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Tonya Moseley
podcasts from WHYY in Philadelphia. This is FRESH AIR Weekend. I'm Tonya Moseley. Today, growing up underground and on the run, we talk with Zaid Ayers Dorn. His mother, Bernadine Dorn, was a leader of the sds, the student anti Vietnam War group. She also led a faction that broke away and formed the Weather Underground, advocating armed resistance. In his new memoir, Zaid wrestles with questions.
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Zaid Ayers Dorn
What turned somebody into a revolutionary? How did my mom go from a law student and a civil rights activist to a top 10 most wanted fugitive and a person who advocated bombing government buildings?
- [00:58]
Tonya Moseley
We also hear from writer Jesmyn ward. She's a two time National Book Award winner, a MacArthur fellow and the author of Salvage the Bones and the memoir Men We Reaped. Her latest book is an essay collection on grief, motherhood and survival that's coming up on FRESH AIR Weekend.
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AT&T with your summer essential the iPhone 17 Pro, its center stage auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at, at and t ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone. Trade in any condition requires trade in of iPhone 15 or higher excluding iPhone 16e and 17e requires eligible plan Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change. Visit att.com iPhone for details. This message comes from NPR sponsor Harry Potter, the official Film podcast from HBO Max. 25 years after the first Harry Potter movie came out, it's the perfect time to rediscover these beloved films. The Harry Potter Official Film Podcast brings you behind the scenes, starting with the Philosopher's stone. Uncover hidden details and hear interviews with the people who brought the wizarding world to life. Watch on HBO Max or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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Tonya Moseley
This is FRESH AIR Weekend. I'm Tonya Moseley. Terri has our first interview.
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Terry Gross
Here she is as the child of parents who were radicals in the 60s and revolutionaries in the 70s. My guest, Zaid Ayers Dorn, spent his early years underground with parents who were on the run, disguising themselves with fake identities. Zaid Ayers Dorn's name gives you a sense of his story. His mother, Bernadine Dorn, was a leader of the 60s radical student group, SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, which opposed the war in Vietnam and racism. She and Zaid's father, Bill Ayers, helped found the more militant faction that split off from SDS in 1969 and became the Weather Underground, committed to armed resistance against the government. For years, Bernadine was on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. Zaid is also named after Zaid Malik Shakur, the minister of information for the New York Black Panthers, who designed some of their clothes as well as their disguises and was killed after a traffic stop that ended in a shootout with police in 1973. The Weather Underground and the Panthers had been working together in protest against the war in Vietnam and against racism. The Weather Underground planted bombs in empty police cars, the Pentagon, and other places they considered symbols of the opposition, giving advance warning to people in those buildings to evacuate. In Zaid's new memoir, he wrestles with the contradictions between his parents, commitment to their cause, and how they and other members of the underground left their children unwilling casualties of their parents war. The book is titled Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. It's his family story and the larger story of the radical underground, based on personal experience as well as interviews with his family, former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, and their children, as well as Bernadine Dorn's FBI files. Zaid is also a playwright and screenwriter and professor and director of the MFA program in writing for the screen and stage at Northwestern University. Zaid Ayers Dorn, welcome to FRESH air. I'm so glad you wrote this book. It fills in so many blanks in my mind. And I was in college during the years of SDS and the beginning of the Weather Underground because I was in grad school too. And I always wanted to know, what are the children of these revolutionaries going to be like? And your book told me so much about that and filled in so many blanks. Thank you for writing it.
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Zaid Ayers Dorn
Thank you, Tay.
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Terry Gross
The recurring theme in your book is your fear that during your childhood that your parents would prioritize the revolution, the cause over their role as your parents, and that they could be imprisoned for years, for decades. They could be killed, and you could be left without a parent or without either Parent. So how old were you when you understood enough to start worrying?
- [06:01]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
I think like most kids, my life felt ordinary to me when I was growing up. The truth is, I always knew from my very first memories. I knew that the FBI was chasing us. I knew that we were fugitives. My parents tried to explain it in terms of, you know, we were like Robin Hood or we were like the Rebel alliance in Star Wars. And so I knew, in the way a kid knows, that our lives were precarious. And so I think I was worried early on. But I think most kids are worried, you know, that their parents might leave and not come back. When, you know, if you get left in the car, when your parents go to run an errand, there's a primal fear there. I think my fear of those things was accentuated by what I knew about their situation. But of course, as I grew up, I started to learn more about what that meant, and I both understood more why they were doing what they were doing. And it made my feeling about them more complicated because I realized that they had these other goals that transcended their roles as parents.
