Tayari Jones on Finding Her Voice, Toni Morrison & the Power of Storytelling
00:00 We hope you enjoy this episode with Tiari Jones. Now, Tiari will be one of the judges for originators in 27, a new mentoring program for writers from the Women's Prize Trust presented by Chanel. So if you are an unpublished and unagented writer based in the United States and you want to find out more about the opportunity, just head to the Women's Prize Trust website. Coming up on Vouchelphi, sometimes you need a deep, ferocious intellectual cry. about a few of them in my time. Verocious. Yes, I mean, it's so rare that you can be completely destroyed by a novel that at the same time is so intellectually rigorous. It doesn't choose between its head and its heart.
00:45 There's so much to love about Morrison. She's my favorite writer. One of the things she does is so interesting is that she writes about ordinary people, but with her language, she raises them almost to the level of myth. Yeah, they're gods. Yes, and yet they're still recognizable. Who does not like a happy ending? And I am fully in favor of happy endings when they are earned.
01:09 And silly and nitty and Mr. and should. Everybody in that book works hard to achieve their happy ending. It's so easy to get swept up in what the trends are, what other people are doing, to doubt the uniqueness of your own voice. And I say embrace the things. about you that are unique, they're yours. I love to relax with a little murder. It takes the edge off for me. Hello, I'm Vic Hope and this is Bookshelfy, the podcast from the Women's Prize that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have
01:46 shaped them. Now, before we begin, remember to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode, with thanks to our sponsor, Bayle's. Today I'm joined by Tiari Jones. Tieri is the internationally bestselling author of five novels, including an American marriage, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. It was also an Oprah's book club selection was included on Barack Obama's summer reading list and has been published in two dozen countries, selling over 350,000 copies in the UK alone. Tiari was born and now again lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently professor of creative writing at Emory University
02:25 and an Andrew Dixon-White professor at large at Cornell University. Her most recent novel, Kinn, was an instant New York Times bestseller and has been named a best book of the year so far. It's also another Oprah Book Club selection. Oprah called it a masterpiece of a novel that will live with you long after you turn the last page. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. You had that amazing quote and many, many others that was Oprah and Patchett, Media Reviews. How have you found the reception to this book?
02:58 and specifically, because I know you're in the midst of a tour, a world tour of promoting kin, how do you find the reception worldwide? One thing I've discovered traveling with this book is about the nature of the universal experience. I used to really balk at that word universal because I thought it meant something so bland that it wasn't tied to any particular place or people. But with this being a novel about friendship and motherhood, I think it really is. something that people all over the world have experiences with in a way that it's kind of fraught individually, but not as fraught culturally. So people can talk across their experiences about motherhood,
03:43 about their best friends, about marriage, all the questions that are raised with this book. It's your first work of historical fiction. What made you want to reach into the past? Well, I did not want to reach into it. I feel like the past reached out to me, actually. I was working on another contemporary novel. I had a contract for it and I couldn't. The novel wasn't interesting to me. It seemed like a great idea. But when I sat down to write, it wasn't musical. It was more like it was noisy as opposed to being musical. And finally, I just had to give up after writing a couple of years. years in vain, putting down words but not having art. And I just started scribbling just to see what was on my mind. And that's when I met my two characters, Annie and Vernice. And I was astonished to discover them to be living in the 1950s, to have them living in really my mother's era. When you spend years on something and you then sort of feel like it was noisy, it wasn't musical. You couldn't carry on with it. Do you take anything from that into your next project? Does
05:00 it feel like it is like you say totally in vain or could could it be resurrected? Could it find it? I don't feel like any endeavor, anything we do is in vain. Yeah. Period. So in writing all this time and having to walk away from it, it was humbling to me to try my best and not have something that I could use. but I think I grew from it because one way you know good writing is to do bad writing as well. I don't think those pages will ever show up again. I don't think so. They weren't good. It's kind of like when you realize that you are in a bad romantic relationship.
