Robert Jones Jr., THE PROPHETS
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[4:25]Robert Jones Jr. is the author of The Profits, a novel. He was born and raised in New York City
[4:30]and received his BFA in creative writing with honors and MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College.
[4:35]He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Paris Review,
[4:40]Pescence, OK Africa, The Feminist Wire, and The Griot. He is the creator of the social justice
[4:45]community son of Baldwin. And was featured in Team magazine's cover story, Black Male Writers of
[4:50]Our Time. The Profits is a debut novel. Welcome, Robert. Thanks so much for coming and moms
[4:55]don't have time to read books to discuss your amazing hugely successful powerful book, The Profits.
[5:03]Thank you so much for having me. This is such a pleasure.
[5:06]How are you doing with the success of this book? What do you think? What could you ever expect?
[5:13]Tell me about it. I did not ever expect. I actually expected the opposite that people would either
[5:21]ignore it, find it far-fetched, be offended by the topics it broaches. I did not expect
[5:29]the success and the acclaim that it has experienced thus far. And it is so hard to internalize it
[5:37]because I had been so preparing myself for the bad or the negative that the positive surprised me.
[5:43]And I think I'm still in the state of surprise, but ultimately grateful.
[5:48]I like doing that too. So to prepare for the worst and then everything is a pleasant surprise.
[5:54]Well, for people who might not be familiar with The Profits or a son of Baldwin for that matter,
[5:58]would you mind first just talking a little about what The Profits is about and then why
[6:03]what inspired you to write it? Awesome. The Profits is about Samuel and Isaiah, two enslaved men on
[6:10]plantation in Mississippi during the 1800s who are in love. And the book sort of examines how that
[6:18]love transforms, inspires, angers, everyone around them, whether that be fellow enslaved people or
[6:28]the plantation owners and the family that owns these enslaved people. And it also, there's a thread
[6:36]in it that goes back to pre-colonial Africa to give us sort of a precursor to Samuel and Isaiah's
[6:42]love in an origin point for how long lasting and historical that sort of love is. And it is something
[6:52]that took me 14 years to write. Oh my gosh. Precisely because I could find no template to draw from.
[7:00]And that in all of my studies, that was an Africana studies minor in undergrad. I could find
[7:07]no examples of blackness and queerness prior to the Harlem Renaissance and wondered where were they?
[7:14]Like did they just pop up in 1929? Like where were black queer people? And found only references
[7:23]that sort of alluded to sexual assault or some sort of depravity. And my question was,
[7:29]what about love? And so because the great Tony Morrison said, if you cannot find the book,
[7:35]you wish to read, then you must write it. I said about writing what would eventually become the
[7:41]prophets. Wow. 14 years. And it's finally here. Do you ever get tempted to go back into the
[7:49]file on your computer and just keep tinkering around a little bit more? Or, you know, if it were not
[7:53]for my agent and my editor on my agent PJ Mark at Janklon Nesbitt and my editor, Sally Kim at Putnam,
[8:01]I could have tinkered with this for another 40. The writer almost never knows when it's done.
[8:07]You just revise and revise and revise because that's your training is that writing is revision.
[8:12]And so you will keep revising until you have written 14 years worth of books. But they stopped me
[8:19]and said, okay, this is done. And we can move forward. Yeah. I love Sally Kim, by the way,
[8:26]she is like one of my all-time favorite editors and she's amazing. So awesome.
[8:32]So also, Son of Baldwin, you've built this enormous online community. And here's just a little
[8:38]thing about it for people who don't know, but I want to hear from you that Son of Baldwin is
[8:42]specifically interested in critical analysis and in leading and participating in conversations
[8:47]from the queer perspective, intersections of ability, age, body type, class, gender, gender identity,
[8:53]sex, sexuality, and others, of course, this is now cut off white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy
[8:58]are considered. And then of course, there's a lot more. So this is a big undertaking. Tell me about
[9:03]this. Well, Son of Baldwin started when I was first introduced to James Baldwin. I'm late to the
[9:10]game. I did not really know about James Baldwin until my freshman year of college when I was
[9:15]assigned an essay by him called Hear Be Dragons and was so blown away by the clarity and the brilliance
[9:23]and the in the just beauty of that essay that I devoured and sought out all sorts of works by him
[9:32]and discovered that he was also black queer raised in New York City and a writer, all of the things
[9:40]that I am. And I adopted him immediately as my spiritual godfather. I was devastated to learn that
[9:47]he was dead because I was hoping to like find him and talk to him, but he was dead and I said shoot.