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Terry Gross
Some of your early memories of Ara visiting your mother in prison when she refused to testify against her fellow revolutionaries. She wouldn't name names, she wouldn't give up details. Can you describe your memory of what the prison looked like and how it felt to see your mother imprisoned there?
- [07:18]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah. So she was imprisoned at MCC Manhattan Correctional Center. It's a big kind of brutalist building in downtown Manhattan and kind of a windowless, giant concrete structure. My dad would take me and my brothers there to visit my mom and, you know, we would go through metal detectors, talk to the guards, and, you know, to see my mom twice a week and spend a little bit of time with her. And I remember smuggling in little child sized books, you know, Peter Rabbit and In the Night Kitchen, things like that, you know, putting them in my pants so that I could make it through the metal detector so my mom would have something to read to me. The visiting room was a big kind of cavernous space with a bunch of tables. And, you know, we would spend a couple hours talking to her, having her read to us, and then we would leave and we would go outside and stand on the sidewalk and we would wait there for half an hour, an hour until she was back in her cell. And she could flip the lights on and off in her cell so that we could see that she was back in her cell and was safe. And it was kind of like waving goodbye. And I remember that being hard because it meant that we were allowed to leave and she wasn't.
- [08:25]
Terry Gross
Did she look worried or afraid when you saw her in prison?
- [08:29]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
My mother never looked worried or afraid. She was about as committed and courageous a person as I ever knew. I mean, I now know, having read her letters to my dad from prison, having talked to her all these decades later about what it was like, that she was in a lot of pain, that she was suffering. She knew that she was making this choice, you know, to refuse to testify meant that she was held in contempt of a grand jury and was in prison while her kids were at home. And I was, you know, four or five at the time, and my little brother was one or two. I think he was nursing when she went in. So it was painful as a mother to be separated. And that's one of the things, of course, like you said, the theme of my book is trying to kind of come to grips with or understand the fact that even though she was a great mom, she had these ideals that were priorities for her, even over us.
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Terry Gross
When you were, I think, four, you kind of inherited a younger. Well, you had a younger brother, but then you inherited a second brother, Chesa Boudin, when his parents were imprisoned, would you describe why they were in prison?
- [09:45]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah. So of course, we had been on the run my entire childhood. My mother was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and she was a very high profile fugitive. But by the time I was three or four years old, the Vietnam War had ended. Most of the crimes she was accused of were in the past. And in fact, many of the charges against my mother had been dropped due to FBI misconduct and the COINTELPRO scandal, you know, illegal wiretapping and searches and even blackmail and kidnapping attempts. So most of the charges against my mother had dropped away and my parents decided to turn themselves in. This was in 1980, and my mother ended up getting probation. She did not get prison time, even though she had been a very high profile fugitive because so many of her charges had been dismissed. But when we turned ourselves in as a family, some of their former comrades, including their close friends Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, stayed underground and stayed committed to helping the New York Black Panthers in their continuing struggle against the police and the FBI. Kathy and David took part in a bank robbery, the brinks robbery, in 1981, in which a police officer and two guards were killed. And so they went to prison for a long time. And they had left their 18 month old son Chesa at home with a babysitter when they Went out to rob this bank. So my parents, my family took Chesa in when he was very little. So, yeah, I inherited a second brother, and he became part of our family because his parents were sent to prison for a long, long time.
- [11:19]
Terry Gross
Did that make you even more worried because you saw somebody who did lose his parents to prison?
- [11:25]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
That's exactly right. Chesa, for me, was. I mean, he was my brother and is still one of my best friends. But he also represented for me what it might look like if my parents had been caught, if they had, you know, stayed in the underground for one more month, one more year, what it might have looked like if they had been sent to prison forever and I had to grow up without them. Because that's what happened to Chesa.
- [11:49]
Terry Gross
You always wondered, well, when you got old enough to wonder, you started wondering, why would people have children if they were going to risk their lives constantly or risk prison constantly? Did you ever ask your parents that question?
