Music Credit: “NY” written and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

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Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.  Today we’re revisiting my 2019 interview with author Renée Watson. While Renée Watson is an acclaimed author of two picture books for children: A Place Where Hurricanes Happen and Harlem’s Little Blackbird; she’s even better known as a writer of young adult fiction with books like Piecing Me Together, which received both a Newbury Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award and Watch Us Rise, which was co-written with poet Ellen Hagan. Renée’s work mostly centers on the lived experiences of black girls and young women as they grapple with identity and place right at the intersection of race, class, and gender…but she doesn’t write message books. Renée Watson is first and foremost a storyteller and it is story that drives her work. She has a fine sense of the complexity of identity. She understands how fraught it can be for adolescent girls in general and for black girls living in an impoverished but loving homes and going to a ritzy school clear across town and how you’re seen seems change from street to street. That’s the dilemma faced by Jade in Renee Watson’s prize-winning book, Piecing Me Together.

Renee Watson: Piecing Me Together is about a girl named Jade. She lives in Portland, Oregon, which is where I grew up, and she feels very much brilliant and beautiful and seen and validated in her community, which is a predominantly black community, and when she goes out into the world, that’s when she feels broken and comes against stereotypes about her because of where she lives, because of her race, because she’s a girl. So, the story is about how can she remain whole no matter where she is.

Jo Reed: And it’s at the school that she attends, that these feelings of being perceived as broken really come up.

Renee Watson: Right. She attends a private school on the other side of town that is predominantly white and they care about her. Her teachers are very sincere and they want her to succeed, and so they give her a mentor, thinking that that’s the way to help her, and everyone thinks they’re going to get along. They’re both African-American women, so people just assume that they’re going to be fine together, but there’s a huge class difference, and so she doesn’t really see eye to eye with her mentor and instead really bonds with one of her friends, a white girl at the school, who is also economically poor. So, the story is kind of about what brings us together, what are our different identities. So, she is a black girl who is economically poor, who’s very talented. She’s also a big girl. The book is about the intersections of race, class, and gender.

Jo Reed: I really liked the complexity of it because you’re never just one thing.

Renee Watson: Right.

Jo Reed: And, that can shift, depending on what the circumstances are, and when she’s with her mentor, Maxine, class becomes a real issue.

Renee Watson: Right

Jo Reed: And, then when she’s with her white friend, Sam, she has to explain how race really factors into her life in ways that Sam just doesn’t understand and it seems like doesn’t want to in the beginning, though they resolve this.

Renee Watson: Yeah, I feel like a lot of that is my experience and the experience that so many of us have when we’re talking about where we kind of intersect and where we can see each other and identify with each other, where we bond, especially as women and friends. She’s so close to Sam and really, they are all they have at that school, because they really, really get each other. But then yeah, when her and Sam are outside of that school and in different environments, it becomes clear that there’s a lot of difference there, too, and that you can work through those differences. Hopefully, I hope the book speaks to that, for our young people to see that it’s worth trying with friends and not just to write people off because they are different.

Jo Reed: Right. Well, I think Jade’s big learning is not giving up but speaking up.

Renee Watson: Yeah, absolutely, that is a great way to put it. <Laughs>

Jo Reed: Well, there is a really great scene in the book, which I think speaks to a lot of what Jade is finding in that school, which is a very good school and it’s the kind of school many parents would aspire to be able to send their children to. But, she’s in class one day and students were asked to think of somebody who they don’t see that they take for granted.

Renee Watson: Yeah. So, the teacher is asking, “Who are the invisible people in your community?” And a lot of her peers, who are not only white, there are affluent black people, Latina people in the classroom as well, and a lot of them say their housekeepers, the people who clean, their nannies, people like that. And, Jade has this moment of, “Oh really? Because my mom is one.” So the fact that they have nannies and housekeepers working in their homes, she knows that her mother works as one, so there’s that moment of her realizing that she’s so very different from a lot of her classmates.

Jo Reed: Exactly, she realizes, “Oh my God, not only don’t they see my mother, but they all have a housekeeper.”

Renee Watson: Yeah, and it’s an interesting moment, too, because so before that, Jade is talking about how she misses her best friend, Lee Lee, who grows up in the same neighborhood as Jade and they’re very close but now they’re at these different schools. Lee Lee is going to the public school that is predominantly black, and I think there’s this assumption that that school doesn’t have a great education like this private school. But, as you’re in the book and you’re realizing the things that Lee Lee talks about that’s happening at her school, the way teachers are asking young people to write poetry in response to what’s happening in their world and in the neighborhood, I do think there’s something there about the quality of education that they’re getting at this public school that is under resourced but definitely has teachers who care and who are thinking about culturally relevant curriculum. While Jade is at a school that has all the bells and whistles kind of, but I don’t know that her teachers actually see her and are thinking about making education relevant to her beyond facts and the traditional way of teaching. So, I also kind of just wanted to explore that in the book as well.

Jo Reed: Oh, I found that fascinating.

Renee Watson: Lee Lee doesn’t have the same opportunities, but she’s definitely getting a good education.

Jo Reed: Yeah, there’s no question and I thought that was a really interesting and quite unexpected turn in the book. You know, it really is such a complicated thing because, you know, I have family and friends who grew up in the Projects, and let me tell you, they were very eager to get out of the Projects, which does not mean there wasn’t people there who love them and they don’t go back and they don’t visit. But, it’s like you do want to move up and move out, but you don’t want to have a wall come down and say, “Everything there is bad,” because it’s not.

Renee Watson: Yeah, absolutely. I say this often, and I hope that this came through, especially-- she makes collages. Jade is a budding artist and she is taking all these different pieces of scraps and newspaper articles and things that people throw away and disregard to make beauty out of, and that is this also kind of extended metaphor through the book of broken places not only being broken, but that there’s beauty there too. And there’s love and there’s maybe economic poverty, but they can be rich in so many other things and wanting to show the kind of the balance of that and respect these places that have many layers to them that sometimes are only seen through one lens.

Jo Reed: I love the picture you painted of her home and her relationship with her mother and her uncle. I mean, she comes from a very loving, very close household.

Renee Watson: Yeah, I love her mom. I really do.

Jo Reed: I do, too. I really do.

Renee Watson: I’m so grateful that my editor really helped me deepen her a little bit. In the beginning, the mother wasn’t so-- she just wasn’t on the page as often, and so when I went back to do edits, I made her a bigger character, and I’m really glad that we did that edit, because I grew to love her, and yeah, I know so many parents like her. I was a mentor and I’ve been a mentor, so I’ve been on both...

Jo Reed: I was going to ask you about that.

Renee Watson: ...ends of that relationship and I know so many hardworking, loving parents who just can’t come to every meeting or every time the school’s open for a performance.

Jo Reed: Right, because they’re at work.

Renee Watson: Right, they’re working. They are taking care of business and making sure that their children can eat and have a place to sleep, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care. And so yeah, she fiercely loves Jade and has big, wild dreams for her daughter and is very hands on. So yeah, thank you for saying that.

Jo Reed: No, not at all. Now, tell me about your experience both as a mentee and as a mentor.

Renee Watson: Sure. So, I went to a school called Jefferson High School and at the time, I was there in the nineties and it was the school that people literally would say to your face, “Nothing good comes out of this school.”

Jo Reed: Oh, my gosh.

