In Conversation with Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna, USC Dornsife professor of English and celebrated author of the novel Colored Television, joins her fellow author (and former student) Jonathan Escoffery for a lively discussion of her literary journey, central themes in her work — including mixed-race identity, artistic ambition and bohemianism — and more.

Lauded by The New York Times, The Washington Post and others as one of the best books of 2024 and dubbed “The New Great American Novel” by the Los Angeles Times, Colored Television sets a new standard for contemporary fiction.

Senna is also the award-winning author of Caucasia, Symptomatic and New People, works that have cemented her reputation as a bold, witty voice in American literature. She shares her stories firsthand with Escoffery, an award-winning writer whose critically acclaimed debut novel, If I Survive You, was named “Best Book of 2022” by NPR and a New York Times’ Editors’ Choice.

Learn more about the Dornsife Dialogues and sign up for the next live event here.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:31:04

Unknown

Welcome to the podcast version of Dornsife Dialogs, hosted by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Conversations feature our distinguished scholars, alumni and other thought leaders discussing the fascinating issues that matter to you. You can also find video recordings of these discussions on the USC Dornsife YouTube channel. We begin this Dornsife dialog with an introduction from interim Dean Mo Al-Najjar

00:00:31:08 - 00:00:35:16

Unknown

Hello and welcome to our first Dornsife dialog of 2025.

00:00:36:10 - 00:00:59:03

Unknown

Of course, the year did not begin like we imagined here in L.A. My thoughts go out to our alumni and friends who were affected by the devastating fires, and I'd like to thank so many of you for the tremendous outpouring of support you've provided for both our Dornsife and extended communities. The Trojan family, as expected, has been out in full force during these difficult times.

00:00:59:05 - 00:01:25:05

Unknown

Today, we kick off our spring semester dialogs with one of our own Danzy Senna, USC Dornsife professor of English and one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary fiction. Her latest novel, Colored Television, has been hailed as the new great American novel by the Los Angeles Times and was named one of the best books of 2024 by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

00:01:25:07 - 00:01:56:15

Unknown

Danza's work is not only well received, it adds a unique and important voice to conversations about complex issues related to identity and culture. She dives into the complexities of mixed race identity, artistic ambition, and the relentless search for authenticity in a world that can often feel deluding, filtered and absurd. Her storytelling is fearless and deeply human, proof of the ability of literature to help us see ourselves more clearly.

00:01:56:17 - 00:02:20:01

Unknown

Joining her is Jonathan Escoffier, an acclaimed author whose debut story collection, If I Survive, You exploded onto the scene with its own share of praise. As someone who sat in Dance's classroom, Jonathan brings a unique perspective to this conversation and maybe even some stories about what it's like to learn from someone who has been a leading voice in the literary world for years.

00:02:20:03 - 00:02:25:06

Unknown

So I'll hand it over to Jonathan to get us started, and thank you all for tuning in.

00:02:25:09 - 00:02:53:12

Unknown

Good afternoon to our audience. Thank you for joining us today. I want to remind everyone who is watching from home or elsewhere that you can submit your questions to the chat. And Dancy and I will do our best to get to them. Towards the end of the hour. And now I want to welcome Danzy. I'm so happy to be speaking to you today about your beautiful novel.

00:02:53:14 - 00:03:18:07

Unknown

You know, this is a book that does that. Beautiful. It's that beautiful, sweet spot between page Turner while also engaging with social critique and exploring what it means to survive as an artist, both spiritually and materially. And, you know, I couldn't thank you enough for writing this. It's a book that I needed and read at the right time that I needed it.

00:03:18:09 - 00:03:41:00

Unknown

So thank you for writing it. Thank you so much for for doing this with me. It's so fun to talk to you again because I had such a great time reading your pages in my workshop when you were in Graduate school. And of course you were a graduate student, but you very quickly became a colleague. Like it was sort of imminent that your book was coming out.

00:03:41:00 - 00:04:00:16

Unknown

So it felt like we we quickly got to see your work enter the world. And it was sort of so electrifying in the workshop. And then to see the world get to read it. And I'm rereading it now. And if you if I Survive you, it's just an amazing book. So I'm thrilled to be here with you. I appreciate that.

00:04:00:16 - 00:04:33:08

Unknown

Thank you very much. I'm a bit toggling between, you know, how do you jump into a book that you love so much? Obviously, you will have talked about it from various perspectives. And I think I want to start here, which is to say we meet your protagonist, Jane, as she's struggling to complete her second novel, which she's still working on nearly a decade after after the release of her debut novel and which her husband Lenny, calls the mulatto.

00:04:33:08 - 00:05:10:04

Unknown

War and Peace. It's a sprawling book that's standing kind of in opposition to the advice that her literary agent has given her to, quote, just bang it out and get it over with. Right. And I wondered if you could talk to us about this idea about second novels and, you know, the, I guess, idea of of the sophomore curse, but also the reality of what it's like to approach a first novel and then a second novel, and then those books that come afterwards.

00:05:10:06 - 00:05:36:10

Unknown

Yeah, that's such a great question. You know, I think that there's all writers face that issue of if your book does really well or if it does poorly as a debut novel, there's nothing to compare it to. So the second novel is sort of the birth of comparison. It's like being a second child, which I also am very interested in, in being the second of something.

