Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
Speaker 2: You Are Beef Today. Zor Nolhurston is a household name
Speaker 2: for the average booklover.
Speaker 1: Doubly so for the average black book lover.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't the case in the nineteen seventies when
Speaker 2: Alice Walker rediscovered the deceased writer's elusive works. Despite being
Speaker 2: the most widely published Black woman author of the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties Harlem Renaissance, when Hirston died in nineteen sixties, her
Speaker 2: stories and books had gone out of print.
Speaker 1: And if you listened to our previous episode, which one
Speaker 1: of y'all want Beef, you'll recall that Zora's beef's with W. E. B.
Speaker 1: Du Boyce, Richard Wright, and others led to her fall
Speaker 1: from literary fame and into literary obscurity.
Speaker 2: You may also recall her beefing with her Frenemie Langston
Speaker 2: Hughes over the play meal Bone, despite Zora never speaking
Speaker 2: to him again. Langston included Hurston's story The Gilded Six
Speaker 2: Bits in an anthology title The Best Short Stories by
Speaker 2: Black Writers. Alice Walker also had a short story in
Speaker 2: that collection, call to Hell with Dying, but Several years later,
Speaker 2: a neighbor let Alice Walker their eyes were watching God,
Speaker 2: and then Walker's journey to unearthed Zorra began. The young
Speaker 2: Walker began studying Heurston's life in writing, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three, she found herself knee high in grasses and
Speaker 2: weeds in Fort Pierce, Florida's Garden of Heavenly Rest, searching
Speaker 2: for Hurston's unmarked grave. In a two thousand and four
Speaker 2: MPR interview, Walker described calling out to Zorra to find
Speaker 2: the writer's resting place. I actually started to call to
Speaker 2: her to Zorra, she remembers, and I just kind of
Speaker 2: stepped into this hole, which was the only thing that
Speaker 2: looked like a grave in the area. Walker took it
Speaker 2: upon herself to buy Zora a headstone and inscribed it
Speaker 2: a Genius of the South. Walker wrote about looking for
Speaker 2: Zorra in a Miss magazine article titled in Search of
Speaker 2: zor Or Neil Hurston. The article sparked a renewed interest
Speaker 2: in Zora Neil Hurston and her writing. Later, Walker edited
Speaker 2: A Hurston Reader, taking its title from a Hurston quote,
Speaker 2: I love myself when I am laughing and then again
Speaker 2: when I'm looking mean and impressive.
Speaker 1: I shuddered to think about what would have happened to
Speaker 1: Zora's story and writing if Alice Walker hadn't taken it
Speaker 1: upon herself to go looking.
Speaker 2: Now we have Zora's novels like Their Eyes Were Watching God, Moses,
Speaker 2: Man of the Mountain, and Jonahs Gordvine. We have Zora's
Speaker 2: folk tales and short stories like every Time Got to
Speaker 2: Confess and Mules and Men, and her autobiography Desk Tracks
Speaker 2: on a Road In short. We have Zora. We still
Speaker 2: have soa.
Speaker 3: My name is Zora Neil Herston. This song the call
Speaker 3: shove it Over, and it's the line in rhythm, pretty gentle.
Speaker 3: To distribute it all over Florida where I got you
Speaker 3: you land noise. I'm going to spread the news about
Speaker 3: the Florida boy shove it all. Oh wow, Hey, you'll
Speaker 3: catch a line a shack.
Speaker 4: A like a lack a la like a like a like.
Speaker 2: I'm Katie and I'm Eve's today's episode Literary Detectives.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll take a look at another black
Speaker 1: woman writer whose writing and story went out of print
Speaker 1: after her death in nineteen sixty six. Then we'll speak
Speaker 1: with Michael Gonzalez, the curious reader and intrepid writer who
Speaker 1: resurfaced that writer's short stories in the early twenty twenties.
Speaker 2: That mystery writer we tease before the break, it's Diane
Speaker 2: Oliver Eves. Do you remember the first time you heard
Speaker 2: of her? Honest, it was really recently same. I didn't
Speaker 2: learn about her in school or even as a bookstore owner.
