Episode 18: Featured Event with Dionne Ford

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers podcast, Cleyvis Natera moderates Dionne Ford's book release event for her memoir, Go Back & Get It, live in-store at Watchung Booksellers.

Dionne Ford is the author of Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing. She is an NEA creative writing fellow and the co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Literary Hub, New Jersey Monthly, the Rumpus, and Ebony and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. She holds a BA from Fordham University and an MFA from New York University. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Cleyvis Natera the author of Neruda on the Park, a New York Times Editors’ Choice in 2022. She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. 

Books:
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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

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Transcript

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Watchung Booksellers podcast. If you are new to our podcast, thanks for listening in. Each week on the Watchung Booksellers podcast, we bring in two or three of our store's community of book professionals. writers, publishing folks, booksellers, to talk about a different aspect of the book world.

They share a conversation that we might get to hear at Watchung Booksellers, and now we get to share it with you. I'm Kathryn, and I'm here with my co producer Marni. Hi Marni. Hello. What are you reading these days? I have Asia's copy of Pew by Kathryn Lacy. It came out in 2020. It's contemporary fiction.

It's Asia's from the store. It's her favorite book. And it's really good. I'm halfway through. I'm loving it. How about you? Yeah, I think Nicole liked that one too. I just got back from vacation, I got to go to Paris, and while I was there I went to Shakespeare and Company, which is phenomenal. And the book I picked up was a bookseller recommendation called The Paris Trilogy by Colum Schneck.

And it's a slim memoir in three parts about a woman in various stages of her life. She talks about having an abortion when she was 17, and then she talks about this lifelong friendship. And then finally she talks about discovering swimming in her 50s. So it's super cool. It's so good. I'm not sure if it's available in the States, but we'll put it on the website if it is.

And speaking of vacation, while our staff has been on vacation, me included, we decided to air some of our recorded events that we've had in the store. And today we're throwing it back to 2023, when we had the pleasure of hosting Dionne Ford for the launch of her memoir, Go Back and Get It. We had Dionne on the show in episode two with Alice Elliot Dark.

to talk about writing and self care. And after you hear this episode, you'll get a better understanding of why self care is so important. Anyway, her book is, it's a very deep and powerful story. And it was just wonderful to have that launch in our flagship store with Clavis Natera. Yeah. And actually we had read her memoir, Go Back and Get It, and Dion came to our memoir book club in the store.

And she was kind enough to speak with all of the memoir book club members. And that was really fantastic. Dionne Ford is the author of Go Back and Get It, a memoir of race, inheritance, and intergenerational healing. She is also an NEA Creative Writing Fellow and the co editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants, Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Literary Hub, New Jersey Monthly, The Rumpus, and Ebony, and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. She holds a BA from Fordham University and an MFA from New York University. Next year, Dionne is hosting a memoir writing retreat in the French Pyrenees.

You can find out more about that and contact her via her website at dionneford. com. And Clavis Natera is the author of Neruda on the Park, a New York Times Editor's Choice in 2022. She was born in the Dominican Republic. Migrated to the United States at 10 years old and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University.

Her writing has won awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Kenyon Reviews Writers Workshop, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. Enjoy the conversation, and we'll be back afterwards to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

Well, thank you, everybody, for being here. Thank you so much for being a conversation. Well, don't thank me yet. Let's see how this goes. Um, first I want to just apologize to everyone in the front if I flash you because it's like the first warm day. I have to, I have to let my legs out. I was like, I hope everybody's okay right here.

So apologies in advance to the front row. I am so thrilled to be here with Dionne. You know, I had the opportunity to read this remarkable memoir a few months ago and I just haven't been able to read it. It is brilliant it is beautiful and moving and I just I'm so excited to get into it So the way we're gonna do this is that I'm gonna warm you all up with a little question for Dion Then she's gonna read a little bit and then I'll come back and ask some questions and then you'll get to ask some questions So just as I'm getting you started to start thinking about your questions How does that sound?

Don't move too much, because it's really hot. He all asked me like, what was it? So, I mean, the first question, I'm really curious just to hear a little bit about your journey. I know that you started out as a fiction writer, and then you ended up deciding to write this memoir. So I'm really curious if you would spend a few minutes telling all of us about your journey as a writer.

