Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

Summary

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New Books Network: Princess Joy L. Perry on This Here Is Love

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Date: January 31, 2026
Host: Sullivan Sommer
Guest: Princess Joy L. Perry

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Sullivan Sommer interviews Princess Joy L. Perry about her debut novel, This Here Is Love. The discussion explores the novel’s historical setting—17th-century Virginia—the creative process behind its writing, and the profound questions the text raises about love, morality, and the legacy of slavery. Perry delves into her inspirations, research methods, and literary influences, as well as her approach to character development and the challenges of writing historical fiction. The episode remains spoiler-free, focusing on thematic and process-oriented insights rather than plot specifics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Writing Journey: Timing, Experience, and Loss

• Could the novel have been written earlier?
  Perry reflects on how personal loss—her father's passing at age 39—became essential to her capacity to write the book with depth (04:42).

  “That grief needed to be a part of the writing of this book, that losing something that is irrevocable needed to be a part of that.” (05:10, Perry)

Inspiration: History, Personal Experience, and Literary Influence

• Early exposure to silenced histories:
  Perry recounts a formative childhood experience: visiting Hope Plantation, a place where slavery was omitted from the official narrative (06:55).
• Literary influences:
  She cites Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez for their “layering on of images and thought” and the emotional journeys their novels inspire (08:00).

  “To be able to communicate layers of beauty in language, the way they did, is something that I aspire to.” (09:20, Perry)

Historical Setting: The Anchoring Role of Virginia

• On location and authenticity:
  Perry describes living in Virginia and researching local sites, such as the landing place of the first Africans and Monticello, as crucial to grounding her novel (12:07).

  “Those beginnings, how slavery came into being, how it changed and morphed over time... I could go and see and touch those things here.” (13:09, Perry)

Balancing History and Storytelling

• How much history to include?
  Perry explains her instinctual approach, using just enough historical detail to illuminate character motivations, not to deliver a textbook (14:49).

  “I only used enough to help explain how the character became the person that the character is.” (14:54, Perry)

Research Process: Details that Matter

• Researching objects, especially instruments of oppression:
  Perry shares her deep dive into the craftsmanship of a whip—a recurring and haunting symbol in the novel (17:42–21:47).

  “It is a horrendous and ugly tool, but it is one of the things that would have been pretty ubiquitous...this is an instrument of torture that someone put almost a level of artistry into.” (20:45, Perry)

Character Development and Moral Complexity

• Centering "whiteness" and character sympathy:
  Discussion of Jack, a white Scotch-Irish character, centers on whether he is sympathetic and the process of ‘becoming’ an enslaver (23:02–26:42).

  “It's not because he's bad. It's because this is the way I get taken care of. And so I think that he suppresses the parts of himself that know better in order to have physical security and what he takes for emotional security.” (24:30, Perry)

• Pairs and opposites:
  Sommer observes how Perry’s narrative juxtaposes characters, often posing the same question to them and showing their divergent responses (26:42–28:05).
  Perry credits the subconscious in her writing:

  “There was so much going on in my subconscious...and you come back and look at it later and you're like, oh man. Wow.” (29:13, Perry)

The Revision Process

• A decade-long endeavor:
  Perry outlines the evolution of her manuscript, including the decision to remove a white-centered character to allow her Black characters agency (31:00–33:39).

  “In taking that character out of the story, my African American characters, my enslaved characters, were free to find their own solutions and to make their own destinies.” (32:19, Perry)

Thematic Questions: Morality, Love, and Judgement

• Is morality a luxury?
  Sommer raises the provocative question of whether morality is a luxury in the context of systemic oppression (34:22–37:31).
  Perry responds:

  “Morality is not a luxury. But I think the society that we live in and the society that shapes my characters would have us think that morality is a luxury.” (36:13, Perry)

• Meaning of the title—“This Here is Love”:
  The choice of title reflects both a declaration and a question repeatedly explored throughout the novel (37:31–41:59).

  “So many different ways in the book that the characters show—this thing that I am sacrificing or giving or that I do or that I won't do, this is what love is to me.” (39:12, Perry)
  Sommer:
  “For me anyway, a very natural inclination is to turn it into a question. Is this love?...it reappears so many times in the book, like—Is this love?” (40:02, Sommer)

• Judging choices:
  The conversation addresses the difficulty—if not impossibility—of judging a character’s (or person’s) choices under the pressures of enslavement (41:31–42:59).