Speaker 2: I found out about her in twenty twenty two, when
Speaker 2: Michael wrote about her in The Bitter Southerner. I was
Speaker 2: fascinated by Diane, a twenty two year old writer whose
Speaker 2: life was tragically cut short by a motorcycle crash in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six. I was also fascinated by her stories,
Speaker 2: which are mostly about the horrors of racism and black
Speaker 2: communities in suburban America. Reading her stories now, when might
Speaker 2: place her work in the historical fiction category For a
Speaker 2: Remember she's writing in the mid sixties. The lunch counter
Speaker 2: and the grade school integrations and the ever present Jim
Speaker 2: Crow was very current when Diane was writing these stories,
Speaker 2: and we wouldn't be alone in not knowing Diane's work.
Speaker 2: She was young, very talented, but still young, so when
Speaker 2: she died, some of her short stories were published posthumously,
Speaker 2: but they were believed to be her only remaining works.
Speaker 2: But sometimes reality has plot twists too. Diane's family kept
Speaker 2: Diane's writing in a chest for nearly sixty years, and
Speaker 2: idot late eight new unpublished stories a positive plot twist.
Speaker 2: We love to see it.
Speaker 1: Of course, we want to learn more about Diane, so
Speaker 1: let's speak with Michael Gonzalez, the writer who was the
Speaker 1: catalyst for the renewed interest in Diane's work. Michael is
Speaker 1: a literary essayist, music journalist, and short story scribe and,
Speaker 1: as our luck would have it, a podcast guest. Michael,
Speaker 1: Welcome to On Theme.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us. Can you give us a brief bio?
Speaker 2: How you describe yourself?
Speaker 4: I describe myself as a cultural critic. I mean, I've
Speaker 4: been writing since I was a kid, and you know,
Speaker 4: when i was younger, I used to write a lot
Speaker 4: of short stories, which I'm doing again now, but for
Speaker 4: most of my career I was writing about music and
Speaker 4: books and television and film and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So one of my heroes, Greg Tait, used to call
Speaker 4: himself a cultural critic, and I kind of adopted that.
Speaker 2: So we have you on today because Diane Olive short
Speaker 2: stories were recently published and you had a hand in that.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious to know and hear you describe how
Speaker 2: you came to find out about Diane Oliver in her writing.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it was kind of weird because one
Speaker 4: of my friends, Paul Price, he and I went to
Speaker 4: college together, and he was moving from Jersey to Florida
Speaker 4: and he was cleaning out a historic facility and he
Speaker 4: started sending me all kinds of old black stuff that
Speaker 4: he had, and one of the books that he sent
Speaker 4: me was an anthology called Rite On and Right On,
Speaker 4: I believe was publishing either seventy one or seventy two,
Speaker 4: and you know it had a bunch of people in there,
Speaker 4: Lorraine Hansbury and Leroy Jones, and you know, I came
Speaker 4: across this name Diane Oliver, who, out of all the
Speaker 4: names in the book, hers was the only one that
Speaker 4: I was unfamiliar with. So I was like, okay, well
Speaker 4: let me check her out. I've never heard of her before.
Speaker 4: And I the story that was in there was Neighbors,
Speaker 4: which is actually the title story of the short story
Speaker 4: collection that just came out from Grove Atlantic and I
Speaker 4: read Neighbors. Neighbors was this short story about a family
Speaker 4: and their little boy that is supposed to integrate a
Speaker 4: Southern school during Jim Crow the following day. And it
Speaker 4: begins with the older sister on the bus coming from
Speaker 4: her job as a domestic thinking about the pressures of
Speaker 4: that her little brother is going through. You know, she's
Speaker 4: walking through the neighborhood. People are giving their support or
Speaker 4: given their opinions one way or the other. And then
Speaker 4: she comes home and you know, there's the men are
Speaker 4: meeting in the dining room, the minister and you know,
Speaker 4: the local men of the community, the men from the church,
Speaker 4: and the kitchen, the women are meeting and everybody's trying
Speaker 4: to decide if this little boy is going to go
Speaker 4: to integrate this school the next day. And it was
Speaker 4: such a real story to me because you know, when
Speaker 4: you watch movies about civil rights, and you know, you
Speaker 4: never really deal with the dilemma. You know, we deal
Speaker 4: with you know, yes, this is going to happen and
Speaker 4: you have to be strong or whatever, but you know,
Speaker 4: there's not a lot written about, you know, what the
Speaker 4: family is going through in terms of their nerves, what
Speaker 4: the little boy might be going through in terms of
Speaker 4: his fear. I mean, everybody's afraid. And this story was
Speaker 4: just so real. I mean it felt like I was
Speaker 4: in these people's homes. I mean, I you know, of course,
Speaker 4: like everybody else had read about Jim Crow and about
Speaker 4: people integrating schools, but this was the first short story
Speaker 4: that I read that really put me in that house,
Speaker 4: put me with those people. And after I read the book,
Speaker 4: like I put in my essay, later on, I wanted
Speaker 4: to know more about Diane Oliver. I'm like, who is she? Like,
Speaker 4: how come I don't know more about her? How Come
Speaker 4: she's not up there with you know, Tony Morrison or
Speaker 4: you know any Alice Walker or any of the other
Speaker 4: you know, black women or black writers period. And I
Speaker 4: just started digging and looking for more of her work.