- [12:09]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Of course. I've asked them many times growing up. And then in the writing of this book, I asked them over and over what they were thinking at that time. And, you know, their answers are funny. I mean, my mom, when I first asked her about it for the book, she said, well, we'd been fugitives for a long time and we felt like we knew how to be safe and. And we certainly wouldn't put our baby at risk. And I said, well, you know, you were FBI top 10 most wanted fugitive. Having a kid, by definition, that kid is at risk. But I think they felt, you know, like a lot of young parents. My mom was in her early 30s. She finally wanted a kid. She had never thought she wanted to be a mother or a wife. She was a very anti traditional person. But I think once she started wanting a kid and they'd been underground at that point for seven years, and so I think it felt to them like, well, we either do it in this strange circumstance or we don't do it at all. And, you know, I talked to other children of Weather Underground fugitives. I also talked to Assata Shakur's daughter, Kakuya. And you know, her mom, Asada, had Kakuya when she was in prison. She was facing life in prison for murder. And she was in the psych ward at Rikers island. And she got pregnant, you know, with a co defendant of hers and had a child in prison. She got pregnant in prison, she got pregnant in prison. And people have asked Assata about this too, and she says the choice was we knew that the world was a Terrible, racist, horrible place to bring a black child into. But we also felt like we have to live like our grandparents and great grandparents and great grandparents had children even under slavery. And so the choice is not, you know, do you abandon the struggle for justice and have a normal life? The choice is, given that you're in the struggle, do you decide to live and have a family anyway? So I understand that decision. But, of course, as the kids, it's a complicated. The consequences are quite clear.
- [14:03]
Terry Gross
They reassured you that they would always protect you, they'd always be with you. But you later learned that they took some really dangerous actions when you were very young that you did not know about. For example, you and your parents went on a camping trip in West Virginia. They're reassuring you they'll always protect you. They'll always be with you. You later learned that trip to West Virginia was because it was near a prison that they were casing to help break out Assata Shakur, a New York Panther. To help her break out of prison, she was moved to New Jersey to a prison there before the breakout. But your parents did later help her break out of that prison. When you found that out later in life that they were, you know, not being honest with you, you were very young during that camping trip, what was your reaction?
- [14:58]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Well, yeah, when you say, I found it out recently, I literally found it out while working on this book, so in my 40s. And so, yeah, it was surprising, definitely, but also not surprising in the sense that I've always known my parents had these goals that were foundational for them, that. That fighting racism, that being white activists in solidarity with the black freedom struggle was their priority before I was born. And so even though I did always feel loved growing up, I always felt safe and protected to some extent. I mean, I felt like they definitely had my best interests in mind, but I also always knew that they had these goals that were bigger and preceded me. And so when I reconstructed the history and figured out, you know, where my parents had been, what they had been doing at that time, it made perfect sense that when the Black Panthers came calling for one more favor, my parents would have found it impossible to say no.
- [15:57]
Terry Gross
How do you look at it now? Is it better to risk your life as a parent for the greater good, for the cause that you really believe in? Or do you give up the cause or change your role in the cause to more of a background figure in order to be with your children and protect them from the larger world?
- [16:21]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah, I think it's a question I've wrestled with a lot. And I would say where I come down is it's a fundamental contradiction. If you are somebody who believes strongly in something, that you have to make a better world for your children. You know, you can't exactly choose between I'm gonna have kids and have a normal life, or I'm gonna fight for a better world for my parents and their friends in the Panther Party and in the Weather Underground. The choice was more like if we're gonna have kids knowing what we know about this world, we have to both fight for a better future and try to be decent parents. And that was a contradiction. It was a contradiction that reared its head in all sorts of ways and most dramatically when they committed crimes and left their children behind. But I think for my parents, it was never a choice. My mom couldn't have been somebody who decided to abandon the movement and just settle down and have kids. She had to try to do both.
- [17:19]
Tonya Moseley
We're listening to Terry's conversation with Zaid Ayers Dorn. His new memoir is called Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. We'll hear more after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR Weekend.
- [17:35]
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This Message is from AT&T with your summer essential the iPhone 17 Pro, its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at, at and t. Ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone. Trade in any condition requires trade in of iPhone 15 or higher, excluding iPhone 16e and 17e requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit att.com iPhone for details. This message comes from NPR sponsor Harry the Official film podcast from HBO Max. 25 years after the first Harry Potter movie came out, it's the perfect time to rediscover these beloved films. The Harry Potter Official Film Podcast brings you behind the scenes, starting with the philosopher, Philosopher's Stone. Uncover hidden details and hear interviews with the people who brought the wizarding world to life. Watch on HBO Max or listen wherever you get. Your podcasts.
