(no audio) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio) - The elements of a scary story might be exotic, supernatural, or even mundane.

Today's guest weaves all of those things together in an ethereal world of her creation to explore the violence of the Jim Crow South.

She's Tananarive Due, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(lively instrumental music) (lively instrumental music continues) (lively instrumental music fades) Hello, and welcome to "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.

- And our guest today is an author who has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award.

Tananarive Due has a new book just published, titled "The Reformatory".

She joins us today from California.

Tananarive, thank you so much for being with us today.

- I am happy to be here.

- So, the book is "The Reformatory", and it is a heck of a read.

Would you give us just a brief overview of the book for our audience who maybe hasn't read it yet?

- Sure, really, it's set in Jim Crow, Florida, in the year 1950, and it's about a 12-year-old boy who gets in what would have been a typical schoolyard scuffle, but because of the times, he ends up being sentenced to a notorious reformatory, which is based loosely on the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

And the story is about his adventures and horrors with haints and horrid humans on the inside, while his sister, Gloria, who is older, tries to free him on the outside.

- So, you know, the danger, whenever we have an author of fiction on, is that we don't want to give anything away, and so we're gonna do our best today, no spoilers.

But, you know, you mentioned the Dozier School for Boys.

In the book, it's the Gracetown School for Boys.

Tell us about that kind of institution, particularly in the Jim Crow South.

- Well, this was a segregated institution that was really a work farm.

Black and white students were kept separate, but they ran farming equipment, they were leased out to nearby farmers.

They had to do other forms of work, and there were also classrooms.

So, it called itself a school, it had a football team.

It was really very important in the town of Marianna.

From what I understand, the printing press there was printing for the town.

They were growing corn for the town.

So, it's a really great microcosm in terms of the impact of, say, incarceration on a community, like a prison town, that supplies jobs, and therefore, it makes it more difficult to nudge people to make changes when, inevitably, things go wrong.

- So, the book is set in 1950, obviously during the Jim Crow era.

Let's get to Gracetown, the fictitious reformatory in the book.

Who is sent there, and why are they sent there, for what, quote, unquote, "transgressions, crimes"?

How do you get there, and who goes there?

- I drew from the history of that institution in terms of what kinds of crimes children were sent there for, the true life of Robert Stephens.

I had a great-uncle named Robert Stephens who was sent there apparently for breaking and entering in real life.

You could be sent there for running away.

You could be sent there for truancy.

Sometimes, historically, kids had been sent there just because they were orphans and they had nowhere else to go.

- So, Robert Stephens is the Black boy in "The Reformatory".

- Yes.

- Tell us about him.

What lands him in Gracetown?

- So, in the book, "The Reformatory", I decided to change the age of my great-uncle from 15 to 12 to make him more sympathetic, and also, I changed the nature of the charge because I wanted to show the intersection between the power structure in the town and then how children were being basically prosecuted and sent to these institutions, the way, frankly, it parallels a lot of what happens today.

So, he's walking down the road with his older sister, literally minding their own business, when they come across the teenage son of a planter, who is a rich man in town, owns much of the town, and the planter makes an advance toward his sister.

Robert is only 12.

He is very confused by this.

Why would a white boy be making a pass at his sister?

He pushes, the white boy pushes Robert.

Robert kicks him.

Literally, it's a schoolyard scuffle, but the father witnesses it and is infuriated and orders that this child be sent to the reformatory.

- You know, I'm curious about the, you mentioned the history of these types of institutions in the South.

How much research do you put into being able to really understand the lived experience of an institution that actually existed before you translate it into the fictional world that you're creating?

- Well, it really did begin with the research.

I had no intention of writing a novel about such institutions.

I knew nothing of such institutions until after my late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, passed away in 2012.

A few months later, I got a call from the Florida Attorney General's office letting me know that I might have a relative who was buried on the grounds.

There were were so many children who died at this facility that they actually had their own cemetery, called Boot Hill, and it was learning that that sent me down the rabbit hole of research.

My father is still living now.

He's 88, freedom lawyer John Due.

He and I were both mourning my mother's death, so we went to Marianna together, sort of on a pilgrimage to honor her, her family, to learn about this story, and I literally heard eyewitness accounts from survivors, Black and white, who were at meetings, because at the time, the Dozier School was in the news.

Erin Kimmerle at the University of South Florida was exhuming bodies, and all these kinds, or remains rather, and all these kinds of things were going on.

So, it was a big community event, and I was just so struck by these older, older men, you know, 60, 70, and older men who were still carrying these horrible stories of beatings.

