ood to adulthood ushers in a wide variety of difficult questions like who actually loves us and why?

Today's guest explores those coming of age themes as well as issues of race, identity, trauma and who is responsible for the person we actually are?

She's author Nyani Nkrumah, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) Hello and welcome to the "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- Our guest this week is Nyani Nkrumah, an author whose debut novel "Wade in the Water" is out now and it's a remarkable read.

She joins us today from Washington DC.

Nyani, thank you for being with us.

- Thank you, it's a pleasure.

- You know, we chatted a little bit before we started taping and I think both Wayne and I gushed a little bit about how- - [Wayne] We did, understandably.

- How remarkable this book is.

We wanna talk to you about it, we wanna try not to give away too many of the twists but let me start with your inspiration for writing it in the first place.

Where did this come from for you?

- Well, I would say I am somebody that just loves to write.

I have a full-time job, and so I just find spaces in my day to put words on paper.

I would say maybe my source for inspiration was really two sources.

One, my mother, she was a literature and language teacher and she filled our lives with books.

So from a very early age, we had nothing for entertainment actually, except books because my father gave away our television when I was about seven years old.

So that was an important part of loving literature and beginning to write literature.

I think I wrote my first story when I was probably about 12 years old, and I took it to my mother, and of course she loved it and I think that was what set me on this path.

Now in terms of the actual story, it just came to me.

I'm the type of writer that writes very organically.

So I wanted to write this compelling story about a Black girl living in Mississippi and it was more or less conceived as a coming of age story of this little girl.

And somehow it morphed over the course of about six years, it morphed into the story that it is today.

- So you lived with these characters, and this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I almost imagined this book being born whole, right?

Like you just sort of sat down and you wrote it because it seems so well put together.

There's nothing that I sort of found myself wanting further explained.

You precisely told the story .

But it was a six year process, can you tell us what that was like?

- It was six years because I had to really find time for it.

And my process of writing is that I would write a chapter and then I would go back and edit it over and over again.

And that editing process may take me a couple of months and then I would write the next chapter.

So that's why I think you see it as though it's a whole novel, it's just a lot of writing and then even more editing to carve out the story that I have.

I kind of liken it to really knitting, picking up something that you're knitting and you do a row here and there and then you put it down and then you pick it up again because that is what it seemed like for me to get this book accomplished.

I have a very full-time job so, and then I had kids at the time in the house so this was the strategy that worked for me.

- That's remarkable.

You know, I get so excited just to talk to you.

I should ask for the benefit of the audience at home, could you provide a quick overview of the book itself?

- Okay, so essentially the novel is about two traumatized individuals that have different races that come together on the pages of the book and form this complex interracial friendship.

Now, one is a child Ella, and she is 12 years old.

She's a 12 year old Black girl living in rural Mississippi.

And the time for this novel is 1982.

And within this town, Ella is navigating a very complex life with her mother and her stepfather who detest her partly because she's the darkest child in the community and certainly the darkest child in the household.

She is also a result of her mother's infidelity and she is sandwiched between legitimate siblings.

So that is the context of the story for Ella.

But then at one point in the novel, Katherine St. James walks in and she's quite the enigma.

She's a 34 year old graduate student from Princeton who arrives in Ricksville to carry out some research.

And the story really hones in on the intricacies and limits of their friendship within the backdrop of a town community that really still remembers the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s.

And because of that, they're very suspicious of Katherine.

They don't know what she's doing there, they don't know what she wants.

And the story develops from there into a tale of what I would say is mystery and suspense with some aspects of civil rights at its core.

- So Ella is physically abused and sometimes very violently.

- [Nyani] Yeah.

- Why did you want to be that graphic in the descriptions?

And that's not at all the criticism because I'm seeing scenes in my head right now where I shudder and it's so real.

But why did you decide to be that descriptive in those scenes?

And I'm thinking of a number of scenes.

- Yes, I wanted it to be descriptive because I needed the reader to really understand what compelled Ella to decide that Katherine St. James was going to be her person, as it were.