Sure, yeah. You know, we have so much in common. We both went to NYU. But long before that, I started out as a journalist. And so, I guess I was kind of always working on this in a, in a way. I feel like it was probably my, my first journalistic endeavor, frankly. From the time my grandpa told me about his grandparents, I was interested in them and would, from time to time, try and find information about them on my own.

By the time I decided that I wanted to You know, go and get my MFA and I had a novel that I was working on and I was really excited to get into that prestigious place and be able to work with such smart and talented professors and, you know, other writers. My cohort was so smart. But, you know, and by that point I had been working on my memoir separately and alone and felt like I had, you know, gotten to a good place with it and I would just circle back to it, you know, at some point.

But once I got to school, weirdly, after one semester, like, it just was so different. And I kind of couldn't stop thinking about it and sort of always working on it. So I asked the director of the program, even though I was there for fiction, and they had no non fiction track at that time, if it would be okay if I worked on it, uh, on my memoir as my final project.

And she was fine with it, as long as my thesis advisor was fine with it. And that was in 2013. So, it's been a long journey, but I will say that after I started working on it there, I kind of quickly found an agent. So, that was also sort of just another kind of outside validation that this project that had been mostly mine might find a place there.

Yeah, I love to hear that. I mean, anytime that we follow that urgency, both in our imaginations, I think, and also just in our lives. Like, the story that can't wait to get out is the one that takes center stage so often. And if we listen, I think the result can be just astounding. So, why don't you read to us for a little bit?

Okay, here we go. So I'm just going to read from my prologue since it sets up the book and hopefully it will give you some idea of the course that the book takes. And my prologue is called, If you are going to look for your enslaved ancestors, you will have to look for the people who enslaved them. Any African American can expect that 19 percent of their ancestors were white men.

So the enslavers might also be your relatives. This is a study in contrasts. Shadow, light, black, white. Joy, pain, victim, perpetrator. You will find ephemera. Editorials, photographs, wedding announcements, and atrocities. Lynched uncles, your people as property in someone's will, deed, or mortgage guarantee. You will also find the living.

Third cousins, once removed. Fifth cousins, straight up. and descendants of the family that forced your family into slavery. You will meet them on beaches, in dusty archives, in farmhouses, scratching at the past like it is a lot of gain, and you are strokes away from a million more reasons to believe. For a time, you will cease to believe in, or pray to, God, and instead will pray to your ancestors, the enslaved ones, the women, because they are what you want to be.

Mother, Creator, Feminine, Divine. They were raped. They were sold away. They kept on living. Some even thrived. If you are going to look for your enslaved ancestors, you will have to reconsider the word lucky. In 1858, when Colonel W. R. Stewart, a wealthy Louisiana cotton broker, married Elizabeth McCauley, a girl from a long line of North Carolina plantation owners, Her family gave the couple a slave named Tempe Burton as a wedding gift.

Elizabeth was sickly and couldn't have children, but Tempe could, and did, have six of them with her new master, the Colonel. My great grandmother, Josephine, born a decade after slavery ended, was their youngest child. On my 38th birthday, I found their picture on the internet. It was May 7, 2007, and with those sevens, I'd like to tell you that I was feeling lucky.

Tempe was in the middle of the photo. Her former masters, Elizabeth and the Colonel, were sitting behind her. On either side of Tempe were two biracial looking girls. The one on the left was curly haired and creamy skinned like my dad and my daughters. It was eerie how this century old photo of my ancestors mirrored the new family I'd created.

Lucky and Unlucky Number Seven. In seven days Seven plagues, God made the world. And seven plagues, God could wipe it out. On the 7th of May, I was born. In my seventh year, I was raped. It's been said that it takes seven years for every cell in your body to change. In the seven years after finding the family photo, I criss crossed the country, uncovering the stories of the people in it.

There is a name for this kind of pilgrimage. The Akan of Western Africa call it Sankofa. Symbolized by a bird in flight with its head craned backward and an egg in its beak. Sankofa means to go back and get it. Or, it is not wrong to go back and get it. For that which you have forgotten

such a very beginning and even it does set up like the entire book, I think, in such a beautiful way. So first, I mean, how are you doing? I feel like I just published my book last May. And I felt like the whole thing was so surreal at the beginning, like it's like time ceases to like matter and everything's happening You're so excited.

