Speaker 1: Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
Speaker 1: conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
Speaker 1: decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
Speaker 1: a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
Speaker 1: to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
Speaker 1: at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
Speaker 1: love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
Speaker 1: not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
Speaker 1: a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me for a special bonus episode of this
Speaker 1: Therapy for Black Girls podcast. We'll get right into our
Speaker 1: conversation after a worry from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Morgan Parker and I'm on the Therapy for Black
Speaker 3: Girls podcast and we're in session today. I'm packing my
Speaker 3: collection of essays you Get What You Pay For.
Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, it's time to make some space on your
Speaker 1: bookshelf because we're back with another edition of TBG Library.
Speaker 1: Today's pick is the debut book of essays by award
Speaker 1: winning author Morgan Parker, titled You Get What You Pay for.
Speaker 1: Morgan is a poet, novelist, and author of work such
Speaker 1: as the young adult novel Who Put This Song On
Speaker 1: and the poetry collection Magical Negro, which won the twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen National Book Critics Circle Award. And You Get What
Speaker 1: You Pay For. Morgan traces the difficulty and beauty of
Speaker 1: existing as a black woman through American history, from the
Speaker 1: foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up
Speaker 1: to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Morgan
Speaker 1: joins me today to discuss what it means to experience
Speaker 1: hyper visibility as a black woman, regardless of class. How
Speaker 1: as a teenager she advocated for her own mental health
Speaker 1: with her parents, and the ways in which conversations with
Speaker 1: her therapists influence her writing and vice versa. If something
Speaker 1: resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with
Speaker 1: us on social media using the hashtag TBG in Session
Speaker 1: or join us over in the Sister Circle. To talk
Speaker 1: more about the episode. You can join us at community
Speaker 1: dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us today, Morgan.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: So as you say, let's start at the beginning, I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to share when did you know that
Speaker 1: you wanted to write poetry, or even write at all.
Speaker 3: I was nine years old when I said I want
Speaker 3: to be a writer, so it was a long time ago.
Speaker 2: At that time, I did not like poetry at all.
Speaker 3: I'm a firm believer that we teach poetry completely backwards.
Speaker 3: It took me until the middle of college until I
Speaker 3: read poetry that I was like, Oh, it could be this,
Speaker 3: you know, like it can be about this stuff and
Speaker 3: it can resonate with me and not be about snowy
Speaker 3: evenings and men name Longfellow. So I was always interested
Speaker 3: in writing, but I didn't really know what that meant.
Speaker 3: I didn't know any published authors or anything like that,
Speaker 3: so I guess in my head it was just like
Speaker 3: some vision of me.
Speaker 2: Being an older black woman with a blazer and like,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like, I didn't really know
Speaker 2: what it meant, but I always wrote.
Speaker 3: I have kept journals, and I found that it was
Speaker 3: something that helped me express myself in a way that
Speaker 3: I didn't think was being expressed in conversation and in
Speaker 3: just like how I was expressing myself through my body
Speaker 3: in my words in person, and so I really found
Speaker 3: that I was best able to say what I meant
Speaker 3: if I was writing it, and so that became just
Speaker 3: like my way of living in the world.
Speaker 2: As a kid.
Speaker 3: And as I got a little bit older and started
Speaker 3: sharing things with my friends, it became a way for
Speaker 3: me to connect with other people, which I always say
Speaker 3: I write to communicate, and it is about connection. So
Speaker 3: I found sharing little bits of journals and things like
Speaker 3: that in middle school and high school, and my friends
Speaker 3: were saying things like that's exactly how I feel, I
Speaker 3: just don't know how to put it into those words,
Speaker 3: and that felt really special to me, and it felt like, well,
Speaker 3: if that's something that I can do for other folks,
Speaker 3: to like articulate what people are feeling, that's pretty powerful
Speaker 3: and it's something.
Speaker 2: That I love to do and feel that i'm good at.
Speaker 3: It's one of those things where when I'm writing, and
Speaker 3: even as a kid, when I was writing, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is when I'm supposed to be doing. This is
Speaker 3: where I feel most free to be me, I guess,
Speaker 3: and where I feel most valuable also to others.
Speaker 1: Love then I'm curious. Have you thought about how we
Speaker 1: should teach poetry to young people so that maybe more
Speaker 1: of them fall in love with it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think there are so many exciting contemporary and young
Speaker 3: poets right now who are doing incredible work, not just
Speaker 3: in terms of entertainment, but also on the craft level.
Speaker 3: And I think about the folks that I teach to
Speaker 3: graduate students, folks who are writing about everyday things, people
Speaker 3: who are black and brown, and people who are queer,
Speaker 3: and people who've had a lot of different lives, a
Speaker 3: lot of imperfect lives and are.
Speaker 2: Willing to talk about it.
