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Interview with Shonell Bacon
Nubian Chronicles - August, 2000
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SB (Shonell Bacon) Interviewer
The "writing" bug: When did you first get bitten by it? Was writing something you've always wanted to do?
KC (Kathleen Cross)
I began writing short stories and poems when I was seven or eight years old, and although I've always loved books and was an avid reader throughout my childhood and adolescence, it never occurred to me that I might someday want to "be a writer." Even in adulthood I considered writing more of a "pastime" - - something to do for self-expression and enjoyment. I didn't realize I had become a writer until my article, "Trapped in the Body of a White Woman" was published in Ebony Magazine in 1990. The response I received from Ebony readers overwhelmed me, and I suddenly realized how powerful the pen is in expressing and interpreting the human experience. That article was my springboard into believing I might someday pursue writing professionally.
(SB)
What did you do careerwise before your first book was published? And, are you a full-time novelist now?
(KC)
Career-wise, I still have that day job. As an education consultant, I work with teams of educators to help them improve instruction and raise achievement for Black and Latino students. I love the work that I do, but I look forward to a time when I do not have to divide my time and energy between the roles of single mother (three teens), full-time education consultant and part-time novelist. I am currently working on two novels and would love to have more time to devote to them.
(SB)
How do you come up with the characters that you write about?
(KC)
I find that when my writing is at its best, my characters really create themselves. When a character begins taking on a life of its own - saying and doing things I don't agree with, or am uncomfortable with - that's when the writing process gets exciting. As I was writing Skin Deep, I struggled with the decisions made by my characters, and I was often at odds with them. In that scene where Nathan called Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas "niggas," I was trying my best to tone him down. I was afraid he would offend too many folks, so I lined through and exed out that scene a dozen times - but it was meant to stay there, because that was who Nathan wanted to be and how he wanted to express himself.
Throughout the book I found characters doing and saying things that I didn't necessarily agree with - but I let them be who they were. I especially struggled with Nina, who, in my opinion, is not the strongest character in the book. (I have an affinity for Tonya, whose pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to life endears her to me.) Nina disappointed me at times, and she needed a lot of support from loved ones to fight her battles - but that is what made her real. As a mother of impressionable teenagers, it was very strange for me to write a novel that begins with my main character naked, on her back, and in the bed underneath a man she has no business being with! I didn't want her to start out so triflin,' but no matter how many times I tried to change that opening scene... she ended right back up under Derrick! I finally had to let go and realize the sista had some lessons to learn, and, by the end of the book, I amazed myself at the amount of growth she was forced to undergo.
(SB)
Is there a process to your writing? Do you sketch out characters, write an outline, and go chapter-by-chapter..., or do you venture out into your writing and let the chips fall where they may?
(KC)
My preference is to work with a loosely drawn plan and not confine myself to a concrete outline, however, in this case my publisher bought Skin Deep half-finished, (my agent started shopping the novel when I was at chapter 18) and I had to construct a chapter-by-chapter outline for them so they would know the direction I was going in and how I planned to wrap it all up. But when it was all said and done, I really didn't follow that outline too closely.
(SB)
What do YOU read? Who are the HOT authors in your opinion?
(KC)
This is a difficult question for me, because I read EVERYTHING, and I am "truly sprung" on so many authors. I am currently reading a book on physics and philosophy by Guy Murchie called The Seven Mysteries of Life, which is non-fiction, and I am also re-reading Beloved by Toni Morrison for the fifth time. I am in awe of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston - They are consummate artists and true examples of literary genius. Those women can paint a scene and interpret and reflect back to the reader the deeper significance of life's circumstances in ways few writers can. However, they are writers of classic literature, and I'm not a literary snob by any means. I don't believe the Pulitzer prize is the only measure of great writing. As far as contemporary fiction is concerned - I love different authors for different reasons, but I have to say I respond most to a writer who can get me to see, smell, taste and feel everything their characters are experiencing (without a lot of extemporaneous detail). I also admire writers who take risks. Some authors I've read and loved recently are Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due and Wally Lamb. Sister Souljah got me good with The Coldest Winter Ever - She cut a thick, nasty slice of life and served it up raw. And as for dialogue, (which many authors seem to struggle with) I have to give it up to Eric Jerome Dickey - his characters speak like real folks and his books are always an entertaining read.
(SB)
Do you have mentors in the writing field who have helped you get to where you are?
(KC)
My agent, Denise Stinson. Denise read the Ebony article in 1990 and called
me from across the country to ask me if I was writing a book. I said, "No." She said, "You will. And, when you do, call me." Eight years later I sent her the first five chapters of Skin Deep, and she liked what I'd done, and wanted to see the manuscript when I made it to the halfway point. At chapter 18 she started shopping it to publishers - and that resulted in the novel being completed and published. My procrastinating self would probably still be working on finishing Skin Deep if not for her feedback, encouragement and expertise.
