From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Novelist and 2022 NEA Literature Fellow Marjan Kamali is an Iranian-American writer. The daughter of a diplomat, her family moved to the United States after the Islamic revolution and during the Iran-Iraq War. Her fiction, not surprisingly, often examines transitions, family, memory, and the tap dance around navigating complicated and often contradictory cultural identities. Her first novel Together Tea is a funny and compassionate mother-daughter story that underscores the juggling act that life requires for the women who emigrated to the US and those that stayed in Iran.  Marjan’s most recent book is The Stationery Shop –a book about memory, loss, love and social upheaval that spans sixty years. The story moves between Iran and the United States as well as shifting back and forth through time. It’s a surprising and moving novel that’s currently being adapted into an HBO series. As with Together Tea, The Stationery Shop is steeped in Persian culture, poetry, and food and informed by Iranian history.  The story begins with young protagonists Roya and Bahman who meet in a stationery shop.  I’ll let Marjan Kamali tell you the rest.

Marjan Kamali: It's a love story. It's about two teenagers who meet when they're 17 in 1953 in Iran. They meet in a stationary shop and they continue to have once-a-week rendezvous in the stationery shop and their love blossoms into this sort of whirlwind romance. And they get engaged to be married, but on the day that they're set to get their marriage certificate the country erupts in a violent coup d’état and they're separated until they reunite 60 years later in the United States.

Jo Reed: This book opens with two epigrams. The first is by F. Scott Fitzgerald from “This Side of Paradise”: And the second is Harry Truman. Perhaps we can begin with the epigram from Fitzgerald.

Marjan Kamali: The Fitzgerald quote was something I came across before I even started the book: “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” and when I read that line I knew I wanted to write a book with that theme. The Harry Truman quote, “There's nothing new in the world  except the history we do not know,” I feel has several layers of meaning for this story, because while it's true that “There's nothing new in the world  except the history we do not know,” and in this case, particularly, when it comes to Iran I also feel that, aside from geopolitics, that's very true with people. When we meet someone it's very easy to make a snap judgment about them, to come to certain conclusions, but once we know their history we might think of them entirely differently. And that's another theme I wanted to explore with this novel.

Jo Reed: Well, I read, and I hope it's true, that the kernel that this story grew around actually was an event that took place in an assisted care facility. Is this true?

Marjan Kamali: That is true. You know, for my first book, for “Together Tea” I visited lots of book clubs. And at the end of one of those book club visits one of the members came up to me and asked if I would read at the assisted living facility where she worked. And, so, I went down to Duxbury, Massachusetts, a few weeks later and I did a reading. And there was an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair who kept saying things and I wasn't sure if he was heckling me or cheering me on, but he was very vocal. And then, later, they had organized this lovely Persian lunch, because there's a lot of food in both my books.

Jo Reed: Oh, yes, there is.

Marjan Kamali: There sure is. And they had done a fantastic job at making some of the dishes. And he wheeled himself up to me and he kept saying things, like, “I met the Prince of Spain. Did you know I traveled with Charles de Gaulle?” And he went on and on, but people were, you know, trying to have him sort of leave me alone and quieting him down. But I did ask him his name. And later when I was sharing with my father how this event had gone and I mentioned this man's name, because he had an Iranian name, my father said, “Oh, that was one of our most decorated dignitaries. He met the Prince of Spain, he traveled with Charles de Gaulle, he met all these world leaders.” And I realized then that I was guilty of dismissing him, not believing him, and I kept thinking, “What must it be like to be in an assisted living center with this past that nobody believes or maybe they believe it, but they don't really care?” And that did become the colonel for “The Stationary Shop.”

Jo Reed: Well, in a way, it frames the book, because we know from the beginning that these two young lovers will meet again 60 years after their lives diverge. Why frame the story this way?

Marjan Kamali: It was so important to me to frame it that way, because while we discussed the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote-- and my whole thrust with the theme of this novel was to explore lost love, not necessarily just first love. And, so, I framed the story so that right off the bat, from page one or two, you know that these two people did not end up together. And you know that they haven't seen one another for 60 years. I felt that by framing the story when our two lovers are 77, not 17, I give the reader the expectation that's something happened to drift them apart, something pretty monumental, but clearly they haven't forgotten one another. And now they get to see each other again for the first time in 60 years. And I think if you enter the story knowing that, it just sets up an entirely different viewpoint for you, the reader, than if you start and they're 17 and they first meet in the stationary shop.

Jo Reed: Well, I think it gives so much more depth to their characters. I mean, I promise I'm not going to give anything away, but, certainly, one thing that it enabled me, as a reader, to see was that within 77-year-old Roya, and we mostly see the story through her eyes, there's still that 17-year-old.

Marjan Kamali: Yes, absolutely.

Jo Reed: And I love the way it collapses time because of that. Obviously, she's still 77, but she's all of those ages.

Marjan Kamali: She is all of them. And aren't we all?

Jo Reed: Yes!

Marjan Kamali: All the ages we've ever been. Yeah. I just don't believe that in our experience of it, deep in our hearts, deep in our souls, time is linear. It's circular and at any given moment we can access all the ages we've ever been. And it's really like Russian nesting dolls were encased within us. We carry all our past selves and all it takes is a particular voice or a specific scent or even a piece of melody and you're back. You're back to that younger self. And that's what happens for Roya. So, when she does see him again, she may be 77, but she is also 17.

Jo Reed: Well, I'd like to have you describe Iran in 1953 when the book opens, because it was a country that was on the cusp of great, great change.

Marjan Kamali: Great, great change. And, I must say I wasn't around in 1953.. But I did a lot of research and I spoke to many people in my own family who had lived through that time in Iran. It became clear to me that it was a very different country than what we think of as Iran today. They had a democratically elected prime minister, Prime Minister Mosaddegh, of whom most people were incredibly proud. He wanted to nationalize the oil. He was very nationalistic and independent-minded and not kowtowing to foreign powers, which did create his downfall. But, also, the country had a sense of a blossoming in art and culture, theater, film. Even the food culture, all these Italian cafes, and I think the people who were young before August 19th happened had an incredible sense of hope, hope that their country was going to be a great big democracy.

