My guest tonight is the poetry editor at The New Yorker,
and director of the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture,
and author of a new book of poetry called Brown.
Please welcome Kevin Young.
(cheers and applause)
-Welcome to the show. -Thanks for having me.
A beautiful book of poems
with a title that says so much, Brown.
Why the title, Brown?
I was thinking of all kinds of brownness.
Uh, James Brown-ness, um, John Brown,
also Linda Brown of Brown v. Board,
who played piano at my church
-in Topeka, Kansas, growing up. So... -Oh, wow.
So she was, you know, right there.
And I learned at an early age that history--
You know, she was part of the case
that changed our whole nation,
and, you know, desegregated our schools and so much more.
And there was history right in front of me singing.
So she was a beautiful singer and a beautiful person.
Right. It's a name that many people have in America,
a name that many people adopted,
and a name that many people were given.
But, in many ways, brown in America signifies so much.
You know, brown can determine what kind of job a person gets.
Brown can determine what schools you go to,
brown can determine what type of loans you can get.
Is that why brown was so important for you
when writing about, I guess, black culture
and the black experience in this book of poems?
Yeah, absolutely. It had many resonances.
I just love the word, of course, but also I thought a lot about,
you know, how can I go from Prince to the personal?
You know, which is what I get into in the book.
And I was thinking a lot about history.
I'm obsessed with, uh,
the music of history and the history of music,
and both those things came together
-in that book and in that word. -Right. When you,
when you write your poems...
I mean, like, some poems are extremely, extremely short,
and then others span pages.
Does-does this just come to you? Like, where you go like,
"Oh, no, this is two lines, and then I'm done"?
Or do you quit?
Or are you thinking about it from the beginning?
Like, how do you... how do you plan a poem?
'Cause there's, like, this one poem in here.
This was my favorite one. It was a...
it was an ode to Big Pun,
and it was basically just two lines.
Yeah, "Ode to Big Pun."
I mean, you know, he has that great song, "I'm Not a Player."
-Right. -"I'm not a player, I just crush a lot."
And so, I was thinking about it,
and I just decided to say,
-"I'm not a prayer, I just wish a lot." -Right.
Um, so that's my ode to Big Pun.
Right, and if you love Big Pun...
And it's also a pun. You know, it's a pun, so...
Yeah. Yeah.
-Sorry, I don't mean to be so... -(laughs)
Am I being too obvious?
You-you have poems like that.
You also wrote a poem entitled "Money Road,"
-which centers around Emmett Till. -Yeah.
And, you know, the Emmett Till story
took an interesting twist--
I mean, not a twist for some, but for others--
where the woman who was the reason
he-he got into trouble
came out and said, "Hey, I lied."
She said on her deathbed, "I lied.
He did not do anything."
You wrote a poem in this book before that happened,
and in the poem, you said,
"Did he whistle..."
You said, "Whistled or smiled or did nothing."
Was that just prophetic,
or was it something that you always believed?
Was it something that is tied into brownness as a whole,
just the idea of being falsely accused?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's part of brownness.
I mean, um, I-I'm shocked that we believe...
We realize that, obviously, lynching was terrible,
and he was lynched supposedly for saying something,
-Right. -but why do we even believe
this little part of the story, you know?
I think it comes up in Starbucks.
You know, they had to do something wrong.
Um, we're... It's hard for us to believe
that, you know, racism could be full of blame
and the person receiving the brunt of it
-could have nothing, no blame, you know? -Right.
Well, as someone who studies black culture,
a lot of people are confused by what that means.
-Sure. -Like, what is black culture?
Does it have a culture unto itself,
or is it culture that comes from African, Caribbean,
-etcetera? -Sure.
Well, race is a, you know, a fiction,
but racism isn't.
-So there's that. -Right.
But then there's also blackness comes from African culture,
the mix of Caribbean culture.
What I love
about the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
is we study global black culture and experience.
-Right. -We've been in Harlem for 93 years,
and we were part of the first Harlem Renaissance.
And we're thinking about the new renaissances
happening now in film and poetry and art.
And to be able to think about it holistically,
that's how I think about culture.
When you look at Kanye West now,
does that... is that a part of black culture?
-How does that qualify? -I mean...
-I'm saying as an expert in this. -until last week.
Till last week he was, but now...
(laughter)
No, I'm just... I'm kidding.
No, I'm kidding, kidding.
No, I mean, I think we have a big tent.
I mean, that's what's really interesting.
-Right. -There is a big tradition
of black conservatism, of course,
but there's also a tradition of humaneness,
of thinking about everyone under this aegis.
I mean, that's why I love that assoc... research...
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
-Right. -It's thinking not just about African-American,
not just of African,
but the African diaspora, as well.
You know, we love having you
as part of our-our, you know, dreams.
Well, let me ask you this before I let you go.
Brown: Poems--
it's a book that encompasses so much,
and it's beautiful storytelling.
-It speaks to brown -Thank you.
not from the inside, but from all sides, I feel.
-Sure. -Someone reads this book, they read the poems.
What is the one thing you wish they would take away from this?
What is the story you want to tell?
I think it's a story about America and about history
and how history is both personal and public,
and, for me, we're swimming in it.
-You know? It's like we're fish. We don't know we're wet. -Right.
But how do we think about history maybe in an active way?
For me, looking back, growing up in Kansas
and having Linda Brown there,
-it meant a lot to realize that I was in a place -Uh-huh.
that Langston Hughes also had lived
and, you know, coming from a place unlikely,
-like Kansas. -Right.
But it was filled with blackness and brownness.
Well, it's a fantastic book.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me.
Brown is available now.
Kevin Young, everybody.