Hi friends,
This week we’re proud to share a new episode of Reckon True Stories, in which Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon reflect on their own experiences writing about family — specifically mothers and fathers.
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Get the full show notes and reading list over at Reckon.
Philyaw: “I always say whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, I’m writing to discover. I don’t always know what the thing is going to turn out to be. But 15 years earlier, I thought I knew what I was writing and it was an essay about my father, and I was going to finally speak aloud what I felt like I had not been able to say for my entire life at that point.”
Laymon: “So much of what I’ve been trying to work through the last 5-10 years or so was just really how we break reparation down. What does repair actually look like, and what do we want it to look like? When I wrote [Heavy] I wanted to show myself and my mama a version of what repair could look like.”
More Reckon True Stories
“Writing poetry is my earliest memory of putting words together. I was a poet first, is what I always tell people. When I asked my grandma out of curiosity, ‘Do you remember how old I was when I started writing?’ She says, ‘I still have some of the things you’ve written. . .before you were even in kindergarten, you were writing little sentences on paper and drawing pictures.'”
—In Reckon’s Black Joy newsletter, Danielle Buckingham writes about Deesha and Kiese and her own experience as a writer.
Thanks everyone for continuing to listen to and share this show! Your support means so much to us.
-Dawnie, Deesha, and Mark