Jo Reed: And Roya's parents and, most particularly, her father, who's just this wonderful character, he is set on making sure his daughters are educated and they are ready to take their place in this new Iran.

Marjan Kamali: Yes. And, you know, I do get asked about Roya's father, because he is progressive. He is very enlightened and forward-thinking. And, sometimes, readers ask me, “Well, was he an anomaly?” And perhaps,  he did belong to a certain class in the big city, but I based him, to be truthful, on my mother's father, who very much believed that his daughter should be educated and was not at all partaking of the chauvinistic sort of old-fashioned macho view that people associate, sadly, with Iranian men. So, we have to remember that that generation of young women in the 50s, they started to go abroad to study and they were encouraged by families who wanted them to progress.

Jo Reed: And I think the question I asked you actually could have been more precise and less about Iran in 1953, but Tehran in 1953. Because I would imagine there would be very big differences between rural areas and cities and, as you mentioned, of course, class.

Marjan Kamali: Very true. So, most of this novel, when we are in Iran, we are in Tehran. We're not in the villages and we're not in the outskirts. And it is important to remember that, back then, more than now, there was a huge difference between what was happening in the big cities and in the villages, which, over the decades, created resentment and then a revolution in 1979. So, everything I did say about Iran in 1953 should be qualified by saying, particularly, in Tehran and with the middle and the upper middle classes.

Jo Reed: Well, you mentioned August 19th, 1953. And you certainly write about it in the book. What happened on that day?

Marjan Kamali: That day is engraved in the memory of the generation of Iranians who lived through it. And, as I researched this book, I learned so much more about what happened that day. It reads like a spy thriller.  What happened that day, basically, was a mob erupted in the middle of the city and went toward the prime minister's house and, literally, attacked it-- such that he had to sort of climb out the window, down a ladder, to escape. He was overthrown. The mob succeeded. It was a coup d’état. Now, as to what exactly happened that day, to this day people are in disagreement. It’s now finally declassified that the coup d’état was abetted by the UK and US. And, of course, by Iranians, too. So, it remains a wound in the Iranian psyche, because, overnight, their leader was overthrown. The Shah solidified his power as a result of that coup and became much more of a strongman than he had been before the coup and became way more beholden to the West than he had been before the coup. So, it feels like the origin of so much trauma for the generation who saw their country change overnight by the actions of a mob. They couldn't believe it had happened, but it did.

Jo Reed: As you were writing the book and plotting and thinking about it, how did you balance the politics, which is pivotal, with the stories of Roya and Bahman, who are clearly affected by the politics, but also have their own story that really is paramount?

Marjan Kamali: Yes, that's a great question. You know, I'm only interested in the politics as it relates to the novel, in how the politics affect my characters. So, I'm well aware I'm not a historian, I'm not a scholar, I'm certainly not a political junkie. I want the politics to inform my story, because the politics changed the trajectory of my characters’ lives. And that's my interest in it. The circumstances, the geopolitical circumstances, affected their ability to be married. Other things did, too. No spoilers.  But it's a constant balance, because, as a novelist, you don't want the politics to overwhelm the story. At least, I don't. I don't want to be didactic, I don't want to be preaching. If people are interested in this history, I know they can follow up and, you know, research on their own later and see what they discover. So, I like to think of the politics as a backdrop to the main, main concern of the novel, which is the characters.

Jo Reed: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think as you're writing, you're creating characters from a country that Americans still don't know that much about. And I would imagine that's something that you have to be thinking about, too.

Marjan Kamali: Yes. And you know what? When I was younger I was so aware of that that, sometimes, I felt it was an obligation of mine to explain the history or to inform my reader. But that does not do any good for the story. So, I think one thing I've learned is I can tell the story and trust that even if not every reader is well versed with the history, they will figure it out. I give enough context for them to figure it out, but I'm not going to overexplain or worry too much that they may have a gap in their knowledge of the history. Because that takes you out of the dream of the story.

Jo Reed: And I think you succeed really, really well in doing that. That's why I was curious about it, because it's such a fine line to walk.

Marjan Kamali: It is a fine line, yes. Oh, my goodness.

Jo Reed: You know, so much of this book is about love in many manifestations, not just romantic love, though certainly that. But then the kind of steadfast love that Roya has with her husband, Walter, And then the family love, the love between her and her sister, the love with her parents and their daughters. So, we see that. But we also see loss, the loss of, writ large, a country; the loss of first love, the loss of a child. And, I think it all connects with unfinished business that we all have and it's not like this book is trying to finish all that business for Roya, but it's taking one strand of it and trying to, you know, put a period at the end of it.

Marjan Kamali: You said it. You said it. Don't we all have unfinished business.

Jo Reed: Oh, yes, yes.

Marjan Kamali: And I really wanted to give my character Roya the gift of having some closure on her unfinished business, like you say, this one strand of it. And you are right about the very different manifestations of love, the sisterly love, romantic, parent-child, husband, fiancé, all of that, and the love of country and the loss. Roya has so much love in her life, but sometimes when you do you set yourself up for the potential of a lot of loss as well. And, in her case, tragedies do ensue. I wanted to show that, at the end of the day, for this one woman, despite all that she has lost, what she's gained outweighs it. And I wanted her at the end of the book to recognize that the losses, though they shaped her and were incredibly difficult, and, in many instances, you know, held her back for some time, at the end of the day, what she does have, what she has gained, what she holds dear, is still far more, in some ways, powerful and healing. And I wanted her to have that sense of healing. And it's not a big, fat kind of emotional catharsis, but it's a very quiet healing. And sometimes that quiet acceptance, I think, can be in many ways restorative for the character and, hopefully, then for the reader.

