Breena Clarke, CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL: I'm Speaking Now: Black Women Share Their Truth in 101 Stories of Love, Courage and Hope

[1:18]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Libby Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Special announcement, I am teaming up with Katie Couric Media's Wake Up Call and Random House to give away 100 copies of the book Stranger Care by Sarah Santillis. I'm really excited about this. Here's a little about Sarah's book, and we collectively are giving away a 100 copies. After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Santilles and her husband Eric decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system's goal is the child's reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question them, evaluate them, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their lives even if it means most likely having to give the child back. Stranger care is an illuminating read, and Sarah will be on this podcast soon. So if you would like to enter for a chance to win, please go to the link in the episode description from right where you clicked on it and enter your email address, first and last name. By doing so, you're agreeing to the sweepstakes official rules and agree to receive communications and special offers from Katie Couric's wake up call and moms don't have time to read books. Thank you for doing it and enter to win today. Just go back to the episode description. Thanks again. I did an Instagram Live with Brena Clark, who is the co editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I'm speaking now: Black Women Share Their Truth in 101 Stories of Love, Courage and Hope. The other editor is Amy Newmark, who is the publisher of the whole company, and who I also had on for her other book, Making Me Time, which came out the same day that my old anthology came out, Moms Don't Have Time To, a quarantine anthology. Anyway, Brina is also the author of three novels, and the most recently published was Angels Make Their Hope Here, which was set in an imagined mixed race community in nineteenth century New Jersey. Her debut novel River Cross My Heart was an October 1999 Oprah Book Club selection, and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the seven essential books about Washington DC. She is cofounder of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers and is on the fiction faculty of Stone Coast MFA and creative writing at the University of Southern Maine since 2013. I hope you enjoy our conversation, which was originally an Instagram live, and you can go on Instagram to at Zippy Owens and watch it if you're interested in the visual. Thanks.

[4:13]Breena Clarke: Yay. There we go. Yeah. At last. How are you? Hi. How are you doing, Zippy? I'm pretty good. Are you I'm sorry. It's so not intuitive, this process, but thank you for sticking with it. It's okay. I really appreciate it. But the good news is I had time to read your bio. I read an excerpt. I chatted Oh, on thanks. You know, into the wilderness about the weather. You know Oh, I'm sorry. I left you hanging there. No, no, no. It's quite alright. It's quite alright. Congratulations on this collection, which you co edited with Amy Newmark. Tell listeners a little bit more about how you got involved with this project and all the great things about it. Okay. Well, it's been an exciting project for me. I am primarily a fiction writer, but Amy Newmark reached out to me after my name had been given to her through a friend. And when she told me about this project, I got really excited and said, Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. She the chicken soup for the soul is not may not have been on the first blush a connection for me because I am a fiction writer. But when I heard about the project and I realized their reach, I said, Well, this is a good opportunity to provide a platform for large number of black women to speak about their own experiences specifically. There's a lot of universal wisdom in this book. Women are talking about their lives in every stage. We've got younger women, middle aged women. We have mature women as well. So there is that universal experience, but there's a lot of specificity that people talk about the unique experiences of black women in this country. And we reach women in Canada, as well as in The Caribbean. So we're really talking about Black women's experiences on this continent, And I think that's very important as well. We've got women from all parts of the country, from the South, from the Northeast, certainly from California as well. So that's one of the things that's exciting about it too. It's exciting. So what are some of the themes that you've found in most of these stories? Obviously, yes, there are lots about womenhood in general. Yes. Have things about, you know, talking to moms during sporting events and all sorts of stuff. But what are some of the things The universal themes that women deal with certainly. We have a section on hair, and that's a universal theme, of course, but it has specificity for the black woman's experience. So I think that those stories are unique. We have stories about raising our children. And the stories are typical of raising children all over by anyone, but they, again, there is the specificity of our experience and what it is like to worry about the safety of your children, to worry about their emotional health also when they go into school, when they go and interact with institutions in our culture. So there's a lot of there's that theme. We talk about loving each other, loving men and others. We talk about the effects that the incarceration system has on our families and on ourselves as individuals. And there are stories about ancestors and ancestral traditions. So that's also important. And we've got stories about some of the genealogical research that individuals have done to discover their own personal identity. Amazing. How did you collect? Were you involved in collecting or choosing which essays made it into the book? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We received about 2,000 submissions. Wow. So we had to cull them down. And we did it we did it quickly. We didn't do it fast, but we did do it quickly because we wanted to get these stories compiled and have them before the public quickly because I think now is a time when people are interested to hear these specific stories. And as we've said, they are personal narratives. So each one of them is centers the writer's voice, and she speaks with clarity. So that really was the criteria for choosing them, the clarity of the narrative voice. And as I say, we got about 2,000, and we had to cull them down to this 101 stories. And as I say, we got a lot of submissions. We got a lot of poetry. So in order to be able to use the poems as well, we decided to choose 12 of them to go with our sections. So that adds another layer that's exciting. And I also mentioned that each story is accompanied by a quote from a black woman. Some of them are historical figures, some are contemporary figures, some are little known, and others are very, very well known. So I think that that's a treat also for the reader. I read a few as I was waiting for you earlier. There are a few more, Toni Morrison, I get angry about things, then go on and work. Let's see. Is saltless anywhere more comforting than in the arms of sisters, Alice Walker? Oprah, surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher. Mhmm. Mhmm. And Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb, for there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it. Yes. Yes. Yes. How did I do? Beautiful. Very well. Very, very well. You know, it's the type of book that you can have at your bedside or wherever else, you know, next to your chair. You don't necessarily want to pick it up and read it from cover to cover. You want to go back and look, and the stories are short. As we said, it's a 100 and well, it's a 101. So and they're short. So that's perfect. You get a little glimpse of each woman's life. I also mentioned that the section that we have at the back, which is the section of contributors bios, I like that too. I like that specifically because it shows you that the Black women who've contributed to this volume come from all kinds of backgrounds. They come from very wide backgrounds. They've accomplished a lot in their time. And so I think that that too is a very interesting section of the book. I also like to collect anthologies. Even have this much on the shelf behind me, but this is my first one. It's Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Moms don't have time to. And I have another one coming out in November. So anyway, I'm all about, you know, moms not having that much time, and I love this format. I've always loved essays so much. And I feel like it's like a, like someone throwing a dart. Right? It gets the message in quickly and effectively. And like some of these essays, they just lodge I mean, confronting my rapist. You can't like read this for two minutes and not feel, you know, completely moved by it. So, anyway, I think it's this forum is particularly what's a good word for it? Direct, I guess. So Yes. And I think that that's one of the strengths of the chicken soup series that these essays are presented as direct statements of individual lives, and there's a lot to appreciate about them. And they're not just for other Black women to read, though they are especially. I always say that they have universal truths, but they also have the specific truths of the black experience as well. So there's a lot to appreciate

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[14:50]Breena Clarke: Well, I think your next chicken soup for the Soul book should be about dogs because I saw your Instagram account was overtaken by your puppy pictures of Dinah or Dynamite or whatever, who's so adorable. And I am equally obsessed with my black lab Naya, who is usually right under my desk. So, yeah, I feel like we need if they don't have one, you should take the lead on that project. Well, they have done a dog book in the past. I don't know what the plans are for the future. I'm I'm I'm right there with you. Yeah. You gotta throw your hat in the ring for that one. Yes. You know, because you don't have enough to do, but, you know. Definitely. But I'm also dogs do also figure as characters in some of my fiction, and I'm working on a manuscript now that has some canine characters. So Oh, great. I I have to go back now and read your fiction, particularly your Oprah's Book Club book. And I know it was all about a lot about grief and loss. I know you've had some truly, you know, terrible loss, and I'm so sorry to hear about you losing your child when he was five, and I'm so sorry. But I guess it sounds to me like you've thrown a lot of that emotion into your novel writing. Is that true? Or how has it been helpful to Well, it it has my son's death was kind of a turning point for me. So it was an impetus to complete work that I had always wanted to do in fiction. So it was a very important turning point for me in recovering from that grief. So and, you know, I sort of modeled it. I read that Mark Twain had done a similar thing after the death of his daughter. And then I've come to find out that a lot of writers have done this as well, just sort of pouring out their thoughts and feelings. And I did that. And I don't actually write about my son, but I try to take the feelings into the fiction. I mean, the some of these feelings are just so universal. Once you get it out, you end up helping so many other