Good Life Project - How a Secret Business Built a Life | Bridgett M. Davis

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Bridgett M. Davis (http://bridgettdavis.com/)grew up in the high-stakes mix of Motown, motor-city unions, and racial tension that was Detroit in the 1960s and 70s, watching her mother, Fannie, run a neighborhood numbers game that provided for the family and the community. After leaving Detroit for New York City, she honed her craft as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter, with her most recent work, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers (https://amzn.to/2ZMJ430), paying tribute to her mother’s ingenuity and care under world-shifting circumstances. Join us to hear Davis share her journey from the troubled city of her upbringing to award-winning author and professor, and the incredible through-line of compassion, generosity, and tangible acts of love that saw her through it.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Bridget Davis, grew up in Detroit in the 60s and 70s, a time where the huge figure in the community because she ran a business that was not entirely legal, locally known as Running Numbers. She was the numbers person, also the local sort of manager of the lottery. That was a family secret for a really long time. And it also served to keep the family being able to actually sustain itself and be okay and let her mom sort of take care of helping Bridget go out into the world and do amazing things. And then when she wanted to take a really big risk

and try and sort of make her mark in the world of writing and then teaching in New York, it helped start that journey. The entire story is detailed in a really wonderful new book called The World According to Fannie Davis. We dive into some really powerful elements of this story. A lot of what was happening in the early days in Detroit when she was growing up, how her mom made this incredible thing happen, how unusual, kind of legendary her mom actually was that she didn't even really know until learning much later in life when diving into the research for the book. And also how she has sort of launched and

crafted her own life, her own career, her own devotion to writing, to filmmaking, and to teaching and giving back and carrying on the sort of spirit of service and compassion and generosity that her mom so often led with. Really excited to share this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I grew up in Detroit throughout the 60s and 70s. Take me back to Detroit around that time, because it is a really interesting blend of things happening. Some good, some not so good. Yeah.

Each decade was really distinctive, I would say, because the 60s was really about this thriving auto industry. And so many people had great jobs. You know, they worked in these plants and they made really good hourly wages. Unions were strong. Michigan, Detroit was like the birthplace of unions, if you think about it. UAW and ones like that really pushed and made sure everyone was able to have a really good life making salaries without advanced education and managing to be middle class. It's unique now when you think about it, but it was normal then. And it was certainly incredible for me because Detroit, even in the 60s, was rapidly becoming a largely black city. Not so much in the early 60s,

not so much by the mid 60s, but by the late 60s, it was largely black. So we watched that transition. In my own neighborhood, it went from a mixed neighborhood to a largely black one. And that was actually exciting because it was still middle class and thriving and well kept and beautiful. And yet we were in this kind of cocoon, you know, where we got to sort of thrive and not be judged and not worry about being considered a minority. We weren't. We were the majority. So that was really unique.

And I didn't know how unique until I left Detroit. Yeah. So, I mean, at the same time, also the backdrop, I mean, definitely Motor City, you know, it's becoming this huge thing. Yes. A lot of good jobs, a lot of industry, well, primarily one big industry.

Well, there were two. Music also, right? Yes. I mean, you know, I wasn't aware of the techno scene, but that was huge in Detroit too at the same time. I was, of course, focused on Motown because I had older siblings, because we all knew someone who knew someone who lived near a Motown artist. They were

our local royalty. We lived around the block from Diana Ross and the Supremes. No kidding. Yeah, who each bought their own home on this one street, Buena Vista. And Diana Ross, of course, had the corner home, the big, beautiful one. And I literally would stand on the corner as a child and wait to see if I could spot her. And one day I did. She came out of the house. I waved. She waved back. It was a big deal. On the other hand, my cousin lived a few doors down from Stevie Wonder's mother. So whenever Stevie was visiting, we normalized kind of special environment, you know, because we all had experiences like that. My high school boyfriend lived down the street from Aretha Franklin. I mean, I could go on, you know. So that was incredible. By the 70s, there was a lot more outsourcing apparently, and the auto industry was really

going through some of its transition. Yeah, and we also had the gas crisis and the recession. And everything got smaller. Yeah, it got crazy. People were not as excited about those big cars. And

drugs were really now becoming an issue in these communities. And Detroit definitely faced that sort of dilemma head on. And I could see as a teenager how things were changing and how the city was feeling less safe. I mean, Detroit was considered the murder capital at some point in the 70s, and for a reason. I'm grateful that I didn't see that kind of crime firsthand, but my whole family was really clear that we had to protect ourselves from it. No one was sort of walking the streets at night, if you know what I mean. Yeah.

I mean, and at the same time, so that's in the 70s. The late 60s also, like July 67, everyone was in that window. Yeah. I mean, the riots were really a combustible moment that made it clear how problematic race relations were in the city. Yeah. in the city. So that didn't affect our lives in the sense of our livelihoods, but it just brought a spotlight on the sort of discrimination that all black folks were aware of in Detroit and had experienced and were trying to fight against. Detroit was a bedrock of social activism and really the northern heart of the Civil Rights Movement.

