berkeley university in california. the novel explores the complexities of race, identity and class, be it with the liberal elite in berkeley or in the traditions of the deep south. applause. t geronimojohnson, very warm welcome to talking books. thank you. you have been compared to some extremely fine authors — mark twain, toni morrison, tom wolfe — and i wonder if that's because you've got the capacity to put a magnifying glass up to american life, with all its foibles, and chronicle it in a very acute way, but also a way that makes us laugh, too. right, i think that may definitely have something to do with it. that's definitely what moves me about a few of the writers that were mentioned there. but it's always felt to me necessary to me to try to have a breath of emotional experiences in a novel, or it can get too heavy. and if it is too heavy all the way through, considering some of the topics i'm dealing with, i don't know if that leaves the reader in a good position to face forward and think about how we can move forward from where we are now. i think the thing is, as well, you come at it from all angles. so every race, every variation, every ethnicity, gets it with both barrels and gets some love directed towards it. right. your most recent book is welcome to braggsville. before we delve into that kind of rollercoaster, rumbustious novel, i want to begin with your first novel, hold it ‘til it hurts, which is a deeply affecting, tender novel. at its heart, there are two young men, achilles and troy, who were adopted. they are not blood brothers, but they are adopted sons of a white couple, and afghanistan vets — or you would call it in the book "goddamnistan vets". they take two tours together and much of the action takes place in new orleans, your home town. before we talk about the big issues you face, i also want to talk about the family dynamics in the relationship. here we have two young black men, adopted by — i would say a lower—middle—class white family, traditional five acres that they have. tell me how you came to that family dynamic. i wanted to put together a cast of people who were trying to do their best for each other but did not necessarily know how. and so this is what ends up happening with achilles‘ parents, who don't really know how to prepare him for what he will face when he leaves his small home town where everybody knows him, and becomes just this anonymous black kid walking down the street, which is, in much of american society, a symbol for danger. people are worried as soon as they see this. also between the two brothers, with all of the tension and competitiveness that can arise between siblings, you mix in this notion of masculinity, you send them off to war, and they come back, and achilles really wants to do what is best but he doesn't know how because he is following too many different rules. and so this is part of what i was thinking at the beginning. but it's a very tender dynamic between the mother and the sons, particularly. because what happens is sending both — well, troy signs up so archilles better go. and archilles is the son you'd all want to have and troy is a bit more wayward. it is about loyalty and it seems to me that is about nature versus nurture. it is certainly about this conflict between from where do you draw who you are? is it genetics, or your environment, in which you have been raised? the funny thing for them is because they go off to war, at a very young age, and have an extremely traumatic and concentrated experience, we know that whatever nurturing they have had, and whatever nature they brought into it, are both changed over this 18 months of basically been charged with killing people. this is essentially theirjob when they're deployed. and i wonder, just to digress a bit, i want to talk about afghanistan, because when you are writing this book, you knew a lot of people in the military. and you spoke to a lot of people with ptsd particularly. at the time in america there was no discussion about how to help these young men re—enter society. so they spent a number of months literally being under fire, being afraid for their lives, and then actually going through the changes that you go through when you become acclimated to being afraid to go about your life, when you become accustomed to people shooting at you. and then you go home but your triggers are still there, right? you still have all of this, all of this emotional vortex carrying you along. so i really wanted to explore that in the novel, because itjust... nobody was talking about it at the time and it seemed a shame. it resonated with vietnam and korea as well. of course, right. you imagine after something as traumatic as vietnam, and people came home and did not know how to deal with these vets, it might be a better place. i think a lot of the philosophy around reintegrating after vietnam or korea or even world war i was just be silent. you don't talk about it. this is also a part of the code of masculinity, right, so you don't talk about what is bothering you. you basically don't talk about anything. that is why i would say not that most men die of masculinity, to the extent that we die of like, heart disease or stress related conditions. and so i was... i was also thinking in the novel about what it means to be a young man to be given the ultimate responsibility and the ultimate duty and then have that licence removed and kind of find yourself basically a warrior in peacetime. and a warrior in peacetime. and also a warrior in peacetime who is also an african—american. and then comes back to new orleans and faces black—on—black violence. we have this violence, black—on—black violence, weighing against archilles‘ experiences in afghanistan, when this is the first time he's been around a lot of people