Jo Reed: It's peace.

Marjan Kamali: It's peace. Exactly. That's such a good word. Yeah. It's peace.

Jo Reed: And I have to give a shoutout to Walter--

Marjan Kamali: Yes.

Jo Reed: --who was Roya’s wonderful, wonderful husband who really supports her as she makes a decision to meet this man again 60 years after she was engaged to marry him.

Marjan Kamali: Yeah, we do need to give Walter credit. You know, I've been in book clubs where some people have been Team Bahman, Roya's fiancé from Iran, or Team Walter. And they really, to my shock, like, argue and get at each other's throats. But I don't think one outweighs the other. Walter is incredible in his own right and, in my mind, I don't see Roya's relationship with Walter as a compromise. It's just different. It's easy to idealize the teenager she never did end up with and to romanticize what he was. But she did live a life with Walter. And sometimes I'm asked why Walter is so giving in his support of Roya and, literally, drives her to the Duxton Senior Center so she can see again her first love from 60 years ago. You know, I think Walter may not have done that when he was 37, per se, but, at 77, he and Roya have enough of a shared history, enough of a life lived together, that he's secure! And maybe he would have been even when he was younger. He is Walter, after all. But he loves her so much that he wants to give her this gift of healing. And that, to me, is true love.

Jo Reed: Again, I promise I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but the book takes several twists. And it takes us to unexpected places. And I'm curious how much you plotted out ahead of time.

Marjan Kamali: Oh, yes. Well, the truth is the twists were super unexpected for me, too, in that first draft. For this book, I wasn't that much of a plotter. I sort of wrote that first draft by the seat of my pants. And I discovered the story as I went along. I did know I wanted twists, because I wanted to write the kind of a book where the reader will occasionally gasp and need to catch their breath. And that's a challenge I set out for myself. So, then it became a huge puzzle where I had to figure out the pieces, but I figured them out as I went along. And I have a whiteboard in my home office where I would write things-- and this isn't giving anything away-- like, “Why did Bahman disappear?” For the longest time, I didn't know why he disappeared, but I knew he needed to. Even before their separation, he disappears for a while when they're still in Tehran. But, yeah, a lot of the twists took me by surprise and that first draft experience was incredibly emotionally intense for me as a writer. But then, when I went to revise, I became almost a different person. And everything I did it was deliberate and intentional, and I reordered everything so that it would create the maximum amount of suspense that I could have in a book like this and give the reader the maximum emotional impact.

Jo Reed: Books and writing are so important in both your books and there's a lot of poetry in these books. So, what is the role of reading in your life? You had to have come from a family where literature is valued.

Marjan Kamali: Yes, definitely. You know, my grandfather, he was a writer, he published several books in Iran, mostly travel logs, travel memoirs. But I grew up with poetry being part of our daily life and this is not uncommon for a lot of Iranians in Iran, certainly, and in the diaspora. So, you know, if I skinned my knee, if I spilled some orange juice, my dad would recite a verse from an ancient Persian poem. They were always at his fingertips, those verses. And I grew up hearing them, if not necessarily memorizing them myself. So, poetry was a huge part of my life. Poets are venerated in Iran and they're sort of the heroes of the culture. But I read a lot.  It gave me the greatest pleasure. And I feel like the cake was baked back then, because I read so much as a child and it sort of gave me not just a desire to do what those authors did, but it almost, like, gave me access to all these different worlds and voices that stayed with me.

Jo Reed: Now, you lived around the world when you were growing up, didn't you?

Marjan Kamali: I did. Yes.

Jo Reed: Where did you live?

Marjan Kamali: Well, I was born in Turkey, but I'm Iranian. My parents are Iranian. And I only lived there as a baby. Then I lived in Iran for a few years. Then we moved Hamburg, Germany. I started school there, and then we went to Kenya, and then we went back to Iran, and then came to the United States. And all this moving around I do think it helped me as a writer, because we always talk about the universality of the human condition and how, when you write novels, that's sort of what is the common theme all across. And, for me, I had first-hand experience that what happens in the playgrounds of Nairobi, Kenya, is the same as what happens in the playgrounds of Tehran, Iran, and Queens, New York. The language, the customs, the politics, outfits may be different, but the people and the human sort of connections and desires are exactly the same.

Jo Reed: When did you come to the US?

Marjan Kamali: January 1982. I came to the US a few months shy of my 11th birthday.  We came to New York, had the quintessential looking out the plane window, seeing all the jeweled lights, seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time, landing in New York City, and we lived in Queens. I went to high school in Manhattan and those lights were specifically remarkable to me, because we had come from a country in the middle of a war and--

Jo Reed: Is this the Iraq War?

Marjan Kamali: Yes, yes. The Iran-Iraq War. I was there when it started and I was there for the first year and a half of that eight-year war. And, so, I remember looking at the lights and thinking, “Oh, my God, they're allowed to keep their lights on at night!” Because we had not been allowed to do that for over a year.

Jo Reed: In your first book, “Together Tea,” you write about the main character Mina, and I'm quoting now: “She knew how to swing her legs on that hyphen that defined and denied who she was, Iranian-American, neither the first word nor the second really belonged to her. Her place was on the hyphen.” Was that your experience, too?

Marjan Kamali: Yes, that is my experience. And I used to resent the hyphen, because it felt like you didn't belong in either culture or any culture. But I've learned to see it's a privilege to be on the hyphen, because it gives you a perspective you wouldn't otherwise have. And, so, even though I may not feel fully Iranian or, I suppose, fully American, I feel it's empowering to know the best and the worst of both those cultures.

Jo Reed: Well, speaking of the best things a culture has to offer…we have to talk about food.

Marjan Kamali: Yes.

Jo Reed: The food in both your books—it’s so rich. It's so tempting. Was it fun to write about?