And within the context of this all Black community, which harbors some mistrust because of the civil rights era, I wanted to make sure that this was a child that had some kind of reason for reaching out to a stranger that enters their community.

And this is how the story came to me.

Now in terms of the graphic nature of the writing, I'm someone that really explores every emotion and I really want our reader to feel what Ella is feeling.

And to be able to do that, you have to be somewhat very graphic.

Now in terms of the abuse, I think I was sensitive enough because I never really described the actual abuse but events leading up to it and around it.

I was trying to be cautious of some of our readers who might be sensitive and this might be a triggering issue for them.

But certainly I did want the reader to be able to feel Ella's pain and to put themselves in Ella's place.

- Well, you definitely succeeded on that count.

Ella, of course, is more than just a victim.

She is innately curious.

She at times has a good nature.

Describe her personality, it's very rich, it's really well developed on the page.

She's more than a one dimensional victim.

- Yes, Ella is funny.

There are some portions of the novel where people tell me it's laugh out loud funny, and through her eyes, you get access and you gain access to other people in the community.

So she has this level of engagement with Mr. Maccabee, who's the blind old man in the town with Nate and with some of the other characters such as the drunk Mr. Graves that goes from house to house on his whiskey run.

So you actually begin to see the characters in the community through Ella's eyes.

And some of that is very humorous in terms of how she looks at them, and she has this resilience and part of that resilience also comes from her faith.

You can see that resonates through the pages of the book that Ella is someone that strongly believes in God and that gives her the hope that lifts her above her circumstance.

And yeah, that's Ella in a nutshell.

- So I wanna get back to craft, in the creation of this character, you know as a fellow writer who has created many characters in the books I've written, you've lived with these people to some extent.

Talk about living with Ella as you're creating her.

I mean, did she appear to you in dreams?

Did she come to you when you're making coffee or when you're dealing with your kids or with your day job or you're on break or, anyway, I'm going on here and so, you tell me.

What was it like?

- Well, I mean, when you live with characters for as long as I did, I mean, they become part of who you are and sometimes you find that you are thinking about them and thinking about what they're doing and what they're saying.

And you know, Ella was with me a lot longer than Katherine St. James because I had her for the full extent of six years.

However, Katherine St. James came really in the middle of the novel.

So I was writing this story, which I thought was about Ella, and the way I write, I make sure that the characters lead.

I don't really have any structure, I don't have any predispose plan in terms of what I want the characters to do.

So the characters are essentially leading the dialogue and I probe through ahead with each of the characters.

And then one day, Katherine St. James just suddenly appeared on the page and I'm like, "Wow, what do I do with her?"

And it really morphed into this whole personality.

And then I got some feedback at one point from one of my readers and literally, Katherine St. James had walked into the page probably at about page 100, full grown adult woman.

And people wanted to know more.

They wanted to know what type of person was she.

You know why does she believe the things that she believes?

Why does she do the things she does?

So I went back into the story and began to craft out a childhood for Katherine.

And that childhood started at the age of five and at the age of 10 and 15.

So you see snapshots as you begin the book of Katherine's life.

And for me, that was actually the most exciting part of writing because I'd lived with Ella for so long, she had become more or less like a child of mine.

And then suddenly I had this new injection of life with a different character.

And so that part of the writing was very exciting for me and it flew so quickly, Katherine St. James part of the narrative.

- That's an amazingly eloquent way to describe the creation of characters.

If Katherine and Ella could magically come to life and read this book today, what do you think they'd say?

- That is indeed an interesting question.

(Jim and Wayne laughs) Well, Ella today would be pretty much a full grown up woman.

And looking back at the childhood, I think she would probably appreciate the way she was portrayed because really the story about Ella is a coming of age story, and it's finding strength within yourself as a Black girl, living under these circumstances and finding who you are intrinsically.

