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Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Tremaine Lee
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:21]
Sullivan Sommer
Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra.
- [00:29]
Marshall Po
See mintmobile.com 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, 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.
- [01:37]
Sullivan Sommer
Being Black in America offers inexhaustible ways to die. I almost met my death one night in the summer of 2017 when I was awakened by a crushing pressure in my chest. It felt like someone had jammed a beach ball inside of me, pumped it to the verge of exploding, and then pumped it some more. I was nauseated, dizzy, and washed in cold sweat. I looked up and found my wife standing in the doorway of our bedroom, her eyes filled with fear and wider than I'd ever seen them. The opening words of A Thousand Ways to Die. The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America by MSNBC contributor Emmy and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tremaine Lee Tremaine, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:23]
Tremaine Lee
Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
- [02:25]
Sullivan Sommer
So in, in this book's introduction, you write, although I have been physically healthy most of my life, my heart and spirit have taken on tremendous psychic burdens. I happened to see you when, on the day your book launched, and this may have actually been the day after your book launched, but I happened to see you here in New York City in conversation with Nicole Hannah Jones. And it was the same day that Charlie Kirk was killed and that there was also a school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado. And so I'm curious now, this book has been in the world for several months now that we're recording. Has there been a psychic burden on the book tour as well?
- [03:14]
Tremaine Lee
Yeah, I wouldn't say a psychic burden necessarily. I think there is without a doubt a weight that is I'm carrying with me, but I think more than a burden, it's probably a catharsis, I think, for me. But also many people who have come to hear me talk on the book tour, people who've had experiences with, you know, violent death in their families, men were carrying the trauma of childhood experiences, some of which I get to in the book. And so I feel like naming a thing and pointing to a thing and putting shape to a thing has been freeing in some sort of ways, despite the contemporary context of the lash of American violence that continues to kind of whip at us. And so I think there's been. I don't know if there's been a burden, but I think certainly been catharsis.
- [04:07]
Sullivan Sommer
Did you expect that when you started the tour at Catharsis?
- [04:11]
Tremaine Lee
I wasn't sure what to expect. I think part of it is so much of this book is emotional for me. And so even talking about it, I kind of well up a little bit from my experiences and experiences of people in my family and people I've covered my whole career. I don't know if I anticipated it being as emotional as it was. Like, I didn't break down crying, but I always felt the tears sitting behind my eyes as I talked about the writing of this book and the story and what I think it means, but I also wasn't sure how people will receive it because I think we had some lifting to do because the title was already provocative. A Thousand Ways to Die and the True Cost of Violence and Violence and Black Death are often or mostly, or I should say routinely, things that we push into a corner because it's so routine that it's everywhere, but then it's nowhere because we never fully address the broad ripples that it sends out into our communities. And so with all that, I was like, I just don't know how it's gonna be received. So I didn't have. I didn't know what to expect.
- [05:14]
Sullivan Sommer
The book wrestles throughout with this communication struggle of communication struggle about talking about things. And in fact, you, again, really early in the book, you say, look, I come from a family where, like, you don't talk about, you know, you don't talk about the family. And I was it. It also struck me you and I are about the same age. And so I think we are. We are children of a generation that doesn't talk about things at all. And so. And also I think we're of the generation where, you know, certainly history has always been rewritten for every generation, but I feel like it's getting rewritten faster. You know, we're experiencing a faster rewriting, almost a real time rewriting of history as it's happening. And so I'm curious about this negotiation between memory and public and private that you've had to go through both in writing the book and then also having it out in the world.
- [06:17]
Tremaine Lee
You know, I think as a journalist and someone who's occupied public space and had conversations in the public space and create a record for the public, I think some of this feels most natural to me in some ways, right. I've been telling other people's stories in very intimate ways, I think, wrestling with what it means to tell my own story and the softest spots in our community. When it comes to violence and how we've experienced it in a public space. I think it's required, especially in this moment as history is being rewritten. And it's important for us to be able to level set and put clarity and make sure we're filling the gaps in the public retelling of our stories in pure, real context. But I think it's always a reference because the same way with the family, it's kind of like. I think it's twofold. These are the most painful days of our lives and experiences that have shaped us in profound ways. And it's just too heavy and too burdensome to address. And so it's easier to sit it somewhere and try to navigate around it. But I also think that there is a danger, especially when it comes to black people telling our truths in this wide open space, to be not ridiculed or shamed, but maybe ridiculed and shamed because I think so often they hoist upon us some sort of guilt for the experiences that they put onto us. And so we are forced to carry this burden. So during the public we open it up for the white gaze and white conversation and this kind of public discourse that often doesn't help at all. And so there's always the danger that even in the reporting my career, it's like how much do I actually say in this 1000 word news article about the way people are experiencing things and exposing that? And I think that's the part that is there. True wrestling is like how much of our experience do we and expose is a charged upload word. But how much should we be exposing? But then I think it's, it's necessary for us to, to be able to address these issues and experience. I think we have to kind of do it publicly.
