The Interview with Jamila Minnicks

Happy New Year to all! I hope that 2022 treated you well. As we go into another spin around the sun, I also hope that this newsletter adds value to your creative life. The sole purpose of this project is to spread some light into the world. Everything else is just a byproduct.

Greetings to new subscribers and welcome to Sitting in Silence, a newsletter for writers, readers, and thinkers. The Interview is an ongoing feature for the newsletter. 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 right here. This issue’s conversation is with the debut author Jamila (Jah-MEE-la) Minnicks. This is the first time I’ve released an interview on the day the book came out!

Jamila Minnnicks is the author of the brilliant novel Moonrise Over New Jessup, which has already appeared on many most-anticipated lists and was selected for the highly-respected Lit 16 list curated by literary geniuses Deesha Philyaw, Robert Jones, Jr., and Kiese Laymon. Jamila is well known for how community-centered she is and her new book, a PEN Bellwether prize winner is proof of that. 

As always, thank you to the premium subscribers who make this newsletter possible, especially those who just signed up. I appreciate your support. This would be much harder to do without your help. Lastly, check us out on the Substack app. I asked a question there about what you’d like me to talk about in future issues. And, by the way, you can play an audio version of these piece on the app!

Now, for our interview.

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MAURICE: What are your earliest memories of reading or writing stories?

JAMILA: I remember stories from a really young age—maybe three or four years old—when my mama used to read to me and tell me about her Alabama childhood. She was a spellbinding storyteller, the way her voices and sound effects could transform her into anything or anybody. 

Then one year, we visited my Uncle John and Aunt Margaret. He was her oldest brother, and they had made their home in New Jersey. I was down for the count at the doorstep—sick with strep throat or something—and spent the first couple of days with my heart breaking from my sick bed as I listened to everyone catching up in the family room. But after my meds kicked in and I started feeling better, I rejoined everyone in the family room one night. Uncle John was a tall, impressive man and he was in the middle of a story. He told stories with his whole chest—a voice that could boom one second, and whisper the next. And just like my mama, although they had been north for years, he was all Alabama in my ears. 

At one point, I looked at my mama. Admiration glowed all over her face. At such a young age, I was certain that my mama was put on this earth to be my mama, but that's probably when I realized she was also someone's younger sister. When Uncle John finished, her smile twisted towards amused skepticism. She told him, 

"I don't remember that." He was twenty-something years older than her. He lowered his chin, raised an eyebrow, and said to my mama,

"That's because it happened before you were a thought in anybody's

head." 

"Oh, John, go on." She threw a palm at him.

"Don't believe me," he said and shrugged with playful indifference. "God

saw it." I laughed so hard at the telling of the tale that I thought my side would split. Stories have the power to transport, entertain, and call memories. Not only did he seize the room's imagination, he took us to the Alabama he loved and remembered. I was really small when I realized that, with stories, I could go anywhere.  

MAURICE: That's lovely! Your mama made sure you were immersed in stories. Also, it's clear to me that the oral aspect of storytelling is very important to you. On your Substack, Lioness Tales and live in-person, you often perform your work "off the dome" with no text or notes. Now, my understanding is that you were a lawyer. That's such a strange transition: lawyer to writer. I've never contemplated such a thing. lol Seriously though...longtime followers know I made a similar move. Can you talk a little about your journey from practicing lawyer to published author? I know many writers read this substack and they're always curious to know how that works. How did you find the courage? How did you know you could do it? How did you polish your skills? 

JAMILA: My grand life's ambition remains unchanged since I decided to attend law school: I want my work to positively impact my community. Through the years, I did some voting rights and civil forfeiture work, but the vast majority of my practice was in labor and employment—job discrimination and employee benefits. The work was often fulfilling, and I worked alongside many talented and dedicated people. But I often saw communities of color sacrificed or disregarded for a greater good, despite my best efforts to direct attention to the ways my people would suffer in the bargain. 

I grew up living inside stories. I wrote some short fiction in high school, including some serial romances between my friends and their crushes. But we had Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and more, in the house. Like them, I wanted to write about the lives of Black women because that's who I am. That's when my stories started beginning with a question, and ending with more questions. I had some difficult high school years, and writing gave me a way to escape and figure things out—or try to. But ultimately, writing gave me permission to interrogate myself and the world around me in ways big and small. Even if I came away with more questions than answers. 

Although there is a fair bit of storytelling in litigation, legal writing is more technical than creative. I needed to express myself, interrogate the work and the world deeper, even if it wouldn't change hearts and minds at my office. So, I picked up a long-dormant writing practice to give voice to my questions and frustrations. My first published piece Not Staying for Dessert was a pretty raw expression of that. It was fun to write, came to me rather quickly, and was "finished" when I was happy with my thoughts and observations and craft choices. When I read that story today, I am proud to see how much my creative writing has matured in the three years since its publication. Since leaving the law, I write whatever I wish, and my intent is to continue writing for my community in honest and responsible ways.