People don't know this, but Dr. King came to Detroit first. Yeah, before D.C., right? Yes, in June of that same summer. Right, 63, right? 63. Led a march through the streets of the city where 250,000 people participated. Oh, wow. I had no idea the scale of that. Yes, it was gigantic.

Wow. And he worked on his I Have a Dream speech. He did a version of that. Yes, it was gigantic. Wow. And he worked on his I Have a Dream speech. He did a version of it. Yes, that was like the legend around him. He was always workshopping. He was always honing his message. And so if you see the transcript, it's really interesting. It's not quite as tight as what we now remember, but it was the same concept.

And that was a march for workplace equality. That was the point of that march, to really focus on all the discrimination in the plants and other industries in the city. So Detroit had a huge NAACP chapter, the biggest in the nation at that point. So they were pushing hard for the very same policies that the Civil Rights Acts ultimately put into place on a federal level. Detroit was really on the forefront of pushing for those things. You would have been in, if I'm right, sort of single digit age when that was all going down. Do you have personal recollections of any of that? I do. I remember the riot.

Or, you know, in Detroit, we don't call it the race riot. We call it the uprising. Right. I remember it vividly. Because I remember that we were all concerned initially about flying bullets. Because 12th Street was not that far from our home. That's the street where the riots, where the uprising really initially broke out. It was on the west side, which is where we lived.

And so we had to crawl around on our hands and knees to ensure that we were not, you know, vulnerable if a bullet went through a window in the home. And understand the uprising sort of took place over four or five days. So it was not a short experience. Then there was the fear of seeing just the terror, it's still vivid for me, of these tanks rolling down our streets because the president's sitting in the National Guard. And imagine that. And at that point, the silence was as scary to me as anything. The idea that there was no sound, and yet there were these tanks,

there were these men with their guns poised, rolling down our residential block in front of our home. And no one knew what that meant. I didn't know, as a seven-year-old, whether those guns were going to be turned towards us. And then there was a third big fear that our home would be set on fire. Because in the process of all of the looting that took place and all of the sort of angry sort of expression of frustration that people had, folks burned things. They burned homes. We lost 2,500 buildings during the course of that uprising. So we were very worried. My father stayed up all night guarding the house each night because we were worried about arsonists. So that was pretty traumatic to experience as a child that young. And yet it constantly felt like something that was happening to us from an outside force.

That's how it felt. Yeah. So that was about five days, right? Yes. When things started to calm down and when the Army National Guard started to roll out, was there a sense of normalcy that returned or did it take a long time? I mean, I know all the press accounts and stuff like that, but I'm talking more from like personal experience with someone who was young and who was there like during that window. I can't remember specifically how soon things got quote unquote normal again.

I know that I personally developed anxiety and the way it manifested was that out of nowhere, I was fearful of my father leaving the house. And it seemed to me he was in danger out there. Somehow I understood that this black man's life was going to be at risk suddenly. I don't know, maybe it was intuitive. Maybe I saw reports on TV. I don't know. But I would grab onto his leg and beg him not to leave. And I have this memory. He'd be like shaking his leg, you know, and saying, let go, baby. I'm fine.

I'm going to be okay. But I know now looking back that that was an outgrowth, literally, of what I had just gone through, what we had all just gone through. So how long that lasted is hard for me to remember. But I also don't remember the riot being an ongoing traumatic experience for me. It's not as though, and then I was eight and nine and still dealing with it. That didn't happen.

That didn't happen. So this is sort of the backdrop of you coming up as a kid in Detroit and sort of what was going on there within your family. There was a lot of interesting stuff that was going on, too. And one of them was the way that your mom chose to effectively support not just the family, but really the community in a lot of different ways. And it's also the subject of your most recent book. So take me there. Yeah. So yeah, that was unique. My mom was a numbers runner, as we call it. She basically was a bookie and then a banker for this underground lottery business that predated today's lottery. It was essentially a precursor to it.

People don't remember that the lottery that is so ubiquitous now wasn't always legal. In fact, in Michigan, the lottery did not become legal until 1972. And the kind of game that my mother helped people play did not become legal until 1977. So she was able to have a thriving business along with a lot of other people by taking people's bets on these three-digit numbers and collecting their money when they didn't win and paying out their proceeds when they did, paying out their winnings. And she profited from the difference. And that was her livelihood. And that was, take me more into the numbers though, because there's, so yes, it's effectively

a lottery. You know, like at the same time, this is your mom running a business out of the house. Yes. That's all cash. Yes. That is, I guess the way you described it or she described it, that is illegal, but legitimate business. Right. So a couple of things about that. My mom understood that there were a lot of laws that were put in place that were unfair and unjust, that that is American history. We can cite one example, Jim Crow laws. She grew up under those in Nashville, Tennessee. There's nothing just or fair or logical about laws that say that certain people can use this bathroom and certain people cannot. Or as we know, the example that's so vivid, you cannot sit at this lunch counter and eat, even though you're an American citizen. There's nothing just about

that, but it's a law. So my mother made it clear to us, the fact that something is a law doesn't make it legitimate. Conversely, she believed that the numbers was a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. And she taught that to us. Now, what did that do? Two beautiful things. First, it made sure that we felt no shame about what my mother did.