Speaker 4: I found some of her work online. Thank god, there
Speaker 4: is an archive of Negro Digest Slash Black World, which
Speaker 4: was a magazine that Johnson Publications, the same people that
Speaker 4: put out Ebony and Jet did. It was a black
Speaker 4: literary magazine in the fifties and sixties and early seventies
Speaker 4: that published some of her short stories. And so I
Speaker 4: just started looking more and more into her work trying.
Speaker 4: It wasn't really that much about her written at the time.
Speaker 4: And so the essay that I wrote, which was published
Speaker 4: in the in the Bit Southerner and it was called
Speaker 4: The Short Stories and Too Short Life of Diane Oliver,
Speaker 4: which was published in March twenty twenty two, I just basically,
Speaker 4: you know, went with a little bit of material that
Speaker 4: I could find and basically wrote this essay about her
Speaker 4: and her stories, the few stories that I did find
Speaker 4: through Negro digests and as well as some that were
Speaker 4: published in anthologies that I later ordered, And you know,
Speaker 4: I just felt so, I mean, I feel really good
Speaker 4: that this revival of her work is happening. You know,
Speaker 4: years ago in the seventies, Alice Walker basically brought on
Speaker 4: the revival of Zoria and Neil Hurston. She found Zoria's grave,
Speaker 4: if I'm not mistaken, which didn't even have a marker
Speaker 4: on it. She wound up buying a gravestone for Zoria
Speaker 4: and Neil Hurston. And she was instrumental in basic bringing
Speaker 4: back to this woman of the Harlem Renaissance that who
Speaker 4: had kind of faded away. And so a small part
Speaker 4: of me felt the same way with Diane Oliver. I
Speaker 4: mean I kind of claimed her as my own because
Speaker 4: prior to my essay, nobody was talking about her. I
Speaker 4: was basically turning on all these different black writers to
Speaker 4: Diane Oliver's work, and so it felt I mean, it
Speaker 4: just felt really good. It just felt really good. And
Speaker 4: you know, I'm just so proud of where it's going.
Speaker 4: I feel a sense of pride that this is happening.
Speaker 2: It seems like there's tradition of black writers making sure
Speaker 2: that other black writers do not fall into obscurity or
Speaker 2: that their work is seen one more time, one more time,
Speaker 2: one more time. And I was wondering, do you feel
Speaker 2: like you're a part of that tradition or what do
Speaker 2: you How do you that tradition of rediscovering and then
Speaker 2: amplifying not just keeping it to yourself, but making sure
Speaker 2: that as many people as possible. No, kind of like
Speaker 2: Alice Walker did, was Zora Nelhurston.
Speaker 4: Well, a small part of me kind of took that
Speaker 4: as a mission, maybe about ten years ago, like in
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen. You know, one of the things, I mean,
Speaker 4: I love black writing. I love black writers, but I
Speaker 4: also you know, would visit a lot of bookstores and
Speaker 4: it seemed to me, like, I think I got frustrated
Speaker 4: with the beats. I mean, as much as I love
Speaker 4: Jack Kerouac and William Burrows, and I'm like, how many
Speaker 4: more editions of their work do we need? You know
Speaker 4: what I mean. I'm like, you know, there are so
Speaker 4: many black writers who put out one or two books
Speaker 4: in the seventies and just basically disappeared. Nobody has heard
Speaker 4: about these people. And you know, I kind of just
Speaker 4: took it on myself to start writing about these rights.