- [08:20]
Sullivan Sommer
Do you, do you have a. Is there rubric is too structured of a word, I think. But do you have a way that you think about that? Think through that. How much should I say in this, you know, in this particular audience to these particular people? Yeah, how do you think about that? How do you decide?
- [08:43]
Tremaine Lee
Yeah, think about it. Does it serve, does it serve the story? And does it serve like whatever I'm trying to say, does it serve that or not? Is it gratuitous or not? Is it for sensation or not? And so I think there's always this, you know, trying to balance what actually serves the story, what actually serves the truth. And so for me, I've always allowed that to guide what I include or not. I remember one story in New Orleans and it was like some sort of shooting and I was in the neighborhood and a guy was sitting on his front porch with his 10 year old son who was eating Cheetos, right? Cheetos or Doritos or something like that. And I described this scene and I had that this little boy took another bite from this bag or whatever it is and I had like a number of white people email me saying this is so stereotypical and how could you. And I'm like, this is the moment. He's eating these Cheetos. Chubby little boy with his dad on the front porch. I don't go so far as to worry about that kind of thing because I'm just telling the truth and telling the story. But it's amazing how, how people scrutinize these moments and they're arriving with their own set of whatever it is they' carrying and push it upon us. And so sometimes you are thinking about you can get in your own way if you're thinking about how other people are perceiving what you include and what you don't include. That's why I've always tried to like, does this serve the story? Does it paint the picture accurately? Does it offer a glimpse into a very particular, specific moment? Right. So I've tried to let that guide me.
- [10:12]
Sullivan Sommer
So there's a number of people in this book. Well, some of them are, you know, your family members. So they're very personal to you. There are people that are public figures. There are people that are or were public figures, but are maybe lesser known, especially in 2025 historical figures. For example, how did you negotiate where to lean, you know, in telling this story? And then also how much, you know, if you're talking about a figure, for example, of a Crispus Attucks, that a segment of the population is like, oh, Chris was addicts. I know who that is. And a segment isn't even as coming out of my mouth. Listen, some listeners are like, is who. Who is that? How did you negotiate? You know, how much to talk about and, and what to tell and where to lean in.
- [11:05]
Tremaine Lee
I think when we, you know, I love, you know, you use that word negotiate. And I like the word negotiate because it is like a wrestling and a tug back and forth. And I think with this book it changed shape along the way, midstream almost. It just changed shape after I had this life altering near death experience. But I think most of it was framed in this journey through literal geography and time. And so as I'm telling this story, I imagine it like we're on this train ride and we're in the Deep south in this time period or during the period of enslavement. And we're literally moving through. And at each stop along the way, I want to step off and introduce you to a place, a person, a group of people, an experience or a story or a time in my life. We step off the train and we're holding hands and people walking, telling the story for this book in particular about how violence and gun violence has shaped our experience in this country and guns have shaped our experience in this country. It was important for me early on to set the historical stage for us here that it's not necessarily guns are bad, bad, it's just this is how guns and gun violence have shaped us and moved us and bent us and propped us up. How guns have been used to destroy us, but also how we've used guns to free ourselves and defend ourselves. And so Think about Crispus the tux, or the black men who were alongside John Brown during the raid at Harpers Ferry, that black men and black people did have agency, some agency in this. And even though this tool, again, has been used mostly for our destruction, we also employed these tools to, you know, push for our freedom. And so the decision each step along the way was, again, how does this serve the broader story of me trying to, you know, speak to how it shaped us?
- [12:56]
Sullivan Sommer
I want to say I. I loved reading the section that talked about John Brown in. In particularly the five black men that were part of his group of raiders, because that is it. That is something I feel like you never read about that.