So, how are you doing? Yeah, I am all of those things all over the place And I think you just need to look at my house to see That it is beautiful A manifestation of my emotional state. A complete discombobulation. But joyful too, because guess what? Like, you published a book! I just want everybody to clap again.

I feel like doing the tap dance, like, You're a champion! This is really remarkable. So, the first question I wanted to ask you, it's about the structure. I mean, we're both writers, and we're both obsessed with, like, The shape of things and you know what I think is really interesting about this book the shape of it is that it's Like a braided structure.

So like one braid is your life and what happens as you're dealing with this trauma of having been raped as a child. And then there's another grade which is like this obsession with finding your ancestors and dealing with that violence and in a way It's like the story of this country, right? Or like the history of the United States.

And so, the first thing that I wanted you to talk about is what made you choose this structure for this book? Thank you for asking that question. I'll try to answer. I don't know how much I chose it as it chose me. So I think, initially, what I really wanted to do is structure the whole book around anything that I found about my ancestors.

And so I think that initial impetus remains to some degree. But then, as you said, I needed to also find a way to braid in my own story. So I think what I tried to do was use whatever I discovered as the spine of the story to kind of like propel, you know, us from chapter to chapter. And then find a way to then tell my life now, you know, my life now Or whatever pertinent thing, you know, it happened in my life based on the discovery of, you know, something about my ancestors.

So yeah, I wanted those discoveries about them to be the propulsion, what's moving us forward. Yeah. And it's really propulsive. I mean, it's so interesting because when I, you know, I got it in a, in a paperback, an advanced copy of it. So it feels lighter. And each time I came back to it, cause I read it, like in a way.

I was like, Oh, this is so good. And even the hard parts, I was like, Oh my God, like this is so enlightening. And the way you've done it, I think is really honest, like in a really important way. Um, but each time I came to the book, I just was like astounded that it's so light. You know, like I was like, this book feels like so big, like the depth of it is so big.

And so I think that's really difficult to pull off, to be able to tell a story that. is telling the truth that it's like found objects and known objects and then also that it's weaving together like your own personal life and I loved it. I mean you guys, this is just going to be a fangirling event. I love you and I love your book.

You know, I really do think that being courageous as a writer is, is probably the hardest thing to do. Because so often we're like seduced by the idea of like presenting the world in a very sanitized way. And I thought that the way that you address, um, The violence that has happened in this country, like what this country has been built on, is the violence against black women.

And for some reason, it seems like we, we just still don't acknowledge that. And so, I just wanted to know, like, why do you think it's important to confront issues of, like, sexual violence as fundamental to the creation of the United States? And I also want to know why do you think there is so much resistance in acknowledging The mass rape of black women in this country.

Yeah, that's a great question and I, so I think for me, why it was, did you say why it was important to me or why is it important just like generally? I think it's the same question. Okay. So, um, to me it seemed important because to me it seemed, Obvious, but in my experience it just seems that for some reason that piece of it gets lost in our discussions when we have discussions about slavery and, and how it is foundational to our economic prowess, you know.

Became a superpower in a very short amount of time, and it's because of, you know, we made slave people. So, there is that. And then if we talk about, like, what else did we do? You know, we made laws around black women's bodies, you know? And that their children would be slaves as well. And then, so I just feel like we don't talk about that.

'cause it's, 'cause you know, we, we don't also don't talk about sex, you know? Yeah. And we don't talk about violence and sex. Even if you think about, like, when we bring awareness to sexual violence, I'm always shocked at how often, whenever there is, at like any media around it, it's often about men. You know, like who were, who were abused in childhood or.

It's about adult women in the workplace, which are issues, but those are not the people who are most victimized. The people who are most victimized, actually, are indigenous women, and then it's black women. So, I think there's something to that, that that is the truth, and that's what we most often don't talk about.

And to me, you know, if you can't face it, you can't fix it. So, I feel like it's It's actually very empowering to say that this is what the truth is, because then you have something that you can do about it. I mean, I think that's why I wanted to be a journalist. I found it really empowering to know things, you know?

And I felt like that gave me some agency then to, like, figure out what I could do about it. Yeah, I mean, I also feel like one of the things that's so striking about the memoir is that there is like a very visual way in which we understand, like, the cost to the human being, to like, the person, when we are embodying you.

