Saving the Race

SAVING THE RACE has such a unique structure–a mixture of your personal reflections with essays from cultural luminaries about Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. How did this project evolve?

I understand why it might appear to readers like a unique structure, but to me it’s an entirely intuitive, natural, and kind of normal structure, in that it reflects the constant dialoguing I do in my head. While the structure in STR may not represent the conventional Q&A format, or even a traditional call-and-response formula, it does represent ideas generated in my head prior to an interview, during an interview, and that live long after an interview is over.

The memoir pieces that preface each narrative interview in the book demonstrate how deeply I internalized the themes in The Souls of Black Folk, and how those themes inspired me to interview certain contemporary figures, who in turn inspired me to reflect in ways I hadn’t before about my own race consciousness.

You use specific passages from Du Bois’s work to examine the larger topic of racial identity and experience. Which is your favorite passage and why?

It’s less about one passage as about his use of language throughout Souls–unpleasant rawness and gaucherie,” “magnificent barbarism,” “the vague dream of righteousness… simple beauty and weird inspiration”–it’s so evocative and beautiful and stunning. There’s something so otherworldly and yet so real and right here and now about it that makes me feel hopeful.

How did being a biracial woman influence your inspiration for and editing of this project?

Being biracial is a trip. It’s also who and what I am, so you’re only going to get so far with an analysis of it. I black-identify by choice and am black-identified by others because of the color of my skin. But it’s also important to say that above and beyond that–are you black (enough) or not?–I care deeply about black folks as a people, as a culture. While there would obviously be different ramifications if I did a project like this as a nonblack person, I’d like to think that my efforts would still be received in the spirit with which they were intended, and that is to look at and talk about race in new and healthy and provocative ways.

Do you think Du Bois’s work is timeless?

Absolutely. He’s one of those people–like Nina Simone, Toni Morrison, Stevie Wonder, Picasso, Klee, Thoreau, Sidney Poitier–whose careful brilliance and enormous individual integrity transcends time and different cultures and generations.

What were some of the things you discovered or learned–about yourself, about Du Bois’s work and about the topic of race and identity–during this project?

That I don’t know how to fix racism, and I really, really want to.

If a reader isn’t familiar with The Souls Of Black Folk, will they understand your book?

Yes. Like many memoirs or biographies or literary nonfiction works, SAVING THE RACE is a story told through collage–dispatches and scraps of images and notes and inner thoughts and musings that bear an inherent impact.