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>> You're listening to Library Talks from the New York Public Library, I'm your host Aidan Flax-Clark.

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Today on the show Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, he's the author of the debut collection of short stories Friday Black. Adjei-Brenyah recently graduated from an MFA program where he studied with George Saunders who is a huge champion of this book. And in fact the book has been getting all kinds of notice since it came out this fall. Adjei-Brenyah came to the library to talk about the book with journalist and author Mychal Denzel Smith. They started with Adjei-Brenyah reading one of the stories from Friday Black.

>> Okay I'm going to read just a little bit from the very first story in this book, it's called the Finkelstein 5. Fila, the headless girl, walks toward Emmanuel, her neck jagged with red savagery. She was silent but he could feel her waiting for him to do something, anything. Then his phone rang and he woke up. He took a deep breath and set the blackness in his voice down to a 1.5 on a 10-point scale. Hi there, how are you doing today? Yes. Yes, I did recently inquire about the status of my application. Well all right, okay. Great to hear, I'll be there. Have a spectacular day. Emmanuel rolled out of bed and brushed his teeth, the house was quiet, his parents had already left for work. That morning like every morning the first decision he made regarding his blackness, his skin was a deep constant brown. In public when people could actually see him it was impossible to get his blackness down anywhere near a 1.5. If he wore a tie, wingtip shoes, smiled constantly, used his indoor voice, and kept his hands dropped and calm at his slides he'd get his blackness as low as 4.0. Though Emmanuel was happy about scoring the interview he also felt guilty about feeling happy about anything. Most people he knew were still mourning the Finkelstein verdict. After 28 minutes of deliberation a jury of his peers had acquitted George Wilson Dunn of any wrongdoing whatsoever. He had been indicted for allegedly using a chainsaw to hack off the heads of five black children outside the Finkelstein Library in Valley Ridge, South Carolina. The court had ruled that because the children were basically loitering and were not actually inside the library reading, as one might expect of productive members of society, it was reasonable that Dunn had felt threatened by those five black young people. And thus he was well within his rights when he protected himself, his library [inaudible], DVDs, and his children by going back to the back of his Ford F150 and retrieving his Hawtec [assumed spelling] Pro 18-inch, 48 cc chainsaw. The case had seized the country by ear and heart and was still mostly the only thing anyone was talking about. Finkelstein became the news cycle. On one side of the broadcast world anchors openly wept for the children who were saints in their eyes. On the opposite side were personalities like Brent Cogan, the ever-gruff and opinionated host of What's the Big Deal, who had said during an online panel discussion yes, yes, they were kids but also fuck niggers. Most news outlets fell somewhere in between. On verdict day Emmanuel's family and friends of many different races and backgrounds had gathered together and watched a television tuned to a station that had sympathized with the children, who were popularly known as the Finkelstein 5. Pizza and drinks were served. When the ruling was announced Emmanuel felt a clicking and grinding in his chest. It burned. His mother known to be one of the liveliest and happiest women in the neighborhood threw a plastic cup filled with Coke across the room. When the plastic fell and the soda splattered the people stared at Emmanuel's mother. Seeing Ms. John that way meant it was real, they lost. Emmanuel's father walked away from the group wiping his eyes and Emmanuel felt the grinding in his chest settle to a cold and nothingness. On the ride home his father cursed. His mother punched honks out of the steering wheel. Emmanuel breathed in and watched his hands appear and disappear, then appear and disappear as they rode past three lights. He let the nothing he was feeling wash over him in one cold wave after another. But now that he'd been called in for an interview with Stitches, store self-described as an innovator with a classic sensibility that that specialized in vintage sweaters, Emmanuel had something to think about besides the bodies of those kids severed at the neck, growing damp and thick, pulsing, shooting blood. Instead he thought of what to wear. In a vague move of solidarity Emmanuel climbed into the loose-fitting cargos he'd worn on a camping trip. Then he stepped into his patent leather Space Jams with the laces still clean and taught as they weaved up all across the black tongue. Next, he pulled out a long-ago abandoned black hoodie and dove into its tunnel. As a final act of solidarity Emmanuel put on a gray snapback cap, a hat similar to the ones two of the Finkelstein 5 had been wearing the day they were murdered. A fact George Wilson Dunn's defense had stressed throughout the proceedings. Emmanuel steps outside into the world, his blackness at a solid 7.6, he felt like Evel Knievel at the top of a ramp. At the mall he looked for something to wear to the interview, something to bring him down to at least a 4.2. He pulled the brim of his hat forward and down to shade his eyes. He walked up a hill toward Canfield Road where he'd catch a bus. He listened to the gravel scraping under his sneakers. It had been a very long time since he'd had his blackness even close to a 7.0. I want you safe, you got to know how to move his father had said to him at a very young age. Emmanuel started learning the basics of his blackness before he knew how to do long division. Smiling when angry, whispering when he wanted to yell. Back when he was in middle school after a trip to the zoo where he'd been accused of stealing a stuffed panda from the gift shop Emmanuel had burned his last pair of baggy jeans in his driveway. He'd watched the denim curl in ash in front of him with unblinking eyes. When his father came outside Emmanuel imagined he'd get a good talking to, instead his father stood quietly beside him. This is an important thing to learn his father said. Together they watched the fire until it ate itself dead. Thank you, guys.

