Victoria Christopher Murray, HARLEM RHAPSODY
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books, so you
[0:29]you don't have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests, like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:45]Victoria Christopher Murray is the author of Harlem Rhapsody.
[0:49]She is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 novels, including the personal
[0:53]librarian, which by the way I had her and her co-author Marie Benedict on to discuss, so
[0:58]you can go back and listen to that.
[1:00]It was a good morning American book club pick.
[1:02]And the first ladies, which was Target's 2023 book of the year, both of which she co-authored
[1:07]with Marie Benedict, as I said.
[1:09]She is an NAACP Image Award winner for outstanding literary work for her novel, Stand Your
[1:14]Ground, which was also a library journal best book of the year.
[1:17]She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
[1:21]Welcome, Victoria.
[1:22]I'm so glad you're coming back on my show to now talk about Harlem Rhapsody.
[1:28]Congratulations.
[1:29]So awesome.
[1:30]Thanks for introducing us to Jesse and this whole time period and the many other authors
[1:37]that she's created and inspired and what a story that you found and told so well.
[1:43]So thank you.
[1:44]Oh, thank you for having me back.
[1:46]Isn't she amazing?
[1:47]Amazing.
[1:48]Yeah.
[1:49]Jesse Gardner Foster was just so amazing.
[1:51]And you mentioned to be the number of authors that we know them.
[1:57]And she discovered them, but we don't know her.
[2:00]And the fact that at the end, she couldn't even get a job in publishing after that.
[2:03]I mean, I could not believe it.
[2:05]Yeah.
[2:06]Well, it was 1925 when she left and she really wanted a job in publishing, but and she
[2:13]was willing to work at home so that no one would see her in the office.
[2:18]And she couldn't get a job in publishing and had to go back to teaching.
[2:21]Oh, okay.
[2:22]Well, back up and tell everybody who is this.
[2:26]Her secret love affair, her place in history, that she worked out and everything about
[2:32]Jesse.
[2:33]She was an amazing woman if if I had to sum it up in one word, I would say that she was
[2:40]the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.
[2:44]She was the woman who got it started in more ways than one.
[2:48]It wasn't just that she discovered all the writers that we know.
[2:53]She discovered county colored when he was 16, Langston used when he was 17.
[2:58]She was a mentor to Noah Larson, all the writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
[3:03]She met them, discovered them, edited them and published them first before anyone else.
[3:12]And so that's what people would say is her claim to fame.
[3:16]We would know Langston used without her.
[3:19]Because she probably published his first 20 to 25 poems if you could believe it.
[3:25]But what she did most was she was a writer herself.
[3:29]She was an author herself.
[3:31]She wrote the very first novel of black characters who were in the middle class.
[3:38]And so the what was so amazing about that to me is I write novels about black characters
[3:45]in the middle class and had never heard her name.
[3:48]And I stand on her shoulders.
[3:50]And it was actually the launch party for her novel, her first novel, there is confusion
[3:57]that started the Harlem Renaissance.
[4:00]But it was a movement that wouldn't have continued if it weren't authors to follow her.
[4:06]And all the authors that followed her were the ones she discovered.
[4:10]Amazing.
[4:11]Just an amazing story.
[4:13]When you share in the book how you included how you found all this information, the
[4:18]rabbit hole you went down, even scenes at a party that you're like, I didn't make this
[4:22]out.
[4:23]This actually have it.
[4:24]Oh, you know, the research was so interesting because I first heard about her just
[4:31]her name in something that Langston used wrote in one of his books saying that Jesse
[4:38]Redman Fawcett was the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance.
[4:43]But I couldn't find any information on her and then I heard a podcast that was called
[4:48]Harlem on my mind.
[4:51]And it talked about Jesse Redman Fawcett, this amazing woman who was the literary editor of
[4:59]the crisis magazine.
[5:01]And one of the very first things I began to look up was who were all the literary editors
[5:05]of the crisis magazine because why didn't I know her?
[5:08]Well, there were no other literary.
[5:10]She was never a literary editor before her and never one after her.
[5:15]When she left the crisis, they stopped publishing Langston and County and all of the literary
[5:22]section disappeared.
[5:23]She was the person that put it together.
[5:27]And then she was the one who ran the very first, she was running the crisis magazine
[5:32]for WED Du Boi, who was one of the great thinkers and activists of our time.
[5:40]He was the first black man to graduate from Harvard University with the PhD.
[5:46]And he had this crisis magazine that was the periodical that told everything to the black
[5:54]community.