[9:55]And then I watched a documentary where his brother said some of James Baldwin's
[10:00]Last words were, I hope that someone finds me in the wreckage.
[10:05]And it broke my heart because I thought,
[10:07]why isn't he more popular?
[10:09]Why aren't we discussing his works more?
[10:11]And this was about 2006.
[10:13]And I said, I know what, I'm gonna start a blog
[10:17]and it's going to be centered around James Baldwin
[10:21]and all the things he talked about politically.
[10:24]So in about 2007, 2008 I created the son of Baldwin blog,
[10:28]moved it to Facebook in 2009
[10:31]and the rest is kind of history
[10:32]because just by word of mouth,
[10:34]people started participating
[10:35]and the audience just grew and grew and grew into what it is now.
[10:39]Wow.
[10:40]I read though James Baldwin in college
[10:42]and I graduated college in 1998,
[10:44]not to date myself here,
[10:46]but I did a whole class on African American literature
[10:48]and that was, he was prominently featured.
[10:51]So anyway, he's not like lost history.
[10:53]No, I just was wondering why he wasn't more popular
[10:57]because at the time it was,
[10:59]we would talk about like Malcolm X
[11:01]and Martin Luther Jr.
[11:02]And those were the big names
[11:04]and I'm like, why isn't he that big?
[11:06]And obviously part of that reason is because the queerness
[11:09]always makes certain people uncomfortable.
[11:11]But lately in the last maybe five to seven years,
[11:15]his memory, his work has really returned to form.
[11:19]So I'm really, really glad about that.
[11:20]Isn't it amazing?
[11:21]I love what you just said about sort of finding
[11:23]a spiritual godfather
[11:25]and that there are all these people
[11:27]who have come before us and who are out there now,
[11:29]who maybe we just wouldn't have heard about
[11:32]or don't cross paths with,
[11:33]but then it somehow like validates our entire lives,
[11:37]whether it's just something about them
[11:39]that's similar or a sensibility or something.
[11:42]And it's just like, wow, like I am not the only one
[11:44]like me in the world and how amazing is that?
[11:47]That is what drove me utterly,
[11:49]was he confirmed my right to be.
[11:53]And so all I bow down to James Baldwin,
[11:56]I adore him still and he has a huge influence
[12:01]on my thinking and my writing.
[12:03]So when you were writing fiction,
[12:06]how did you even start to attempt this project?
[12:09]Because this book is amazing
[12:12]and that it has like different dialects,
[12:15]the wrong word, but you have like different speaking styles
[12:17]for different characters.
[12:18]You have different like first person, third person,
[12:21]and there's like some that feels biblical.
[12:24]There's some parts that feel,
[12:25]it's a lot of different tones and speakers
[12:29]all sort of interwoven to create this masterpiece,
[12:34]essentially, of different threads.
[12:37]So how did you even, how did you like sit down with it?
[12:39]And you're like, okay, yeah, I'm just gonna,
[12:41]I'll just start this thing.
[12:43]What preceded it?
[12:44]Well, you know, my first semester of grad school
[12:48]in the MFA program at Brooklyn College
[12:51]Stacey Derezma was my fiction tutorial instructor
[12:54]and she gave us a project.
[12:56]She said, it is your job to go out into the world
[12:59]and find objects, a character that you're thinking about
[13:02]would possess.
[13:03]Hmm, that's so interesting, it's okay.
[13:06]Because serendipity is real,
[13:09]I found a pair of shackles in the garbage on the street
[13:13]in Brooklyn.
[13:15]Stuff, seriously?
[13:16]A pair of shackles.
[13:18]And when I lifted them up, they were heavy
[13:20]and I said, oh, this person is enslaved.
[13:23]Oh my goodness, I am gonna have to write about
[13:25]a black queer character and antebellum slavery
[13:28]when there is no template for that.
[13:30]But this is my sign that I'm supposed to be doing this.
[13:34]So I said about sketching who the character
[13:37]who would have been held by these shackles was.
[13:41]That character eventually became Samuel,
[13:43]one of the main characters.
[13:45]So I just basically sketched out what he looked like,
[13:48]what he smelled like, what he liked, what he disliked,
[13:51]who he loved, what he thought about,
[13:53]all of those sorts of things to kind of build him
[13:56]into a person.
[13:58]And then I went about writing the book,
[14:00]which was initially going to be told
[14:03]solely from Samuel's point of view.
[14:06]But then I realized that Samuel didn't have enough information
[14:10]to really span the breadth of what I wanted
[14:14]to discuss in this book.