05:41 Are you going to carry something to its fruition merely because it has begun? Or can you just stop? Like giving yourself permission to stop and do something else gives you control of your And you're in a better position not being inside something that is wrong for you. You are further forward. It's not a step backwards. No. And I learned, you know, the other book, I was at a contract.
06:05 And I did feel that I had kind of contracted out my creativity, that I was writing to the contract, not writing to my spirit. And once I started writing Ken said in the 1950s engaging entirely different questions than those I had originally set out to do, I did feel like I had my imagination back. Yeah. Like you mentioned, that that theme of motherhood, of course, runs throughout. It also a special type of sisterhood between Annie and Venice, their cradle friends. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, Annie and Vernice have known each other since they were two infants in a cradle. They are both motherless. And so this is an identity they share, those poor motherless babies. But that is what brings them together, but it's not what keeps them together.
06:51 other. They love each other. I wanted to write a novel about women who love each other. People often compare Ken to Tony Morrison Sula, you know, which is her novel of friendship. But her main character, Sula and Nell, I feel like they're frenemies. You know, as much as friends, their relationship is very tense. And although my characters do have conflict and they have to, they have growing pains as they, as their lives take different directions, their love for no. Neither of them ever doubts the love that the other has for her. Tony Morrison came up there and looking through your list, she does feature a couple of times, deservedly so being one of the greatest writers of ever, ever.
07:37 Yes. But I just want to touch on that magic that you describe that you need to feel when you're writing. Do you need to feel that when you're reading? What books really, really matter to you and why? Yes, you do have to feel the magic. As a matter of fact, I have, speaking of giving myself permission, I've been giving myself permission not to finish books. I used to feel that if I'm, I'm starting, I owe it to myself. I owe it to the author to finish. If I couldn't finish a book, I would blame myself. Like, why is it? I can't find my way into this book that. Like I'm at fault. Yes, so many others have read it. Why can't? So many others have read it. And they liked it. Yeah. Why don't I like it? What's wrong with me? Am I not reading it right? Am I missing something? And I've discovered this feeling of this feeling of this. deciding that it's, it's, who do you hold in higher esteem yourself or these other people? That you don't know.
08:28 That you don't know. Because you do need to feel the magic in the reading. And I think a story can work for you. There are all these different factors. Imagine you need a grand total of 100 points. So some stories get most of their points from interesting characters. Some of them get their points from just beautiful writing. Others, the plot.
08:49 The plot. You're like, oh my God, what happened? wait, what? And you keep turning for the twist and turns. So any of these can be the reason you continue to read. And some of them have a little from every category. And of course, there's a holy grail of a novel that does all four. But to me, there's, if they can contribute from each of the categories, but one is very strong, it's enough for me to finish. It's so funny that you use the analogy for a relationship when it came to your writing and about how sometimes if they're over, they're over,
09:22 but it's okay, we've learned we move on. Me and my friends use the analogy of a relationship when talking about these sort of these categories. We use that as well. And that's why we don't always understand each other's relationships, but that's because they're getting different amounts of different categories, whether it's the conversation, the physical attraction, whether it's the peace, the understanding,
09:42 but we all build them in our own ways to get our hundred. And the same, you're so right, the same goes for reading. it might be a different combination but that doesn't make it any less good. But you do need something from each. Yes. Just like if a relationship is only sexual attraction but you don't have anything else.
10:00 Absolutely nothing else. So you have to get some from each but there can be a standout. Like really interesting standout characters can carry you a long way. Just like a memoir that is outrageous, you will forgive a lot of bad writing to find out what happens next.
10:18 Well, let's delve into the books that have that little bit of everything for you. And sometimes a lot of those things. And your first is, of course, by Tony Morrison. It's Jazz. First published in 1992, Jazz is the second book in Morrison's beloved trilogy. Set in Harlem, it tells the story of married couple Joe and Violet Trace and Joe's younger lover, 18-year-old Dorcas. In a jealous, obsessive rage after the affair turns sour,
10:44 Joe fatally shoots Dorcas at a party. passionate and profound, jazz brings us back and forth in time in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears, and realities of African American life. Why have you chosen this novel today? Well, I chose it because the question was, what's a novel that has challenged you and changed the way you read it when you revisit it? Revisit that novel. And jazz is a novel that I actually like less, the older I get. Really? Yes, because this is a grown man.
