Poured Over Double Shot: Aaliyah Bilal and Caleb Azumah Nelson

By Jenna Seery / July 11, 2023 at 6:00 am

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a novel of family and freedom as one young man navigates coming of age as a Londoner born to Ghanian parents. Nelson joins us to talk about the change and growth in his second book, visiting Ghana while writing, the importance of place and more.

In her short story collection, Temple Folk, Aaliyah Bilal examines and illuminates some of the realities of the Black Muslim experience through her stunning prose and deep characters. Bilal talks with us on how she came to short stories, the impact of community, the influences that shape her as an author and more.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.         

Featured Books (Episode):
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
NW by Zadie Smith
Lot by Bryan Washington
Family Meal by Bryan Washington
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
The Sword and the Shield by Peniel Joseph

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer the producer and host of Poured Over and I’ve been looking forward to this interview. Well, you’re gonna hear how much I’ve been looking forward to this interview. Caleb Azumah Nelson is one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35, Open Water also won the Costa First Book Award, I hope I’m getting the name of that prize, right. But more importantly, Small Worlds is just out. This book is magic. This book is summer and love and it’s tenderness. And it’s a family story. And it’s the world we live in. So there’s some you know, there’s some stuff that isn’t lovely or tender. But dude, this book, Caleb, this novel is so special. It is so good. I love, love, love everything about this book, Did you really write it in three months?

Caleb Azumah Nelson
I did. Three separate months, but three months. I was on tour. And it was getting to the point where these characters had been, in my mind, for the better part of like, three years at this point. But perhaps before I’d even really finished Open Water. And actually, my editor recently reminded me that I softly pitched her this novel in the first meeting I had before she was like, I’m gonna write a book about community and faith and about music. And she was like, great, let’s just, let’s do this one first and we’ll get to the next one. But I wrote the first split into three consecutive summers, summer in August of 2021. And then I wrote the second in Jan of 2022. And then the final one after a trip back to Ghana in March of 22. And then we were done.

MM
So this is a pandemic novel.

CAN
This is yeah, this is like, like…

MM
I mean, you. Wow, wow. Well, because I do, I love the setup of the three separate summers. And I just the way you capture time in this— my eyes are getting big, really big as I think about this book, what’s that line? I wrote it down, you have this amazing, amazing, amazing line, since the one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing. I mean, come on, this is a summer novel. This is this is love and hope and all of the great things. But would you explain the title too, because you have a moment in the book where you explain where Small Worlds comes from. And it’s excellent, it’s most excellent.

CAN

I think with both novels the title hasn’t immediately come to me. And I’m really, I’m always just very patient. I’ll wait until something emerges. And really, right at the beginning of writing this novel, I got this glimpse of a moment in which I began to understand how like the intimacies of like how much I value intimacy and closeness and much I value this like kind of space making, this wealth building within smaller quarters, like the ways in which we do it with our friends, our partners, our families, like even strangers, people that you bump in, you have these like, very, like everyday moments that that resonate with you. I think, every one of those moments for me, big and small, were just ways of, of finding a little home for our freedom just for just for a brief moment, you know?

Yeah, I do, because I’ve read your book, and it just put everything in, like, high relief. I mean, it’s all stuff that I think we all think about this, and we all think about, you know, this is my immediate experience, right? And you just blow that up. I love this kid, Steven, I love this kid. I love his relationship with Dell, who is sort of a childhood friend turned girlfriend, we’re gonna find out. But you also give Stephen a really great relationship with his brother. Yeah, slightly complicated relationship with his dad. But not a bad relationship. Just complicated. But Stephen is really present. He doesn’t quite know how to do things. I mean, he’s young, but he’s a sweet kid. And you create the sense of intimacy with all of his relationships in the first person. I mean, Open Water, okay, right. If you use the second person device, and it’s great, and we’re totally in it, and you know, did not want that book to end. And yet you do it again, with this kid, who’s so great. I really liked this character. I really really liked this character. But I want to talk about the shift invoice for a second because I was listening to doughnuts on loop, the J della album while I was prepping for our conversation, I was like, Yeah, this is the soundtrack I need for this book. And the way music flows through and whatnot, but there’s something happening with the first person voice in small worlds. That, yeah mimics Open Watercertain extent, but it is, it’s an entirely new range for you. And I think it’s really great. So let’s talk about that shift for a second.