Marjan Kamali: It was so much fun to write about. I think in another life I would have been a professional chef. I do love to cook and it grounds me, it makes me happy, I love to eat, I guess. So, there's, like, a huge benefit to doing it. In “Together Tea,” when I wrote the book, after it came out, people kept saying, “How come you included so much food?” And I said, “Did I?” Because I didn't do it on purpose. It just is impossible to write about these Persian parties and these family get-togethers without including a ton of food. Because there is truly always a feast. Regardless of class, the feast exists for the guests, you know? People do their best to create those feasts. And then, with “The Stationary Shop,” I included a lot of food and it was way more intentional. This time I wanted the food to sort of play a particular role, especially because when Roya comes to America she can't even speak English. And, so, the food is one way she's able to communicate through the food, through the preparation of it, and sharing it with somebody like a young Walter. But, yeah, I love to cook and I cook a lot of Persian food.

Jo Reed: It’s not unusual for writers to have an MFA—a Master of Fine Arts—which you have. But you also have an MBA, a Master of Business Administration. I’m really curious: has your MBA proved helpful at all with your writing?

Marjan Kamali: I want to think it has, because it would make me feel better about--

Jo Reed: --having done it.

Marjan Kamali: --having done it and the time and money I spent. You know what? It helped me the most with having a thick skin, because I did-- as you know, I have an MFA in creative writing. I did it in tandem with the MBA. Long story there, but one thing the MBA taught me, which has served me so well as a writer, is how to have a thick skin. Because the people I was with at Columbia Business School, ready to jump into finance at the turn of the century, they were not wimpy. They could take anything. They were so tough and, from them, I learned how to have a thick skin. And that has served me well as a writer who is constantly out there for everyone to adore and everyone to sort of, you know, share their opinion about-- not adore, if they wish.

Jo Reed: You-- congratulations-- have gotten a 2022 Lit Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. What do you hope it will allow you to do.

Marjan Kamali: Emotionally, it allows me to finally breathe and to stop thinking I have to somehow legitimize myself or prove that I can do this. So, emotionally, it's been incredibly gratifying. Talk about being at peace. But, practically, it allows me to focus on my writing, to have more time to dig deep, delve into it without other pressures and worries all the time, and, quite frankly, to give back. I do think that the community of the arts-- people like to complain about it or, you know, think about how hard it is to be an artist, but it's a privilege and it's empowering and I've been inspired by so, so many. So, I hope to give back and I feel this allows me to focus more on giving back as well.

Jo Reed: “The Stationary Shop” is being adapted into an HBO series, another big congratulations!

Marjan Kamali: Thank you.

Jo Reed: I can't imagine how exciting that must be. And are you a part of the collaboration process? How does it work?

Marjan Kamali: Well, I'm officially a consulting producer. So, it means that I have some say. I'm definitely not in charge, nor should I be. And I think of it as-- you know, people sometimes ask, “Are you worried they're going to change the book?” Well, they can't change the book, because the book is the book. The book is the book. It's in the book shelves, it's online. No one can change the book. But every time a reader reads this book, they have their own interpretation of it, as they should. And I feel this TV adaptation will just be one more interpretation. I'm curious to see how it all plays out. And I will do my utmost to make sure that the story is true to the culture and, as much as possible, to the characters. But I also know that things will change.

Jo Reed: And, Marjan, like you, I really love cooking.

Marjan Kamali: Yay!

Jo Reed: And it's something I do a lot.

Marjan Kamali: Yes.

Jo Reed: When we hang up, I am about to put some bread on to rise.

Marjan Kamali: Yay!

Jo Reed: So, if I'm attempting Persian food for the first time, what do you think a good dish would be to cut my teeth on?

Marjan Kamali: Okay. A lot of people are enamored by the rice dishes, especially because in the Persian way of making it, we like the bottom to be very golden and crusty and crispy. The bottom of the pot part of the rice, that tahdig. So, you could look at that. And there are all these food blogs now. You could just go look at TurmericAndSaffron, MyPersianKitchen. But, yes, that rice dish, just to get yourself into the mood, the tahdig is great. Another dish I personally love that I also hope you make is fesenjan, it's, like, three ingredients. It's walnuts, pomegranate molasses, and chicken. But it's fantastic. And I believe the New York Times has a very good fesenjan recipe if you want to just Google that. But you, basically, grind the walnuts in a food processor, you cook them on a stove top in a big Dutch oven, big pot, and you eventually add the pomegranate molasses. Add a little cinnamon, little saffron. I'm getting hungry as we--

Jo Reed: I am, too. I'm making notes.

<laughter>

Marjan Kamali: Yeah. Yeah.

Jo Reed: I am as well. And then, finally, tell me what you're working on now.

Marjan Kamali: Yes. The third novel. It's currently called “Novel 3,” which is a great title. Truly, I started writing a book about four mothers in the suburbs of New England worried about where their kids were going to go off to college and a nice, you know, 75 pages into that manuscript I was like, “I do not care. I don't care about this.” It wasn't compelling to me. So, lo and behold, it's changed. And, now, I'm actually writing about a friendship that spans several decades back in Iran and the US. And I think of it as the third in my trilogy of books set in Iran and America. And we see these girls form their bond in childhood and follow them as they go through adolescence, you know, women's right movement in Iran, which people don't realize is quite robust and-- well, there's betrayal and forgiveness and all that good stuff.

Jo Reed: I love books about friendship. So, I am very much looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you for giving me your time and for writing these wonderful books and for all your tips about cooking.

Marjan Kamali: Thank you so much. Highly recommend that dish. I hope you make it after we go off the air.

Jo Reed: I'll let you know how it comes out.

Marjan Kamali: Yes. Thank you so much for this interview. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Jo Reed: It was a real pleasure for me as well. Thank you.

That was novelist and 2022 NEA Literature Fellow Marjan Kamali. We were talking about her novel The Stationery Shop. You can keep up with her at marjankamali.com. We will have links to the food blogs in the show notes. You’ve been listening to Art Works. Follow Art Works on Apple podcast or Google Play—leave us a rating—it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Stay safe and thanks for listening!