[5:55]What was going on all across the country, that was really the only magazine they had
[6:00]at the time, but he also founded a magazine for black children called the Brownies
[6:06]book.
[6:07]And even to this day, we still don't have another one like that.
[6:12]It didn't survive, but it was wonderful for the time that it was there.
[6:18]And she ran both the children's magazine and the crisis magazine that is still out today.
[6:25]Still out today.
[6:26]Oh my gosh.
[6:27]That is amazing.
[6:28]Tell me about when you were doing the research, and especially, well, not especially,
[6:33]but I found it very interesting.
[6:34]This whole love relationship and how other biographers have handled it, how you chose
[6:38]to handle it and all of that.
[6:41]You know, I didn't realize how big it was the way I handled it until after I handled
[6:48]it and it was kind of published.
[6:50]So because there were really three people, well, two people before me who have addressed
[6:56]this or not addressed this.
[6:58]There was someone who did a paper on her for, I think it was a dissertation that got published
[7:05]and she chose not to mention it.
[7:07]And then David Glevelling Lewis, who wrote two Pulitzer, winning, Pulitzer Prize winning
[7:14]biographies on W.E.D. Du Bois, chose to not only mention it, he mentioned all of Du Bois
[7:23]affairs and the only person he named was Jesse Redmond Fawcett.
[7:30]He was, that was the only one he made.
[7:32]So he made a distinction of her from the others and he always called them the others.
[7:38]He would say his wife, Nina, became friends with the other women.
[7:43]But he named Jesse several times in the book and he called them Star Cross lovers and he
[7:50]said they had a parallel marriage.
[7:53]So that's as far as he went in the biography because it was a biography of Du Bois
[7:58]entire life.
[7:59]It wasn't just about them.
[8:01]And so I took that because Star Cross lovers, the only time I'd ever heard that term,
[8:07]was in high school with Romeo and Juliet, that's what I think everybody, when you hear
[8:13]that, you think Romeo and Juliet, they don't die at the end in this book.
[8:18]But you think that I had no ideas any what a parallel marriage was?
[8:23]I, you know, I had to kind of go with that.
[8:24]So I took that.
[8:26]I took letters that I found other people talking about them.
[8:30]I took articles, especially from J store, that talked a little bit about how women described
[8:37]him and why they were involved with him.
[8:40]And then there was this one letter that was outside of the storyline, but one letter
[8:46]letter that boy wrote to Jesse, where he said, I sat outside your apartment last night
[8:53]in my car and I saw that your light was on and I wanted so much to come in.
[9:00]That's not, that's not the typical letter that you kind of write your, you know, your
[9:07]co-publisher, your literary editor.
[9:10]Oh, I took it and then I created it because it was historical fiction.
[9:15]What I imagined their relationship to be, they're anchoring it in the history.
[9:22]I didn't want to do anything that I felt was outside of what people knew or didn't want
[9:29]to talk about.
[9:30]But wasn't until after I published it that I was like, wow, this is kind of big, you
[9:35]know, it's kind of big to do this.
[9:38]But I based it all on letters, but the biography, research articles, scholarly articles
[9:47]that were written, always mentioning.
[9:50]And one of the things that I found most common between some of the articles about Jesse
[9:55]and the boy was that they were always together.
[10:00]People said that all the time. They were always together. And I guess that was the parallel marriage part
[10:07]So I just kind of built a story around that to be honest
[10:13]I thought about trying to write it without that
[10:16]The challenge with it was there was a plot hole
[10:21]Why was she in New York? Why was she the only literary editor?
