Greetings and welcome to Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s Sitting in Silence, an inspirational newsletter and podcast for writers, readers, and thinkers. I hope you’re enjoying the summer as much as I am.
The interview is a popular ongoing feature dating back to February 2022, when I started SIS. I love talking to writers about inspiration, craft, and life. They never disappoint. So, from time to time, you’ll find these intimate and enlightening conversations in this space. Today’s conversation is with National Book Award and MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Dr. Imani Perry.
Please bear with me for a couple of paragraphs as I explain the reasons why today’s newsletter is so special.
First, I’d like to offer a heartfelt thank you to all subscribers and followers. Some of you are day ones. Some of you signed up this past weekend. Either way, Sitting in Silence is now a full Substack bestseller complete with the cute little orange checkmark next to the title. (Unlike some platforms, Substack creators can’t just buy their checkmark. It must be earned. By some platforms, I mean X also known as Twitter.) I started SIS because I love to write. At the time I was having trouble writing my novel. I wanted to do something low stakes, joyous, and improvisational. Now, years into the project, the joy has only increased. Enough people enjoy what I do here enough to act as patron supporters, which is where the checkmark came from. And that novel I was struggling with? It became a bestseller in its own right.
Sitting in Silence’s growth has been remarkable. About 50 new subscribers sign up a month.
Second, with so much pressure on the writing community, I wanted to create a space where writers can talk about whatever is on their mind. A space that isn’t corporate or even academic. Yes, Substack is a company. And I (as well as today’s guest) am an academic. But there are no ads here. And no one is pushing us to say or not say anything.
Lastly, my respect for Dr. Perry knows no bounds. We first met at the New Orleans Book Festival in March 2022, not long after I started SIS. This is the same day I met Eddie Glaude, John Grisham, and Jenna Bush Hager (my mama had an extremely funny response to this last one; I’d share but the internet seems to have gobbled up that post). It’s also the very same week I ran an interview with this legend and friend of SIS. Imani struck me not only as a brilliant and confident writer, but also as an extremely kind and humble person. She doesn’t know this, but I would have asked to interview her then. But I never want to take advantage of anyone’s good nature, so I tabled the issue. Then she won a series of well-deserved awards, and I didn’t want to butt in line.
Fast forward to earlier this year. At Imani’s well-attended New Orleans book event for her latest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, I served as moderator. I also interviewed her for the Baldwin & Co. Bookstore YouTube Podcast, which will air later this year.
Finally, I got up the nerve to ask Dr. Perry to come on SIS. She agreed, of course, because she’s one of the greatest of all time.
I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate Sitting in Silence leveling up than by sharing this discussion with Imani Perry.
Without further ado, here’s our interview.
Maurice: What are your earliest memories of reading or writing literature?
Imani: I can't remember a time before I was a voracious reader. Even my earliest memories, from around age 3 are filled with books, in particular the work of Tom and Muriel Feelings, Ezra Jack Keats and Eloise Greenfield. And also Richard Scarry. I remember writing my first poem in kindergarten, "If I were a raindrop, I'd drizzle down a car window and smile and say hi in a way." And it was illustrated with a smiling drop of rain.
Maurice: What was it that made you turn to writing your own literature?
Imani: Writing is one of those things that I also have always done in part because I stayed in school so long, I have a J.D., a Ph.D. and an LLM, and then became a professor. So that's really a writing life. But the turn to what I would call "literature" writing as art rather than simply writing as argument, was later and it was a decision to "go the way my blood beats" to borrow James Baldwin's language. I had two children, I was tenured at the full professor level, and I remembered that my college professor Josh Gamson- who wrote a brilliant biography of Sylvester- had said to me "Promise me that once you earn tenure, you'll write whatever you're passionate about." It was one of a number of moments I'd had with professors, from Skip Gates to Ann Fabian, to Mary Helen Washington, who told me in one way or another that they saw that I really wanted to be a creative and literary writer. I was tenured as a Law Professor in 2007 and in 2009 I attended Hurston Wright Writers Week on Howard University's campus. And slowly, steadily, I developed as a literary writer even as I continued to write scholarly books and articles. Since the publication of Looking for Lorraine in 2018, I've been writing in a way that maintains the rigor of scholarly research but which is crafted as literature with all that means, a commitment to a full relationship with the reader-appealing to their imaginations and hearts and senses of beauty.
Maurice: I was honored to moderate the New Orleans event for your brilliant and luxurious Black in Blues. The book is incredibly fluid and has an almost melodic flow as you move from topic to insight. How do you decide what you want your page to sound like?
Imani: I love this question because rhythm and cadence is so important to my writing. Like many writers in the Black tradition, music and language are both deeply influential to my work. I'm trying to do something similar on the page to what Romare Bearden did on canvases as a fine artist, to think of composition on multiple registers- time, sound, and content and also to be a quilter or a collage or assemblage artist- bringing together different elements such that the reader feels like they're having a multisensory experience while looking at black letters on an off white page. It is an exhilarating effort. I think I love writing because it is where I get to play like a musician.
Maurice: Do you ever need inspiration to write, and if so, who or what do you turn to?
Imani: I read constantly, I listen to music every day, I live in a home with a lot of art and I go to a lot of art exhibitions, and I am blessed with amazing kids and an extraordinary family and group of friends so I feel like my life is a steady source of inspiration.
Maurice: What hobbies or obsessions do you have outside of research and writing?
Imani: Reading, crocheting, long walks, and I play words with friends and the New York Times games almost every day.
Maurice: How have you changed from your early writing to Black in Blues?
Imani: I'm freer. And I take advantage of the wonderful archive that's in my head. That's the best part of growing older. I know so much more at 52 than I did at 25 and I savor it and relish it all.
Maurice: I won’t enumerate everything that’s been going on politically in the nation and around the world. Suffice it to say, something feels different and more chaotic than usual. How do you respond to the disorder of the world?
Imani: I keep trying to identify how I can be of use, in the moment but also once I'm gone. As Maya Angelou put it, "I didn't come here to stay." So that means staying informed and connected but not doom scrolling, not living in the noise but remaining anchored to my values. I believe everyone deserves to live free from violence, exploitation and hunger, to express themselves expansively and to love who they love.
Maurice: What’s your favorite book, film, tv show, and/album of all time?
Imani: I don't have a favorite book. There are just too many that I love for me to choose one or even ten. But my favorite films are Euzhan Palcy's Sugar Cane Alley and Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust. And the Commodores “Zoom is my favorite song, The Clark Sisters “You Brought the Sunshine” is my favorite Gospel Song, and "Body and Soul" is my favorite jazz standard. I especially love Thelonious Monk and Esperanza Spalding's versions.
Maurice: What project are you excited about working on next?
Imani: My next book is a middle grade book on the way Black people build beautiful school communities despite segregation and Jim Crow that will be published by Norton. I'm excited about the possibility of having younger readers.
Maurice: I wish you all the best with your new project, Imani. Thank you for all you do.
That concludes our interview. We hope you liked it. If so, please comment below. I love it when the conversation continues. You can follow Imani’s Substack.
Check out my previous interview with Author Irvin Weathersby.
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This is a beautiful interview! Thank you.
Shes a national treasure