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Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
Welcome back to New Books in African American Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I am Dr. Nakazioates, the host of the channel. Dr. Dana Williams, joins me today. She is a professor of African American literature and the dean of the Graduate school at Howard University. She is the former president of the College Language association and the Modern Language Association. She is the author of Tony at the Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship, which is published by Amistad. Dr. Williams, welcome to New Books.
- [00:47]
A
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:50]
B
It's such a delight to have you on. I was at a bookstore, and the bookstore owner had an advance copy on his desk, and I said to him, wait, the book is out. And he was like, well, it will be out, like, next month or so. I said, oh, you gotta be kidding me. I could not wait to get my hands on it and finally talk to you.
- [01:14]
A
I appreciate that. The enthusiasm was really overwhelming. I'm just so appreciative of the audience that has received this book. It was a long time coming. So on the one hand, I was excited that people were enthusiastic about it and weeing with bated breath, and on the other, I was like, come on, girl, let's get this over with already. Let's get this book out. Because I'd actually been working on it off and on for more than 20 years.
- [01:40]
B
Wow. A labor of love.
- [01:43]
A
Indeed. Indeed. I enjoyed every minute of it. I learned a lot. A big part of the challenge was making determinations about what to include, because I couldn't include everything on a book about book selling and book publishing. I was keenly aware that I had limits that I had to stay within. So I couldn't go into this as a kind of naive author thinking like, well, I can write everything I want to write. And it will have no implications for marketing. It'll have no implications for sales. It'll have no implications for how it gets stocked in bookstores. So my editor didn't have a really hard time convincing me to try to stay under 400 pages. It just makes a difference with the price of the book, how many copies a library will buy, how many copies a bookstore will keep in stock. So it was tough trying to figure out, like, how to manage what was just a treasure trove. And so what I'm really excited about are the real possibilities that exist beyond this book, even as I'm absolutely basking in the moment of this one.
- [02:42]
B
Before we get into the book, I do want to touch on your experience as a professor and a dean at one of the most noted universities in the country, I want to bring us back to last spring. Those who particularly work in higher education know that it was a tough time for many of us as Trump became the 47th president of the United States, which the landscape of college teaching, like, shifted dramatically. Now that some time has passed, what was it like for you to teach college students during the period when higher education was pretty much tagged?
- [03:29]
A
It's interesting because I was always aware of how much of a unicorn Howard is as a private university that does get an appropriation. So it has this public private split as a university that's an international University in Washington, D.C. and has the full range of black people from the US and across diaspora. Like, I understood that completely, but I didn't understand as much, to be quite honest with you, how insulated we are from so much of the drama and madness in really important ways. Because what most schools are seeing as point of crisis now have been like perpetual points of crisis for us. So we're navigating this moment the way that we've navigated everything. We've always been under resourced. We've always punched above our weight. We've never been given the kind of federal funding that is commensurate with, like, the products that we produce. So it reminded me, or it continues to remind me a lot of how most black folks of a certain age will say when you ask them, what did y' all do during the Great Depression? Usually the same thing we did before the Great Depression. Like, we made our own food, we ate. Like, it just didn't impact communities that had already been so adversely impacted. So that's one part of it. The other part is trying to figure out, really, how to help students negotiate what this moment will mean for them, because they're the ones who are more vulnerable in the sense that they believe in American democracy. They grew up in interracial environments. They went to school overwhelmingly with people of mixed races, and they have this, like, really kind of pure belief in humanity that is beautiful, that is now abruptly interrupted, that you have to figure out how to help them calibrate, because you want to keep that idealism, and you want them to understand what Raleigh Shoinka calls Africa's greatest gift, which is, you know, her humanism. You want them to understand that this is who they are fundamentally in spirit and in truth, even as this place has tried to create something else in black people. But you also have to make some presently aware that there is this assault there is this attack that we have to be prepared to respond to so that 20 years down the line they won't look up and say, well, no one told us that we needed to be ready for this. Whatever that this is, fill in the blank. So it's been an interesting time. I think the commitment to our mission is just more clear and embraced than ever. And we are seeing other people begin to understand and to think about our mission and considering adopting it as their mission as well.
