On a sunny day in late October, the writer, agent, and literary powerhouse Kima Jones and I talked about the real work of a writer: the channeling of communal voices and concerns. Kima was the keynote speaker for LaGuardia Community College’s National Day on Writing (NDoW), a celebration of writing as a medium for connection, for pleasure. Students troubled this conversation with meaningful questions about equitability: we don’t build connection without understanding, so how do we ensure more voices are heard? How do we make sure stories are told authentically?
In a racing cab, right before the big event (NDoW), Kima described the storytelling process–and its importance for transforming our lives.
Solstice: You’ve published in GQ, Poets and Writers, Guernica, and Jesmyn Ward’s anthology The Fire Next Time and worked with award-winning writers as an editor and literary agent. Butch is your highly anticipated memoir..What has your process been like?
Jones: I’m learning a lot about myself. Butch is teaching me how to write my other books. It’s taught me how I greet my research. How I greet my writing. I’m responsible for how I mature as a writer. Butch is teaching me to be the writer I need to be…And I’m learning a lot about myself. I want to take time but also be accountable. I want to protect and baby this book. Luxuriate in the ideas. But, again, also be accountable.
Solstice: What challenges have you faced?
Jones: I’m afraid to fail, and I’m also afraid to not write the book. I’m afraid to lose stamina. I’m afraid not to do enough excavation…Writing a book is hard. Staying the course is scary. I’ve published several stories and articles, but ten or twelve pages is not the same as a 400-page book. And I’ve rewritten 400 pages a few times.
Solstice: Most readers would say you already know a lot about writing. You’ve published several articles in highly respected magazines and journals.
Jones: At forty-two, I’ve been training for this all my life. All my scholarship, my lifeforce, has been in the service of writing books. I’m prepared for this. My dreams have come true. I’m a writer. I’m a teacher. I’m everything I wanted when I was little…I come from a family of storytellers. I’m not the first writer in my family. But I will be the first published author in my family.
Solstice: You discuss the foster care system, economic and racial oppression. You’re not writing about easy topics.
Jones: It’s the interviews. It’s sitting with the horror of foster care and making sense of it. It’s me, my family, all the foster care kids.
This is a New York book, for the New York foster care kids. People forget stories when they’re not in front of you.
What’s scarier for me is not finishing the book because I was too afraid.
Solstice: Afraid?
Jones: It’s my memoir. My mother will read the book. My siblings will read the book. I have to be careful. I have to be honest. I want to not be afraid. I’m not afraid of losing my family. My only fear is to not do right by them. I don’t want to play myself. I don’t want to play my ancestors. I have to do right by me. As long as I’m doing that, I’m writing the book I need to write.
Rochelle Spencer is author of AfroSurrealism (Routledge) and The Rat People (The Fantasist and The Coil), and with Jina Ortiz, co-editor of All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (University of Wisconsin). Rochelle’s work appears in Solstice, Callaloo, Poets and Writers, Tin House, the African American Review, The Crab Creek Review, and The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Endowment for the Arts to attend the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and the CUNY Research Foundation to attend the La Muse Arts Residency.
