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BLK LIT: Octavia Butler - Why Didn't We Watch, KINDRED??! · The Breakfast Club

0:00
Speaker 1: My name is Jacquees Thomas and you're listening to Black Lit,
0:05
Speaker 1: a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
0:13
Speaker 1: There is so much we can take away from this
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Speaker 1: exploration of Octavia Butler's work. At every turn, her narratives
0:21
Speaker 1: compel us to reflect, question, and reimagine the world as
0:27
Speaker 1: it is. With every interview, a new depth of insight
0:31
Speaker 1: into her psyche is revealed. We've only cracked the surface,
0:36
Speaker 1: and there is so much more to discover. The complexities
0:40
Speaker 1: of her life, the choices that she made to dedicate
0:44
Speaker 1: her existence to the craft of writing during a time
0:48
Speaker 1: where she didn't have strength in numbers. She was one
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Speaker 1: of one. As we transform our experiences, observations and perspectives,
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Speaker 1: and to the stories for tomorrow, inevitable question surface. Butler's
1:06
Speaker 1: inquiries into the human condition opens pathways into understanding the mind,
1:12
Speaker 1: envisioning the future, and unraveling how our past has shaped
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Speaker 1: our bloodlines and family structures. She wrote, all that you touch,
1:25
Speaker 1: you change, all that you change changes you. The ony
1:32
Speaker 1: lasting truth is change. God is change. The power of
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Speaker 1: influence and the exploration of identity themes that resonate throughout
1:46
Speaker 1: her entire Over her work prompts endless questions and ideas,
1:53
Speaker 1: with each page and interview revealing new discoveries. Her writings
2:00
Speaker 1: beckon us to lose ourselves and then rediscover paths we
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Speaker 1: never conceived, only to lose ourselves once more and the
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Speaker 1: richness of our imagination. These layers are not merely for enjoyment,
2:17
Speaker 1: but provide a textured ground to examine in seeds of thought,
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Speaker 1: seeds in which I can only hope will continue to
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Speaker 1: be planted for the next generation. Over the last few years,
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Speaker 1: the word legacy has occupied my mind with a new significance.
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Speaker 1: Legacy is the opportunity to leave behind something of value,
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Speaker 1: something that not only inspires, but also enriches lives long
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Speaker 1: after we are gone. Butler's legacy indoors. Her works are
3:00
Speaker 1: now a part of educational curricula, discussions on podcasts, and
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Speaker 1: are being adapted for television and theater. Kindred, her popular
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Speaker 1: narrative and the very first of her works to be
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Speaker 1: adapted to television, tells the story of an American bloodline
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Speaker 1: and the horrors that occurred in order for the lead
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Speaker 1: character and her family to exist. Kindred asks readers to
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Speaker 1: examine the truth of our history as a country, and
3:32
Speaker 1: it's not a soft swallow, but a harsh reality that
3:35
Speaker 1: Butler doesn't shy away from the importance of knowing and
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Speaker 1: the sensitivities around accepting what happened. To confront what is,
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Speaker 1: Butler challenges us to confront these truths head on, not
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Speaker 1: as passive observers, but as active participants seeking understanding. In
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Speaker 1: the wake of a divisive election, the harrowing tooths of
4:01
Speaker 1: our past and present intertwine like persistent weeds at our roots,
4:07
Speaker 1: deep beneath the soil. Butler anticipated with somber pragmatism, but
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Speaker 1: no less hope. Hope remains a consistent anchor to cling
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Speaker 1: on to a beacon amids the turmoil. As we stand
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Speaker 1: here thirty years from Butler's introduction to Powerable of the Sower,
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Speaker 1: one must wonder how she would interpret the current political climate,
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Speaker 1: societal divisions, and the environmental degradation. This quote from Eddie
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Speaker 1: s claud Junior stood out to me this week.
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Speaker 2: When we imagine the world as it could be and
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Speaker 2: use that imagination to critique the world as it is,
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Speaker 2: all of us have that capacity.
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Speaker 1: The capacity for a moral imagination that sees well beyond
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Speaker 1: the opacity of our conditions, because if we can envision
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Speaker 1: an alternative world, an alternative future, surely we can create it.
5:09
Speaker 1: Brandon Jacob Jenkins, the creator of the Kindred series, joins
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Speaker 1: us in a conversation later, but here are a few
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Speaker 1: of his thoughts on the power of our imaginations and
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Speaker 1: a necessity to have the freedom to imagine.
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Speaker 2: The Black imagination is profound, you know, and we have
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Speaker 2: to have unfettered access to imagine whatever we want, how
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Speaker 2: we want. And it's the obligation of the creative to
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Speaker 2: constantly celebrate that and honor that and defend that. Because
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Speaker 2: if someone's out there not letting your life and your
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Speaker 2: history and your context on this planet get into that
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Speaker 2: space of viewership and imagining, something's off.
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Speaker 1: Beware Octavia Butler Champion science fiction are for futurism during
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Speaker 1: her era, but now the fire is lit amongst mini writers,
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Speaker 1: creatives and citizens. So what are you thinking, What observations
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Speaker 1: and questions are emerging in your own self reflection, because
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Speaker 1: that's where it starts. What alternative world can you create
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Speaker 1: despite the pervasive uncertainty? What will be your legacy? How
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Speaker 1: will you use your voice, your pen, your action to
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Speaker 1: shape the world beyond what it is.
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Speaker 2: Or what was.
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Speaker 1: Octavia's predictions were based on patterns, history repeating itself, humans
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Speaker 1: repeating themselves and falling over the same lines in the sand,
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Speaker 1: and then drawing it all over again, just to fall
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Speaker 1: all over again. What will be here?
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Speaker 2: Like as he.
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Speaker 3: We can be better with human beings than that. But
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Speaker 3: it's so tempting to be greedy and have power and
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Speaker 3: keep it from other people.
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Speaker 1: In America, it is time to draw something new through
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Speaker 1: the lens of a moral imagination, with the depth of
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Speaker 1: knowing that everything we touch changes, and the need to
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Speaker 1: heal at the root is dire, so that we can
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Speaker 1: grow past our stunted patterns.