00:05:36:12 - 00:06:05:05

Unknown

And and so I was trying to kind of play with that anxiety that is is general to all writers. But I think it's also more complicated by questions of race and represent tension and that I specifically faced when I published my first novel, Caucasian. I'd never published anything before it too. Better than I could have dreamed. I was in my twenties and I was not prepared for that.

00:06:05:07 - 00:06:28:14

Unknown

But, you know, one of the things that that was the book in the first novel and I was thinking about this reading your novel, If I Survive You, it's, you know, it's kind of the book that you always had to write. It's the book your whole life has been leading up to your first book, and it brings in all of the sort of autobiographical and the obsessions.

00:06:28:14 - 00:06:52:08

Unknown

But it's it's very clear to you in a way, what the material is. And. And the second novel is, I think, where you become a writer, in a way. It's where you're born as whether you're going to stick this out or not. This life as a writer, which is a lot rockier and more sort of difficult than that first novel maybe prepares you for and so on.

00:06:52:14 - 00:07:19:14

Unknown

I was trying to take a novelist and do what the advice she gives her students, which is to make it worse, because my second novel took me five years and I was like, Let me add on another five years and see, you know, what I can do with someone who has no tenure, who's still struggling in in a sense, in the same way she was in her late twenties, but now she's in her forties and she has children and the stakes are a lot higher.

00:07:19:16 - 00:07:59:10

Unknown

I have to tell you that I'm reading or I've read this book and I'm coming to you today from the position of somebody who is working on her seventies. Second book I was going to say is different. So, you know, in addition to being, you know, such an insightful, you know, book, for me to read a book that's just so full of life and humor, it also struck me as this kind of horror novel, because, you know, it was it was reflecting back to me a lot of the anxieties that I that I also am dealing with as somebody who's working on that, that second book.

00:07:59:12 - 00:08:28:04

Unknown

You know, and I've received you know, I've definitely heard about this kind of sophomore curse that you could either, you know, try to be or just work your way through. And, you know, as the agent said, just kind of get on with it, bring it out and and work towards that that third book. But I've also I've received the advice recently that if you kind of fail at this second novel, then people might suspect that book.

00:08:28:04 - 00:08:48:13

Unknown

One was that well-received. You know, assuming the first book was a well-received book in the first place, that they wanted one third write, you don't star. Yeah, exactly. But if you you know, if you really nailed the first two books, then you've you've kind of proven yourself in a way to your readership so that you can do all kinds of things after that.

00:08:48:13 - 00:09:10:00

Unknown

And, you know, you've built this kind of core audience. I don't know if you have any thoughts on. I do have a thought of that. I really do, because my first book was a bestseller and did really well and my second book was trashed. It was mostly ignored, but when it wasn't ignored, it was like hated and it was in such an extreme measure.

00:09:10:00 - 00:09:40:04

Unknown

The difference between my the reception of my first and second book, and I remember reading the reviews of symptoms Attic, my second book, which I went I did a risky thing of writing a horror thriller about race in a moment when nobody was doing that genre mixing of race and horror, and people were completely bewildered by the tone and the material being sort of as dark and comic as it was.

00:09:40:06 - 00:10:08:19

Unknown

And those two, two qualities that have actually been much more what my work has been since then. But at that time it wasn't. It was not well-received. And, you know, I remember reading the terrible reviews of symptomatic and feeling this odd relief because I realized that the first novels, excessive Praise had made me think that that's why I was writing and what people hate my work.

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:30:20

Unknown

And this says something about me. I thought, I'm really a writer because I just keep wanting to write. Now I don't I am not made by the praise of the world I'm writing because it's a compulsion. It's what I've always wanted to do and it's what I'm going to continue to do. And, you know, I think Spike Lee says by hook or by crook, a body of work.

00:10:30:23 - 00:11:05:10

Unknown

And the real thing is to just have that resilience as an artist and keep writing the books blind faith in the process of writing. Because, you know, I've written now six books and each of them has been received very differently and, you know, by different people. But I keep that as kind of a mantra that I'm trying to create a body of work that eventually that that the number of books you write and the and the sort of commitment to the practice of writing is what will help you survive this.

00:11:05:10 - 00:11:58:00

Unknown

Not the. Those first two books. I really love that. Yeah. This, this makes me think. Well, anyway, I have other thoughts, but this actually leads really well into my next question, which is that colored television explores the tension between artists desire to remain faithful to their artistic visions, and that pressure of seeking commercial success and add to that the decisions that black artists in particular have to make around explicitly or how explicitly race features in our work and how, you know we do or don't anticipate how audiences respond to, you know, however we go about including or not including race in our work.

00:11:58:02 - 00:12:25:23

Unknown

Yes. You know, I wanted I want to kind of pick your brain about this phenomena. And I guess to narrow it a little bit, although you can speak as broadly is as you like, you know, do you see this working differently across mediums? We have Lennie in the book who is an abstract painter and chooses one way to go in terms of not including, you know, black representations in any explicit way.

00:12:26:01 - 00:12:50:07

Unknown

We have, you know, the main character in the book, Jane, whose projects are heavily influenced by her, her identity. And in her interest in race. And then we have these other characters like, you know, Brett, who's who's who's a successful screenwriter. And I'm just wondering how you're seeing some of those choices that various kinds of artists have to make.

00:12:50:09 - 00:13:23:06

Unknown

Yeah, and it's funny because I think that's the thing that writers of color really distinctly and consciously have to think about in a way that I think white artists have not historically had to even think about. Like it hasn't been a whisper of a thought historically, like, can I write another book from a white point of view? Will that be seen as limiting me if I write another white main protagonist, am I going to be seen as being obsessed with whiteness?