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- [19:11]
Terry Gross
Bernadine Dorn, was a leader of SDS, and then she led the group that became the Weather Underground and supported armed resistance. She issued several statements over the years. I want you to read the one from 1970.
- [19:27]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Okay. The declaration of War.
- [19:29]
Terry Gross
Yes.
- [19:30]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah. So this is a tape that she recorded and that was delivered to police stations and news outlets secretly, all across the country in 1970 to announce that they had formed this underground resistance. She says, hello, this is Bernadine Dorn. I'm going to read a declaration of a state of war. All over the world, people fighting American imperialism look to America's youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire. Black people have been fighting almost alone for years. We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. Within the next 14 days, we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people. Never again will they fight alone.
- [20:29]
Terry Gross
So what did they attack?
- [20:31]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah, 15 days later, they attacked New York City police headquarters, the headquarters of the nypd. They smuggled a dynamite bomb into the headquarters, put it in an empty bathroom, and that night, they called in a warning, and then the bomb exploded. That was the first attack. But over the next few years, they bombed the Harvard center for International Affairs. They bombed an army base in the Presidio near San Francisco. They bombed the US Capitol. They bombed the Pentagon.
- [20:59]
Terry Gross
And so in those early days, most of the protests were against the war in Vietnam. And most of the symbols were symbols of police or symbols of what they called the war machine. You know, like the Pentagon. They were also fighting racism, which had to do with bombing the police headquarters. Can you talk some more about how the Weather Underground became aligned with the Black Panthers?
- [21:25]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
I think for my mother, in particular, the question of race was always central to her politics. She started out in the civil rights movement, marching with Dr. King, volunteering during the rent strike in Chicago. And she was really radicalized by the deaths of these black leaders, by the death of Martin Luther King, by the death of Fred Hampton and the Weather Underground. My mom, for sure, saw her role as being a white ally, or what they called a comrade to the militant black freedom struggle. And so when my mom became one of the three national leaders of sds, one of her programs was, how can we be Better allies to the black freedom struggle. She was based in Chicago, and Fred Hampton, who was only 26 at the time, was the head of the Illinois Black Panthers. And Fred was creating what he called a rainbow coalition of activist groups. He had put together this alliance where different activist groups of different races could work together in the struggle for against the war and against racism and ultimately the struggle to bring down the United States government. And my mom, as the leader of sds, they were one of the first groups to join that coalition. So they were allies already. And then when Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago Police, that really kind of sent the Weather Underground over the edge in terms of their militancy and their determination to escalate that struggle against what they saw as a racist government.
- [22:51]
Terry Gross
And the FBI had an informant in the Illinois Panthers, and that was key in the murder of Fred Hampton. Would you describe the role of the FBI informant?
- [23:08]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
So there was a Panther named William o', Neill, one of Fred Hampton's bodyguards, friends. But the FBI had recruited him as an informant. And we now know that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were determined to bring down the Black Panther Party and were determined to neutralize Fred Hampton as a charismatic, revolutionary black leader. So what they did is William o', Neill, the FBI informant inside the Black Panther Party, drugged Fred Hampton's Kool Aid one night with a sedative, and Fred went to sleep. And that night, the Chicago police showed up armed at Fred Hampton's apartment and started firing through the doors. And they shot Fred Hampton. They shot one of his bodyguards. And then when they burst into the apartment and found Fred basically asleep and wounded, he wasn't yet dead, and they shot him at point blank range and killed him. And they later claimed that it had been a firefight and that the Panthers had fired back. But we now know from forensic evidence at the scene and from testimony that they were lying, that they came in and murdered Fred Hampton without the Panthers firing back at all.
- [24:23]
Terry Gross
And his pregnant girlfriend was lying at his side in bed.
- [24:26]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Exactly. Deborah Johnson. Yeah, Was pregnant with their son, Fred Hampton Jr. And she survived and the baby survived, but she was lying next to Fred in bed when he was killed.
- [24:38]
Terry Gross
So how did that further radicalize your parents?