In order to accommodate a writing practice while working as an attorney full-time, I started waking up at 5:00, then 4:30, until I settled on 4:00 when working on New Jessup. At that hour, ideas are still dreams swimming and forming. Sometimes, they are weighty, if not concrete, and they only begin to take shape as I write. Other times, a scene that has been troubling me has unknotted overnight, and it’s ready to be edited (or rewritten). At four am, the perfect warmth of my covers does try to tempt me back into sleep, but the aroma of coffee brewing (set the night before) helps urge me from the bed. I'm usually so excited to get my thoughts on the page that I have two or three pages typed before I pour my first cup. In those early hours—what Toni Morrison called "the edges of the day"—my mind roams and explores and bends language. 

To polish my skills, I read a lot and participated in classes and workshops that taught me the craft choices I was making, and the rules I was breaking. I owe sincerest gratitude to those who have read my work with an eye towards helping me hone my voice and sharpen my skill without trying to conform my work to a particular style or methodology. Encouraging distinct voices only heightens the art form.

MAURICE: Your book Moonrise Over New Jessup is quite a remarkable read. I had the feeling I have when reading Morrison, Alice Walker, or Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. In other words, I feel like I'm meeting them as real people on their own terms. Not as "black and white" spirits but flesh and blood humans. I'm not the only reader who loves this book. It won the PEN/Bellwether prize. And it was selected by Lit 16, the fab quarterly reading series from geniuses Deesha Philyaw, Kiese Laymon, and Robert Jones, Jr. New Jessup is such an amazing community not only because they are autonomous, but also because many communities like New Jessup have existed in America. Why was it important for you to create New Jessup and write a narrative set there? And what do you find attractive about the fictional past rather than the present or future?

JAMILA: Thank you for your kind words about my words! Morrison, Walker, and Sexton represent the pinnacle of literary excellence to me. The people in their work embrace readers generously, unflinchingly, giving us eyes to see, hands to feel, feet to walk, vulnerabilities to explore. I’m flattered to be mentioned in the same breath. 

New Jessup represents the possibility and hope that approximately 1200 Black towns and settlements offered Black people on American soil. It is exciting to see how energized we get over the possibility of Wakanda, and I want us to recognize that our ancestors built real, autonomous, thriving communities in the United States. Maybe it was a couple of families owning a city block or two in New Orleans, or places like Africatown, Alabama that grew to 12,000 people during its mid-20th century heyday. Maybe they were places for us to enjoy the ocean like Atlantic Beach, South Carolina, or communities seeking the western promises offered by hundreds of places throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and California. Despite location, the Black people built these communities so we could live and experience social enjoyment and social advancement on the very soil where generations of our foremothers’ and forefathers’ toil had been stolen to build this country.  

We didn’t always agree, but our shared history and culture afforded us the foundational tools we needed to prioritize and get to work. We built schools, churches, one another’s homes, businesses. We farmed communally and aimed, together, to provide safe and stable environments from often unyielding land, and despite the hostilities of anti-Blackness. We sought to make a way out of no way.

And we were autonomous, yes! I realize the words we know are the words we use, but language shapes our thinking. I’ve heard Black towns and settlements described as “self-segregated” or that the people “chose segregation,” or that they serve as proof that “segregation was actually good for Black people.” This is patently false. Now is a great moment to demand precision in our words so we can put these assertions to rest. New Jessup, and towns like it, were safe spaces where we sought America’s promised freedoms through independence, self-governance, and self-reliance. 

Segregation was a system of laws that codified white supremacy. We never wanted, or asked for, our mere presence to be criminalized under Jim Crow. It was against the law for us to sit here, eat there, swim here, go through front doors. We never asked for a system of laws that criminalized our unemployment and used the resulting arrests to send us back into the cotton fields, or onto chain gangs. We suffered, not thrived, under laws that made it impossible to vote, open businesses, own homes, or avoid the imaginative cruelties of anti-Black violence. We never chose, or asked for, the degradation, humiliation, or trauma segregation promised, so my goal is to encourage us to do away with the ideas of "self-segregation" or "chosen segregation" or this language that segregation was, in any way, "good for Black people". These communities prized autonomy. They remain places where children learn to “see it and be it.” To this day, Black mayors and community leaders continue to strive towards thriving for generations living, and those yet-to-be born.