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Speaker 3: Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led
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Speaker 3: by a fool is to be led by the opportunists
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Speaker 3: who control the fool. To be led by a law
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Speaker 3: is to ask to be lied to.
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Speaker 1: But it's impossible to ignore the irony of the time,
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Speaker 1: the date, the topic, the year, and an exact journal
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Speaker 1: entry from Lauren Olamina on Wednesday, November sixth, twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: four and Powerable of the Sewer, in which she writes
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Speaker 1: about the President elect and her concern about what they
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Speaker 1: have ahead of them, She writes, Dad decided not to
8:33
Speaker 1: vote for Donner. After all, he didn't vote for anyone.
8:36
Speaker 1: He said, politicians turn his stomach. During this election, millions
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Speaker 1: of people decided not to vote, not to show up
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Speaker 1: at all. Coincidence, perhaps having read Powerable of the Sewer
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Speaker 1: and all of the things that were essentially predicted or
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Speaker 1: calculated just from her watching NPR and just understanding the
9:07
Speaker 1: possible outcomes and in the state of the world that
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Speaker 1: we're in today, how do you feel about what she
9:16
Speaker 1: prophesies and how these things have come to be as
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Speaker 1: a writer, as a black man, how does that sit
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Speaker 1: with you?
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Speaker 2: Who? I mean? I think the important thing, you know,
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Speaker 2: her great message inside of that was about adaptability and
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Speaker 2: community and a deep understanding that change is the constant,
9:44
Speaker 2: and you know, how do we imagine our way out
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Speaker 2: of the world that we've imagined our way into. That's
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Speaker 2: really that's really the clearing call. I think. You know,
9:59
Speaker 2: we're talking just days after the election, and people were
10:04
Speaker 2: still feeling all kinds of feelings. But I know those
10:05
Speaker 2: feelings are going to be different feelings tomorrow and the
10:08
Speaker 2: day after that. And the thing to do is to
10:11
Speaker 2: stay present and to locate one's dignity, locate one's worldview,
10:18
Speaker 2: and always articulate what you feel and what you know.
10:22
Speaker 2: And you keep history of life through the stories you tell.
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Speaker 2: You keep your sense of self and your sense of
10:28
Speaker 2: community live through the stories you tell. So that's what
10:32
Speaker 2: I kind of take away from her whole project. She
10:35
Speaker 2: didn't have to write these books, you know, and we're
10:38
Speaker 2: all very grateful she did write these books. And I
10:43
Speaker 2: think it's up to us to kind of take as
10:45
Speaker 2: an example for ourselves why she chose to write these books.
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Speaker 2: You know, that's what she decided to spend her life
10:53
Speaker 2: on this planet doing. And how do we be inspired
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Speaker 2: by that of human action? That's sort of my That's
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Speaker 2: where my mind takes me. That's where i'm today, That's
11:06
Speaker 2: where I'm staying. On Friday of Ember eighth, twenty twenty four, you.
11:16
Speaker 1: Are now listening to black Lit black List.
11:21
Speaker 2: Well, the thing about Kindred that was very important was
11:24
Speaker 2: it was the kind of watershed book for her. It
11:27
Speaker 2: was sort of you know, I think if you take
11:30
Speaker 2: the kind of complete body of work of many great artists,
11:34
Speaker 2: there's always like a book that feels like a turning
11:36
Speaker 2: point where nothing else could have happened unless this book
11:40
Speaker 2: had happened. And I think that Kindred was that for her,
11:44
Speaker 2: like I think at some ways she was born as
11:47
Speaker 2: a writer through the writing of that book. And you know,
11:50
Speaker 2: she would say, I, since we come rather close with
11:54
Speaker 2: Merrily Hypetz, who is her great champion and her agent
11:57
Speaker 2: and currently her you know, Elery executor, and has really
11:59
Speaker 2: done incredible a lot of work to keep Octavia in
12:02
Speaker 2: the imaginary and keep her alive and keep her legacy alive,
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Speaker 2: merely told me that she would say to to Octavia,
12:11
Speaker 2: you know, you really should write a memoir. And Octavia say,
12:14
Speaker 2: I've already written a memoir. It's Kindred, and that there
12:18
Speaker 2: was something about that book that was very personal, and
12:20
Speaker 2: that was that was a book of a young person
12:23
Speaker 2: trying to make sense of what they cared about and
12:26
Speaker 2: trying to figure out the themes that would motivate them
12:29
Speaker 2: and carry them through the rest of their body of work.
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Speaker 2: And when I began to sort of look at it
12:34
Speaker 2: through that lands, you know, I was a teacher and
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Speaker 2: I teach write. I haven't teaching writing about for over
12:37
Speaker 2: a decade. You know, you do see in young writers,
12:40
Speaker 2: you know, you see what them you see they're actively
12:43
Speaker 2: wrestling with in those early works, and I really let
12:47
Speaker 2: that what I see her doing is actually trying to
12:50
Speaker 2: find the confidence to be a black female writer.
12:55
Speaker 3: You know.
12:55
Speaker 2: I think it's no mistake that it's about you know,
13:00
Speaker 2: I always said, the art of that book is she's
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Speaker 2: the black female writer married to a white male writer
13:05
Speaker 2: who's very successful. But in the end, the book that's
13:08
Speaker 2: in your hands, it's her book techniquey right, that it's
13:12
Speaker 2: about a woman claiming an identity as an author and
13:15
Speaker 2: an artist and a person through this strange traumatic experience
13:22
Speaker 2: that's part imagined, part reality, part historical, market temporary, you know.