CAN

I guess for me, like there was this understanding that when there’s artists, I’m having that moment where you have like 10 different tangents, which I think first and foremost, I was thinking like writing, writing another novel, which like full disclosure, writing Open Water, for me was like, in my mind, I was I get one chance at this, and we’re gonna leave. But then on the other side of that, it’s like, actually, no, like, I get to try again, and hopefully, try again and again. So I was asking myself what I wanted to do this time around, like, how can I deepen my level of craft? How can I like write something that expanded upon the questions that I began to ask and, and not necessarily diverge, but walk a bit further down the road, the central thing in both novels is this notion of, of like, how we love how we express love, and how we fail to do that. And so I was really thinking about how I could do that both within the intimacy of like, one on one relationships, but also expanding to look at the wider community. And then I started thinking about music, and the ways in which, for me, music has always been a way of, I guess, with my writing, I’m always trying to close this gap between emotion and expression. Like both music and like some of my other art forms, like thinking about my work as a photographer, like serve to close that chasm. And I really wanted to hone in on how visceral music can be when you’re when you’re experiencing it. And so small worlds for me, I wanted to write this novel that could feel like one long song, they can have these like verses and choruses and reframes and breaks and pauses, but like, you’re always within the music, you’re in this rhythm. And I think really like it was, I remember when I started writing, and it was hardly voice. So clearly, I was, oh, this is my music. This is my rhythm.

It’s really satisfying. With a device like this, right? When you when you are working with words, but you’re relying on another art form. Words are only one piece of music, music. I mean, there’s a whole different thing happening there. And the visuals of your photography, it makes Small Worlds, all of those elements make Small Worlds such a special book, because I feel like I know your characters. I feel like I know them completely. And obviously, I am not from London, I do not have Ghanian parents and yet there’s a universality to this story. And it’s partially, you know, sort of the exuberance and confusion being an 18 year old because yeah, that’s just messy, messy in a good way. But watching Stephen, figure out what matters to him…

CAN

In real time.

Yeah, and the stuff that he gets really judgy about and then sort of learns that maybe he’s being a little overly judgy I am totally dancing around a plot point, because we’re going to release this episode very, very close to the book’s pub date, and I’m not ruining it for anyone. I am not running it and I will say to like, if you can read this, I’ve read it twice. Now, if you can read it in one sitting. The music piece of it hits you so hard. Because you get that sort of build to the crescendo, and then it drops and then it and it’s wild how you duplicate that experience with words. Because you’ve also talked about this in other interviews where you’re just like, yeah, the language doesn’t always help. No, language doesn’t always work, which I get why you say that. But you know, as a book person, I’m kind of like, Yeah, I know, we got to work on. I know, we have to work on this. Because the emotional terrain of your work, right? I mean, most dudes cannot do that. Right? Like not, and I’m not limiting it to men by any stretch of the imagination, but the language that we give men specifically to talk about their feelings. I mean, Stephen’s dad is a very good example of this, right?

CAN

Yeah, especially it’s kind of like, like too an older person of color.

They don’t want to talk man. They didn’t talk about it. You’re just like, hi, tell me a story. And they’re like now just go to school be amazing, you know, run the world. But no, I’m not going to tell you this and you’re like, I want to know the story.

CAH

So much of their relationship is in the tension or Stephen trying for something to emerge and Eric not I really haven’t been to words for that yet not really, to deliver his own narrative.

the arc that you give their relationship is very satisfying. But it feels real too because it’s not, it’s not at all perfect. And they are both who they are. I mean, this is a global thing. This is not just the UK in the US. But the idea that men are not allowed to be tender. That that is a sign of, you know, failure. And it’s just well, actually, if we can figure out how we feel, we’re much less likely to be dumb about that.

CAN

I think about how you’re feeling but also, knowing that you might have the grace when you can’t quite articulate, it’s not something that you’re going to fail that like you don’t, that’s not really how it happens. It is like it’s not a pass/fail thing. It’s like, Can you can you try? Can you get like close to this feeling? And perhaps let me meet you halfway, you know.

Love is hard. You know, we all have these ideas, right? You go buy a greeting card or something or, you know, you bring someone a present, love is hard, like actively loving your community, actively loving members of your team. It’s really hard. And sometimes it feels a little impossible.

CAN

Absolutely, absolutely.

Can we talk about this trip you made back to Ghana, because you have this great line about, it doesn’t represent a home for me. But it’s a way of seeing the world. And there had been a large gap between trips, you’d gone as a teenager or an adolescent, actually. And then you went back, as you said, earlier in the show, in 22. And you I mean, you grew up in London, I grew up in Boston, like I mean, I go back to Japan or Taipei, and it’s just like, Oh, right. Hi. There’s that moment where you’re like, Yeah, I’m back. And I get to eat all of the things that I’ve been dying to eat. But then there’s also cultural stuff. I’m like, Yep, I’m an American. I’m an American. But I do want to talk about that because obviously, it’s a huge part of Stephen’s story, as well. But, you know, you do some cool stuff. In this book with that sort of immigrant piece.