- [06:24]
B
Thank you so much for that. One of the questions that I ask every guest on the show is to share a moment in which you felt self doubt. But then I also want you to tell us a time or name a time that you feel like represents your greatest achievement or accomplishment. If you just had to reflect on those two questions out loud, and I know they're kind of large and quite vulnerable, what would those two things be?
- [06:58]
A
I think interestingly enough, maybe because I'm thinking about the book now, they're both related to the book. The first one in terms of self doubt was for many years while I was working on this project. So we joked a little bit before about how long it took to come out, but part of that was because I did not have complete confidence in my ability to write a commercial or trade book. So I've written academic books, I've written articles like by university presses, but that aren't for mainstream audiences. So I wasn't sure that I could do it and do it well. And then I like finally came to my senses as I faced my fears with like some very internal self reflection. I said, I got really smart friends. Even if I'm not that smart myself. I got smart enough friends that they're not gonna have me out in these streets looking bad.
- [07:45]
B
Yeah.
- [07:46]
A
So I thought get the draft together and share it with people. That's literally what being a part of a learning community is. So I was able to quell the self doubt that way because I said everyone has gaps, holes, silences, and then you just use whatever tools you have available to you to, to make it work. But I spent a lot of time worried about whether or not the book was good enough, whether or not it had a kind of shape that it needed to, whether or not the writing was clear, whether it was the perfect mix of scholarly. I mean, every doubt that you can imagine. I figured out how to do everything except for write chapters because there was a lot of doubt. And that does really reveal a tremendous amount of vulnerability that we aren't trained to navigate. And to manage well as academics. So I had to navigate it myself, which is why I'm very comfortable talking about it out loud now. Because people shouldn't have to endure that alone. I mean, I had written plenty of papers. And somehow there is the difference between turning something in for a professor to read and giving you feedback and turning something in that the world will now see. And the larger readership, I think, only made me more subconscious. Like, every person is scared to death of what the review is going to be. Whether or not you're a performer or a writer. You're like, what if this gets a bad review? What will I do? Will I just hide? Because this is so many years of my life, like, occupied by this idea. Fortunately, didn't have to deal with it. You know, part of it is what I tell my students who have concerns about imposter syndrome. Well, there's one remedy. Don't be an imposter. So similarly, I said, the one remedy for me with the self doubt is to, like, be sure of the excellence at every turn. Every word had to matter, every sentence had to matter, every page had to matter, every paragraph. And I think the kind of proudest achievement, if you will, has something to do with my productivity as a scholar, as a teacher. So I was proud on so many different fronts. It was really important to me that this book came out with me as a faculty member from Howard, because I wanted to say absolutely, that it's possible at a place like this. Not highly resourced. I didn't have many, many graduate assistants who were doing grunt work for me. I had to do it myself. I didn't have a budget that was out of this world. I wanted it to be very clear that exemplary scholarship comes out of this place not as a fluke or as an isolated thing, but fundamentally because of this place. The way that I thought about this project is because I am of Howard. The access that I had to Toni Morrison was because I was of Howard. My thinking about how to contextualize Morrison and this project around what was happening larger in the world. So that was important to me. And then similarly, I. I mean, I think if I had to describe it in a very. Almost a rudimentary way, in all things that I do, I seek to make those who love me and who have poured into me proud. And the kind of pride that I'm able to see from my living relatives and the pride that I know exists is pretty much all I need. Like, every time I like, one of my aunts will tell me, oh, your parents would Be so proud because both of my parents have made transition. Or my sisters will say, oh, Daddy would have put this on the church bulletin boards. Oh, Granddaddy would have put this up in the cleaners. Oh, Mama would have made sure that, like, her book club read it. You know, those kinds of things. Those are tremendous points of pride for me. I try to do everything that I do in service of the kind of commitment and vision for black liberation that I've never known anything else in my life. So I try to do my work in service of that. And when I think that I do it well, then I sleep well at night.