Speaker 3: I think that's the sort of work that young people
Speaker 3: need to be able to see and be fed poetry
Speaker 3: in a way that is more of an offering and
Speaker 3: less of a challenge to be presented. And honestly, I
Speaker 3: think that a lot of the older and more traditional
Speaker 3: and more you know, technically stale work that we look
Speaker 3: at first, you know, if we're looking at Shakespeare or
Speaker 3: Kipling or whatever it is, I think we can get
Speaker 3: a lot more from it seeing how their.
Speaker 2: Influence has showed up in this century.
Speaker 3: You know, I think there's no problem with starting here
Speaker 3: and then going backwards instead of starting way back there,
Speaker 3: you know, and whoever whoever makes it, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, gets the treat of exciting poetry at the end.
Speaker 2: That seems wrong, right right?
Speaker 1: Agreed? Agreed. I appreciate that perspective. So talk to us
Speaker 1: about what inspired you to write you get what you
Speaker 1: pay for, and how it might be different from collections
Speaker 1: of your other work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, it definitely took a lot longer, and I think
Speaker 3: that had to do with not just the work, but
Speaker 3: conceptualizing the book as a whole and not just each
Speaker 3: individual essay.
Speaker 2: I've been writing.
Speaker 3: Essays in the past for various publications, and I was
Speaker 3: always frustrated by word count. It felt like I was
Speaker 3: able to just scratch the surface of a theme or
Speaker 3: a topic. And so the inspiration behind writing a book
Speaker 3: of essays was really to see what happens if I
Speaker 3: had as much space as I need to follow these
Speaker 3: threads that were interesting to me and a different way
Speaker 3: of looking at I guess my life. I never intended
Speaker 3: to write a memoir, but nonfiction is how can I
Speaker 3: give you a look into my life? What are the
Speaker 3: narratives around my life so far? And what are the
Speaker 3: themes that are through lines in it, So thinking about
Speaker 3: how to wed what my life experiences have been with
Speaker 3: what are the themes and threads in the world and
Speaker 3: throughout history that are really compelling to me, and that
Speaker 3: I want to dig into research and follow every little
Speaker 3: tiny breadcrumb and how am I going to blend those
Speaker 3: together and put them in conversation with each other. So
Speaker 3: a lot of it started when I wrote an essay
Speaker 3: for The New York Times about how we should have
Speaker 3: therapy as reparations, and that idea was one that I
Speaker 3: wanted to follow, and thinking about mental health in general
Speaker 3: as it relates to race relations and how our psychological
Speaker 3: health is and has been affected by race relations in America.
Speaker 2: And so that essay is just a little piece.
Speaker 3: It's like me figuring out what that argument is and
Speaker 3: laying it out, And in the process of writing the book,
Speaker 3: the collection of essays, it was about thinking through my
Speaker 3: experience of mental health. There's an essay for almost every
Speaker 3: one of my therapists. I always say, the most memoiry part,
Speaker 3: the parts where it's like you're following me in my life,
Speaker 3: those are.
Speaker 2: All happening in a therapist's office.
Speaker 3: So that's just the way that I decided to frame
Speaker 3: the book here is my life through the lens of
Speaker 3: the therapist couches that I've been sitting on, I guess, and
Speaker 3: what are the things that are going on out in
Speaker 3: the world, and how are they relating to what I'm
Speaker 3: talking about in the therapist's office.
Speaker 2: So that was like the larger.
Speaker 3: Conception of it, which there's a different type of storytelling
Speaker 3: that happens in narrative nonfiction than in poetry. Obviously in
Speaker 3: poetry there's less of argument making. It's more presenting the images.
Speaker 3: And I still wanted to do that with essays, but
Speaker 3: with the book, I did want it to feel as
Speaker 3: though there was a claim being made and an argument
Speaker 3: being fought for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so mental health is definitely a large theme throughout
Speaker 1: a lot of this work, and early on you talk
Speaker 1: about like some of your early symptoms of depression being
Speaker 1: written as an attitude problem or just the behavior of
Speaker 1: a regular teenager. I wonder for you, when did a
Speaker 1: shift that you realize that you actually needed the support
Speaker 1: of a mental health professional.
Speaker 3: I mean, for me, it really was like, oh, I
Speaker 3: want to die, you know, it.
Speaker 2: Really was it's either this or else.
Speaker 3: And even though I didn't you know, it was almost
Speaker 3: like I was like gaslighting myself because I'm like, maybe
Speaker 3: it's not that bad, and maybe I am just a teenager,
Speaker 3: and you know, I get it, but really having to
Speaker 3: get to that point where it's like I'm trying and
Speaker 3: I can't. There's got to be something outside of me
Speaker 3: that can help me really getting to that point. I mean,
Speaker 3: it really was more of a conversation between me and
Speaker 3: my parents. These conversations were still working on, I will say,
Speaker 3: but we've gotten a lot better about it, and I
Speaker 3: can't imagine being put really in their shoes. Also because
Speaker 3: I think that they didn't even really understand. You know,
Speaker 3: the first time I said I wanted to go to
Speaker 3: a therapist, They're like, hmm okay, oh, like what have
Speaker 3: you been reading sort of thing. So it did take
Speaker 3: a little bit of me just really not letting up
Speaker 3: on that and trying and really pleading with them to
Speaker 3: understand that I needed something else. Of course, the problem
Speaker 3: was that they didn't know what that thing was. It
Speaker 3: wasn't like, oh, I'll just call my therapy, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. So I think it presented a little
Speaker 3: bit more of a challenge. It was easier to kind
Speaker 3: of avoid because no one knew what to do, no
Speaker 3: one knew what that meant, like what are the steps
Speaker 3: even to take? So yeah, for me, it really was like,
Speaker 3: I know that I feel bad, I know I have
Speaker 3: felt bad. I'm thinking about the things in my life
Speaker 3: that are making me feel bad and it's not adding up.