Speaker 4: I did an essay on a Chicago writer named Ronald o'
Speaker 4: fair and he wrote a book called Hog Butcher, which
Speaker 4: later on was made into a movie called Cornbret Earl
Speaker 4: of Me. And it basically was about a teenage kid
Speaker 4: in Chicago who is shot by a policeman. And this
Speaker 4: guy is like the hero of the neighborhood. He's mistaken
Speaker 4: for a thief and he's killed. But I wanted to
Speaker 4: know who was Ronald Fair, and so I started doing
Speaker 4: some research, you know, on who this guy was. I mean,
Speaker 4: Black Expectation films is something that I've written about extensively.
Speaker 4: A guy I grew up in the seventies during the
Speaker 4: Black Expectation period. I didn't know that Corporate Early in
Speaker 4: Me was based on this black Man's book. So when
Speaker 4: I discovered that, I just started digging into his autobiography
Speaker 4: finding what I could find. You know, thank God for
Speaker 4: the Internet. But I also, you know, started going to
Speaker 4: the libraries more often. I had to actually stop going
Speaker 4: to the library, you know, because now, I mean, I
Speaker 4: love libraries, but I don't like to go as much
Speaker 4: as I used to because they're not the same. They're
Speaker 4: not quiet, you know. I used to go there to
Speaker 4: have a sanctuary that it's like a recsenter or something,
Speaker 4: you know. But I did start going to the library
Speaker 4: again to do research because there's a lot of books
Speaker 4: that you can't find online or you know, even if
Speaker 4: you could order them from Amazon, they're like, you know,
Speaker 4: sixty dollars. I'm not paying sixty dollars just to read
Speaker 4: the section of a book, right, So you know, it
Speaker 4: sent me to the library again. In twenty fourteen, I
Speaker 4: was living in Philadelphia, and then later on I moved
Speaker 4: to Baltimore, And you know, when you tell librarians were
Speaker 4: you're doing, you know, I would get into some conversations.
Speaker 4: They were just so helpful, and I can't give enough
Speaker 4: props to the librarians in Philadelphia and in Baltimore who
Speaker 4: just was you know, would go out of their way
Speaker 4: to help me with these columns, I mean with these articles.
Speaker 1: Rather, did you find that in your research process you
Speaker 1: ran into anybody who had an intense interest in Diane Oliver,
Speaker 1: like somebody that you didn't seek out who you knew
Speaker 1: had that interest?
Speaker 4: None? Nobody. I mean I did find and I can't
Speaker 4: remember her name of him, but I found a woman
Speaker 4: that was in uh the Iowa Writers' Workshop with her.
Speaker 4: She had written a little essay in that appeared in
Speaker 4: a magazine called The Brooklyn Rail and she had written
Speaker 4: a little bit about Diane Oliver, and so I, you know,
Speaker 4: reached out to her. But other than not know, I mean,
Speaker 4: it was almost like she didn't exist. And to this day,
Speaker 4: I don't know why. You know, I discovered her work
Speaker 4: in different anthologies that you know, came out through the
Speaker 4: seventies and eighties, and I just don't know why no one,
Speaker 4: you know, attached themselves or looked into her. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, sometimes with these anthologies, you know, people look
Speaker 4: at them and they read them or whatever, but you know,
Speaker 4: other than that, they're just throw them back on the pile,
Speaker 4: and that's it. I just had a general curiosity, and
Speaker 4: you know, as a I don't know, I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't want to call myself like a literary detective or anything,
Speaker 4: but I just wanted. I just wanted to know more,
Speaker 4: you know, and so I just found what I could
Speaker 4: find them. Nego Digests and Jet were the only ones
Speaker 4: who actually did obituaries on her. From what I understand,
Speaker 4: she was supposed to graduate in June of nineteen sixty
Speaker 4: six and then she was going to go to Chicago
Speaker 4: to work for Johnson Publications. But I love, you know,
Speaker 4: finding some of this stuff on Google Books. I mean,
Speaker 4: Google Books is such a great research you know, a
Speaker 4: research guide, as is sometimes the Internet Archive, where I
Speaker 4: could find different books and different things like that. I
Speaker 4: was writing a column for Catapult called the Blacklist, which
Speaker 4: was basically about out of print black writers, and so
Speaker 4: I think that was part of you know, I had
Speaker 4: already started on that mission. I only did six of
Speaker 4: them for Catapult because my editor got a promotion and
Speaker 4: I didn't really want to work with another editor, so
Speaker 4: I stopped doing that. But you know, it didn't stop
Speaker 4: my curiosity in you know, unveiling or discovering or rediscovering
Speaker 4: other these you know, black writers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love your Catapult column and you went on
Speaker 2: to continue to write about other authors for other publications.