13:27
Speaker 2: And that was really that was really fascinating, and I
13:30
Speaker 2: also was really moved to learn more about you know,
13:35
Speaker 2: she It's hard for people to understand now, but like
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Speaker 2: she was a real researcher at a time when research
13:40
Speaker 2: was not easy, and she was not affiliated with the university,
13:44
Speaker 2: she was not an academic, you know, and she really
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Speaker 2: was so such an autodidact and so self motivated that
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Speaker 2: she paid her she paid for a greathound bus that
13:57
Speaker 2: took her all the way across the country to do
14:00
Speaker 2: research on this book at a time when you know,
14:05
Speaker 2: we don't understand how lucky we are living or be
14:09
Speaker 2: living in an era that is dedicated to the moralization
14:13
Speaker 2: of the American chattel slavery and like the memory of it.
14:18
Speaker 2: But at that time, which was you know, right around
14:23
Speaker 2: the country celebration of it's like bi centennial, you know,
14:28
Speaker 2: nobody was out here caring about this stuff in a
14:32
Speaker 2: significant way, writing about it, memorializing, theorizing, historicizing it. You know,
14:38
Speaker 2: that was We're looking at the very beginnings of the
14:40
Speaker 2: birth of like African American studies as we understand it
14:43
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, you know. And so for her
14:46
Speaker 2: to like decide she's gonna write this book, pay her
14:49
Speaker 2: way on a greyhound, be on that bus for however
14:51
Speaker 2: many days, to go to like basically where I grew up,
14:54
Speaker 2: you know, Maryland, Eastern Shore, DC, and look at these
14:58
Speaker 2: crumbling plantations and I have government funding, you know, and
15:02
Speaker 2: try to piece together enough sense memory and reality to
15:06
Speaker 2: kind of go into herself and tell this story is
15:10
Speaker 2: a profound undertaking with no Internet, no nothing, you know,
15:14
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous. And Merrily also told me that all through
15:18
Speaker 2: her career she was obsessed with she would like record
15:24
Speaker 2: things on her like on like tailor and like cassette tapes,
15:29
Speaker 2: and she would make these, especially she make podcasts for
15:32
Speaker 2: herself and she's like audible audibles, yes, by herself. She
15:36
Speaker 2: would make them, you know, and she would just she
15:39
Speaker 2: just had a methodology of bringing that knowledge to her
15:41
Speaker 2: and synthesizing that knowledge, and her work is proof of
15:44
Speaker 2: how you know, that work yields more than just the
15:48
Speaker 2: knowledge itself. In some ways, people argue she brings she
15:51
Speaker 2: was a prophet in many, many of these books, but
15:53
Speaker 2: she was definitely making these interesting arguments through fiction about
15:58
Speaker 2: thinks like genetics, epi genetics, like providence of racial you know,
16:03
Speaker 2: racial like interracial lisms and forms. You know, She's doing
16:06
Speaker 2: all this stuff in an imaginative way that now, of
16:08
Speaker 2: course we have entire shells of scholarship kind of talking
16:14
Speaker 2: through the reality of you know. So that was really
16:16
Speaker 2: just inspiring that if you really just dig down into
16:22
Speaker 2: your calling and you take the work seriously and you
16:25
Speaker 2: just get what you need at whatever the cost, there's
16:28
Speaker 2: real yield there.
16:29
Speaker 3: One of the things that I tell people who are
16:31
Speaker 3: reading my work critically is that what they bring to
16:34
Speaker 3: it is at least as important to them as what
16:37
Speaker 3: I put into it, and that's true.
16:40
Speaker 2: Once we sold the show, soeld the idea. At that time,
16:44
Speaker 2: Huntington Library had just received her papers and no one
16:48
Speaker 2: could really get access to them, and honestly, nobody want
16:50
Speaker 2: to access them because she wasn't really in the air.
16:54
Speaker 2: I say, in like twenty when was this mus have
16:56
Speaker 2: been like twenty fourteen, twenty fifth teen around then when
17:01
Speaker 2: we actually sold it, and Merrily was like, listen, you can,
17:04
Speaker 2: I can get you access to this library. So I
17:06
Speaker 2: messedlf out to La and I like went to that
17:08
Speaker 2: library every day, and they had barely organized these things.
17:12
Speaker 2: I mean because she wrote in these scraps of paper.
17:14
Speaker 3: You know.
17:14
Speaker 2: That was the beginning of me trying to really get
17:16
Speaker 2: inside her mind, because I felt that was my obligations
17:20
Speaker 2: as an adapter, was to like just know every inch
17:23
Speaker 2: of her intention and every inch of this book. And
17:26
Speaker 2: I read like her her like multiple drafts and like
17:29
Speaker 2: half drafts and falls drafts, and and I was like, man,
17:32
Speaker 2: this woman, really we're not joking around with the body.
17:35
Speaker 2: She was really a deep, deep, deep serious thinker and writer.
17:40
Speaker 2: And I couldn't just comment her with like there was
17:44
Speaker 2: just gonna everything you every thread you pulled, just took
17:46
Speaker 2: you on her whole journey, and I just wanted to
17:49
Speaker 2: know every part of that map. So that was part
17:52
Speaker 2: of my process for the many, many years I was
17:55
Speaker 2: just stating a series.
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Speaker 1: So knowing that it was her essentially her memoir, wanting
18:01
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're capturing her intention of the book.
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Speaker 1: Did that play a role in your character development within
18:11
Speaker 1: the series, because I know there were some changes that
18:12
Speaker 1: were made, but how did you maintain that intention within
18:16
Speaker 1: the changes?
18:16
Speaker 2: Within the changes? Yeah, I think what I did well,
18:19
Speaker 2: I want to say, I don't think it was I
18:20
Speaker 2: don't think she's being literal about it being her memoir.