- [13:11]
Tremaine Lee
That whole entire section. And the guns for slave cycle part where I talk about how black folks were bartered literally for guns and how Europeans were playing regional African powers, that was much longer. I had to shrink it down. I like the history. I think history helps us understand that we're on this broad continuum. And it's not like this chapter is over and now we're at this new chapter and this new page. It's like we're on this continuum. And so until we understand the arc of the history and the arc we're still on, you know, I don't think we can figure out where we are now. So that part, much to my dismay, I had to shrink all because I love all of that stuff, because it helps you understand how to perceive what comes next. It helps you understand just how to read, you know, the retelling of the.
- [13:54]
Sullivan Sommer
Story, maybe for a next project.
- [13:57]
Tremaine Lee
Listen, don't get me started here. I am no historian, but I love how instructive history is because again, I don't even know what is. What is the past. I don't know if there is a past. We're in it now because everything that happened before us kind of was this long pathway to the present. And the pathway doesn't end. It just meanders, it moves, it twists. So I think I'm very fascinated by history and just how it. Again, because what is history? What is history?
- [14:29]
Sullivan Sommer
I know, yeah. And one of the things I'm shocked by, and you see it very clearly in your book and we can talk about a couple of the places in your book, but I read a lot of. I read a lot of Civil War era history and the numbers of books that I read and authors that I talk to here on the New Books Network, and they're writing about, you know, the 1860s, let's say, and it really could have been written today. And about today. And yeah, to your point, when you, when you, when you don't know the history, I'm always fascinated by this question of if you don't know the history, then what is that framing of what you're, how you're understanding what's happening?
- [15:11]
Tremaine Lee
You don't, people don't, you don't understand.
- [15:13]
Sullivan Sommer
But they don't know that they don't know. Right, right. Like that, I think. And that's the problem. It's one thing if you know, you don't know if you, you know. So one of those, one of the stats I read in, in your book that I had never heard before and I found really fascinating is you quote or you attribute Dr. Nicholas Buttrick at the university of Wisconsin, Madison, and, and said the more enslaved people a U. S. County had in 1860, the more guns its residents have today.
- [15:44]
Tremaine Lee
Yeah.
- [15:45]
Sullivan Sommer
What do you make of that?
- [15:47]
Tremaine Lee
I think about it in, in a couple different ways. It's almost like if you have like, you know, a mango orchard. I don't know if mangoes are grown in orchards, but you like an apple orchard, you have some sort of orchard. And to harvest the fruit you have to use machetes. And so over time you're gonna find machetes everywhere. Bits of machetes, the lore of the machete, the myth of machete, how machete was used to feed the people. Machetes become such a central part of the understanding of this orchard culture. And I think when you think about the south in particular and the brutal work of enslavement and the brutal work of subjugation and the brutal, nasty, violent work of oppressing a people and solidifying their oppression. It require fired those guns. And the gun was the means in which black folks were subjugated and forced and relegated into this sub citizenship and subhumanity. And so the idea now that we can disentangle that weapon and the violence and the hierarchy from today, you can't. And no wonder. We still see these places as very violent, very segregated, very stratified. And guns remain everywhere because the gun is central to how it's not just regional, it's this entire country, but how those former slave holding states in particular in the southern culture, these guns are central to that. And to understand that culture, you have to understand the violence deployed by the guns. So the guns are going to still be everywhere. It's like the machetes on the orchard.
- [17:17]
Marshall Po
Yeah.
- [17:19]
Sullivan Sommer
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- [19:21]
Tremaine Lee
You know, I think in some ways I feel like every story I've told in some way is the story of the great migration. I feel like it's the south as it belongs from the head and us seeking a more just place in this society, in this country and in this economy. And so I think about how the Midwest was reshaped by the migration folks trying to get to Chicago. And you end up in Gary, Indiana, and you're in St. Louis or you're getting to Baltimore. And then some people, you got some, some folks from Georgia who ended up in New Jersey or New York or California, folks who were leaving Louisiana and Texas. And you arrive there and begin to reshape that place, but also reshape how, how you see the world, how you move in the world. And so I. When I think about New York, I still, I think about Chicago, what it meant to have, especially in New York, this collision of people from the Deep south, but also from the Caribbean, right, and Latin America all kind of colliding together and. And reshaping how. Not that they move in the society, but how the society, man, like this big machine. And so in some ways, I don't think it changed the way I reported it, but it's a reminder of this machinery was built cog by cog and with all these different people who are fuel for this machine. And so whether we're talking about Chicago and that specific kind of culture created from the black folks, the millions of black folks who fled Mississippi, I think it's kind of all. It's all the same kind of right, like, this is a much bigger machine with a very specific pathway to it. But I think being here helps me understand in a granular way because there are just so many peoples with so many histories here, you know, twisting and bending all of the strictures and structures built around it.