11:16 married, grown man, who becomes obsessed with a high school girl and he shoots her. And when I read it again, I read it when I was a young girl and I thought it was romantic and interesting. But now I think, I don't know that that novel earns some of the famous lines in it. For example, Joe says famously, I didn't fall in love. I rose in it, which is a wonderful idea of things. about love. But now my adult reader self says, sir, you are a grown man and that is a high school girl. You don't get to rise in love. And if you've risen in love, how do you end up killing her?
11:58 Absolutely not. So I feel like I'm an oppositional reader of that book now. I use that term oppositional reader to mean that when you can tell that your feelings about a book are different than the book's feelings about the book. So have you read it since? You reread it. You keep returning to it. Well, I did. Also, you know, they've reissued all the Morrison books.
12:22 And I was trying to look at them and see which one I wanted to write an introduction for. And I read jazz and I was appalled. I was still in love with the writing. Yeah. I was still impressed with the way the novelist put together, the different voices, the points of view, all of that. But, you know, in this post Me Too era, I could not. So do you question, I mean, of course you question the person you were when you first read it, but you were younger and it's understandable. Do you question the author?
12:54 I never questioned Tony Morrison. She can do whatever she wants to do. But I do question. And also, we know Morrison. We know her body of work. Yeah. And I don't think that we can take one objectionable novel and decide that the author is an objectionable. person. I just feel like that one. I was like, oh, no. I don't know. No, ma'am. Well, she can create
13:17 objectionable characters. She can, but you can tell whether or not a novel kind of, you can tell what behavior in a novel, the novel itself is okay with. Even with jazz, toward the end, Dorcas's best friend, because Joe feels bad about murdering the teenager, and her best friend, puts his mind at ease and says, no, she let her own self die. You know, when she was shot, I couldn't get her to go to the doctor. So she let herself die. You see what I mean? It's just that turn. And then at the end of the book, you know, he and his wife have come back together and understand more. And I kept thinking, no, no, no. The fact that she was a child murdered by an adult who groomed her. No.
14:07 But again, I read it at a different time and she wrote it at a different time. What is it about her craft and her mastery linguistically, the rhythm, the music of it. You talk about the music in your writing. What is it that is so exquisite to you? Well, there's so much to love about Morrison. She's my favorite writer in that one of the things she does is so interesting is that she writes about ordinary people, but she raised with her language, she raises them almost to the level of myth.
14:40 Yeah, they're gods. Yes, and yet they're still recognizable, which means that when she takes ordinary people and elevates them in her fiction, then it actually causes us when we see ordinary people to elevate them in our minds. You know, she is an advocate for the complexity of daily life. As someone who is so deeply familiar with Tony's work, do you ever read her work and it shows you something about yourself or about the world that you hadn't seen before?
15:10 Well, I would definitely say the song of Solomon is the one of her novels that I chose to write the introduction for because I believe it is her greatest work. And rereading it, even though I've taught it, I've read it a million times when I reread it to write the introduction. One, I was intimidated by the assignment. Who am I to write anything about Morrison? Who am I to introduce a Tony Morrison novel?
15:37 You chose this one. Yes. And I do believe this is the greatest novel I've ever read. And every time I read it, I get a deeper understanding. It's interesting because it's a feminist novel that's written from a man's point of view. And that is a man coming to grips with his own role in a patriarchal culture, while also looking at his role as a black man in America. he has to kind of negotiate them. And there are so many quotes that just strike me so differently.
