Our opener for Season 4! This is a great start to a big season. Ja'Quintin talks with us about his new Novel WILLIE.
Transcript of Ja'Quintin Means interview Download
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Ed Watters 0:08
To overcome, you must educate.
Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others. However, some of the best conversations happen with ourselves. Reach Out and challenge yourself. And let's dive in and learn something right now. And we are super excited today to have Ja' Quintin means with us today, Ja' Quintin, could you please introduce yourself and tell the people what you do?
Ja'Quintin Means 1:09
Oh, yes, I spent two and a half years as a minister in training in the Methodist Church, and also spent a lot of time in high school being a journalist. And that kind of gave me this love for writing. And being a minister gave me a love for history, spirituality and religion and how it works inside of the human mind and how it can be good for us. And sometimes as we know throughout history can be bad for us. And that really was inspired me to be a writer and write the way that I do and about the subjects I've talked about.
Ed Watters 1:46
Very interesting. The book we're going to talk today about is called Willie, Willie started out going to have a different title. Could you tell us why you chose Willie, instead of the other title,
Ja'Quintin Means 2:02
I grew up learning about the weightless letter, or like I heard of it. It's like this folk tale in the black community. So I've always grown up hearing about the Willie Lynch letter, but I had never listened to it for myself. And then I found that there's so much controversy on if it's being a real document or not. But when I when I actually read that document for myself, it just spoke to me in such a way. And when I looked out at the world around me, and I looked out at my own black community, I could really see the effects of what was detailed in that letter. And I was like, Well, you know, my book would be a lot better off if I could kind of show how these things affect us today in a kind of allegorical historical tale. And that's what inspired me to change the name because initially, it was run boy run. And it was really just inspired about me and my best friend walking through the backwoods of Arkansas. He's dark skinned, I'm very light skinned. And me just thinking of like this bond of two friends that wanted their freedom and wanted to, you know, do whatever it took to get that. And like I said, like, once I once I read the Willie Lynch letter for myself, I just had a completely different perspective.
Ed Watters 3:19
History tells a lot, you know, and I looked a little into that Willie Lynch letter myself, because I never heard of it until I ran across your book, and we hooked up for this interview. By going back looking and doing the research, like you obviously have with this book. Do you tie a lot of fiction and historical fact into this book?
Ja'Quintin Means 3:48
Yes, I did. There was so many, you know, Arkansas just has a very rich culture in the history, especially in the times of the 1800s in the Civil War and the slave times. So I did the best I could to take real historical characters at times, I changed their names at times, I did not and incorporate their real stories, and put my own creative flair into it to get the message across.
Ed Watters 4:16
It's one of the best books I've actually read in today's society, and what we're dealing with in today's environment. I think this book is really needed. Just the honest tone you have written with this book. It's going to hit a lot of people, some people are going to find it offensive. I think they need to really read into this and take a deep dive into what is displayed in your masterful writing here, your character's range from the master and all of his slaves within that hierarchy. There's a breakdown of different cultures within this plantation. Some are good, some are bad. How do you find the setting for this big plantation? And was that a historical setting? Or was this a fictional thing made up by you?
Ja'Quintin Means 5:18
The plantation that is based on is a real plantation that still stands today. In Chicot County, Arkansas, which is Lake Village, those based off of real place. And I looked at a lot of pictures online of what that plantation looked like. And then the other side came for me just studying old slave stories of the Library of Congress in the late 1800s. When in and they tried to interview as many surviving places as they could to get their narratives. So I listened to hours upon hours of just listening to the slaves tell their own stories. I read Frederick Douglass biography, I read Diary of a slave girl Uncle Tom's Cabin, multiple multiple slave slave movies like drum, those a movie called freedom road that Muhammad Ali was in. And then you know, other than that is just like hours upon hours of research of just studying the landscape of what slavery actually looks like in Arkansas in regards to the the world around it, and the vegetation, the trees, different things. What did a slave shack actually look like? What did the slave drivers like? How did they live? What did they eat? So I just kind of took real historical, the real historical setting, and whatever I couldn't find or couldn't, didn't have enough detail for I just came up with my own imagination.
Ed Watters 6:38
Who do you as the writer see as the main character, would it be master James, or possibly Sarah,
Ja'Quintin Means 6:46
is kind of a mix for me. And my mind, there's four main characters, Master James, for sure. To me, Sarah is the main hero of the story. And then john, and Martha ann, and obviously, Jacobs, very important, guys, very important. But for that first book, those are the main the main characters for me, because they, I feel like their emotions and through what they go through, they kind of dictate the direction of the story.