- [21:07]
Sullivan Sommer
So we talked before about history and history showing up in the present. And I had said this shows up many times in the book as well. And in fact, it's. Those connections are one of the things that I really enjoyed as a reader I was really interested in. You have a chapter where you talk about the Smith and Wesson factory in Massachusetts, and you look, I grew up in New Hampshire, not far from Massachusetts border. I didn't know there was a Smith and Wesson factory there. It did not surprise me to learn there was a Smith and Wesson factory there. But, you know, in the book, you really wrestle with this idea that a. A liberal, you know, very Democratic, very liberal state is participating in an economy that is purportedly politically distasteful to the region, which to me, again, you know, hearkened back to, you know, 19th century, the buying and selling of. Of humans domestically, while still while saying, you know, slavery is bad. But talk about, talk about your research in Massachusetts.
- [22:22]
Tremaine Lee
I don't want to go as far necessarily to speak to this idea of hypocrisy, necessarily, but I think that there is this false, shallow moral distance that places and people and powers put between itself and deplorable things like slavery. But then there's this economic intimacy that is bound and braided alongside of it. I think about. I heard a story a while ago about how Brooks Brothers started in, like, lower Manhattan and they'd have all this cotton from the south coming up on these barges and these boats up the river, docking right behind its manufacturing facility in a place like New York that, again, was a hub of slavery early on and then eradicated it. But there was still this. This braiding of the economic interests, but then this distance between those who found the institution of slavery obscene, but didn't find that money or that bread at all. And so I think about a place like Springfield, Massachusetts, a literal world away from Chicago and Compton, California, and any number of places that experienced a lot of gun violence, where in that universe, guns are a means of putting kids through school and putting food on tables. And I talked to some folks there who came to the dawns on them. Huh? Where are all these guns going? Like, wait, what? And so I found it interesting because, again, we oscillate in these different worlds in this country by race and class and region. And again, means of providing for your family. And so I thought it was the perfect place one. Because we're also able to, like, you know, one of the ideas from the initial iteration of the book is to follow a gun. Right? So I was able to kind of do some of that. And so Springfield was like the central to that. But I think this idea that we just. That economic intimacy to these deplorable things. Mind you, it's also an industry that is fed by and fueled by racialized fear. Many Americans were buying these guns, and a lot of them are stockpiling these guns. And they speak of this fear and wanting to defend themselves. And who is it that they imagine climbing through their window to come rape their daughter? We know who it is. And it's this, like, this is thinly veiled racial weaponization, Literally weaponization and fear of us in this innate, criminal, violent class. Not unlike in some of those former slaveholding states like South Carolina, where enslaved people outnumbered white folks. So that fear. And going back to that idea of those counties in the south that had the most enslaved people having the most guns, you gotta arm up. And it's almost required that these white men are the boundary keepers with these guns. Um, anyway, that's a long road and highway from Springfield, Massachusetts. But it's just that that. That moral distance and the economic intimacy is. Is striking.
- [25:38]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, well, and you said, you know, I don't want to use the word hypocrisy. The word that springs to my mind, though, is actually complicity.
- [25:44]
Tremaine Lee
Complicity is a complicated.
- [25:45]
Sullivan Sommer
Is that a fair word? I mean, because honestly, I think about that a lot. Like, for. For Myself, you know, for myself, like every day, like in the decisions I make about how to conduct my life, you know, where am I complicit? Because I. I happen to believe we're all complicit in different places, I think. And I think part of the problem is our refusal to acknowledge it.
- [26:06]
Tremaine Lee
You know, I think about this often too. That's just. Sorry to jump in, but I think that everyone. That's perfect complicity is perfect word. I think there's wittingly complicit, knowingly complicit, and unwittingly complicit. And I think there is a. And I've had many conversations like this where I think to myself, and it's one of my kind of guiding principles, almost a thing is as it is, not as we want it to be. And so even in this country, bound by all of the racism and all of the evils of capitalism, this is the game that we gotta play somehow, some way. And so there is so much gray area in where you stop being unwitting and then you get to uncaring, and then now you're witted. And so I think about that often because. Especially where there's no way you can turn any corner in this country without tripping over the economic levers of violence or the actual levers of violence. It's just we are all complicit, but then it's like, how do we uncomplicit ourselves? I don't even know if that's not a word, but how can we uncomplicit ourselves in this very complicated system, again, bound by all this violence? Right. We're all. We're all helping to load the bullets in.