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Marjan Kamali: I grew up with poetry being part of our daily life and this is not uncommon for a lot of Iranians in Iran, certainly, and in the diaspora. So, you know, if I skinned my knee, if I spilled some orange juice, my dad would recite a verse from an ancient Persian poem. They were always at his fingertips, those verses. And I grew up hearing them, if not necessarily memorizing them myself. So, poetry was a huge part of my life. Poets are venerated in Iran and they're sort of the heroes of the culture. But I read a lot. It gave me the greatest pleasure. And I feel like the cake was baked back then, because I read so much as a child and it sort of gave me not just a desire to do what those authors did, but it almost, like, gave me access to all these different worlds and voices that stayed with me.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the album Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Josephine Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. It’s Women’s History month, so we wanted to revisit podcasts celebrating great women artists…and my conversation with Valerie Boyd about Zora Neale Hurston was of course near the top of the list. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is one of the greatest works of American fiction and the book was also one of the four original titles selected when the Arts Endowment launched the NEA Big Read initiative.  Then we heard the news that Valerie Boyd who wrote the acclaimed biography of Hurston “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Biography of Zora Neale Hurston” died on February 17.  And that decided us: It seemed appropriate to honor both women by revisiting my 2006 in-depth interview with Valerie Boyd about Hurston and “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  Just a few words to add to the many lately written about Valerie Boyd: she was a journalist, a biographer, a writer, and a mentor to many writers, particularly women of color.  Boyd had spent nearly two decades at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, leaving to write “Wrapped in Rainbows.”  She spent almost a decade researching and writing the comprehensive and compassionate biography that has become a definitive examination of Hurston and her work from her birth through her death. It earned numerous awards including a Southern Book Award, an American Library Association Notable Book Award and a Georgia Author of the Year Award in nonfiction. Valerie Boyd’s knowledge of and clear-eyed passion for Hurston is apparent in the book and in my interview with her. I remember I had asked Valerie about the dedication in “Wrapped in Rainbows” which read “For Zora Neale Hurston: who chose me.”

Valerie Boyd: I feel in many ways that my opportunity to do this book came about because of my long time interest in Hurston.  I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God when I was a first-year college student, and I was blown away by the book-- just amazed that somebody could have written a book in the 1930s that still spoke to me so resonantly across the decades.  I was touched by the character of Janie Crawford, who as we know is on a journey to know herself, and as a 17‑year-old, first-year college student, I was just embarking on a similar journey myself.  So I certainly related to Janie, but I was also very much interested in Zora Neale Hurston.  I was interested in the woman behind the book, and as an aspiring writer, I really felt that I had found my literary grandmother of sorts.  And so, my connection to Hurston began then.   I read everything I could find by her and everything I could find about her including Robert Hemenway's 1977 biography of her, which was the only full-scale biography before Wrapped in Rainbows.  I enjoyed his book and really became a Zora Head-- a real Zora enthusiast.  And then in 1994, I heard Hemenway give a talk at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival in Eatonville in which he critiqued his own book and pointed out things that he felt he had missed because he was a man writing about a woman-- because he was a White American writing about an African-American.  And he said, "It's time for a new biography to be written, and it needs to be written by a Black woman."  And it was at that moment that I felt this sort of inner calling.  I felt like all of my connection to Hurston-- that feeling of having found a literary grandmother-- all of that had coalesced to this moment when I felt sort of this inner calling to tell her story-- to write her biography.  The work sort of fell into my lap, so that's part of why I feel that she chose me for the work.  It was a connection-- a mutual connection.  We chose each other, I think. 

Josephine Reed: Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 in Alabama.  Her family moved to Eatonville, Florida when she was quite young.  Explain the significance of Eatonville in her life and he work..

Valerie Boyd: I think Eatonville was completely significant for Hurston because it was a community where she was never indoctrinated in inferiority.  It was an all-Black town.  One of the few all-Black towns still surviving in the early part of the 20th century when when her family moved to Eatonville when she was just a toddler.  And she always talked about Eatonville as her hometown almost as if it were her birthplace because she moved there as a very young child.  So her earliest memories were of Eatonville, and Eatonville was the place where she began to discover her voice as a storyteller.  She grew up listening to stories being told on the porch of Joe Clark's store.  Her father was a Baptist minister, so the ministers would come by and tell stories of God and the devil, and she absorbed these stories.  And these stories and this kind of Black folk life and Black folk culture became her primary language as a storyteller, but, mostly, Eatonville was important because it was a place where, as I said, she was never indoctrinated in inferiority.  It was a place where she saw Black people achieving or failing on their own merits.  Her father was one of the mayors of Eatonville for a time.  Her mother was a seamstress in the community and a Sunday school teacher.  This was a place that was sort of protected from a kind of judging, racist gaze because it was an isolated, small Black community.  So she really learned in Eatonville that she could be whatever she wanted to be and do whatever she wanted to do.  And that knowledge, that real ingrained belief, sustained her for the rest of her life, and I think really gave her even the notion that she could become a writer that she could become a storyteller and make her mark on the world that way. 

Josephine Reed: It was a roundabout and very long trip for Hurston from Eatonville first to Howard where she studied with Alain Locke and then on to New York.  Can you give us a brief summary of how she made that journey? 

