Speaker 1: I was thinking when I was reading Alice Walker's journal
Speaker 1: entries that she knew somebody was going to read those.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's been famous for a very long time.
Speaker 1: She has been famous for a long time, and these
Speaker 1: entries go back to you to the earlier years of
Speaker 1: her famous. She's been famous for a long time still.
Speaker 2: But the way she was right in the full sentences
Speaker 2: m dashes, she knew yeah. And it's funny her diary
Speaker 2: entries like she'll spill some like t on people that
Speaker 2: are still alive, and most people don't do that. Like girl,
Speaker 2: you do not care. Like it's funny when you like
Speaker 2: are encountering like old black people, I think especially they
Speaker 2: do not care they're like whatever, Like what you're gonna do.
Speaker 2: They'll just say anything, yes and write it down. Do
Speaker 2: you think that's wrong or are you cool with that? I
Speaker 2: mean personally you didn't talk about me because but I
Speaker 2: mean I think it's just like honest, Like, I know,
Speaker 2: people be like mad at you when you like talk
Speaker 2: about them about some shit they did, like you did it. Like,
Speaker 2: as long as I'm not lying on you, you did it,
Speaker 2: So don't be mad, be mad at yourself. All I
Speaker 2: can do is pray for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're gonna be mad still though, Keep praying.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I do find that like funny about Alice
Speaker 2: Walker's diary entries. But I do like that hers were
Speaker 2: released while she was still alive. I think there's something
Speaker 2: about like the agency of it that I appreciate. She
Speaker 2: did work with Valerie Boyd, who unfortunately passed away before
Speaker 2: the collection was published, but she was the editor for
Speaker 2: it and worked really hard on that. And Emory holds
Speaker 2: the Alice Walker papers, so you can go to Emory
Speaker 2: Library and see her diary entries. Not all of them
Speaker 2: are like as as neat like some of them. It's
Speaker 2: just like legal paths and she's drawing stuff, like she
Speaker 2: had a really beautiful house, like drawing the estate and
Speaker 2: planning parties, and so it's like really cool to see
Speaker 2: her social life, all the people she's been in relationships
Speaker 2: with so many people, like romantic but also just like platonic,
Speaker 2: Like she's friends with a lot of people and seeing
Speaker 2: them come in and out of her sphere is really
Speaker 2: cool too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that about I like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there was name dropping across all these diary entries, all
Speaker 1: even and sometimes there were closer personal relationships, like with
Speaker 1: the when we were talking about Francis, those were lectures
Speaker 1: she was going to see if people. But once we
Speaker 1: get into Alice Dunbar and Nelson and we get into
Speaker 1: Alice Walker, they're like, this is who I was colt
Speaker 1: sing with, you know, yeah, I mean Langston Hughes. You know.
Speaker 1: In the journal entries, Alice Walker had an entry of
Speaker 1: I think it was a poem she wrote to Langston
Speaker 1: Hughes and he was a mentor of hers, and she
Speaker 1: obviously had a lot of feelings after he died. And
Speaker 1: I just felt like spaces were so lively, like I
Speaker 1: could see the back and forth, like the communication and
Speaker 1: the camaraderie that was happening between people whose names I know,
Speaker 1: you know, people who was writing that I admire, or
Speaker 1: just artistry in general that I admire, and they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: this person came to my party. We were at this bookstore,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, wow, that seems so warm. It
Speaker 1: just felt so warm and yellow in so many moments
Speaker 1: in the diary entries and from a way where we
Speaker 1: saw the be happy about that, because I feel like
Speaker 1: now when we look at artists that we admire from
Speaker 1: the outside, it looks like it can be like a
Speaker 1: keeping up, like there's images you're trying to keep up with,
Speaker 1: or like levels you're trying to reach. It can be
Speaker 1: a lot of social maneuvering around it, and we don't
Speaker 1: often get to see when we don't know people people
Speaker 1: we admire who are in public spheres, like how they
Speaker 1: feel about their writing, how they feel like, wow, I
Speaker 1: did this, I'm proud of myself, or I love my people,
Speaker 1: I'm glad my people showed up for me.
Speaker 2: An interview that you know is going to be published
Speaker 2: on this day, or an acceptance speech where like, of
Speaker 2: course you have to say those things, but like, what
Speaker 2: are you saying, like to yourself, like before you go
Speaker 2: to bed at night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it can also seem like people are
Speaker 1: so self assured about their fame and success and that
Speaker 1: they're just like this, it is what it is. I'm
Speaker 1: in these circles now, I'm on this different level now,
Speaker 1: and it just is. It just be And it's nice
Speaker 1: to see some of the struggles, like in Alice Dunbar
Speaker 1: Nelson's case, she had a lot of struggles with getting
Speaker 1: her work published that she actually talked about, and also
Speaker 1: seeing the humanity behind the notoriety. Yeah, that was nice.
Speaker 1: So Alice Walker did do an interview with The New
Speaker 1: York Times not that long ago, and she said, quote,
Speaker 1: I want the journals to be used so that people
Speaker 1: can see this working through of disappointment, anger, sorrow, regret.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, it's a medicine book. And I
Speaker 1: liked that quote. I liked thinking of these diaries as healing.