CAN

When the novel that Small Worlds is in its current form, a novel that I sold to my editors, and we, okay, from the initial pitch, think about the first summer. The novel that that really was it, it began to be shaped by these feelings I was having, as I was writing this novel about, I described it as trying to fix a line that I’d only previously traced, like, I was really count, like, what that action could look like. And I could feel myself doing it as I was writing. But I knew that in order to write about Ghana, I wasn’t gonna write from memory, I needed to have the texture of the place to hold it in my head, something that I was really, it’s like, the thing I’ve been struck by like the most since I’ve been back, is the way that light falls in Ghana. So the sunrise is at like five in the morning, the sunsets at five in the afternoon, all the time, doesn’t matter what time of year. And usually, you know, you get like a full golden hour where there’s like this glow, and everything really like glistening in this light. In Ghana, the golden hour is like maybe like 20-25 minutes. And then blue hour stretches for like, for what seems like an eternity. And it’s not this, like this kind of heavy, purplish hue. And everyone just looks so beautiful. And like, I just remember being in that period of time, I could never have imagined this, if I hadn’t come here.

You kind of have to serve a little bit too, when you’re moving between cultures that aren’t necessarily yours, and yet somehow are. Like, I have a lot of family in Taipei and Tokyo and Kobe and they’re very lovely people don’t misunderstand me, but I’m really aware that I grew up in a very different culture. And I have to shift gears in a way because I’m on you know, I’m on unfamiliar terrain, and also, you know, language skills they are what they are. Sometimes it’s really great. And you can find the thing you’re looking for right away. And sometimes you’re just like, it’s a good thing I can read romaji because otherwise I cannot figure out the subway.

CAN

For me its the speaking. To sit in like, in a room full of adults they’ll be like, going back and forth at I’m good. Like I’m understanding everything and I’ve just sat there like…

I can feed myself. I can maneuver, I can get around but occasionally I’ll Just look at someone and say I am so sorry. And they look at me and they’re like, oh, oh, you’re one of those. Yes.

CAN

Like, you’re just like you’re always try not to betray yourself. Just find a way but stick it out too much.

But at the same time being able to move in the community with some semblance of anonymity is something that we don’t always get, right. Like, I mean, to be part of a majority and just be like, oh, right, I see my face in like a stranger’s face or I see my mom’s face in a stranger’s face. And it’s a little trippy. It’s a little trippy when you make that shift back and you’re like, Oh, yeah. Okay.

CAN

Yeah, to see that. And also to kind of see, for me, it’s always people’s rhythms. Kind of like, man, that’s like, because those things are so specific to like, what is that. When I was in Ghana, I had this, I had this grand plan, bear in mind, I was there for I was there for 10 days, because my paperback had come out for maybe three days beforehand. No worries, I’ll do the events when I get back. And I had this like, grand plan of like, going away. And like, you know, being in Ghana and having this time every day where I was gonna write and finish this novel, and I obviously did not write a single word, but I had all of my cameras with me. And so we’re kind of walking around, and making portraits of people. And I’ve got this like, big, old medium format camera that I shoot with, people would see this, this camera, I was kind of like trying to research and amass these images of the place, and they started, like strangers would just start asking me for portraits. And that was such a beautiful thing, like and coming back, I actually had the last like this, this archive of that time of like, maybe 200 or so strangers, who had asked me for these portraits and had, in a way like fostered this trust, the same trust that I had had in myself to make that journey, and to go to really be there, which was a really beautiful thing.

It’s been a minute since I’ve been to London, but this novel, Small Worlds, so of the place and of the time. And it’s not just the music and it’s not just the people, it’s having a sense of place and you do it in such, I’m going to steal a J Dilla description for a second, it’s you have a way of pulling back and not giving us everything that another writer might choose to, you’re letting us fill in the gaps. And I love that, because all of us bring our own experience, right to any book that we’re reading. But it gave me a chance to connect with your characters. I mean, I love Stephen’s mom, love Stephen’s mom, loved all of these characters, you gave the brothers a really good, solid, decent relationship. Like, that was probably the biggest revelation of all, I was like, oh my god, the brothers like each other. That’s awesome. That’s delightful. They’re supportive. They’re great. They’re brothers who just want to be around each other. Thank you more of this place, but creating that landscape, right, you’re building it out of your own experience. This is not auto fiction. I mean, there are a couple of details that feel like maybe you borrowed them from your own life. But this is not auto fiction. But you have to create a landscape you have to build a world out of something that you know cold. But you’ve got to bring in someone like me, who’s like, Okay, I’m the reader. I know nothing. Yeah, I just want to hang out with these people. Can we talk about the craft of of making this world and building this book and finding these characters because they’re awesome.