Ed Watters 7:16
You know, you mentioned Martha ann, this character is obviously the daughter of James, the plantation owner, then she's got this relationship that is just tremendous in the book with her half brother, without revealing a lot of the nature to this, how did you come up with that setting.
Ja'Quintin Means 7:42
Um, there was a lot of stories in slave history of masters having to break their children to indoctrinate them into the ways of being a slave owner or a slave master. And so a lot of times they would use their siblings there half siblings that the master would make with the slaves, to prove to them what the hierarchy was. And that blood, like they had what they call the one drop law. In those days, which meant if you had one drop of slave blood, then you were a slave. And typically, depending on the mother, so I just wanted to have that kind of dynamic to kind of show a real picture of what these children of slave masters went through, when they were forced to go against human nature, in order to keep the business of, you know, human property alive.
Ed Watters 8:37
It's incredible how human nature will allow us to violate one another in such remarkable, horrendous ways. There's stuff about growing up on the plantation, and they wanted to separate and make examples of how you outline that in your book, it really hit home. And I think a lot of us white people actually need to pick up this book and really understand how much ripples throughout time. It's still a problem today, especially deep in the south down there. I just commend you for your bravery on stepping up, especially in today's world to write such an inspiration. So growing up together on a plantation in the deep south during the civil wars, starting and going into the Civil War. It had to be very difficult to even mix people with the races white and black. It was more of a mandatory, you didn't have any hope for reconciliation of any problems like you outline in this book. So Going forward. In today's society, we have laws. I think a lot of people, they don't understand how to use the law properly. And right, I think we need to start educating people in the laws and how to fight and combat the nature of racism. You are obviously trying to combat here in this book, how did you think writing this book would in any way help the political structure and the society's attitude towards the black people today.
Ja'Quintin Means 10:40
And in my mind, I believe that there's so much psychological trauma that has been passed down from the slave times to my generation, a lot of fear based trauma, a lot of white people being afraid of black people, a lot of black people being afraid of white people because of what happened during slavery. I mean, I believe, you know, we've all seen the pictures of slaves, you know, slaves backs after they've been whipped the kind of chains and colors that they had around their necks. We know the stories of the lynchings. And, you know, the different things that happened throughout our history, and, you know, sadly, at time still happens today. So I kind of wanted to show people that we are afraid of each other based off of the sins of our ancestors. And in order for us to overcome this trauma, and to be healed by it, we need to be honest that it happened, deal with it, process it. And then hopefully, through understanding the sins of our forefathers, we can create something different for the children of tomorrow. And I just believe that we can't get to that point, unless we're willing to deal with the sins of the past and overcome them, you know, at the end of the day, and I guess this is probably kind of a controversial statement. But, you know, America was built on the back of slaves. It was built on a lot of blood and turmoil. So in order to make that, right, I believe that the only thing that we can do is be honest about that upfront about that. Talk about it, discuss it amongst ourselves, have those feelings of guilt, have those feelings of anger, rage, have those feelings of you know, feeling absolutely hopeless. And then through that, understanding that we're all human, and that we need each other to survive. And that was really the goal of the book. And you see it more towards the end of the book, and you will in the future books, too. But it's like, at the end of the day, it's not so much about black and white as it is about, you know, we need each other.
Ed Watters 12:42
Yes, very true. I love that. Back when Barack Obama was elected, I really felt that a lot of this would go away, but apparently it hasn't. I think books like this, being truthful and not hiding the scourges that happen and the disgusting things that occur in human nature. I think it's going to heal people. Politics it's one of those things that just make people mad. Back in 1988, Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first black mayor said, politics, although not perfect, was the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. Politics is not an end. It's a means to an end. What I take away that we need the most is we need to make sure that we have laws written and enforced without prejudice. That's supposedly what our great nation is supposed to do. Anyway, all men are created equal. And I understand how a lot of people feel disturbed about the racial past, but the only way to get over it is coming through with books like this. Do you plan on writing more books?
Ja'Quintin Means 14:14
Oh, yeah, I, you know, this kind of a this is in me now. I'm addicted to you know, I'm addicted to writing so to speak. Like I'll have a vision in my head and I just cannot rest until it's out. And then Willie was like that Willie, I worked on Willie for three and a half years a mix of research and you know, actually writing you know, times I would have to stop and check my notes and my facts and then go back to writing, just to be in that mindset, but it's, it's like a part of my DNA like I couldn't imagine living the rest of my life and never writing another book.