16:12 Like his mother, who is this, you know, bourgeois woman, daughter of a doctor, and he has such contempt for her. But, you know, she has been completely devoted to her son, her whole life. And when he has this contempt for her, she says, what harm did I do you on my knees? Because she has been on her knees, her whole life. and he has to also face his sisters who have whose lives they said you know when when you were asleep we were quiet you know when we were hungry you ate first like he
16:45 he's the youngest but he dominates the family he never considered himself in that way and he has to face these women or even when he goes on this you know incredible journey to trace his roots and he discovers that he is descended from you know an African who could fly and he says to this woman, my granddaddy could fly, my granddaddy could fly. And the woman asked quite simply,
17:09 really, who did he leave behind? And it just kind of takes the air out of his sails. But that is the question, if this man has flown away from his troubles and gone back home to West Africa, who did he leave behind? So I just, and it just even talking about it now, I feel the chills up my arms because the hard questions are asked. answered in that book. Well, Song and Solomon is your second bookshelfy book that you've brought to us today. Milkman is born in Michigan shortly after a man attempts to fly off a rooftop. As a boy, he was raised beneath the shadow of a status obsessed father. As a man, he trails into the fiery wake of a friend bent on racial revenge. Lured south by tales of buried treasure, Milkman embarks on an odyssey
17:58 to his family's origins. Along the way, he loses more than he could ever have imagined. but he also discovers his past and his true self. It's Tony Morrison's third published novel, first released in 1977. Song of Sullivan captures the social and racial dynamics of the mid-20th century. And you've described it as a work of genius. Of course, you wanted to write the preface to her. It's extraordinary. It's an extraordinary piece of work.
18:25 She weaves like we were talking about myth, heroic quests. There's African-American folklore history. It's so seamless the way it's woven together. Did this alter your understanding of the possibilities of fiction of writing? One of the many things. I mean, I was writing this preface at the same time as I was writing Ken. And I could see, as I reread Ken and look at my notes, I can see all the places where I can tell the parts when I was working on the Song of Solomon piece
18:59 with the obsession with lineage, who is your own. mother, who's your mother's mother's mother, what were their names, where are they written down? Because that's a big part of Song of Solomon is that milkman has to figure out. He cannot know who he is until he knows whose people are. And it was a golden age when it was written. It was kind of the golden age of African American genealogy. This is when Alex Haley published Roots. Yeah, roots and roots. Which was about going back to Africa, as it were. And Morrison stops in Virginia. She doesn't feel she has to travel across the ocean to find her roots. So she's establishing her origins as an American story. And also, like now, everyone is doing the DNA, right?
19:45 You just like rub your cheek and send it off and you will receive a document that tells you who you are. And Morrison would argue, you cannot know who you are until you make that journey both physically and spiritually to find out who your people are. Because it's not just our roots with a double O, it's the roots we've taken, our families have taken with an OU. I read actually that Song of Solomon provided some inspiration for the way that you eventually ended up writing an American marriage. Is that right? I feel that Song of Solomon provides some inspiration for all the books I write. It's inside you. But yes, with an American marriage, I was interested in how one can use a male voice to interrogate questions of patriarchal.
20:27 And with Ken, I was really interested in Song Solomon in the ways that, because Annie is searching for her mother, she's on a physical search. You know, she's not just like thinking about it or an emotional search. She gets in a car and goes to find her, which also echoes, you know, Milkman in his physical journey, you know, that wears out his shoes and, you know, uses of all his money to find who he is. On American marriage in particular, obviously we, it means a lot to us here at the women's prize. It won in 2019. I do want to ask what that experience was like. Did it change the way that you write? Did it ground the way that you write? Was it just a nice, you know, a nice extra accolade? How did that feel?
21:17 By the time in American marriage was published, I had already written four novels. It's my fourth novel. And I had written these other novels with very little attention besides my American marriage. my mother's attention. And so I knew what I wrote and why. I was not seduced by awards because I hadn't had any. So I was really grounded in this idea of storytelling. You know, people say, oh, when you write, you're speaking truth to power. But for me, I've never really been interested in speaking to power. I've always been interested in speaking to everyday people. There, nothing makes me happier than when, let's say I go into a building and I see a woman working as a security guard
22:03 at an office building and she's reading my book. It means a lot to me that this woman who works all day has a little time. And my book is what she has chosen to read. She doesn't sit on prize committees. She's not a book reviewer. But her time is perhaps even more valuable than others because she has so little of it. But the women's prize was a very meaningful moment because the women's prize really has a focus on accessible fiction. And it is about bringing not truth again to power, but bringing truth to the people. That is why this award was especially meaningful because I felt that my goals and the goals of the prize were aligned. That I could accept it, joyfully and without irony.