Valerie Boyd: Yeah, the journey really began for her-- initially-- involuntarily.  Hurston's mother died when she was 13, and the family fell apart.  She had seven siblings-- six brothers and one sister.  And Zora was especially close to her mother because her mother encouraged her storytelling gifts.  Her mother encouraged all of her children to jump at the sun.  She said, "You might not land on the sun, but at least you'll get off the ground."  So Zora Hurston was especially close to her mother, Lucy Hurston.  And after her mother's death, not only did the whole family fall apart, but Hurston herself was sort of thrust into adulthood.  Her father quickly remarried.  He married a woman who was younger than his older children.  All of the children resented the quick remarriage.  It was less than six months after their mother died.  There was a lot of turmoil in the family.  Zora, especially, resented this new young stepmother.  And, in fact, Zora got in a physical fight with the stepmother and almost killed her.  And after that, Zora's father, John Hurston, really just had to send her away and felt like she could no longer be in his home.  He had already sent her away to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida at Florida Baptist Academy.  But after the fight with her stepmother, he really sent her back to school, and she wasn't really welcome to come home anymore after that.  And so she was thrust into adulthood and really forced to sort of make her own way in the world.  And so there was a real difficult time there.  There's a period in Hurston's life that's known among Hurston scholars as the missing years.  There are about ten years where she disappears from public record, and we don't really know where she was or what she was doing.  She reemerged on the public record in Baltimore at age 26.  And at age 26, she still hadn't finished high school.  And so in order to qualify for free public schooling in the state of Maryland, she lopped ten years off her life, and told school officials she was 16 instead of 26. 

Josephine Reed: And looking at the picture in your book, you can see how school officials were persuaded by that.  She looked so young. 

Valerie Boyd: Right, exactly.  And she had been told that by people who-- when she was trying to find a job to make ends meet to really scrape by any means possible, she was often told that she looked too young to work.  People asked her, "Does your mother know you're out here working?"  And so she used that youthful face to her advantage by claiming to be ten years younger.  And once she lopped those years off, she never added them back on, but those ten years-- that taking on the role of the youthful ingénue helps her to get into Howard University because after she was able to graduate from high school in Baltimore, she went on to Howard University.  Actually, she didn't graduate from high school in Baltimore.  She was at Morgan State, and she went on to Howard and finished up some final classes in Howard's high school division, went on to college at Howard, and then transferred from Howard to Barnard.  And that's how she got to New York. 

Josephine Reed: It seemed that when she arrived in New York that she really arrived at the right place at the right time. 

Valerie Boyd: Absolutely.  And it wasn't totally accidental.  I mean, Hurston was ten years older.  She was quite savvy, and she had actually submitted a short story to Opportunity magazine based in New York.  She was very much aware of this burgeoning movement in New York that we know as the Harlem Renaissance.  At the time, they called themselves part of the New Negro Movement.  So she was aware of this movement-- this flowering of Black arts and culture that was going on.  She was reading the magazines.  She submitted a piece to Opportunity.  The editor, Charles Johnson, was so impressed with the story that he suggested that she consider making a move to New York and all she needed was that casual suggestion.  So with a $1.50 in her purse, the story goes, she actually dropped out of Howard and moved to New York to see if she could make a go of it in New York and to be a part of this Harlem Renaissance, which obviously we know she did.

Josephine Reed: Well, explain just a little bit about what that burst of creativity was like then.

Valerie Boyd: You mentioned Alain Locke, who was actually Zora's professor at Howard, and he was the person who sort of helped her to know about this burst of creativity that was going on New York.  He introduced her and some of her classmates to the goings on.  He was often going from D.C. to New York to participate in this.  He was one of the sort of deans of this New Negro Movement.  He and Charles Johnson and others, who were really sort of organizing the young, Black artists and intellectuals, and helping them to know each other and also helping them to publish in the magazines that were flourishing at the time-- to help them get book contracts and to really make it a movement rather than individual efforts.  So it was an incredibly creative time where you had not only the flowering of jazz in the nightclubs-- the jazz and blues clubs, but also a flowering of Black artistic expression on all levels-- particularly literature and visual arts.  A lot of the writers that we've come to know of from that period-- the period of the '20s, all the way into the early '30s-- Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neale Hurston.  All of them were producing at this time-- producing strong writing.  They were working with visual artists like Augusta Savage and Aaron Douglas.  A lot of them got together and actually produced a magazine called “Fire!!”, but they formed a real community of supportive artists and writers who helped each other to grow in their work and to really feel that they were not alone and also they pushed the conventions a bit.  This group of younger artists and writers who put out “Fire!!” really wanted to challenge the status quo of some of the older intellectuals like W.E.B. DuBois.  And so it was really a vibrant movement, and Hurston was at the center of it.

Josephine Reed: How did Zora Neale Hurston take to Harlem?  And how did Harlem take to Zora Neale Hurston?

Valerie Boyd: Well, she took to Harlem beautifully, because Harlem, I think, reminded her in some ways of Eatonville.  Eatonville was this all-Black community where you can sink or swim on your own merits not based on race.  It was a place where Black expression was the norm.  So to walk from Eatonville-- even though it was a circuitous route to get from Eatonville to Harlem-- I think when she hit Harlem she felt a sense of being home in a way that she had felt in Eatonville and had not felt since then.  And so she loved Harlem.  I mean, she loved strolling down Seventh Avenue.  She loved the Southern food that had migrated north to Harlem.  She loved the parties, and she attended every one apparently.  She just really had a great time in Harlem, and I think Harlem also took well to her.  One thing that's interesting about Hurston, when we think of the Harlem Renaissance, is that we often talk about her as a writer in the Harlem Renaissance, but the truth is Hurston didn't do a lot of writing during that period.  Her first novel was published in 1934, Jonah's Gourd Vine, which was sort of a fictional account of her parents' marriage.  The Harlem Renaissance pretty much-- most scholars agree-- ended with the stock market crash of 1929.  Sometimes scholars put the Harlem Renaissance into the early '30s, but it's interesting Hurston didn't publish any books during the Harlem Renaissance of the '20s.  Her books came later.  So more than being a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, she was more a personality of the Harlem Renaissance.  As I said, she went to all the parties.  She held court.  She told stories.  She was in the middle of this magazine, Fire!!, that was being produced.  She, and Wallace Thurman, and Langston Hughes, and Bruce Nugent were sort of the main creative forces behind that magazine.  So she was very much involved, but not as productive as a writer as she would become later in the 1930s.