- [11:54]
B
Well, you made so many of us proud. Many of us were at the finish line cheering you on or seeing, celebrating this fantastic book. Let's talk about Tony at random. Let's begin at Tony's entry into editing. So before Professor Toni Morrison was a Nobel Laureate or even a household name, she was editing groundbreaking books at Random House. How did she land the job? And what kind of person did Random House see in her?
- [12:32]
A
I think it's interesting that you should say that. Because that was one of the questions that I had in one of the early conversations that I had with Ms. Morrison. I was like, how is this possible? That of all of the people who were selected to go to Random House. Because she was at a small publishing house called LW Singer. And they decided which folks were going to come to Manhattan, which were going to stay, like, more independently. And she was very humble, very modest about, you know, when I did my work, I'm like, yeah, I'm sure everybody there did their work, but, like, reading more about it. And that was from some of the archival notes around the people who were there at the time. She clearly communicated, like an outsized intelligence and an awareness of what was going on. And a commitment to doing exemplary work, like in publishing. Some of it is a function of her personality. I think she had been teaching at Howard for many years and had a firm sense of, like, her professional identity. But she had just published the Bluest Eye. So her identity as an author wasn't quite established. So I think it was a combination of just who she is. Really smart, really thoughtful, never kind of trivial, never quotidian or silly. So I think they were clear that they were hiring a first rate mind. When they hired her to shift from talking about and thinking about and publishing textbooks to really beginning to work on trade books.
- [14:12]
B
One of the things that I found interesting in reading that chapter of, of the book was Random House's process in selecting books. They Sort of had an unusual editorial process at the time, which was that they did not rely on committees. It was just how well one can persuade the editor in chief how her approach would have thrived in a more conventional structure. Do you think that her approach lended itself to this one on one style, just with the editor in chief as opposed to convincing the committee?
- [14:53]
A
Oh, absolutely, in part because. Well, and to be clear, I think that she would have been okay in a committee structure, in part because of that outsized personality that I mentioned before. But the difference between going to one person and pitching and convincing them that you can do a project well, the difference between that and pitching to eight or nine people in a room when you're the only person who looks like you. I mean, you can just imagine like the first person gets the book or hears the pitch and says, I don't really understand it. Second person hears a pitch and says, I think I understand it, but I'm just not interested in it. I don't see readers for that. Third person says, eh, it's okay. Fourth person says, I'm with. I'm with person one and two. I don't see readers for this. So you don't have to convince folks who may or may not understand what your mission is, may not understand like what the larger project for the firm is, and certainly would not have a full view of what was happening in the culture. So I think being able to talk directly with her editor in chief made a tremendous amount of difference in terms of what she was able to do. But I think it also kept her from being tremendously frustrated. I think had she been at another house, she would have been more frustrated and annoyed by the process and trying to convince people than she would have been able to tolerate. I think she would have left much sooner because there were even moments once the book was out that she still had to do the work of working with sales. To say, this is who I think you should market this book to. This is how I think you pitch this. This is what's necessary for this to do well. So imagine having to do that on the front end. I think it would have just been really exhausting.
- [16:41]
B
Right, right.
- [16:43]
A
Which is, I think, kind of what happens today. Unfortunately, you don't see people who stay in the industry for nearly as long as she did. I mean, she had a very varied career. She was a writer, she was always teaching. Um, but for people for whom this is a full time job, you see them moving from firm to firm to firm, and then eventually out of the industry. Some of it has to do with pay, but a lot of it has to do with. I'm just tired of this invisible labor, and I'm tired of beating my head against this wall.
- [17:12]
B
Right. One of the first books that Professor Morrison edited was Contemporary African Literature. And the anthology wasn't a guaranteed commercial success. What motivated her to publish that book, and for what reason do you think she chose it as her editorial debut?