22:54 As a little girl, I used to take the short list of the women's fries to the bookshop, and that would be my reading list for the next few months. And so it really does. It really does mean speaking truth to the people, because the prize, you know, I didn't really think of it as a prize so much as a prompt to help me out. Oh, that's well put. Well, here's a little small detour with that. well often when I travel I visit people who are incarcerated because that's one of the issues that
23:24 means a lot to me started really with an American marriage and I went to visit women who were incarcerated in Dubai and there was a woman there who said the things she missed most now that she is you know in this prison is that she no longer is able to read the women's surprise shortlist really wow we can somehow use that as a quote but uh But, you know, those in oppressive regimes, when I went to visit, they weren't allowed to read my book. And she asked me, she said, just tell me about it. This episode of Bookshelfy is sponsored by Bayleys. Bayleys is proudly supporting the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction,
24:09 helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bayleys is the perfect adult treats, whether shaking in a cocktail, over ice cream or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. Well, your third bookshelfy book is Faithful Place by Tana French. So we're going on a slight detour now. And it's a really interesting one.
24:45 The course of Frank Mackie's life was set by one defining moment when he was 19. The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in faithful place and run away with him to London, as they planned. Frank never heard from her again. 20 years on, Frank is still in Dublin, he's working as an undercover cop, when one day his sister calls to say that Rosie's suitcase has been found.
25:10 Frank embarks on a journey into his path that demands he re-evaluate everything he believes to be true. You've described this as your comfort read, which some might find curious, if you find comfort in, you know, murder, mystery. But what makes it comfortable for you? Well, mysteries are very comforting because when you read a mystery, you approach the story with the assumption that by the end, we will have answers.
25:37 Oh, we'll have resolution. That'll be nice to feel. Yes. I love to relax with a little murder. It takes the edge off for me. But I love Tana French. I think she's the best person writing in the mystery genre today. I was shocked to find out that she's not Irish.
25:54 She's not Irish. See? She's right Chicago. You assume because of the lilt of the writing. Yes. And I was shocked. And of course, the protagonist, but, you know, I was shocked. But I love faithful places so good.
26:07 So he has to go home and solve this murder. And none of the people back home, they all hate cops. And now he's a cop. He's married a rich woman. They're divorced. It's a lot. But he has to go home. So he's alien.
26:19 from home and he has to find out which of the people he grew up with killed Rosie. So it's tense and you get that release at the end, you know, when they solve it and you find it out and you know these mystery novels at the end very often, the killer gives us a monologue. I love it. Yeah. It's just, again, it keeps you turning the pages and the writing is exquisite. When do you get to delve into a comfort read? Is it something that you can do any time, you know, before bed or are you, you know, holiday is ring-fenced for that?
26:56 I read them when I'm on planes. Okay. Which you are a lot of the plane. I'm on a plane a lot and it just relaxes me. I'm reading the new town of French right now on planes. I just, it does. It just comforts me. I get lost in the story.
27:10 And it's easy to explain to someone else what you're reading. Because a lot of times when you're reading literary fiction, people say, what is it about? and you say, you know, it's about some people having some feelings. Yeah, it's often the themes that come out. It's all. It's about motherhood. It's about, you know, childhood. It's about loss. It's about grief. But when you read a mystery. Yes, but when you read a mystery, you can say, it is about this guy. Somebody in his family killed his girlfriend. You know, like you can go right there.