- [27:20]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, yeah. How do we. How do we not be complicit? I. I don't know. I feel quite cynical. I don't know that we can. But I do think. I think education is part of it, because to me, like, this whole being unwittingly complicit, like, I have. I have so little patience for that, especially, especially today in an era of information at your fingertips. Now we can argue, you know, there's a lot of bad information out of there out there. A lot of really bad information out there. But, like, there's also a lot of really good information, and it's not hard to find it. None of it's hard to find. I think you can find accurate information quite easily. And. And then if, you know, I feel like you're not.
- [28:13]
Tremaine Lee
What do you do? But once, Once, you know, what do you do with that information. Once you, once you, Once you know that the place has been underfunded, once you know that the police are abusing people routinely and they're getting away with. Once you know, they're filling their coffers based on, you know, stop. And what do you do with it? Do you, some would argue, if you're not ready to tear it down after that point, if you're not willing to destroy the machine and rebuild it anew and replace the top at the bottom, then you're just moralizing. You feel better about your complicity because now you're aware of it. You could talk about it in ways, but it doesn't stop your participation and it doesn't stop you from. It doesn't stop the machine from rolling unless you're going to dynamite the machines from rolling down the streets and feeding on the people. What are you doing? So I don't know. So I don't know. But I think some people do opt out and they. Some don't know, go back to the idea of education. Some people are not educated because they don't have the continuum. They don't have the framework. They're living in this moment and they're in a vacuum filled with foolishness. They're watching Fox News every day, all day. That's the only thing they ever see. They don't have any other conversations with anyone different, with a different point of view. So that's their worldview, whether they like. And then culturally, culturally, it's reinforced with all their friends and their communities understand it. But once you know better and you're from a nice liberal state or community, but then you don't want that shelter moving in, right? I think about this. After Roe was overturned, everybody went back to normal, right? There was no tearing this shit down, pardon my language. There was none of that. We see the erosion now, the incursion in these cities by the National Guard and the President of the United States saying that these people are born to be criminal and all and nobody's. A lot of people know better. And I think this is the conundrum, maybe there's a better word for that that I think the, the, the left and Democrats find themselves in. Because the right, they know what they're going to do. They're going to storm the castle. They know what they're going to do. They had the guns. They know what they're going to do. If, if there's a line crossed that other side, what are they willing to do? Nothing but study it or not even have Study it, read about it. I have the information about it. So anyway, so where does that come.
- [30:29]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, I feel like this is such a good conversation. I feel like we keep going and going and going on this and not. And. And not have an. Not have an answer. I will say, like, one more thing because, you know, I said, oh, well, you got to educate yourself. You got to know. I think your question is exactly the right one then. So, like, what do you. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with that information? And, you know, I do think, and this might be a little bit what you were getting to as well with the Democratic Party is I feel like right now it's very easy to have your attention fractured on. Right. There are so many problems. I think there is an analysis paralysis. I think people get overwhelmed with the number of problems. And so it's much easier just to make a, you know, a social media post about it instead of actually going out and doing something. And so I think for me, my strategy has been to pick the, like, one or two things, it is truly only one or two, and actually try to make meaningful change on those one or two things. It's not that I don't care about the other things, but like, somebody else is going to have to make those that were there one or, you know, that that's somebody else's one or two thing. I can't do that. And like, for me, I, I think the answer is for each of us to do something meaningful, but, like, do less, meaning do less some things and do the some things we're doing more meaningfully. And then in my head, like, then things get addressed as opposed to like, oh, I care about these 50 things that are all like, super important 50 things. And so I'll do next to nothing on all 50 of them.
- [32:06]
Tremaine Lee
I think. I think that's a. A great approach because I also believe in stacking wins. You can actually get some small wins there. But I think back to a conversation I had with a black activist and a black police officer, and both of them were starting from a point of love of black people, love of community in different ways. And the activists said that there's no reforming the overseer, there's no way to reform that position, there's no way to reform that system. And so I think in a place that we find ourselves in now where our imaginations of what is possible has been so limited that we're only tinkering around the thing, if you're not going to tear down apartheid, then it's still apartheid. Like, what are you doing? It's still apartheid. And to say now that the colors and the blacks can now live in that neighborhood, but then there's still all these structural barriers that no one's going to tear down because that's just what it is. And we can't imagine a society, a world, a universe where things operate differently. So I think part of it is this lack of imagination. We can't even imagine a different way to do things in this country. So we're stuck arguing whether it's Democrat or Republican. Maybe there are other ideas. Or how to fund the schools or how to run the elections or how to feed the hungry people or how to keep people healthy or how to give healthcare to folks who found themselves by no fault of their own in places where they're not getting nutrients and they're breathing the sediment. Right. But we can't even think outside of that. And so we're tinkering around that again. I'm not calling for revolution. I'm just saying necessarily, necessarily, the people got what people got do. But I don't think we're there.