[10:26]Why did they spend so much time together? And they spent all of that time together and nothing happened
[10:33]I didn't think and so one of the things even when I was writing contemporary fiction
[10:38]I always stay true to the characters even when I'm making them up
[10:43]I want them to be as authentic as real as possible
[10:47]And there was no way to write this story without that storyline. Yeah, it would be a totally different book
[10:57]I mean you must have been like
[10:59]Gasping like I feel like if it were me going through this research and finding certain things
[11:02]I must I would have been like oh my gosh. No way like wanting to tell everybody like look what I found today
[11:08]Well, I was you there was one of the very first articles I found was in a research library in California
[11:13]I was there with another friend who would be searching his historical fiction and so we had downloaded a lot of articles and she's sitting at
[11:21]We're at Starbucks now sitting and she's doing her research and I kept reading like clutching my pearls on how women described him
[11:29]Like I can't use the words here
[11:33]I kept stopping and saying for sure to look
[11:34]Read this and she was like I do articles that I read you know with my hands over my eyes peeking through
[11:42]Because I couldn't believe how what right some people were
[11:47]Some of the things that they said in clutching so yeah
[11:50]So it would have been a totally different book the book isn't
[11:53]About they're a fair but they're a fair makes you question would there have been a Harlem Renaissance without they're a fair
[12:02]Well, I think you could say
[12:04]Maybe not
[12:06]Oh my gosh
[12:06]Well, it's like a gold mine what you found here and the way that you told it right it's
[12:11]Yeah, these lost stories of of the things that happen in history that we just
[12:17]We don't realize how instrumental certain people were and they just get lost. It's crazy
[12:22]It's really amazing and they're hidden and they're important people. Yes. The Harlem Renaissance was this major
[12:30]Literary movement. I may not be here as a writer without the Harlem Renaissance
[12:37]Yet the woman who ignited the whole thing
[12:41]Was lost in history now some of it. I think actually began with Du Boi
[12:46]I think some of it began with they didn't have a good break up
[12:50]They had a better break up in the book
[12:52]But they didn't have that great of break up even though he stayed in her life
[12:57]And so I think he began when people would come back and talk to him about certain things
[13:02]He would say I did this I did this I did this
[13:06]And because he's given credit for things that I know I have research that he didn't do he did she did
[13:14]He did not discover links to news. He did not
[13:18]So what else I feel like it's not going to end with this book
[13:22]Like what else are we going to do to honor Jesse and get her like into the mainstream and you know
[13:27]Are you now like advocating like there should be a center and you know
[13:31]I mean like I know. I know well one of the things I am doing
[13:35]Not on my tour at the beginning part of the book, but maybe in the fall is I really would like colleges to become very aware of
[13:45]Her and there are many colleges. I was at a school recently just speaking and one of the professors came up to me and
[13:53]And I spoke a little bit about Harlem Rhapsody and one of the professors said I
[13:58]majored in the Harlem Renaissance and
[14:01]She said I don't understand why didn't know her name and
[14:07]And she said and it made no sense to her because one of the things that she had focused on
[14:13]Were the white women of the Harlem Renaissance because they wouldn't but that's something else we don't know
[14:18]There would not have been a Harlem Renaissance without the white women who were patrons who allowed
[14:26]authors like
[14:27]So Danielle Hurston and Langston use and Gene Tumor to actually go out
[14:33]And write freely without having to think about it. Langston use would have never written his first novel
[14:39]He would have never been able to take the time to write his first novel
[14:43]So one of the things that I hope this novel shows is the importance of everybody
[14:48]In the Harlem Renaissance movement and I want to take it down to colleges first
[14:53]And and really do a tour
[14:55]From speaking about this book speaking about the Harlem Renaissance as a whole
[14:59]And it wasn't that it was much bigger than what we've been taught that it was
[15:05]And you said it in the book that you went to Harlem and stayed in a hotel
[15:09]You're like
[15:12]So the first time I stayed in a a-lock hotel the other the new hotel was being built
[15:17]I didn't know what it was
[15:18]And then when they opened it and it was the Renaissance hotel. I was like, oh, you're like playing
[15:24]Yeah, Harlem Renaissance
[15:26]Right, and it's right
[15:27]You look at the window and you look down at the Apollo Theater
[15:31]It is right in the center
[15:33]So I go there and stay there all the time now
[15:36]No
[15:36]Because I spent my
[15:39]Most like five weeks up there researching in the Schomburg Library
[15:44]Which was the 135th Street Library in the book
[15:47]It's the library of the Harlem Renaissance and Langston used his ashes are there in that library
[15:54]It's so historical and I'm actually going to get to do a signing there. So I'm excited about that
[16:00]I'm very excited. That's I feel like I'm taking Jesse home
[16:05]To that so that is it's really good
[16:07]But I am advocating that people need to know her name. They need to know her and we'll see what happens after I do the college tour
[16:14]What about any family members of hers?