Speaker 1: I think that was like a good way to go
Speaker 1: back and think about all of the diary entries we
Speaker 1: have from black women. And we did talk a lot
Speaker 1: about people who have actual storytelling capacities, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: that way for you know, everyone, and not to the
Speaker 1: same extent as to the Alicees was for Francis, but
Speaker 1: they were medicine for themselves, which they actually said, this
Speaker 1: made me feel better, As Alice Dunbar Nelson said, there
Speaker 1: are medicines for people who are reading and getting to
Speaker 1: see more of that interiority of people that we might
Speaker 1: look up to or who had challenges, like some of
Speaker 1: the enslaved people's narratives, and that we get to see
Speaker 1: that range of emotions and that it's not all things
Speaker 1: aren't always so cut and dry, they're not always so
Speaker 1: wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow like they
Speaker 1: are when they're presented to us, and even personal narratives
Speaker 1: like biographies, and I appreciate that, and that we can
Speaker 1: see that happen over time with the three people we
Speaker 1: had today, like this is from the eighteen hundred to
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds to this very moment with Alice Walker
Speaker 1: still living today.
Speaker 2: One thing I would like to see is diary entries
Speaker 2: from kind of just regular black women, because like these women,
Speaker 2: they had a certain amount of leisure time. You know,
Speaker 2: like the first lady, she's living in a time where
Speaker 2: slavery is existing, but she's a free black woman. But
Speaker 2: it's like, what was it like to be a black
Speaker 2: woman with five kids in the South d'ur in the sixties.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think those people really had the
Speaker 2: luxury of sitting down and writing all that down.
Speaker 1: They did not. I think doctor Hole actually talks about
Speaker 1: that in her scholarship. You're starting from a specific place
Speaker 1: when you have the luxury of these journals, and you
Speaker 1: can see that influx in these people's diaries too, because
Speaker 1: some of it is that it's just not extant, but
Speaker 1: some of it is that they just weren't writing at
Speaker 1: those times, and those times we have evidence of. But
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we too can also assume like they
Speaker 1: just didn't have as much space in their lives to
Speaker 1: write these journals. I agree with you, and I also
Speaker 1: think on the flip side, it's nice to see black
Speaker 1: women have ease to be able to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, these women we talked about today,
Speaker 1: it's like their heritages were really mixed too, and there
Speaker 1: were free people of color, and they had like high
Speaker 1: status in society, had money, So yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: lot of social class privilege that was happening for these
Speaker 1: people for sure, and education.
Speaker 2: How Alice Walker said it could be medicine, Like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't think I want to get our
Speaker 2: Alice's level, you know, and most people aren't going to
Speaker 2: be an Alice Walker, but a lot of people are
Speaker 2: going to be just more normal. So it's like, what
Speaker 2: were normal black women who did not have access to
Speaker 2: all these like really cool scenes and people and travel,
Speaker 2: Like where's our medicine? Not saying that we can't get
Speaker 2: anything from these women who are living different lives than us,
Speaker 2: but I just want to see more.
Speaker 1: More yeah, more variety, more range. I mean, we still
Speaker 1: ask them for those things today at a media representation, and
Speaker 1: it would be nice to have those that kind of
Speaker 1: perspective on this smaller level that is more touchable, that's
Speaker 1: more accessible to us. They exist, but they're farther and
Speaker 1: fewer between. And I also would imagine that like archiving
Speaker 1: becomes another issue in this for people like that. So
Speaker 1: these people have families who had spaces to keep them,
Speaker 1: but we start talking about housing and being itinerant or
Speaker 1: you know, not always having financial, economic and housing security.
Speaker 1: You know that probably also went along with the people
Speaker 1: who were like have five kids and they didn't have
Speaker 1: this writing stature or any sort of artistic our professional stature,
Speaker 1: and travel. These women did a lot of traveling. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have all that and they didn't have people
Speaker 1: who could keep up with it and make sure that
Speaker 1: it remained in existence over time. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: those are harder, but yeah, we do need more of those,
Speaker 1: and not just from a personal perspective, I think also
Speaker 1: from a like sociological anthropological perspective for us to get
Speaker 1: a better handle and sense of how life was in
Speaker 1: the past. And this just scratches the surface of all
Speaker 1: the diaries that writers and non writers alike have kept.
Speaker 1: There are the diaries of activists and teacher Charlotte for
Speaker 1: ingrim Key, journalist Ida B. Wells, poet Gwendolyn Bennett, and
Speaker 1: writer Jaanita Harrison, and they're all storytellers with some name
Speaker 1: recognition exactly. There are people like Emily Francis Davis, who
Speaker 1: was a free black woman in Philly during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: She wrote a diary that can help us time travel
Speaker 1: and see what day to day life was like for
Speaker 1: her and get engauge on responses to the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Mary Virginia Montgomery and Laura Hamilton Murray and plenty of
Speaker 1: other black women named and unnamed have penned diaries.
Speaker 2: Now it is time for roll credits, the segment where
Speaker 2: we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
Speaker 2: we encountered during the week. Ease, who are what would
Speaker 2: you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1: I'll give credit to Ida b Wells, who we briefly
Speaker 1: mentioned it today's episode, but she also wrote diary entries
Speaker 1: where we got to learn more about her journey, her journalism,
Speaker 1: the events that happened to her, all the work that
Speaker 1: she was doing back in the day, and you can
Speaker 1: read those and those are super insightful about her work
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: I would like to give credit to celebrating posthumous birthdays.
Speaker 2: Yesterday would have been my grandpa's eighty seventh birthday, and
Speaker 2: so I made a dish that he was known for making,
Speaker 2: and me and my family ate it and it was
Speaker 2: just a way to celebrate that was not sad. So
Speaker 2: I've been doing that for the last couple of years
Speaker 2: since he passed and it's fun.
Speaker 1: On whatever.
Speaker 2: Happy birthday, Grandpa, Thank you, and with that, we will
Speaker 2: see y'all next week.
Speaker 1: Bye y'all bye. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves,
Speaker 1: jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Theme Show.
Speaker 1: You can also send us an email at Hello at
Speaker 1: on Theme Dot Show. Had to one Theme Dot Show
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