  “Who can judge her decisions? Who can say she did the right thing or the wrong thing? No one.” (42:51, Perry)

Novels as Vessels for Teaching History

• Perry didn’t set out to write a “teaching novel,” but views the accurate historical framework as essential for character plausibility (43:17–45:31).
• She emphasizes the value of being “true to the history” while exploring the lived experiences behind the facts (45:31).

  “So the history is very important. And I tried as best I can, as someone who was not a historian, to be true to what I actually found in my resources.” (45:38, Perry)

Who is this Book For?

• Perry sees her novel as valuable for those seeking to understand the origins of contemporary racial inequities (47:57–51:53).

  "If we disregard the history, if we forget the history, then we have a false idea about why our society has the inequities that it does...” (49:10, Perry)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the necessity of grief in storytelling:

  “As strange as it may sound, that grief needed to be a part of the writing of this book...there's no one-to-one comparison of what my characters went through and what my character lost. But those losses...gave me some kind of insight into how the characters might have felt.” (05:07, Perry)

• On the complexity of creating historical fiction:

  “I tried very hard to be true to the history. What would have been possible in that time? Within this structure, within these rules, what can I do?” (45:31, Perry)

• On judgement and trauma:

  “In this system of enslavement where there are no good answers, no good choices...Who can judge your choice?” (42:33, Perry)

• On teaching history through fiction:

  “The novel as a way of teaching history is a happy side effect ... but what I was exploring was why did humans in these circumstances make these decisions? And the history is the framework that I needed.” (43:40, Perry)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Personal Loss and Writing — 04:42
• First Encounters with Plantation History — 06:55
• Literary Influences — 08:00
• The Role of Virginia’s History — 12:07
• Balancing Fact and Storytelling — 14:49
• Researching the Whip — Tools & Symbolism — 17:42
• Centering Whiteness & Character Sympathy (Jack) — 23:02
• Pairs and Opposites in Character Construction — 26:42
• Revision Process & Character Agency — 31:00
• Is Morality a Luxury? — 34:22
• Meaning of the Title — 37:31
• Judgement in the Context of Enslavement — 41:31
• Teaching History through the Novel — 43:17
• Historical Novel Self-Identification — 45:31
• For Whom is the Book Written? — 47:57

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is deeply reflective, candid, and suffused with a blend of humility and scholarly thoughtfulness—mirroring both Perry’s narrative style and the host’s literary engagement. Perry’s approach to fiction is grounded in empathy, research, and lived experience. Both guest and host encourage readers and listeners to question history, morality, and the enduring impact of systemic oppression, all while acknowledging the complexity and ambiguity within each.

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Ending Note:
Princess Joy L. Perry’s This Here Is Love is a richly textured exploration of survival, love, and agency in the crucible of early American slavery. This conversation invites readers to sit quietly with challenging truths—and to confront the questions the novel so powerfully stirs.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Bless. Crawled to the side of the bed. She knelt beside her mother. The child's eyes were wide open and full of disquiet. Will you hold me? Cassie wanted to say no. She wanted to curl onto her side and return to the refuge of memory. She wanted the last 20 years, all that those years brought and took. The walls of the cabin, the damp, cold floor, even the child pressing into her embrace to be the dream from which she awoke. It was not to be. The child who had been otifole had been stolen by the flesh traders. She had been marched and shipped and sold into the life of a slave named Cassie. Cassie, just one of the characters in this Here is Love, the debut novel by Hurston Wright Award winner, Princess Joy L. Perry. Princess, welcome to the New Books Network.

[C]

Thank you very much for having me. Good morning.

[B]

Yeah, so you know, I share this with you off air. I learned about this book and learned about you as you were featured in the November December 2025 issue of Poets and Writers magazine as one of their five over 50. And I also shared with you that this book blew me away in ways that I did not. It did not anticipate you.

[C]

Thank you very much.

[B]

I found myself. I don't often do this, probably wrongfully, right? Because we all move so fast and Life moves so fast that even when I'm reading, you know, I. I might. Okay, I'm finished with this reading session. I'll close the book. And I may continue to think about it as I'm out, you know, doing my grocery shopping and walking around. But this book, you know, I would. Book open on my lap, would find myself stopping and pausing and just sitting and I can't remember the last time I did that with a book.