[16:17]I haven't no one I've met yet with my last historical books. The family always kind of comes out afterwards
[16:26]You know, they kind of come out and we've been really blessed to have family members come out with a book
[16:33]That I wrote with my co-author Marie Benedict the first ladies
[16:37]We had the opportunity to meet the granddaughter of Eleanor
[16:42]Nancy Roosevelt
[16:44]And she invited us to speak at the FDR
[16:48]Library and told us that she was so pleased with our depiction of her grandmother
[16:53]So that's been good and then we we met one of JP Morgan's
[16:57]A great grandson's in his 90s now and he he thought the book was a hoop
[17:04]I'm saying he kept saying that book was a hoop. No, we're like, okay. Well, that's not quite what we were going for
[17:09]But at least you love it. You know
[17:14]He kept saying in the interview when we were we did a zoom with the board of the Morgan Library
[17:22]And when he got on he was like, oh, I love this book. It was a hoop
[17:27]And Marie and I kind of looking at each other saying, okay, that wasn't white
[17:31]What we were aiming for but he must have said it ten times. He loved the books
[17:36]So we've had good things and what I've tried to do I did run my book past historians
[17:43]Because I really did want to honor even with the affair
[17:48]I wanted to honor Jesse so much and and
[17:52]W.E.B boy as well
[17:54]But I wanted to honor her because she's so important to so many of us
[17:59]Well, it's amazing and you know it brought the time to life and the people to life and emotions that you can still have today
[18:08]You know, there's authenticity of longing and you know, all of that is still very much
[18:15]You know, yeah, you know, one of the things that I found so fascinating was the parallel of her life and today
[18:23]Like the biggest decision the choices she had to make was could she have this career and the family
[18:31]And she decided very early on. She did not
[18:36]Her greatest love I think was languages and literature
[18:41]She would rather speak French than English and she would have and one of the things I didn't get to depict as much in the book
[18:48]Well, she would have these weekly literary salon parties at her home
[18:54]Where Langston said they were there was lots of food but short on the wine
[18:59]And and and everybody would speak French
[19:03]Everybody would speak French some of the letters that I discovered were in French
[19:08]You had that you had the part about how she had been dreaming in French and I I once spent the summer in France
[19:15]When I was in high school and I also was dreaming in French by the end now
[19:19]I can barely speak it anymore, but I understand
[19:22]I know but I was like wow, this is crazy. I didn't know what that meant until it happened
[19:26]But yeah, and I've never dreamt in another language, but I did a
[19:31]Festival one time in Dubai with with authors from all over the world
[19:36]And a gentleman went to the guys on the panel with me
[19:39]He and from Morocco
[19:41]He and I are still friends. He spoke three languages and he said he wrote in one
[19:47]He spoke English and he dreamt any other. Wow, and I can't even imagine
[19:53]So you were you were really blessed to get to be able to dream in French. I think yes
[20:00]that was that must be so fascinating. Yeah. And then have lost everything, but that's okay.
[20:06]That's okay. You had the memory of that. You had the memory of that. I know I have the capability,
[20:11]which means anyone has the capability. So I love that. So I know you're totally focused on
[20:18]Harlem Rhapsody at the moment, but knowing the timing of publishing. Are you already working on
[20:23]the next thing? Is that almost done? Are you working again? And I actually just interviewed her
[20:27]this morning. So I feel like I'm having a day with the two of you. Yeah. So yes, Marie and I have
[20:33]just finished the first draft of our third novel together. Really fascinating stories. So we're
[20:40]very excited about that. So we'll be in the editing stage of that very, very soon. While we're both
[20:47]on tour for our new solo books, I missed her while writing, you know, this book because it's so much
[20:53]fun to have a partner with you. And then I will be starting on my second solo historical fiction.
[21:01]I'm not sure I'm going up to Sad Harbor. So I'll give you that little bit of a hint to check
[21:07]out something I heard recently. Interesting. Interesting. I also this morning interviewed Jessica
[21:14]Sofer who wrote a book called This is Not a Love Story. And she lives in St. Harbor. So if you
[21:19]you want me to put you in touch, I'm sorry. This is a love story. Not this is not a love story. This
[21:24]is a love story. And you have books coming out around the same time. In fact, the same day, even
[21:30]So I'll put you in touch on you. Perfect. That will be perfect. Yes. So I am working because like
[21:36]you said, the way publishing works, I mean, you know, for sure, the way publishing works, we have
[21:41]to get started so far ahead of time. So we're already a generosity. The characters are kind of
[21:50]already trying to slip away from me. But I love Jesse so much. Love does so much that she stays with
[21:57]me. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you for introducing the rest of us to in the world to her and her greatness
[22:05]influence and just the power of what one woman can do and what one relationship and one publication
[22:11]and how it can change history really. So it's really great. Yeah, you can change this world with
[22:18]words. Changing the world with words. I like it. Yeah. All right. Well Victoria, thank you. And thank
[22:24]you again for just being so amazing and supportive on all fronts of my life and so much more.
[22:29]So thank you. Well, thank you. And thank you for being such a good friend to me and
[22:34]understanding and giving me the information I need. That means everything to me. Anytime. Okay.
[22:40]Good luck. Congratulations. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi,
[22:47]formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[22:52]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.