- [17:36]
A
I think because she had been at Singer working on textbooks. She had a firm sense of what was expected. She knew how to do that well because she had worked on the St. Thomas More series. She also knew while a commercial success was not likely or guaranteed if she could sell it to libraries and to universities, that she could sell that book and it would work in her favor in the profit and loss statement. Because textbooks, like, really are the cash cows of industries. So when you can sell a textbook to Texas, to California, you can then sell that book and all of the other states because the price point is going to be significantly lower, because their volume is just so much higher, because they have a population that's really tremendous. So I think that was part of it. The other part was her interest in African literature. She said she was reading around in different places that she would go. When she was encountering these writers, she had less familiarity with. And she noticed the kind of small, beautiful things that they were doing in their writing that she didn't see in African American literature, especially writing by black men. Writers who were often thinking about the journey, but always thinking about this kind of relation to the exterior. And she was absolutely interested in the interior. And I think that's a lot of what she saw with African literature. Because, of course, in those instances, those writers are in the majority in their populations. Yep. They're facing discrimination. But they also have, like, a tradition of storytelling that is very different from the tradition here in the US because we've always been so very weighed down by enslavement without any memory in this place. Outside of that, African writers had a different kind of luxury that I think that she found attractive. And for her first book, I think she was really interested in something that would put her on a positive, on the profit and loss side, but that would also kind of animate her interest and extend it. And obviously, it was at a time that the Black studies movement in the US Was raging. So people's interest in Africa, African independence movements, that interest made sense for her to try to pursue that because you knew there was an audience for it.
- [20:10]
B
You mentioned a bit ago about how Professor Morrison also had to have conversations with other departments at Random House, like the marketing team and whatnot. I wonder if you can talk about how did she handle editorial disagreements around, like, marketing and promoting the books that she was responsible for, particularly to the authors who didn't really agree or align with her vision. One that I'm thinking about in particular in the book was the legendary Barbara Chase Rabault.
- [20:51]
A
Mm. That was an interesting one to say the least. And for, like, readers, you're with us completely. For those of you who have yet to read, skip straight ahead to the Barbara Chase Rabo chapter. Like, one of the things that I think it was Vulture said is, what's better than literary gossip? That's one of my favorite lines in terms of, like, how people have, like, read the book, like, because it's literary. Awesome. So, yeah, she has a vision of what a book needs to do. Well, because Barbara Chase Rabo has some experience as a sculptor, is really well known as a sculptor, had actually been on the COVID of EBONY for her work as a young sculptor who had been to Paris, had, you know, something of a reputation in those professional circles with mixed race audiences, but no experience whatsoever as a writer. So Morrison's idea is, all right, let's put a piece of sculpture on the front. Let's have a very beautiful cover that highlights Barbara Chase robot as this beautiful woman that's attractive, that will make people pick it up. The sculpture in the background. Like, there's this contrast of black and white. There's this kind of fluidity in the COVID I mean, and she was really. Morrison was really deliberate. Like, this cover is going to do the work of convincing the reader to pick it up and see what's inside. Where Barbara Chase for Boat was like, I don't want my picture. This. You know, my picture on the COVID of this book is like, look, another black girl. And that's not what this book is. And so Morrison's response is, you sent me 30 thick pictures. Like, what was I supposed to do with them if I wasn't supposed to put it on the COVID What are we doing?
- [22:21]
B
Right?