- [33:41]
Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, no, I. And I'm. I'm reminded, you know, you and I actually got. Although I said I had seen you before in New York, you and I actually got connected through a dear friend of mine, Dana Tenille Weeks. And she talks a lot about what we're talking about here, which is imagining. Imagining a different future. And how do you. Then that has to come for that has to. Has to happen before you can actually make changes.
- [34:02]
Tremaine Lee
It has to. And back to this idea of the violence that has limited so much. One, it's like the folks who've actually experienced the violence, the physical violence, and then all of the requisite systemic violence that come before that. But then also this respect and reverence for those who use violence like the government and police. There is a reverence for those who. From the other side, because that's who's keeping them safe. Right. So they don't mind a little black death? Not a little. They don't mind a lot of black death. They don't mind a lot of black violence as long as it happened in there. And they don't mind violence by the state to keep folks under control because it's still the plantation system. And so we're all bound to this violence, either experiencing it or complicity in the violence that limit. That continues to limit our imaginations of what we could be because it's driven by fear.
- [34:50]
Sullivan Sommer
Yes. Yeah. Going back to the book then in some of these places, the roots of the fear, rational or not. One of the other things that you talk about, of course, is, you know, this book goes throughout, you know, history as we talked about. We started in the 19th century. But another thing that you write is that perhaps the most underappreciated and overlooked response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. So now we're in the mid 20th century 1954, and the signing of the Civil and Voting Rights act of 1964 and 65 is the rise of the modern gun rights movement. This was something I had. This was new thoughts to me as a reader. Talk about those connections.
- [35:45]
Tremaine Lee
The idea that our citizenship and to no small degree our freedom was seen not just as a front to those who are more deserving of freedom and citizenship, white people. But that it represented a form of violence. That people were. White people were afraid of the idea. And this speaks to me to some of the core issues at the root of all other issues we experience in this country. This is a very insecure nation with insecure people and insecure politics who are so afraid of expanding and granting and providing and supporting and affirming the freedom of a people's that it strikes this fear down. The core of it, right? And the only way to defend yourself, because they will be coming. Part of it is, do you know what we did to these people? The other part for some is these people are violent by nature. If we let them access to the grocery store, if you let them sit next to your daughter, if you want them to eat a cheeseburger next to you, what's next? They're coming for your job and your house and your place in society. So in order for us to maintain superiority and control of this country, you have to arm yourselves. We have to. And they literally would sell it to housewives. Got white women on board. The white men were already on board, right? Get the white women on board, protect your family because that black horde might be coming. And meanwhile you have school kids in their Sunday best marching, just saying, we want access to the bus. We would just like funding for the school. We'd like to go where the resources are. We're hard working people, right? That was what black folks were doing and pushing for. And they were met by literal violence and this hoarding of guns. And again, the gun rights movement was different. Before, the NRA was a sports shooting club and a training club. And now they're in the game of politics to beat back and push back the gains made by black people. During the civil rights movement. And I think that's the part that is so striking, is that it struck such fear. Not just a theoretical, philosophical fear of what does it mean to be a top of society, but a literal fear of like, oh, we have to get guns, you thought you were safe. No, the Negroes are voting. The Negroes have free reign in this country. They can go anywhere they want, kinda, because people are black folks are still getting shot in parts of this country for crossing those invisible and literal boundaries.
- [38:17]
Sullivan Sommer
There are many places in the book, too many to count, where you begin a paragraph or a section with, I wanted to show this. Talk about your balance between having a clear idea of what you wanted to show and what you wanted to say versus you're out there talking to people, researching, learning, and, and, and you find out along the way what you want to show or what you think.