[C]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

Just sitting with it.

[C]

You know, it may be kind of a transfer of energy because when I was researching the book, I often had to do that. I would learn something and then I had to just kind of sit still with it for a little while and kind of absorb, you know, things about. Things about the slave trade, things about the daily lives of enslaved people. So maybe, yeah, maybe some of that energy. I'm sure some of that energy is in the book.

[B]

Yeah. And so we're going to get into, we'll get into the history, certainly. But people should know, listeners should know that this is going to be a spoiler free discussion because we want people to go out and experience the book themselves. So we're not going to be giving away. We're not going to be giving away anything that you can't otherwise, you know, read on the book jacket type things. But you know, you mentioned the slave trade. This is a story of multiple characters set in the 17th century and 17th century Virginia, just to ground people. And before we talk about specifics of the story, I was really interested. Since you and I are close in age, I'm curious, do you think you could have written this book earlier in your life?

[C]

Absolutely not. There's no way I could have written this book earlier. The obvious reason, I think because I still needed. There were a lot of books I needed to read and things I needed to learn and things I needed to practice. But I think probably the most important thing is that when I was younger, I had not experienced, experienced the losses that, that went into this book. When I was 39, my father passed away. And that was my first real loss, my first real experience with grief. So I lost my father, I lost my grandmother. And as strange as it may sound, that grief needed to be a part of the writing of this book, that losing something that is irrevocable needed to be a part of that. But for me, in order for me to really understand the characters and be able to. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that as a black woman living in the 21st century, with all of Its challenges. There is still no way for me to know. There's no one to one comparison of what my characters went through and what my character lost. But those losses that I experienced with my grandmother and my father were the closest comparison that I had. And they gave me some kind of insight into how the characters might have felt. And so I couldn't have done that when I was younger and still thought everyone would live forever.

[B]

So you just shared some of your personal life experiences that influenced the book. Can you talk a little bit more about your other inspirations from the book, whether they're literary, personal, what have you?

[C]

When I was 12, I think I was 12 years old, and I was living in North Carolina, and I think I was 12, I may have been a little bit younger, but I lived in a small town in North Carolina, Windsor, North Carolina. Tobacco and peanut town. And my school was situated near this place called Hope Plantation. And they took us on a school trip there. Kid I didn't know. And this gorgeous old plantation house. And you go, and you see the. It's yellow. You see the beautiful grounds, you see the furniture, and you hear the story of the plantation. And so I went home later that afternoon, of course, and I told my grandmother that they had taken us on that school trip. And my grandmother was so angry. She said, that's nothing but an old slave plantation. And during the whole trip, they had never mentioned slavery. That school trip, they never mentioned slavery. And I think that's a seed. I think that was one of the seeds. I am very interested in how people survived enslavement. So that's the history. Like, how did these things happen? How did they come about? How did people survive? As far as. Do you want me to talk about literary. Okay, so as far as literary influences, like probably a lot of your readers, your listeners, I am a huge fan of Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And, you know, the complexity of their passages, the layering on of images and thought, and the way they bring you from a scene and they kind of take you on a journey through the person's thoughts, through the textures of their lives, and then they bring you back to that scene, I think is beautiful and fascinating. And I wanted to try. I want to. I still want to try to do that with my writing. That's the writing that I think. Those are the writers that I think I admire the most. And there's only one. There was only one Toni Morrison. There's only one Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But to be able to communicate layers of beauty in language, the way they did is something that I aspire to.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I think.

[B]

I mean, this book is certainly in conversation with Beloved. I mean, I feel like certainly, you know, I can imagine a. I can imagine a professor somewhere who is, you know, putting together a class reading list or, you know, as recording this online. Right. Like personal syllabi or like all the thing. Right now everybody's like making their personal syllabi scene. Yeah. People are making personal syllabi for like all kinds of different things, deciding, hey, I want to read this, whether. Whether it's a subject matter, whether it's a specific author or something like that. And, you know, I. To me, you know, if I was going to put together a personal syllabi, you know, you could always. Okay, now I'm really into this. You could do something like. If you start with something like a Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, though, I think this, you know, this here's Love would have to come first. If we're going chronologically, this hero's Love would maybe be number one, and then number two might be Harriet Jacobs. And then number three may be Beloved, I think. Right. Yeah. And that would be. It would be an emotional class.