Speaker 3: It feels bigger than me, and it feels bigger than
Speaker 3: my middle school friend not hanging out with me anymore.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean it's not something that I.
Speaker 3: Had a model for, but obviously have reread Sylvia Plath
Speaker 3: and all these other New England white women, and they
Speaker 3: seemed to be in therapy, you know, that seemed to
Speaker 3: be a tool that were using, So why not me?
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think it was hard because it was
Speaker 3: hard for all of us to conceptualize that just talking
Speaker 3: about my problems would help anything, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I think there wasn't really an understanding of what the
Speaker 3: therapeutic process is. And again that's something that I'm still
Speaker 3: getting my folks to understand all these years later. So
Speaker 3: it really was a blind spot in our family and
Speaker 3: in our community.
Speaker 2: It's a big thing for a fifteen year old to
Speaker 2: have to do.
Speaker 3: I feel lucky that I am so stubborn and was
Speaker 3: able to advocate for myself because a lot of teens
Speaker 3: don't or don't know what to say or what to do.
Speaker 3: But I do feel like there was something in me
Speaker 3: that knew I don't have to live like this, and
Speaker 3: it feels a little early for me to just bow out,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So that really was where we were.
Speaker 1: And I wondered, kind of looking back on your own experience, Morgan,
Speaker 1: if there's advice you have for teens about how they
Speaker 1: can advocate for themselves and their mental health.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think just be open about it and be
Speaker 3: honest with themselves. I think where I got into trouble
Speaker 3: was doubting myself and thinking, oh, it's not that bad,
Speaker 3: maybe I'll feel better tomorrow, you know. I mean you
Speaker 3: can only think that for how many tomorrows. So I
Speaker 3: think believing that my problems were real really gave me
Speaker 3: more confidence and to not shy away from really saying
Speaker 3: how I felt.
Speaker 2: It was hard, you know.
Speaker 3: I think parents and black parents who don't have experience
Speaker 3: with therapy especially have this way of internalizing it as
Speaker 3: I am a failure because you're not happy, And I
Speaker 3: think that that can stop us as young people. A
Speaker 3: lot of the time, you don't want to hurt your
Speaker 3: parents feelings. You don't want to make them feel bad.
Speaker 3: So I would just encourage them to honor how they're
Speaker 3: feeling and be honest about that. I think for me,
Speaker 3: a lot of it was that my parents didn't know
Speaker 3: exactly how bad I felt because I didn't want to
Speaker 3: tell them and it's hard to say it out loud.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that is, especially like you said at that age.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yeah. So I'm curious, Morgan, how would you
Speaker 1: say your writing has been informed by your experience of
Speaker 1: being in therapy and then vice versa. I'm curious to
Speaker 1: hear how much of your experience and your identity as
Speaker 1: a writer actually shows up in therapy. Can you talk
Speaker 1: to us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so intertwined at this point, and I'm really
Speaker 3: grateful that's something that my therapists are interested in and
Speaker 3: helping me with. We talk a lot about my career
Speaker 3: in therapy. I mean, that's my life, right and a
Speaker 3: lot of this work requires me to have a certain
Speaker 3: level of self understanding and self knowledge.
Speaker 2: And self forgiveness.
Speaker 3: You know, a writing requires a lot of grace with
Speaker 3: the self, and so a lot of the time, the
Speaker 3: tools that we're talking about developing for me to move
Speaker 3: through the world are the same tools that are going
Speaker 3: to help.
Speaker 2: Me in my writing process.
Speaker 3: And a lot of it is talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: how am I going to be prepared to go on
Speaker 3: tour and how am I going to protect myself when
Speaker 3: I'm really trying to be vulnerable in the writing.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of discussion of that.
Speaker 3: I will also say that I could not have written
Speaker 3: this book, my last book, the one before that, I
Speaker 3: could not have written any of them without being in therapy.
Speaker 3: And often I'll write something and be like, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is what we'll talk about in therapy. You know, there
Speaker 3: were a lot of poems in my last poetry book,
Speaker 3: Magical Negro, where I would write a draft and look
Speaker 3: at it and think, oh, okay, well, I need two
Speaker 3: more therapy sessions before I can finish this poem. Now
Speaker 3: that I know that the poem's doing that, I'm not
Speaker 3: yet in place where I can go there. And that
Speaker 3: sort of navigation has been incredibly important to my writing process.