CAN

When I was thinking about this, the setting, then of like, I understood that southeast London and specifically Peckham, which I spent a lot of time growing up. And wasn’t just this, this whole complete world, in itself. And while these people in the novel aren’t necessarily people that I know, it’s people that like if I go to pick them now I know are bumping into right. I think I was really keen on thinking about that Peckham has like a really large West African and Caribbean, like migrant community. And thinking about those people thinking about those, the kind of life the hairdressers and the barbers and the takeaways and all of these businesses and homes and people’s lives that are being held in this space. I really, there was such a big thing on my end of like trying to render this community in like a really like kind of in a way that felt really full and whole didn’t shy away from the harder parts, the parts which might grieve for the parts, which might not feel beautiful at the time. Like I wanted to be able to say that these are these are people these are like my people, you know, like there’s this pride that I have in, in occupying those community teas. And I think from a car point of view, like, you know, sitting down to think about the construction of the this, like the summers where everything feels really heightened, and everything feels really like, you know that the day starts early in the day that day doesn’t end like this sense of this sense of like in front of you that I think we’re all roaming around with within the summer, but in particular thinking about black communities in the summer, when it’s a time when it’s not, okay. Like, all year, we look forward to this time where we can be living, and we can be thriving, and my garden parties, barbecues, like all of these things like the kind of minutiae of the everyday I that was something that was felt so big for me, like being able to find a way of turning everyday into the spectacular.

You totally do that in this perfect, you can’t have just the good bits or just the bad bits, and the fact that you give us all of the good, all of the joy, all of the tenderness, all of the like the beauty of the place. But we don’t live in a vacuum. We can’t pretend the other stuff doesn’t happen. And in fact, that heightens, you know, you do turn the everyday into the spectacular because we know what the stakes are. And if we don’t know what the stakes are, then it’s all very pretty. And I would, you know, certainly look at the magazine spread that this would be but knowing that the stakes are so high. And that this is part of the tension between Stephen and his dad, right? Like here, Stephen dropping out of school and becoming a cook and his dad’s going. This is, no, no, no, this is not, and I say this is a bookseller who did not do the thing that was expected. That’s you know, I mean, we find our own paths, right. But again, that’s a piece of it. The beauty of the everyday, right, like, we get these amazing, amazing things, because sometimes we don’t do the thing that people think we’re gonna do.

CAN

I think in the first maybe it’s on the first page of the novel. And it’s something that like, I think, really like echoed throughout this novel, this notion, I think the line is like we all know death. But we’re all very serious about being alive. So much of everybody’s journey in this novel is about trying to seek a sense of aliveness of whatever cost. And for Stephen the cost here is like not following that traditional path, not going down the proven route, I should say, in Eric’s eyes this is going to that you need to do because it’s the thing I have to do. For Stephen, he understands that there’s something more that he needs to reach towards, like, there are so many moments in the novel where Stephen Raymond, Dell, all of them are reaching towards this sense of like, the ecstatic. This kind of feels bigger than yourself, but actually is you I think so much of Stephen himself is like, just, it’s figuring out who he is and being like, this is me, how can I go towards me?

I think that ecstasy, that sense of ecstasy does come out of community, it comes out of having the every day, right, like, you don’t have to have spectacular moments. To think, oh, yeah, this is just a good day to be me and this is a good day to be on the planet. You know, I mean, you just you were working in an Apple Store, and said, Oh, I have to do the thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, you’re now I have to do the thing. And I love that part of the story, right? Where you’re just like, No, no, I’m just, I’m just going to swing. I’m just going to swing and I’m just going to see what happens. And I’m going to take all of these things that I love. I’m going to take music, and I’m going to take art and this place and my community and my people and everything else. And I’m going to make a thing. And then we get Open Water. Right? And Open Water is great and Small Worlds is even better. So like I’m watching this build, right? I’m watching you take all of these elements of your art and combine them and build them together. And then I discover you love NW by Zadie Smith way I love NW by Zadie Smith. So we’ve got to talk about Zadie for second because NW was one of those books and again like do I know these people? Oh, yes. Yes. I do. And they are awesome. And when you were saying the Stephen drops in a very cute thing about Zadie Smith and I’m gonna assume that’s something you borrowed from your own existence. But NW you said that sort of changed your trajectory and gave you permission to write the thing you wanted to write and I love that. I love that because it’s that is a really special book that just pops. I mean, the dialogue is so good.