18:22
Speaker 2: I think that what she was sort of saying is
18:24
Speaker 2: that she told her emotional story through that. You know,
18:29
Speaker 2: I think it was about trying to first of all, yes,
18:33
Speaker 2: it did, because it was about what I felt in
18:37
Speaker 2: the book. What I wanted to do in the series
18:40
Speaker 2: was to do with the trick of the book, which
18:42
Speaker 2: is that in the end you realize this whole thing
18:44
Speaker 2: is a memoir of an author, But it was about
18:49
Speaker 2: you know, I think she very intentionally wanted to write
18:53
Speaker 2: about a driven black female creative in an industry that
18:59
Speaker 2: in which she was was just gonna be like automatically
19:04
Speaker 2: a weird anomaly. And I also felt like one of
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Speaker 2: the things about Octavia that I loved is that she
19:11
Speaker 2: never you know, my other queen mother is Tony Morrison,
19:14
Speaker 2: which you know, Tony Morrison has this whole origin story
19:17
Speaker 2: of like I went to the library, I read all
19:19
Speaker 2: the children's books on the bottom shelf, and then the
19:22
Speaker 2: next shelf it was Dostoyevsky, and I read all that too,
19:25
Speaker 2: you know. And so her story as a writer was
19:27
Speaker 2: very much and justifiably wrapped up in an exposure to
19:32
Speaker 2: like great literature and the formation inside of herself of
19:35
Speaker 2: what it meant to be a great author of literature.
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Speaker 2: But Octavia's story is very different. Where Octavia read whatever
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Speaker 2: her mom, who was a domestic could bring home from
19:45
Speaker 2: the house that she was cleaning. So she was reading
19:47
Speaker 2: comic books, she was reading manuals, she was reading whatever
19:50
Speaker 2: she could. So she didn't have, I think, a necessary
19:53
Speaker 2: division between high and low literature in her conception of herself,
19:58
Speaker 2: and that she had to someone she was someone who
20:02
Speaker 2: understood the value of watching things that most people would
20:06
Speaker 2: write off as not like disposed, like disposable or not
20:11
Speaker 2: valuable or not meaningful, and so I needed to make
20:14
Speaker 2: I really wanted to make a character who was like,
20:16
Speaker 2: I'm about here to bring digny to the thing that
20:18
Speaker 2: staying so many people I know and look like me,
20:21
Speaker 2: but you're going to write it off as not meaningful enough,
20:25
Speaker 2: and I don't care, because that was what Oh, that's
20:26
Speaker 2: what octavit. She was the only one in her field
20:31
Speaker 2: for so long, she was the only black woman, you know,
20:36
Speaker 2: and that's a lot. That is a lot, and that
20:39
Speaker 2: takes a lot of commitment to stay there, you know.
20:42
Speaker 2: And that felt kind of important to me. And also
20:46
Speaker 2: just looking at how in the drafts that I read
20:48
Speaker 2: and kind of in some ways being able to track
20:50
Speaker 2: the evolution of the finished project and seeing where her
20:53
Speaker 2: mind went and the roads she went down and why
20:56
Speaker 2: she decided to back up out of them versus go
20:58
Speaker 2: down some of them. I was like, Oh, I actually
21:01
Speaker 2: think there's ways to honor this impulse she had in
21:05
Speaker 2: a television form in a way that she couldn't necessary.
21:08
Speaker 2: She knew that she somehow instinctively knew she couldn't actually
21:11
Speaker 2: pull off in a novel that needs to be about
21:13
Speaker 2: two hundred pages, you know. So yeah, that did all
21:16
Speaker 2: kind of all that was definitely in living in me
21:19
Speaker 2: and with me through that whole process. And of course,
21:23
Speaker 2: you know, making TV has other challenges, but everything I did,
21:28
Speaker 2: I tried to do in the grain of what I
21:30
Speaker 2: had come to understand was her thinking and as a
21:33
Speaker 2: creative at that time in her life. One of the
21:37
Speaker 2: often cited kind of aha moments was she was in
21:40
Speaker 2: a class and he was a history class where some
21:42
Speaker 2: students stood up and was like, if I go back
21:44
Speaker 2: in time, I would have killed all these Uncle Tom's
21:47
Speaker 2: and these house slaves, this, that, and the other. And
21:49
Speaker 2: she was going home to a parent who was a domestic,
21:54
Speaker 2: you know, and just that experience of like, wait a minute,
21:59
Speaker 2: you know something that's so poisonous about our history that
22:02
Speaker 2: people don't even acknowledge that the people in these in
22:07
Speaker 2: this history didn't know the future. This is the only
22:09
Speaker 2: world they knew and they were still human beings who
22:12
Speaker 2: had to navigate the reality dating right, you know, as
22:15
Speaker 2: we all are today, you know. And just the profundity
22:21
Speaker 2: of that thought was to me like right, of course,
22:23
Speaker 2: like it's so easy for people to want to judge
22:26
Speaker 2: any story about slavery because all we've received is like
22:30
Speaker 2: a copy of a copy. But if you'd stopped for
22:31
Speaker 2: five seconds and think about these people's lives, they had
22:36
Speaker 2: no reason to believe that this was not going to
22:37
Speaker 2: be the history of humanity forever and ever. So when
22:40
Speaker 2: you have that thought, how does your behavior and your
22:43
Speaker 2: sense of entitlement in your relationship to violence or violence
22:47
Speaker 2: you think you'll do shift or change? You know? That's
22:50
Speaker 2: really the story. That's what's that's the interesting story.
22:53
Speaker 1: I remember you saying something in an interview once that
22:56
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of binging gives us an opportunity
22:59
Speaker 1: to almost approach it as if it were a book.
23:02
Speaker 1: But can you talk to me about like your approach
23:05
Speaker 1: to time and because I feel like, even in the
23:08
Speaker 1: first eight episodes, we got through a good amount of
23:11
Speaker 1: the book, and I'm so curious, I don't know if
23:14
Speaker 1: you can talk about her if you're so shopping it,
23:15
Speaker 1: if there's potential of it ever being another season.
23:18
Speaker 2: I don't know, y'all. It would require a lot of activation,
23:24
Speaker 2: you know. Well, one thing I knew is for a
23:26
Speaker 2: long time I think people were like, why is this
23:29
Speaker 2: stop being made yet? And I think one of the
23:30
Speaker 2: issues was people were trying to make it a movie.