Speaker 3: I think when I was first starting out, it was like, whoa,
Speaker 3: this is where the poem's going I'm going there, and
Speaker 3: then maybe I'm just like totally shredded at the end.
Speaker 3: So it has been helpful for me to notice where
Speaker 3: they can help each other, where I can talk through
Speaker 3: some things in therapy that will help me feel safer
Speaker 3: writing about them in poetry, and where I can spill
Speaker 3: some of my unconscious in poetry and have that inform
Speaker 3: future therapy sessions. I mean, it's all very interconnected, right,
Speaker 3: and it's I think the more that I'm able to
Speaker 3: acknowledge that and harness it, the stronger not only my
Speaker 3: writing about depression, but just my writing about myself has been.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there are poems that you've written and
Speaker 1: you realize where it's taking you and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know that this needs to be public, right,
Speaker 1: Like this may be something that I all talk about
Speaker 1: with my therapists, Like how do you make the decisions
Speaker 1: between which ones get shared with the public and which
Speaker 1: ones you keep privately?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that all happens in the editing process, for sure.
Speaker 3: I think all drafts at first are like, we'll see
Speaker 3: if this gets shown to people. And I think there's
Speaker 3: two parts of the process. There's the part where I'm
Speaker 3: expressing something, and then there's the part where the poem
Speaker 3: is expressing itself. Right, So sometimes it's just for me
Speaker 3: to express myself and the poem doesn't live on its
Speaker 3: own for other folks, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 3: think it's really about what is being expressed. Is it
Speaker 3: just me working through something? Or am I saying something
Speaker 3: larger that other folks can grasp onto while speaking about myself?
Speaker 1: I guess ass. It's nice to see you're still with this.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the conversation so far? Did
Speaker 1: anything come to mind for you? Or maybe you're just
Speaker 1: listening and learning That works too. If you're enjoying this
Speaker 1: week's episode, be sure to circle back next week. Here's
Speaker 1: a preview of our conversation on starting a career after
Speaker 1: fifty with jenn Is.
Speaker 4: Suddenly can tell by my accent, I'm English born, but
Speaker 4: I moved to the Caribbean from a successful career to
Speaker 4: have a different life, and that life seemed to ramp up,
Speaker 4: so I made the decision I was done in my fifties,
Speaker 4: rapidly approaching my sixties now and decided this wasn't the
Speaker 4: life I'd signed up for. So it's time to make
Speaker 4: a change, and if I don't do it, something else will.
Speaker 1: So is there anything that happened, because it feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, many of us have these like a how moments,
Speaker 1: or like something happens and we're like, I need to
Speaker 1: make some changes or my values are not quite an alignment.
Speaker 1: Was there any specific thing that led to this piod?
Speaker 4: There was definitely a values challenge because at the time
Speaker 4: we were going through a major restructuring and I looked
Speaker 4: at where the organization was going and realized that's not
Speaker 4: where I want to be going in my career. In fact,
Speaker 4: when I moved to the Caribbean, I'd already decided that
Speaker 4: had reached the peak of my career. I didn't intend
Speaker 4: to be c sweet. I never came to do this job.
Speaker 4: I came to have a step down, but I found
Speaker 4: myself being rapped up to even more work. I then
Speaker 4: start experiencing my second what I can recall, my second
Speaker 4: bout of burnout, and my body was telling me that
Speaker 4: this isn't going to work, This is not working for you.
Speaker 4: You need to do something.
Speaker 1: Has your body ever told you it was time to
Speaker 1: make a change. If you want to find out what
Speaker 1: Jane is dere to transform her life. Be sure to
Speaker 1: tune in next Wednesday. So in this collection, the first
Speaker 1: entry year started at the beginning, like we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: and this is an overview of your upbringing in the
Speaker 1: social and political events that influence did you also referenced
Speaker 1: Laura Neil Hurston's quote, I remember the very day that
Speaker 1: I became colored. Can you talk about some of your
Speaker 1: earliest experiences related to race and how they continued to
Speaker 1: shape you today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I grew up, I mean, in a black family, but
Speaker 3: in a very white community, and I went to a private,
Speaker 3: very white Christian school that was fairly evangelical. So I
Speaker 3: was the outsider from the beginning in a lot of
Speaker 3: different ways. And this is before I started wearing blazers,
Speaker 3: so then it was like full outsider. But my relationship
Speaker 3: to myself and my blackness, I think was so complicated
Speaker 3: because it was such a time in the early nineties
Speaker 3: of not seeing color again, this sort of gaslighting thing
Speaker 3: of like I feel something is different about me, but
Speaker 3: y'all are saying there's no different, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So I think that really had an effect on how
Speaker 3: I was able to access my own identity I guess
Speaker 3: how I felt allowed to. There's something about not wanting
Speaker 3: to be the one that stands out, but also being
Speaker 3: aware that you do. You can look at the pictures
Speaker 3: of my class, my six rade class, and I'm just
Speaker 3: like a little brown spot right there, so you can't
Speaker 3: tell someone you're.