00:13:23:06 - 00:13:45:22

Unknown

If I write too many white books like the Things if you flip them, that you realize how much of that sort of extra workload we take on and that extra kind of weight of representation that we take on every time we put pen to paper. And, you know, one of my sort of survival techniques and I keep going back to the words survive.

00:13:46:03 - 00:14:18:12

Unknown

It's not just to plug your book, Jonathan. I find myself saying survive to survive as a writer of a kind of marginalized identity is to kick all of those voices, if I can, out of that sort of sacred writing space and try first and foremost to amuse myself. It sounds very lighthearted, but it's actually not like to keep my own attention and to write the book I want to read.

00:14:18:14 - 00:14:39:14

Unknown

I have to be the first reader, and then it's either, you know, either the gatekeepers are going to love it, they're going to want it or they're not. But to, as you know, to sit with a project for years on end, if you're writing for committee, it's not going to work because you spend so many hours with these characters in these worlds.

00:14:39:14 - 00:15:07:02

Unknown

And it's such a, you know, sort of physically grueling and mentally grueling thing to work with a novel. So so I really write to the people in my life and to myself who I don't have to translate for, who are not sort of in that capitalist system and market place. And then I just at some point I start thinking, you know, I have this draft, let's see what what they think of it.

00:15:07:02 - 00:15:36:02

Unknown

But it's been, you know, really the only way to finish a book for me is to kick that level of pressure out of the room, because it just doesn't help me to complete the thing, which is really the hardest part about writing beyond everything else is to to fulfill whatever vision you have. Let's talk about I just was going to say, you know, I think we're being mixed race, too.

00:15:36:02 - 00:16:09:22

Unknown

It's been very specific that those other pressures that, you know, if you're black or red as black, if you're Latino, if you're all sorts of other identities, you get certain specific pressures put on you. And as a mixed race writer, I was facing the sort of strange yawning chasm of of no writing from that point of view. When I first wrote Caucasian and the last sort of explicitly biracial black white characters were tragic mulattos.

00:16:10:02 - 00:16:47:17

Unknown

And so I was writing into this kind of empty space of trying to write contemporary worlds of biracial people. And and that was that faced its own bewilderment from the publishing industry and from the and from audiences. Yeah, well, thinking about your main character, her racial identity, she's the daughter of a white parents and a black parents. And that's not just you know, I kind of want to say central to the novel and how she's moving through the world, but also central.

00:16:47:19 - 00:17:16:02

Unknown

Well, I should say in in forms, her various writing projects, which we get to spend some time with. As we were reading the novel, I've heard you talk about the word biracial and multiracial as as meaningless. And you can correct me if I'm wrong here. Yeah. And then you've also talked about the usefulness of the word mulatto, which is used all throughout the book.

00:17:16:04 - 00:17:41:21

Unknown

I wondered if you wouldn't mind or wouldn't mind elaborating on that kind of distinction and its relevance in contemporary discussions about about race. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, I've done a lot of talking about this book, and the first time someone asked me about the use of the word mulatto, I was actually surprised that it had jarred people so much because my world is so on.

00:17:41:23 - 00:18:13:21

Unknown

My sort of inside world is so heavily populated by quote, mulattos. And we use the word constantly that I forgot that other people weren't allowed to say it. And there you go to like how I'm writing to the most sort of intimate group of people. I'm writing to the people in my world who constantly speak with a level of irony and use these terms with like, we're in a safe space and we can use these inside terms that I wasn't sort of trying to argue that everyone should adopt the word mulatto.

00:18:13:21 - 00:18:39:03

Unknown

It was more me writing to how these characters would speak to one another. And and yet, as you're pointing out, you know, I point out in the book and I've said before, like the word biracial, I never know what someone is talking about when they say they're biracial. And it it's sort of a catch all term for anyone whose parents identified as members of a different race.

00:18:39:03 - 00:19:11:23

Unknown

And my background growing up with a father who identified as black American and is a descent of American slaves, and my mother, who comes from, you know, a white American background and is a descendant of slave owners, I feel like that identity is so central to me, but also the history that it comes out of and and that is the term mulatto, which is the only word that speaks and comes out of that specific history.

00:19:11:23 - 00:19:52:13

Unknown

Actually, the word mulatto is born of that originally origin original sin in American history. And I've heard other authors like I'm thinking of Matt Johnson, who's, you know, written a bunch of books including Loving de, I guess, advocate for a more open use of such a term. It sounds sounds like you are not advocating for that, but I wondered if you get a up or something like right, would you advocate for a more specific word than biracial?

00:19:52:13 - 00:20:27:10

Unknown

Do you think that would move the needle forward in terms of There's nothing prescriptive for me in my writing. I'm not arguing for anything. And that's a very important stance for me to take as a writer of fiction. You know, I remember when Jesse Jackson, like, declared that we should call ourselves African-American and like, that's his job. My job is to write fiction and to write fully formed, you know, worlds and characters and situations that raise all these questions.

00:20:27:10 - 00:21:03:00

Unknown

But I, I think sometimes as writers of color, especially black writers, we get asked to be Obama, to be these other to wear these other hats that, you know, I sort of want to live in a much freer space and that and where I'm not sort of and maybe it's an irresponsible space, but I want to kind of really claim the fiction writer artist loophole with caveat that, like nothing I'm writing should be seen as prescriptive and certainly not Zane's behavior or anything that she does.