[C]

That would be. Yeah.

[B]

Syllabus. But yeah, that would be quite a trio of books.

[C]

I think it's interesting that you said Harriet Jacobs. That was one of the places that I went to. Edenton, North Carolina. That was one of the places that I went to kind of experience the textures of the book and what it would have been like. So the little. There's a little. If I'm remembering because it's been a quite a few years, but the jail that I believe Harriet was held in, was it Harriet, Was it her grandmother was held in the little town and the gravestone of Norcome. I think that's the person who held her enslaved. You can find that there in Edenton. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

So the book, though, like this year is Love is set in colonial era Virginia. And, you know, the. Virginia Connolly is very important to the overall storytelling. Do you think it's the same book if it were set elsewhere?

[C]

I don't, because this is my backyard. So there are places that I could get. Well, a couple of things. I wanted to go back to the beginning. I think that's one of the things I wanted to know. How did we get to where we are as a nation when it comes to race and racism and our perceptions of African Americans and how African Americans are treated in this country as far as some of the violence and things that we still see towards African Americans. And so I am very fortunate in that I can drive across the bridge tunnel and in 20, 25 minutes, I can stand at the place where the first Africans came to the shores of Virginia. And if I keep going a little farther, I can go to colonial Williamsburg and actually walk through some of the rebuilt cabins. And the history is there. And I can go to Charlottesville, so there. Where I visited Monticello and I did the Sally Hemings tour of Monticello. So those beginnings, how slavery came into being, how it changed and morphed over time into the slavery that we know from our history books, I could go and see and touch those things here. I went to other places, too, but I do think there is some. Like, I went to places in South Carolina also. I'm trying to think of the other trips that I made. But it's very particular and very important that I live in a place where these things began.

[B]

Yes, as you were writing the book then. You've got. You live in Virginia. You've got these background trips that you've taken to stand in the places. This is a novel, though ultimately, it's not a US History text or academic text. It's a. It's a novel. And so talk about how you thought about how much of the history to explain to a reader. Like, how did you decide? Maybe what's my reader's level of knowledge and what's really important for them to, like, fully get from a U. S. History perspective versus the things. Maybe I'm. I'm okay if they don't quite understand fully, you know what I'm saying?

[C]

I only used enough to help explain how the character became the person that the character is. So I have. I was looking back through my notebooks. I have lots of stuff that never, of course, that never made it in. I have things in there that I don't even remember researching now. But what I did was I read. So I'd have a question. I'd have a question, maybe. Okay, so what was it like to be an indentured servant? So I had to read about indentured servitude and how people came to accept those contracts and travel and things like that. I read a lot about those things, but I only used what I thought would give some kind of. Shed some kind of light on who the character was and what the character was becoming. So maybe it was more, I think, instinctual than conscious. What do I need to tell my readers so they understand why this character behaves the way he or she behaves? That's what I chose.

[D]

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[E]

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[F]

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[B]

Did you find yourself in your research? I'm curious how much are details you came across in the research and you thought, oh, I want to include that versus in your maybe sitting down at the computer or with pen and paper or what have you that you realize, okay, I want to tell this scene and but but it needs more texture or detail. So now I need to go research and and I'll give you an example. Like for me, a very particular detail in this book you talk about a whip, a particular whip and the level of detail that you give about the whip. And when I was reading this I thought, I don't think I've ever read any detail about whips ever. I think I've read, you know, so many, whether they're novels or again academic texts or you know, in during slavery that talk about whips. And no, I've never read anybody talk about what the whip looked like. And it just Made me really curious about your process when it came to those kinds of details.