Renee Watson: Yeah, so many times, things would happen maybe in the neighborhood where the school was, but if it was reported on the news or in the newspaper, they would always mention that it was near Jefferson High School. We just had to be mentioned in any type of negative press about violence or anything unhealthy. So, I grew up with that cloud over me, and with well-meaning people coming in to our neighborhood who did not live there, who wanted to help us, and sometimes it felt like they were trying to save us or rescue us or take us out, and I never saw my home in deficit. I loved my neighbors, I was not afraid to live on my block, I was proud of my school. My sisters had gone there, and I was so tired of adults coming into my life, trying to fix me and never asking a question, like, “What do you need? What do you want? How is it here?” so that we could actually have a real conversation about what was happening in my life. And, it wasn’t until maybe my senior year I think, or junior year, that a teacher really, I feel, saw me and really invited me into this mentoring relationship with her that felt healthy and that she wasn’t trying to fix me, that she was coming in to walk alongside me and help me figure out what it is I wanted to do in life. And, so that was early memories of people coming in to help, and then I became a mentor and one of the places that I worked at was my former high school. And I remember sitting in a meeting with all the adults, all the mentors, and we’re getting the stats on the young people and on the neighborhood, and the way that they were talking about the students and the space, I really had to raise my hand and say, “I’m sorry, I just want to say I grew up here. You all are talking about my home. I still live in this neighborhood, so let’s just pause a moment and not only focus on the things that need to change. There is beauty here, and I’m not interested in only having field trips where we’re taking kids away from where they live, but let’s explore this neighborhood and the history that’s already here.” And, then since then, just trying to advocate for programs that work with young people to really think about how do you come alongside what’s already happening? How do you figure out what is there that is working, that is beautiful, that is strong, and how do you make it stronger.

Jo Reed: Tell me a little bit more about your growing up. Were you an only child like Jade? Do you come from a large family?

Renee Watson: Yeah, I’m so opposite of Jade. I am the youngest of five children and I am not a visual artist at all. I always joke and say that no one would buy any of my books if I was the one designing the covers. My skill is definitely writing, not anything artistic in that way, but I’ve always been a writer. I say this often too. When I was a very young child, second grade, I wrote a twenty-one page story.

Jo Reed: Oh, my goodness.

Renee Watson: Yeah, and my teacher, bless her heart for reading that handwriting, said, “You’re going to be a writer one day, we’ve got to get you journals, we’ve got to get you notebooks,” and I’ve just been so fortunate to have teachers who saw that talent and nurtured it and really encouraged my mom to put me in courses during the summertime to learn the craft of writing. So, I really have been writing my whole life. In middle school, I wrote a play. It became the spring production that the school put on. So, I definitely took myself serious as a writer when I was a kid and loved theater too. I was into acting in plays, writing plays, and fascinated with that world of make believe and how things can come to life on a stage. So, I really connected to words as a child and had teachers who made space in their classroom for me to be creative. I’m so glad that I grew up in an era where creative writing was taken seriously. It was taught and we really would write stories and get feedback from our teachers in a very thoughtful way. It’s definitely one of the reasons why I’m a writer today, is because I had teachers who really saw me and encouraged me to pursue it.

Jo Reed: What were your favorite books when you were growing up? What did you like to read?

Renee Watson: So, I mostly grew up reading poetry actually. Poetry is my first love. I grew up attending a church in Portland, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, and we would have to recite poems and scripture on Easter Sunday, Christmas, for special occasions. I was always called on to be one of the people in the programs to recite, and so I grew up learning words by heart and loving poetry, loving rhyme. And, so Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton are some of the early poets that I started reading, and then of course I did read-- I read the Ramona series. She grew up in Portland.

Jo Reed: You would have to, right?

Renee Watson: So yeah, you have to know Ramona and I loved her. She was so feisty and just a different character at the time, you know, where you get to see this girl being very playful and talking back, I mean just things that I could never do in my real life. She was so much more adventurous than I was, so I loved the Ramona series. And in high school, I got exposed to Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison and started reading adult fiction because of my English teacher. She was giving me books that weren’t necessarily geared toward high school students, but she knew that I loved to read and that I was a writer, so she was introducing me to all these other adult writers.

Jo Reed: What inspired you, Renee, to write for young adults?

Renee Watson: You know, it wasn’t intentional. I have been working with young people, even as a young person. When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher had me go to the freshmen class and teach them poetry. I would use the poem that I wrote as a sample and take them through a writing workshop, and then when I was in college, all of my jobs to get through school were in arts and Ed organizations, nonprofits that hire writers to go into the school. So, my world has been with young people always and I have so many of their stories in my mind, and so when I sit down to write, that is what comes up, is the young people that I’ve met over the years. So, I think that’s why right now I’m writing for young people, but I don’t know that I always will. You know, I want to do adult fiction. I want to write a poetry collection, so we’ll see where my career goes. But right now, it’s focused on young people because I’ve had such rich interactions with young people and when I sit down to write, those are the stories that kind of bubble up for me. I also think just practically speaking, teenagers are so complex and they are so passionate and extreme, so they just make good characters too, because there’s just so much emotion to work with. They really, really love something or they really, really hate something and to write with that kind of deep passionate emotion is also just a lot of material to pull from.

Jo Reed: Yeah, I love YA fiction. I was on your website and you’re also an educator. You do a lot of work with children, as you’ve mentioned, but you’re also a performer.

Renee Watson: Yes. I miss the stage. I don’t do it as much as I used to.

Jo Reed: And, tell me how this all comes together for you.

Renee Watson: I love the written word and I do think there’s something about reading it and writing in the margins and really connecting in this very personal, private way with words and paper. But, there is also something about bringing those words to life on stage and as a performer and as an audience member, experiencing a person on stage, acting and reciting and performing text. So, I love to do both and I find that some young people who are a little maybe resistant or reluctant to write, once they see spoken word poetry or they witness a poetry slam and they see the theatrics of it and all that passion, sometimes that is inspiring for them and then they are-- they go back and they write, and they’re really writing because they can’t wait to perform it. And you know I’ve had it work both ways, where I do the performance to get young people hooked and to write, and then I have young people who love to write but would never get up and say their poem out loud, and I think there’s something about pushing those students too and helping them think about, “Well, what do you want to say to the world? You did the first brave thing by writing it down, but let’s take it further and open our mouths and say it out loud and put it on stage.” So, those two things, performance and writing, have always kind of gone hand in hand with me. Yeah, I love to do both and I like to help young people get better at both, at writing and also speaking up and raising their voices.

Jo Reed: You moved across the country to New York City.

Renee Watson: I did. I came to New York for school. I went to The New School and that’s where I studied writing for children and creative arts therapy, which really was my main focus, was using the arts to help young people cope with trauma, and that’s what brought me back to school, and I didn’t come to stay. I thought I was coming to school and I was going to finish my degree and go back to Portland, but I got published my last semester of school. I was in an Adult Ed program, so I was in my late twenties at the time and I signed my first contract with Random House for a picture book about New Orleans. And so I thought, well let me give New York a try, let’s see what happens, and now I don’t know, thirteen years later, I’m still here. So, I did move to New York. I used to not say that. I used to say, “Oh, I’m staying here for a while,” but New York is home. Harlem is home for me and so is Portland. My family is mostly still there, so I go back often and visit and I’m still very connected to the schools that I attended and the community that I grew up in. So, anytime I have a book out, I make sure I go back home and share it with the community and visit schools there. So, I feel like both Harlem and Portland are my two homes.

Jo Reed: Your latest book, Watch Us Rise, is co-written with poet Ellen Hagan.

Renee Watson: Yes.

Jo Reed: I want the backstory to this.