00:21:03:00 - 00:21:35:01

Unknown

It's a world I'm describing. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. Well, you bring up Jane's behavior. So let's let's talk a little bit about that. She's, you know, in a position where, you know, it might be first useful to the audience members who have not read the book yet that it, as it's described, her and her family are living on borrowed time because they are living in her grad school friends.

00:21:35:03 - 00:22:13:21

Unknown

This is Brett, the successful screenwriter there living in his home. Brett's away on set in Australia, but he's due to to come back, you know, at some point and that that clock is ticking. And that's very kind of present. We feel it's part of what's so suspenseful about the book. And you know, as that pressure increases, Jane starts to make some really interesting choices that are you know, they're interesting, the questionable, maybe morally, ethically, that must have been so fun for you.

00:22:13:21 - 00:22:39:05

Unknown

I kept thinking, this is such a great character. This is so fun to spend time with, Jane, even as on, you know, my eyebrow is going up as she's making this choice. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that was like or. Yeah, I think you were in my Autofiction class, right? We did that class about sort of thinking about the sort of shadow self that you write as a fiction writer.

00:22:39:05 - 00:23:10:02

Unknown

And it's it's like you, but it's doing things differently than you might either want to be seen doing or the choices that you might not make, but take away a few of the sort of safeties in your life and you might have made those choices. So for me, writing characters who get into trouble and get messy and do things that aren't quite protecting them from trouble, like you don't want to protect your characters from trouble.

00:23:10:03 - 00:23:37:01

Unknown

Nobody wants to read about upstanding, happy characters. At one point I think I said to a class, It may have been yours, like we'd rather an alcoholic than a pothead who wants to act out, not someone who goes inside their head. And so for me, it's really important to see the characters acting out and creating trouble. And Jane really does that.

00:23:37:01 - 00:24:07:00

Unknown

And you have to be able to sort of identify with why they're doing that and see the reasons. And for Jane, you know, she and her husband have lived in this kind of bohemian squalor for many, many years. And now they have two young children and she's in her forties. And whatever kind of romance to living in this starving artist Bread and Roses life of of and also being nomads is beginning to kind of fade.

00:24:07:00 - 00:24:32:06

Unknown

And and so I fully identified with her reasons for doing things that were not on the up and up in a kind of desperate quest to enter the middle class, which is very hard to do for artists and I wanted to kind of fully believe her desperation. So I had to build things into their life that that made you understand them, even if you didn't approve of them.

00:24:32:08 - 00:25:10:14

Unknown

Yeah. And it's such a potent image of Lenny and Jane and seeing the wine fridge. And I love the way the fact that they drink all of their letter friends wine is always the most disturbing thing to people, which I find very funny. I'm like, she does a lot of other bad stuff, but the drinking, all of his vintage wine bottles is somehow you know, just it's kind of marking the time and the sense of, yes, she's drinking herself into a very bad situation when he comes home.

00:25:10:19 - 00:25:38:16

Unknown

Yeah, she's not a good friend, right? Not not a good house sitter. don't don't rent your house to her. Right. Right. No, I love that. That the time marker, the visual. I mean, you know, it's to me clearly not the worst thing she does, but it is such a trackable image throughout the the novel. And I absolutely love that.

00:25:38:18 - 00:26:09:13

Unknown

You know, to back out a moment for, again, those those fortunate and unfortunate people who are who have to read the novel, they're fortunate because now they get to go read the novel and, you know, have the joy that that I've experienced a couple of times over now. But could you could you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind a color television and then, you know, the book maybe what led you to the title itself?

00:26:09:14 - 00:26:44:04

Unknown

Yeah, well, I'd been living in L.A. for many, many years when I started this novel, and I'd always really wanted to write like a really L.A. novel because it's I often write about New York and Boston, and L.A. has crept into my stories, but I wanted to write something that was like that, L.A. was a character in this, and I've loved so much of the literature of Los Angeles and, you know, also have lived in the shadow of the television and film industry, as all of us novelists do.

00:26:44:04 - 00:27:15:13

Unknown

And, you know, I was I, I would go to parties and sort of feel my irrelevance in L.A. when I would say I was a novelist and people would say, any of your work been made into anything and stealing that. The novel itself, when you live in L.A. long enough, starts to feel like intellectual property for an adaptation rather than the goal in and of itself and the way that the city can work on your sort of worries about your obsolescence.

00:27:15:17 - 00:27:55:10

Unknown

And all of that was very much in my mind as kind of as a theme and an A in a situation. I wanted to dig deep into. And and I had done a little writing for television at that time. And was it it felt like this like sparkly to sort of this high actually, because the potential for for getting rich and for having your work sort of experienced on such a large scale felt so huge and alluring and publishing felt like this, like frumpy last century thing that I'd been doing.

00:27:55:10 - 00:28:20:10

Unknown

And I tapped into that feeling that I was having and it was like at the height of prestige television and that feeling I had that books were were sort of fading into the history and, and television was taking over. And to put this novelist in this space and see and poker and see what I could do with her in that in that situation felt really rich.

00:28:20:12 - 00:28:48:19

Unknown

You early in the book, there's a quote I want to read from the early paragraphs, even describing L.A. It reads, Every story about the apocalypse was really about Los Angeles. And this is coming from the narrator. But this is told in a close third person point of view. And, you know, every story about the apocalypse was really about Los Angeles.