- [38:47]
Tremaine Lee
Yeah, I mean, it's. I think it's. In some ways it's chicken or egg, but it depends on what we're actually, what dish we're trying to make through my journalism, often you're arriving, you get a. You get a tip, you have an idea, there's a kernel or a seed of something. And I'm going to like, text dive, let me see what's happening there. And I'm telling the story of this community, where this thing happened. But by the time we get to the book, I've spent a career in communities, talking to folks, experiencing my own family, all the things that we have. And so I kind of wanted to speak to like, you might not understand how people are hurting. You might not understand how politicians are complicit. You might not understand what fuels this. You might not understand that long before you get to the violence of a trigger and a bullet, there's all this other violence that people have experienced and people are weathered by the experience. So let me put shape to it. Let me explain it to you. This is your America too. One that seems far away, but let me draw it closer to you. So, so it just, it's different. Like by the time I kind of knew what I wanted to say and what happens is the ways in which people experience it. Now, that's often new. That's me standing on the front porch with the lady and her telling me about what happened when so and so was killed and what that did in the neighborhood. And so there is a balance. But I think part of what I've always tried to do also is do what Arturo Schomburg set out to do. Convincing evidences of Our people, our humanity, our culture. But I wanted to find like point to the thing also. What I want to do is let me show you how there ain't nothing wrong with us. Let me show you what's wrong with us is all this machinery and violence built around us. The violence and machinery that's been keeping us down the entire time. And so part of me is, yeah, let me show you what's wrong with us. It's segregation, it's white supremacy, it's. It's hunger, right. It's the trauma that we carry, right. It's, it's that projection of violence that you couldn't even dare imagine projecting onto this society, right. Or people are actually mean, you harm. So you projected on your brother who is next door to you because they're close to you, right. And you live so far away from other people. Let me just show you, let me, let me show you that. So I think that was that idea of let me show you is central. Let me show you how. Let me show you violence. If you want to understand violence, you don't necessarily have to look at that 17 year old young man. Let's look at the system. Let's look at this country. Let's look at the history of this country.
- [41:12]
Sullivan Sommer
One of the stories that's in the book is about a young man named Kevin. And I've heard you again on the book tour in preparing for this conversation. I've heard you tell the story about Kevin that's in the book, that he was a young man that was paralyzed by a bullet. He had dreams of basketball and you know, his keeping hope alive, even perhaps when you and his mom could see something different from him. And I had heard you tell this story a couple of times before I read the book. And so when I read the book, I was familiar with that particular story. But there was a part a few pages later that, that got me, really got me in the chest. And it wasn't that scene that I had heard you talked about. It was that his, his mom talked about hearing him cry through the baby monitor. As an adult. As an adult, right. He's an, he's not a, as an adult. And that despite the fact that he was very positive and put on a very positive face in front of you, that she would hear him crying, the baby monitor at night.
- [42:23]
Tremaine Lee
There is one. Kevin's story still touches me to this day. It was not only just the seeds of this book, but it was one of those moments that helped me understand or begin to understand the broad, broad cost of gun violence and what we lose and what's taken from us. And so his story of his buoyancy and his hope and all that was certainly in contrast to the reality. And in that scene that you talk about, and this idea of a grown man crying at night and his mother listening over a baby monitor and her weeping with him on the other side, it speaks to this idea that so many of us end up through violence and other means, frozen in time. Right? Frozen at a certain age, literally. When you think about those who we lose to gun violence are forever 17, 18, 23. And we see their pictures and we will always remember them that way. I think about how black men in particular, we don't always have the privilege of growing old. We die disproportionately from all the things. And so this idea that so few black men get to be old and gray and wise and can't nobody tell me nothing. I'm sitting on my porch. Get off my grass. We don't have the privilege to be cranky old men or loving old grandfathers. And to think that a mother who had all the hopes in the world for her son to grow on and become that young man who graduates from high school and gets a job or goes to college and comes out and starts a family and becomes the grandfather and be that old man, she's listening to her son cry over the baby monitor because he's a quadriplegic and he will never have any of those things. And I think it's not even a reach to think about how literally and figuratively so many black men, we cry at night alone, right? Because so many of us feel hemmed in and trapped and feel stuck and feel the weight of the world on our shoulders and feel, dare I say, paralyzed by all of it. And so, yeah, that's a. That's a touching. That's a touching scene. So, like, just. It also speaks to. Like, there's nothing you can do about it. There is a distance from. As close as you are to the person experiencing that world of hurt, you can't experience it for yourself. And your child has to go out there and experience so much on their own. Yeah, that's a touching scene. That. That's that's just that whole Kevin's whole story to me. And I talk about it all the time because it really was the first seed and driver because of what we lose and the cost we pay. And, you know, it's a touch of story that still sits with me today.