Renee Watson: Okay, I am very good friends with Ellen in my real life. We know each other. We’ve known each other since I moved to New York. We just were fast friends. We met by way of being teaching artists in New York City. We both taught at DreamYard and at Community Word Project and when you’re co-teaching and planning lessons together, you’re getting a bite to eat afterwards and you just bond because so much is happening in the classroom and you’re spending a lot of time together. So, we became really good friends and had collaborated on poems. We’ve worked with young people and helped them put collaborative pieces together, and I’ve just always wanted to do something bigger with her. And, so I ended up leaving DreamYard and Community Word because of my writing and just didn’t get to see her as much, missed her, and so I sent her a text. This was in 2015. I was on a book tour and just missing New York and missing my people, and I sent her a text to say, “Hey, we should write something together, we should write a book together,” and she was like, “Absolutely, yes let’s do it.” And, it didn’t happen right away. It took us a while to figure out when and what it would be about, but that’s kind of the backstory, is that we are friends and we wanted to write something that really focused on friendships, on activism, on young girls who won’t be silent and who are very bold and really wanting to use art to get their voices out and to get their voices heard, which it’s so much like the young people that we’ve taught over the years. So, it’s very much, in a way, like a tribute to the girls that have inspired us, who we’ve gotten to know over the years, and definitely a statement about friendship being the thing that I think keeps us moving. This world is hard to live in and the girls have their own personal things they’re going through, but also all the drama at school with sexism and racism, and how do you keep fighting and overcoming that if you don’t have people to lean on and to go through it with you? So, we wanted it to very much be about the feminist movement, but also about the solid friendship as a foundation of the movement.

Jo Reed: Was it fun to write with somebody?

Renee Watson: It was the best, yeah. Writing is so...

Jo Reed: Hard.

Renee Watson: ...isolating. It’s very hard and you’re by yourself a lot.

Jo Reed: Yeah, exactly.

Renee Watson: And, so I normally don’t get feedback until I’m showing it to my editor. So, what was great is that Ellen and I plotted and did this huge outline with Post-It notes and we had the plot written out and then we would work, and we’d set a timer, write for forty-five minutes, write for an hour, and then take a break and share with each other and get immediate feedback and kind of check in, “Okay, if that’s what you’re doing, then I’ll add this in my chapter.” And, so that was great because I never share immediately as I’m working on something, you know, so it was really nice to have someone to go to for when, “This is not working, what do you think I should do?” or to have someone like, “Yes, this is great, let’s keep going.” That felt really, really good.

Jo Reed: I bet. I bet. I really liked how much friendship is at the center of both Piecing Me Together and Watch Us Rise. And, the other thing I really love what you do is these aren’t message books. They really are great stories.

Renee Watson: Thank you. I appreciate that. I really try to write a good story first and then the message is kind of secondary to the, just a good plot and a good story.

Jo Reed: You know, another thing I really loved about Piecing Me Together is that you’ve described Jade as dark-skinned, as plus-sized, but it’s not an issue. It’s just what it is.

Renee Watson: Yes. Yeah, and I want more books like that. Of just letting people exist in their skin, however that means, without that being what the story is about.

Jo Reed: Exactly. Yeah. I would like to hear about the I, Too Arts Collective.

Renee Watson: Oh, so growing up in Portland and loving poetry as a kid, when I first moved to New York, one of the first places I wanted to go to was Harlem and I wanted to see all the places that Langston Hughes wrote about in his poetry. And I went to Harlem and I knew where his brownstone was and found my way there and I thought it would be a museum, much like the King Center in Atlanta has restored Dr. King’s home, his childhood home. You can go in and see it and it’s all set up like it used to be, and I thought it would be something like that, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t open to the public. It was just the brownstone with a plaque that acknowledged who lived there, but I wanted more. I wanted to go inside. I thought it would be a space where people could come in and maybe learn about him or create their own poems, and this is many years ago when I first came to New York. So, I kind of just tucked that away. I was like, “Man, that’s too bad.” But, over the years as Brooklyn got gentrified and Portland, Oregon too, where I grew up, and then happening in Harlem, I just got worried that we are going to start losing these sacred spaces that have so much history and I just didn’t want to lose that space. So, in 2016, in the summer, I launched a campaign called Langston’s Legacy, where we raised money to lease the brownstone where he lived, and he lived there the last twenty years of his life. We originally were hoping to purchase it and have been working with the owner to work out some way to do that and in the meantime are leasing from her. And, I was just so touched, so many people supported and came alongside to help me do this. I started a nonprofit called I, Too Arts Collective, which is taken from his poem, “I, Too, Sing America,” and we really-- after forming the board and meeting and thinking about what did we want this space to be, I really thought, “You know, we don’t want it to be a museum.” I want people to come and continue his legacy and create, and so we have poetry workshops for young people and literary events and readings and book launch parties and all types of programing for the local community. We officially opened in 2017, so we are celebrating our two year anniversary. And, I’m just so proud and excited and in this kind of mindset of, “Okay, what’s next? What do we want to do? How do we want to expand?” And, so once we purchase and do some restoration of the space, I really want to open the second floor to people who don’t live in New York. Being a person who did not grow up in New York, I know what it’s like to feel like, “Man, everything happens in New York City.” So, I want to make sure writers and artists have access to the space. We’re going to start a fellowship program where folks can apply to come stay at the brownstone if they’re working on a project in line with our mission and our values and they’ll have studio space to create and we’ll just ask them to give back to the community in some way by doing a workshop with young people or a lecture. So yeah, we’re dreaming and planning out what these next few years will look like, but it’s happening. It’s been two years of solid programing and we’ve had some living legends come into the space, which has also been really gratifying and so great that our young people are meeting working, living writers are artists.

Jo Reed: Absolutely. This is a great project for so many reasons. Oh Renee, it was such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much.

Renee Watson: Yes, it was so nice talking with you, too. Thank you.

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Jo Reed: That was my 2019 interview with author Renée Watson —we were talking about two of her YA titles: the prize-winning Piecing Me Together and Watch Us Rise co-written with Ellen Hagan: both are published by Bloomsbury. You’ve been listening to Art Works the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us on Apple Podcasts. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Renée Watson: I became a mentor and one of the places that I worked at was my former high school. And I remember sitting in a meeting with all the adults, all the mentors, and we’re getting the stats on the young people and on the neighborhood, and the way that they were talking about the students and the space, I really had to raise my hand and say, “I’m sorry, I just want to say I grew up here. You all are talking about my home. I still live in this neighborhood, so let’s just pause a moment and not only focus on the things that need to change. There is beauty here, and I’m not interested in only having field trips where we’re taking kids away from where they live, but let’s explore this neighborhood and the history that’s already here.”

Jo Reed:  From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed—

We’re concluding our celebration of Native American Heritage Month by posting a conversation I recently had with 2022 National Heritage Fellow and Diné Textile Artist and Weaver TahNibaa Naataainii.  Born in the New Mexico, TahNibaa is a dedicated artist and fierce advocate for traditional Navajo or Diné weaving, yet she’s willing expand them by changing patterns  and shapes or weaving different textiles into her work. Because of this, her weaving has deeply impacted both traditional and contemporary textile arts.  Living in her ancestral homeland of Table Mesa, TahNibaa embraces holistic Diné weaving practices. This is not just an artform, it’s a way of life – that involves raising and herding the sheep,  harvesting and dyeing wool, then carding, spinning before she even begins to weave it on a loom.  TahNibaa’s textile art has been recognized in museums and galleries across the country and around the world. She is also a celebrated interpreter of Diné weaving traditions, working with museums and cultural centers to tell the story and process of this remarkable art. I lucky enough to speak with TahNibaa Naataainii last month—here’s our conversation.