23:34
Speaker 2: And the truth is that like part of the effectiveness
23:37
Speaker 2: of that book that she manages so beautifully and I
23:39
Speaker 2: think you really see her like get better and better
23:41
Speaker 2: at this. Like I think Parable is a great example
23:42
Speaker 2: of this, is you have you know, part of the
23:44
Speaker 2: emotional experience of those books is how much time you
23:47
Speaker 2: spend with these people. You know, it's getting to know
23:50
Speaker 2: the people and feeling how important it is for them
23:52
Speaker 2: to be changing so vividly over time. That's what part
23:56
Speaker 2: of the book is about. If you think about the
23:57
Speaker 2: arc of Missus Whale Margaret Whalen, you know by the
24:01
Speaker 2: end of the book, which we didn't get to a show,
24:03
Speaker 2: but she is a totally different person. And it's also
24:08
Speaker 2: kind of implied that that woman is the reason why
24:11
Speaker 2: Dana's line gets to continue on something right. So, but
24:16
Speaker 2: you can only feel that, you can't feel that in
24:18
Speaker 2: two hours that's not gonna mean nothing to you. If
24:19
Speaker 2: Glenn close to whoever is really mean for like ten
24:21
Speaker 2: minutes and then twenty minutes later she's like old lady
24:24
Speaker 2: and she's blind, Like, it's just gonna feel different. Yeah,
24:26
Speaker 2: So I was so early on, I was like, he
24:28
Speaker 2: has it has to be TV, because the thing about TV,
24:30
Speaker 2: you're constantly having to ask yourself, why would the audience
24:33
Speaker 2: member bring this person back into my living room every week?
24:36
Speaker 2: Because when you're trying to build there's a relationship to characters,
24:39
Speaker 2: You're trying to build familiarity. You know, you think about
24:41
Speaker 2: these these long running shows and it's like you literally
24:44
Speaker 2: feel like you know Aria Stark. But you would not
24:48
Speaker 2: have that same experience if Game of Thrones had been
24:51
Speaker 2: into our movie. You just wouldn't have because about the
24:54
Speaker 2: time you spend with people. And truthfully, yes, and part
24:57
Speaker 2: of also part of what she woul the revolutionary about
25:00
Speaker 2: what she was doing in Kindred was talking about how
25:04
Speaker 2: it's easy to pretend that the worst part about slavery
25:06
Speaker 2: is that people got whipped, But the truth is people's
25:08
Speaker 2: lives were robbed from them. People were trapped, and they're incarcerated.
25:13
Speaker 2: The theft of your time is the crime. And how
25:17
Speaker 2: do you really show that to people unless you give
25:19
Speaker 2: them an experience of orders to live with these people
25:21
Speaker 2: in this world and wake up every day in the
25:24
Speaker 2: same captivity. That's really the that's where the heartbreak is.
25:29
Speaker 2: You know, it's not just the precarity, it's not just
25:31
Speaker 2: the ways that the system is built to contain and
25:36
Speaker 2: demean you. It's the life you lose. It's the social death.
25:39
Speaker 2: That's the phrase Atlanta Passion uses. That's the real crime.
25:45
Speaker 1: The sexual violence, it's such a sensitive thing that is
25:50
Speaker 1: a part of that generational trauma. It's a part of
25:52
Speaker 1: all of these things that we essentially sometimes don't want
25:55
Speaker 1: to talk about. Why we don't want to even watch
25:59
Speaker 1: or people are con saying, we don't need another slave movie,
26:02
Speaker 1: we don't need another slave contextual idea. But in so
26:06
Speaker 1: many ways, I'm like, yes, we do, because there's still
26:08
Speaker 1: so many conversations that we are refusing to have and
26:12
Speaker 1: I think that's part of it. And doing it in
26:15
Speaker 1: a series makes the most sense to me because of
26:18
Speaker 1: the sensitivity of it.
26:19
Speaker 2: You can't put that in someone's face so immediately.
26:22
Speaker 1: I mean you can, but why would you want to
26:25
Speaker 1: if you want to create a dialogue, right, especially when
26:28
Speaker 1: it was the sexual violence that wasn't like one off,
26:33
Speaker 1: it was systemic, it was systeaetic. Yeah, you know, the
26:36
Speaker 1: economy of slavery depended on the sexual violence. The sexual
26:42
Speaker 1: the repeated sexual violation.
26:44
Speaker 2: And assault of women of black women. That's what it was.
26:47
Speaker 2: And you know, the thing about Kindred quite as it's
26:50
Speaker 2: kept is it's a family store. It's a family drama.
26:53
Speaker 2: When she goes back and she meets those Whalens, she's
26:56
Speaker 2: meeting her actual ancestors. That's the reveal. You know. Margaret
27:01
Speaker 2: Whalen is her great great great grandmother. Tom Whalen is
27:04
Speaker 2: her great great great grandfather, you know. And her life
27:08
Speaker 2: is the product of all kinds of violence. I mean literal.
27:13
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's Alice's arc, right, That's like, that's
27:16
Speaker 2: the real moral craziness of that book is what Dana
27:21
Speaker 2: realizes she has to do in order to keep herself alive.
27:26
Speaker 1: Man, I mean, it's a heavy book.
27:31
Speaker 2: It's a lot. It's a lot.
27:37
Speaker 1: I have to ask. I have to ask this question, Kevin,
27:43
Speaker 1: mm hmm. What was the reason for changing the dynamic
27:48
Speaker 1: of their relationship.
27:50
Speaker 2: I have a theory. Your theory might be the I mean,
28:01
Speaker 2: what specifically about their dynamic are you thinking about?
28:05
Speaker 1: They're they're not married, they're not a couple, They're not
28:09
Speaker 1: you know, the relationship is not at the depth as
28:12
Speaker 1: it was in the book. When she started going in
28:16
Speaker 1: the past.
28:17
Speaker 2: There were an incredible number of drafts, So you know,
28:21
Speaker 2: I don't you know, making TV is tricky. It's not.