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A
So there's this tension between author and editor that we see in the correspondence that I just think is just fascinating because she's not only having to really work with designers and jacket cover and color schemes. Like, she's having to think about all of those things, but she's also having to negotiate accusations by authors who were like, is Random House really doing the most that they can to promote this book? And so she basically tells Her. If you wanted, you know, your book to be published by some nondescript publisher not interested in making money, then you should not have come to this firm. Like, we're only interested in publishing, like, for some level of commercial success. Obviously, the critical is there as well. But there was that tension when she had a vision of what would make a book do well and the writer did not. And, I mean, I can tell you it's a challenging experience across most of the writers that she works with, because we think of, like, our work is like our babies, and then we hand the babies off to someone. Like, you take them to preschool or something, and you're not convinced that they're going to feed them the right way or that they're going to take them to the bathroom when they need to. Whereas the people who are, like, in the daycare, like, we're professionals and we actually have a whole lot more resources and intellect about this than you do. Let the kid go. You're a kid, but it's time to let the kid go. So I think seeing that back and forth between her and writers while also knowing what's happening on the other side. So she's also having to fuss interiorly to get what she thinks is best for the book and sometimes, you know, fuss with the exterior, with the writer. So negotiating. All of that. Editors have told me. And I wasn't really thinking about editors as, like, a kind of ideal or like a special audience for the book, but people who are still in the business now are like, oh, gosh, you nailed it. I can't believe that 40 years ago people were still having the same conversation. And I'm like, well, people are the thing, you know? Right, People. Yeah, people haven't changed tremendously, but, yeah, editors have to deal with all of these personalities and then try to produce the best book possible, because that's ultimately what everybody wants. That's what the reader wants. It's what the editor wants, is what the author wants, and it certainly is what the firm wants.
- [24:51]
B
Mm. Mm. I wanna stick on this point of Professor Morrison's vision as an editor for just another question, but bring it to Toni Cade Membera, who is extraordinary in her own right, and she was at the time, she already was a successful writer with the Black Woman anthology was a huge success when Professor Morrison brought her to Random House. What did Professor Morrison offer that was different in ultimately convincing her to switch publishers?
- [25:34]
A
Well, I think it was probably pretty easy in the sense that she didn't have Bambara, that is, didn't really have the full commitment of the firm that she was working with. She had published also a collection of stories, poems, essays by her class, because she taught in this community program at Rutgers. And she didn't have anyone beating her door down saying, we want to be your publisher, like, in perpetuity, or, we want to publish multiple books. We want. And we want to publish you. We want to think about your work. Because the other books had been anthologies, and Bambara was really best known in terms of her work as a short story writer for her work in magazines. So when Morrison extended the offer to say, let's pull all of your stories together and anything that have been published and anything that you don't have, and let put it together as a collection, I think Bambar found it attractive. And then, of course, after Saw either, she does another one Seaburs. And then Morrison does tell her. Now, listen, the industry is geared up for a novel. Like short story collections just don't sell in the same way. It was full awareness that Bambara was a swift writer and didn't have the patience for, really, the novel. One of the things that she said to me, Toni Morrison said to me, was she didn't stop for the halt and the lame. She just left you, you know, if you couldn't keep up with the reading.
- [27:09]
B
Yes.
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A
She didn't hang around and say, all right, I'm gonna slow it down. So in theater, for instance, there's always a line behind the joke. So you tell the joke, and then there's a throwaway line, because the audience is almost surely going to miss it. So it doesn't matter before you move on to the next thing where you want the audience to read. Sometimes you see that in the short story where. Or in a novel where there are a couple of pages where you give the reader the opportunity to catch the reader's breath. Bambara is like, keep up with me or else. And that works for the short story. It's a little more challenging for the novel, where readers are always looking for a break in the action. But Morrison was patient with her as best as she possibly could be. And their correspondence was among some of my favorite. Toni Cade is just like a really remarkable writer and every way. And seeing their friendship over the course of those letters was just really rewarding to me. And it was also kind of like my secret weapon, if you will. So at any point that I was in interview with Toni Morrison and I felt like she was not giving me, like, what I was hoping for, or she was being impatient or, like, if I Just needed to unlock her joy. I asked the Toni Cade Bambara question, and her countenance would change so that you could tell that their friendship was just so genuine and so real and so pleasant and that she just. I mean, she still does. I think she missed her tremendously.
