Tell us a little bit about you outside of being an author. I am a high school teacher, but I am studying to be a college professor.
Tell us a little bit about your work in progress and/or your upcoming release. My new book is titled Detroit: The Black Bottom Community, and it is a pictorial chronology of a little known ethnic community that emerged during World War I, reached its zenith during World War II, and its demise during the national urban renewal movements of the 50s and 60s.
How many years of professional writing experience (if any) do you have? What have you written? Well, I wrote, produce, and directed plays during my high school days. But I guess you’re only a professional when you’re either published or paid for your material so I’ve been writing professionally for about 10 years on and off. I’ve written songs, music, plays, and this book will mark my second book in addition to an academic essay publishe a few years ago.
Do you have an occupation in addition to being a writer? If so, what is it? Yes, in addition to my day job, I recently founded the Existential Hedonist Society. And it’s a full-time job.
What credentials establish you as an expert in your field or have contributed to your success as an author? Well, I write both creative non-fiction and academic. I am currently working on a Master’s degree in African American Studies and Creative Non-Fiction. Otherwise, I’m a born artist – a Libra to the bone.
About the Book
What was your motivation for writing this book? It was simply time for someone to write about Black Bottom. Like Gayl Jones, I wanted to leave “evidence” that – even amidst the present state of black America, with its internal and intra-racial issues and dilemmas of grief, confusion, dissonance, hatred, separation, and division – the black community hasn’t always been in the chaotic mess it is in currently. Even in the context of jim crow and violent white terror, black folks lived among each other, struggled together, and overcame obstacles that pale in comparison to what we think are obstacles today. Certainly you had class, economic, and ideological differences – especially with religion – as seen with the Detroit Urban League, but, for the most part, black folks were a tight knit community, and had eventualy proven themselves a force to be reckoned with. Read Dominic Capeci’s marvelous book, Race Relations in Wartime Detroit, for a good example of real black leadership and strong communityship – in the face of racial, social and political tumult. Ricard Thomas’s book, Life Is What We Make It, is another grand example. In the midst of the current political scandals of Detroit – including that ridiculous circus performance by Monica Conyers – I think this book will deflect negative perceptions and help us to reflect on the positives and the possiblities of what we can do as a community. We are this nations moral leaders, but lately we’ve been steadily integrating into a burning house. I wanted to offer evidence of real black achievemnt and greatness, of our great moment – our finest moment – as a black community in Detroit history. I think that’s the basic intent of any Black historian.
What is the single most important thing that readers of your book will be able to do after reading your book that they could not do before? Know Black Bottom and the struggle of the community’s quest to find peace, dignity, and respect.
What emotions does your book evoke from readers? Most of the folks who’ve read review copies are just glad to see an important part of their history brought to focus. The older Detroit community – the senior citizens who lived in Black Bottom and have vivid memories of life in Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, etc – were especially excited to finally have that important aspect of their lives documented and told. I think some of them are able to rest easier knowing that their story has been told, or at least acknowledged.
Are there any controversial elements in your book? The chapter on the Sojourner Truth Homes controversy which preceded the 1943 race riots certainly surprised some of my early readers because most people have forgotten about it or can only think of the 1967 race riots. Also, I think that the images of that particular historical moment really illuminated the depth of black struggle for human rights.
In researching your book, did you come across any surprising facts, figures or statistics? Yes, I did. And I won’t go into it here because I’d rather the reader share in that experience by actually reading the book. But I will note one particularly interesting fact: Black Bottom was not given its name because black folks lived there. But, again, you’ll just have to read the book to find out how it actually got its name.
If your book were for sale in a major bookstore, in what section would it be found? I would hope it to be in the general history section. But I’m quite sure it’ll be limited to the African American history section even though the first chapter deals with Black Bottoms first community of European settlers.
What did you learn while writing this book? It’s always a sense of great awakening, a feeling of anger, and a breath of fresh air when – as a black person – you read your history and can then compare it to today. It’s amazing what the black community was able to achieve back then, with little resources, yet, now, we do less with more. I think Cornel West said that once, and I now can understand that more clearly.
