conversation is really about that. Its about and threw him on the curb.
curb. My father is I think essentially we will move forward
CULTUR E
The system is
constructed
Breakout literary star Brit
Bennett is Auckland-bound,
armed with tales of
Americas troubled times.
INTERVIEW ALEXANDER BISLEY
US writer Brit Bennett is only 26 years old,
but her debut novel The Mothers has been
described as ferociously moving by The
New York Times and has seen her hailed as
one of Americas best writers under 30.
Set in Oceanside, Southern California, The
Mothers tells the stories of two young black
women and one man, a pastors son. (Kerry
Washington is producing the cinematic
adaptation, which Bennett herself is writing.)
From her Los Angeles home, Bennett speaks
in a vivacious, dynamic voice, reminiscent of
her pages. We discuss her fathers experience
of police brutality, Trumpism, empathy, and
contemporary American abortion politics.
ALEXANDER BISLEY A line thats been
resonating a lot recently is William Faulkners
line from his book Requiem for a Nun: The
past is never dead. Its not even past.
BRIT BENNETT Yeah, I think in some ways
this book is kind of a ghost story. Its about
characters who are haunted by their past,
whether thats somebody youve lost in the
past or a decision youve made in the past
that lingers with you. I think that quote is very
relevant in the political-historical sense. But
also in a personal sense, as you were saying,
in the way that our past travels along with us.
As with the film Moonlight, The Mothers
exploration of masculine vulnerability is
powerful. Thats a big concern of the book.
Particularly with Nadias father, or even
with Luke, these male characters who are
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vulnerable. I was interested in these black
men who are given the space and freedom to
be vulnerable, and are also given interiority
and complexity that I think black men in real
life are often denied.
The Mothers centres on an abortion.
What are your thoughts on contemporary
American abortion politics? I find it very
troubling that were in a period where state
legislatures are increasingly passing these
anti-abortion policies. A lot of people passing
these laws dont actually think about what
it would look like in practice if Roe v. Wade
were overturned and if abortion was banned
in the United States. Throughout time and
throughout cultures, women have always
found ways to terminate pregnancies they
didnt want, even before there were surgical
ways to have abortions. Its something that
seems inevitable to me, regardless of what the
legislation looks like. These laws being passed
by predominantly male legislators trying to
make it impossible for women to legally and
safely access abortions are very troubling.
The Republicans abortion platform is
outrageous, and hypocritical. Obama had
a Saint Louis pilot for free birth control for
poor women that lead to a massive decline
in unwanted pregnancies and therefore
abortions. But the Republicans maintained,
and maintain, their usual scorched
opposition to that. What were really arguing
over is how much freedom women should
have with their sexuality. So much of this
11. M AY.1 7 I PA PE R B OY
men trying to control how free women can be
with their bodies. Its not about life because
if our country was that concerned, we
would invest for everyone to have better sex
education and more access to birth control
and family planning. We wouldnt have such
a high maternal mortality rate. In Texas, they
have more women dying in childbirth than in
a lot of other countries around the world.
Oh girl, we have known littlebit love.
That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar
that traps the sweetness in your mouth
long enough to mask your hunger. We
have run tongues over teeth to savor that
last littlebit as long as we could, and in all
our living, nothing has starved us more.
Thats The Mothers special novelistic
language. I love TV, I love film, I love all
these other forms of storytelling right now.
But when youre reading a book youre able
to pause in time, and spend a lot of time
thinking about what the actual language
sounds like. I spend so much time looking at
my phone and doing all of these other things,
but reading a book, theres a way in which I
feel like Im out of the time that Im in.
Youre currently working on a book set in
the South, which is where your parents
are from. I think of it as a book that feels
of the Obama era even though its not
set there chronologically, because I think
all of these questions within the book are
questions about identity and these categories
of identity that are eroding increasingly. In so
many ways Obamas rise and his presidency
coincided with this way of questioning these
identity categories that people previously
thought were very static and have proven
since to be fluid. Whether thats of race, or
multiculturalism, or gender.