- [28:43]
B
Yeah, I want to talk about that. What was it like for Professor Morrison to carry out the editorial vision of Toni Cade Libera as a close friend, especially after that friend had passed away and she passed away in 95, and Professor Morrison was tapped to edit those Bones Are Not My Child, which came out in 99, I believe. How did she hold that responsibility?
- [29:14]
A
Close to her heart and with a tremendous amount of humility. They had been working on the book off and on for many years, and Morrison had long left publishing, but knew that it was a debt that she owed to Toni Caden Barr. They had talked about the book enough to understand, for Morrison to understand what the book was supposed to be. But it was in pieces. And as was custom with Toni Cade, she would have five different introductions. Like, this is. At any given moment, some other scene was gonna open the novel.
- [29:52]
B
Wait, wait.
- [29:54]
A
So she had. Morrison had seen a version where she thought this was the latest. And then she thought, I don't know and I can't find it. And then when it shows up, she's like. Just like, in the nick of time. Toni K. Va's mother referred to the two of them as the two Tonys, which Tony like, because both of them were larger than life for her. So Toni K. Showed up at the moment that Toni Morrison needed her. So I think she appreciated the opportunity to commune with our friend, but also understood just how tremendous the responsibility was to get this book that Bombard had been working on for so long out and to get it done. Well, you know, because they also tended to edit in person or to work on the projects in person as they were trying to get through. If there was a thread that Morrison couldn't find, figure out how to weave, then they would work on it together, make the revision, read it. Got it. Yep. No, no, not quite. Yes. Got it. So the absence of that, I think, was daunting for her. Just like, how do I get this when I don't have her here pointing to me? Or as Morrison would say, I would point and she would grunt, or I would grunt and she would point. And, like, they could communicate with each other in ways that they understood what the other was expecting for the other person because they were in proximity to each other. So she had to really try to Feel and experience. Bong Barr from the other side.
- [31:32]
B
Do you think that Professor Morrison saw her editorial mission as trying to bring black writers to a larger audience of. Of white people? Or was she more interested in building a national platform that centered black readership?
- [31:51]
A
If we were to take her at her word, she was definitely foremost interested in the assumed reader being black. But she clearly also had no reservation with, like, the more robust readership. I mean, she in the end became and still is, I would argue, like one of the most celebrated American authors and editor alone. She knew that she needed a broad readership to be able to sustain a significant base. So. But, I mean, I can completely appreciate the fact that she intended for her assumed reader and her assumed narrator to be of color, to be a black person.
- [32:43]
B
I was fascinated to see how other editors in the business view Professor Morrison, particularly those who were working at, like, Negro Digest or the Black World. Was there a sense of true kinship or creative tension?
- [33:04]
A
Both. Absolutely both. I mean, for the most part, it was kinship, but then there were times, as we all do, and I think that just, you know, goes to the point of, like, black humanity saw how people want to believe that black people are superhuman, and we don't argue, we don't have disputes or something. So I think that it spoke to the humanity that, indeed, it was challenging to be in community with people who were also, to some degree and under some instances, in competition with one another. So the example that you give with Black World is, like, Martha is really working hard to involve, you know, black people, get black readers to make sure that books are in the hands of black readers. And so she knows that that's in certain independent bookstores that the publisher wouldn't necessarily go to. Typically, that's in certain critical venues like Black World, Negro, Negro Digest, Black World. There are blurbs that she had to get from people when she had to do book parties. Like, where do I have this book party so that I can get, like, the maximum readership, the maximum eyes in front of this thing, really. So I think what happens when we see her with those situations, like was the case with Black World, where they're saying, like, you sent us the paperback copy instead of the hardcover. She's incredulous. She's like, because I really had time to run down to the stock room, get the paperback instead of the hardback, and because I actually do that myself, right? Like, somebody did it. And even if somebody. Somebody else did it, and they did it out of a kind of lack of care or malice, and we all know we make certain decisions. There are instances where I may have a book event myself, for instance. And I'll ask my publisher, hey, can you make sure that, you know, this person gets