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>> So thank you for having me here, thank you for letting me a part of this. I want to start you wrote an essay for Paris Review recently and you wrote it in sort of response to a question that you get asked a lot, that it's why do you write political stories. And I'm not going to ask you that question.

>> Thanks.

>> But I'm interested in something you said in the essay where you say, I'm interested in the ways we dehumanize each other. And I'm thinking about that sentence in the context of you writing these political stories and understanding that you are dealing in the world of fiction right. But there is something, that there are as you write in the essays sort of these big questions that you're wrestling with. So if you can walk me through sort of in the process of writing any story for you in which you do want them to be political and you want to wrestle with the ways in which we dehumanize each other. Are you still thinking of the story, thinking of fiction as a mode of entertainment? And then if you are, like at what point in the process do you know that you've achieved the goal in which you are both writing and entertaining story that delves into those things with sort of the humanity that you want to rescue?

>> Right. That's an excellent question. I'm also jealous of you're your sitting stance, I'm always wanting to be able to. I'm not flexible enough. So I am very interested in the ways people dehumanize each other and I think for me I think it's essential to entertain actually as you're trying to wrestle with those problems. I teach as well and for me in the classroom I think engagement is sort of like my pedagogical like foundation. Because if you don't get people to -- if you don't set the hook, if you don't get them to want to be there, if you don't get them enjoying the space it's very likely [inaudible] not read. So and enjoying can look a lot of ways. I think people think enjoying is like you know someone juggling and smiling all the time. I think enjoying is sometimes me saying look I understand you're a human being with a great capacity to love and understand someone else. Well now let's see if we can help, how much we can stress that capacity, how much can we show that capacity and maybe apply it to these situations and these sorts of systems that we have somehow learned to accept. So I think that the way I know that it's working is I enjoy the writing which is pretty rare when I'm reading my own writing you know. And I have to like feel like I want it to -- I think it's fun. In the process of writing I'm surprising myself maybe. Sort of it's like you know kind of you're doing this dance, you get out of the story's way a little bit. That the characters do something, [inaudible] says like you know make the story swerve, let the characters make the stories swerve. Let them do something that surprises me as well. And I think another sort of green, like sort of lighthouse for me is when I have a feeling that I would like the story to exist even if my name wasn't attached. You know I talked in that -- I think in that interview I talked about how when I was in college, we made these pamphlets. I was in college when Trayvon Martin was murdered and a sort of response, me and a good friend of mine we made these pamphlets that we threw around [inaudible] Albany campus. And we made it anonymously, we printed a bunch of copies, as much I could afford, I think we did like 500 copies. And we, like three in the morning we spread them all over the place. And you know I went to bed feeling good about myself thinking like you know we fixed it, you know we fixed racism today.

>> Yeah.

>> And then we go to bed.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> And you know obviously we did not fix racism that day. But I woke up.

>> I appreciate your efforts though, I really do.