Speaker 2: Just the same.
Speaker 3: And then you see that picture and obviously one of
Speaker 3: these is not like the others. So I do think
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of me having to deal with
Speaker 3: my difference on my own, if that makes sense, and
Speaker 3: understanding what that meant, but not really being able to
Speaker 3: talk about it in my social life. Some with my
Speaker 3: parents and all of that, but I didn't, you know,
Speaker 3: with my friends at school.
Speaker 2: There was always this.
Speaker 3: Unspoken navigation of my identity. I think either that or
Speaker 3: it had to be some kind of a joke. However
Speaker 3: I could make it non threatening.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: And how would you say that has shown up for
Speaker 1: you later in life? At what point do you feel
Speaker 1: like you were able to have more open conversations about
Speaker 1: who you were as a black woman in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a little bit later in high school,
Speaker 3: but certainly college. I moved to New York, so I
Speaker 3: was living in New York City context is key, So
Speaker 3: living around a lot more black folks made me feel
Speaker 3: freer to exist as a black person. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it took me almost exercising myself from a
Speaker 3: situation in order to be able to access all the
Speaker 3: parts of myself with pleasure and without feeling like a
Speaker 3: trespass of some kind. But yeah, I think for that reason,
Speaker 3: I am very attuned to the other things about myself
Speaker 3: that are different or the same, And writing is part
Speaker 3: of this. I think being a writer was kind of
Speaker 3: part of my identity in high school, and being the
Speaker 3: writer is different than being the black girl, if.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: I think there's a way that we find our identities
Speaker 3: underneath the identity because we're forced to. So for me,
Speaker 3: I became, i think, more secure in the other parts
Speaker 3: of myself that were different the Doc Martin wearing blazer,
Speaker 3: wearing weirdo writer. I think I was more comfortable with
Speaker 3: standing out and I think I still am for those reasons.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think that that has affected my ability
Speaker 3: to just.
Speaker 2: Like embrace who I am in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: because I had to.
Speaker 3: I guess I had to in the absence of being
Speaker 3: able to embrace the fullness of myself.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned this blazer several times, and I'm curious to
Speaker 1: know whether that still is a major part of like
Speaker 1: your identity as a writer, and like, where are you
Speaker 1: finding your fabulous blazers.
Speaker 3: Still just full big part of my personality is the blazer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I picked a couple from J Crew for the tour,
Speaker 3: but I get a lot at thrift stores. That's always
Speaker 3: been where I get a lot of good blazers.
Speaker 2: I like a good.
Speaker 3: Print, I like a nice hounds tooth. You know, a
Speaker 3: good corduroy blazer. But it's great, I think to latch
Speaker 3: onto those parts of yourself that are through lines that
Speaker 3: you're like, you know what. This is something where I
Speaker 3: feel like myself, I feel comfortable, And I think as
Speaker 3: I've gotten older, it's been important to find those things
Speaker 3: that even when I was nine, I liked this, And
Speaker 3: what are those things that can always remind me who
Speaker 3: I am because I think the world can confuse it sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: important to you very early on in life, right, like
Speaker 1: as it shaped your identity of who a poet is,
Speaker 1: and is something that has kind of grown with you,
Speaker 1: which I think is very cool. So one of your
Speaker 1: other essays, watch Her Rise and Rain. It explores the
Speaker 1: perceptions of black womanhood and the prize and perils of
Speaker 1: being a highly visible black woman. You share this through
Speaker 1: the lens of Serena william though I think this kind
Speaker 1: of applies to lots of different black women. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us a little bit about that piece and
Speaker 1: why you specifically chose the lens of Serena Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I originally wrote that piece for ESPN, and
Speaker 3: I am not a sports person, but I was excited
Speaker 3: to take that assignmix. I was like, my dad's going
Speaker 3: to be so excited. And because I love Serena. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's Serena. She's more than an athlete. So I was
Speaker 3: interested in writing about her obviously because I'm interested in
Speaker 3: writing about black womanhood, and I was interested to see
Speaker 3: what would happen if I wrote about sports, Like what
Speaker 3: through lines could I find? What connections could I find?
Speaker 3: You know, all writers know that sports is like the
Speaker 3: greatest metaphors.
Speaker 2: Why not me?
Speaker 3: Why couldn't I use it? It's kind of funny. My
Speaker 3: agent had gotten a lot of requests from me. I
Speaker 3: guess that like Black History Month or whatever to write
Speaker 3: about like my hair, and I just was like, very like,
Speaker 3: I'm never gonna write about my hair, like you know what.
Speaker 2: To end this white guy. But I was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I went to say to these people.