a copy of the book? Because I'm going to be in the conversation with this person. But if this person has done some significant work with me on it, I say, please make sure they get like a hardcover as opposed to an advanced review copy. Because the publisher print 100, 150 advanced review copies. They want to move them like they. There's nothing they can do with them after the fact. So if somebody is doing an event, the immediate thing for them to do is like, here's this copy right here. Let me just send it out. So part of what I think the tension was is just misunderstanding of what it meant to be a black person in that White House. So to have to endure that, I think was hurtful. I remember very distinctly that letter between her and Carol Parks where she says, hoyt's letter. And she's talking about Hoyt Fuller, who had accused her similarly of trying to claim to have, quote, unquote, discovered Henry Dumas. And she says, hart's letter bothered me. Yours hurt me, because I thought you knew me well enough to know that I'm not trying to claim ownership of Henry Dumas. And there was this. This notion that her books were really becoming a thing, that they had some problems. She had published the black book and had everybody from Ossie Davis, Ruby D, Ishmael Reed, like, everybody was there. Bill Cosby did the early promos and the introduction. So everybody in the kind of black who's who was involved with a book. And so smaller independent media had some concerns, like, what does this mean? And some of the tension was really between the small independent firm or publisher or house or whatever and Random House and Morrison was just a stand in. So the tension was there, but I think to some degree inevitable. But 10 times out of 10, I think they worked it out.
- [36:59]
B
So the archive was foundational for Tony at Random. And Princeton University holds Toni Morrison's papers. What was the experience like going through her archive? And were there particular discoveries that gave you deeper insights into her editorial style and process?
- [37:21]
A
Yeah, I think so. The Random House papers are at Columbia. So 95, if not 99% of my time in the archives was at Random House, in the editorial files I did sometime at Princeton. But that was also, again, because the project, you know, extended itself for so long. And they weren't even there when I first started this project. So some of the Things could fill in the blanks for me. Like, there were some things. And so the kind of interesting, kind of surprising thing was sometimes I would find things on her personal papers that really should have been at Random House. And I'm like, ma', am, like, what happened here? Like, why is this here and not where it's supposed to be? But that just spoke to. She was creating her own archive herself. You know, it could have been as simple as she was working from home during that time, and she just never got around into bringing it back. But that was the kind of interesting thing. So if there was a hole somewhere, I'd be like, let me just check and see whether or not. And sure enough, she was a manuscript in her personal archives as opposed to in, like, the one at Random House.
- [38:27]
B
In your acknowledgments, you mentioned that you met with Professor Morrison several times and that she supported this project, though you, too, occasionally disagreed about its scope. Did you ever get the sense that she wanted you to write a biography of her editorial life, or was she more interested in the kind of cultural, historical portrait that you ended up creating?
- [38:53]
A
I think she was definitely more interested in the project the way that it is now, the broader editorial scope. I first wanted to work on just the fiction and put her in conversation with the fiction writers that she edited. And she just kept talking about other stuff. And I was like, ma', am, like, I am clear. Like, my questions are clear. What are you doing? And after, like, I guess seeing the look on my face, she's like, oh, don't worry about it. We'll talk about that next time. And I was like, okay, so two good things. There's gotta be a next time. And she is not, you know, I am not a poor communicator. But she would continue to talk about the project more broadly until finally I said, you know what? I think this book has to be about your whole editorship and not just about your fiction. And she was like, like, okay, it took you long enough to come along. Yeah, but remember, I was gun shy. I wanted to work on the big, like, the project around more than a fiction and the, like, writers that she had done. I wanted to do that for the dissertation. And my dissertation advisor, who was really my connect, if you will, with Morrison, so she's like, the project's just too big. You can't do that for a dissertation. It's just too big. And I was like, I'm going to show her. And like, six months later, I was like, this Too big. So I. At that Point was the opposite kind of person. I was like, I'm, my scope is going to be narrow. I'm not taking on this whole editorship. And then she's like, no, you're going to have a bigger scope, ma', am, and you can do this. So it took a little while, but I got there.