- [24:42]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
One thing was it became very clear to them that the government was targeting the Black Panthers and that any charismatic, effective leadership in the black freedom struggle would not only be, you know, surveilled and harassed, but ultimately targeted with violence by the government. And so they felt that that required white kids, white activists, to use their privilege to kind of try to help shield the Black Panthers. They felt like the country wasn't noticing that black people were being killed, but they would notice if white people were putting their own bodies on the line. The other thing it did is it convinced them that above ground activist work was no longer viable because they could try to organize against the war. They could try to protest, they could try to have demonstrations. But if the government was literally going to murder people who were opposing their policies, they felt like that meant that activist groups had to develop a clandestine structure where they could operate beyond the reach of law enforcement.
- [25:46]
Terry Gross
It was after the murder of Fred Hampton that your mother declares a state of war against the government.
- [25:52]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Yeah, my parents were still above ground when Fred was killed. They actually went over to his apartment. They saw the bloody mattress where he was killed. They saw the holes in the wall of his apartment. And that really kind of drove them a little bit crazy. The next night, they firebombed a bunch of police cars around Chicago, empty police cars, to kind of show that the SDS and white activist groups were going to try to respond to Fred's death. A few months after that, my mom had what they called a war council, Basically a meeting in Flint, Michigan, of the kind of remainders of the Weathermen organization. And at that meeting, they decided, we're going to go underground. We're going to build a violent, clandestine resistance to the government. And it was in, I think, March or April of that year that they declared war on the government.
- [26:44]
Terry Gross
Zaid, thanks so much for writing this book. I just feel like you explained so much of the past, and it's so interesting to hear what your life was like. So I really appreciate that you wrote this. I recommend your podcast also. Mother Country Radicals. Thank you so much.
- [26:58]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Likewise, Terry, thank you for having me.
- [27:01]
Tonya Moseley
Zaid Ayers Dorn is the author of the new memoir Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. He spoke with Terry Gross. There's a small town in coastal Mississippi called Delisle, mostly black, a few thousand people, and most of the them have lived there for generations. My next guest, writer, Jessmyn Ward, was raised there. Her family has been there for more than 100 years, and for the last two decades, she's been writing about it. Her new book is a collection of 22 nonfiction essays that Ward wrote over 17 years. She wrote the first one in 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina took her grandmother's house. She wrote the Last one in 2025, sitting with the loss of her brother and her partner and her grandmother going back to the music she had grown up on because as she writes, it was the only place that still felt like home. Ward is the first woman and the first black American to win the National Book Award for fiction twice for her novels Salvage the Bones and Sing Unburied Sing. She is also a MacArthur fellow. The title of the essay collection is called On Witness and is also the title of her 2020 Vanity Fair essay about the death of her spouse and the father of her children. Respair is an English word that was nearly obsolete for 100 years. It means the recovery of hope after despair. Jesmyn Ward, welcome back to FRESH air.
- [28:38]
Jesmyn Ward
It's good to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [28:44]
Tonya Moseley
That old word, that is the definition, the definition being fresh hope after despair, the reader never sees it inside. And I'd love to know for you to talk to me about that word, a word that's from really the 1500s. How did you even find that word to be able to articulate the bigger thing that you wanted to say?
- [29:07]
Jesmyn Ward
I discovered the word in 2020, like during 2020 that year, you know, and I had just lost my partner, the father of my children. I just lost him in January of that year, you know, the pandemic began. We were, you know, sequestered from each other. I was unfortunately, spending a lot of unhealthy time on Twitter. But it was serving a purpose right at the time because, you know, we were all so isolated. And back then, Twitter was one of those places, you know, as a social media app that we can go to where we could find a sense of community, a sense of togetherness, a sense of connection. You know, one of the reasons that I spent so much time on Twitter was because I was using Twitter as a tool to discover new writers. And so I was following a poet, and this poet was talking about how they had discovered the word repair and that they were sort of spending their time sort of meditating on it in this sort of terrible, really difficult moment, right, when so many of us, you know, no matter where we were in the world, we were dealing with, you know, the trauma of the pandemic, right. And of seeing the world remade into, you know, something that was very unfamiliar and scary. And a lot of us, I think, you know, we're feeling uncertainty. And I definitely think that a lot of us were feeling a strong sense of despair, you know. And so this poet was sort of talking about how they discovered this word and they were holding it close to them and they would sort of return to it. And I was so struck by that idea. Right. That there was a word that existed that was the opposite of despair.
- [31:04]
Tonya Moseley
Before I even say this, I want to offer my condolences on the loss of your beloved, as you call him, you describe him in this essay. But I also was really struck by you finding this word at a time that was dark for a lot of people. But it was especially dark because you had literally just lost your beloved right before we went into lockdown. So you were living at home with your children, grieving together.