27:38 Yeah. Well, like Kin, this novel follows characters trying and failing to outrun their past. Did this book offer a new perspective on, you know, identity and belonging to use those kind of thematic words? For me, what mysteries do for me as a writer is they remind me that something has to happen. Like we were just saying, literary fiction can be so much about the theme that you forget that the people need to do something. And I keep reading mysteries to remind myself of the pleasure of plot. The pleasure of plot is a really lovely way of putting it because I think so. sometimes, especially, you know, when we are talking about literary fiction a lot and we put it on this pedestal, we undermine how important the pleasure of plot can be. Talk to me about your
28:26 plotting process. Well, for me, it's mysterious. That plotting process for me is very, I'm often surprised at what the characters do, but I put them in places where they must do something and let my imagination determine, you know, which fork they will take in the road. But it's my duty to put them somewhere where there is a fork. But like in Ken, when Annie is on this journey and they can't find anywhere to live, to stay because of segregation, they have to use this document called the Green Book that tells, you know, black travelers where it's safe to stay. But what I realize, and just thinking it over, that the Green Book, it only tells you where it's safe. There's no Yelp reviews. It doesn't tell you how many stars. All the Green Book can promise is safety for the night.
29:16 And so when she gets to this kind of farm type setting and is allowed to stay there, and the proprietor says, but just so you know, this here is a whorehouse, I was as shocked as Annie was. But I knew when the thought came to me that it was a brothel, it kind of clicked in the place. I knew. I knew. that it, I don't even think clicked into places to write metaphor because that sounds so mechanical. I want to go back to what I said earlier. It was like when you, you know, when you touch two wine glasses together and it makes that musical sound. A little blink.
29:54 Yes, that's how it felt like. I knew it. I knew that is where they needed to be. I love this idea that rather than a light bulb moment, you have a wine glass clink moment. Yes. And it goes back to you saying that the music has to be there. noise, it's music in your writing. Well, there is the most beautiful music in the writing of your fourth bookshelfy book, which is The Color Purple by Alice Walker. In rural Georgia,
30:21 sisters Celia and Nettie share the pain and struggle of growing up as African-American women at this time. At least when she's forced into an abusive marriage, Sealy can offer Nettie refuge from their violent father in her new home, until Nettie catches the attention of Cee's husband and is forced to leave and forge her own journey. Through a series of letters spanning 20 years, the sisters sustain their hope in each other across time, distance, and silence in a triumph of resilience, bravery, and ultimately love. Now, you've actually described the Color Purple as an instrumental book for your writing
30:57 and your work. What impact did it have on you? Well, Alice Walker is from Georgia. I'm from Georgia. She attended Spelman College. I attended Spelman College. So there's a certain kinship, as it were, that I feel with Walker, just for the overlap in our lives. But as the color purple, it's epistolary, you know, it's written in letters and diaries.
31:22 And that is also a technique that I use very often in my own work because I feel like a letter or diary inside a book is a book within a book. And it's establishing the characters as writers, even if they don't think of themselves as such, that they are able to express themselves, like in their writing through my writing, it's like we're just layering our relationship. And the color purple also is great plot-wise. I mean, the description you read, Thale, to mention that Sealy herself ends up having an affair with the woman her husband is having an affair with it. There's the Shug as well. Yes.
32:01 Like that's so, that's so plotty. It is. It really is. It's so multi-layed. And when I read it, I read it as a story about God, about our relationship with the universe, the nature around us. That's where the title comes from, says that when you pass the color purple in the field and don't notice it, you hurt God's feelings because you didn't give God your attention. Because why would those flowers, those purple flowers, be so beautiful if they didn't want us to look at them? Yes.
32:31 It makes me look at everything differently. and with that magic, you've noted that every time you read this book, you walk away a better person. He tells us a bit more about that. Well, you know, just Alice Walker is an incredibly optimistic writer. It's so funny because when the book was published, people said it was so grim, it was so dark, you know, because it deals with things of domestic abuse, child abuse, etc. But it is ultimately a novel of possibility where even the most, you know, unreformed, man. By the end of the book, you know, he is actually sewing and talking about the nature of love and God and all of this. Like Alice Walker believes we can all be redeemed. And every time I read that book,
33:19 it reminds me of my own obligation or responsibility to write with the idea that there is hope because I never want to write a hopeless novel. Do you feel, yeah, yeah, I guess responsibility to infuse optimism into your work. I feel the responsibility, yes, to have optimism. And I feel that responsibility in life too. I think the responsibilities in our work are the same as our responsibilities in life. And I believe that we all have these responsibilities regardless of our work. I'm going to take that.