Jo Reed:  Well, TahNibaa, I have to begin by congratulating you on being named a 2022 National Heritage Fellow.  Bravo.

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Thank you.   Thank you very much. It’s an honor to recognized for the work I’ve been doing and as time goes I am learning the magnitude of it

Jo Reed: Tell us a little bit about where you were born and where you were raised.

TahNibaa Naataanii:  I was born on the Navajo Nation in the northern area, the northern agency of the Navajo Nation, near the Four Corners area where the four states meet.  I was born in Shiprock, New Mexico. And my father, Leo Naataanii, his job took us to Fort Defiance, Arizona. My father was a carpenter and a director of a housing program there.  And Fort Defiance at that time was a small town, there was still a lot of traditional people that lived on the outskirts. 

Jo Reed:  Were you raised with traditional ways?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yes I was, even though it was in the late 60s, early 70s.  My mom and my dad were somewhat products of the boarding school system that the government placed upon our people, and even though my dad went to boarding school and my mom also was sent away to school they still held on very strongly to their traditional upbringing, their traditional ways.

Jo Reed:  And I know your parents moved you back to your ancestral lands.  How old were you, and what prompted them to do that?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah.  So I went to school in Fort Defiance my elementary years, and my grandmother, Mary Lee Henderson, I remember she would visit us on weekends; it seems like there was frequent visits from my grandmother, and I believe what my grandmother was-- her visits were primarily to tell my mom and encourage my mom to move back to the ancestral lands.  My grandmother was getting older, and I believe that my grandmother was seeing changes in her community, seeing just a lot of  development, in the community, and I think that she was concerned that the lands where we're originally from possibly might be used for development of some sort.  So, she encouraged my mom to make the move back and start raising the sheep, and that's what happened.  So about 9 years old we moved back here to Table Mesa.

Jo Reed:  What's your earliest memory of weaving?  Is it when you moved back to the ancestral home, or was it still when you were in Fort Defiance? 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  My earliest memory of the actual weaving was living in Fort Defiance.  I was, I'm going to say, I think I was in the second grade. My routine was I'd come home and get into my play clothes and play until maybe a couple of hours till dinnertime. But one day I came home, and my mom had a small loom set up for me, and she told me “today you're going to learn how to weave,” she says “you're going to learn how to weave, and after you start weaving, then you can go out and play with your friends when you come back from school”.  That was where I sat down, and my fingers touch the warp, and my hands held the comb, my hands opened up the shed with a baton.  Those are my earliest memories of weaving.  Prior to that we had frequent visits to my paternal grandmother's home, and I vaguely, vaguely remember my paternal grandmother carding wool, working with wool.  And then I was started handling that wool, and that's when my paternal grandmother gave me my Navajo name. I was about 5 years old at that time, and she gave me my full Navajo name of TahNibaa Atlo hii gii.  TahNibaa Atlo hii gii means “coming into battle with your weaving.”  And then maybe two years after that, and maybe a year after that, that's when I started weaving.  That's when my first loom was brought before me.

Jo Reed:  Was weaving something you loved from the beginning or something that you learned to love?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  At 7 years old, I was more interested in watching cartoons and playing with my best friend Marcinda.  I was more interested in that.  So at seven years old, I didn't really want to learn how to weave, I was resistant to it a little.  And then when we moved to Table Mesa, to my current home now, then of course, I was older, I was about 10 years old, 11 years old, and I started weaving more frequently.  And we were not living in the town anymore, so I couldn't just ride my bike down to the school or down to the store, the school is 15 miles from here So we come into the desert at 10 years old.  And my mother, and she set up another loom for me, and she started showing me more, I started designing my weavings, and that there at age maybe 10 or 11, I believe I begin to feel that that spiritual connection of the weaving, it was speaking to me, and it became enjoyable, and it wasn't a chore to me, I wasn't resistant anymore.  As a matter of fact, I had three older brothers and living on a ranch there's a lot of chores you have to do, we had sheep, we had to herd sheep, and we had horses, and we had no running water, we had to bring the water into the house with a bucket. So when the chores were given out, my chore, my job was to go work, to go do my weaving, and I did not mind that.  That was my fun space, my fun time.  And I don't think I realized what was happening, I didn't realize that the spiritual connection of the Navajo weaving, the magnitude of it, what it was doing to me.    And when I was about 13 years old,  when I became a young woman, I had a sacred ceremony to celebrate that, and in that ceremony weaving songs were sung for me, and my weaving tools were in there also in my ceremony.  So that particular ceremony I believe is kind of the forefront also of me, TahNibaa Atlo hii gii, TahNibaa the weaver, how weaving stayed in my life, the spirit of the weaving. 

Jo Reed:  You made the decision to join the military.  How old were you then, and what made you take that decision?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Well, I was very young.  I was just 17, 18 years old.  I had just turned 18 years old, and I also graduated at that time.  I wasn't interested in college, I know I didn't want to go to college.  And what I thought, what I wanted to do was to weave about 10 weavings and sell them and buy a Harley Davidson and go to Rocky Boy, Montana.   Of course, at 18 you have no knowledge of maturity, you don't really have a knowledge of maturity.  And my father, --I often think of it as laying down the law to me.  He just made it very clear to me that I needed to get a job, and I needed to start providing for my own self. And he told me, you like to travel, I know you want to travel, you like to travel, perhaps the military, the Navy's the one I think you would go traveling if you want to travel, he said.  And right away I thought about it, and I just thought about the Caribbean, I don't know <laughs>, I just thought about a blue ocean, a turquoise shore, and palm trees.  That's what I thought about, and then I thought the Navy would be the one to get me there. and I joined the military then,

Jo Reed:  And you remained in the military for five years?  Is that correct?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yes.  Actually about 15 years.

Jo Reed:  Oh, sorry. 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah, I did four years of active duty where I was stationed on a ship. And then after my active duty time I stayed connected with the military as a reservist, as a Naval Reservist. So that's where my other years comes in, my 11 years of reserve duty.

Jo Reed:  But I know you didn't weave for five years, but you were really drawn to it in various markets as you traveled throughout the world.  And you've spoken about a really important moment in the Philippines, and I'd like to just share that if you don't mind. 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  So I was stationed on a ship, and our living quarters are very small. You have like a two feet by six feet rack that's your sleeping area, and underneath that rack is where you store your clothes, and you might be lucky to have a small locker.  And so my weaving-- it did stop for a moment.  And so when I was in the military, of course, I was meeting many different people, many people from different nations. And then we went on a western Pacific cruise for six months, and we went to the Philippines to a port called Subic Bay, and the town is called Olongapo.  And our ship stayed there for about a month and a half.  And I grew lonely, I could feel the distance. And I always remember my father, my late father, telling me no matter where you are, every day the holy people they cross the universe, and they see you, they recognize you.  And I was so lonely, and on a Saturday, I went out to the market.  I went out to the market, and I was walking about just looking at products. Then I saw these ladies selling woven items made out of palm leaves, and they were like purses, coin purses, hats, placemats, they were just a lot of those woven goods, and then all of a sudden I just started touching all of them.  And they couldn't speak English, and of course I can't speak Tagalog, that's the name of one of their dialects, and I couldn't speak that, but I touched every weaving, and it was so comforting to me.  And I tell them “I'm a weaver, I know about this, I'm a weaver too.” 

Jo Reed:  When you left the military, you eventually ended up going to school in Santa Fe for environmental management.  And you were weaving during this time.  But when you were done with school you decided you were going to weave full time. 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Right.