And then it also ensured that we kept quiet about it because she made it very clear that since it's deemed illegal, it's risky to let people know what we're doing because the authorities will come after us. It's not fair, but it's the law. So that became the big family secret. Yes, absolutely. I always tell people I was born into that secret. Was she doing it from before you were born? Yes. My mom started her numbers operation two years before I was born. Right. And as you said, so she came up from, I guess you had a couple of generations from Nashville. Yes.

So my mother and father were part of the great migration, the second wave of it. So that she and my dad and my three oldest siblings all migrated from Nashville to Michigan. They started out in Pontiac and then they made their way to Detroit. And this would be in the mid fifties. And it's, it's no surprise that they were trying to leave behind these draconian laws in Nashville. It was clearly a Jim Crow place. And my father wanted to get a good job, you know, in one of the plants in Detroit. Everyone had told them

Detroit City is the place to be because there are jobs there. And that was the initial plan, that they would come north and he would get work and they would better their lives and their children could go to decent schools and they could vote without intimidation, you know, some basic rights. But when they got to Michigan, that's not what they found. Part of it, I think about them and I try to imagine being in your 20s, leaving a home you've been living in your whole life with your network, your friends, your family, your siblings, everyone. And in their case, my mom had family that went back generations in Nashville. In fact, her grandfather was born into slavery in Nashville. So they had deep roots and they picked up and left all that. And when they got North, nevermind the cold weather, they got North and they found that there was this northern version of racism they weren't prepared for.

And that meant my father couldn't get steady work. He was the last hired, the first fired, you know. And then to compound everything, he got ill. He suffered from hypertension. And suddenly his high blood pressure was at such high levels that he couldn't keep steady work. Then my mother thought, okay, I have got to figure out something. She used to say, I had to make a way out of no way. And she was ingenious. She looked around her and noticed that all of her neighbors were playing these numbers every day,

trying to win on these three digits for these winning numbers that would come out. And they were playing for like a nickel or 10 cents or a quarter because the payout was 500 to 1. So your nickel could turn into $25. Right, real money. Real money. They could keep you going. And that's the thing. The numbers, you're right. They were this lottery, but that doesn't really describe it. They were an informal economy that helped to fuel these communities and provide these services that the formal economy was not providing for black folks. So it had so many sort of functions.

Yes, it was fun to play the numbers. Those windfalls paid off, but it employed people too. And numbers money created all kinds of businesses that were necessary and needed. My favorite example, there are two, I could talk about it a lot because it's so interesting even to me. One example is that a numbers man decided to buy a hotel, the Hotel Gotham, which became the place where all these black dignitaries

and celebrities and sports figures could stay. Because in the 50s, if you were a Negro man or woman, you could not stay in a downtown hotel in Detroit. So he created a hotel for his people, you know, which I thought was quite moving. The other thing, the big thing that Numbers Money did in Detroit is that this man named John Roxborough, whom we call the father of the numbers because he brought it to Detroit from where it began in Harlem. He decided to use his money to invest in a boxer. He wanted to help create a world-class athlete. And so he found this man named Joe Lewis and he invested in him. He became his manager. He put all that numbers money into Joe Lewis. He trained him. He gave him the best of everything and he groomed him. And so, yeah, he became a world, he became the world champion, but he also became Detroit's hero, you know, because he was a symbol, low key of what numbers money can do, but really of what you can do to fight and push back against, you know, discrimination and how you can sort of out of that forge a level of excellence that can be the epitome of the American dream.

So I love that story because it makes it very clear the role the numbers played in that city in particular, but there are similar stories throughout the country. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.

When your mom got into it, it sounds like, I know you've done the research, and I haven't, this was not a place where you often saw women. Oh, you're right. And I tell you, viscerally, is that the right word? Yeah, it was in my sort of underneath my skin, this understanding that my mother was unique and that she was not like any of my friends' mothers at all. I knew that she was running things. She was in charge. She was helping other people. People saw her as this sort of font of important advice and information. People were coming to the house all the time to be in her presence. Some of them were customers, but some of them were not. They were just people who wanted to be in her orbit. And I thought, you know, wow, that's pretty cool to have a mother that's so beloved. But also part of what the admiration came from was that she had this gravitas,

you know, she had respect in the community and she was making a difference. She was a kind of philanthropist. That's what she was, helping people, you know, sort of get a foothold to just better their lives a little bit, to help them through a rough patch. That meant a lot to her. So I knew that was really cool. What I didn't know until I was researching my book is that my mother was one of the only women doing what she was doing. This is how a scholar put it to me. She said, she found me, and she said, I really want to interview you because I'm writing a dissertation on the numbers in Detroit. And given your mother's, you know, sort of a distinction, I really want to talk to you. And I said, sure. But I'm not exactly sure what you mean by her

distinction. And she said, don't you know? Don't I know what? Your mother was the only woman in Detroit in the time period she was operating to be doing what she was doing at her level. She was the only woman banker in Detroit for decades. And I had no idea. And yet I get it. I guess I knew on some level she was unique, but I didn't know how unique. Sounds like just a powerful, big hearted, tough also. Yeah. You had to be at the same time. You're in business, you know? And again,

so this is a business, which it's like a big, it's a public secret because the right people know about it because they have to, because she is in relationship with all these people in the community. Right. And the wrong people can't know about it because then everything gets shut down and all sorts of other bad stuff happens. sort of like middle-class living, which allowed the family, even through your dad's struggles, to sort of like be able to work. Yes. To be okay. Yes.