>> But I woke up thinking like you know there would be something happening, some kind of conversation, something and nothing was happening obviously you know. I actually saw a janitor throwing the things away, we had pretty much just littered. And I remember I didn't like that feeling. And like when I wrote that there was no sense of being entertaining or engaging it was about this is a problem, I want you to see how much of a problem this is. And also, I was coming from a place of kind of I think hubris, that is I was on like this hill saying this is how you fix yourselves. And I think with stories I'm sort of asking, more like asking important questions, I think. But what is important though is just like with that pamphlet when I wrote the story Finkelstein 5, I wanted to exist in the world, whether or not my name had anything to do with it, I wanted to be read. I actually cared if it would be read. And when I feel that feeling I think it's like maybe I've hit that space.

>> So there's a news story that I'm sure many people if you're engaged at all in social media because that's how I found out about it. This was a news story about this Rhode Island school that has hired a collection agency to deal with student lunch debt right. That there's like $45,000 in overdue student lunch debt and they have hired a collection agency to go and collect that money from supposedly students.

>> They can take the kids and like hang them upside down.

>> Basically.

>> Get their coins.

>> I bring that story up because a number of the stories in your collection are sort of dealing with the absurdity of capitalism. And you are utilizing satire and I think in our conversation last time you saying you like ratchet up all of the things that you see in the world and sort of like that's your way of -- that's your own way of pointing out the absurdity of it right. But I'm wondering in the process of writing these stories did you ever feel like; do you ever feel like you couldn't keep up with the absurdity of capitalism right? Like because I mean I'm reading the story Zimmer Land and it, you know, it seems absurd the idea that there would be this like amusement park in which you could go and like to this virtual-reality killing of a black person or whatever. But then also I'm like maybe that's actually in Elon Musk's dream journal you know right. Because it just feels like every day there's a new level of this. And so did you ever feel outpaced by the absurdity of capitalism and how did you wrestle with that?

>> I think a lot of my stories -- yes, I did often feel outpaced by the absurdity of capitalism, the absurdity of many of these systems that we're kind of talking about. And for me that's kind of part of the power, I like to -- I think I like to operate right in the space between oh my God that's so insane, wait or actually maybe that was yesterday. You know like right in between that can never happen and that's happening all the time.

>> Yeah.

>> And so I am constantly outpaced, I think. I think half and you know I wrote this book sort of pre-Trump and so I think there's a lot of things that and every day someone tells me you know they send me like an article about some, I don't know some crazy thing that's happening in some mall or some crazy racist doing this insane sort of violence. And I don't think actually like I'm necessarily doing that much hyperbole actually. You know I think what it really is I may be just focusing on one aspect that might be considered extreme. Like for example, there's a chainsaw and that story, it's more like -- it's more a kind of shift the kind, and the kind becomes something you can't ignore. That is you know if you kill someone with a gun that's very common, if you kill someone with a chainsaw it's like oh my God. But they're dead either way you know. And so for me I think a lot of my stories kind of do that thing. I kind of like key in on the kind that I think would make people pause because part of the whole, I think part of these systems that we're talking about, part of their power comes in getting us used to a certain type of dehumanization, a certain type of it's okay on this day for people to run and act like crazy and trample each other because look at these prices you know. And so I think it's like really just keying in on whatever specific aspect that I'm kind of interested at the time shifting either the kind or like, just like you know changing like the flavor if you want to call it that, and making it something I can play with. But I think often I'm not necessarily exaggerating too much which I hope is sort of like the horror you know.

>> Yeah. Last time we spoke I read back your own words to you because I felt like this is sort of my favorite sentences of the entire collection and what I felt like really encapsulated a lot of what you are doing here with this work. And it's in the story Zimmer Land and you write, people say sell your soul like it's easy, but your soul is yours and it's not for sale. Even if you try it'll still be there waiting for you to remember it. And I remember your response when I told you that I think that encapsulates that is you were saying that sometimes you just have to say the thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Right like you just have to cut to the quick and you like, you can't dance around it so much. When and where do you feel like it's appropriate or how do you decide when you need to just say the thing?