Speaker 3: And in that essay I ended up talking about braids
Speaker 3: and seeing the Serena and Venus and their braids and
Speaker 3: that giving me comfort wheneveryone was making fun of my
Speaker 3: braids at my school and it just was hilarious. On
Speaker 3: My agent was like, how do you get Morgan to
Speaker 3: talk about her hair?
Speaker 2: Ask her to talk about sports. You know, we'll come
Speaker 2: around to it in that way.
Speaker 3: But I was so excited like the different themes that
Speaker 3: came up in that where it was like, all right,
Speaker 3: let's see how to talk about this tennis player. But
Speaker 3: really it just brought me back to seeing her on TV,
Speaker 3: seeing her, you know, those beads in her braids, and
Speaker 3: feeling a sort of affirmation from that.
Speaker 2: So that became the seed of that essay of here's.
Speaker 3: This woman I don't know personally, but she's in the world,
Speaker 3: and her being in the world makes it possible for
Speaker 3: me to be in the world. So that became the
Speaker 3: framing for the essay of our lives as paralleled. And
Speaker 3: I do think that black women were connected to each other,
Speaker 3: and our fates are connected to each other, and our
Speaker 3: success is connected to each other. So it was a
Speaker 3: way to talk about that by just using the example
Speaker 3: of just me and Serena, but really thinking about, yeah,
Speaker 3: what are the challenges that we face, and we face
Speaker 3: them in.
Speaker 2: Distinct but similar ways.
Speaker 3: You know, no matter who you are, what your career is,
Speaker 3: how many people are looking at you, we are all
Speaker 3: sharing those experiences of being alienated and being undervalued.
Speaker 2: Or overhyped or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of shared experiences in terms of
Speaker 3: how we're being perceived.
Speaker 2: By the world.
Speaker 3: It's easy for us to separate like celebrity from regular
Speaker 3: but when it comes to black women, I mean, maybe
Speaker 3: that's just not useful. And that was part of what
Speaker 3: I was trying to do with their more beautiful things
Speaker 3: Beyonce as well, a more of a leveling of playing
Speaker 3: field of like, we're all dealing with these things, no
Speaker 3: matter one stature or money or fame, I mean, and
Speaker 3: it's it's wild to think, you know, well, she has
Speaker 3: all this and they're still saying that stuff about her.
Speaker 3: So it was a little bit of that of like, wow,
Speaker 3: we all stand on the same ground to America, right,
Speaker 3: so what does it look like when we stand on
Speaker 3: the same ground to each other?
Speaker 1: Morgan? Are there other pieces that you've been able to
Speaker 1: write that weren't quite your beat so to speak? Like, Oh,
Speaker 1: an esp and angle wouldn't have been one you naturally
Speaker 1: would have maybe pitched, but it came out to me glorious.
Speaker 1: Others you can think of that you feel like really
Speaker 1: helped bring your writing to life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, assignments are really helpful because it really
Speaker 3: puts you outside of yourself. There's another essay in the
Speaker 3: book that started as a piece for an anthology that
Speaker 3: celebrating one hundred years of the ACLU. And so there
Speaker 3: are a bunch of different cases that the ACLU intervened
Speaker 3: in and I had to pick one, and I picked
Speaker 3: one about this Christian university that I had never.
Speaker 2: Heard of before. And it was my be for sure.
Speaker 3: But it was a weird way to enter to enter
Speaker 3: talking about myself and my relationship to white Christianity.
Speaker 2: It was interesting that it was the school I'd never
Speaker 2: heard of. The story was.
Speaker 3: That they had these very racist emissions policies where black
Speaker 3: people weren't allowed to.
Speaker 2: Be admitted, and then it was like only.
Speaker 3: Married black people could if they're married to another black person,
Speaker 3: and like no single black people. And this is like
Speaker 3: late seventies when I say that single black person could come,
Speaker 3: but only if they'd never been in an interracial relationship
Speaker 3: or didn't advocate for so very strange things like that.
Speaker 3: That stuff was in the school's policy until the year
Speaker 3: two thousand and I ended up finding this sermon by
Speaker 3: the school's founder that was given in nineteen sixty and
Speaker 3: just went in and decided to you know, I whipped
Speaker 3: out my Bible versus that I had not looked at
Speaker 3: for a while and was like, no, I know that
Speaker 3: I'm arguing with him. So that was something where I
Speaker 3: didn't really expect to go into it that way, but
Speaker 3: that's what happened, and it was fruitful. But it was
Speaker 3: also like, Wow, all of this stuff is very interconnected
Speaker 3: me feeling lonely and desirable at times in my life.
Speaker 3: It was hard to not find links there. Thinking about
Speaker 3: a white Christian institution that saw interracial dating and interracial
Speaker 3: sex as so dangerous. Those are things that were in
Speaker 3: the back of my mind as a child, but I
Speaker 3: didn't know that. So I think there was a lot
Speaker 3: of that where I didn't expect myself to be reflecting
Speaker 3: so much on the messaging that I heard as a
Speaker 3: child in school, from like elementary school and chapels and
Speaker 3: all of that. I had been excited to write about
Speaker 3: Christianity in the Civil Rights era in general, but was
Speaker 3: surprised to find that, you know, part of it. I
Speaker 3: ended up writing about immigration, and ended up writing about
Speaker 3: the Republican Party, and it all really kind of one
Speaker 3: thing leads to another, and I found that anytime I
Speaker 3: was looking into the past, that's what happened.