For a long time. Yes. 34 years. Yeah. Yeah. She ran her business. That's amazing. What's interesting to me also is that, so she's doing this, generating enough money,

and eventually it comes time to buy a house or to quote, have a house. Right. But because of what's happening at that time, it's not so easy. No, it's stunning. It's stunning to think about what she had to go through. And I'll tell you, that's another example in which I had one understanding of what happened. And only when I was researching the book did I learn the full story. I knew my mother had to buy or chose to buy her home on contract. And what that meant was she entered into an arrangement with the seller, no bank involved, and they had a contract, an agreement, and she bought the house that way. Basically, he held the mortgage. That was my understanding. And I thought, well, she was in an unorthodox

profession, so she had to find these unique means to purchase a home. No, that's not what happened at all. Here I am several years ago reading the case for reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates' seminal Atlantic article, and my mouth dropped. He is describing this practice that was virulent in Chicago in particular, but that is exactly what my mother went through, wherein you have to buy a home that's like an installment plan. Because in this process of having this contract with the seller, you build no equity in your home. The seller keeps the title. And more importantly, if you miss one payment, the seller can take the house back. So that stunned me until I actually saw the literal contract that my mother had with this man. In her case, Mr. Prince, who sold us our family home, my mother's dream home. And there it was in black and white.

And now I'll add another layer of complication. There was a strange man's name on the contract. His name was Wallace Colvin. Who was he? Oh, it turns out the seller didn't trust my mother. She was a Negro woman after all. And it is true, she didn't have a sort of steady paycheck. So he told her, I can't sell the house directly to you. And she decided, I'll find a friend who has a reliable job and income and ask him to technically buy the house. So his name was on the contract, not hers. And that arrangement went on for three years before the seller decided, even though he was collecting all of the mortgage money from her, it took him three years to decide, okay, I trust you. I'll put the contract in your name. Meanwhile, it was still such a predatory contract. The interest rate was like 13%. At the time, President Kennedy had interest rates at four, four and a quarter.

Yeah. And I mean, a lot of this also was, so there's a practice of, quote, redlining back then, which was sort of underlying all of this. Exactly. So here's the point, yes, that all of this is about. She and millions of other Black folks had to buy their homes with these contracts because they could not get legitimate mortgages. And I don't care if you were a Black doctor, you couldn't get these mortgages because the federal government decided to create these red lines around what they called high-risk areas. And all of the areas in which black folks lived were considered high-risk. There could be one black family

in a community and it suddenly became high-risk. And so if it's high-risk, the federal government, the FHA, is not going to insure mortgages. Which means effectively nobody can get one. Right, which means the entire real estate industry can deny you a mortgage and have a technically good reason for it. Well, I'm not giving you a mortgage if the federal government won't actually insure it. That's too risky. So black folks had like so few options, even though here they are working hard, you know, wanting to have that badge of, you know, the sort of that stamp of a middle-class life, owning their own homes, the American dream, they weren't being given the opportunity and the

federal government was ensuring that it wouldn't happen. Yeah. So you're growing up with all of this around you. It sounds like your house was kind of a hub also. It was a little busy. Not just from your mom's clients slash friends, but also just sounds like it was a gathering place. It was a gathering place.

We called it Grand Central Station. And I was really, really like an adult. I was probably 18 before I knew that was a real place. Did your friends who are sort of like your age have any sense of what your mom's business was or like what was going on? No. So that was another huge surprise. I'm saying no, but I'm going to couch that a little bit. So when I decided several years ago that I would start interviewing people so I could write this book, it was incredible that I had friends for decades whom I'd grown up with, whom had been in the house all the time, and they weren't aware. A best friend of mine. We've been friends since

we were both nine. She said to me at that moment when I confessed all these years into the, you know, later what my mom did for a living, she said, what? And then she paused and she said, you know, I knew your mom was in charge of something. I just didn't know what. Right. So yes, surprise, but not really. Right. It's like you knew she was there and she was running something and she had power and control. Exactly. That you could see. That you could see. So we were great. We didn't just keep that secret from the authorities. We kept it from everyone. There was a very short list of people who knew if they weren't customers. Customers had their own incentive to keep quiet because they didn't want, you know, they don't want this business to get busted because they're participating in it.