One in particular, which I did recreate in the novel, recalled that he was whipped so severely once that he had to be sent to the infirmary and that his clothing was literally stuck to his skin, and his family was not allowed to see him that day because he was in such bad shape, and it just felt like a typical story.

I mean, if that had been the worst story, that might not be as remarkable, but what seems to happen at institutions like this, you see it at the Indigenous schools in Canada, the Alabama Industrial School for Boys, there's a whole podcast about this facility, there is something that happens when people who are powerless, children, prisoners, are put to the care, so-called, or in the hands of people who have power over them.

There's this psychological element.

You would think everyone wants to protect children, but in fact, even in real life, you know, some of the research I did was about our current criminal justice system.

And in a book called "Burning Down The House, An End To", I think it's "An End To Juvenile Prison", she talked about the fact that most juveniles who are sexually assaulted while incarcerated are not sexually assaulted by other prisoners, they're sexually assaulted by the guards, and that's just this power differential phenomenon that has been well-documented, and it's horrible.

- So, as Jim mentioned, you're a bestselling author.

You write horror.

You've been praised by many people, including Stephen King, someone that we were talking about, and somebody we both admire, his writing.

This book, however, took you many years to write, and I'm guessing, given how prolific you are, your other books have not taken that long.

Why did this book take so long, and what was the pain that you felt writing it, because it had to have brought pain to the surface?

- It was an extraordinarily painful experience to work on this book, starting with those first meetings, when I didn't even know I wanted to write a book, but after hearing those stories and reading more about the school and my great-uncle, not his life, but just that he had died there, I realized I had to write it.

(chuckles) I fought it, you know, at first.

I thought about non-fiction, but it seemed to me that the survivors themselves were really the best caretakers for that story in a non-fiction form.

And my strength is as a novelist, and I thought, "Well, maybe I'll get some emotional distance from it writing it as a novel," but, in fact, because my son was about the same age as Robert during the time I was working on the novel, it was extraordinarily painful just to read the research, to imagine my son going through these things, and I found every excuse (chuckling) not to work on it.

I started my screenwriting career, I wrote a collection full of short stories, like anything I could work on, but I kept getting drawn back to this story.

I wanted the world to know that these children had existed and that Robert Stephens had existed.

- That's powerful.

You know, the- - No kidding.

- When you were doing the overview of the novel, we sort of just, like, you know, glossed over, you mentioned that there were haints, another word for ghosts, and so I'm curious about the genesis of the paranormal in telling this story.

When did it occur to you that there would be ghosts that you would make part of this narrative, and what's it like to write in another world?

- Well, I am well known as a horror writer.

So, often, a story comes to me in the form of the paranormal or the uncanny, and this facility, just walking through the grounds, like literally the ruins of dormitories, with these old cots grown over with vines, at one point a hurricane had destroyed some of the buildings, it looks haunted.

(chuckles) It totally looks haunted today, and given how many children suffered and died there, of course, it's not a big stretch to think, if you even believe in the possibility of ghosts, that, well, this is a place where ghosts would hang out.

And I actually did hear later, while I was about finished with the book, from Erin Kimmerle, the researcher, that she had also heard people telling ghost stories.

So, a place that holds a history like this is going to sort of get seeped with the energy of everything that's happened.

So, even if the ghosts aren't literal, you can feel this sense of suffering as you walk through those sort of now desecrated and destroyed-looking grounds, and I also hoped, as I always hope with historically-based horror, because Jim Crow itself is such a character and so horrific in this story, I wanted to do honor to the violence of the times and the violence at the institution without immersing the reader in it too deeply, to the point where it's unreadable, where it's not, and this sounds like a weird word, but entertainment, which horror typically is considered entertainment.

So, the entertainment factor is the fantasy factor.

You can sort of bring people out of an experience by saying, "Well, this isn't what happened to my ancestors," "This isn't what happened to me because I don't believe in ghosts," or, you know, "This couldn't be true, this couldn't have happened," and with that emotional distance, the themes of the story, the situation, the heartbreak of the story, the joy in the story, I hope, have more of an opportunity to come to the forefront.

And ultimately, it's really, I mean, I don't think it's spoilery to say, yes, haints are very scary, and haints can be very dangerous to have any kind of a relationship with, no question about it, but the real monsters in "The Reformatory" are human.

- So, let's talk about what I would call monster number one, and that's the superintendent, Haddock.

Tell us about him.

He is one of the vilest people in literature that I've ever read, and just, you know, I started this book, and I'm glad I didn't read it at night, but from page one to the very end, I was just totally drawn in.

But when I encountered him, and then some of his secret paths, or hidden paths, I was horrified.