Though set in the fictional past, the questions presented are timeless and timely. The conversations taking place in 1960 New Jessup are relevant to present-day discussions about voting, gentrification, safe spaces, busing, and a host of other considerations that affect Black people. New Jessup gave me the opportunity to explore a community as built and maintained by our ancestors; to continue conversations begun with my mama and other elders no longer with us who grew up in thriving Black communities on southern soil; to interrogate and experience a sort of life that my ancestors fought to build, maintain, and protect.

From our beauty and barber shops to our HBCUs to our cookouts to our corporations to our towns and settlements, our fellowship sustains and fortifies. I use my own writing life as an example: many in the Black book community have embraced me and my work similar to how I envision Alice was embraced when stepping off the bus and seeing so many who looked like her ready, willing, and able to identify and assist with her unique needs. Through LIT16, Deesha, Kiese, and Robert created community where we can support and fortify one another as artists. Communities offer opportunities to be, or receive, a helping hand. We may not always agree on the path to, or definition of, social advancement. But we know that, as a people, we deserve better. Among us, love and possibility and hope feels intuitive. And real.

MAURICE: Independence and self-reliance! That's the best explanation I've heard for the difference between so-called "self"-segregation and autonomy. And I may get some shirts made that say, We Deserve Better. When I read your work, including your short stories and essays, I see a confidence that's rare. You know what you stand for. You know what you want to say and how to say it. You won't be deterred from your mission. What do you think is the role of a writer in our society? I'm not trying to steer you into the age-old question about whether writers are activists, but it does seem there's some overlap between writing and activism. Is writing a purely artistic exercise or are we doing something more? 

JAMILA: I’d love that t-shirt, and will wait patiently for mine to arrive in the mail!

The other day, I was talking to my cousin. He has some years on me, and even though I’m grown, I am forever the baby cousin on my mama’s side. I come from a beautiful, dynamic, community-focused, and hard-to-impress family. Our ancestors’ resolve that We Deserve Better is imprinted on our DNA.

I feel very blessed that New Jessup has earned some early, and positive, recognition, and me and my cousin were talking about a particular piece of good news that I had texted him the night before. 

“Oh yeah. I saw it. That’s cool,” he said, his voice shading somewhere between a hint of pride and a little teasing. “Maybe now I’ll have to start bragging on you.” 

“You’re only now gonna start bragging on me, huh?” I asked, feigning insult. My people fortify me, hold me up, and keep me grounded; their love and support for me, as infinite as the drops in the ocean. But big demonstrations, and effusive praise, are not our style. Instead, he reminded me of a lesson taught by our parents, who learned from their parents, who got it from their parents, and so on down the line.

“Listen,” he told me. “All this that you’re doing? Lifting up our community with your book? You’re a Young. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.” 

My cousin vocalized the sentiment behind every craft decision in Moonrise Over New Jessup—that we are all part of something larger than ourselves. Yes, my family is happy with the work. My “mission” is to raise up the community with honesty and care, and to highlight some of the many perspectives that make us who we are. So after that little play, and his loving reminder, we moved on. My cousin said what he said, and that was that.

Writers fight blank pages, insecurity, personal limitations, naysayers, and inboxes full of rejection for the prize of lifting our voices above the fray. Similar to the painter and their oils, or the sculptor and their clay, our medium is words. And like our artistic counterparts, we make craft choices with every keystroke or pen stroke. Writers choose whether to avoid, or use, inflammatory language or hate rhetoric; choose whether to correct, or continue, ahistorical renderings of the past; choose whether to arrest, or perpetuate, falsehoods and misinformation; choose whether to use our pen to build, or to tear down, communities. Our work entertains, yes, but it also informs and inspires and influences. When our art literally speaks to the world, we must interrogate: Why these words? Why this work? We have a responsibility to write with precision and intent. 

Moonrise Over New Jessup started as a short story about a Black family sitting around the holiday table debating the merits of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. I envisioned a young Alice sliding steaming platters on the table as everyone else talked. Amidst the spirited debate occurring in my mind, Alice kept her opinion hidden behind a sparkle in her eyes and an Alabama smile. Her eyes, and slight curve of her lips, told me that she needed not jump into the fray. “I know my own mind on the matter,” said the look. “And trust me—they know my mind, too.” That’s when this became her story. If I didn’t tell her tale, she risked getting lost to history. 

Historical fiction gives the opportunity to meet the ancestors in their youth, and to consider how they experienced the world. When writing about the past, modern sensibilities must be separated from ancestral reality, yet too often, Black voices are altered to fit an incongruent narrative, if not erased from literature altogether. Historical fiction requires not only research, study, and thought, but also deep examination about the motivations behind the work. It demands honesty and propriety according to the time and circumstances on the page. Many of my favorite books centering Black people incorporate speculative or spiritual elements; or make me think more critically while playing with time or space in interesting ways. But there is a mile-wide distinction between thought-provoking and propaganda. Patently ahistorical renderings of the past pollute the process of critical thinking, and perpetrate literary, and historical, injustice against my people and the lives they actually lived. 