[14:16]So I said, okay, maybe Samuel and his love interest,
[14:19]Isaiah will tell the story together.
[14:21]And then I said, no, that's still not enough.
[14:24]I need something broader.
[14:26]Then I realized the center and the heart of the story
[14:30]was actually that Samuel and Isaiah were in love.
[14:34]So that love needed witnesses.
[14:36]And from that epiphany, I said, okay,
[14:39]so now these other voices are going to need to speak.
[14:41]Whether they affirm this love or they wanna destroy it,
[14:45]they need to be able to tell their point of view.
[14:48]And then from a dream that I wrote scribbled down some words
[14:53]in the middle of the night, the ancestors spoke.
[14:56]They said, you do not yet know us.
[14:59]And I said, okay, now the ancestors wanna be able
[15:02]to talk to me, they wanna be able to talk to these characters
[15:06]and they wanna talk to the reader too.
[15:08]I have to now incorporate them in.
[15:10]And then they led me across the Atlantic
[15:14]to pre-colonial Africa to talk about the precursor
[15:18]to Samuel and Isaiah.
[15:19]And I thought, how am I gonna work
[15:21]to get all of these disparate pieces to work cohesively?
[15:26]And thanks to the help of Sally Kim and PJ Mark,
[15:30]we were able to sort of make it congeal.
[15:34]Wow, that is quite a story.
[15:36]Oh my gosh, I can't believe you found those on the street.
[15:39]I mean, it almost has this Greek chorus to it, right?
[15:43]Have you heard that a lot?
[15:44]I'm sorry.
[15:45]No, no, it's totally that.
[15:47]It is totally has that Greek chorus.
[15:49]In my mind, I'm thinking of how black women in church
[15:53]often sing gospel in harmony.
[15:57]And that is kind of how I hear the voices
[15:59]of those ancestral interjections as a harmonious,
[16:05]gospel sort of tone, but with West African tenor,
[16:11]if that makes any sense.
[16:14]And did you do any travel?
[16:16]Like did you go back to anywhere to investigate
[16:19]in Africa or anything like that?
[16:21]I had the great fortune of having visited Africa before.
[16:24]So I just retrieved those memories
[16:27]of what it was like to be there, what the air smelled like,
[16:29]what the people looked like, what the camaraderie felt like.
[16:34]It felt like a homecoming.
[16:36]Like that was the place that I actually belonged.
[16:40]Like I belonged to that landscape.
[16:42]And I took that feeling and tried to interpret it
[16:46]in a literary fashion.
[16:48]Wow, very cool.
[16:49]Oh my gosh.
[16:50]A lot of the scenes in this book,
[16:51]I have to say were very tough to read
[16:54]in terms of the graphic nature of the torture
[16:58]and depravity and just awful.
[17:02]It was just like, I wanted to close my eyes
[17:04]at certain scenes, which is tough when you're reading, right?
[17:07]What was like to write scenes like that?
[17:10]Like was that hard for you?
[17:12]It was physically painful.
[17:14]Like when I would be describing a scene,
[17:16]my skin would start to like burn a little bit.
[17:19]It would hurt as almost as though I was becoming the character.
[17:23]And I had to often stop and take walks
[17:26]and visit with my nieces, nephews, and nibblings.
[17:29]And do-
[17:30]What's a nibbling?
[17:31]Nibbling is a child of my sibling that is non-binary.
[17:35]No way.
[17:36]Okay, I'm so out of it.
[17:37]I've never heard that before.
[17:39]Okay.
[17:39]Nibbling, who is non-binary.
[17:42]And so I took breaks.
[17:44]Partially, that's part of the reason
[17:46]why I took 14 years to write this book.
[17:49]But it was also sort of a, it became a conscious effort
[17:54]to say to myself,
[17:57]if I'm gonna expect the reader to get through this,
[18:00]I'm gonna have to give them something beautiful.
[18:04]I'm gonna have to give them something deeply loving
[18:08]to sort of balance out the hatred and the torture.
[18:13]So I decided early on that the love would be imbued
[18:17]as much as I possibly could into the book
[18:21]so that there was some sort of balance.
[18:24]You speak so reverently about love.
[18:27]Tell me about the role that love has played in your life.
[18:29]When I think about the fact that I'm here
[18:32]as a black queer person, writing and reading
[18:36]and going to school and walking down the street
[18:39]and all of these things,
[18:41]I can't help but feel grateful to all of my ancestors
[18:46]who endured because I must have been the outcome
[18:51]that they were hoping for.