I think a lot of the Trumpism is a reaction
against this sort of multiplicity of identities
and this forward-thinking way of looking at
identity. Trumpism wants to send us back to
these very codified identity categories.
Your Jezebel essay on your fathers
youthful experience of police brutality
went viral. He was a Deputy District
Attorney at the time, driving home one
night from bible study when...officers
swarmed his car with shotguns aimed
at his head. The cops refused to look in
his wallet at his badge. They cuffed him
PA PE R B OY I 11. M AY.1 7
mostly thankful that hed stayed calm. In
his shock, he had done nothing. Thats
what he believes saved his life. Any
further thoughts? I wrote it very quickly one
afternoon when I was feeling very strongly
about everything that was happening at
the time. My dads story was something
I started to think about in connection with
Michael Brown and with Eric Garner; these
other black men whose stories ended very
differently. I wrote that piece out of a genuine
question, which was: What is the value of
good intentions if the end result is harm? I
continue to think about that question because
so often when we talk about race we focus
on individual motives and intentions, but so
many of the problems with race are systemic.
Theres a tendency to want
to read art by people of
colour through a strictly
political lens instead of
an aesthetic lens.
The author of The Underground Railroad,
Colson Whitehead, told me he still agrees
with Martin Luther Kings belief that
history arcs towards justice, but adds that
its very, very, very slow. What do you connect to somebody across culture or race
think? I think its perhaps a wave, waves back
and forth rather than an arc. In America,
we like to think were always marching
towards this progress. We like to skip over the
moments where everything went backwards.
We like to talk about the Civil War and the
civil rights movement, but we dont like to
talk about the Reconstruction era, the birth of
the Ku Klux Klan, and all of these lynchings
that happened in the early 20th century. All
these really dark moments where we seemed
to have moved backwards. They exist and its
important to think about how they happened
and what its like to experience them. Right
now it feels like Reconstruction. We had
this really historic presidency, we seemed
to be oriented towards increasing progress.
Gay marriage was legalised. Suddenly were
slingshot backward. There was a backlash
during the civil rights movement, there was
a backlash when slaves were freed. With any
moment of racial progress in this country,
there was a backlash. In a way, this Trump
presidency is distinctly American.
towards justice, but again who knows how
long this moment were in now is going to
last. God willing this country still exists a
hundred years from now.
Just asserting that black humanity
matters, black bodies matter, black love
matters, and black joy matters, youve
also said. Theres a tendency to want to read
art by people of colour through a strictly
political lens instead of an aesthetic lens in the
way that I see art by white people engaged
with. But most things are political, even if we
dont necessarily see their politics. For me,
to write about black humanity is an act of
politics. Black humanity is something thats
still being debated, so to write about black
characters who are fully human has become
a fact of politics, even though that shouldnt
be political at all. The fact that black lives
matter is a controversial statement.
Is there anything you hope people might
take away from reading The Mothers,or
from your visit to Auckland? Im always
really drawn to visit these places near water.
I hope, first of all, that people enjoy the book.
I also love the idea of reading as gaining
empathy, and for people who are often
different from you. I think thats one of the
great experiences of reading that you can
or gender or time or anything like that. I love
the idea of people really connecting to these
characters, and of people being challenged by
the characters.
Barack Obama has talked about how
he loves books because they taught
him empathy. Thats one of the reasons
why you can tell he is a reader, he is an
empathetic person. Thats an important
quality about being alive, trying to understand
where other people are coming from.
Also understanding the limits to your own
perspective. Understanding that you dont
know everything and realising you can learn
from other peoples perspectives. Empathy is
an important quality in a leader, and I think
its one of the reasons why its so shameful
that my country elected Trump, such a very
obviously un-empathetic person, to the
highest office.
Brit Bennett appears in three Auckland Writers
Festival sessions from 17-20 May.
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