28:24
Speaker 2: It is not like painting and painting. It's not writing
28:26
Speaker 2: a poem. It's not even write a play. You are
28:29
Speaker 2: in constant negotiation with a corporation represented by any number
28:35
Speaker 2: of pretty much well meaning people, and you're trying very
28:41
Speaker 2: hard to I was. I just felt like I gotta
28:45
Speaker 2: I gotta get Octavia to people. That's like what I'm
28:48
Speaker 2: you know. That was my fire inside of me. And
28:52
Speaker 2: there were many, many, many, many, many many many drafts
28:56
Speaker 2: of this pilot in which these two were married. There's
29:04
Speaker 2: a multiverse in which I made this show in which
29:07
Speaker 2: they're married, and I'm very happy, So I did that.
29:10
Speaker 2: I would say that two things, the marriage as represented
29:17
Speaker 2: in the book, which people seem to like close one
29:20
Speaker 2: eye to, is not what we would consider functional, or
29:25
Speaker 2: I would say or I would say progressive. Right. He's
29:30
Speaker 2: significantly older than her in the book, Yes, right, in
29:33
Speaker 2: a way that we would all kind of like, I
29:36
Speaker 2: think if we had to watch that every week, would
29:39
Speaker 2: have questions about He's also described in the book as
29:42
Speaker 2: like not attractive.
29:45
Speaker 3: At all.
29:48
Speaker 2: He's like short, he's like got white hair, he's got
29:50
Speaker 2: crazy eyes. He seems aggressive, and he has like extremely
29:56
Speaker 2: paternalistic impulses towards her that are that can make people pause. Right,
30:04
Speaker 2: she's supposed to type up his type, up his stuff
30:08
Speaker 2: for him. You know, there's a wild moment they have
30:12
Speaker 2: a wild fight early in their relationship where for some reason,
30:16
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people would not forgive him,
30:19
Speaker 2: and this character kind of inexplicably lets this man back
30:25
Speaker 2: in her life. So if you're talking about really trying
30:29
Speaker 2: to recreate that specific marriage for a contemporary audience, there
30:35
Speaker 2: will be bigger questions. I don't think that everyone's instinct
30:38
Speaker 2: would be like if they were in love and it's
30:40
Speaker 2: a deep love. I think that she's actually written a
30:41
Speaker 2: very I think in some ways the story of the
30:43
Speaker 2: book is actually the two of them learning really what
30:47
Speaker 2: love is.
30:48
Speaker 3: Like.
30:48
Speaker 2: They kind of bond through the experience in a way
30:50
Speaker 2: that makes that marriage at the end feel genuine enough
30:53
Speaker 2: that she keeps this man out of jail when she
30:55
Speaker 2: comes back from the arm you know. And I think
30:58
Speaker 2: that there was a desire to I think I desired
31:05
Speaker 2: for there to be the possibility of watching this character
31:08
Speaker 2: have a love story in real time, rather than taking
31:15
Speaker 2: it for granted or presupposing that's our Okay, what would
31:19
Speaker 2: it mean to ask the question of how this woman
31:24
Speaker 2: might inside of this horrible experience where she is literally
31:30
Speaker 2: a commodity and at risk of being violated at any moment.
31:35
Speaker 2: You know what, if inside this we could actually give
31:37
Speaker 2: her an emotional story that felt productive or safe or
31:44
Speaker 2: evolving or deepening, or something that was also happening. But
31:48
Speaker 2: there's other things I can't say on the record. That's all.
31:50
Speaker 2: That's that's fair man. But but it's you know, for
31:55
Speaker 2: people who think I didn't want you know, I did.
31:58
Speaker 2: There are actually versions of this script that were very
32:02
Speaker 2: very close to the book, But TV's another. It's a
32:04
Speaker 2: different kind of animal than a double. And I always thought, well,
32:07
Speaker 2: you know who liberated me was merely she was like
32:12
Speaker 2: Octavia always felt kind of ambivalent about aritations for work
32:17
Speaker 2: because she was like, it'll never be the book, It'll
32:20
Speaker 2: be its own thing. As long as people read my books,
32:23
Speaker 2: that's all I care about. And so I thought, okay, right, Like,
32:25
Speaker 2: my job is here is not to replace that book
32:28
Speaker 2: or anybody's experience that book, or even my experience that book.
32:31
Speaker 2: It's to kind of give it a different iteration and
32:33
Speaker 2: hopefully in a satisfying way that it sends you back
32:36
Speaker 2: to the book and that book has accrued a different
32:38
Speaker 2: layer of meaningfulness or something. You know, that was what
32:41
Speaker 2: I always felt when I was making it. That makes sense.
32:45
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons why I started this podcast,
32:48
Speaker 1: and it's happened already. We're like, oh, I should go
32:50
Speaker 1: back and reread parable of the soroh I should read Kendred,
32:53
Speaker 1: or oh I need to learn more about Octavia Butler.
32:56
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, you kind of want
32:58
Speaker 1: to just ignite this part.
33:00
Speaker 2: Exactly because I try. I mean, you and I both
33:03
Speaker 2: know we can trust those books enough to make their
33:05
Speaker 2: own case. Like you don't even need to make a podcast,
33:07
Speaker 2: you know, like you can lose your whole life in
33:09
Speaker 2: mind and everything spirit in those books, like black people
33:12
Speaker 2: I know have, and they're they're just more than any
33:16
Speaker 2: either of us could sum up, you know, and just
33:18
Speaker 2: talking about them, you really have to experience them, you
33:21
Speaker 2: really have to live in them, live with them. And
33:25
Speaker 2: I'm just so fortunate that somebody in my life gave
33:28
Speaker 2: me the wherewithal to kind of stay tenacious. I mean,
33:32
Speaker 2: maybe's Octavia. So I'm saying like all these people, like
33:35
Speaker 2: Toddy Moore said, nobody was checking for blue as eye it. No,
33:42
Speaker 2: she was just doing these things on the weekend. Yeah,
33:46
Speaker 2: you know, nobody saw the future coming, and no understood
33:48
Speaker 2: just the profound revolution she was engendering through her through language,
33:53
Speaker 2: through the way she engaged language. So you just have
33:56
Speaker 2: to sort of have faith in the work you're doing
34:01
Speaker 2: and listen. I mean, I'm never afraid to listen to
34:04
Speaker 2: people have something to say. That's the other thing, Like,
34:07
Speaker 2: I'm always willing to have a conversation because I do
34:10
Speaker 2: believe I put in the work to say what I'm saying,
34:14
Speaker 2: and maybe something didn't get across to you the way
34:17
Speaker 2: you wanted to hear it, or maybe you just didn't
34:20
Speaker 2: hear it.