00:28:48:21 - 00:29:28:05

Unknown

Was there is there anything you could. I'm really interested in that, and I'm interested in how that read after the last few weeks. Yeah, well, I, I also I'd also been thinking about those first few months of the quarantine and the COVID pandemic, and friends of mine from New York calling me and me having this sense that, like L.A. does apocalypse really well, Like we had been writing this story in films for many, many, many decades about like, what if this thing goes wrong?

00:29:28:05 - 00:29:49:03

Unknown

What if this pandemic takes over the world? And now we were just sort of we were on the set of the movie we had been writing, and it feels like L.A. has such an interesting dichotomy where it's both like the land where dreams come true. It's this kind of sparkly never, never land of of beautiful people and sunsets.

00:29:49:03 - 00:30:17:01

Unknown

And then it's also, you know, this incredibly kind of dark space of of like end of the world calamity. And during, you know, the fires, I was thinking, here we are again, like L.A. will will revive, it'll reinvent itself. And you know, people on the East Coast maybe didn't quite understand that. Like L.A. is is does apocalypse. Wow.

00:30:17:03 - 00:31:08:14

Unknown

Like this is this is where we shine. We are like a place that, like, constantly has these things happen and then kind of has to reinvent itself. And it's kind of part of the identity of the city and absolutely, I'm sure that there are some academics who are viewing this. There are some grad students who are probably tuning into this, probably people who are thinking about, you know, giving given the nature of the creative writing, the dual program, creative writing and literature, how one balances a creative life, if they are intending to stay in academia, work in academia, break into academia, actually pays the bills.

00:31:08:16 - 00:31:30:01

Unknown

Right? And that is a big question in the book as well, is like, how do you make a living as an artist? And I think we need to kind of talk about that more in these programs and really talk about like what the financial reality is of being a novelist or being a visual artist. And how how do you survive those things?

00:31:30:02 - 00:31:57:00

Unknown

Because it it isn't, you know, a consistent job. You don't have the Writers Guild, you don't have this these sort of supports systems built in. The one support system you do have is teaching. And I've over the years, you know, had to really change my writing practice the more I had children and I had students and a job to go to.

00:31:57:00 - 00:32:24:21

Unknown

And and it hasn't made me less productive. It's just meant that I've had to sort of be flexible in terms of when I work. I don't have the thing where I'm working every semester from 9 to 5 and I'm saving a lot of it for the summer or for those semesters off. But I think you just constantly have to like look at your lifestyle and do a check in.

00:32:24:21 - 00:32:50:00

Unknown

Is is the old way of working. Continuing to serve me in this new chapter. And I think of life as sort of chapters. And now I'm in the chapter I'm teaching and raising children, and the writing has had to adjust to that because most of us aren't trust fund babies and aren't like living in an inherited property without any responsibilities.

00:32:50:01 - 00:33:16:22

Unknown

Like most of us have to make another source of income. And and the university has really been, you know, this amazing I wouldn't say benefactor but supporter of artists because we we often, you know, need something to kind of stay alive. We make our art and that has been you know such a gift for me is having having this job.

00:33:17:00 - 00:33:48:18

Unknown

Are there any other upsides to the steady teaching gig, apart from knowing where your health insurance comes from and I think I mean, I love having younger people in my life and being able to kind of stay, I think, mentally limber and culturally connected in a way that I've seen people who don't have kind of connection to the university, who are artists.

00:33:48:18 - 00:34:14:15

Unknown

And I think you can float off into the stratosphere a little bit. And it keeps me very much connected to the world in sort of multiple generations, which I really like. And I also, you know, like to teach the things that I'm thinking about in my own work so that it becomes generative rather than purely taking from me.

00:34:14:15 - 00:34:33:19

Unknown

But it's it's something that, you know, when we were doing our autofiction class with you, you know, that was something I was trying to puzzle out, was like, what was my relationship to all of these protagonists? And I got to think about it with a group of really smart people. So I've really made friends. I'm not like Jane.

00:34:33:19 - 00:34:57:04

Unknown

Jane thrives on teaching the whole the whole book. But I was having fun with that with Jane. But for me, it's been like, you know, I feel very lucky to have a steady job. And as someone who grew up without parents, who were not tenured and who were struggling, like I see the gift of it, of being in a study, a steady place.

00:34:57:06 - 00:35:25:03

Unknown

The writing doesn't come from, you know, desperation and terror go right, right. You know, you know, we we kind of started off talking about the first novel, the first third, the the trajectory through the second novel, that kind of important, the things you learn about yourself through the reviews and through getting it done. It's resiliency and all of that.

00:35:25:05 - 00:35:52:00

Unknown

I wonder for those people at home who are a little bit earlier in the process of getting started, if you if you have any tips for, you know, how does one find and this is actually coming from an audience question. So I'm not pulling this from my own curiosity as much as I know there are people who want to know how do you how do you where do you start?

00:35:52:02 - 00:36:14:22

Unknown

Where do you start this this journey as a fiction writer and maybe that's for someone who's been dabbling, has been journaling for a while, but they want to start taking things a little bit more seriously to you. Can you can you reach back to that person? Yeah. I mean, I was a journalist before I was a fiction writer in terms of my job and public life.