Speaker 2: Why was that exploration and examination and discovery and rediscovery
Speaker 2: important to you?
Speaker 4: I love writers, I love writing. I love you know,
Speaker 4: various styles. I love you know, the era of the
Speaker 4: you know, fifties, sixties, seventies, the writers that came out
Speaker 4: of that era. And you know, even though Diane Oliver
Speaker 4: was the MFA candidate, you know, most of the writers
Speaker 4: that came out of those periods didn't go through the
Speaker 4: same kind of MFA programs. They were like writing out
Speaker 4: of experience and you know, who knows, Like they might
Speaker 4: have been day laborers or whatever. People had different kind
Speaker 4: of jobs and different kind of career paths. And you know,
Speaker 4: I've just always been curious about who these writers are,
Speaker 4: Like I was saying before, you know, I see a
Speaker 4: lot of white writers who you know, they are constantly
Speaker 4: in print, People are constantly writing about their work. There's
Speaker 4: no shortage of essays or you know, books about these writers.
Speaker 4: And a part of me was just like, how come
Speaker 4: we don't have that? How come you know, people aren't
Speaker 4: curious about the black writers. I mean, you know, there
Speaker 4: are a lot of black writers that people do are
Speaker 4: curious about, you know, who stay in print, like you
Speaker 4: know Tony Morrison or Tony cable Bar or you know
Speaker 4: Alice Walker. But you know, I wanted to know more
Speaker 4: about the other people as well. The first person that
Speaker 4: I wrote about was Who's a guy who's a friend
Speaker 4: of mine named Darius James who wrote this crazy book
Speaker 4: that came out in the nineties called Negrophobia. And if
Speaker 4: you haven't read Negrophobia, please do. I mean it's one
Speaker 4: of the most bizarro books ever. I don't know if
Speaker 4: my essay had anything to do with it, but within
Speaker 4: months of me writing about his book was reprinted. And
Speaker 4: so there have been a couple of writers that I've
Speaker 4: written about, Neddie Jones being one who wrote a book
Speaker 4: called Fishtails. I wrote about Fishtails for long Reads. It
Speaker 4: was an essay called Beautiful Women Ugly Scenes because which
Speaker 4: I actually stole from a book from you, but I
Speaker 4: always loved that title. And Eddy was a writer that
Speaker 4: I found. You know, my late girlfriend she loved Neddie
Speaker 4: Jones and she used to talk about this book Fishtails
Speaker 4: and I actually bought it for her, but I never
Speaker 4: read it. I bought it for her in the nineties,
Speaker 4: but I never read it myself, and that when I
Speaker 4: finally read it, I was like, wait, this book is wow.
Speaker 4: Like she was just like, you know, drinking and talking
Speaker 4: mad and I just loved her for you know, it
Speaker 4: took the book took place in New York and Detroit.
Speaker 4: Neddie is from Detroit originally, and I discovered that one
Speaker 4: of my friends was friends with Nettie and I found
Speaker 4: her like that, and you know, it's been that kind
Speaker 4: of thing. I mean. Charlotte Carter was another one that
Speaker 4: I wrote about who She was a black crime writer
Speaker 4: in the in the nineties who put out a trilogy
Speaker 4: of books about a black woman. She was like an
Speaker 4: amateur detective. But they were really good books and I
Speaker 4: really enjoyed reading them, and so I wrote about her,
Speaker 4: and she wound up getting her books came back into print.
Speaker 4: But you know, one thing, and I guess maybe it's
Speaker 4: my ego so times, but you know, these books come
Speaker 4: back into print the way he ever says, oh well,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, Michael Gonzales is the reason that
Speaker 4: these books are back and for everybody acts like they
Speaker 4: were there was that we discovered it. I mean, not
Speaker 4: the writers themselves. I mean I've had the writers reach
Speaker 4: out to me and thank me and whatever. I mean.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm a simple guy. I don't need awards everything,
Speaker 4: just you know, recognition.