My stories are intended to stimulate imagination, to highlight Black history, and to provide a genesis for readers to engage in critical thinking about how the past is prologue. Does all of this amount to activism? Or is it just something I’m supposed to be doing with, and for, my community? That’s a great question. Let me chew on it a bit. What do you think?

MAURICE: I think that some activists put their bodies on the line and walk into the streets before screaming counter-protesters. But there's also the people who support those folks. In New Orleans, we had Leah Chase who in the 1950s and forward fed leaders like MLK when they came to town. Ms. Chase literally fed the movement. Still, you have people who hang on the fringes of protests and offer water and first aid. And Baldwin talks about the duty of the writer to observe, document, analyze, and give back on the page. The people behind the line are like the nutrients in the soil that help the tree blossom. But let's shift gears a little bit. What are some practical tips you would offer rising writers who want to make a book that feeds their community? What mindset is required? And what kind of choices need they make when they sit down to write their stories? Laptop or writing pad? Short chapters, long chapters, or no chapters? One POV or several? This potential main character or that potential main character?

JAMILA: This book was written to honor women like Mrs. Chase—people who were the moonrise in their own ways to the community. Mrs. Chase took seriously her responsibility to care for “family” in ways that deserve celebration, not erasure. She fed the social justice movement in New Orleans so that its impact could be felt worldwide.

I like to think that Alice’s story ensures that “everybody eats” because it provides a fuller picture of Black history. By centering her voice, Alice gets her due recognition in our historical narrative. Alice played a vital role in her family and the community around her. 

I also hope Alice’s life encourages Black writers to center more people like her in our work because readers are hungry for her story, too. My most meaningful feedback comes from people in my community, some who have not picked up a book for years. People are eager for Black writers to tell stories about our elders and ancestors that consciously reject tropes and stereotypes about our lives.

Writing is an act of bravery in two parts. Yes, we put words on the page that are subject to public scrutiny, challenge, and (mis)interpretation. But the first act of courage that writers should commit is to interrogate our own ideas and motivations. If we fix our mouths to speak on behalf of others in our community, and purport to be a voice for our elders and ancestors, we must approach this work with intelligence, humility, compassion, and self-awareness. Alice, Raymond, and the people of New Jessup, Alabama represent real people who nurtured, mistrusted, loved on, lied on, joked on, and prayed on, each other, and who earned their spot in our historical and contemporary discourse. 

So my advice is to write consciously, intentionally, and from the heart. I wish every writer millions of book sales, movie options, and international jet set fame (if that’s what they are seeking). Dreams and goals are important, but ultimately, the only guarantee in publishing is the lack of guarantees. Writing is an act of courage, joy, and resilience that requires us to do the work.  Discipline and stamina dictate that we sit down and put words on the page. Beginnings, middles, and ends are hard. Write anyway. If revision is daunting, try playing around in a favorite scene and see what ideas that generates for the rest of the manuscript. If motivation wanes as the road bends towards writer's block, write something anyway—even if it is the character’s grocery list or an overdue light bill. Social media is jealous for attention. Silence it and write. People will doubt your stamina to write a book. Write anyway. People will question your skill and craft decisions. Write anyway. People will doubt your ability to get published. Write anyway, and write from the heart. Your readers will love your work and thank you for sticking to your vision, but they can only thank you if you sit yourself down and do the work.

And when you write, pick your work up and examine it from every angle. Revise, revise, revise. You decide the length and utility of your chapters. You decide how many POV to use or whose voice rises above them all. Follow craft rules that serve your art and ignore the ones that don’t. Above all, if making art about the community? Make it with intention and care.

MAURICE: Your responses remind me that the writer's life is a bespoke life. There are no "off the shelf" solutions to issues of craft and beyond. Other than writing, what brings you joy?

JAMILA: First and foremost, my family—my blood and chosen relations—who ground me and make me laugh and keep me sane. The people in my life are a blessing, and I am immensely lucky to be surrounded by love. 

I also adore being outdoors. Being under wide open skies or inside a quiet forest or listening to lapping waves for hours the beach feels like being enveloped by a world much larger than me. Travel is also on this list! It is eye opening and inspiring to experience new food and cultures and histories around the globe. But I have to admit, at the end of the day? I am my best in my ancestral home in Alabama. Nowhere is the sky as blue, nowhere does the sun warm my skin, and nowhere do I know love like when I'm on that soil.

Finally, reading is a must. When I can't explore the world through my own eyes, it is a gift to see the world through another lens.