Josephine Reed: Let's focus now on “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  When you talk about Harlem Renaissance as being groundbreaking-- in many ways pushing the envelope, one can also say that about “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

Valerie Boyd: Absolutely.  I mean, what amazes me so much about “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is that no matter whether the '20s or '30s, that really explored something that had not, at that point, been explored before in literature and that was the internal life of an ordinary self-educated southern Black woman.  It's hard for us to imagine, at this point, how revolutionary that book was.  We've read Toni Morrison.  We've read Alice Walker.  We've read Terry McMillan.  We've read Edwidge Danticat, and we've read all these Black women writers and other writers who look at the internal lives of Black women.  When Hurston did this with “Their Eyes Were Watching God” in the 1930s, that was revolutionary.  She was the first, I think-- if not, I mean, perhaps, one of the first, but I think the first writer to say these people's lives these self‑educated ordinary Black folk, and particularly Black women, these people lives are worthy of literature.  It's important to give these people a voice at the table-- at the national table as part of the conversation.  She did that.  She opened that door in a way that made the work of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, and all the other writers we enjoy today, possible.  And I think that's one of the most amazing things about “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

Josephine Reed: Tell us about Janie Crawford the protagonist of “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”.

Valerie Boyd: Well, Janie Crawford is an incredible woman who is also a very ordinary woman.  She is a woman who is ordinary in the sense that she is part of this Florida community.  She grows up in the rural South.  She is self-educated.  She is raised by her grandmother, Nanny.  And yet, with all of that kind of ordinariness, she becomes extraordinary in this journey that she embarks on to know herself.  And with Janie, the journey takes the form of her relationships with three men, Logan Killicks, Jody Stark, and then Tea Cake.  Many of these characters were inspired by characters in Hurston's own life, but Janie herself is, as I said, a woman who's embarking on this journey to know herself.  I mean, it's not-- it's been talked about as a love story, and I think “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a love story in some ways.  And, clearly, there is this great love story between Janie and Tea Cake, the final man in her life-- at least in the story.  I think more than that, it's a love story of Janie coming to love herself-- coming to know, and love, and accept herself.  And I think Janie is so interesting, because even though she is a Black woman, she's very specific-- Southern, Black, self-educated, rural woman.  She is embarking on a journey that we can all relate to.  It's a journey that men and women, and Black people and white people, and people of all colors and cultures can relate to, because we're all, hopefully, at some point, on this journey to know ourselves better and to accept and love ourselves.  It's interesting.  One time, I was actually doing a radio show where I was talking about Janie Crawford and her importance to Black women, and a caller phoned in, and he said, "I'm a white man, and I love “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  Don't leave me out."  And that was important-- an important lesson for me.  I think Janie's story transcends race, and time, and culture.  It's really a timeless kind of story because her journey-- Janie's journey is so universal in some ways.

Josephine Reed: I think it does what literature is supposed to do.  It's that ability to be so absolutely specific, and at the same time, transcendent and universal-- that a work can contain both, the way “Their Eyes Were Watching God” can.

Valerie Boyd: Absolutely, and that's well-said, and that's exactly what I does.  Since the Big Read Initiative by the NEA has chosen “Their Eyes Were Watching God” as one of the books that communities around the country are reading, I've had the great opportunity to go to many of these communities and speak about Their Eyes Were Watching God and speak about sort of how it flowed out of Hurston's own life, but more than that, I've gotten an opportunity to meet people who were reading the book.  I was just in Charleston.  There were 12-year-olds sitting in the front row who had been reading “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, and there were 75-year-olds sitting right behind them who also had been reading this book.  And the level of the conversation has just been inspiring because everybody can find something of themselves in Janie's story, and that's just really amazing.  And it speaks to Hurston's transcendent talent as a writer.

Josephine Reed: Well, the other thing that Hurston does in this book is speak with the poetic lyricism of the narrative.  The language is incredibly rich, if very traditional, and that really is contrasted with the poetry of the idiom that people use when they speak, which is equally poetic though not what many readers and certainly not what many readers back then were used to reading. 

Valerie Boyd: Right, absolutely.  I think you really have pointed to something significant, which is there's two voices in “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  There's the voice of the narrator, which is incredibly poetic and penetrating in some ways, and then there's the voice of the idiom-- the voice of the people in the novel, and that voice is also quite poetic and penetrating and haunting in some ways.  And it captures the poetry of the people in Eatonville who Hurston grew up with.  And she really wanted to, I think in this novel, elevate that language to the level of poetry-- to the level of literature.  At that point, in literary history, this kind of language-- if it had been used in literature in the past, it was sometimes used in a condescending way.  Hurston used it in a way that elevated it-- that said these people's language is literature.  These people's language is poetry, and it was her first language.  Having grown up in Eatonville, it was her first language as a writer and as a storyteller.  So she wasn't coming to it as an outsider, but as someone who knew the language intimately and understood its poetry and its beauty and wanted to really hand it to the world as a gift. 

Josephine Reed: Hurston also wasn't afraid of tackling very tough issues, I think.  She was not afraid to talk in this novel about Black people of having a hierarchy based on one's skin hue. 

Valerie Boyd: Yeah, she not only was not afraid of it, but that was-- I think that was an important theme that she wanted to address and explore a little bit.  It happens with the character of Mrs. Turner who's quite color struck.  It happens even with other characters sort of looking up to Janie because her light skin and her long hair.  So Hurston definitely wanted to explore those kinds of issues.  One thing that she always said-- and she got some criticism-- not so much for exploring those issues, but for the dialect and for the book not being more angry.  Some people thought that it was too-- Black people in the book were too happy.  It was set in the '20s.  It was written in the '30s, so there were some people who felt like the Black people in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” weren't angry enough.  There wasn't enough conflict.  Hurston's view was that she wrote about Black people when white people weren't around.  She wrote about the internal workings of the Black community.  And she understood that Black people didn't spend all their waking moments thinking about white people and being oppressed.  They weren't always thinking about the white man's foot on their neck.  They were enjoying their lives.  They were laughing, and loving, and doing everything that people do in living their lives, and that's what she wanted to write about.  And part of that Black community's life was a sort of hierarchy based on color-- was this notion of people being color struck.  And that was a part of it, too, that she did in fact write about because she, again, was writing about Black life without the white gaze-- without the judging, White gaze.  It's like-- this is Black people are like in their own communities-- laughing, and loving, and living and doing all the things that they do including sometimes hurting each other with notions like colorstruckness or what have you.