Like, as you are both trying to numb away that trauma from childhood, And as you're growing up and you're time and time again, you're like forced to confront it. And I was thinking, as I was reading the book, and as I was re reading the book, I was thinking a lot about how so much of what happens in this country, like these bursts of violence and these bursts of rage that I think happens.

are like that sore, right? Like that kind of rottenness that is in the marrow of like who we are as a country. And how like the more and the more that we try to like hide it and numb it and look away from it, the like bigger it becomes. And so in your own life, I thought that that journey. You know, we're talking a lot about like, spoil, no spoilers.

And Dion said, what can we spoil? I mean, it's like my life, which I love that you're like so open about it. And I was just thinking a lot of like, I kept thinking about this idea that the way that you talk about your own personal life, to me, like just really becomes symbolic of so, so many of the things that happen in this country.

And it's really, it's, it's so remarkable. I mean, it's, it's so powerful. So I also wanted. So it's not got a lot of proper joy. Yay. Because you know, I think that it's, there's so much beauty and love in this book and there is this idea of, that I think sometimes when we pick up a book that has like difficult themes, as human beings it's like, I think we have a habit to like buy the book so that it's in our bookshelf, right?

Like, oh it's like, no. And you know, and I think a lot about 2020 when like for the first time in the United States, like, Nearly every book in the New York Times bestseller book was dealing with race because we were having a reckoning But then like a couple of months later, guess what happened? And then when I talk to people about those books, right, because some of us read those books all the time Like most people haven't read the books And so and I'm very proud of those of you.

I'm sure none of those people are you Everybody here is irrelevant But you know, that's that's something that to me I was I was thinking a lot about, Leigh Anne, about like just your, just as you're confronting it, as you're working Yeah, I think that there's a way in which, like, your bravery and your courage to me made something really beautiful.

And I can only imagine how difficult it was to write this book and to go on the journey of finding your ancestors, but I wanted you to share with us what was joyful because I actually found the book to be filled with so much beauty. Oh, thank you. I'm so glad because that's what I wanted and I don't think I could have stayed with something, something that wasn't uplifting for me, you know.

I just feel like my ancestors were really incredible, you know. I mean, you know, regular people, but they really I survived so much, and I'm thinking particularly about my great great grandmother Tempe, lived to be like 104 years old, which is insane. You know, this is a woman who spent half of her life enslaved, and then the rest of her life free.

And she owned property, which I thought was fantastic. I love that when it came time, you know, she made a decision to, um, make sure that her daughters would be. So she gave him some of her property, which I just thought, yay! You know, we often hear, like, the firstborn or the son, you know, at that time. That would have been sort of a typical thing.

So I thought, like, good looking out for an eye, you know. Yes, like, take care of your daughters. Also, um, I grew up in the A. M. E. tradition. My dad's an A. M. E. minister. He's here. But did not start off A. M. E. My dad and my mom chose to become A. M. E. My dad started off as a Methodist and that was the tradition that Tempe also practiced.

I guess in my mind I often would think about Black people who have been enslaved sort of having the religion of their enslavers forced upon them. So it was actually really very powerful to learn about more of the history of Methodism in this country and that among the first Methodists in this country were enslaved black women.

That was shocking to me. And so while I don't know exactly how Tempe, my great great grandmother, came to Methodism. I did find it really, like, illuminating and kind of like a beacon that women before her, enslaved people before her, did have some agency in how they, um, you know, in this most sacred space in their lives, how they prayed.

I found that really, really beautiful and kind of gave me, actually, a new appreciation for the religion that, you know, brought me up. There are so many things, even, I will say even about, like, my great great grandfather, my enslaving ancestor. You know, there are things about him that, like, I was proud to learn.

That's the right phrase. So, after slavery was over and he, uh, was really interested in cultivation and did cultivate a strand of a pecan, pecan if you're from the south, that you can still buy today. And so, I don't know, All of the ins and outs of that. There's something about that that just, you know, it, it, it stayed with me.

You know, make me campfires every Thanksgiving. And there's something about that that took a little bit of pride in me, so. Twisted history to it, but something that was nice to know. So, yeah. The discoveries for me were every time I learned anything, honestly. About my great great grandmother in particular.

It was just kind of like, served as like a talisman for me. It's so powerful to learn, like, the extent to which you went. I won't tell you, you gotta read it. But it's really fascinating, like, how you went about connecting the dots and finding information that for others it would've just been like the first dead end.