[18:53]That endured whips and untold brutality
[18:57]and untold degradation to ensure that a me could exist.
[19:04]If that is not love,
[19:06]they didn't even know me.
[19:07]They dreamed that it might be.
[19:10]That is the ultimate form of love.
[19:12]And this was my attempt to testify on behalf of that love
[19:17]and to witness for it and to pay homage to it.
[19:22]Beautiful, it's really beautiful.
[19:24]Who's like, what are some of the loving examples
[19:27]you have in your life now or that you have?
[19:30]My husband.
[19:31]Or that you've seen actually like role model to you.
[19:34]I have one of my best friends in the entire world.
[19:37]We've been best friends since third grade
[19:39]Arlene Solovargus.
[19:42]One day when we were 15 years old in high school,
[19:46]I picked her up from school.
[19:48]We went to adjacent high schools
[19:49]and so I would walk to her school, pick her up
[19:51]and we walk home together.
[19:53]She stops me and she goes,
[19:55]Bobby, that's what my family calls me.
[19:58]You see that guy right there?
[20:00]and I'm looking at him. I'm like, yeah, she's like, that's going to be my husband. And I said,
[20:04]Elky, that's my nickname for her. He's just an average looking guy. You're so beautiful.
[20:11]Low and behold, they started dating shortly after that and have been together ever since.
[20:18]Who was? That's crazy.
[20:20]They have modeled for me what it means to be in love. She knew from the moment she
[20:25]saw him that that was her soulmate, her eternal love, the love of her life. And he felt the
[20:32]same way about her and they have been together ever since three children, a marriage and three children
[20:36]later. They are still together. We are still friends. Her children consider me their uncle. I have
[20:43]never seen romance like that in my life. It is just absolutely beautiful. And then in my own
[20:50]family, the way my grandmother loved me was unbelievable. She died when I was very young.
[20:57]I was seven and she told my mother, she said, Bobby's going to miss me. And the truth of the matter
[21:03]is to this day, I still cry when I think about her on her birthday on the day that she died.
[21:09]That kind of love is just all through my life. There have of course been examples of people who
[21:15]did not love me, who did everything in their power to try to tell me that I was unlovable.
[21:21]But thanks to the glory of the love of people like Arlene and my grandmother and other members of
[21:28]my family, I was stood and I'm here. You know, it's so funny. So talking to you, you're so like
[21:35]kind-hearted and like peaceful seeming and I don't know how to, I'm not explaining this very well,
[21:42]like you seem gentle to me despite the brutality in the book. And then I saw the article in the
[21:49]Paris Review, let it burn where you referenced your past article called, I don't give a, I'll just
[21:55]say blank. I don't give a blank about Justine, Damon, which got you in heaps of trouble apparently,
[22:01]which I'm sort of shocked to even hear because you seem like someone who would care about like,
[22:06]you know, not crushing a ladybug on the street, which I might be wrong. I've only known you for like,
[22:11]what, 20 minutes, but that's the impression I'm getting. It is absolutely true that I even have
[22:18]a problem with killing a fly or a cockroach, like something about that bothers me, but what also
[22:24]bothers me just as much as injustice. I cannot stand to watch another video of a black person being
[22:32]murdered on camera and the murderer just as though they were swatting a fly that it utterly
[22:39]doesn't matter. That angers me to be on my capacity to contain anger. I don't want to be an angry
[22:46]person, but I can't help but be angry when I see what happens to black women, what happens to
[22:53]black queer people, what happens to black people in general, what happens to anybody who's marginalized
[22:59]in a society, angers me deeply. And so I write with the spirit of that when I'm writing pieces
[23:07]like I don't give a blank about Justine Damon, which is really rhetorical because the truth is,
[23:13]I do give a blank about Justine Damon, but I'm trying to let the society know you only care
[23:19]because it's a white woman, but if it was a black woman, you wouldn't care. So I'm trying to turn it
[23:23]on you and say, here's your mirror. This is what it's like when you disregard our lives. This is
[23:27]what it feels like. And it worked because so many white people got angry, but did not see the
[23:32]connection. Did not because Americans, it's so bizarre. Americans have an inability to self reflect
[23:40]and always think we always think of ourselves as innocent. And I really wish Americans would wake
[23:46]up from that dreaming. I really do because America has the potential to be a nation that's
[23:51]transformative and that's a model for how the world should work and it is not. And it has not been
[23:58]since the beginning because it's a nation that's origins begin with genocide and enslavement
[24:03]and the degradation of women. So this is this is unseemly and I really want us to grow into what
[24:10]it actually means to be humane. We haven't earned the right to be called human beings yet because
[24:15]we're so cruel to one another. Why? I totally agree about the cruelty. Like I can't understand it.