>> Yeah. I think -- yeah and that line maybe more than adding the story, I think I'm sort of almost stepping out of the story to be like listen, this is what I think about this whole thing. Especially with that idea of like selling which I think is like kind of key to the whole book. What can and can't be sold, what are we losing, what are we keeping. And I think you know it's kind of a case by case basis when you're going to take that kind of shot. I think in that particular story we're sort of so immersed in the actual sort of world that has been built, this Zimmer Land space, this theme park space. And it's sort of right before maybe the crucial this or that is going to happen. And so I think a little bit before that for me like in terms of like story pace he's just kind of gotten and this sort of bad thing has happened to him. And he's like trying to, like he's been lamenting on this sort of fact that he's there, the fact that he's lost this person important to him. And that she's like now with his boss in this space. And to me it's like kind of earning, how do you earn that thing. And for me that particular line is earned by story of the story having gone so far. And in that particular story I kind of was asking this character why do you work here because I have this space that I created that is sort of obviously maybe ethically horrendous. But I want this character who is pretty reasonable to be there for the purpose of the story. So I'm like how, why are you there, why are you there, why are you there. And for me what I kind of arrived at was in that case he sort of -- he's like almost problematically optimistic. He's like there's something really, really like essential that can't be lost. So I'm trying to use hints of spaces here anyways, then we try to use it in a way that could potentially be positive. And so that's the way he's sort of justifying his own, himself. I can't -- I'm not a sellout because there is no such thing, I didn't sell my soul because that's not something that can be done. And so he's hitting on a truth while maybe living in a space, in a world, in like this kind of lie you know.

>> Yeah. Hitting on that a little bit, the story, the era which I'll sort of crudely summarize. In which you're sort of imagining a world after these wars that happen. And that there's a whole system set up now for people, one like an education system that's teaching people about this past world that used to exist in which people did not value the truth right, they didn't tell the truth to one another that's what caused these wars.

>> Right.

>> And so now we are completely honest with each other all the time right.

>> Yeah.

>> And there's the administering every day of this drug called the good that makes people sort of drains them emotionally so that there's the possibility of them right telling this truth to each other. But they're not completely honest right, like they're not honest about the origins of the world that they live in. They're not honest about the origins of the war that brought them to this point. But they do have an emotional detachment now that like that causes everyone to be completely like direct in describing things as they are. But there's one family that's sort of a holdout right and they exist in a world in which they are kind of lying to themselves in some ways. Where they're sort of saying things that they don't always mean right. But they're happier sometimes, but they feel a range of emotions right that the rest of the world, this new world does not feel. But they also even in that sort of dishonesty are more honest about the war itself and like the world that existed before. And so did neither [inaudible].

>> That's a good summary by the way, [inaudible] that summary.

>> In neither place is anyone sort of being completely honest about what the situation was before and what the situation is now. And it's not even clear like what the value of the truth that these people are telling is now right. And I'm just, I'm thinking about that I mean not to bring so much of like our current political moment into this. But I'm thinking about what is exactly the value of truth and what truths we tell and like what we choose to remember. And how we determine like what's valuable. I'm just interested in [inaudible].

>> Yeah. So in this story the people are very direct but it seems like they're choosing to favor being like assholes pretty much you know. I think for what I was really interested in and not that I -- again, like this is kind of pre the whole Trump thing. But you know there are those people who say like PC culture sucks you know, I hate being PC but really it's kind of like their way, their kind of thinly-veiled way to being like I preferred when I was [inaudible] misogynistic, homophobic, racist, whatever.

>> Yeah.

>> And so they've kind of because in this world that for specific reasons has sort of decided that kindness a.k.a. valuing humanity for humanity's sake is not a useful virtue.

>> Yeah.

>> Their truth has become this other thing. And so for me I think what I think and sort of kind of connected to my sort of personal ethos and now like all these systems, whatever you're, whatever you're doing, whatever you're selling, whatever you're thinking there's not too much value in it if at your core and base, like valuing other humans in and of themselves is not a part of it. And so there can't -- you're calling it truth but it doesn't feel like the truth, it isn't really the truth. And I think that kind of -- for all these different stories if you're, you know, you can have all these, you can talk about profit margins or whatever until you're blue in the face. But if you aren't centering humanity, these people it doesn't matter, it's not important, you're chasing like a false sort of idol. And I think in the world very explicitly they've kind of decided to diverge from thinking about humans as in and of themselves purposeful because they thought that that was the thing that was causing all this pain. And now they're causing all this pain in these new ways and they feel like it's somehow more valid.

>> The Finkelstein 5 you read the beginning of that story and there is a moment in there for me that I've been thinking a lot about this question of and just wrote about it recently, about the question of audience. And so there's like this little tiny moment for me where you're talking, like the character is walking through his day and he puts on his Space Jams right.