It would've been like, never mind, like, there's no way to find our people. And I think that among the things I appreciate most about this book, I think it's the First of all, like the resilience and the strength that you are learning about through your ancestors, especially Tempe. I think it's very clear that you inherited that, and it was beautiful for me as a reader to be like, badass, yes, check, check.

And then, and then I think also just like this idea that like we are called upon. As artists, I think so often it's like, like the way for other people and to be like, we are not people less people. And like, just because we don't have the archives and we can't find the names of those from whom we are descended, It doesn't mean that we don't come from remarkable, beautiful, powerful people.

And so it was, it was just like, uh, like really important, I think, that you continued. And like your obsession, which at one point I was like, where are you going? I don't think this is not safe with me talking to the book. And I honestly was like, yes, you were like on this journey, which is like a spiritual journey.

And like this, this is now like the archive. This is the proof. This is like what gives the rest of us this like lovely totem, right? To be like this, even if I don't know who my great great grandmother is, it could have been Tempe, you know? Or someone like Tempe, so thank you for that. Thank you. That's so beautifully put, because that's what I wanted.

Sometimes people ask you, so why did you choose to write this? A memoir as opposed to a novel. You could make this into a novel. It's because I needed the record. And, um, I did need to, I needed to lead something, you know, for my girls. And to give to my family. And so, yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't set that down.

You'd think I was a writer. So now we're going to open it up for your questions. So, I know at the beginning people get a little shy. So, who's going to be the first? Hey, I was wondering, I know you probably used your skills as a journalist doing research, but did you also reach out to professional genealogists, or how did you approach it as a research task?

So the question is around genealogy and whether or not, aside from using her own skills as a journalist, whether or not you also reached out to like some professional genealogists. Yeah, I did eventually. I reached out to some professional genealogists in Louisiana and Mississippi because I just didn't have the ducats to go and take the time and do what I would have needed to do.

Also, because they already had the relationships down there, you know, and that is something that comes up in the book, that relationships matter. You know, people have The key to certain archives and, uh, it was better. For me, for people who were known and who could say to so and so, Hey, I just need, you know, this document.

And for unknown me, with this face, to go certain places. So, I kind of sat and learned that the hard way. Had I known, had I really thought about, The implications of showing up at certain archives. I probably would have just tried to save my money and do a lot of that. Farm that out. Hire, hire that out. So yeah, I absolutely did use some really fantastic genealogists to help me with this research when I couldn't do it myself.

Thank you Kate for that question. So I think it's about redemption and reparation. On a personal level, do you feel redeemed, that there's been redemption, that there's been a repair, um, that there's been some, it certainly seems that way, you know, from this process. And also, Moving forward, reparations for what's happened, how can I, as a, as a person who wants to see reparation, what can I do to make that happen to people that have been hurt tremendously?

Yeah, so that's a great question. I think when it comes to reparations for slavery in New Jersey, We are trying to get some bills through, so you can certainly, uh, contact your, your, your senators and tell them that you, you support those bills. These are just bills that would study reparations. They're not even, you know, saying what they are.

So, any support you can do, um, at the state level, that would be great. And, um, I think for me, do I I feel, I don't think I was looking for redemption, but for personal, personal repair and reconcile to my family, my story, my country. I absolutely do, yeah, because I feel like I really have a much better understanding about the trajectory of our country, and I have a much better understanding about my people's place in that, and I think I also know that they did have a place, and so does everybody, and so I really appreciate being able to just kind of dig in to see what that was and experience it.

So yeah, I feel reconciled, absolutely. And yeah, I hope that other folks will definitely support reformations for people who We're, you know, descendants of people who were enslaved. I think they're probably the only group that hasn't received some form of reparations for their, um, unpaid labor here. Have you been able to address the generational, emotional trauma of your ancestors?

What do you mean by that? I mean that the trauma of the violence that's been passed down through the generations. I mean, it's in our DNA. Yeah, yeah. I think for me, I do that. By trying to connect to my ancestors, there's all that I can do for myself personally, all that I can do within my family, but every day I keep an altar and, um, you know, my ancestors picture is on it, all of them, including the ones who I'm not very fond of.