[C]

It's something that. It's really hard to remember what the spark was for researching the whip, but I know exactly what scene you're talking about, and I needed. I wanted to know, I think, what it would have felt like in his hand. I was curious about what it was made of. I think I was just curious about the whole process. Like, I know what you're talking about, like, the weights in the handle and the hide that it's wrapped in and the popper on the end. So I could not tell you exactly which of my reference books that I found in which I found those details. But to me, it seemed important because it's an extension of these enslavers. It's a tool of their work. And I was interested in the tools of the times. I was interested in, I think, trying to understand the why and the what. And what did that feel like? I think. I think the whole thing. The question at the root of this book for me is, how do you become an enslaver? How do you become enslaved? What are the steps? What are the tools? What are the mechanisms? And that whip became very important because it is a part of the characters becoming who they are. And also, I don't know if this is a different note, a lighter note, but again, the tools of the time really are interesting to me. And I do consider that one of. It's a horrendous and ugly tool, but it is one of the things that would have been pretty ubiquitous, you know? You know, and it was worth. It was worth looking into and figuring out for me, what is this thing made of? And think about also, this is an instrument of torture. Think about the craftsmanship and the care that went into an instrument of torture blows my mind. Yeah. So those are the. I hope I answered your question in that way. Those details like that are the details that are fascinating to me. This is an instrument of torture that someone put almost a level of artistry into. Yeah.

[B]

I'm reflecting on a couple of things as you're saying that one is in. I don't want us to talk about it because if, to me, it's one of the most impactful scenes of the book, but there is a. There is another instrument in the book as well that has a scene that is crafted as well. And again, hope, me, hopefully, me saying that sparks people just enough to be like, I just want to know what she's talking about. I need to go by to get the book. But you Know, the word crafts, the word craftsmanship, you know, is, I think, in the abstract, such a positive word. It's a. It's positive and it's. And it's beautiful and it's. We all want to see something well crafted.

[C]

It means time, care, intention. Yeah.

[B]

And to use that word to describe an instrument of torture then sets this very uncomfortable juxtaposition. And I want to talk about just one of your characters, Jack, who is white. He. Scotch Irish.

[C]

Yes, Scotch Irish.

[B]

And, you know, I had this feeling because Jack is in the entirety of the book. He's one of the main characters. And initially, when I was preparing for this interview, I had this initial question where I was like, you know, hey, this is a book about, you know, the enslaved. But we've got this white character who's. Who's very centered. And so, you know, talk to me about the decision to center whiteness. And then I thought, like, well, wait. Wait a minute.

[C]

Is. Is.

[B]

Is whiteness centered? And then I thought, well, maybe. I mean, maybe. I mean that Jack is sympathetic. And then I thought, well, do you think Jack is sympathetic? And so I'm curious. I mean, I have an opinion about myself as a reader, like, how I felt about it, but I'm curious whether. Whether you have an opinion that you want to share or whether you like how you thought about. About Jack.

[C]

Maybe I don't. I will. Well, the only way I can answer this question is to tell you how Jack came about. So I think when asked that question, it's like, no, I don't think of him as a sympathetic character. However, what I was trying to understand, again, is how does someone become the kind of person who believes they have a right to own someone else? And so, because I don't want. Well, I couldn't, because I don't believe it. The easy answer to this is, oh, slave owners, they're bad. They're born bad. You know, born. Yeah, but that can't be right. You know, we've all met babies and children. We know how innocent they are. So it has to be a becoming. And so when I think about, you know, with the research, why people became indentured servants, why they left everything they knew knowing that they would, you know, probably never go home again. Jack is a little boy who wants security, I think. And when that security is offered, he. I think he takes it on its own terms. Or maybe not, because that's such a hard question. It's not because he's born. It's not because he's bad. It's because this is the way I get taken care of. And so I think that he suppresses the parts of himself that know better in order to have physical security and what he takes for emotional security. And I don't know if that makes him sympathetic or not to the reader or even to me. It's just. What is. It's just how he ended up there. Yeah, that's how I would answer that. I know it's not a simple answer, but that's how I think of it is like he became that. Why did he become that? And that's what I was trying to get to. That's what I was really trying to explain to myself. And that is the explanation that I came up with for this particular character. Yeah.