00:36:14:22 - 00:36:59:10

Unknown

And I was working for a magazine, New York, and I was scared to make that leap to writing fiction because it felt so risky and, you know, hard to break into. And I this is where, you know, I do really believe in workshops, as, you know, hokey as it may sound, But I took night classes at the New School in New York, and I just started the process of learning to put my work in front of other people and to get their criticisms of it and start to learn to edit my own work and to realize that first drafts of the hour should be bad, should be flawed, and that kind of get into the

00:36:59:10 - 00:37:21:17

Unknown

process and to start thinking like a writer and not just like a reader where you're reading works and you're starting to think about where you pulled into this story, where you pushed out and starting to look under the hood and think, How does this work? How does this person pull me in? And then to understand craft in a sense.

00:37:21:19 - 00:37:56:08

Unknown

So I think that that's how I began was actually through night classes and starting to just put my toe in the water to think of myself as the writer. You've mentioned having to remain nimble across the various teaching schedules and maintaining your writing practice. Is there any particular thing that has remained consistent that might look like a writing routine, even if it means times are shifting or the places you write may have changed?

00:37:56:08 - 00:38:17:07

Unknown

Is there any constants? I think I learned this actually with my second novel when I had a job, because most of my books I've had jobs, in fact, every one of them. But I had a really sort of intense work schedule for my second book, and I was working like, you know, 60 hours a week and I had a magazine.

00:38:17:07 - 00:38:46:10

Unknown

And I, I learned at that point that I work better for my first draft in a public space, not at home. And so I started to go to a cafe in Brooklyn every day for 2 hours and work on the first draft. And I had rules for myself that I had to write forward and scene and that I, I had a car that was at a meter and I had to stop after 2 hours and go to go to work.

00:38:46:10 - 00:39:15:14

Unknown

And I realized that having sort of limitations around my work is where it becomes most free in a kind of paradoxical way. And where I actually produced the most is when I have these kinds of and where I'm not in my house and I'm not next to my refrigerator and I'm not dealing with my dogs or the laundry, but I'm actually like sitting in a space that's just for the writing of these scenes and just moving the story forward.

00:39:15:14 - 00:39:55:13

Unknown

And editing can take place in a lot of places, but that's where the first draft happens for me. And libraries, cafes. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with the well, with a lot of what you're saying and especially the having the heart stop on your you're kind of writing session. I right before I came to USC, I was managing a writing retreat where I had negotiated that my writing time would come 1 p.m. and I knew every single day at 1 p.m. calamity was going to strike because the residents at this writing retreat were going to come knocking on the door.

00:39:55:15 - 00:40:18:02

Unknown

In our 90 year old, the owner of the retreat lived on site as well. And you know, for him a lot of things that weren't really emergencies would would seem like emergencies such as a resident left window open when it was, you know, below 60 degrees out. And this was a case for emergency. But that heart stopped, really.

00:40:18:02 - 00:40:44:16

Unknown

I mean, my fingers would start moving faster, my brain would start moving faster. I would really generate such, you know, important material in the session in those last that last hour or even that last 10 minutes. Yeah, it's such an important point. Yes, it's strange, but true. It's not about being wild and disciplined and unstructured that you create the most interesting work.

00:40:44:16 - 00:41:10:09

Unknown

It's through these structures and discipline and daily practice that it happens. Absolutely. We're getting some great questions from the audience. So I want to check in with those. One of those is and I'm just going to read it in the book. Lenny has this fantasy of moving to Japan, mirroring some of the other black artists who have had success abroad.

00:41:10:11 - 00:41:50:23

Unknown

Is the impulse to escape or take a break from America, something most artists working with race experience. I mean, I think that's historically been very true and the sort of fantasy that, you know, especially with the Harlem Renaissance through James Baldwin and Richard Wright, like this is a large part of the black American artistic imagination. And and the theme in the work of trying to be freed from this place in which, you know, we're always living at this sort of level of double consciousness.

00:41:51:01 - 00:42:40:01

Unknown

And I have many friends and people who I love. My own sister moved out of the country and never came back. And I would say race was a huge part of that. But I was interested in both Lenny's desire for that and the tension with Jane, who does not desire that and in my own experience of living abroad and and this was a sort of mulatto idea comes from as well that that identity makes no sense in any other country but this and I have a line I think in my my memoir, which is about my parents histories, that this is my only homeland, like other people, have other homelands to look to and, you

00:42:40:01 - 00:43:06:10

Unknown

know, to think about Italy or Nigeria or all of these other places. And for me, the story begins here and ends here. So I was trying to play with that with both her and Lenny and their kind of friction in their marriage about whether to look outside of America or to become sort of entrenched in the problem of America.

00:43:06:12 - 00:43:32:13

Unknown

I love that section. I'm going to read it real quick because I love it so much in her to this is Jane in her decidedly unscientific sampling, all the black people who left the country in their desperate quest to escape, to escape the American obsession with race only became more obsessed with the race themselves, or rather became obsessed with not being obsessed with race.

00:43:32:13 - 00:44:09:20

Unknown

And it goes on. There's, you know, I'll stop there for time's sake, but it's such a wonderful passage about this kind of an escape ability, especially for the artist who may wants, you know, to be able to make the decision about how much or little they engage with questions of race. But, you know, it's a very circular. They find themselves right back there examining, you know, how or how they can't escape it, for lack of a better phrase.