So they didn't tell anyone. And then we did not discuss that with our friends. We just did not. It didn't come up. If someone really pressed and said, you're living pretty well here, you know, like what's going on? We had a standard answer. Oh, you know, my mom's in real estate, which was true. My mother did have rental property. So that was sort of a half truth. Enough.

Enough. Just enough. Just enough. So you grew up in this environment and then you end up going from there, you end up in Spelman. Yes. For college. Yeah. When you're thinking about leaving it and heading off onto your own and going to school, what type of kid had you become?

Like, had you started to develop your own sort of passions or interests or direction? Yeah, I was always interested in being a writer. Yeah. I didn't say that to people. I didn't say I'm going to be a writer when I grow up, no.

But if I look back, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up. No. But if I look back, I was always telling stories and writing. And the beauty of that is my mom always allowed it. Now that I look back, I see that. She encouraged it in her way. She gave me one day, it wasn't even a special day. it wasn't a birthday or anything. She just decided one day that by the time I got home from school, I would find brand new bedroom furniture. And that included a desk and a chair, wow, in my room, and a new bookshelf with some special books on that bookshelf. And most importantly, she put a brand new diary on my desk. Pretty little pen.

She never said a word to me. But that was so clearly, you know, validation. Like the tacit, yeah. Yeah. Like, don't do this thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And the other thing about her, there are many, but one in particular is that she was writing a book. As far back as I can remember, my mother had this black binder. It had inside of it, online white paper, and she would write this story in that book using different color ink. And I now have that binder. But at the time growing up, I just

never knew what was in it. I just knew she was working on, as she called it, my book. And it turns out it was a Romana Clef. Because when she learned that word, she got very excited and she put it on the refrigerator. And it helped her to define the kind of story she was telling. She had heard a story growing up in Nashville and now she was capturing it in fiction. So this seems so obvious, but it was only like, you know, much later that I realized, oh, yeah. When I started writing, what did I do? As soon as I moved to New York to pursue a life as a writer, I got a binder. I filled it with paper.

It's like the imprint was there for her. It's like, wow. So I am my mother after all, in a lot of ways. You have that binder now. I still have it, yes. When you read through that. It's extraordinary. It's so extraordinary.

I put passages of it in my memoir because it was incredible to see sort of my mother's beliefs and her interest and her obsessions through the characters that she created and focused on. You could see it. It's a story that's very much a parallel to the kind of things she believed were important in life. Now, this woman she's writing about is a madam who has this group of girls working for her in the Capitol in Tennessee. So you can imagine the clientele. And yet there's the one young woman whom she takes in and does not allow her to do that with her life. This young woman,

she's helping to put through school. She wants her to have a better life. My mother used to say to us about the numbers, I'm doing this so you don't have to. And when I read this story, you know, it was quite beautiful because I could see how much she admired that woman's ingenuity and her sense of her business acumen, but also the fact that she was doing what she was doing to help someone else live a life better than the one she was living. And that was really my mother's, I believe that was her raison d'etre. That was what she believed made it worth it. Not just for the money. People would say to me, wow, but how did she never get caught? I said, well, maybe there was some luck. Maybe she had

some safety measures that she put in place, but mostly it's because she wasn't greedy. She didn't keep trying to get bigger because she could. She was trying to have a business that was robust enough to provide for her family in the way she felt we all deserved. And so that was a certain level. It was not the lowest, and it certainly wasn't the highest. And the bigger you get, the more exposed you are. My mother was still basically a housewife and was raising children and wanted to be able to show up to the PTA meetings.

Yeah, amazing. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you

you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk it's fun as you were sharing that i was thinking um a little while back we had Liz Gilbert in here. And her last book, City of Girls, was a novel. But it was also so clear that so much of her was in it. And I remember her saying to me something like, if you want to know a writer, read their fiction, not their nonfiction. Yeah, yeah. Because it's like so much more will be revealed than that. Well, that's certainly true in my mom's case. You know, I learned so much, and it was prescient, this book. And I suspect because she wrote the story across many years, and it was really brief. It was probably the equivalent of a novella, maybe.

It wasn't a lot of pages. They were all handwritten. But I do believe that as she began to get ill and knew you know that she was terminally ill she decided to finish it and i think that the the storyline was affected by that fact i can see it in the writing and even that becomes really powerful and moving for me. It's as though I'm not leaving anything behind like a letter to all of you, but I am leaving this document that tells you what matters to me. And what mattered was for, in this case, characters, but I would say my mother's belief that I want everyone to go on and do well because that will have made my life worth it. Did you receive this binder?

When did she pass it on to you? So my mom suffered from colon cancer and she struggled for two and a half years after diagnosis. And so at one point when she was still at home and okay, but not okay, she decided to do a reading, a personal reading of her story for myself and my sister Rita. My mom sat at the kitchen table and we sat beside her. She put her reading glasses on. She opened her black binder and she read the whole story to us. And we had never heard it because we had honored her privacy. No one ever tried to look in that binder. She read the story to us. And understand she died in 92, so maybe this was 91. And for a long time after her death, I had that binder.