Jo Reed:  Can you talk about that decision? 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Right, right.  While in Santa Fe, halfway through my schooling I begin to weave again, I begin to have the interest to learn more about hand spinning.  I learned how to card wool, I learned how to spin, and it was like side by side, and the more I got into hand spinning and dyeing woo,l by the time I finished my school I was afraid because I knew deeply that it's possible I might not work in my field of study, what I've been studying to be, because the weaving was too great, was too strong, was talking to me, was just living within me more and more.  And when I graduated, I graduated and I was working part time for the state environment department, and my weaving was talking to me, and I couldn't ignore it.  I couldn't ignore it.  And then right around that time also, my mom and my dad retired from ranching.  They said, “you kids, my brothers and my sister, we're handing over the ranching duties to you.”  And I took that as a message to come back home.  And I missed home also.  However, I know I was taking a risk because coming back to over here there's really no jobs, there's not too many jobs available, but I took that risk.  I took that risk, and I'm glad I did, I trusted that, and this is my destiny, it is my destiny what I'm doing.  I'm weaving full time, and I'm living as close as I can as being a traditional Dine woman, a traditional Navajo woman.

Jo Reed:  You do this holistically. You're raising the sheep, you're shearing the sheep, you're dyeing the wool, you're carting it, you're weaving it. Can you tell me a little bit about the dynamic of that whole process?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Well, yes. For me being a rancher because I've gone to college and I've studied some about the environment, about how delicate our desert is now, and I can understand climate change. My responsibility is not only taking care of the sheep in the very best way I can but also taking care of the land. So living holistically with the land and having sheep means also that you have to be aware of what's available out in the desert, the forage, the availability of water, and it helps you to not be greedy. It helps you to be humble, to be able to understand that it's okay to reduce your flock. It's okay to do that, and we have to do that now more than ever. And so also with the sheep they help you become strong. You become strong because you have to shear them in the springtime. Sometimes you shear them twice a year, because the kind of sheep I have-- their fleece can grow up to a foot, can grow 12 inches. It's hard work. It's not easy work, but it's rewarding.  I'm very lucky that my late father comes from another community. I live in Sanostee community. That's where my mom is from. Right next to our community is Toadlena, and that's where my dad was from, and in the summertime for the past 40 years that's where we would take the sheep up to the mountains for the summer. And now I don't believe a lot of people have that luxury.  And so we follow that cycle. When the summer comes it's too hot here in the summer, so we'll shear the sheep in April or May, then middle of June we'll head to the mountains and stay in the mountains for about two to three months, and then we'll come back down maybe September, maybe August. Really, it’s is dependent upon the weather.

Jo Reed:  What is it about Dine weaving that's distinctive? How is it distinctive?  

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah. Our weaving was created for us. The whole construction of the loom was created by the Spider Man and Spider Woman deities and the other holy deities. They used part of the universe to construct the loom, and when they did that, they created songs. So, a Navajo loom has a lot of spiritual, universal relations. The warp represents rain, and it represents our life, and the tension cord represents lightning. The top of the loom represents the sky, our Father Sky, and the bottom represents our Mother Earth. The corners of the loom represent our mountains. The weaving comb represents White Shell. So there's songs that were made when these items were created, and that's why this way of work, this skill is very spiritual. The skill is very sacred. This weaving has a heartbeat, and you have to give it respect.

Jo Reed: Can we talk a bit about how your weaving has evolved over time?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah. I used to weave regional patterns. The Navajo twill weavings is a pattern that's developed by a sequence of numbers and of pulling so many warps forward and pulling so many warps back to create diamonds, to create double-weave, to create zigzags, to create intricate, tiny diamonds. But when I decided "I'm gonna do weaving full-time"-- my relationship to my weaving became very special, and in the beginning I used to want everything so perfect, sometimes the weaving, it wants to go in on the sides, and you want to pull those out, and the more I tried to correct it to make it perfect, seems like the more the spirit of the weaving showed me that it didn't want to be that, and what my experience told me is the weaving has a heartbeat, and I don't do all this alone. I'm in partnership with this work, and so I have to respect that. And because of that surrender, that acknowledgement on my part, I'm able to receive just a tremendous blessing from it and create in patterns that aren't regional styles that help also to inspire my fellow community, my fellow weavers across the whole Navajo Nation to see and get inspired and say "Wow, I can do something like that" and to be very expressive. There's a powerful energy with it that-- it feeds you.

Jo Reed:  You're also bringing your own creative process to it. You're open to the magic and spirituality of it, but you meet it with your own creativity. You incorporate other fibers into your work, for example, so I'm curious about that creative process and how ideas come to you.

TahNibaa Naataanii:  A lot of my ideas come in different forms. Sometimes they come in dreams. Sometimes I see patterns in nature, or sometimes I see like a hand-felted art piece that I'll want to create a weaving that has a movement like that or the landscape. I'll have weavings where a customer wants a certain weaving, and I've gone to their home and I've looked at their artwork and taken photographs and come home and look at those photographs now and then and when it feels right, I'll start sketching something. And so taking time and allowing those designs to come. I'm very curious also about how different fibers work, how they behave, how they weave. I didn't realize, but every fiber creates a different sheen, creates a different texture, and now I'm fascinated about texture, and you don't see that in Navajo weaving. But I'm very secure to still weave Navajo-style and put texture in it. I've developed that security over the years because that's part of the creativity.

Jo Reed:  I think you might've answered this. You're a weaver, and you're also an advocate, and you're building cultural knowledge both in your community and in the wider world. I'd like you to talk about how and why you began this work, and you're really devoted to this. 

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yes, yes. I'm devoted to it… there's different reasons, and a very special reason I do it is the balance that it brings me, there's a beautiful spirituality with it. There's a medicine with it that helps me to be strong, to not be bored, to be able to get into a zone, a creative space so weaving is kind of like my prayer. I need my weaving, and this way of life of being a rancher, of having to go out every morning and breathe that cold air, to throw some hay for my sheep or having to go to the waterhole. We're living in such a changing time right now, and our culture, our way of life is in danger. And it's my hope that my community see how I'm raising sheep and see that there is a way to do it holistically to help heal the land, because the land goes hand-in-hand with our culture, with our traditional beliefs.

Jo Reed:  You've been a mentor to a number of apprentices, and I wonder what you try to impart to them. Clearly healing the land has been part of the process, but how do you approach your work with mentees?

TahNibaa Naataanii:  When I have an apprentice and I'm a mentor to them, I become their student as well. I don't think that I'm the only one teaching them. I'm open to learn from them too. A nd one of the first things I tell them is "I like to enhance what you know, and I'll help you to blossom it, and I'm also here to learn from you.”  And I try to share with them the love I experience with my work, the excitement, the exuberance, the magic in washing the wool, in carting the wool, in spinning the wool, in weaving, in herding the sheep, in shearing the sheep, in feeding the sheep. There's many different aspects of feeling the richness of this way of life.

Jo Reed:  You've participated in quite a few cultural exchange programs, and I wonder if there was any one that was particularly memorable to you.

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah. I think the one that was memorable for me is when we did a three-generation cultural exchange to Laos, and it was my mother, myself and my daughter.  And we went to the villages just to see their weaving, and then we took our weaving too, and we gave them workshops to let them see how we weave. They spun cotton, which is a short fiber, and they spun it so easy. They are just like some professionals using whatever they had on hand. They created a little spindle mechanism with a tire rim, and we took our Navajo spindle, and I think the amazement between the two cultures-- the amazement—is what was neat to see. Even though we live miles, oceans apart and different languages, different cultures, but we have a common language, and that's fiber and weaving and spinning. That's our language, and I think as I'm where I'm at I believe that's a universal language, and whether I go to Africa, South America, Croatia, if we get fiber people together, we all know that language, and that is an honor. That is an honor.