[B]

And talking about that, I made note when you said, well, you know, for him, it's. He decides, you know, this is the way I get taken care of, that decision. I think the same could also be said of Bless, who's one of your other main characters who makes some decisions, I think, because she decides this is the way I get the way I get taken care of. Which also reminds me, one of the things that came through very clearly to me in reading the book is you have these interesting pairs of people. And sometimes the pairs are, you know, relation in. You know, in relationship. Relation to one another. But sometimes there, again, there are these. These juxtapositional pairs. Pairing of op. What simp. Very simply put, oversimplified opposites there as well. Again, really starting from the beginning. And I thought that was. To me, that was a really interesting. Really fascinating way to think about these characters individually. Yes. Because they are all individuals. But then when you start putting them, you know, facing someone else in endless pairs, you start to see these really interesting decisions and decision points.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is the beauty and mystery and the journey of writing. Because I would love to sit here and tell you that I planned that from the beginning, but of course, I did not. And somewhere along the way in the. In the. The. In the almost endless revisions that it felt like sometimes, but in the revisions and in the editing, those things became apparent to me, like, oh, this character is kind of. These two characters are facing. That's facing the same question, but they're answering it in very different ways or they're trying to find their. They're finding different solutions to the same problem. But I think that is the. I think that's the thing that writers, or at least this writer really loves about writing is that it kind of. It makes itself. It Tells you it shows. Like there's. You are. I think it's Mary Oliver who says poets are. The poem comes ready. I'm messing up. What's her poem? But she basically says the poem comes ready to be received and written, and poets are merely the transportation. And I feel that that is very true in story writing. In writing this manuscript, there was so much going on in my subconscious. Subconscious. So much going on in that indefinable realm of story. And then you write it down and you come back and you look at it later and you're like, oh, man. Wow. Yeah. And I love. I love that. And the only way you get that is to write for any of the writers who are listening to you. And because it's so hard, I know I'm going off a little bit. But, you know, you read a book like Beloved, you read a book like Sula, any book that you love, and you think, wow, how did they do that? Some of it was conscious, some of it wasn't. And a lot of it was working toward it and discovering what was there. Yeah.

[B]

I think this book, for me is one that I think every time I read it, because I do. I plan on rereading every time. I think every time I read it, it's gonna reveal more.

[C]

I hope so.

[B]

You know, it's. I feel like it's one. It's one of those books that. That, you know, there's more in it. And some of it is. Some of it is. Is in, you know, black and white in your text. And I think it is one of those books that reveals more about the reader every time they read it.

[C]

Hope so. Thank you. Yeah, I really hope that's true.

[B]

You talked about the revision process. I read that you. Or heard that this book took 10 years.

[C]

A long time. I think it actually took a little over 10 years because I think those first, you know, three or four, you know, I'd started down the path of a completely different story, and then I ran into these characters. So it was supposed to be a story that was set in the 20th century. I ended up, of course, in the 17th century trying to figure out how those 20th century characters would have been born free or would have remained free through enslavement through the 17th century, 18th century. And so I ended up back in the 17th century with an indentured woman who is no longer in the novel at all. So revision. She's no longer in the novel at all, but. And she got taken out during revision. And I think that was a point in the story. When I did have whiteness centered and I didn't realize it. And in taking that character out of the story, my African American characters, my enslaved characters, were free to find their own solutions and to make their own destinies. Yeah. But yes, 10 years of conceptualizing and writing and again, I was looking through the notebook that I pulled out and, you know, the characters evolved over time to become what they are. But I think that during that process, each time I revised, I was learning something necessary about the characters. And each time there are lines in the story, there are lines in the book that can be found in the very first manuscript. Because I think each time and again I learned this afterwards. Each time I revised, I took what really worked or impacted me from that revision and I carried it over to the next one. So some of the stuff is from the. The very first manuscript. Yeah.

[D]

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[B]

You.

[D]

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[C]

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[B]

We talked about. You talked some about the questions that you asked and questions that you had as you were writing in myself, one of the questions I found myself asking when I was reading the book is whether morality is a luxury.

[C]

That's a great one.

[B]

Do you have an opinion on that?

[C]

I do have an opinion on that. I think that there are. And again, Jack is the character that I go back to when I think about this, I think that there are powers that be or structures in our society that would have us think that morality is a luxury that you can only be. You can only be financially or you. Or comfortable in a material way if you put aside morality and gather as much unto yourself as you can. But I also. But I think those are the. The voices that are maybe the. That are the loudest. But when I think of the decisions that the characters are making and I think of the making of enslavement, I think of what if people decided to have a little less to have to share? I know maybe it sounds Pollyanna, but what if greed had been the thing that was set aside? Yes, everybody would have had less, but everybody would have had something so I think that morality is a decision that we make over and over and over again, sometimes multiple times in the course of a day. And I think it's a difficult decision, probably because for a lot of us, and I count myself in this group, taking care of your. You know, that. That survival instinct, taking care of yourself, making sure you have enough, that is your. That is our first instinct. But if you. If you listen to the thought that comes after that. So what if I have. Instead of having, you know, $200, what if I have 175, then that means this person can have 25 and 20, you know, and then everybody has some. So I think that morality is not a luxury. But I think the society that we live in and the society that shapes my characters would have us think that morality is a luxury and that you.