who look like him, and he is supposed to shoot them. so that ended up, i think, allowing me to create kind of a richer story, in a way, yeah. and also when you look at the domestic lives, and achilles returns, and he always remembers that he's come back from afghanistan, and there's no doubt that his mother was warning him away from his two—time, three—time girlfriend, because she was considered white trash. his parents wanted him to date somebody of higher standing than janice. you have this notion of class and race, what might be white trash, being juxtaposed against the slow and steady work of love. you do that in another character in the book, ines, who isn't actually african—american but, as you put it, can "pass". one of the great things you do is burst the bubble of the gap year, or the "gap yar", as it is called there. she's done her time in afghanistan as well, but he still thinks that she is a bit snooty. he thinks that she is snooty and also, oddly enough, he is more attracted to her because he does not know that she is black. so that kind of sets them up to have a reckoning and conciliation in which they change the way they look at themselves in the world. yes. which is what you do in both novels, which is undercut what we think, and i think you do that so well. because you have this incredibly energetic, vibrant page of writing, but at the end, you've got to stop and say, right, i need to think about that for a minute. which brings me on to actually how you literally right, you literally write, because you are a professor of writing and do lots of different things. you participate in different writers‘ programmes. you say that you are a serial monogamist. when you do one project, you do one project. when you have one relationship, you do one relationship. how do you literally put your life in writing together? i have to admit last fall i was a little bit promiscuous... we like confessions. and i saw several projects at the same time. and that was fun. but for me i think it is better to focus on a single book because it lets me look at the world i am living in and filter those experiences through a unique mind. because each book has a unique mind. i read a lot of religious texts as a child. yeah. there is something of the language of bible that i think is part of these influences as well. also listening to music. i think all of that goes in. are you religious now? it depends on who's watching this show. mum, i am very religious. my friends, you know the truth. no, my mother knows the truth. i look back and feel that the religious upbringing i had was one of the most important components of my development, because it gave me a sense of what it means to believe in something outside of myself, something higher, and even if someone later leaves their religion, there's still this space — this imaginative space, you know, in your soul, this kind of outward sense of belief and belonging. and also it is important to me, looking back, because i have an appreciation for what it means to believe something that other people don't, or to believe something and feel kind of like you are an outsider, right? and also a sense of the totality of that veil, right? once it you put it on, it determines everything you do. but it also, coming back to this idea, you believe what other people don't believe and vice—versa, but it gives you a compassion rather than an intolerance? certainly, certainly. i think that at the global level, we often see a lot of religious conflict that would lead us to believe religions are inherently intolerant but when you read the text themselves, they pretty much all extol the golden rule, and there's a great quote from the dalai lama, that everyone does not need to become buddhist, they simply need to practise whatever religion it is they claim to be following. let's come on properly to the much garlanded braggsville, which the new york times said was the funniest send—up of identity politics and racial anxiety in years. it begins with a 500—word sentence which crackles with energy and sets the pace. the style challenges the reader. what did you want to think in that first huge rush of language? "this is not for me." or maybe it is. but i wanted to let the reader know very early on that it was going to have this kind of frenetic pace and also, it wasn't going to be a book that wants to tell you what you already know in a way that you have already heard it, and i feel like this was the important thing, you're going to start talking about contemporary society or social issues, no—one needs me to tell them what they already know in a way they have heard it said before. braggsville itself is a place of 700 souls and it is where a young boy comes from who goes to berkeleylittle indians. tell me about them. the four little indians are quite, quite different in that d'aron coming from georgia, in the south.... all the way through the novel, "are you daron, are you d'aron?" he talks about dropping the apostrophe early on. he has this anxiety about being a southerner. on the west coast, there is a bit of derision about people who are from the south, so he's trying to figure out how he can fit in and sound smart but he is also coming from small town coming from a small town where he was the valedictorian and that was easy but it seems like everyone at berkeley was a valedictorian and so how does he stand out? he ends up falling in with candice, who is one—quarter native american. or as she puts it, one—quarter indian, the kind you found, not the kind you were looking for. then you have charlie, who is this african—american kid from a poor area of chicago but who, through an athletic scholarship, ends up attending a residential school and it gives him this g
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