00:44:09:22 - 00:44:38:19

Unknown

Jumping back to the questions from the it's really great. There is you know, there's guy Anatole Broyard, who is this famous book editor who passed as White his whole life and wanted to become sort of a writer who was not known for being black. And he was very light skinned and he passed for white. And then after he died, all of his black heritage came out and it was like the only thing that anyone knows him for now is that he passed for white.

00:44:38:19 - 00:45:08:21

Unknown

And it was sort of like a version of the story you're telling of. Like the more you try to escape something, the more it defines you. Yeah. That beckons on our questions. What do you think are the components of a book or a story that are compelling enough to make it into a movie? Does it take away from what the author is sharing?

00:45:08:23 - 00:45:51:12

Unknown

Yeah. I thought a lot about adaptation and the. I mean, with Jane. Of course, I won't give away the story, but, you know, I just hope that the writer gets paid for their work and does get compensated for what they write. But, you know, I think of adaptation as very exciting thing, actually, and that it can really bring audiences back to the book when it's done, if it's done well and done with sort of in good faith and as long as we see the the book and the movie or the TV show as sort of separate things, and that one is a kind of interpretation of that by a different medium.

00:45:51:13 - 00:46:13:14

Unknown

They're not I don't I don't think they're in competition so much as maybe they used to be. I think there's a really interesting relationship between the two, and I find it kind of exciting to work in both mediums, which I have been doing, and I find that they both kind of bring something to the other the more I work in both of those areas.

00:46:13:16 - 00:46:43:21

Unknown

Yeah, it even makes me think of, you know, this is a guy with one book even experiencing the production of the audio book to some extent. I had to, you know, at some point let go a little bit and I received the clips and the audition tapes of I don't listen to them. I don't listen to those. Yeah, that is an interpretation of your work, the audio, the audible version of it.

00:46:43:21 - 00:47:15:10

Unknown

And, and it's not you anymore. And it's not like House one reads a line is maybe not how you imagined the person speaking. So it's that feeling like you have to let go of some of that control is really I think, a good thing to to focus on. Yeah, yeah I love that. I mean, so, you know, my book is technically we got tricky with it because we didn't put a subtitle on the front in terms of dictating whether people read it as novel or stories.

00:47:15:12 - 00:47:41:05

Unknown

But even I would say as a short story writer, becoming comfortable with the idea that a magazine version of your story can look quite different from story that winds up in your collection because, you know, cuts maybe that maybe had to come as a result of the page count limits that the literary journal has its end for all sorts of reasons.

00:47:41:05 - 00:48:06:05

Unknown

So becoming comfortable with multiple versions or multiple interpretations of your work, I think is important to not drive you crazy. Well, I think that also gets to, you know, what I would say to you as a younger artist in the process of writing a second book is by my age, you realize you have finite resources in your brain and you're trying to protect the next book.

00:48:06:07 - 00:48:30:15

Unknown

And the more kind of mired in the last book that you you have to really, you know, protect that last book. But the next book is the one that's in the incubator. And you really have to decide, like, where am I going to give my energy? Like, is this worth my fight or is this going to take away from my whole morning of writing, which is really precious and nobody is going to nobody's going to make you write a book.

00:48:30:17 - 00:49:05:04

Unknown

So you have to protect that energy. The world isn't screaming for another book. It's really got to be the thing you decide to to protect in a kind of blind faith. And and part of that is not getting too focused on the smaller battles that I do already, in a sense. Well said. One of the questions from the audience is how do us writers keep finding new things to say?

00:49:05:06 - 00:49:27:21

Unknown

Well, the one thing you can not teach is having something to say. you can teach. I could teach a lot about craft and plot and dialog and story, and I can ask the right questions. But, you know, really that is like at the at that point, it's it's it's about whether you do have something you want to say.

00:49:27:21 - 00:50:09:07

Unknown

And it's I think it's really a compulsion and it's a human compulsion. When you look at those cave drawings, you think, okay, the the first, you know, cave people were trying to represent something and that was their auto fiction. Right? They're writing these pictures of something happening on a cave wall. And that impulse has to be in you and you have to have that temperament and you have to in a sense, you know, one of the strange things about the older I get and the more books I write, the shorter the distance between something happening to me and me turning it into material is like really interesting.

00:50:09:07 - 00:50:33:06

Unknown

I'm having an experience and I'm already thinking of the the me as a she and I'm thinking of the person having this experience with as a as a character. And it's it's probably not psychologically a good thing, but it's happening and I'm going with it. So you have to have that impulse to kind of turn the world, as you see it, into a fictional creation.

00:50:33:06 - 00:50:59:11

Unknown

And and that's the thing no one can give you. It has to come from you. Yeah, you said maybe not good psychologically, but has that been good in terms of moving that from experience to fiction or art or any kind of writing that you put out into the world? I mean, is that a smooth you know, you get it and you now turn it out into a you know, I feel like it just sounds so cold and ruthless.

00:50:59:11 - 00:51:21:07

Unknown

But I think it's also a part of being a writer is to be a bit ruthless and to feel that the art has a value in and of itself and that, you know, you're going to it's going to cost a lot, but it has to be worth it in the end. And so so your your devotion to this art form kind of takes precedence over a lot of other things.

00:51:21:09 - 00:51:49:00

Unknown

And there's no way to say that's good or bad. It just is what it is to be an artist. Yeah, Yeah. I've wondered about my own experiences that I know. I mean, I could get a lot out of, but I've sometimes wondered if I needed to step away from the experience. But sometimes when I do that, I kind of lose the juice in that experience.