- [31:38]
Jesmyn Ward
Yeah.
- [31:39]
Tonya Moseley
Can you take me just a little bit to that moment and the things that you were doing to try to find your way as you are really sitting in your grief in isolation.
- [31:53]
Jesmyn Ward
Yeah. I mean, when my beloved died, I knew that in my experience, the next two years would be just, you know, that I would be mired in the, you know, the terrible muck of grief.
- [32:20]
Terry Gross
Right.
- [32:20]
Jesmyn Ward
That I would be that I would sort of struggle with it, that time would escape me, that I would, you know, wrestle with that constant pain and longing and loss. And because I'd had the experience of losing, you know, my brother, my sibling, you know, in my early 20s when he was 19. And so I knew that especially like for me, that those first two years would be difficult. But I think having to navigate my grief during the pandemic when I don't know, when the world that I thought that I knew and that I had planned my life around suddenly did not exist anymore, you know, one world ended.
- [33:20]
Tonya Moseley
Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is author Jesmyn Ward. Her new essay collection is titled On Witness. And continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR WEEKEND.
- [33:34]
NPR Sponsor Announcer
This message is from AT&T. With your summer essential, the iPhone 17 Pro its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at, at and t ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone. Trade in any condition requires trade in of iPhone 15 or higher, excluding iPhone 16e and 17e requires eligible plan terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit att.com iPhone for details. This message comes from NPR sponsor Harry the Official film podcast from HBO Max. 25 years after the first Harry Potter movie came out, it's the perfect time to rediscover these beloved films. The Harry Potter Official Film Podcast brings you behind the scenes, starting with the Philosopher's stone, uncover hidden details and hear interviews with the people who brought the wizarding world to life. Watch on HBO Max or listen wherever
- [34:33]
Sponsor Announcer
you get your podcasts, support for NPR, and the following message come from GoodRx. This allergy season, the whole family can get relief without overpaying. Seasonal allergy medication starts at just $10 with GoodRx. GoodRx lets you compare prescription prices at over 70,000 pharmacies and instantly find discounts of up to 80%. GoodRx is not insurance, but even if you have Insurance or Medicare, GoodRx may beat your copay. Get allergy savings on the GoodRx app or go to goodrx.com fresh.
- [35:08]
Tonya Moseley
There is a. There's a moment in this essay, Witness, and where, I guess, lack of a better term, the dam breaks for you. You know, you're in the midst of COVID And so to remind everyone, we're all at home sequestered, and you turn on the TV and you see the crowds of people protesting over George Floyd's death. Can you take me to those feelings you saw watching the people out there protesting all over the world and what you were witnessing in that moment, that almost like it. It just completely overwhelmed you with emotion.
- [35:54]
Jesmyn Ward
Yeah. I mean, you know, so at that time, right, as I'm, I'm, you know, experiencing that first, like, terrible wave of grief, and I am also very aware of. I don't know, of my history, my family's history, my community's history, you know, what it meant to grow up and to be a black. To grow up black in Mississippi, to be a black Mississippian, to be a black Southerner. And so one of the sort of motivations for me in pursuing writing was this idea that I would push back against our erasure or what I understood as our erasure. Right. And, you know, that was something that was, like, very clear for me, especially after. Especially, you know, like, after my brother died, that.
- [37:00]
Tonya Moseley
That was part of your purpose. Right, Right, right.
- [37:02]
Jesmyn Ward
Was to. Was to. Was to say, you know, like, no, like, we're here. We. We, you know, we live, we love, you know, because. I don't know, because especially, like, you know, in my brother's case, it just felt like he was. He was erased. Right. I mean, by the legal system who didn't hold the person who killed him responsible for his.
- [37:28]
Terry Gross
Right.
- [37:28]
Tonya Moseley
So to let the audience who doesn't know your brother died by a drunk driver in a car accident, and the person who was responsible for his death really did not receive the punishment that you believe that he should have.