What one thing about writing do you wish other non-writers would understand? Let’s face it, being black in America is a very unique human experience. And not to victimize that experience, but, because of our unprecedented experience, and what it means to be where we are now, it is important for any and every black artist, writer, painter, musician, teacher, whatever, to leave behind evidence of our experiences – both the good and the bad. It’s important for us to tell our own stories. That’s what makes our jobs as story-tellers especially important. We are not in the habit of creating false histories for conspiratorial and supremacist purposes. So, then, it becomes the responsibility of non-writers to have enough courage and faith to at least assume that a fellow African American can actually have the intellectual ability to accurately tell a black story. Some black folks still prefer to read white accounts of blackness. Just the mere white face of the author sometimes connotes authority, truth, and authenticity for some folks – black and of course white. But Malcolm X said that whites aren’t in any moral position to judge blacks. Minister Farrakhan told Mike Wallace that he nor America wasn’t in any moral position to call Nigeria the most corrupt nation in the world, for instance. So, I’m saying that white folks aren’t in any moral position to write about us in any way, shape, fashion, or form. Not even a movie review. Not even a music review. That’s because they’ve made it too much of a religion devaluing and ridiculing our language, art, religion, humanity, race, etc. And they haven’t yet come to the point where they are even willing to open up the dialogue on those matters in order to begin to not necessarily atone but at least change their perceptions and fears of us. So, I never could understand how they could understand us enough to write anything about us. D.W. Griffith tried. Hollywood tried. Disney tried. Harriet Beecher Stowe tried. Carl Van Vechten meant well when he labeled his book Nigger Heaven. But ultimately the price is too much to bear: racial equality. That’s why we need to hold the premium on how blackness is articulated, disseminated, and dispensed, how it is shaped and formed and reported. What white person would read a book of criticism on white authors written by a black author? That’s why Zora Neale Hurston’s manuscript on King Herod was never published. Her contemporary publishers flat out refused to publish it. They all rejected her manuscript every time she submitted it. They couldn’t take seriously a Jewish story written by a black woman. They couldn’t accept it.
What are three things you wish you’d known before you reached where you are now?
“In the end, the best means nothing.” Oasis lead singer, Liam Gallagher, said that in “I Hope, I Think, I know.” That’s 1, 2, and 3.
What would you like your readers to take away from your book? I want the reader to walk away empowered and invigorated…especially at this great and awesome moment in black American history.
If you could change one thing you did during your road to publication, what would it be and what would you have done different? I learned a lot with my first book. This book I tried to be a little more serious. I try not to be too serious with anything, but it is very important to be involved in the promotional process. You get what you give, whether you self-publish or get a book deal.
What advice would you give an aspiring author? Well that would depend on the type of writer they are, but I’d say to stay away from writing clubs and cliques. They are overrated. Either you’re a writer or you aren’t. Certainly a writer’s group or club can provide you a captive audience, but it won’t teach you how to write. You can learn technical writing or journalism, but creative writing is a borne gift, and participating in groups and clubs won’t help you become a better writer.
Where can readers learn more about you and your books?
• www.pushnevahda.com
Please identify five recent books that compete most directly with yours.
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Capeci, Jr., Dominic J. Race Relations in Wartime Detroit: The Sojourner Truth Housing Controversy of 1942. Temple University Press, 1984.
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Capeci, Jr., Dominic J. and Martha Wilkerson. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943. University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
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Wilson, Sunnie and John Cohassey. Toast of The Town: The Life and Times of Sunnie Wilson. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
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Borden, Ernest. Detroit’s Paradise Valley. Arcadia Publishing, 2003.
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Katzman, David M. Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973).
Tell us some of the factors that make your book unique. Well, unlike other authors of Detroit history, my book is more a concentrated effort of Detroit’s black community – and it has pictures! Not too academic, and more reader-friendly.
Detroit: The Black Bottom Community will be released on October 26.
Video: Detroit: The Black Bottom Community
Go to www.pushnevahda.com for more info.