- [40:35]
B
I love that you had frequent meetings with her. I, I, I tell this story quite a bit. Last season of my one time of meeting Professor Morrison. And I'll just re narrate it rather quickly. So I was a intern at the Nation magazine and that year they were getting ready to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the magazine. At the time, at least many of the interns were fact checkers. And so we fact checked our assigned writers and editors, but then we often were assigned other pieces. Professor Morrison contributed an essay for the commemoration edition and every one of my colleagues wanted to fact check her essay, including, oh, and the internship coordinator's like, okay, wow, I wasn't expecting this. Let me go back and I'll draw a name out of the hat. I don't know if she actually did that, but she came back and she said, nikazi, you are the person to fact check her article. So I fact checked her article. Her article was no place for self pity, no room for fear. It was through that experience I met her. But the Nation magazine also has the Nation Institute and every year they have their fundraising gala. That year she was the honoree and I had my brief moment to meet her and she signed Song of Solomon for me.
- [42:18]
A
So very nice.
- [42:20]
B
Yes, I decided to have her sign Song of Solomon because I once heard her say that that was her favorite book. Okay, Dana, tell me what you are currently working on. If you are working on anything.
- [42:34]
A
This might be like a, an exclusive or something. I don't even know. Right? I am 99% done with being a second writer, ghostwriter, slash good child for Jeremiah Wright's autobiography.
- [42:52]
B
Oh my goodness.
- [42:54]
A
So his autobiography should be out this time next year. It should be out. We have a solid draft of the main parts of the work. So that that's been a really exciting project. But it's, I'm mindful about how I talk about it, if for no other reason than it's his book. He had 300 plus double space pages that we had to figure out how to get into a tight, very accessible, readable biography that I'll never be anywhere except for in the acknowledgments. But that has been like really sustaining life, giving just beautiful Work that I feel tremendously privileged to be able to do, in part because I was like one of the many people who were like, baba J, you got it, you got it, you got it, you got it. It's like everybody telling me, I gotta write this book. Ain't nobody gonna write this book. But he had to tell his story for himself. So that was really important. I am thinking about fleshing out a couple of essays into a book project that really traces the history of African American literature as a field of study. And finally, a project that really examines a couple of small towns in the Delta as representative towns that speak to a kind of shattered hope for democracy in the US with my hometown being at the center of that conversation, because it was a black, largely like, majority black town, like what it had the first black sheriff since Reconstruction after the Civil Rights movement. And what we saw is what we see in so many places. White, slightly, just resources moved out to surrounding areas that I kind of disregard by government agencies to just let the place die or resolve to let it die if they couldn't control it. So those are the things that are, like, really animating my imagination that I need to finish in far less than 20 years. Yeah, but the Jeremiah Wright book will be out in 2026.
- [45:08]
B
You are working. You have projects, Dana.
- [45:12]
A
I am. I'm trying. I mean, you know, you sleep like when you gone, like you really have a responsibility. I feel very strong. I got a real responsibility to do what I can in this, the time that I have.
- [45:26]
B
Well, you carry out the responsibility of showcasing Professor Morrison's othership very well, Dana.
- [45:34]
A
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. And I just appreciate all of the work that you do. I know that it is hard. It's labor intensive. Some of the labor is. We all know it's invisible. But it's really important for us to be aware of the books that are out there. And then we get to decide which we'll read, which we'll give, which we will use to continue to think about this project that we find ourselves in.
- [45:57]
B
Thank you.
- [45:57]
A
Appreciate you.
- [45:58]
B
You. Appreciate you. Dr. Dana Williams is a professor of African American literature and the dean of the Graduate school at Howard University. She is the author of Tony at the Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship, published by Amistad. Special thanks to Courtney Noble. If you enjoy this episode, please rate review the show and be sure to mention the host. I'm your host, Dr. Nakazi. Thank you for listening.