Speaker 2: What's a respect? Michael's names, props, you know what we
Speaker 2: you give me your props because I feel like you
Speaker 2: truly have the magic touch with this. Because I remember
Speaker 2: seeing that article in twenty twenty two and then hearing
Speaker 2: that the book was coming out in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: knowing how slow publishing is, I was like, oh, y'all
Speaker 2: fast tracked this, like y'all really wanted this out after
Speaker 2: reading Michael's article. And one of the things about Diane
Speaker 2: Oliver's writing, especially in this collection, it's very of the
Speaker 2: time she was in in the time she was writing,
Speaker 2: which is the sixties. So what do you think it
Speaker 2: is about her writing that's resonating with people in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four? It being about Jim Crow era situations.
Speaker 4: I agree with you, and I don't agree with you
Speaker 4: because some of the stories just have like a gothic
Speaker 4: kind of feel to me, Like that story meant Julip's
Speaker 4: not served here that is. I love that story. I
Speaker 4: love it. It's so stunning.
Speaker 2: When I started feeling the twist coming, I was like, oh, am,
Speaker 2: I right, But.
Speaker 4: You know I think I mean, especially with the current
Speaker 4: climate or race, it's like, I mean, who doesn't feel like,
Speaker 4: you know, racism is alive and well in America. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's never gone away. Sometimes it might hide out for
Speaker 4: a little while, but you know, affirmative actions being has
Speaker 4: been taken away. You know, we see what the Santus
Speaker 4: is doing in Florida. You know, now it looks like,
Speaker 4: you know, God forbid that Trump is going to get
Speaker 4: back into the White House, and we know what he's
Speaker 4: all about. I mean, I think black people and you know,
Speaker 4: are realized that, you know, these things can change it
Speaker 4: any time, you know. I mean I used to joke
Speaker 4: with a friend of mine and be like, yeah, we're
Speaker 4: gonna wake up one day. They're going to be like,
Speaker 4: you know, slavery started back, you know, and it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, I say that as a joke, but it's
Speaker 4: not funny, you know. I mean, we don't know what's
Speaker 4: going to happen with these people. You know, the people
Speaker 4: in the Supreme Court, you know, the public officials. I mean,
Speaker 4: these people are just blatant. They don't care that we
Speaker 4: know that they're racist. I mean, at least years ago
Speaker 4: people would try to hide it a little bit. They
Speaker 4: don't care. They you know, they're they're not for us.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think you know people who are
Speaker 4: of color in our allies. You know, we realized that.
Speaker 4: And these stories, you know, I just hopefully they could
Speaker 4: be a warning or you know, a foretelling of what
Speaker 4: could happen.
Speaker 1: More with Michael Gonzalez. After this break, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about what you said earlier about how much her stories
Speaker 1: resonated with you, and they were unlike any other stories
Speaker 1: that you read before. And I'm just like, I know
Speaker 1: you read a lot of stories of that era, and
Speaker 1: for her stories to stick out to you is very fascinating.
Speaker 1: And the idea that their interiorized were something that you
Speaker 1: could understand more through her writing. Do you have any
Speaker 1: insight as to why her writing was that way? What
Speaker 1: was it about her life or her practice that got
Speaker 1: her to that point with her craft?
Speaker 4: Well, she was raised as Charlotte, North Carolina, so you know,
Speaker 4: considering that she was in school, I don't know exactly
Speaker 4: what you she was born, but considering that she was
Speaker 4: in school in the in sixty six, you know, we
Speaker 4: can just assume that, you know, being in Charlotte, her
Speaker 4: parents were educator. She grew up middle class, but you know,
Speaker 4: there was still Jim Crow in the South during those years.
Speaker 4: You know, she was a young woman who, you know,
Speaker 4: from what I understand, was a big reader and then
Speaker 4: she started writing, and she was reading stuff at a
Speaker 4: young age. You know, she would go to the library
Speaker 4: and get stacks of books and you know, sit in
Speaker 4: her room, and then she decided that she wanted to
Speaker 4: write her own stories. I think by the time she
Speaker 4: got into college and had certain teachers kind of guiding her,
Speaker 4: and then getting into the Iowa Writers Program. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure how difficult that was at the time, but you know,
Speaker 4: it seems to me like she she just had this
Speaker 4: vision of she knew what she wanted to do from
Speaker 4: the time she was young. She won a contest from
Speaker 4: Mademoiselle magazine and spent the summer in New York working,
Speaker 4: I believe for the literary because Mademoiselle published a lot
Speaker 4: of literary short stories during that era, and you know,
Speaker 4: it was one of these internships that Joe Diddion had
Speaker 4: at one time, Sylvia Plath had that internship at one time.