Why don't you tell us about Haddock, who is this horrible, horrible person?

- Well, I wasn't a psychology major, but he is one of the paths, either a sociopath (chuckles) or a psychopath.

I always forget the difference between the two, but this is like the perfect job for someone with those tendencies.

Like, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that long before he came to work for this reformatory, from childhood, he had exhibited traits that are violent, and even murderous.

So, someone with that personality type, who actually gains pleasure from delivering violence, who wants to keep trophies, I mean, this is the kind of person that, in contemporary times, might be called a serial killer, but because it's set at a reformatory, where he's just doing his job, if boys run away, you set the dogs on them, which, by the way, is something that was true in life.

They would set dogs after runaways.

I saw accounts, I don't know if they're true, from former guards, that they were instructed just to shoot at any boys who ran away, and that doesn't seem too far-fetched, considering how many people get shot in the back today.

So, I took the real-life horror of this job, being an administrator, sort of a bureaucrat, and perhaps that's what the real life warden was.

I, in no way, shape, or form, want to imply that Warden Haddock is based on a real person.

He is a microcosm of a monstrous system put to human form, and he's a smiling monster.

I wanted to create nuance in the character.

So, he has a level of politeness, this veneer of even considering himself kind of a progressive when it has to do with race relations.

He'll say things that other people won't say that are true about race relations at the time.

So, there's this sort of uneasiness, where you want to see him as a human and you want to believe him, but from Robert's point of view, who's only 12 years old, and here's this tall, tall person, and Robert is sensitive to the vibration of this guy, so he can sort of sense his monstrosity literally from the time he first meets him.

- So, the superintendent himself is haunted by ghosts, and one of them, and again, we don't want to give away too much here, but one of them is his sister, his baby sister.

- Yeah, yes.

Yes, his baby sister.

- Who died.

He's haunted by the ghost of her, and he's haunted by some of the boys who died in a horrible fire.

Just talk about his haunting, too, because he's not immune to what is going on at the reformatory either.

- Well, I wanted to ask myself, "If there were ghosts, what would they want," right?

And, of course, sometimes ghosts just want to be known and recognized, and sometimes they want revenge, and why would a ghost want revenge?

Well, obviously, someone who was murdered would want revenge.

So, if a superintendent like Haddock is working on grounds that are prone to ghosts, he is definitely going to have his hands full, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if this guy is so vile that he's not only responsible for killing children, but he's literally trying to trap their dead spirits?"

You know, like, that is like a level beyond just the regular vile.

Like, it's not enough that they're dead, but you want their spirits exiled as well, or captured as well.

So, I decided to use his fear of the ghosts as a way to show that no matter what he's up against, he's trying to find the upper hand, he's trying to get power over it, and, frankly, he just must be stopped.

(chuckles) - So, not all of the ghosts in "The Reformatory" have ill intent or are bent on revenge or have unfinished business.

There are what I would call good ghosts here as well, and one of them is the ghost of the mother of Robbie and his sister, Gloria, who has died recently of cancer.

Talk about the good ghosts in "The Reformatory", again, without giving too much away about particular good ghosts beyond the mother.

- Part of the hat-trick in "The Reformatory" for me was, of course, to take our natural fear of ghosts and kind of subvert it.

Not always, you know, sometimes the ghosts are acting exactly the way you expect them to act, but there are these spirits, and I wrote this in the wake of my mother's death.

My mother did pass away from cancer, so I don't think it's a coincidence, and Gloria was my late mother's middle name.

So, I don't think it's a coincidence at all that, literally, Robert feels this spirit of his mother watching over him, trying to guide him while he's in the reformatory because, in some ways, I've felt similarly.

Not with ghost experiences, but there were so many opportunities and things that opened up for my life after my mother passed away, where I sometimes felt like, "You're looking out for me, aren't you?"

And I think a lot of people experience that because we, in grief, we try to cling to whatever grace or hope we can, and that's the role of the mother in this story.

And then, of course, at the reformatory, you will have all manner of haints, and one of the very fun parts about writing this book was to ask myself, "What would it be like to try to have a friendship with a ghost?

Is it even possible to have a friendship with a ghost?"

The results are, I would say, mixed.

(all laughing) - You know, the book, it covers so much ground, and one of the things that I'm really sort of fascinated about is that you've written this book that sort of reflects back on the Jim Crow South at a time in this country where we're banning books and we're changing high school curriculums in some states because that history is too painful.

I'm not sure what the real reasons are, but we're not teaching that history so much anymore.

Were you mindful of that in telling this story?

Was that any part of the inspiration for it?