- [37:44]
Jesmyn Ward
Right. Well, he was charged. He wasn't charged with my brother's death at all. He was charged with leaving the Scene of an accident. And that's it. That's what he received, you know, time, five years for, and was ordered to pay some restitution. And that's it. Right. And so. And that felt like extreme erasure to me, I think, and only definitely cemented my understanding of what it meant to be. To be, you know, a black person in the south. Right. To face the erasure of our humanity again and again and again and again. You know, so this is the context that I was coming to the summer of 2020 with. And, you know, and I felt like in my lifetime, you know, I was born in 1977, I'd never witnessed a movement or, you know, a collection, right, of people coming together, of them, you know, sort of bearing witness to that systemic erasure and then standing up and pushing back against it. Right. Like, I think that definitely happened, you know, during the. In the civil rights movement and then in the 70s, right, with the black power movement. But I didn't. I'd never seen it. I'd never witnessed it. And so it was, I think, shocking for me to see, you know, to see people who were not black and, you know, who were not Southern and who, you know, were, you know, people from all. From, you know, all kinds of people, right, who had nothing in common with George Floyd, but people suddenly, like, sitting with that history, sitting with that fact, sitting with that erasure and saying, we. We see you.
- [39:50]
Tonya Moseley
Yeah, that. That was a very overwhelming experience for you, for maybe the black American who has really lived in this country always having to prove and show and say, this is real. And so people are actually saying, this is real. We see it. We are standing out, and we are standing as witnesses. And that part of that essay was really powerful to me because now we're in this moment, and I wonder, how do you hold the truth now that the grieving we saw as collective action in a way, has turned against itself and kind of helped trigger and create this massive campaign to end civil civil rights.
- [40:39]
Jesmyn Ward
Right. You know, it's. This is difficult for me to talk about because I haven't, you know, on the day that they. That the Tennessee legislature was erasing the seat, you know, the one seat that was occupied by black Congress person in. In. In Memphis. I just. I don't. It was. It was so difficult. I found myself crying and I mean, I don't know. I know that I. I wasn't the only one, right, who felt this sense of loss and this felt. Felt this sense of, you know, devastation to know that, you know, that this. That you know, so many people who fought, you know, for this legislation and for, you know, for these rights. Like, you know, with one with a vote like they were. That work was undone, unraveled. And I don't know, it's. It's difficult for me to navigate.
- [42:10]
Tonya Moseley
And I can almost hear your thoughts as you're trying to find them. Because, like, when you're sitting there and you're watching all these people, it's like you had just lost your spouse and dove deep into a depression and despair after losing him, after being so optimistic. And then there's this other moment of optimism, right? And is it now another well of despair or are we in rest?
- [42:37]
Jesmyn Ward
You know, I don't know. I, you know, I. In the past year and a half, I continued to return to the work, but then that's what I've done my entire life, right? So when I lost my brother, I did that. Losing my brother actually was actually one of the things that made me commit to pursuing this right, to, to writing. And then, you know, after Hurricane Katrina, when I was in another moment, I think, where I thought about quitting, right. I returned to the, to the writing, right. And to what I think, like the good that I think that the writing is accomplishing in the world, right? And then after my partner died again, like, I almost quit and then I returned to the writing. And I feel that way. I feel that very strongly now, right, that, you know, because so much about what is happening right now feels just as it did, you know, in 2020. It feels like it's outside of my control. Right. There are powerful actors everywhere who do not have my best interests or, you know, people who are, like me, our best interests at heart. And what I can do in order to push back against that is I can return to the word and believe in the power of storytelling and believe that storytelling leads us to empathy and leads us to connection. And that is a good thing. And then I can just sit down every day and do the work. I've worked harder in the past year and a half than I've worked in a long time.
- [44:24]
Tonya Moseley
I want to talk about the essay Raising a Black son in the US you wrote this in. It was published in 2017 for the Guardian. And at the time of this essay, you were, I think you were 40 years old and you had a 2 year old daughter and you were pregnant with your son. And in this excerpt, I'd like to have you read, you are about to undergo a battery of tests and also learn the gender of your child
- [44:56]
Jesmyn Ward
as the Months progressed, I developed gestational diabetes and agonized over the prospect of another premature birth. I wanted my second child to have the time in the womb. My first didn't. I wanted to give the second the safety and time my body failed to give the first. I also underwent an entire battery of tests for genetic abnormalities. A bonus of one of the tests was that I would learn the sex of the child I was carrying. When the nurse called to deliver my test results, I was nervous. When she told me I was having a boy, my stomach turned to stone inside me and sank. Oh, God, I thought, I'm going to bear a black boy into the world. I faked joy to the white nurse and dropped the phone after the call ended. Then I cried.
