the TONIC:

How have the challenges of being both a writer and a woman of color changed over the course of your career? Has your authorial voice changed or shifted as you’ve grown into your own body of work?

AJ:

Looking at the publishing world broadly, the challenge of actually getting published has diminished greatly since I began publishing. The days of looking for an editor, in particular, seem to be finished. In the past, there were book editors and acquisitions editors; the latter scoped the market, befriended agents, and made book purchases for publishing houses. Now, book editors (a la Bob Gottlieb, at the very top, at the pinnacle) are very infrequently obtained, and acquisitions editors do “all the work” of bringing books into publishing houses. While greater ease of publishing is, for the most part, good news, I must also admit that opportunities to publish poorly have also greatly increased. For women of color, we have to protect our present, and our future, so recovering from or surviving a “bad publication” is something that changes in publishing have shown we need to guard against. (Self-publishing, in the main, fits in this “to be avoided” category. For writers who thrive as marketers, and who can be “engines” in their own travel and promotion, self-publishing can be a viable option. But this is hard work for an individual, and publishing houses have systems set up to accomplish the objectives that self-publishing writers almost “reinvent the wheel” in order to achieve.)

My authorial voice has grown as I have, has matured through initial aspiration, and then the miracle of publication, and then the joy of prizes, and then through the grinding work of motherhood. It’s been a fascination to see how life has exerted pressure on my thinking and my sentence construction, as I have matured, and has life has “operated” on me. This march of intelligence in consort with maturation is nothing new or revolutionary, but the change in thinking and intention and vocabulary are engaging, and intense, to observe and experience.

the TONIC:

Writing can be a weighty endeavor - how do you find joy in your process and do you feel it’s necessary to translate that onto the page for readers? 

AJ:

We, as writers, are in the entertainment industry, whether we realize or are willing to admit this placement or not. Readers choose books (or audiobooks) to learn comfortably and privately, to take in sought-after information directly, to live vicariously, to be carried off by a story—of adventure, of survival, of thriving, of joy.

Joy in the process is rather a different matter. Writing is difficult for me. The book (I am currently working on, at any given time) always feels like both an elusive or distant goal. Or, I should be more specific: writing well enough to earn my own approval is difficult. Even after twenty years in the prose-writing business, what I am reaching for in my writing is, on a daily basis, beyond my ability to accomplish. I have higher standards for myself than I have skills, and so, Let’s go: difficult, and potentially enduring, work awaits me – and all of us writer-dreamers. Over time, I have learned that the main task that confronts me as a writer is to get up, get to the work table, and look at my work. I have not yet written a sentence I couldn’t adjust, I have not yet met ink I couldn’t justify using. That approaching the page, confronting the page, sitting with the page is the necessary first step is miraculous—no excuse when all you have to do is arrive.

As to “translating for readers,” my experience suggests that what readers want most is insight: a way of seeing, an interpretation, a sightline that might not have occurred to them, save for the work (that you or I have written) which they are currently reading. For writers of color, insight often comes with our experience, with our melanin, with our varying experiences with the quotidian requirements and occasions of life. Our nation has for centuries balked at allowing that we have experiences of life, and of thought, and of striving and joy. And so, what we see and what we have to say often just surprise because we have articulated our perceptions. We – especially African Americans – belong to a “caste” of Americans who have for centuries been considered imbecilic and unintelligent. So, that we can think, that we can write, that we can wield the same intellectual tools as others—for some readers, that in itself counts as surprise. More generally and more importantly (and more intelligently) however, the insight that arises from varying experience is what makes our work sing and delight—even if the stories are tragic, the magic and miracle of words are transport. Time has proven this to be true.

the TONIC:

What is the last text that truly moved you?

AJ:

Many books affect me deeply—due to the writing, or the subject, or the imagination, or the timing, or the book’s longterm endearment to me—which means I might go back, and re-read. I am currently reading The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. The novel, which is neither long or sprawling, examines aspiration and thwarted hopes with the precision of a dental instrument. Mayr, a young novelist, is prickly and insightful and unflinching and sometimes hilarious as she follows a man who dreams of professionalism, but who can only be employed as a sleeping car porter, because that is the one of the only jobs that Black men are then allowed to hold. Also, I have just finished reading Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, which is a sprawling novel “modeled after” Dickens’ David Copperfield. Barbara Kingsolver is a genius, and over the course of my career, I have learned so much that is practical about writing, from reading and deconstructing her work and approaches. From observing and marveling at her verbs. Honoree Jeffers The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois is also monumental and profound. Finally, a book I re-read frequently for inspiration and pure joy is The God in Flight, by Diana Argiri. A story about gay men coming of age in homophobic 19th century New Haven is a big surprise and a real romp. The God in Flight is my favorite novel, after Morrison, of course. (ICYW, Paradise is my favorite of Morrison’s novels.) The God in Flight remains a book I read when I’m in the doldrums about my work. At least once every two years. I am always re-inspired.

the TONIC:

What is one piece of advice you have for emerging writers?

AJ:

Be wary of constant critique. Often critique has the effect of destruction. Whether the writer critiques her or himself, or the writer craves the critique of others—attention to what does not work will not scaffold any project. Our works will not be critiqued into fruition. Writing is a constructive business; our work is to create. Critique does not create.

the TONIC:

What is your favorite thing to teach students about creative writing, and why?

AJ:

That language is infinite and capable of incredible and almost otherworldly precision. Words work. As revelers in words and masters of language, we have the responsibility, the great fun, and the great power to use language vigorously, carefully, artfully, deeply. The pen is mightier than the sword. Well-done writing is a wonder of the world.