[B]

Are.

[C]

Not very bright and you're never going to be powerful or successful if you choose to be moral more than you choose to be selfish.

[B]

The book's title, this Here is Love, you know, that appears. It appears in the book. But I'm curious about how you landed on it as a title.

[C]

I had. Well, so the book had maybe three titles. The first one, again, going back to that revision process. The book that I ended up with is not the book that I started writing. So the first title for a long time was Favorite of Heaven. And I got that from. I can never say his name correctly, but it's Equiano, the. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes. I came across that name. I think it was the name of a ship. That was it. That was. I found embedded in his story. But as the story changed and it moved away from being about the crossing, you know, the triangular trade and things like that, so that title no longer fit. And then for the longest time, most of the time, the title of the book was Bound, because I thought of the ways all these people were bound together and then actually the physical act of binding, the ways that people are physically bound in slavery. But then when we were nearing the end of the process, my agent said we might need to rethink that title because it has other, more, you know, salacious connotations. So then she said, maybe let's, like, let's rethink it and see if there's something else in the book that would fit. And so I landed on this Here Is Love. Because I think that there are so many different ways in the. In the book that the characters show like this. This. This thing that I am sacrificing or giving or That I do or that I won't do. This is what love is to me. This is how I love you.

[B]

What I loved about the title also is, to me, it's a little. It's a different sort of syntax. And because of that, I think the. For me, anyway, a very natural inclination is to turn it into a question. Is this love?

[C]

I like that.

[B]

And that question for me, like, then appears and reappears and reappears and reappears so many times in the book. Like, is this love? Is this. Is this love? Is this love? Is this love? Which was. Can really fascinating to contemplate within. Within the pages like that.

[C]

No one's ever said that to me before, but I think that is a. I think that is a very fair question. The characters are trying to figure out as they go through the. As they go through the story, what's the best way to take care of this person that I am bound to by love. And there are no. In their. In their circumstances, there are no simple answers to is this love? Because the system that they live in is so cruel. So what might seem to be an obvious answer or what might seem. Seem to be love could actually be the opposite. When you're thinking about a system in which you are held by violence, the violence is the thing that keeps you in this system. Then how do you love someone in that system?

[B]

And I think there are so many. There were so many individual decisions, you know, plot points within the book, really from the early, very early pages, where I think the characters are making decisions that, you know, reasonable people could debate all day whether or not.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

That action. Absolutely was a manifestation of love.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

And never come to an agreement about it.

[C]

That is one of the questions that I also like. I've got notebooks and notebooks and notebooks of what if, what if, what if? And trying to answer those questions. But one of the things that I was trying to understand again is in this. In this system of enslavement where there are no good answers, no good choices, who can judge your choice? Whatever choice you make, who can judge it? Who can say that was the right choice or that was the wrong choice or I never would have done that, or of course she did that. There are no simple answers. And that's one of the things that I wanted that I found myself exploring. Again, I can't say that that was. I think that was one of the foundational questions actually, though, especially with the character bless. Who can judge her decisions? Who can say she did the right thing or the Wrong thing. No one.

[B]

I want to pivot for a second. Well, though we talked, we sort of imagined this book as part of a class, but we go back to that. I'm curious about how you think about novels as a vehicle for teaching history.

[C]

I wasn't thinking about that when I embarked on this book. I needed the history to help me tell the story, to help me answer the questions. So I think that the novel as a way of teaching history is a happy side effect, you know, something like that. But what I was. What I was exploring was why did humans in these circumstances make these decisions? And the history is the framework that I needed, and I learned a lot. And I think that it is valuable. I think that it's very valuable. But that was not my initial intention. The history is the framework in which I needed to tell this story. These are the things that I needed to know to explore these characters, lives and decisions.