Speaker 4: When I'm reading these stories, it doesn't say, oh, she
Speaker 4: was the first black to do this, or she was
Speaker 4: the first black to do that. But in my mind,
Speaker 4: I believe she had to be. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: know how many black writers, young black writers were trying
Speaker 4: out for to get this Mademoiselle internship and win these
Speaker 4: contests and you know, to become a part of the
Speaker 4: Iowa Writers you know, MFA program. But she was also
Speaker 4: very aware of her blackness. I mean, she wasn't like
Speaker 4: trying to right color out of the equation. All of
Speaker 4: her stories, whether they dealt with race directly or prejudice
Speaker 4: directly or whatever, you're aware that these characters are black people.
Speaker 4: From what I understand, I mean, they've sold the I mean,
Speaker 4: the book has been sold all over the world. You know,
Speaker 4: it came out in the US and England the same day,
Speaker 4: but you know it's also been sold in other European
Speaker 4: countries and stuff. And from what I understand from the
Speaker 4: sister or you know, I mean I haven't spoken to
Speaker 4: her myself, but from the interviews that she's given there
Speaker 4: are more stories in this chest, so I guess, you know,
Speaker 4: once they decide what they're going to do, I mean,
Speaker 4: hopefully there'll be enough for second volume or whatever. You know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think we're going to see. I mean,
Speaker 4: considering all the writing that's being done on Diane Oliver
Speaker 4: right now, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, somebody
Speaker 4: buys the book and they start making Netflix a Prime
Speaker 4: or whatever movies from these.
Speaker 2: I can definitely see.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I mean, if like you know
Speaker 4: Calson Whitehead, and you know Victor Laval or whoever, all
Speaker 4: these other writers exactly exactly, and I can see it
Speaker 4: being done. You know, some of those stories, I mean,
Speaker 4: they're so rich, they're almost like feature films, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, so I'm you know, I'm curious to see
Speaker 4: what happens next.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And as someone who considers himself a literary detective,
Speaker 2: what tips would you give to writers or researchers looking
Speaker 2: to explore lesser known literary figures like Diane Oliver essay?
Speaker 4: I said, I was guided by spirits in a way.
Speaker 4: I felt like she guided me to to who she was.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not trying to say that in a
Speaker 4: way to be like, oh like so you know, like
Speaker 4: on some mojo kind of thing. But you know, I
Speaker 4: I would just tell people to try to, you know,
Speaker 4: look up. Uh. You know when when you find these anthologies,
Speaker 4: whether or not it's like a Norton anthology or this
Speaker 4: one or that one, you know, if you find writers
Speaker 4: that you're unfamiliar with, and then I have people, I
Speaker 4: have friends who turned me on to different stuff because
Speaker 4: they know that I'm you know that this is an
Speaker 4: interest to me. So that's basically how I discover a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff. I mean through conversations with writers and
Speaker 4: just through you know, looking at different collections and stuff
Speaker 4: and use bookstores. Use bookstores to me is a treasure.
Speaker 4: And I don't go as much as I used to,
Speaker 4: but you know, I love you know those you know,
Speaker 4: books that are damn near falling apart. You know, the
Speaker 4: pages are turning, yell, the type maybe a little bit,
Speaker 4: but you know, you find all kinds of gold in
Speaker 4: these books.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It sounds like being out in the community and
Speaker 2: talking to people is really a way to find these
Speaker 2: lesser known authors too, because like you said, your friends
Speaker 2: put you onto it. Going out to use bookstores like
Speaker 2: being there, being present, being in conversation with people, You'll
Speaker 2: find these hidden gyms that you otherwise wouldn't if you
Speaker 2: were just off to yourself.
Speaker 4: I have a tendency to read a lot, and I
Speaker 4: also have a tendency to buy a lot of books
Speaker 4: that I may not even get you in a you know,
Speaker 4: it may be a year or so. So when Paul
Speaker 4: said me that right on book, I don't know what
Speaker 4: made me like just start reading it immediately.