Um, which, you know, I've learned from some of my spiritual leaders that that's the way to do it. Um, and so I keep my ancestors really close. And I think for me that that has been really comforting and healing for me. Um, I'm sure folks have to find, you know, their own way to, to move through that. But, but most importantly, I think being honest and forthright about the harms that have happened.

Since, you know, as you said, generationally is for me the, the biggest step. Hey, Dionne. Hi, Greta. So happy to be here. Similar question, but a little different. It's about forgiveness. And, um, I hope I'm not going to do a spoiler. I mean, you told me a story about meeting with your white cousins, the descendants, and about kind of the inequality of assets and wealth that had been accumulated generationally.

And, uh I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your process of forgiveness and reconciliation with, you know, you keep referencing your ancestors and yet you have this dual reality of your ancestors are both black and white and your black ancestors suffered so many harms and continued, the legacy is still there.

So what has your process of forgiveness been? I guess Just getting honest with what, you know, what happened, getting clear about that, my feelings about that, and actually allowing myself to be angry was really important. I feel like I was socialized, and maybe many women will, you know, relate to this, but socialized to like not be angry and to move on to forgiveness.

And so, um, I think in this instance, where, you know, my people hadn't done anything wrong and something really unjust had been done to them, it was appropriate for me to feel a lot of anger. I actually went to my minister after meeting, you know, with his family members because I was so angry and so uncomfortable with my anger.

And it's actually very healing for me to hear my minister not say anything like, What can we do to help you move on? That was, no words like that came from him and that was really helpful to me. To be able to like, honor this ancestor, this sort of ancestral rage, you know. And that was really, that was really medicinal for me.

You know, I think about it. And so as far as forgiveness, like, you know, I, I love, I think it was Mary Beth McClean, uh, I just messed up her name. Mary Beth McLeod, MCLE, Beth, thank you Bethune, who said, forgiveness is not forgetting. It's letting go of your pain. And so for me, that has been the forgiveness. I completely acknowledge and remember what happened.

Um, but I. I'm letting go of the pain of it. It's not mine. That's been very helpful to me. Yeah, I hope that answered your question. Thank you. I bet I'm not the only person here who followed your blog finding Josephine Gay back in the day. I think you did a presentation, I think your dad was there too that day, about the things you have found at the beginning of your journey.

And I, I, at that point, I was thinking, oh, this is going to be a book. When is she going to do a memoir about this? And, and, but it sounds like it had more stages. Like you didn't go from blog to book. So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how you pivoted from being a blogger to kind of a novelist.

Because I know that was what you were. Intending to doing. You got your , like how did it become a thing you are sharing with all of us at this point? Without question, Lord, that's a booklet in itself. . Yeah, I mean, the blog really was about, so one of the joys, I forgot this was meeting my third cousin once removed, Monique, who, you know, became my research partner, who I met like through Ancestry.

I found that picture. It was such a joy to find somebody. who was as obsessed with our family's history as I was, and who could, you know, really, like, get in there and appreciate and dig with me, and who had two daughters, also around the same age as mine, so we, we really bonded, and that was wonderful, like, just being able to go on that journey with her.

And really, the blog was because we were trying to figure out what we could do to try and find more information and more of our people. So, she took a bunch of things on the list of to dos, and I took a bunch of things on the list of to dos. And since I was a journalist, I was like, okay, I'll do the blog.

Where, you know, it was that, or like, send every person with the last name, Burton, Stewart, Ford, a postcard. And that didn't seem like that was going to be a very efficient way to contact people. So, you know, I start the blog. My name's Josephine Cossack, so I was looking for my great grandmother on my father's side.

And, yeah, as we continued to find things, kind of just being honest with myself that I did really want to write a book about it, and just sort of, you know, writing that all along as we were researching is what I did. Also getting back to the joy and, and real ambition I had to write a novel and, and, you know, applying to NYU, getting in, going, Okay, I'm gonna do this, and then I'll just get back to the memoir.

And then just, I guess, honesty, like, raising its head again, that really, this was the, the thing that had been lighting a fire under me for years. And so, um, that I just was gonna pivot and, and Really go full force for this. So I hope that answers your question. Thank you. How many relatives did you meet and how many places did you travel to?

Wow, okay. So, I met at least, um, at least ten relatives, and I traveled to Maryland, Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, Brazil. Um, and the Brazil thing is a little, a little side story, but, but it was an important part of my journey only because some of the, the Brazil's story around slavery has parallels, and it's huge.