Josephine Reed: When the book was first published, Valerie, how was it received?

Valerie Boyd: It got mixed reviews, I think.  It sold well.  It was well-received by the literati.  Edna St. Vincent Millay sent Hurston a postcard.  It was well received by the literati and especially kind of the White establishment.  It put Zora on the map, so to speak.  You had criticism from people like Richard Wright.  He and some other Black male writers were quite critical of the book, but I think part of their criticism came from their own sexism.  Richard Wright was not known for his progressive attitudes toward Black women, and I think it was hard for him to abide a novel that was all about the inner life of a Black woman and saying this life is worthy of literature.  This life needs to be-- this person's voice needs to be a part of the national conversation, and I feel fortunate that we can read Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston alongside each other, and see the value in what both writers were bringing.

Josephine Reed: Zora Neale Hurston had a rather difficult time of it towards the end of her life, didn't she?

Valerie Boyd: She did.  She did.  I mean, part of what I wanted to do in “Wrapped in Rainbows” in exploring her life was to really focus in on those final years.  I think we-- broadly, we tend to romanticize poverty, but  I'm not a fan of poverty in any form.  And so, I was really interested in looking at those final years of her life.  We have this romantic notion of Hurston being a starving artist and dying in poverty and dying in obscurity and those sorts of those things, so I really wanted to dive into that.  So I went to Fort Pierce where she spent the last five or so years of her life, and I interviewed many people who knew her there.  I interviewed people who had been her students when she was a teacher-- a substitute teacher at the high school.  I interviewed the undertaker who handled her funeral.  I interviewed the women, whose father, C.C. Benton, was Hurston's landlord, and allowed her to live in one of his homes rent free.  So in doing that kind of research, I got a different picture than the one that's traditionally painted of her final years.  What I saw was a woman who did not have a lot of money, no, but we have to remember that Hurston never made a lot of money in her lifetime.  Being a Black woman writer in the '30s, '40s, and '50s did not pay well.  It still doesn't, I can assure you of that.  So she never made a lot of money in her lifetime.  It was not a rags-to-riches-to-rags story.  There were never any riches.  The largest royalty Hurston ever made from any of her books was $943.75, which even if she had the best financial eye and the best savings plan in the world, just wouldn't last beyond a certain point.  And here's the thing, Hurston was committed to being a writer-- to using her talents to chronicle the lives of Black communities even when that work did not pay well, which was most of the time.  So she was never making a lot of money from her work, yet she remained committed to it.  So when she died, there wasn't a lot of money in her bank account, but she was rich in other ways.  I mean, she was a part of a community.  I talked to people who talked about her garden in Fort Pierce.  It was a garden that stopped passersby as they driving through Fort Pierce.  They had to pull over and see the morning glories and the more practical things like collard greens and tomatoes and all sorts of things that Hurston was growing in her garden.  She was known in the community as Miss Hurston-- as Miss Zora to some.  She was just this woman who was part of the community-- who was valued by community.  Some people there knew who she was.  They knew her past.  They knew her history.  Others didn't.  It didn't matter, but they still respected her as Miss Zora, this woman who was a vital part of the community, so it wasn't necessarily the tragic, romanticized tale that we've come to accept about Hurston's final year.  There wasn't enough money for a marker for her grave.  That remains true, but the high school students in her community took up a collection for flowers and other things.  There were more than a hundred people at the funeral.  Hurston was an incredibly independent woman.  She lived her whole life that way, and she wanted to end her life that way as well.  And so she didn't call people and ask for help.  She was living her life as independently as she ever had, even in those final years.  And she was always, even into the end, still writing.

Josephine Reed: And finally, Valerie, what I found very interesting in your book was the way you end about Hurston being absolutely confident that her work would receive the recognition that it deserved.

Valerie Boyd: You know, Jo, I ran across an interview.  I mean, actually, a letter that Hurston wrote to her first husband.  Their marriage only lasted a few months, but after that, they became very close friends.  And so they were writing to each other a lot.  This was probably in the '40s, I think the letter was dated-- '40s or '50s.  She talked about kind of her belief that her work would have enduring value.  That it would transcend time.  There was a line in the letter that I knew was going to be the last line of the book.  And in this line she said, about her work and about her eventual place in history, she wrote, "God balances the sheet in time."  And that ended up being the last line of “Wrapped in Rainbows.”

Josephine Reed: And it seemed like a perfect ending to me.

Valerie Boyd: Thank you.

Josephine Reed: Valerie Boyd, thank you so much for giving me your time.  I really appreciate it.

Valerie Boyd: Thank you.

Josephine Reed: That was my 2006 interview with the late Valerie Boyd who wrote “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Biography of Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora Neale Hurston , of course, is recognized as one of the great voices in American literature.  Valerie Boyd, who died on Feb 17 2022, continues to make her mark on American writing.  She created and led the low-residency Creative Writing program in nonfiction at the University of Georgia that opened doors for women and people of color. She spent the last several years editing the journals of Alice Walker—they are due to be published in April. And she was also the editor of “Bigger than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic” an anthology scheduled to be published in September.  We join the many who honor her legacy and mourn her passing. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us on Apple podcasts or Google play and leave us a rating. I’m Josephine Reed. Stay safe and thanks for listening.

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