(SB)
Agent / No Agent -- do you have one? Do you think it's necessary to have one?
(KC)
I'm glad I worked with an agent, because it allowed me to concentrate on writing and let someone else do the shopping and negotiating. Also, my agent gave me great feedback and editorial advice that made my book a better product to shop to publishers. She knows the business side of publishing, and I benefited greatly from her expertise.
(SB)
Tips -- To us writers who dream of being published, what tips..., advice would you give?
(KC)
My number one tip is: Find a good friend (someone who reads constantly) to be a reader/advisor as you write your manuscript. I mean, the type of friend who is not afraid to tell you you have spinach hanging from your tooth. Someone who will love everything good about your manuscript, but will also love you enough to point out what's weak. I had a friend like that who read Skin Deep as I was writing it. Not only did she threaten me with bodily harm when I was taking too long to provide her with "more book," she did not play when it came to giving me feedback about how believable she thought the interactions between the characters were. (Remember Stephen King's Misery? She was close to Kathy Bates!) Seriously though, my reader/advisor helped make Skin Deep a much better book in the end.
(SB)
What projects are you working on now?
(KC)
I am currently working on two novels. I can't go into a lot of detail, but I can say that the first is a novel about an ugly beauty - a sista who is beautiful on the outside, but in desperate need of (and, who might just get) some serious reconstructive surgery on her personality. The second is about genetic predisposition - that is - can we be damned (or blessed) by the genes we inherit from our ancestors?
(SB)
In SKIN DEEP, it's obvious that the character Derrick has a problem with black women that stems back from a painful moment in his life as a child. In Michael Baisden's novel, "Men Cry In The Dark," there was also a black male character that chose white women to date because of the disses he received from sisters in the past. I have been in several groups in which the topic BLACK MEN AND WHITE WOMEN has been discussed, with most feeling that the good brothers (at times, this means, successful, with prestige and good looks) are flocking to white women in droves. What's your take on this? In your opinion, do you think that many black men are dis-owning their black women because of painful moments such as Derrick's or because of being fed up with getting the diss by black women?
(KC)
There are a couple of very important questions here:
1. Are Black women (mates and mothers) responsible for traumatizing Black men?
2. Are Black men seeking White women because of that trauma?
1. Sometimes, but not always.
2. Sometimes, but not always.
The deep thing in writing this novel for me was realizing that Derrick, in many ways, symbolized my own father - who did after all choose my White mother to make kids with. (I didn't realize that symbol until a few months ago, when someone asked me how Derrick's character was conceived.) I see, in retrospect, why I needed to portray Derrick as 'broken, but ultimately salvageable.' I couldn't leave Derrick painted as just a shallow, self-hating, racist jerk because I love my father, and he and Derrick have a few things in common.
My Daddy was that Black person you'd meet who'd tell you he was Indian, Chinese, White and Black - only he'd put Black last and say it quieter than the rest. In the Ebony article, I claimed that it was my father who taught me to be proud to be Black. That is only indirectly true. (Actually, I was referring to my stepfather.) In reality, I learned to be proud through my own father's apparent shame. I can remember being in the fourth grade, and we were studying the African continent in school, and I excitedly asked my daddy if we had ancestors from Africa. He paused and said… "Hmm. Maybe nooorthern Africa. (Mmm Hmm. Yes, he did.) My father never shared with me the fact that his people descended from slaves in South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky (I had to dig for that info.) According to a diary I found after he passed, my father lamented that he was the darkest in his family, and that he was made to feel inferior by some of his "mulatto" family members (who obviously were ashamed that they were but a generation or two away from Africa themselves.)
On seeking White women ...
I might be about to over-generalize here, ('cause you know I can't claim to be an expert on anything as complicated as intra-racial/cross-gender conflict) but I DO get approached by countless brothas who see me from across the room and think I'm a white woman. Some of those brothas are the type that date all kinds of women, sistas included, and that is another conversation… However, I have actually had brothas get angry at me for not letting them know soon enough that they were "wasting their time" stepping to a sista. Those brothas (I use the term loosely here) who flat out refuse to
consider Black women as potential mates, are, in my opinion, prejudiced, broken human beings. I believe that like Derrick, they reject Black women because they do not want to be reminded of the pain/shame they associate with being Black, and until brothas like them learn to love themselves they cannot allow themselves to love Black women.