[24:22]It baffles me how evil people can be. Especially, I mean, I feel things very deeply as I'm
[24:29]getting the sense that you feel things very deeply. And so when someone is hurt, it hurts me,
[24:35]you know, whether I know them or not or whatever. And I know this just sounds like ridiculous.
[24:39]But just like the ability of somebody to go out and intentionally hurt somebody, especially based
[24:46]their sexuality or the race or anything. I mean, it's just, it like makes me cry. Anyway, it makes
[24:52]me sick to my stomach, honestly is what it does. It does to so many people. But anyway, it's hard to
[24:59]process in a way. It is it is very difficult. But truly, I think of myself as a non-violent person.
[25:06]I don't like engaging in violence. I was a bully kid and had to fight because I had no choice
[25:12]because I had to fight back to defend myself. But I didn't like the feeling of hurting somebody
[25:18]else, even though I felt justified because I was defending myself. I don't like it. But I also don't
[25:24]like to be pushed to the point at which I have to do that. I get it. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you've
[25:33]had those experiences in your life. And I'm glad that you had people to pull you through and to
[25:40]goodness to you. And so that you were able to channel all of it into art and now have it be
[25:46]sitting on my desk. It's amazing really. So truly, congratulations. It's amazing. Do you have any advice
[25:54]for aspiring authors out there? Yes. And particularly authors who are writing from sort of
[26:01]a marginalized existence is everything in the world. Everything in this country is probably going
[26:09]to tell you that your endeavors are not necessary or that writing is a frivolous endeavor or that
[26:16]art is secondary to other concerns. You will have to fight past that and all the obstacles that
[26:25]the society is going to put in your way for you to, for example, take care of yourself because I had
[26:31]to work three part time jobs in undergrad and two part time jobs in graduate school and then
[26:36]still had to find the time to write as a full-time worker in the workforce.
[26:42]And you graduated Phi Beta Kappa. That's like insane. You're a genius, but okay. Thank you.
[26:48]But you must continue because writing is one of the most valuable professions,
[26:55]one of the most revered and necessary art forms in existence. It is the writer who pushes
[27:04]the society to be better. Other artists do that as well. So I don't want to take that away from
[27:08]them. But but the writer is as James Baldwin said here to disturb the piece, which is to say disturb
[27:15]the status quo so that people's lives can be easier so that mechanisms that are here to oppress
[27:24]and to dehumanize are dismantled and that we could look at each other in the face and say,
[27:30]even if I don't like you as a person, I don't agree with your religion or your whatever. I could
[27:36]still look at you in the face and say, you are human being. So I respect you because you are here
[27:42]and you exist. Writers help us imagine those sorts of worlds and push us in that direction.
[27:47]So I tell the inspiring authors don't give up no matter what. Even listen, I'm going to be 50
[27:54]years old in April. And this is my first novel. And I could have given up because all of the lists
[28:00]are like 20 under 20, 30 under 30, 40 under 40 and make me feel this go, my contribution is a 50
[28:06]year old doesn't matter. So keep going. Even if you're 89 when you publish it, be 89 and publish it,
[28:12]keep going. Okay. Can you can you please publish a list somewhere of 50 under 50 or 50? It has to
[28:19]be a little older though. So you can be included. You should publish like yeah, like amazing 50 year
[28:24]old authors or 50 and 40s or you know, you have to you start that. Okay. So make that a thing too.
[28:30]Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of someone in my 40. Anyway, all right. Well, Robert,
[28:36]thank you so much. Thank you for your literary contribution and for taking the time to speak to me
[28:42]about your life and letting me pry into your past. This was so fantastic because you asked
[28:48]questions that no one else asked me. So it made me think like about myself as a person and what
[28:54]I want philosophically to happen in the world. So thank you so much for having me. And thank you
[28:59]for those wonderful questions. You're so welcome. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. Okay. Bye bye.
[29:06]Today's podcast has been sponsored by under the influence a new podcast by author Joe Piazza.
[29:12]And just a reminder again, please pre-order a copy of my book. Moms don't have time to
[29:17]a quarantine anthology and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser. And I hope
[29:25]you'll buy a ticket and join me for and I should have mentioned, um, I'll proceed to go to COVID-19
[29:31]research. So please join me for the fundraiser. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of
[29:36]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at
[29:42]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my
[29:47]virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and
[29:51]Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[29:56]this fantastic intro and now trim music.