34:20
Speaker 3: You know.
34:21
Speaker 2: But it's always going to be difficult talking about the
34:25
Speaker 2: reality of history to people. Like one of the crazy
34:31
Speaker 2: repeat kind of things people kept saying when Kendrick was
34:35
Speaker 2: on the air was like, do we need another thing
34:38
Speaker 2: about slavery? Another thing about slavery? And I was like, well,
34:42
Speaker 2: first of all, as it's over and over again, I
34:46
Speaker 2: was like, there's a trillion TV show about wealthy white
34:50
Speaker 2: families doing evil stuff. One trillion of this right, and
34:55
Speaker 2: they win award after award after ward, after ward, when
35:00
Speaker 2: I come along and do one of maybe two or
35:03
Speaker 2: three shows in the history of television, there's even partly
35:07
Speaker 2: taken American slavery. It's part of his storytelling. I'm being
35:11
Speaker 2: told it's too many. There's a quota, right when I
35:14
Speaker 2: want to talk about the reality of my history and
35:17
Speaker 2: my family experience in America, there's a quota.
35:22
Speaker 3: You know.
35:22
Speaker 2: There's something about that where I was like, I was
35:24
Speaker 2: just glad to go to TV and say that to
35:26
Speaker 2: people and just be like, this is interesting. Right. They
35:29
Speaker 2: were a nice man in that sermon, but that was real.
35:38
Speaker 2: But that's why that stuff matters, because it's like, actually, no, yeah,
35:42
Speaker 2: this is another one. You don't have to watch it actually,
35:44
Speaker 2: because Lord knows, I don't watch every show about cops.
35:47
Speaker 2: I don't watch every show about firefighters. I don't watch
35:49
Speaker 2: every show set in the hospital. I don't watch every
35:51
Speaker 2: show set on a farm or about cowboys. That's the
35:54
Speaker 2: amazing thing about living in the Golden At TV, you
35:56
Speaker 2: ain't got to watch what you don't want to watch.
35:58
Speaker 2: But that does I mean, it's somebody out there does
36:00
Speaker 2: watch it. It doesn't need to watch it. It was just well.
36:02
Speaker 2: But it's like that's the kind of policing that only
36:04
Speaker 2: happens with black content, right, that's they don't truly nobody
36:09
Speaker 2: else experiences that.
36:11
Speaker 1: If you could, would you adapt another one of her books?
36:16
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean it would take me? Yes,
36:18
Speaker 2: I would, Yes, dance Is, Yes, I would. I would.
36:21
Speaker 2: I'll be honest. When I was like pitching Kindred, nobody
36:25
Speaker 2: was checking for and then once we got picked up
36:28
Speaker 2: and all her books got optioned, and I don't know
36:30
Speaker 2: where those things are. I don't know where Kart's Parable sauris.
36:32
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for it. HBO was gonna do Fledgling. What happened?
36:36
Speaker 2: Like people got to talk. They're gonna do Dawn. They
36:40
Speaker 2: gonna do Dawn. I saw that. Yeah, you guys, can
36:43
Speaker 2: we tell the story of what happened? Because there was
36:46
Speaker 2: gonna be this thing? You know? But I would, of
36:49
Speaker 2: course I would, because I really do have a kind
36:51
Speaker 2: of It's like I'm also working on this Prince project
36:54
Speaker 2: and meeting all these Prince people who are like he
36:56
Speaker 2: was like a religious figure to them. You know, they're
36:59
Speaker 2: like they go into raptures. They pulled me in the clauset,
37:01
Speaker 2: show me tattoos and like it's too much. But I
37:03
Speaker 2: feel that kind of way back, or I feel like
37:07
Speaker 2: I was like my job. I'm just like one of
37:09
Speaker 2: her soldiers. I'm like, let me just give you read
37:11
Speaker 2: these books. Like right, I could just give you read
37:13
Speaker 2: these books. Read these books. I know, I just know
37:15
Speaker 2: that something's going to change because what she was doing
37:18
Speaker 2: was more than just fiction. It was like she was
37:21
Speaker 2: trying to build a community of thought around some ideas
37:23
Speaker 2: and so yes answers. Yes, I would do what everybody
37:26
Speaker 2: wanted me to, honestly, but it was not easy. It
37:29
Speaker 2: was not an easy time to make television. It was
37:31
Speaker 2: not an easy television to make. And yeah it was
37:36
Speaker 2: I got some gray hairs.
37:38
Speaker 1: Oh man, I can only imagine. I'm sure there was
37:40
Speaker 1: a lot of off book conversations there is.
37:45
Speaker 2: That's premium subscribers. You would get you a premium premiums.
37:49
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I do with
37:51
Speaker 2: down and in Atlanta in the fall of twenty whatever.
38:04
Speaker 1: And Kindred, we are transported back to a tumultuous era
38:08
Speaker 1: where the outcomes of many of our ancestors was uncertain
38:12
Speaker 1: and often bleak. Yet hope remained a steadfast companion, contrasted
38:18
Speaker 1: and powerable the soler Octavia. Butler draws from the news
38:22
Speaker 1: and societal eras to paint a future our present day
38:28
Speaker 1: as a dystopian landscape where faith leads as the main character.
38:36
Speaker 1: This prompts a reflective question I posed earlier, what will
38:41
Speaker 1: be your legacy? What stories are you crafting from your
38:46
Speaker 1: current observations, and how are these experiences impacting your imagination?