33:57 I feel like that, I mean, I love this podcast so much. I always take something away from it every single time, whether it's a recommendation or just a pearl of wisdom. And that, and I really needed that today. I think there is a responsibility to go about our lives with optimism as well as our work. I mean, one of the things I think about in writing fiction, I imagine the novel being read read by someone who's having an experience that is in line with what I'm writing about. Yeah, there will be someone.
34:26 I would never want that person to leave my work feeling worse than they did when they start. it. So like when I was writing an American marriage, I had to find a hopeful way out for all the characters, even though when you write about difficult subjects like incarceration, there is an impulse to show the reader how bad it is, show the reader how unjust. But if you overdo it, then you're going to just cause distress for someone who is experiencing it. So you cannot pile on the trauma, the despair at the expense of a reader who may have that experience herself. And because there is always hope. There is.
35:12 This is a story, the color purple, ultimately, in spite of the darkness and the heaviness, it's a story about hope, it's about love, it's about survival, resilience, reclaiming one's voice. And it's so often chosen on bookshelf for those reasons. many, many more. Why do you think the color purple continues to resonate so powerfully with readers today? Well, one, I think the issues it engages are still very relevant. Questions of domestic violence, questions of, you know, child abuse. People are still, so many people are going through life with these secret wounds. And the color purple is a space where people can really think about, you know, what it means to survive. I think the relationship between Seeley and Nettie,
35:59 the sisters that closest the connection. And they are biological family, but they also behave like found family in that they have to continually choose. It's that easy for them to stay connected. And they are constantly making the decision to be sisters, to be friends,
36:19 to be each other's rock. And that is inspiring and comforting to us all. And finally, the happy ending. Who does not like a happy ending? And I am fully in favor of happy endings when they are earned. And Seeley and Nettie and Mr. and Shug, everybody in that book works hard to achieve their happy ending.
36:43 That happy ending is earned. Yeah, it absolutely is by every character and by Alice Walker herself. Well, let's talk about your fifth and final bookshelfy book, which is Pachinko by Minjin Lee. Pachinko is an epic tale of family. identity, love and survival, set against the backdrop of Japan's colonial occupation of Korea in 1910. Told through eight decades and four generations at the heart of the story is Sunya, a teenage girl from a small Korean fishing village. After falling pregnant by a married man,
37:23 Sunya is offered a new life in Japan as the wife of a Christian minister. Following a man, she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot even speak. So your salvation is just the beginning of her story. So you've said that this is a book that you always recommend. Why is that? Why is it must read? Well, one, who does not appreciate a big, giant, epic story? You know, it takes over like, what, four generations over so many years,
37:56 and you can really see the ways, what we inherit, the things we inherit, and the things we choose not to pass down. What are the stories we tell? What are the stories we don't tell? And this idea, too, of, you know, when we think of colonial occupation, we so often think only of the British in the United States, you know,
38:20 colonizing people left and right, which is true. But also, this story takes this colonial question to a different physical space. So I feel like people will, you learn a lot reading it, But also, sometimes you need a deep, ferocious intellectual cry. I've had a few of them in my time. Verocious.
38:46 Yes, I mean, it's so rare that you can be completely destroyed by a novel that at the same time is so intellectually rigorous. It doesn't choose between its head and its heart. It destroys you and then restores you. Yes. This multi-generational saga, like you say, meaty. How much does passing stories down through your own family, how much has that been a part of your upbringing? My family doesn't pass anything down.