Speaker 2: Anytime I'm looking at history.
Speaker 3: I found that I was writing about the present, or
Speaker 3: if I was writing about the present, turned out I
Speaker 3: was writing about history. So there were a few different
Speaker 3: essays where it kind of was like, this is way
Speaker 3: off the rails of where I thought I was going.
Speaker 2: The train is still moving, I guess, and that was
Speaker 2: exciting but also overwhelming.
Speaker 1: More from our conversation after the break, So you also
Speaker 1: write about terms like black girl magic and black excellence,
Speaker 1: and while those things can be celebratory, it feels like
Speaker 1: there's also the potential for harm. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything depends on who's saying it, right and why.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes it's one thing if we're saying that
Speaker 3: to each other.
Speaker 2: It's another thing if it's a corporate logo. You know
Speaker 2: what I mean? What are the motivations behind saying that?
Speaker 3: I worry sometimes that we get these sorts of hollow
Speaker 3: affirmation in order to make us be quiet and to
Speaker 3: say that's excellence. So, yes, that's good, that's enough, Sit
Speaker 3: down now, you know. So I worry a little bit
Speaker 3: about that. I rebel against someone not black defining black excellence.
Speaker 2: That is something.
Speaker 3: And the other thing, to go back to my book
Speaker 3: Magical Negro and part of why I titled it that
Speaker 3: and thinking about the black girl magic is obviously there's
Speaker 3: a danger to that, right, there's a way that our
Speaker 3: humanity is undercut if we're magic.
Speaker 2: That's how Roni King got beied.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're a magical hulk, then you can't
Speaker 3: feel pain. So I think a lot of those dangers
Speaker 3: are embedded in it, depending on who's saying it. We
Speaker 3: as black girls know our magic is our humanity, but
Speaker 3: do other folks know that and so for me, there's
Speaker 3: a little bit of that where I'm like, it's not magic.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm really tired, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: It's not magic. And so I bulk a little bit
Speaker 3: at that when it's coming from an outside perspective, because
Speaker 3: it feels like a way to erase effort and pain.
Speaker 3: And I worry that sometimes our praise of black excellence
Speaker 3: is an effort to contain black excellence and define it
Speaker 3: and by defining it, leaving things out totally understanding.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing it. So what would
Speaker 1: you say are your hopes for the impact of your
Speaker 1: work on your readers, especially for young black women.
Speaker 3: I always answer is permission. That's what I want to
Speaker 3: give young Black women. Permission to be themselves, speak themselves,
Speaker 3: to hurt, to cry, to go.
Speaker 2: To therapy, you know, to write down what they want.
Speaker 3: That's always my goal is just to give other Black
Speaker 3: women the permission that I don't think I've always had.
Speaker 3: And then affirmation. I think in this book, I really
Speaker 3: do want to offer straight up affirmation of I see
Speaker 3: you and I see your pain and I get it.
Speaker 2: Those would be the big ones this book.
Speaker 3: I really want it to allow people to have conversations
Speaker 3: that they haven't had before. I think that is something
Speaker 3: that this book has the potential to do.
Speaker 2: So I'm hoping that that works out.
Speaker 3: But really, in particular for young black people, I want
Speaker 3: them to feel affirmed. I want them to feel encouraged.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, if a couple of people can
Speaker 3: go to therapy, that'd be fantastic. If a couple of
Speaker 3: people break up with their white therapists and get a
Speaker 3: black one, that's cool too, you know. And even if
Speaker 3: it's just a matter of I'm not going to use
Speaker 3: this word anymore, or I'm gonna take an extra beat
Speaker 3: before I respond in this way, little things like that,
Speaker 3: I think are really what I'm asking for As an author.
Speaker 3: I spend a lot of time, I mean five years
Speaker 3: picking the words that I used in this book, being
Speaker 3: really intentional about language, and really I think that's what
Speaker 3: I'm asking my readers to do also, is just to
Speaker 3: be as considerate about the language that they're using in
Speaker 3: the world and just know that it makes a difference.
Speaker 1: So what would you say you learned about yourself in
Speaker 1: writing this particular book.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I feel like I want
Speaker 2: to text my therapists and ask her.
Speaker 1: She might have a better risk for this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Oh man, I think I learned that I
Speaker 3: cannot do it all. I learned that I have to
Speaker 3: be patient with myself and patient with my words. I
Speaker 3: was really impatient with myself about this book and went
Speaker 3: through some really hard times while I was writing it
Speaker 3: and was so frustrated that I wasn't writing and my
Speaker 3: doctor was like, you can't.