And looking at the color of yourself and loving it and then also being able to look beyond color to see the possibilities out there and to see that you're more also than just the color of your skin.

I think she would definitely appreciate that.

Katherine's story is, she's quite an enigma, and so I think if she came back today she would also appreciate the way that the story really struggles to tell her own particular story.

You can see the angst within Katherine in the pages.

You can see the trauma that she suffered from her childhood and you can see how she tried to break through and what she does.

And I think she would appreciate that that struggle is depicted on the pages of the book.

I get a lot of questions from people asking, "You know, what's next for Katherine?

"Can you write another book that tells us more "about what happens to Katherine?"

And it's always very interesting when I get feedback from the readers - You know Nyani, I'm processing a lot of what that meeting might be like today but I wanna stay in the context of the novel as it's written.

And one of the things that I found really remarkable was the way that you captured the voice of a 12 year old girl in Mississippi and you're not a 12 year old in Mississippi.

What was that process like?

How do you actually go through that creative?

How do you actually find an authentic voice like that?

- I think part of it is intuitive.

Another part of it is that you really have to become a child yourself to be able to access the thoughts of a 12-year old.

And part of the other issue is I read a lot of books with first person point of view narration by children.

So for example, one of the books that was really pivotal in my life was Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings".

And Maya obviously is writing about herself but she's writing about herself as a child.

And just being able to access her thoughts was something that was very compelling to me.

And I also used that.

I mean, there are other examples such as "Room" and "Only Child" these are all narratives that are written by children.

So being able to get back and access the child within yourself is something that I had to tap into as well as all these other voices by other writers and looking at how exactly they did that and how they crafted that.

This was all very helpful to me.

It also doesn't hurt that I have children and my children at the time were young.

And so being able to be in touch with that girl, I have a young daughter, well, she's not young anymore but she was as I was writing this book, that's also part of this story, if you will.

- You know, so as I near the end of the novel, I became mindful of almost, in my mind as the reader, the parallel similarities between Ella and Katherine.

That they had both been victims of trauma and their survival, though, it takes different courses.

Was that intentional?

Was that parallel?

You described your method of the sort of letting the story unfold from the characters but was that parallel existence that they lived, was that intentional?

Did you have that in mind when you introduced Katherine into this community?

- Actually, I didn't have it in mind in that I'd never planned for it.

But when I went back into the editing process, I could see that emerge, that these two people had this parallel lifestyle at a young age, that they were both highly traumatized by their parents at very early ages.

And as you say, this has very different impacts on both of them.

So no, it wasn't something that I had thought of before but as I began to finish the novel and carve out the novel, this was something that I began to look at in more detail.

I mean, when we look at the novel at a deeper level, the novel really looks at the intersection between race and society by delving into the legacy of the past.

And when I talk about the past, I'm talking about Jim Crow and by extension also about slavery.

And I'm really looking at what the legacy is on the next generations.

So you can see that Ella and Katherine St. James suffer harm from this legacy, even though they are removed from the 1950s and 60s.

Ella is almost two generations removed and Katherine is one generation removed as an adult.

So that is really the similarity in the two of them, that they have both suffered these hurts from this legacy.

And the novel really asks a fundamental question in terms of, is this legacy something that binds you?

Can you break free?

And that I think is the fundamental question the novel ultimately asks.

- So the novel is set in the early 1980s but the legacy that you're describing here is with us still today.

And we see that in many different areas, we see that with white supremacy, we see that in different parts of the country to different extents.

And we see that in the political arena too, as well.

Was that in your mind when you were writing or when you came back and rewrote and did the editing?

That there is- - Oh, yes, uncertainly.

- Go ahead.

- I mean, certainly because the novel operates at two levels.

The first level is this mysterious woman that arrives and really the intricacies of this friendship within this town.

But on the deeper level, the novel is looking at this intersection between race and society.

And it does so by delving into the legacy of the past.

And that is very deliberate.

It was something that even though on the outsert, when I started writing this novel, I hadn't had that in mind actually.