- [45:47]
Tonya Moseley
Thank you for writing that and for reading it. And I will say, Jesmyn, that I have never read that in a way that captures this feeling, the moment that you heard those words, that it's a boy, that the first emotion was grief. And why was it important for you to find the language to name it?
- [46:13]
Jesmyn Ward
You know, I think one of the reasons it was important for me to find the language to name it was because 1. Because I was being honest about that experience, right. And what it felt like to hear those words and to, you know, given what I know of this country and of this region, to bring a child into that. Right.
- [46:40]
Tonya Moseley
And a boy in particular.
- [46:41]
Jesmyn Ward
A boy, right. And I think, you know, one of the reasons that it's important for me to write towards what hurts, to write towards grief, to, you know, to write towards pain, really, is because I know that other people are experiencing this, right? I mean, you know, whatever. When I'm writing towards, you know, grief or hurt or loss, I know that other people are struggling, I mean, maybe in a, you know, different version, right? But I know people are struggling with that same thing. And I, you know, think back to. Especially to when I lost my brother, right? And I was in my early 20s and I knew next to nothing, right? And I was searching for art that could help me understand what I was living through and that could help me to help me better bear it. And I couldn't. It was difficult for me to find work that did that. And so, you know, that's part of what I want to do, right? I want to write about these issues because. Because I know that people are living through them. And I think about, you know, what I wanted someone to share with me, right? How I wanted someone to connect with me when I was living through, whatever I was living through. And so you know, that's one of the reasons it was important for me to write that essay. Even though, you know, it feels uncomfortable. It can feel uncomfortable.
- [48:24]
Tonya Moseley
This essay goes on to talk about how when you found out you were having a boy, you also thought about your brother. And I just. I. I'm curious. What have you told your children about their uncle, your brother?
- [48:39]
Jesmyn Ward
I. I bring him up a lot. You know, they know that he died before they were born. You know, they've seen pictures of him. I will. The reason. Part of the reason that I bring him up is because, you know, with them often is because anytime something happens that that reminds me of him or reminds me of something that he said to me, you know, or some experience that we had together. Like, I'll just relate it, you know, and in doing so, you know, I think I do it because, you know, there are some stories, there's some experiences that I had with my brother that we had together. Like it was just the two of us. Right?
- [49:30]
Tonya Moseley
Only you all know them, right? Yeah.
- [49:32]
Jesmyn Ward
Right. Only we know them. And when I die, I don't want those stories to dissolve with me or to disappear with me. And. Yeah, so I share them with my. With my kids. And there's some stories. There are some things that I know about my. Or that I experienced with my brother that maybe my younger siblings were too young, you know, to remember. And so I'll, you know, share those stories with them. Like, it's. It's important for me, you know, that even though he isn't here and even though my children will never have the chance to meet him, you know, that I. That I try, you know, to communicate something of who he was and of how much I loved him and just enjoyed him, you know, to them,
- [50:33]
Tonya Moseley
you write that you hope that your son sees 12 and 21 and 40 and 62, that he and his sister is there to bury you. And that part just moved me so much because I don't even know, even as a mom, if I've thought about that, that moment where I will be gone for them,
- [50:59]
Jesmyn Ward
you know, I think. I think about it. I think about death a lot, you know, and, you know, maybe that's. I think, given my past, you know, that's. It's a logical, I think, response for me. Right? Because, you know, when. When. When I was in my early 20s and, you know, my brother, again, was hit and killed by a drunk driver when he was 19. Right? When you're in your early 20s, like, you just think. You never think that anything bad will happen. To you and to the people that you love. Right. I mean, unless you've already experienced it even earlier.
- [51:36]
Zaid Ayers Dorn
Right.
- [51:36]
Jesmyn Ward
But I mean, at that time, I just didn't. I thought, bad things will happen to other people. They won't happen, you know, I don't know. They won't happen to us. And then my brother died, and then, you know, my friends died, and then my cousin died, and then I. I don't know, I sort of understood, you know, I understood that, you know, when you're young, sometimes you take life for granted and you take the continuation of life for granted. And so I always think about. I think about death a lot because I know how abrupt and unexpected it can be.
- [52:20]
Tonya Moseley
Jessamyn Ward, thank you so much.
- [52:22]
Jesmyn Ward
Thank you.
- [52:24]
Tonya Moseley
Jessamyn Ward's new essay collection is titled On Witness. And. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Theresa Madden. Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CB Nesper with Terry Gross. I'm Tonya Moseley.
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