I didn't look in it. I did not reread that story. I couldn't. And then when time came to write my memoir and I went back to it, I had not remembered what was there. And I'm sure it's because when she was reading to us, a lot of emotion was happening, right, for us both. But whoa, I don't know. I'm so grateful in so many ways.

I'm grateful for that document. I really am. Yeah. You end up graduating Spelman. The writer in you is emerging. But what's interesting to me is your next move, and maybe there was something in the middle, you can tell me if I'm missing something,

was Columbia J School. Yeah. So journalism school. Sorry, that's the shorthand. Yeah. So, which is kind of interesting to me because it's rather than you being, I always look at that as rather than you being

the storyteller, it is your sort of, you're the, yes, you are telling the story, but also there's a huge amount of, like a lot of your job is inquiry and investigation and ferreting out the truth. And then you end up and you go out, like you're actually doing that. You're a reporter, a journalist in Philly, and then I guess Atlanta. Yes, that's right. What was behind sort of like that choice?

Well, it's true that my entire life in school, from elementary school on, I was always on the school newspaper. In fact, when I was in fourth grade, I started a little newsletter slash newspaper because my stepfather had this really cool printer in the basement. There's so much foreshadowing. I know. I was like, I could use that. And one of the first things I wrote about was the fact that it was unfair that girls couldn't wear their pants to school. Can you believe that? This is in the seventies. Yeah. So, so something was started there. Middle high school, I was on the school newspaper. In college, I was the editor of the school paper.

Now, I think there are a couple kinds of journalists. You know, there are people who are always determined to ensure the people's right to know. And I call them nosy. You know, they're investigative and they love to seek out evidence. That wasn't my natural inclination. The part that I loved was talking to people and then crafting the story. So essentially, I liked writing. And I think that at an early age, I understood.

After all, I was still from a working class family. You know, I didn't know writers. And I didn't really know that to be a viable option. Even though I'd witnessed my mom doing it. It was a hobby, it seemed. And I thought, well, I can actually make a living and still write. That was really the impetus in the early years of pursuing that. As I got a little older, I understood how exciting it was to sort of help people tell their stories and to shed light on things that I felt people should know. So I did create a more activist mindset around it.

But, you know, in my heart, I wanted to write fiction. And so I struggled with that. Yeah. Yeah. I'd struggled with that until I decided to quit after Columbia University, going to their graduate school of journalism. I got this wonderful job at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which at the time was a top paper and they were winning, you know, Pulitzer's like it was nothing. It was a really, it was a coup to be a beginning reporter there. And, but after two years, I quit my job and I'm not kidding. People started a rumor that I had had a nervous breakdown because the idea. It's like, who does that? Right. Who does that? You

got like amazing job at one of the premier papers in the country. Yeah. And I had no other job. I literally quit my job and, you know, packed up a U-Haul and moved to New York. Now everybody thinks I'm crazy. My mother was concerned. I will say that. She said to me, I just don't like the idea of you going there without any security. And she even said to me, what about benefits and health insurance? And I was young, but not super young.

I was in my late twenties. And I thought, and I remember I wrote her a letter sort of expressing why I was doing this and how I wasn't happy. And I wanted to be happy. It was the scariest thing at that point in my life that I'd ever done. And it was not easy. And my mother helped me. My mother helped me financially. Basically, she funded my dream. She said, okay, then I'll help you with your rent to sort of figure it out. And when I look back on that, I hope I'm that kind of mother. I have a 15-year-old and a 19-year-old. I have to remind myself

that that is a level of generosity and understanding and support. There was no preaching and lecturing. She just said, I'm here to help you. And I decided to figure out very quickly how to teach because it seemed to me, I got this nice degree. I can use it. I'll teach journalism and continue my creative writing. And I did. And that worked out. And when I was about to interview for this job at this Manhattan college, as I called it to my mom, I then wrote that letter and said, I know this has been hard on you, too, because you worry about me. And I appreciate everything you've done, you know, and I don't want you to continue to worry. My goal is to be able to support myself and be happy at the same time. And it worked out.

And you know what? I got that job and I still have that same job. It's at Baruch College, CUNY. People could see the smile on your face right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like you feel your mom's presence like in that entire, you know, like the job that you have now is sort of this manifestation of your mom's effort to a certain extent and her willingness to unquestionably support you. Oh yeah. And people have asked me, what do you think your mom would think about this book you've written about her? I'll tell you, the proudest I've ever seen her was when I got that job at the college. And I saw after the fact, after she died, I saw in her things that she had laminated this school newspaper article about me as a new professor there. And it was not pristine. It was really worn. She'd been showing it to everyone. Not saying anything to me, but

showing it to everyone. Imagine, it must have felt like the culmination of everything she'd struggled and worked for. Her daughter was a college professor. My mother, whose dream in life had been to go to Vanderbilt University because she'd grown up in Nashville. But by 17, she was married and pregnant. So she didn't have that dream fulfilled. And now her daughter has this career. So I think she would have loved, you know, the idea that I am out in the world with a book that's doing well. A book about her, she probably would have smiled slyly, like, really? But she didn't need the accolades in that way. I don't know how she managed to be that self-confident. But my mother didn't have a

big ego, believe it or not. A lot of belief in herself. And she felt, she thought very highly of herself, but that's different from an outsized ego. No one had to stroke her ego. And it sounds like a well-founded belief in herself. Yeah. It was based on something. Right. She was showing, she knew what she was doing. And it sounds like a well-founded belief in herself. Yeah, it was based on something. Right, right. She was showing. She knew what she was doing. Yeah.