[B]

I. I asked the question because we're in this, you know, this time of. Of, you know, I'll just say. Then I say, AI Hallucinations. We'll just say that we know AI has become ubiquitous. Whether or not we want it, it's in our face. And when we know, it makes things.

[C]

Up.

[B]

In addition to all of the institutions or people that are deliberately making things up, things up on. On top of that. And so I think, you know, I think about this line between fact and fiction. You know, fact, fiction, and history has gotten just, like, really squishy, maybe much squishier than it should be. And so, you know, to me, you know, if I'm thinking about someone who maybe doesn't, say, doesn't know anything about, you know, 17th century, you know, colonial history or enslavement. You know, to me, like, you know, this book is as good as, if not better a resource than, you know, sitting down to just Google and see what I find out.

[C]

I will say I tried very hard to be true to the history. What would have. One of the things that I asked myself is what would have been possible in that time? And I kind of. I think that I came to think of it as maybe a poet who is writing in form. So within this framework, within this structure, within these rules, what can I do? And that's how I went about. Using the history to help me understand the characters. Within this system of the child follows the circumstance of the mother. That's the rule. That's the law that has been put into place. That's the law of the land. Okay? Within that, what decisions is my character likely to contemplate and to come to. And so that's what I did. So the history is very important. And I tried as best I can, as someone who was not a historian, to be true to what I actually found in my resources and to use that as a framework of figuring out what my characters would have felt and decided and needed and what options would have been open to them. Weirdly enough, I don't know how many years ago it was, but I went to AWP with my two best writing buddies, and I went. You know how AWP is. Everybody goes their separate ways to different panels. And I came back from a panel, and I remember telling them, guys, I think my work is historical fiction. And they were like, duh, of course it is. But that was not a label that I had placed on myself. That wasn't a label that I had. I was just using this. This is a time that I'm interested in. What is this time? Like, what are the rules of this time? Okay. How do my characters function in this time? So, yeah, that's how I discovered that my writing was historical fiction.

[B]

Who is this book for?

[C]

That's a good question. I think this book is for anyone who wants to understand better something about how we got to where. I would say where we are. But where we are right now is such a strange place where it feels like we're moving backwards in time as opposed to going forward. But when I. Somewhere in the writing of this book, I think I realized that this book is for readers, and again, including myself, who want to understand how we got to the. The racial tensions that we experience, to those questions, to the ways we understand or think we understand or fail to understand one another. I wanted to understand some of the outcomes for African Americans because I think as a society, we look at the news and we say, you know, oh, you know, African Americans have, you know, like, the worst health outcomes and our. And then financial outcomes and things like that. Well, those things did not just happen. If we disregard the history, if we forget the history, then we have a false idea about why our society has the inequities that it does. So if you. For me, if you. If you want to understand why we have these tiers, why we have these classes, why we have these inequities, then you have to look back at where this started. To hold someone, to take someone's labor for hundreds of years, even for. Even for one or two generations, to take their labor with no reward, and all of their labor goes into someone else's pocket, and then you Free them and you expect them to just catch up. That's insane. So of course there are these lingering and lasting inequities because these inequities, these. I don't know what word I want. Like the theft of different things of. The theft of just simply being able to sit down and read a book and think that is such. Can't say that it's. I wouldn't even say it feels sometimes to me because I'm so busy, feels like a luxury. But that is a fundamental step in feeling, figuring out what do I think, what do I believe, what do I want my life to be. And if you take that from someone, first of all, they can't even read if they could read. They don't have the time. If they did have the time, you won't let them have access to the materials. How, at what point are they supposed to be able to build an authentic self and a life that they, that they want, that they feel is worthy of them, that they feel is an outward manifestation, Manifestation of all the things they feel on the inside? That was a very long winded answer. I'm sorry, but that's what I was thinking about. So I want to know how we got to these unequal places and I want. Wanted a clear lens on how that came about. So not just the end result, but the journey to how we got here.

[B]

Say this, this. This book is quite a journey. The book is this Here Is Love by Princess. Joy L. Perry Find Princess on Instagram rincessjoy writes and I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me on my website Sullivansummer, on Instagram @the Sullivansummer and on substack @sullivansummer, where Princess and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the new book.