And I lived in Brazil when I was a teenager. And it was in Brazil that I actually kind of got a real perspective on our country for the first time that I had never really had before, just because of their ideas around race and slavery. I lived in a town that Had been founded by U. S. Confederates, like of all the places in Brazil, India, Pakistan, China, this place.

And that made me realize just how little I knew about our own country's history with slavery. And yeah, it was shocking. I ended up going back to Brazil to, to visit that town with my family now. So, so yeah, I, I clocked some miles and met a lot of wonderful family and happy to still be in contact with some of them, which is really nice.

Do you have any, uh, suggestions for people who are trying to follow your journey up and finding people in their family? What approach would you, uh, From your own experience, give to us, I mean, I know that genealogy and anthropology and all that, but you personally, those things we know about, but is there anything that you would give us that we might not know?

Boy, that you might not know, that's hard to say, but I would say that, I mean, the very first thing that, I mean, I wouldn't have a book. Had I not talked to my grandfather when I was 12, you know? So, um, I think the first thing is to talk to your elders and get their stories and be inquisitive and listen to them as much as possible.

Um, thank God for that, like, lazy summer day that we had. Just the two of us, where he could kind of like stretch out with his memories, you know, cause he had my full attention. So, I feel like that's the very, very, very first thing, is to get with people and get their stories. And then After that, it's probably gonna be some, well, you don't have to stomp the pavement anymore, actually, you can go online to repositories like Ancestry.

com or like the Family, what? Family? Family Search. Family Search, that's it, Family Search. It was free the last time I looked at it, I think it's still free, so, trying to just get as many documents also about your, about your family there. You know, um, death certificates, et cetera, census reports are really helpful, so, but first and foremost, oral tradition stories.

Thanks. Congratulations, Deanna. Thank you for a wonderful discussion. So, I've known you through this process and I've seen you grow into a pretty expert historian compared to someone like me. Um And I was struck in your book by the journalism and the history finding and I was wondering how you felt about the fact that opportunities now are coming to you to use that expertise and to use that historical knowledge and sort of has put you in this position now of being somebody who has all this institutional knowledge and sort of how do you feel about representing that?

Um, post publication. And tag, question, answer. Do you think you'll do more journalism? Do you think you'll go back into any kind of journalism? Because I really saw the gift you have there. Oh, wow. Well, thank you. That's ten questions. I'm over it. Journalists will tell you, it's hard, man. And, you know, people get mad when you ask them this stuff.

And that was the part that was most difficult for me. Like, how just I have a low tolerance for, you know, not niceness towards me. So, um, so, you know, I don't know. That remains to be seen. I mean, I, I think if, if anything, I would love for maybe this to shine a light on is Just how difficult it is to do this work, and how we should really provide more support for people, particularly when their ancestors were enslaved.

You know, you shouldn't really have to go banging on the door to send people who enslaved your people asking for records. So if there's some way to, like, you know, make those public and more accessible, that would be a wonderful way to begin some reparation. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure about that. I, you know, I'm going to go where my gut tells me to go next, but I do hope if I'm representing anything is that this is really, really difficult stuff that should be more accessible to us so that we can just, you know, honor our people.

And have them close to us. It should be easier. So, yeah, that's it. Dionne and

Clavis for being a part of this event. Listeners, you can find their books in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com. And we're excited for a fall season full of events. Here are a few of them that are coming up. On Thursday, September 5th, Jenny Rosenstrack, author of The Weekday Vegetarians, is releasing her follow up cookbook, The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple.

And on Tuesday, September 10th, we welcome back Ian Fraser for the launch of his newest book of essays, Paradise Bronx. He'll be in conversation with his New Yorker colleague DT Max. And on September 12th, the Montclair Public Library has a discussion with Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty by America. And on Saturday, September 14th, we're excited to welcome best selling novelist Laura Dave for the release of her new novel, The Night We Lost Him.

Laura is the author of the New York Times number one best selling, The Last Thing He Told Me. And as a bonus, this book will be available to ticket holders before the release date. We have so many great talks coming up. Too many to mention here. So be sure to sign up for our newsletter or check out the details in our show notes or at watchungbooksellers.

com. The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Council and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, New Jersey. The show is edited by Kathryn Council and Bri Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kaleni and Derek Mathias. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mohica.

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