In addition to teaching now, you've also, you know, you said part of the dream for you was always fiction. Yes. And that became part of your journey, I mean, through a series of books, also film, which I think is really interesting. Tell me more about how that took root. Yeah. So I moved to New York, you know, loaded up that U-Haul and decided right away to get into a writing group. I was going to pursue fiction in New York and hustle and try to make a living. And honestly, I wrote a novel, spent a couple years on it. It was terrible. It was awful.

And I put it in a drawer because people confirmed for me that it was not good. It's better like a few people tell you that than you actually put it out there than a lot of people tell you. Exactly. So it went to a drawer. And out of frustration and realizing after my first year of teaching college that I had my summer free, I was like, I'm getting paid for the summer? Oh, oh, well, let me do something with that. I just really out of curiosity decided to take a screenwriting class at NYU.

You know, the novels in the drawer. And lo and behold, screenwriting, it turns out, is this wonderful marriage of fiction and journalism. And I just fell into it. I loved it from the beginning of learning to write it. And, you know, one class led to another class, which led to a workshop, which led to my thinking, oh, hey, if I'm writing screenplays, I should learn to make film.

It'll make me a better screenwriter. So then I started learning the craft. I read 40-something books. I just became obsessed, and across three years, I learned. I used New York City as my graduate school, you know. And I learned how to make film. And I ultimately wrote a feature script. I produced it, and then I directed it.

And it's called Naked Axe. And it had a life. It went to lots of festivals. And then it aired on Sundance Channel. It actually went on to be on DVD. I'm saying it as though I'm a little surprised because I am still. We just had a big 20th anniversary screening. That's awesome.

Yeah. And as we're hanging out here chatting, you're also, you're working on the screenplay for this, your most recent book. Can you believe that? Right? Yeah. Full circle. Full circle. And for all of those 20 years, people would ask me, when are you making your next film?

Yeah. And I'd always say, when someone pays me to. Right. It's like, you know, it takes more than a couple of dollars to make a film. I did that guerrilla style, ultra low budget indie thing. And it was incredible. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I have two children.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done, making that film like that. It was also the most extraordinary experience, but I was just convinced you cannot do that twice, you know? And it was really, it seemed to me it would be okay if I didn't make another film or write another screenplay. I was okay with that. I was now working, you know, teaching. That was his own really rewarding profession. I ended up really loving it and also writing books. So I thought, I'm what one does in the publishing world is you get a film agent, you know, and you see what happens. And in this case, there was a lot of interest in developing this book into a film or a TV show. So I talked with, had meetings with a lot of people. And I wish I could say which

producer it is, but I'm told I can't. But let's just say I'm very happy with the producer that ultimately offered to develop it. And the best part of all is he said to me, I think you should write the screenplay. I was surprised. And when people hear me say that, they are like, oh, Brigette, you have this background in film. Come on. I was surprised. And when people hear me say that, they are like, oh, Brigette, you have this background in film. Come on. I'm like, I don't even think he knows I made a film once. Right. It was like 20, 21 years ago. Yeah. It's never come up. I don't, I do not think that's why he said to me, you should write the screenplay. I think he, I guess people in the industry understand now that you have to have a personal connection to the material, especially if it's such a personal story.

It's about my mother. It's a story about my mother. So I don't know what that would have looked like, handing that over to another writer. Yeah. Do you have a sense for if this had been the book that you originally turned into or wanted to turn into a screenplay and a movie 20 years ago and tried to offer it out to the industry, what the reception would have been? I feel like a lot has changed in the last 20 years. You know, people say this. I've said it myself. And yet you don't realize how true it is.

Everything has its time. And not only was I not prepared psychologically to do what this book needed, I sort of understood on some level what it would require, and I knew I wasn't ready. I didn't even feel I had the craft yet to do the kind of book I wanted, that I felt this material deserved, this story deserved. So I wasn't in a hurry to tell the story. And now I realize that worked out because this is, it seems to me me this is the right moment for this particular story to be out in the world. And maybe you're right. Maybe that's why there's real interest now that might not have been. Because Hollywood's in a moment too. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So sometimes it's the zeitgeist. Sometimes it's luck. I think it's a blend of this. It's funny. Before we started recording, we were just talking about the fact that I had recently seen this documentary, 20 Feet From Stardom, which features all of these stunning voices who have been the background voices for almost every major song for decades that we all sing. And we don't realize that very often we're not actually singing the lead that the quote famous person is singing.