On the flip side of that equation is the reality that for every brotha who is "broken", there are sistas suffering from the same kind of traumatic damage. The question becomes - how do those brothas and sistas get broken in the first place? I believe White racism does its share of the damage - society is constantly trying to convince black men they are virile, violent and valueless, at the same time holding up white and lighter-skinned women as the "ideal" for value and beauty.
However, to keep it real, we have some practices in our own homes and communities that contribute to the damage. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard a parent say something "corrective" to their child that had a derogatory use of the word black in it, e.g. "You keep on acting black, I'll whup you're a**s…" or "I'ma slap the black off you…" Add to that the use of the terms "good hair" and "pretty (another word for light) eyes" and we have to ask ourselves, "Who has the power to inflict the deepest scars of self-hatred on Black children? Somebody White whom the child doesn't know from Adam, or the Black folks that love, nurture and discipline them?" Just as Ebony asked Ahmad why God made her brown, we as children asked questions about our value (and how many of us had Mama to take us in the kitchen and help us love our chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch or licorice selves?) We are traumatized children, all grown up, and we turn around and inflict on our own what was inflicted on us.
(SB)
INTER-RACISM. There's a scene in the novel when Nina, Tonya and Nat are approached by Monique, a multi-racial student who's AWFULLY proud of not being 100% black. In the scene, you can feel the tension between her and the others, feel the interplay of racism or colorism between our own "race". Nat mentions house negroes vs. field negroes during the scene as a way to confuse Monique, who totally seemed oblivious to terms. Do you believe this concept of "inter-racism" to be something created by White Americans as a way to further divide the African American
race?
(KC)
Before I answer that question I want to mention the fact that Monique defining herself as "biracial" or "multiracial" is, I believe, a misnomer. With the exception of the very few Black Americans whose ancestors never mixed with the Chinese, Indians, Mexicans or Europeans, the "Black American Experience" has historically been a bi- tri- or multi-racial one. In creating Monique's character with her attempt to "not be lumped in" with "regular Black folks" I was commenting on how ridiculous the whole thing becomes. Of course, I do think a child with parents of different ethnicities should feel free to honor and be proud of who and what they are, but it works my last nerve to hear "biracial" people announce that they are "the best of both races," as though being mixed makes you some genetic hybrid that is (here comes that S word again) SUPERIOR to the offspring of two Africans, two Koreans or two Mexicans. I think that is just plain racist.
As to the question: "is inter-racism something created by Whites…"
Yes. I don't know if Willie Lynch actually existed, but the divisions created between "house slaves" and "field slaves" were real and enduring. We Black folks went on to create Blue Vein Societies, Octoroon and Quadroon clubs, and even had "houses of God" you couldn't get in if you were darker than the wooden door. Yes, White America began it with slavery and white superiority, and we as a Community took it in, regurgitated it, (refined it to a science) and continue to feed that garbage to our children daily. And it's not just in America. Look at the bloodshed in Rwanda in 1994 (nearly one million Black Africans were killed!) and look at what's still happening with the Hutus and the Tutsis there today, and you will see a perfect example of how White superiority permeates who we are as Black people and how we continue to measure our value by our closeness to (or distance from) the so-called White ideal. Six years ago, Hutus and Tutsis macheted one another's children to death - and it all began with the Belgian (White) colonists who decided the Tutsi's were superior because their hair is wavier, their limbs longer, and their facial features more angular and "European" than their Hutu compatriots. The only way we could possibly fall for that EVIL okie doke is that we don't know WHO WE ARE.
Skin color preference is a SPIRITUAL disease. What we neglect to teach our children is that Self-love is grounded in the love of God. (And I'm not talking about some old, bearded White man throwing lightening bolts from a golden throne in the sky - - I mean the genderless, raceless Force that created the Universe) Skin color, gender and physical features are simply the outer wrappers on a universally precious human package. If you believe you are an expression of everything that God is…The Powerful, The Omniscient, The Generous, The Creator, The All-Knowing, The Compassionate, etc. then NOBODY can convince you otherwise.
(SB)
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES. In SKIN DEEP, the reader finds a diverse reaction amongst black people in terms of their feelings on racism and how to combat it. In the scene after Rasheed delivers a powerful spoken word, a debate of sorts takes place between Tonya….and Nat, Nina, Rasheed, and Ahmad about racism, integrity, and how black men, people in general choose to combat the degradation.
If I may quote from your novel:
"Baby, you know how I feel about all that 'the White man took my dignity' shit. Can't nobody take your dignity. That's something you give away. The brotha in that poem didn't have to live behind a 357 magnum…he chose to. And he's no better than those corporations who rape third world nations for their own material gain."
That was spoken by Tonya, at which Rasheed responded with, "Baby, the piece isn't about the choices made by dignified men. It's about the choices men make when they never realized they had dignity in the first place."