00:51:49:00 - 00:52:15:19

Unknown

So that's why I'm so interested in what you're saying right now. Yeah, maybe I should actually just go ahead and write it. I mean, I think it's worth it's worth it. And in a sense you sort of it's like that therapy line, like finding the narrative you can live with and then step away from. So writing things and turning them into a narrative that's mine and I'm controlling maybe something.

00:52:15:19 - 00:52:55:20

Unknown

There may be something therapeutic in that act of fictionalizing one's own life. I think the jury's still out on that. Well, we have time for maybe one or two more questions. So from the chat, Jasmine would like to know how your practice of writing has influenced your personal pedagogy, or more generally, what is your teaching philosophy? Yeah, I mean, I, I think with grad school students and undergrads, there's, there's overlap, but it's also different.

00:52:55:20 - 00:53:29:06

Unknown

And I think, you know, when I'm in a room of graduate students, they're adults. They've been working at this for a while and I'm and in our Ph.D. program, I'm often feeling like I'm there to protect that artist self that may be, you know, having to do all these other jobs of writing theory and papers and analysis. And I'm here to say, like, I'm going to help you generate this work and to protect it and and in the program, I think that's been, you know, a role I feel like I've had to take on.

00:53:29:06 - 00:53:58:03

Unknown

And and with undergrads like it's the first do no harm they're they're trying out this voice and you don't want to be that person that fills them with fear or shame in that very vulnerable thing of putting their work forward for the first time. And so, you know, I try to do a lot of prompts and play in that space so that it feels generative again and not prohibitive or or frightening.

00:53:58:03 - 00:54:25:04

Unknown

And and the longer I've taught, the more I've found these tools, the sort of tool bag that that I feel creates that safe space to try out these voices for the first time. Yeah, that's beautiful. Across a couple of decades of either leading workshops or more importantly, being in workshops or leading workshops on the second half of that.

00:54:25:04 - 00:54:57:13

Unknown

But being in workshops where some professors seem to believe that it's their job to shut down the writer who could do other things in the world. Because if along the lines of If I can break your spirit, then you're not meant to be a writer. This is obviously kind of terrible, but I have kind of seen that. And obviously I know as a former student that this is, you know, very far from you or your approach.

00:54:57:13 - 00:55:23:05

Unknown

But it is interesting that once upon a time there seemed to be a pretty acceptable way to go about weeding out who is, you know, supposedly the the real writer and who's just like, we'll see. Now, I've read about the Gordon Lish workshops, the famous Gordon Lish workshops and how, you know, those just sounded like that kind of, you know, walking around with a whip or something like, Let's hear what you've got.

00:55:23:05 - 00:55:49:21

Unknown

And none of my work. I also just struggle with all those same questions of every writer of self, and it's just terrible. Is this good? Can am I allowed to speak? And as a woman, as a writer of color? So I just I think those things and bring that feeling of, you know, trying to to find ways to give ourselves permission to speak, even.

00:55:49:23 - 00:56:12:04

Unknown

It's I think of the workshop as like a very sacred space in a way. And it's and it's a place where, you know, during the post COVID, these kids coming out of quarantine, I felt incredibly I mean, I think that's influenced my pedagogy as well as realizing in that space, you know it was a place to connect to one another, too.

00:56:12:04 - 00:56:43:03

Unknown

And I still feel that's a really great tool. You learn in workshops that no artist is on an island and that you need a community of other artists who you're working with and helping to create. So that's that's been effective to Right, right. I love that. And our final, final question before we have to go, What are you what have you read recently that you would recommend to people who are watching today?

00:56:43:05 - 00:57:09:13

Unknown

Yeah, I'm I read a lot of nonfiction and I read a lot of fiction. And I want everyone to read Jonathan LASCARIS If I Survive you. And right now it's incredibly prescient and great to read in this sort of conversation around identity and immigration and race. We need to protect art right now and support the arts. But also think about these questions.

00:57:09:14 - 00:57:41:03

Unknown

I also read and I'm teaching I read this summer and now I'm teaching it. It's called the Coin by I'm looking at the title Yasmin Zaha by a Palestinian American. I'm not sure if she's American, but she's Palestinian woman writer. And it's set in New York and it's funny and very smart. And I also I read I was American Studies major, and I'm very interested in history, which informs all my fiction.

00:57:41:03 - 00:58:05:05

Unknown

And I'm a big book on reconstruction right now by Eric Foner called The Second Founding. It's not a new book, but I just I'm trying to think about what is happening to this world and this country right now. And and it's also informing my fiction as history does.

00:58:05:07 - 00:58:29:09

Unknown

Well, I've enjoyed speaking with you. I hope our audience has enjoyed this hour. Everyone should run out and buy and read colored television if they have yet to. Even if they have buy more copies, tell a friend, give it for gifts. Thank you, Jonathan. It's a pleasure. I'm so proud of your work and your. Thank you. I'm excited about your second book.

00:58:29:09 - 00:58:34:14

Unknown

And remember, by hook or by crook, a body of work. Yes.

00:58:34:14 - 00:58:35:15

Unknown

Take care of everyone.

00:58:35:15 - 00:58:37:04

Unknown

I

00:58:37:04 - 00:58:44:23

Unknown

hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dornsife Dialogs Podcast. Please leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen.

00:58:45:01 - 00:58:48:04

Unknown

Thank you for your support. Fight on