Jo Reed:  And I think that is a great place to leave it. TahNibaa, so many congratulations, and thank you for giving me your time.

TahNibaa Naataanii:  Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'm glad we were able to do this, and interviews like this, it helps me too. It's also medicine for me to hear myself and the love I have.

Jo Reed:  It's lovely to hear too That was 2022 National Heritage Fellow and Diné Textile Artist and Weaver TahNibaa Naataainii. Please look at some of her work online at Arts.gov—where you can also see a short video about TahNibba, her work, and her way of life.  And while you’re at arts.gov, check out the documentary Roots of American Culture—a film about TahNibaa and all of the 2022 National Heritage Fellows. You won’t want to miss it.  You’ve been listening to You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at  artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us on Apple Podcasts I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

TahNibaa Naataanii: Well, when I have an apprentice and I'm a mentor to them, I become their student as well. I don't think that I'm the only one teaching them. I'm open to learn from them too, and one of the first things I tell them is "I like to enhance what you know, and I'll help you to blossom it, and I'm also here to learn from you.” And I try to share with them the love I experience with my work, the excitement, the exuberance, the magic in washing the wool, in carting the wool, in spinning the wool, in weaving, in herding the sheep, in shearing the sheep, in feeding the sheep. There's many different aspects of feeling the richness of this way of life.

Music Credit:  “NY” written and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand; used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. We’re marking Thanksgiving week by posting an interview I did earlier this year  for the issue of the NEA’s magazine American Artscape that focused exclusively on Native-American artists. I had spoken with author and NEA Literature Fellow Kelli Jo Ford whose award-winning novel Crooked Hallelujah is a semi-autobiographical novel of linked short stories that takes us through the complicated lives of four generations of Cherokee women.  But this isn’t a history of the Cherokee Nation or an insider’s look at Cherokee culture. Crooked Hallelujah is not about “being Cherokee”; it is about these Cherokee women, how they fail, succeed, and survive. It’s an important distinction. They are not on the page to give us a history lesson but their experiences of intergenerational poverty, trauma, the scars of forced assimilation, and an unforgiving church are informed by that often unspoken history. It informs their struggle to survive and competes with the resilience and fierce love that they share. The book opens in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1974, 15 year-old Justine lives with her mother Lula and Grandmother Annie Mae. They moved in with Granny after Justine’s father had left Lula and their three daughters seven years earlier. Lula embraces a small strict “Holiness” church which provides coherence to her life and a rigid inflexibility to her daughter’s. Before the first story ends, we learn that Justine is pregnant. And before I tell you how everything unfolds in this wonderful book: Here’s my conversation with Kelli Jo Ford.

Jo Reed:  Well, first of all, Kelli Jo Ford, a) thank you for joining me; but b) thank you for writing "Crooked Hallelujah." I think it is a fabulous book!

Kelli Jo Ford:  Thank you so much! I'm so pleased to get the chance to talk to with you today and thank you for reading the book. That's really nice to hear.

Jo Reed:  Oh, thank you for writing it! <laughter> and I'd like to begin by just having you read a little bit from it, so people get a sense of what the book is about, but also your style of writing.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Sure, I'd love to. Thank you! I'll read from the first page from a story called "Book of Generations." And the story takes place in 1974 in Beulah Springs, which is a fictional town in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. "When Lula stepped into the yard, the stray cat Justine held took off so fast it scratched her and sent the porch swing sideways. Justine had been feeding the stray, hoping to find its litter of kittens in spite of her mother's disdain for extra mouths or creatures prone to parasites. She tried to smooth cat hair from her lap. She'd wanted everything to be perfect when she told her mom that she had tracked down her father in Texas and used the neighbor's phone to call him. "That thing's going to give you worms." Lula dropped her purse onto the porch. She hadn't been able to catch a ride from work. With a deep sigh, she untucked her blouse and undid the long green polyester skirt she'd started sewing as soon as she had seen the "Help Wanted" sign at the insurance office. She was a secretary now and as she liked to tell Justine people called her "Mrs." and complimented her handwriting. "I'll wash up," Justine said. She'd already decided that today wasn't the day, like yesterday and the day before that. "Well, at least let me say hi." Lula kicked off her dusty pumps and let her weight drop into the swing beside Justine. The swing skittered haywire as Lula pulled bobby pins from her bun, scratching her scalp. Her long salt-and-pepper braid fell past her shoulder and curled under her breast. "Bless us, lord," she said, the words nearly a song. She closed her eyes and as she whispered an impromptu prayer, she noticed the end of her braid to the mole on her lip that she still called her beauty mark. As a girl, Justine had pored over the pictures from Lula's time at Chilocco Indian School, trying to see her mother in the stone-cold fox who stared out from the old photographs. Lula's clothes hung loosely, even more faded than the other girls in the pictures. But something about her gaze, framed by short black curls, of all things, made it seem as if she were the only one in the photo.”

Jo Reed:  That is Kelli Jo Ford reading "Crooked Hallelujah" and actually there is so much about that first page-and-a-half that really gives us through lines that we see across the book. And this isn't where I was going to start, but you just read one of the passages I had marked. And that's when you write about Lula, "She was a secretary now and she liked to tell Justine people called her "Mrs." and complimented her handwriting." And that small amount of detail tells us so much about who Lula is and what that job means.

Kelli Jo Ford:  It does, it does. Lula is a character, I think, who is immensely proud, but she's been put in a situation by a husband who left her with three girls to raise on her own with no support at all. So, she's been put in a really dire situation but she's extraordinarily proud and determined to do her best to raise the girls to also be proud, determined Cherokee women. And in doing so, it makes her a hard woman in many respects, but she's doing the best she can and I just see her as a character with tremendous dignity and strength.

Jo Reed:  Well, as I said, that section you read touches on a number of through lines and obviously that fierce love that mothers and daughters and mothers and granddaughters, this intergenerational love these women have for one another, and we see the different manifestations of it and there's Lula and Justine. And Lula is mired in a religion that keeps her sane.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Yes, Justine and Lula are the middle generations of the four generations I write about in the book. And early in the book, readers learn that Lula, the way it's described is that she turned to a harsh fundamentalist religion to, as you said, to hold onto her sanity, really, when her husband left her. And she's raising Justine and her girls really the best way that she knows how. She's found solace in this religion, and that sets off a lot of the story, the action of the book and the trouble.

Jo Reed:  I found it so interesting, though, that as important as religion is to Lula, at a very, very important point in the book, early on, she sticks up for Justine at the church at a moment that counts the most. When it counts the most, she absolutely chooses her daughter.

Kelli Jo Ford:  She does, and that's pretty early in the book, and that's really one of my favorite parts of the book, when you see the three generations at that point coming together. Lula stands up for Justine when she's getting a hard time from church elders for being a pregnant teenager, an unwed pregnant teenager. And there are questions of, "What does that say about our church community and us if we allow a pregnant girl in our church?" You know? And Lula absolutely stand up for Justine in a moment when she's having a hard time holding herself together. And Granny, or Annie Mae, who is Lula's mother, also stands strong. And so, the three women create quite a force in the face of judgment from their own church community. And that's one of my favorite moments, because later in the book, there's kind of a coming apart of the women of the family for different reasons. And so, I just love that moment when they're all together and they're standing resolutely for one another.