When I read through Rasheed's spoken word and hit this part of the dialogue, it read so profoundly, that I had to take a minute of pause, because even though I feel both views, I was behind what Rasheed was saying.
As you wrote this…even now, if you had to side with one argument over the other, where would your opinion
lie?
(KC)
Now, you KNOW I don't want to side because I believe the only healthy way to deal with what plagues our Community is to acknowledge the balance between (1) defining the negative effects slavery and institutionalized racism has had on our ancestors, on us and on our children - and (2) taking it upon ourselves to strive to overcome those effects. But if I absolutely had to choose one argument over the other I have to side with Rasheed. The brotha knows what he's talking about when he says a young black American's dignity is messed with at a very early age:
"they conspired to remove it from me… at three I knew even there was something not…quite…WHITE about the color of my skin…and GI JOE and Ken? They knew too and they shouted it loud and clear so all the little brothas in my neighborhood could hear…"
That's not to say there's an excuse for the OG turning to crime… But, you can see how society convinced that brotha that there was no legitimate place for him to express his talent and potential. He knew that in a capitalist society his value depended on his ability to amass wealth, and since he was filled with the entrepreneurial spirit, he turned to an "illegitimate" expression of that spirit.
I wrote "Dignity," (Rasheed's spoken word piece) as a commentary on the "War on Drugs" and our willingness to incarcerate millions of Black men in the name of "the law" when the so-called legitimate White CEO is nothing but a glorified gangster himself!
(SB)
SKIN DEEP. As I finished the book, the next day, I began thinking about the book and the title…SKIN DEEP. Even though your novel tackles MANY themes, I felt the major theme lied within the title. In the novel, Ahmad was steadfast AGAINST starting a relationship with Nina because of her light complexion; however, he eventually saw deep beneath her skin, to her heart, her soul…where it's all important at anyway.
In terms of the title, was this more or less a rationale you have for the title of your novel?
(KC)
I initially did not want to name this book Skin Deep, because there are twenty or so other books with the same name. I tried and tried to come up with a better title, but there just wasn't one. You are right when you say that it is the book's central theme: The judge sent Ahmad to prison because of what he saw on the surface; Mitchell Moore's father could not remain in his home and raise his sons because of what folks saw on the surface; Morris Michaels feared what his wife would do if she knew what was under the surface; Tonya couldn't rent a damned apartment or get the job she deserved because of what was on the surface; Dr. Webb's father wrote off the majority of the human race because of what was on the surface; Some folks at Founder's could stay home on Dr. King's holiday because of what was on the surface; Nina was desired by Derrick and rejected by Ahmad because of what was on the surface, and Ebony questioned the wisdom of her Creator because of what was on the surface. All I can say is shame on us if in our daily lives we continue reinforcing that mess. If we don't arm our children with the tools and the wisdom to look beneath the physical wrappers humans happen to get - we doom them.
(SB)
Since your novel has been out…what has the reader response been like?
(KC)
The singular negative response was from a woman who gave it five stars, but complained that there was too much emphasis on Nina being Black. (Yeah. AllRighteeThen.) Other than that one, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. My guestbook at www.kcross.com is filled with nothing but love and encouraging messages. Skin Deep hasn't gotten much "mainstream" publicity, but Emerge magazine called it an "insightful, powerful debut novel," and it is a required text at a college in California. I have received mail from people of every ethnicity who say that Skin Deep really affected them and that reading it made them think about the way they use skin color to measure a person's beauty or value or to determine who they mean when they say "us" and "them."
(SB)
Any last comments you want to bestow upon our readers?
(KC)
A comment on ex-convicts and why I chose to make Ahmad one:
Currently in America, one in three young Black men is either incarcerated, or in some way under the jurisdiction of the so-called justice system. (And private prison corporations are rubbing their palms together in excitement, just waiting for those numbers to grow!) We should not underestimate the effect that is having on our Communities. We NEED those brothas out here. We need them to become the entrepreneurs, scientists, authors, judges, teachers, artists, etc. (and husbands and fathers) they were created with the potential to be.
State governments are currently planning their prison-building goals around urban third grade reading scores, because they know if left uneducated, millions of our young people will eventually have to be incarcerated. It is truly CRIMINAL what the education and "justice" systems are doing to Black and Brown men (and women) in America. Those men and women are ours… we should not consider them throw-aways, nor should we sit by silently while public schools miseducate them and laws are passed to ensure that they go to prison for the rest of their lives and never develop and share with us their God-given potential!
America (the so-called land of the free) incarcerates a larger percentage of its population (White, Black and Brown) than any country on the planet! Your son or daughter could be next. Get involved.
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/comments? write to:
kcross@kcross.com
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