38:56
Speaker 1: These practices of interpretation are not passive activities. They actively
39:02
Speaker 1: shape our ideology for tomorrow and influence how we internalize
39:08
Speaker 1: what unfolds before us. Brandon suggested we conclude with the
39:13
Speaker 1: Book of Martha, one of Butler's shorter stories that challenges
39:18
Speaker 1: us to envision our role in the crafting of our worlds,
39:22
Speaker 1: inviting a deep, introspective look at how we might use
39:26
Speaker 1: our powers of creation to influence our realities. I hope
39:33
Speaker 1: this summarize excerpt enables you to see yourself and your
39:37
Speaker 1: potential more clearly, pushing you to think about the legacy
39:44
Speaker 1: you wish to leave behind and the stories you choose
39:47
Speaker 1: the right.
39:50
Speaker 2: How will you use.
39:51
Speaker 1: Your insights and your voice to shape a future that
39:54
Speaker 1: reflects the best of what we can imagine.
39:59
Speaker 2: I think that's consistent theme and probably when we're liberating
40:03
Speaker 2: and radical. Thrust of her body of work is about
40:08
Speaker 2: the imagination and what it is that we possess this
40:11
Speaker 2: faculty of conceiving our reality as being different than it is,
40:16
Speaker 2: and how that the exercise of that is important because
40:20
Speaker 2: that's where our agency is as actors in the world begins,
40:24
Speaker 2: you know, and that's so much of the world, you know,
40:29
Speaker 2: and things don't go great, what's usually happening is someone's
40:32
Speaker 2: trying to suppress that potential in people in subjects right,
40:36
Speaker 2: and that one of the ways you do that is
40:38
Speaker 2: through robbing them of their language, which gives us access
40:41
Speaker 2: to that right, It gives us access to bringing our
40:44
Speaker 2: interior into the exterior. Maybe little, a little google, but
40:49
Speaker 2: that's just what I always find in all of her.
40:51
Speaker 2: That's the kind of the continuous threat, is a real
40:54
Speaker 2: emphasis on interiority, and especially black interiority. And I always
40:59
Speaker 2: find that these themes for me completely resolve themselves in
41:03
Speaker 2: this little short story of hers called the Book of Martha,
41:06
Speaker 2: which is never where I tell people start with octaber,
41:10
Speaker 2: where I tell them to end and it's a conversation
41:12
Speaker 2: between a Karen named Martha and God. But over the
41:15
Speaker 2: course of the story, you know, you realize that God
41:19
Speaker 2: and Martha have a relationship, you know, like that there's
41:22
Speaker 2: a connection between them that has lots to do with
41:26
Speaker 2: I think what we're talking about.
41:29
Speaker 1: In this scene from the Book of Martha by Octavia Butler,
41:33
Speaker 1: Martha experiences a profound and symbolic moment with God as
41:38
Speaker 1: they enjoy sandwiches together. Martha brings out sparkling apple cider
41:43
Speaker 1: for her divine guests, but she returns she's startled to
41:48
Speaker 1: see that God has transformed into a woman, resembling Martha
41:54
Speaker 1: so closely that they could be sisters. This transformation inspires
41:58
Speaker 1: a conversation about perception and identity. Martha expresses her confusion
42:06
Speaker 1: and frustration over why it took her so long to
42:10
Speaker 1: visualize God as a black woman, questioning the authenticity of
42:16
Speaker 1: her previous perceptions of God as a white or black man.
42:21
Speaker 1: She says, it does bother me if I am doing it.
42:27
Speaker 1: Why did it take so long for me to see
42:29
Speaker 1: you as a black woman, since that's no more true
42:32
Speaker 1: than seeing you as a white or a black man.
42:37
Speaker 1: God explains that Martha sees what she has been conditioned
42:42
Speaker 1: by her life experiences to see, implying that her perceptions
42:47
Speaker 1: are shaped by her own personal and cultural background. The
42:54
Speaker 1: exchange deepens as Martha considers her own ideological constraint, her
43:00
Speaker 1: mental cage, what she thought she had escaped. She has
43:06
Speaker 1: always envisioned God in the limited human constructs available to her,
43:11
Speaker 1: white male human. God's response is enlightening. If Martha were
43:18
Speaker 1: truly still confined by those limits, she would be witnessing God.
43:24
Speaker 1: God's response is enlightening. If it were truly a cage,
43:29
Speaker 1: God said, you would still be in it, and I
43:34
Speaker 1: would still look the way I did when you first
43:38
Speaker 1: saw me, suggesting that Martha has indeed begun to transcend
43:43
Speaker 1: her previous constraints. This scene, although short, captures the theme
43:52
Speaker 1: of self realization, the breaking of mental and cultural conditioning,
43:57
Speaker 1: and the expansive nature of Divinity beyond human imposed identities.
44:03
Speaker 1: It challenges both Martha and the reader to reflect, to
44:08
Speaker 1: reflect on the boundaries of perception and the potential for
44:14
Speaker 1: growth well beyond. The Black Lit is a Black Effect
44:24
Speaker 1: original series in partnership with iHeart Media. I jac Quist
44:28
Speaker 1: Thomas and the creator and executive producer alongside Dolly s Bishop.
44:34
Speaker 1: Chanelle Collins is the director of production. It is written
44:38
Speaker 1: by myself and Bria Baker. Our researcher and producer is
44:42
Speaker 1: Jabari Davis, and the mix and sound design is by
44:46
Speaker 1: The Humble Dwyane Crawford. Special thanks to Hoshanda Saunders, Sheila Lyming,
44:52
Speaker 1: Edward Champion, Bruce Duncan, doctor Ronaldo Anderson, Kristens Wicker, Mesi Shaw,
44:59
Speaker 1: and Brandon Jacob Jenkins. Thank you. Also, if you're looking
45:07
Speaker 1: to become a writer or in search of a supportive
45:10
Speaker 1: writing community, join me for a free creative writing session
45:14
Speaker 1: on my website Black writers Room dot com, b LK
45:18
Speaker 1: Writer's Room dot com, or hit me up directly for
45:22
Speaker 1: more details at Underscore T h A T S P
45:27
Speaker 1: E A c E That's Peace.