Speaker 2: You know, you cannot do this.
Speaker 3: So really learning to be a little bit more patient
Speaker 3: with myself is kind of the journey of this book,
Speaker 3: knowing where it isn't safe for me to go at
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 2: You know, I learned a lot.
Speaker 3: About how trying to take care of myself in the
Speaker 3: writing process.
Speaker 2: You know, I was writing this through the pandemic. I
Speaker 2: live alone.
Speaker 5: It's just me and me in the past and you
Speaker 5: know it, Zarina, and so really figuring out when it's
Speaker 5: just me and I'm the only tools I got, how
Speaker 5: can I protect myself?
Speaker 3: So that was a journey of this book. And in
Speaker 3: a way, the book is a request that's like I
Speaker 3: can't do it on my own, and these are all
Speaker 3: the reasons why, and how can we help each other
Speaker 3: more because it isn't fair what we ask each other
Speaker 3: to suffer through and the ways that we don't notice
Speaker 3: each other and each other's pain. I think I'll know
Speaker 3: more about this in like three years.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to sit with it a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I think I'm still learning.
Speaker 1: So what are you currently reading, writing and thinking about
Speaker 1: that you feel like is challenging some of your perspectives.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm reading a craft book right now which is
Speaker 3: bueing everything, like swirling everything in my head. It's called
Speaker 3: How We Do It, and it's edited by Jericho Brown,
Speaker 3: and it's a bunch of craft essays by a lot
Speaker 3: of different types of writers, and they're all taking different perspectives,
Speaker 3: different themes. There's one towards the beginning by I think
Speaker 3: Crystal Wilkinson, and she presents all of these prompts for
Speaker 3: creating characters, and that is really I think, coming from
Speaker 3: writing nonfiction where I am the character and thinking about
Speaker 3: future projects, it's really cool to see how a novelist
Speaker 3: like her develops characters. And I think that's where I
Speaker 3: am right now and thinking about creating fictional characters or
Speaker 3: characters for screen, or how do we make fiction human.
Speaker 3: I guess that's sort of where I am. I do
Speaker 3: have some like fiction ideas, but for me, it has
Speaker 3: to start with the characters. So I'm enjoying hearing how
Speaker 3: other writers talk about developing characters, and I think that's
Speaker 3: really where my head is right now. Working a little
Speaker 3: bit on the screen adaptation of my young adult novel
Speaker 3: Who Put This Song On? So that has been a
Speaker 3: major challenge because writing for screen has its own rules,
Speaker 3: and I struggle with the rules, so that's challenge, and
Speaker 3: then working within the confines of production company and all
Speaker 3: of their stats about what teenagers want and trying to
Speaker 3: push against that. I'm feeling the challenge of making a
Speaker 3: teen movie. But it's about depression in the suburbs, so
Speaker 3: it's not all the it doesn't have all the hallmarks
Speaker 3: of a teen movie. So it has been a challenge
Speaker 3: for me to think about what is the teen movie
Speaker 3: miss about that? You know, it's they're not going to
Speaker 3: prom not a lot of it's happening. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of crying, but how can we still make it feel
Speaker 3: like a teen movie? Which it has been an interesting challenge,
Speaker 3: you know, but fun, I mean, depression is pretty funny,
Speaker 3: so it's doable.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that. We will definitely be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for that screen at teaching.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So where can we stay connected to you? Morgan? What
Speaker 1: is your website as well as any social media channels
Speaker 1: you'd like to share and where do we grab a
Speaker 1: copy of the book.
Speaker 3: My website is Morgan hyphen Parker dot com. My instagram
Speaker 3: is Morgan apples zero and you can find the book
Speaker 3: out March twelfth, everywhere that you buy your books indie bookstores.
Speaker 2: You can order it on bookshop.
Speaker 3: And you can read it as a kindlebook and an
Speaker 3: audiobook perfectly.
Speaker 1: Will be sure to include all of that in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Thank you so much for spending some time
Speaker 1: with us today, Morgan.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad Morgan was able to join us today
Speaker 1: to chat about you Get what You paid For. To
Speaker 1: learn more about her work, or to grab a copy
Speaker 1: of the book, visit the show notes at Therapy for
Speaker 1: Blackgirls dot com slash you Get what you pay for
Speaker 1: and don't forget to text two of your girls right
Speaker 1: now and encourage them to check out the episode. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for a therapists in your area. Check out
Speaker 1: our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash
Speaker 1: directory And if you want to continue digging into this
Speaker 1: topic or just be in community with other sisters, come
Speaker 1: on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's
Speaker 1: our cozy corner of the Internet designed just for black women.
Speaker 1: You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls
Speaker 1: dot com. This episode was produced by Frida Lucas alis
Speaker 1: Ellis and Zaria Taylor. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all so much for joining me for this special
Speaker 1: TVG Library episode. We'll be back next Wednesday with our
Speaker 1: regular episode, Take Good Care, What's