We're singing all the lines at the background. Yeah, we're singing the chorus. And they're just astonishingly gifted and how so many of them are still, they wanted to be the front person also. Yeah. But a combination of unfairness, timing, industry practices. Right. But a combination of unfairness, timing, industry practices.

Right. There's so much, I feel like there's an important conversation to be had around, yes, devote yourself to the craft, right? Because that's the cost of entry no matter what. You can't show up and be bad. Right. Like that's not going to open any door. But even if you show up, you know, like, even if you show up and you're good, there is still, there's so much around the moment, around to sort of, there's so much that's outside of your control. So much is outside of your control. Whether it's writing, whether it's music, and, you know, like you were sharing before, it's really any artistic or creative field.

True. And I understand both paths. I understand going for what you want, just go for it. And just give it your all and risk it all and know that it's very likely that's what it's going to require for you to get what you want. In my case, I did keep a day job. Fortunately, it's a job that enriches me, that feels as though I'm giving back and also helps to inform the writing. I learn, when you teach something a lot, you learn from it. But it's true that all those years of teaching slowed down the writing process. There's no question. It's something for me to consider. What would have happened for me sooner had I chosen to just go for it?

I'm going to be a writer. That's what I'm going to put at the forefront of my life. That's how I'm going to put at the forefront of my life. That's how I'm going to spend my days, etc. But in my case, I just felt that I would be too vulnerable to compromise if I needed that sort of validation and that response from the publishing world to make a living. That just felt risky. Now, that's just about my personality. Probably maybe I'm my mother's daughter in a lot of ways. So that's how it happened for me. And still, things worked out pretty well if you're willing to give it the time.

That's the trade-off, though. And so, for instance, my son is pursuing a career as an actor and he knows so young, he's known since he was a teenager, he's 19 now, but he's known for years that this is what he wants to do with his life. That's a different path to know early, to go for it, to pursue it, to know it's going to be risky, but this is what you want. And I support him, even though I did it differently. And so I just think that when you're in the arts, you're forced to make these really complicated decisions. Those background singers in the documentary are making a living and getting to do what they love.

And so is that not the right way? You know what I'm saying? It's a tough call. Who beyond that one person is entitled to judge? You know, like that's 100% fine. And that was one of the interesting points, right? People were like, oh my God, you have the most incredible voice I've ever heard.

How can you not want to be in front? And the person's like, I'm actually, I'm legitimately good. Right. And that's, you know, everyone wants to overlay. Sure. Their, well, but if I were you. Right. This is, you know, like, don't you, like, because I would want this or you should want it too.

I don't think people believe you when you say I'm good. I'm good with this level of, you know, sort of my career, which is impressive if you think about it. And also, I mean, like, for example, this book, you know, the fact that you had experienced the depth and the width of life that you experienced experience before you came to the moment where you said, it's time to write this, made this a very different thing than it would have been. Absolutely. So you have to, all these things play into it. Sometimes seasoning in life is a really good thing.

I'm grateful. Yeah. I mean, I say that now. Years, you know, years ago, as we all do, I had my moments of frustration. I felt I hadn't really sort of expressed myself fully as an artist. You know, we go through all of that. But, you know, I'm also, I'm a mom and, you know, married, trying to keep all of those relationships healthy and teaching, you know, it's a lot to balance. But I do think we're often hard on ourselves, right?

Like when I look back, it's like, what was I assuming should be happening based on what? Yeah, which feels like a good place for us. You also said bring up happiness again. Yeah, you know, I've been thinking a lot about it. The original title for this book when I had a manuscript form was, What Does Happiness Play For? Because people play numbers based on things and emotions and all kinds of inspirations. And you can look in a dream book and you can look up emotions. Sadness plays for a number, you know.

Turns out they didn't have anything in these dream books for happiness, but they do have something for joy. Joy plays for 313, which is also Detroit's area code. It's a lovely little factoid. But initially, I wanted that title. My editors said no. But this idea of happiness and my mother's pursuit of it and sort of that right that's written into the Declaration of Independence, right? Like, what does it managed to move on. People have often, people close to me have asked me, you know, do you have any way that you can articulate how you do that?

And here's the truth. I believe that it would be an insult to all the things my mother did because that's all she wanted for me. And I'm so grateful. I'm also really fortunate that I benefited from that philosophy, that her goal in life was to provide the best possible situation for her children to live a good life. Why would I not live a good life? So as we sit here in this container, Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Compassion and love and giving back. Like that to me is a good life because that's what I think of when I think of my mother. If I had to sort of really capture her in a few words, that's my memory of her.

She wasn't hugging us all the time and kissing on us and saying, I love you. Every gesture was proof of her love. She demonstrated it. So rare, you know, she demonstrated it. And to see her compassion for others has really influenced how I move through the world. And I wish everyone could witness that sense of compassion. We don't see it enough in the world. And for that to then translate into generosity. I feel good when I'm giving, you know, it makes me feel so grateful for my own life when I can recognize my own capacity to love other people and to then have compassion for folks who need it, not people who

are not as fortunate. I don't mean it in those terms. I mean, it's a kind of open-heartedness, right? To say, I hear you. I see you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com.

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