Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. - book review

Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2003 by Lynee Gore

It took a long time for me to be satisfied with these stories. I did as much as I could do, not because I wanted the book out quickly, or because I got paid lots of money. If others aren't satisfied, I'll be disappointed but it won't be the end of the world.

Your protagonists are outsiders, struggling with alienation, repression and self-hatred. Thematically, your work reminds me of James Baldwin.

I'm drawn to mentally flawed characters and intrigued by the notion of what a person internalizes, and how a person doesn't see one's position in the larger world. Like Baldwin, much of that comes from a double consciousness being raised African American in the church, as well as within the larger community of America.

Did the church play a large role in your up-bringing?

My grandmother and mother grew up in the church, so it couldn't help but be a powerful influence. I became a witness as well as a participant.

I admire churches that understand that people need to first exist and not be impoverished, instead of preaching fire and brimstone.

Have you always wanted to write?

On some level I've always written, but thought writing was something other people did. In my senior year in high school, I had a teacher who was very encouraging. She had us write short stories and present them to the class. I started thinking, "I could do this if I wanted to."

How influential was your writing professor at Iowa--James McPherson--on your work?

He's still very influential--as a father figure, and as a link to another era of African-American writers. His being at Iowa was wonderful for me. Coming from a different generation, he's had to deal with way more than I can imagine. Ralph Ellison played a similar role in his life.

Where does your work fit in with your black post-modernist brethren, writers like Colson Whitehead and Zadie Smith?

I love Colson's stuff, but I know that I won't be writing like him. Some people do the post-modern thing well. But for others it becomes a belabored exercise.

I think the writer has a responsibility to the reader to tell a good story. I think it's more important to be good first and original later.

Who are your literary influences?

McPherson for short stories: I changed when I read his Elbow Room and Hue and Cry. I first read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye in one night in a Yale library cubicle. Language is an instrument Morrison plays with perfect pitch. I also love Baldwin. I'm most intrigued with his earlier writing like Go Tell It on the Mountain. As far as the "canon," I find myself drawn to the Russians--Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have a sense of nation as an idea. In The Brothers Karamazov, each brother is a facet of Russia.

These writers were not afraid to make big statements about a big country, whereas contemporary American writers equivocate due to a dire need for objectivity.

How do you feel about black writers airing dirty laundry in public?

There's a long line of African-American writers who do that: McPherson, Morrison, Ellison, Alice Walker, Albert Murray, Gayl Jones, John Edgar Wideman, and so on.