- [45:18]
Sullivan Sommer
So there are, as we said before, there Are many characters we meet throughout this book. In reading it, I could not help but think that the gun itself was a character in the book as well. Would you like does that. Yes. No.
- [45:35]
Tremaine Lee
What do you think? The answer is unquestionably yes. And in an earlier iteration of the book, it was going. The gun was going to be the. A gun was going to be the main character. And we were going to engage with every person it came in contact with and every life, it changed. And so the same way a place is a character, Chicago is a character shaped by these forces and these people in a very specific, unique kind of way. The gun itself. These guns that never fade, never melt, never rot, that are with us. No, they are the character.
- [46:15]
Sullivan Sommer
So A Thousand Ways to Die is your first book. What was the biggest learning or surprise for you?
- [46:24]
Tremaine Lee
Even with the biggest surprise wasn't necessarily in any of the information I discovered in reporting and writing this book. Even though there were many things that I discovered about my own family, about America, about people, about community, I discovered and learned a lot. But I think I have so much more respect for so many of my writer friends who are writing amazing books. Again, I know people were like, these people are brilliant, like God. And then it's like they're writing one a year. This thing took me 10 years to write due to some circumstances unforeseen, but also I think just the internal work. And I think when we think about fictional characters in particular, we think about this interiority, this inner world and universe and how they see themselves and talk to themselves and how they exist outside of how people view them. I think sitting here with this work, year after year, page after page, teardrop of the teardrop spoke to this reserve and well and abyss inside of me of fortitude. Honestly, I'm thankful for a lot of people. I'm thankful for the universe. I'm thankful for a spirit that has always been open and also has been sensitive and vulnerable. That with who I am, I was able to get it done because it did challenge me in some pretty significant ways. Not the least of which telling the story. The story. I'm a storyteller. I've done this my entire career. I kind of. I had to wrestle through a bunch of pieces and figure out how I'm gonna tell this story with all these different parts. And I wanted to include all these different parts so to make it cohesive. But I think, like, you know, actually there actually one was one part that I wouldn't say a surprise. And that's not the word. But for the first time feeling my grandfather's death, I had never cried for my grandfather until writing this book. Not to say it surprised me, but I didn't know. Even though I was writing a book about how we carry the trauma and residue from what came before us, even though I'm writing a book about that and how violence shaped my own family, I cried like a baby. Talking about what I get now, what was stolen for me. Like, me, like, I knew my mother's lost, my aunts and uncle lost their father, but I didn't have my grandfather and he was stolen through violence. That was. I had never experienced that. And so, yeah, this just challenged me in so many ways. Again, I'm like, was also very thankful to hit send that last one and we're done. And then it was like the whole next phase of it. But yeah, it challenged me. It's surprised. It's. Yeah, it was, it was. It's truly not, as I say, it's my life's work and it truly. It truly is. Yeah, it truly is.
- [49:13]
Sullivan Sommer
Does that mean that this is a one and done in terms of long form narration for you?
- [49:20]
Tremaine Lee
I don't, you know, now that I got through all that right now that I do feel like, oh, I know how to write a book now. And there are. There are so many things just from a craft perspective and a time management perspective that I learned along the way where, yeah, I could definitely. I actually want to do another one. Like, I, like, I want to. I didn't think I would ever want to do another book because there were times writing this book and the one thing I would never do, the next book deal, I ain't telling nobody. I don't want nobody, though. The feeling of people saying, hey, how's the book going? That's triggering. First of all, mind your business. First of all, like my opinion. But no, it's like actually like the pressure that it puts on you from people like asking you. Because what happens is I felt everything I did, I thought I should be writing. Instead, it didn't matter what I did. I'm out doing something, I'm enjoying myself. I'm like, yo, man, you got this book. For 10 years I had, man, this book, man, a book. You got the book, man. You better be writing the book, man. You got chapter. You write the book. The book, the book. And then people coming up saying, hey, man. And one many people I love who love me, and I know. So, yeah, I would never tell anybody anyway, I think I know how to write a book this time around. I'm looking forward to it. I have some ideas and thoughts, so I'm more than hopeful that there will be another book.
- [50:39]
Sullivan Sommer
Okay. Well, this book is A Thousand Ways to Die the True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America by Tremaine Lee. You can find Tremaine at his website, tremainelee.com and on Instagramain Lee. And I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online@sullivansummer.com, on Instagram, at the sullivansummer and on substackullivansummer. Thank you for listening to the new.