Jo Reed:  It was very surprising that Granny, who is this quiet constant love-- and I don't mean to portray her as soft by any means, because she's not-- but there's a quietude that she has, and her love is so strong. It was very surprising that she would be a part of this very strict fundamentalist church.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Yeah, I guess it is perhaps surprising, but also I think that you can see her approach is more of a moderate approach. When Justine-- she doesn't exactly come to her openly when she realizes she's pregnant. But it's a situation where she goes home, where her grandmother is, and it's just the two of them there. And it's a safe space, and sometime when we're troubled and we get into a safe space and we know it, we know that it's okay to fall apart and let go. And I think that's part of what happens. Granny seems to intuit what has happened to Justine. And Granny offers help. You know, she says, "You need to talk to your mother," but she also says, "How far along are you?" And it's not super explicit, but she's asking that in order to determine whether or not they can get herbs in order to abort the baby. Justine's just a girl. She's been sexually assaulted. And so, you know, she takes a much more moderate approach, but I think that later we see that her questions of faith aren't resolved either.

Jo Reed:  Yeah, indeed, indeed. And then there is Justine and Reney, who's her daughter. And the bond those two have are extraordinary.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Yeah, they're kind of two halves of one whole. And that's probably because they grow up together. You know, and Reney doesn't know her biological father. She never does, never really meets him, and so Justine is kind of her everything for a long time. Of course, they live with Granny and Lula, so she has them, but really in a great sense Reney and Justine are growing up together and supporting one another and looking out for one another in the same way that we saw Justine looking out for Lula in the first story of the book.

Jo Reed:    Early on Reney says that Granny is her soulmate and how rare that is that a soulmate isn’t a romantic partner, especially for a young girl.

Kelli Jo Ford:  That is one of those moments that I pulled straight from my own life. Like I remember realizing that I had a really close relationship with my great grandmother, and I remember having that realization that I felt like that my grandmother was my soulmate, and that that was a really beautiful realization. So-- <laughs>

Jo Reed:  Yeah, I like that realization that a kid has! That you can have a soulmate that isn't an in-love person.

Kelli Jo Ford:  I think I came to that realization later than Reney, but nonetheless. <laughs>

Jo Reed:  Another through line in the book is place.  This is a book that's so embedded in place. And I want you to describe a little bit of both Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and then Beulah, Texas, where Justine and Reney move.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Sure, so the Cherokee Nation is really beautiful, beautiful country. That I didn't realize when iw as growing up. I missed that beauty when I was little kid there. You know, you just, I guess you take for granted where you're from. But we've got creeks and beautiful views and wild country. It's kind of-- there's a lot of woods for rambling around in. You can get lost in there. And then North Texas is different. It's flatter, the sky is more expansive. It's littered with pumping units and mesquite trees, short, scrubby trees. Beautiful in its own right, amazing sunsets -- I haven't lived in either of those places for a long time, but I feel them in my soul, because I did grow up in both places, like Reney in the book did. So, when I go back home, I'm able to see them both, Cherokee Nation and North Texas with fresh eyes. But I feel like I feel those places more than I see them, in a way.

Jo Reed:  I'd like you to talk about how Cherokee Nation factors into the book. Granny is Cherokee, and really the only one who can speak the language. But there's little in the book that talks about how being Cherokee frames their lives. And I don't know if this is accurate or not, but the characters are Cherokee, but the book isn't about being Cherokee. Does that make sense?

Kelli Jo Ford:  It does make sense. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting thing to note. And I think it is an important thing about the book, and maybe important for readers to recognize as well. I think sometimes readers outside of our cultures or communities might come to fiction written by native and indigenous people looking for maybe more of a cultural framework or explanation. But that's sometimes what our books do, but it's not always. And something that I think about and talk about with writing students I get the chance to work with is that that our books should get to be considered as art, too, and not sort of cultural explainers. And that sometimes we have to insist upon that. So, the characters are Cherokee through and through, you know, their experience, their existence-- everything they do is colored by the fact that they're Cherokee women who grew up together with one another in the Cherokee Nation. But there's not a lot in the book that goes through in explaining history. Both of the matriarchs, Lula and Annie Mae when to Chilocco Indian Boarding School. You know, but there's not really an explanation of that or what that means aside from later in the book, you know, we learn that Granny didn't teach the younger generations the language. And when pressed as to why not, she simply said, "That it was easier for those who didn't speak it." So, you know, there are clearly Cherokee characters but there's not going to be like a history of boarding schools. It's there, but you know, and the book is also about leaving the Cherokee Nation and Reney growing up kind of losing those matriarchs and growing up in North Texas, and so it is also about cultural loss and disconnect ; but in the book the characters are struggling in some senses just to survive. So.

Jo Reed:  Well, yeah, you know, what's so interesting, we glean a sense perhaps of-- and I'm using inverted commas here, what it means to be Cherokee in this time, in this place, from the point of view chapter in the book by a white man, Ferris, Justine's father-in-law, who refers to her throughout his narrative as "The Indian." It's constant throughout that narrative.And that explains so much without explaining a damn thing, if you know what I mean.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Right, yeah, yeah, readers just kind of plop down in a world, I think, in some sense. And right, that's there. You see the-- Casual racism, you know? <laughs> Not so casual racism, sometimes, we see that. We see that they've gone to this town that is mostly white. They don't know any other native people, much less Cherokee people there. And they go from the Cherokee Nation living in a Cherokee community and household to a place where Justine's father-in-law refers to her, good-naturedly, he would think, as "That Indian," you know? So, it's a whole different world for them when they leave. But they're close enough, they're always drawn back. They never really leave. Well, I think that's part of the struggle.  Do they have roots and where are they is part of the trouble of the book. I think, one of the questions of the book, perhaps.

Jo Reed:  Then, as an adult when she's living across the country, Reney becomes interested  in her Cherokee identity.

Kelli Jo Ford:  Yeah, and I think that's probably a pretty common experience of we get older and only then do we begin to realize some of what we've lost and yearn for reconnection and that's a complicated process, particularly when you're looking at generations of connection and knowledge that have been lost.

Jo Reed:  And also, when you're thinking about home and what home means.

Kelli Jo Ford:    Yeah, my path in terms of where I've lived, follows Reney's early path pretty closely. So, it's something that as an adult, somebody who hasn't lived in the Cherokee Nation-- I'm at-large citizen of my Nation-- I haven't lived there since I was a young girl. Have family there up until just a couple of months ago, my grandmother was still there. But those intermittent visits are-- you're from there, but you're still in some ways, you know, -- you're an outsider, too.

Jo Reed:  Well, I know it's a work of fiction and imagination, but as you mentioned the characters have echoes of your own background and upbringing. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Kelli Jo Ford:  Sure, yeah. Yeah, when I was a little girl, I don't know my biological father. And I had the tremendous blessing, and now I know, honor, to be raised in a household of generations of Cherokee women. As I mentioned earlier, you know, this book was very much kind of a looking toward home for me. And a celebration of tough women and the trials of motherhood and connection. You know, when I was a little girl, I was in a household with my great grandmother, my grandmother and my young mother. You know, and sometimes one or two of her sisters would be there, or who knows, cousins might be with us, too, living there, or staying there a lot. And I got the experience of, you know, sleeping with my great grandma. That was my preferred place to sleep. And so, I think that's very much like the kind of the foundation of the story. Like this group of hard-lovin', sometimes hard-he-- well, always hard-headed <laughs> women, living close together and struggling to get by. That was very much inspired by me looking back, being a little kid, getting to be surrounded by these really, really giants in my imagination in terms of their strength and their personalities and their love. So, that's kind of the jumping off point for the story. It is fiction, and the characters are-- they're fictive. They get to make their own mistakes and have their own joys. You know, it's definitely not a memoir, but it's definitely influenced by those bonds that I formed early on from living in such close quarters and needing one another so much probably.