>> Yeah.

>> And it caught me off guard a little bit because that's a reference very easily recognizable for me as someone who owns hundreds of pairs of sneakers.

>> Right.

>> Right.

>> Right.

>> But like it feels like there could've been a way for you to like spell out for an audience like exactly what these are.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. But you didn't do that. So I'm thinking, I'm bringing that up as a sort of very specific example but I'm curious in those kinds of moments how much of the audience comes -- like your imagined audience comes into play, and how you're telling the story. And then who that imagined audience is and does that shift and the ways in which that changes the way you tell the stories.

>> Right. I think, I was in a panel with Jamel Brinkley who wrote a great book called A Luck Man.

>> Yeah.

>> If you [inaudible], just quick you know commercial for him. And he said, one of his professors said like don't write like tourism fiction, you know, don't write like tourism fiction or something or not even tourism, it might have been like what do you call safari. I don't know, don't write yeah, whatever something smart about entering, don't write fiction for people who are trying to enter a space to like [inaudible]. Whoa, I got to see like what the black people are like and come back out. The people that I know, know what Space Jams are you know and I don't and I, you know, that's like those are my favorite Jordans. And I don't -- it would be dishonest for me to be like, to try to go the extra mile to sort of make it feel understandable and like tangible for people who are not from that space because they can go find out. And I think also it would be dishonest to like the sort of intellectual situation of this character for who is like maybe more close to someone like me, and from somewhere I come from where he knows what those are. Those are just something clear and specific. And so for me I think I don't think consciously think of a very, very hyper specific audience but I am not going to go out of my way to like sort of make it clear for someone that I know isn't necessarily like equipped to have all the things that I know. Or the people, like you know I'm from a place called Spring Valley, Rockland County and I'm not going to like you know make sure that every single person can get it because I think that the knowledge of the people that we have is valid and is full. And so it's okay for someone else who's not from that space to sort of have to like do some work maybe or follow the story. You know and I think that's important and again like it's for me I think to just write something that sounds true and honest using like my voice and like sort of the voices that I've been -- I kind of grew up around. And then from there hope that in that telling people who maybe aren't so familiar can sort of come, can sort of feel like there's a way in. But I think it is important because you know you can imagine the sort of I don't know movie or whatever that does a lot of like pandering to sort of if it's a black film to like white people to like make sure they get it.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's sort of condescending for everybody.

>> Yeah.

>> I feel like everybody kind of loses out when you do that. You know black people are like come on and the white, and I hope I would think that even the white people as well feel like wait a second like you know I can understand things too potentially so.

>> I don't know. What are those shoes, are those shoes? Are they, wait Space Jam is that a movie, is that? I don't know but I think they'll be all right. Well those are the questions I have for you, you answered everything so brilliantly and succinctly without rambling like I would do so you know we can now open it up to the audience for some questions.

>> I always like to see who's that icebreaker, that brave -- oh there we go. Are you ready?

>> [Inaudible] how do you kind of like step away from it and decompress?

>> How do I like not end up in like a deep, dark pit. I should do a better job of figuring out how. No. It's a great question I think you know if you're going to write work that's meaningful and powerful like it's going to hurt often. One of my mentors Arthur Flowers [assumed spelling] he's like this Memphis blues man. He's like if you write something of power it's going to cost you, you know. I was like okay Arthur. But I know what he means now, you know if you're going to really go there's it's going to like hurt you a little bit. But I think [inaudible] specifically for me actually I think the answer is through the active revision. I usually kind of lean back to like that sort of that you can't sell your soul thing a.k.a. like something that looks almost like a general optimism about humanity. And that is I think that when we are actually cognizant and force ourselves to be aware of the sort of horror that is everywhere around us most of us don't sign off on it. I think that, I don't know how lucky true that is but I like hope it is true. And so I think most of my stories kind of arrive at something like that. I think the Finkelstein 5 is really tough because you know I couldn't, I tried to -- I wanted [inaudible] to be super honest with you. But like I just didn't feel as honest but you know I do think that when people are sort of rising to their best selves and through a revision I think it's sort of like the process of finding your best self through like really, really like being hopeful and really, really paying attention and looking at every single character with love, even the worst character. Looking at them with love, trying to understand how did they get to be this way. I think I usually arrive at something that looks like hope and so that's one thing. And also then like I don't know stopping, writing and like watching Bob's Burgers or something is like, is big or The Office you know like you know those kinds of things like that. But it's important, I think if you're a writer I think you have to have something, you have to sometimes get out of it too. Thank you.