Ed Watters 14:50
So let's talk about the artwork on the book, to me, the scenario the place in time doesn't actually fit what the cover art suggests? Why did you choose a cover art in that manner in that fashion?
Ja'Quintin Means 15:11
Um, I forget the word for it, I think it's called an anachronism when you put something out of place in a different time period. So I did that on purpose to kind of show how the things that are going on in the book, of course, it's a historical fiction, but the same thought process is the same situations that we deal with psychologically, are very much alive and well today. And I also wanted that cover to reach out to the younger black community too, because it doesn't necessarily give away what the inside of the book says. So I kind of wanted this wow factor to where, you know, you look at the cover, and you kind of like, Okay, I see this, you know, Native American Girl, this white girl, these two black kids in the middle of the woods, alright what is this about, but then when you read the book, you understand more about the characters and the timeframes, and it starts to make a little bit more sense to you. So it's more of like a blending of that the the old times, but still modern day thinking, like we, we would like to believe that we don't think how the slave masters back then thought or how the slaves back then thought or had the slave catchers and, and the slave drivers back then thought, but in realistically, we would have the same issues and problems we did today, if we did not still think like them. So that was really what I was trying to get across with that cover.
Ed Watters 16:37
I love that, that's awesome. Just thinking outside the box and challenging like that. That's very unique. Not a lot of people have that. And we really need more of that. Is there any truths that you need people to really understand about this writing,
Ja'Quintin Means 16:58
I think the main thing I want people to understand is like, um, my goal for writing that story was not necessarily, um, to hurt anyone. That was not my desire for writing the story. But I know that there's a lot of painful things in there. And I actually, you know, wrestle inside of my own mind and my own soul, when writing those, you know, at times, you know, very hard to read parts. But I knew that the truth needed to be told. So, I mean, same thing I can say is, you know, my goal is for you to experience those emotions and work through them. And to come out on the other side with a different perspective, and a new outlook on life. And, and not to think that I wrote it to try to down, white people if you if you actually, you know, pay attention that as I can tell that you have, to the theme of the story, I'm not trying to put down any people, I'm actually trying to show the sins of all people regardless of race. And I really hope that when people read the story, don't get so caught up and hard to read, parse, and they can, you know, really find hope, in the redemption side of the story. You know, and we asked each other big thing in the book, too, is like, what is freedom? And once we understand what freedom is, you have to understand what is it worth, to keep that freedom and to maintain that freedom and to give, you know, equal freedom to everyone? And you know, to really question that concept. So we know what it is and what that means for ourselves. So if people can come away with a different perspective, and they can look at someone that doesn't look like them, and understand a little bit more about what each other go through in this country, and in this world as a whole that I believe I've done my job.
Ed Watters 18:47
I think you hit the mark Ja' Quintin this, this is not a stereotypical book, and it challenges the thought process. And yeah, if you really dive into the book, and you understand what's going on, it's going to change what people think I thank you for writing this book and I can't wait to dive into the next one. With that being said, Where can people find you? How can they get a hold of you? And is there anything that you'd like them to do for you?
Ja'Quintin Means 19:24
Um, they can find me on my website, the wondering Alchemist dot com. You can also find me on Facebook. At Ja'Quintin Means Instagram is Jaq_ means and tick tock the wondering Alchemist or at the wondering Alchemist. Um, my call to action for people is to try to understand your neighbor. You know, America is a melting pot is it's a mix of people of a vast different Number of races, cultures and religions. So so my call to action is before we judge each other, before we get mad about the sins of ancestors before we, you know, feel guilty or not guilty about what's happened in our past that we seek to learn a little bit more about each other, that we seek to love each other as neighbors, outside of just our religion, our race, and we seek to grow together as both human beings and individuals so we can make this world a better place for our children.
Ed Watters 20:30
Well said, Ja' Quintin Means his book, Willie, it's out now. You can find it on Amazon. I will send all the links into that show notes area people hit the link, buy the book. It's a must read book. Thank you to Ja' Quintin for being with us today.
Ja'Quintin Means 20:51
Oh, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
Ed Watters 21:00
Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast, enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way. Please Share, Like subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of dead America podcast. I'm Ed Watters your host Enjoy your afternoon wherever you may be