- You know, years ago, my late mother wanted to write a memoir with me because she was so afraid that history was being erased before her eyes, and this was years ago.

She was in Florida, and there were textbook committees saying, well, there was no civil rights movement in Florida.

She was like, "What are you talking about?

We made history in the civil rights movement in Florida."

So, we published "Freedom in the family, A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights".

So, there's this ongoing fear, and she always had an ongoing fear of the clock turning back, and we always thought she was a little paranoid, to be honest.

Like, things have changed, look, we have a Black president now, and all these things, which she did live to see, but she did not live to see the backlash.

She did not live to see the renewed efforts in 2023 that actually remind me a lot of the period I teach about in my Black Horror class at UCLA, the turn of the last century, about 1915, when "The Birth of a Nation" came out, with all of this revisionist history from reconstruction of the Civil War, and all the Confederate statues start going up literally as propaganda.

These were not statues to Confederate heroes that were erected right after the Civil War.

It was during a period when there was a deliberate attempt to try to romanticize and erase the actual history of the country and give it this rosier sheen, and a lot of people fell for it, and it's amazing we're still trying to take some of those statues down now.

And there are still people who teach "The Birth of a Nation", which is probably one of the most racist movies ever made, as strictly filmmaking, look at the camera angles, and, no, I hear from students that their professors don't even mention the race and the problems of that story.

So, I'm not surprised that in 2023, there are politicians, especially in Florida.

Florida is one of those states that's tourism-driven.

When my mother was active in the '60s, there was all this sensitivity about the image of the state, and I don't know that it's just that anymore.

I think there is this real fear of reckoning, first of all, which, to me, has been completely unfounded, but I honestly do think drives our country's gun laws and obsession with guns, is this unconscious, or conscious, fear of reckoning, you know, that people who've been done wrong in the past are gonna rise up and break into your house.

And every time I hear a fear of crime, I'm also hearing a fear of reckoning, (laughing) you know.

Even if the statistics are imaginary, it doesn't matter, that fear is still there, and I think that's why the effort's to erase.

It's not just to make your children feel better, to make your children feel less awkward about things they literally themselves did not do.

It's just history, it's not personal, but I think it's also because you can better subjugate people if they don't know their history.

- You know, I'm fascinated to hear you, an acclaimed horror novelist, talk about the power of fear in politics, and I'm wondering if that gives you a special insight into the unique power of fear as a tool of social control even because of your work in this genre.

- Let's get into it, you know- - Let's do it.

(all laughing) - Yes.

- I must say, in teaching that Black Horror class and looking myself back at the footage of "The Birth of a Nation", which, probably, one of the worst things it does is it characterizes Black masculinity as being monstrous, this obsession with Black men attacking white women.

And, of course, they were in blackface, they weren't actual Black actors 'cause you could not touch a white actress as a Black actor, but it's really, I think, projection.

Again, fear of payback because it wasn't Black men who were institutionalizing sexual assault during the slavery period.

It was people who profited from that.

Literally, there was profit in that.

So, this, I don't know if I would even call it guilt, it's a level beyond guilt, but this fear of retribution, fear of the truth coming out, or even fear of looking at the truth very much is driving our current politics, and I think, obviously, a lot of it is tied to the changing demographics of the country.

Barack Obama was a shock and a fright to many people for whom their picture of what the United States is is wherever they grew up, which is perhaps a community where there isn't a lot of diversity, or if there is some diversity, marginalized people have been othered because maybe they're immigrants or maybe they're suffering from intergenerational poverty, you know, based on lineage and slavery and Jim Crow.

We do not look like Americans to a lot of people.

Mexican Americans do not look like Americans, and I find it fascinating as someone who grew up in Florida during the Cold War era, when it was, like, Americanism versus communism, and the Soviet Union was the big boogeyman, that there are so many people now who would romanticize Russia as sort of a white ethnostate, prioritizing that over the the country that they live in and that their parents lived in.

- So, we only have about a minute left.

You mentioned your father and your late mother, and they were both civil rights activists, very leading figures in that movement.

Your mother was also an inspiration to you in terms of writing, and you were telling me when we talked last week before the show that she liked horror movies.

Again, in just a few seconds, she influenced your writing.

Is that not correct, inspired you?

- You have about 40 seconds.

- My late mother was the first horror fan in my life, and I think it was because of her civil rights activism and the trauma she suffered.

She wore dark glasses, even well into older age, actually, as long as she lived, because of a tear-gassing incident in 1960, when she was a young college student.

So, I think my mother used horror as a way to unpack trauma, and I've learned to try to do that in my stories.

- Well, Tananarive Due, the book is "The Reformatory", and it is a great read.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

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