Jo Reed: And did religion play a big part in your upbringing as well?

Kelli Jo Ford: Sure.  Yeah.  The church community that I wrote about in “Crooked Hallelujah” is fictionalized as well.  But as a little kid I did grow up in Holiness churches. In some communities Christianity can really coincide with more traditional beliefs and traditions spiritual wise. But for us in the Holiness church we couldn’t go to stomp dances and powwows and things like that because they were worldly which is a term that comes up in the book as well.  But that being said, growing up as a little girl, I didn’t know that I wasn’t getting this other experience. 

Jo Reed: You’ve said you’ve come from a family of storytellers.  Was reading always a central part of what you did?

Kelli Jo Ford: Yeah, for sure. Reading and listening to storytellers in my family because growing up in and around the Holiness church--- my mom left the church when I was young.  So it was kind of a thing where if I was with my grandmothers we were doing the church thing or had to put on a dress to go there.  But with my mom she didn’t go to church.  But very much I think the way that she was formed, and so me too, is this kind of this in a way like this Holiness ethos of, you know, you don’t have televisions.  You can’t watch movies.  You can’t go to football games.  So what do you do?  I don’t know.  You make your own interesting things and fun and conversation, and you tell stories.  Cherokee people are storytellers, too, so I don’t know where it started, or like a chicken or egg thing.  But I just know as a girl when family came together there was not a football game on the TV and this separation of somebody watching a football game and somebody doing dishes.  People were just telling stories.  And it would be the same versions of the same stories that I had heard over and over and over again.  But I would always want to get them talking because I loved the stories, but I also loved the act of storytelling.  I loved my aunts and uncles and cousins just laughing.  They’re so funny and creative.  So I grew up with stories rather than TV.  And then when we moved into Texas we married into a family of big talkers as well.  So I kind of got on all sides.  But books, as well.  The Holiness people that I grew up with were tremendous readers from early, early ages.  Again, no TV. You just you read.  So I think that I probably picked that up, too.   I was a big reader when I was a kid for sure. 

Jo Reed: The book is also really looks at class and about people who struggle financially and work with their hands, and work hard as hell often and forget about the American dream.  Half the time they can’t even pay the light bill.

Kelli Jo Ford: Right.

Jo Reed: And I'm grateful for that because you don’t see that often in literature. 

Kelli Jo Ford: Yeah.  And that’s something that you don’t.  I remember when I first went to or took a fiction class in undergrad. I think it was Chris Chambers at Loyola University in New Orleans put “Love Medicine “in front of me from Louise Erdrich. And a book like “The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake”. And I remember those two books, in particular, that was kind of the first time.  Even though one takes place in a fictional rez in Wisconsin. But then Pancake’s stories take place in West Virginia. And so, you know, in terms of region it’s worlds apart.  But in terms of the people I was reading about that was kind of the first time I realized that oh, right, there is literature out there.  It’s about people who feel like people I could know.  And it helped me realize that you could write about what you knew.  And so my very first stories I was writing in an introductory workshop were stories similar to the characters in “Crooked Hallelujah.’ The first time I sat down and tried to write a short story I was looking back toward home.  And I don’t think that there is any explicit desire to tell these stories because they needed to be told.  It seemed to be all that I was able to do.  These were the characters that I felt like I could get to know through and through.  And I think that these stories are out there but not enough.  And I think that we need more-- we need to be supporting our first generation students helping them, afford to get to school, understand they can go to school, afford to stay in school.  I think the stories are really important.  We need to see ourselves reflected in terms of class and culture.

Jo Reed: I'm curious, as a reader, when you were younger and as you are coming into your own as a writer, were you looking to see yourself represented on the page? Were you looking for Native voices in fiction?

Kelli Jo Ford: Not when I was young.  I didn’t know any native voices in fiction. You know? They were out there.  The native Renaissance had happened, was happening, but, no, I didn’t know those voices at all when I was young.  But I do think that I was looking.  I remember being a high school student in a small mostly white town North Texas and searching for African-American literature which we did have some of.  And checking out all of those books that I could get my hands on in our school library.  So I think that I was looking, but I didn’t know that there was really native literature out there.

Jo Reed: And I’m really curious about this, and this is a complicated question-- because on one hand it’s absurd and totally unfair for you to somehow be portrayed or seen as “representative of” in your writing.  And yet as a writer who’s a member of the Cherokee Nation I assume you at least have to grapple with that.

Kelli Jo Ford: Sure, yeah.  I mean we need more diverse books and voices because, right, it would be completely unfair to me, but also to Cherokee people who live in the Cherokee Nation or grew up in the Cherokee Nation.  I’m no less Cherokee because I'm what’s called an at-large citizen, but I haven’t lived there in a long time.  So, right, yeah.  It’s something that I grapple with. And I have my own feelings or insecurities of not speaking the language or not growing up there in the Cherokee Nation.  So it’s a complicated thing.  And if somebody categorizes my book as native literature then that’s good and quite honestly that makes me feel really proud.  And I feel really honored by that.  And at the same time Native literature is literature.  We want to be judged by our merits as artists as well.

Jo Reed: You received literature fellowship from the Arts Endowment.

Kelli Jo Ford: Yay.

Jo Reed: And I’m wondering how did this, does this make it difference in your writing life?

Kelli Jo Ford: Oh my goodness.  It makes such a difference already just in terms of, you know, just it relieves stress.  It is a source of great relief like economically and emotionally as well.  I’m setting up the spring really differently.  I’m stepping back from teaching.  And I have a book on my mind.  And I’m going to have time.  I'm going to have time to write.  I’m going to have that support that allows me to just really get back into the process of creation and that kind of work, again.  I can’t believe it.   

 Jo Reed: And finally Kelli, what about the title “Crooked Hallelujah”? 

Kelli Jo Ford: That title was once again, I think, that’s one of those gifts-- I felt like that was the title of the book almost as soon as I began to conceive of it as a book.  And I worked on the book over the years.  I went back-and-forth with my agent especially over different possibilities, and I was open to them.  One we considered was “You will miss me when I burn”, but I thought that was too cynical for Justine and Reney’s story.  I thought, you know, the exultation hallelujah I thought it just always felt right.  And it was not something that-- I don’t even know where it came from.  I just think it was a gift.

Jo Reed: Yeah. I thought it was a perfect title.  And I don’t often think that.  And I really, really thought that.  And I rethought it after reading the book.

Kelli Jo Ford: Yeah, thank you.

Jo Reed: No, thank you.  And thank you for giving me your time and thank you, again for this book.  And I look forward to whatever it is you’re going to be doing next.

Kelli Jo Ford: Thank you so much.  It’s really been a pleasure to talk with you today. And I’m so excited about the fellowship.

Jo Reed: We are, too.  Thank you so much.  That was novelist and NEA literature fellow Kelli Jo Ford. We were talking about her novel Crooked Hallelujah.  Another version of this interview heard this year in the online edition of the NEA’s magazine American Artscape titled “Contemporary Culture: Equity and Access in the Arts for Native American Communities.”  We’ll have a link to it in our show notes. And we’ll also include a link to our latest issue of American Artscape which just posted on line—it’s called Original Threads: Equity and Access in the Arts for Hispanic/Latinx Communities

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at  artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us on Apple Podcasts I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

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