Speaker 2: But you know, it was those spirit guys exactly.
Speaker 4: And I'm not even joking with that. I have had
Speaker 4: some weird experiences, and you know, later on, my mother
Speaker 4: was telling me how my grandmother was my great great
Speaker 4: grandmother really was a conjured woman in the in Virginia,
Speaker 4: and I was like, maybe I got some of those
Speaker 4: spirits in me, because you know, I've had some weird
Speaker 4: experiences that turned out to be really you know, good experiences,
Speaker 4: and you know went on to you know, write about
Speaker 4: different things that happened because of these spirits. So thank
Speaker 4: you spirits, Thank you spirits.
Speaker 2: So now it is time for role credits, the segment
Speaker 2: where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
Speaker 2: we encountered during the week, and we have Michael joining us.
Speaker 2: But first, Eves, who are what would you like to
Speaker 2: give credit to? This week?
Speaker 1: I like to give credit to the champions and mentors
Speaker 1: who help us along our paths our journeys. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about Diane Oliver and how there were some people
Speaker 1: in her story, like teachers, who encouraged her to keep writing,
Speaker 1: and so times they gave her advice that she didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily follow. And I think it's really nice to have
Speaker 1: those people there for you who you know have wisdom
Speaker 1: and have knowledge who can pass that along to you,
Speaker 1: and you know what you can take and what you
Speaker 1: don't want to take from them. So I want to
Speaker 1: give credit to our champions and mentors of writing. They
Speaker 1: have helped me a lot in my path and I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for them.
Speaker 2: Michael, who are what would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 4: Well? I would like to give credit to one of
Speaker 4: the writers who is one of my mentors who continuously
Speaker 4: helps me out. His name is Barry Michael Cooper. Barry
Speaker 4: started out as a journalist. He's a well known screenwriter.
Speaker 4: He wrote New Jak City and sugar Hill and the
Speaker 4: Folk of Rim and he's to me one of the
Speaker 4: best writers in the world. And whenever I reach out
Speaker 4: to him for help or guidance or whatever, He's always
Speaker 4: there for me. And so right now I'm in the
Speaker 4: middle of writing another book book that was actually written
Speaker 4: by a white writer called The Cool World, and it
Speaker 4: was endorsed by James Bowen when it came out in
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty nine. It was later made into a film
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty three. And when I reached out to
Speaker 4: Barry and said, Parry, you know, because all the Barrier
Speaker 4: films take place in Harlem, I said, Barry, have you
Speaker 4: heard of this book, The Cool World and the movie?
Speaker 4: He was like, oh my god, it's such a big
Speaker 4: influence on me. And so he was like, you know,
Speaker 4: if you have any questions, just send them to me
Speaker 4: and I'll answer them. And as busy as he is,
Speaker 4: I sent him the questions and literally like two hours
Speaker 4: later he sends me back to answers. So I'll give
Speaker 4: props to him, but if you don't mind, I also
Speaker 4: like to give props to my book word Mom, who
Speaker 4: is still with us. She's eighty six years old and
Speaker 4: I love her to death, and you know, she's the
Speaker 4: reason that I started reading. My mom always read all
Speaker 4: kinds of newspapers and magazines and stuff, and her name
Speaker 4: is Franciscan Vallas. Props to her as well.
Speaker 2: I love that shout out to Mama's. I would like
Speaker 2: to give credit to piggingbacking off of your shout out
Speaker 2: to use bookstores, Michael, I want to give credit to
Speaker 2: for Keeps Books, which is a used bookstore in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: I hadn't been there in a while, and so I
Speaker 2: just popped in over the weekend and she shows love
Speaker 2: all the time, and it's just a really cool hangout spot.
Speaker 2: Always good vibes when I'm there, and I always get
Speaker 2: a really interesting book too. So shout out to four keep.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Rosa Duffy at for Keeps. Where can
Speaker 2: people follow you on social media?
Speaker 4: I'm on Facebook, Michael A. Gonzales, I'm on Twitter at
Speaker 4: Gonzo Geo, Nzo Mike and Mike KK one word at
Speaker 4: Gonzo Mike, and I'm also on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Michael's instagram is Big Mike.
Speaker 2: Give one and we'll see y'all next week. And thank
Speaker 2: you so much Michael for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, I appreciate this. This was really good. Thank you.
Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Eves, jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 1: It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us
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