39:15 Okay. Oh, no, black box. My mama is not telling you anything, and neither is my father. I think that's one of the things they have agreed upon. We are not telling, I think that's why I wrote Ken in that it's my effort to imagine the stories that were never told to me. Right. Have you ever asked your parents to tell you stories? Yeah, they look like, what are you talking about? We don't have any stories. Yeah, some people just aren't like that. Yeah. They just aren't like that. And no, I realize now no one owes you their story. I think that as a person who tells stories and also as a nosy person who likes to hear stories, you know, I want people to tell me their story. But I have to respect their right not to.
39:57 And where do you think the impetus for you to tell stories and to share stories came from? I feel like I've always been like this since I was little. I don't know. I try to look back like how did I, this child of two social scientists, become this artist? It's been the only thing I've ever wanted to do for so long that I can't say where it came from. Place and home and family, they're really important themes in Pachinko. And I know you're now back living in Atlanta after some time away. What's that like for you?
40:34 What does your location? What impact does that have on your work, on your storytelling? You know, when I was living away from the American South and I was living up in New York, I found that people had so many misconceptions about the South. They think of the South as, you know, backwards, a place where black people are miserable. I often say that when I lived in New York, people acted like, I got to Brooklyn on the Underground Railroad. Like it was ridiculous.
41:01 They're what they believed. They, it's like they define themselves as the north as being not the South. And I felt like I was writing with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. But now that I'm back home, I've, the characters like Ken, I think is my most southern novel in that it's kind of the characters. Many of them are from rural, rural areas. I'm no longer, you know, working so hard to show urban south of a, of Atlanta. You know, they're from the country. They have country names like character named Bobo, character named Baby Doll. And it's funnier. I think the novel is funnier because
41:38 I'm back home and people can sit on the porch and tell jokes. And I just feel, I feel like I have less to prove and I can just kind of fall into my imagination. What was the pull away from Atlanta? Nothing in particular. I mean, I went to New York in that I thought that's where a person went to become a writer. Yeah. And one day, when I was in New York,
42:07 I was sitting at a coffee shop, and I looked around and I saw all of these great writers all having coffee in the same coffee shop. And it occurred to me that even though we had, many of us that come from different places in the country, different places around the world,
42:22 we were all having the same breakfast. And it was only a matter of time before we start writing. the same novel. Being from somewhere different, I mean, in the UK we're a very tiny island, but the different parts are so disparate and the voices that come from those parts are so, so different and it's a beautiful, wonderful thing and you're right, we can infuse our writing with so much of where we're from.
42:49 It's a really special ingredient to be able to give. And you have to hold on to it because it's so easy. to get swept up in what the trends are, what other people are doing, to doubt the uniqueness of your own voice. And I say embrace the things about you that are unique. They're yours. And I believe that the writing needs to reflect the world, not one single place.
43:16 And that, so I really just wanted to go back south and embrace everything I am. Well, on the writing reflecting the world's, you do recommend Pachinko to other readers, what do you hope they'll take away from this epic? One, I hope it will expand their understanding of world literature. And also, I just hope they will walk away. Just, I feel like Pachinko and Song of Solomon are so similar in that this understanding of you can't know who you are unless you know who they were. And I want people to reflect. not only on the history that it's contained in the book, but on their own history.
44:01 Well, just looking back over the five books that you've chosen, and we said before we started recording, it's not that fair to have to choose a favorite book. But I'm going to ask you, do you have a favorite out of the five? Oh, it's well documented, Song of Solomon always for me. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you about these books, what they've given you, what they've given the world, some exquisite. authors that we've talked about today. So it's been such a joy. Thank you, Tiari. Thank you. It's my pleasure. I'm Vic Hope and that was Bookshelfy from the Women's Prize, supported by
44:39 Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thanks for joining me for this episode. You'll find all the books that we discussed in our show notes. There's also a link to our bookshop.org shelf where every purchase supports independent bookshops and the work of the Women's Prize Trust, a charity helping build a better future by championing women's writing. Now remember to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you liked this one, then leave us a rating or review to help other readers discover even more brilliant books by women. I'll see you next time.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.