[ Inaudible ]

Yeah.

[ Inaudible ]

It's true. But I mean that's a good question for you though like if you don't mind, how do you like so I'm sorry.

>> She's like okay let me wake up there.

>> Put you on the spot, this is giving you time to like think of the answer as I'm like sort of stalling, and stalling time's done. How do you deal with like sort of that problem, especially like you know like we were talking earlier using sort of maybe your own lived life or like the world around you as like your sort of source material?

>> Yeah, I drink and I say that like sort of jokingly and then I'm not. But what I mean to say is like I don't have healthy coping mechanisms with this right. Like and it happens for so many writers that I know right.

>> Have you seen Bob's Burgers yet?

>> I've watched Bob, I've watched all of it.

>> Okay.

>> You know what I mean. And I think but that's the thing for me and it's you know to be completely honest it's one of the things that I'm like trying to work through in therapy is that I feel like I'm immersed in this for work and immersed in it because I care.

>> Yeah.

>> And this is the work that I want to be doing. But then there's a feeling of guilt when I'm not.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Like I'm trying to step away and I'm trying to care for myself but then there's a recognition of just how much privilege that feels like to be able to say I can or want to step away. Like I can just like go play basketball for fun and feel like I'm not thinking about the world as it is right now right. And it's like yeah and there are people who are locked up and just don't get this opportunity right. There are children being locked in cages at the border right like. It feels, it's guilt-inducing for me at times and so I'm working, like trying to find that space to be like it's okay for me to not be engaged for a moment.

>> Yeah. And it's like it's not only okay like for me it's super essential you know because I think about that as well. Because sometimes I get in that kind of space but then I think like we want the world where more people are afforded this sort of privilege.

>> Yes.

>> To be able to and not less. And so don't take yourself.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> You know like I don't want to take myself out of the game because that guilt actually also isn't useful energy. You know I felt this; I think about this like in a slightly sort of separate context thinking about writing about father. He was pretty recently, not recently, he is now in remission he has lymphoma. So the whole lymphoma, chemo thing really like it sucks. If you have to -- it's like not a fun thing. But and I felt for a long time like if I wasn't feeling constantly like upset or guilty about something that was like not doing enough.

>> Yeah.

>> And one day I went there and this is kind of like a long divergence that I hope I'll bring you back to this thing. I went to the thing and he was doing like you know he's not weight-bearing on his legs anymore, he can't walk anymore and they were doing one of those like exercise for old people. Like they had like dancing, whatever with his hands you know. And he's kind of like a, you know, he's a pretty serious guy but he can be pretty silly like in other contexts as I'm learning now. And he was like having fun you know. He didn't know I was there yet, I kind of like snuck to like the rec room and like I was watching him do like. It was like they were playing the God Bless America and they had like little God Bless America you know. And I've never seen my father dance ever, that was the first time I've ever seen my father dance ever in like a wheelchair with like a whole bunch of old people. And but anyways the point was that like I was like oh wait like he's [inaudible] happy right now. This is the person who it's happening to, like that's him you know and I had like a whole big breakthrough with that because I was sort of like in this weird retraumatizing myself every time I came back. And I was going back a lot, you know every time I came back home, I was I like getting retraumatized, re like fucked up about this whole thing. And I realized like I can't -- when I do that like I'm not, even when I do enter the space, I'm less effective. Now when I come back, I can be like some positivity, I can be something good, I can bring something like light to this space instead of just this sort of like he's already, like he already knew he was like not in a good space. And I'm just like yeah, this kind of sucks doesn't it you know, which is not like you don't need more of that. So I think.

>> He already knows.

>> Yeah.

>> He's aware, he gets it.