But as I developed it, this is where the story took me.

And I think it did because of the experiences I had in particular growing up as well as what was going on in America where I have lived for the last 35 years.

So of course, it came into the novel and I used it.

- So you describe the reactions or how Ella and Katherine deal with their traumatizing events and they deal with them in two very different ways.

And there are other ways that people, real life people, can deal with trauma.

Did you do any research on trauma in doing this book and how different people react in different ways and as I said, those can be many, many different ways.

You look at the trauma the people in the military bring back from war.

You look at domestic violence and that type of trauma.

There are many different responses.

Anyway, long way of saying, did you do any research on that or was that in your mind?

- I didn't really look at traumas outside this particular story in terms of looking outside in terms of military and others.

What I did look at was sometimes my own trauma which also was very compelling because as you know, I was born in Boston and grew up on the East coast.

For the last 35 years, I've lived there.

But some of the lenses that I use in developing this story are from my own experiences.

So they are, yes, I have the lens of being in America and living in America but I also have the lens of living in other countries in the world, in particular, in Ghana and Zimbabwe.

And those two lenses were very different.

I lived in Ghana in a place where there was no racial context.

So 99.9% of the country was Black.

And you can see that in the novel and all you have to do is look at Mr. Maccabee who is blind, and you can see, why is he blind?

He cannot see color.

So that is a lens that I bring to that particular story.

And then another lens that I have was growing up in Zimbabwe which used to be Rhodesia.

And I moved there in the 80s at the point where white rule was transitioning to Black rule but the country did have absolute segregation.

And when I moved there, they were trying to dismantle this architecture of segregation by really integrating the schools, the public schools, by busing in African kids from townships into the white suburbs and the white schools.

And I happened to be the first Black student that entered my very white classroom, and that was the lens.

It was a pretty traumatic experience.

And that was the lens that I used when I examined the 1950s and the 1960s, which doesn't form an integral part of this story because it's mostly set in the 1980s, but it's still a fundamental shaping of Katherine St. James and in fact, the com the adult community in Ricksville.

And so I drew on my experiences as well as experiences of people around me and stories and contexts that I've heard.

- Nyani, you know we've had a number of great novelists on the show and the question that I always ask is to talk a little bit about the power of empathy because you've written some characters here that are tremendously empathetic.

They draw the reader in.

How do you think about the use of empathy in your writing and in this novel in particular?

- Well, essentially, empathy is really, you know it traverses this novel simply because you have two people who are traumatized and yet, within the community, you find people holding them up.

If you look at Ella's character, she is somebody that is going from basically house to house looking for love, looking for somebody to love her.

And there are a lot of people in the communities, I mean, especially her parents, that reject her.

But at the same time, you do find people within that community that embrace her in ways that she doesn't really fully realize till later in the novel.

And those people in the community, Mr. Maccabee for example, and Nate are particular characters that see beyond Ella.

They want to build her up in the ways that they can.

When I look at Ella's relationship with Katherine St. James, Katherine St. James is the first person that Ella reaches out to and opens up to.

And whether that is reciprocated or not, it's for people to find out.

But you can find out in the novel that Katherine St. James takes Ella and begins to work with her, play Scrabble with her, and that is a sense of empathy as well, because she sees Ella for some time, she sees Ella.

So there are different people within the community that develop this, where I can say that empathy is shown to Ella.

Now in terms of Katherine St. James, as she walks into the community, a stranger, she's definitely met with a lot of suspicion.

But the people in the community, even though they have suspicion, their children, the next generation is very much, they're very much more curious about who Katherine St. James is.

And they also reach out to her in that context.

So despite the complexity of the story and how the story is shaped, you can see these threads, I would say of empathy within the pages of the novel.

- Nyani, it is an accomplishment and a great book.

She's Nyani Nkrumah, the book is "Wade in the Water".

It's fantastic.

That's all the time we have this week.

If you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square", find us at pellcenter.org.

He's Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for our "Story in the Public Square".

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