people. And I literally just before you got off this podcast with this other woman, Diana Cooper Schmidt, about Emma's laugh about losing her daughter. So, I know, but you should read it. It's so beautiful. It's a memoir, very different. Oh, yeah. Anyway, I should introduce you guys. Not that you need, you know, friends, but anyway, it's Right. Yeah. That's Well, I know what you mean because it it's a peculiar category, the parent whose child has died. There isn't really a word for you because I guess it's just so disturbed, you know, widower or You're none of those things. You're something else. You're in So another it's hard to continue to explore those things that are so rich and wonderful about motherhood in the face of this loss, but that's really the kind of thing you have to do. You know. I think you should point a term for it, you know. Another thing you can do in your spare time. Yeah, it needs a word. It needs a word. But there's so many people who are in this category, unfortunately. So I feel like talking about it, I think some people are afraid to talk about it. But of course, once you lose someone, you never stop thinking about them. So it's not like someone bringing it up is gonna make it feel saddened. Right? You already have the sadness. Right. That's that's it exactly. That's it exactly. Yeah. Well and on a totally lighter topic, I hear that you've taken up swimming, and you're, like, obsessed with swimming. Is that true, or did is that an old thing? Or I don't know. I read that somewhere. Well, yeah. It's an old and a contemporary thing. I come to swimming again because my mother was a she was, as a young person, a very outstanding swimmer. But growing up, I didn't learn to swim. And also my son was a good swimmer. And I didn't learn to swim until I was, I think, 49. So I was, like, older. And I am proof that there is no age limit on learning anything but swimming, certainly. And I've learned to swim, and I swim pretty well. And belong with an aqua aerobics group. We we meet. Now our problem has been during the pandemic, the hours that our swimming pool facility have changed. And so I haven't been in such a long time, but it's one of the things I have to get back to. It's, you know, wonderful. Well, another book recommendation for you after you read on this laugh. Bonnie Tzuyu wrote a beautiful book called Why We Swim, which is all about sort of the scientific benefits we get from swimming. Kat talks about famous swimmers and what they've gotten out of it. That's another really beautiful book. So, you know. And it's called Why We Swim? It's called Why We Swim. Okay. Alright, I'll check it out. Yeah. I don't know why I keep recommending books to you. Maybe I should ask you, what what are you reading now? What do you like to read? Well, I read a lot of different things, and I do read a fair amount of books that are about some of the non fiction books that I read or on topics that I'm working with with my students at the Stone Coast MFA. And one of the books that I'm reading, it's called Afro Dog, Please. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna fumble on the author's name. That's okay. Don't worry. But it's a book that examines ways in which dogs have been used in law enforcement and to oppress enslaved people as well. So it's a book that examines ways in which dogs have been used specifically in this fashion and, you know, examine some of that uneasy relationship. And I'm kind of doing that sort of thing in my fiction. So I was very interested to read that book. And there's another book it's called, it's kind of a hybrid book. Where is it? Oh, okay. Here it is. It's called Black Futures. It's a great book. And I the reason I say it's a hybrid book is because it includes texts and all kinds of various ways of text to talk about Blackness in our culture. So it includes photographs. It's a big, huge book. It's great. Oh, good. Well, if you need even more book recommendations about dogs, I have an article coming out tomorrow in the Washington Post online, and it'll be in paper next week with books about dogs. So maybe I'll forward it to you when it comes out. Oh, please do. Please do. That's my subject. Yeah. Please So, Brina, what advice would you have for aspiring authors? Well, Zibby, you know, I always get this question. I'm sorry. And I guess I always no. No. No. But I always ask for it the same way. I always say the same thing. I give what I call the Nike advice, and that is just do it. People will ask me, they say, well, Breta, I have this novel. I wanna what do I do? So sit down and write it. No one can do it but you. So there you go. And it's a personal process, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you've got to put the words down. Whatever your medium is, you just simply have to do it. And a lot of times people will spend great hours and days discussing something that really they just have to put themselves in the chair and do it. So that's my advice, which is really, you know, sort of puts the onus on the individual. But you have to, you have to pick it up. You have to pick up the stick and go with it. Nobody else can. They can't do it for you. I've realized my biggest procrastination from writing is writing book proposals. I, like, I've written so many book proposals. If I had only just written those books, you know? Yeah. But instead, I have a whole book probably of book proposals. So anyway but luckily, we have this book here, Chicken Two Prince Souls Yes. Speaking now, Co edited by Brena Clark and Amy Newmark. So everybody go pick this one up and thank you so much for taking the time with me today. Oh, thank you, Zippy, for having me. All right. Have fun. Have a great time with your doggies. Okay. Bye. Thanks

[23:26]Zibby Owens: for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.