>> You know and so I think like it's -- you kind of for me it was like I do know, like it's been like a big thing because it's kind of come right on the heels or like right together with this book stuff happening. Like when I got my agent, I pretty much found out my father had cancer like right away together. And then you have like a lot of that guilt thing because I'm like happy or whatever and all this weirdness. And you know I think you know joy, like being happy and feeling comfortable is like Chi whatever way you do it you know to find, like in whatever work you do, if you're a social worker, if you're writing, you know if you're doing whatever you're doing. The work that the world needs like you have to like not feel bad about giving it space, giving yourself space to feel good. Because if you don't, you're not going to do the work.

>> There is no revolution without joy.

>> There is none.

>> I firmly believe that, I'm just struggling to find it.

>> Yeah, me too it's like a whole thing but for me like that was like one way and that was easier because it's so one-to-one and direct kind of. But then with this real world, like the other world outside it gets for me very hard as well. But I'm trying to like apply that same sort of practice you know. Sorry that was a long answer.

>> No that was great.

>> [Inaudible] that no one asked for.

>> Another question.

[ Inaudible ]

>> Put me in this space to really step back and I guess reflect on this concept of black trauma.

>> Yeah.

>> And I mean I'm a black woman, also an aspiring writer and so I would be writing in a lot of those perspectives too obviously relative to my own life experiences.

>> Yeah.

>> But how do you reconcile, I mean you know there I'm sure a lot of non-black folks in this room, non-black folks who have consumed this. And obviously I would assume, I would hope with the most honest intentions and you know being delicate about that. But for you writing this what has been kind of your I know this is going to happen, I know there's going to be a lot of consumption of black trauma but I'm going to do this, I need to do this. What has been that motivating force for you other than obviously being black and living in a black body?

>> Yeah, I think -- thank you for that question, I think it's a very important question. Roger Reeves used to talk about the work in the age of Baltimore, Ferguson and Charleston and he speaks a lot about how as an artist may we have like an ethical responsibility if you're going to use violence of any kind to sort of not just recreate it and sort of unpacking and potentially dismantle that violence in the real world. For me and again, kind of story to story because there's a lot of, there's that first story and some other stories there's particularly black trauma. But there's a lot of different traumas that I think that I'm kind of like engaging with and that's important. So for me just every single story you try to be as precise and controlled with the violence and how, like how it emerges on the page and thus in people's minds. And again have a clear-eyed sort of idea about how I might impact this. So again, so story to story. In that first story just example of like my sort of method of attack is we have this like sort of hyper violent thing that happens. But it happens offscreen, so like you know I mean like there is no chainsaw murdering scene. You know again just like again for me an important sort of ethical line to sort of like keep. In this story like Zimmer Land is this like recreation of murder but it's very purposely fake you know. And to me that story Zimmer Land, that character who's saying that thing, he's kind of doing the thing that I'm doing in some ways, maybe in a much more violent horrible way because he's letting people have the pleasure of quote unquote pleasure of killing and he think it's okay. But he is operating this space he thinks for the greater good. For writers I think you go to that place, that violent place, that place where you know that you hope this stops but because I get to control all the rules which I don't in the real world I can make it just as purposeful as possible. I can make it, I can say look at this. I know you like, just like staring right into like your humans is what he says, I'm staring right into like your humanity, I know you know this wrong. And I get to control all this space. Unlike you know these like whatever assholes over at like Fox News or something the way they're going to present it and try to like just totally rip all the humanity out of these people. You know I can like have a space where I can make this story up. No one had to die for one and I totally make sure that I'm handling each character with just as much love as possible, and I hope that most of the time it's worth it. But that said you know I think it's you have to think about each one very specifically you know and really try to think about why, why does the story have to exist and why the instances of violence have to exist. For me it's because the world is super violent and to not represent that would be a lie. And now that I'm going to do that how can I represent that just as purposely as possible. And for me case-by-case, then we go like case-by-case and be just as you know precise, clear, and sort of full of heart as possible. Thank you.

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Thank you, guys.

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>> Okay that was Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Mychal Denzel Smith talking about Adjei-Brenyah's debut collection of short stories Friday Black. If you live in New York and you have a New York Public Library library card you can get Friday Black from one of our branches or you can get it on our app SimplyE. And if you don't live in New York go to your local public library, show them love and check it out there. Library Talks is produced by Schuyler Swenson with editorial support from Richert Schnorr, and myself. And our theme music is composed by Allison Layton-Brown.

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