CAN

I read NW when I was 18, also, maybe the first book I read when I was at university. And I just remember like being in a space where it’s like, because in northwest London, everyone, you know the deal, where are you from is like, it’s actually it’s just your specific area that you’re actually from Boston really its here. And so for me, it’s like, I’m from London, but I’m really from southeast London and West London. But reading her Northwest was not so dissimilar from myself, like there was this understanding of like, these are people, right? And I think the texture of that novel, you’re just in the world immediately, like this character, like you said, the dialogue, something else, something else, something else. It’s a novel that I read, at least once a year. And kind of like, I think, also to have to now count Zadie as a peer is like, super trippy, like to be able to be like, oh, like, let’s go for lunch just like is it blows my mind a little bit, just because she’s such a big influence on my work.

Next thing, very happy to know that you guys can hang out that just that delights me to no end. And I think, to her sense of time, and space and place, I mean, I can see where you guys kind of sit together. But she’s not your only influence. You talked about Terrance Hayes and Claudia Rankine and Christina Sharpe. All of these writers I really, really, really love. But also Hanif Abdurraqib. I mean, come on, he writes about joy in ways that you write about it and Bryan Washington, this made me really happy to know that Bryan Washington’s Lot and Memorial and he’s got a new book, Family Meal coming. I have a Japanese mama and I was like, how did you do that? How did you do that?

CAN

I just I remember reading Lot in the pandemic. And just, it’s just the words of singing off the page. Like the music is just there. It’s inherent in his work.

So here’s the thing. I think you read for language more than character, but it feels like a very fine line that you but you’re reading for language first, right? It’s voice, it’s language.

CAN

Yeah, for sure. But then I think my photographic work helps with character. I guess so much of my work is, like 99% of my work is portraiture. And so much of it is trying to make space for, for both myself as the as the artist, and then the sitter, to be honest, and to be themselves in that moment where the shutter comes down. And for me, it’s like trying to figure out how I allow my characters to do the same thing within just like see, like this kind of notion of, like, my favorite images are ones where like, you see some somebody can you can see that this is this person like that, like I want to be able to, like, ensure that like you could see a character any glimpse of like, oh, no, that’s them.

So I think you’ve mentioned this in other interviews, it sounds a little bit like, you’re kind of unfurling visual images as you write. And that’s sort of I don’t know if that’s the first draft, or if that’s just sort of the process on the whole, but it sounds like you don’t separate visual and verbal art and then it’s all of it.

CAN

I think actually, really specifically with Small Worlds like, each chapter for me was a photograph, it had this feeling of like you being able to hold this like really specific scene and it’s why actually a lot of the chapters are in one, somewhere down there are quite short.

We’re not gonna we’re not we’re not going to talk about that. The payoff, though. The payoff for the longer one. I’m just gonna, I’m gonna own it right here. Half Japanese Bostonian crying is not a factory setting, I just want to be clear about this. I did get teary. There are very few books that make me teary. It was so satisfying. It was teary in the best way, it was the kind of emotional experience that you get, not always from reading, but when you get it’s so satisfying. And it’s so hopeful. And it’s so happy. It’s happy, but it explains so much. And it was completely unexpected. I had no idea you were going to do that. I’m like la la la. And it was so satisfying. It was so good. Do you miss Small Worlds? Do you miss Stephen and his dad and Raymond and Dell? I mean, it feels like you’re very connected to them in a different way than you are from the narrator of Open Water. It feels like a different experience for you.

CAN

For sure, I guess. So, two things I miss. I really miss them. But also, I’m working on adaptations of both novels. So both are going to be TV shows. So actually, I’m, I’m okay. I’m still with them. I’m okay. Okay. I also think that Open Water and Small Worlds were written from two very different places. Open Water there was this sense, like the narrator, 25 year old me in what, 2018,2019. In a time where state of systemic violence was really pushing and pulsing. For me there was almost like, it wasn’t almost there was this real terror and concern that I would leave my house and not return intact. That was Open Water. And I think with Small Worlds I really wanted to push the, not necessarily push that away, but look towards myself and the community and the spaces in which we can have some freedom away from that terror, even though it’s not something you can never let go of. It’s something that just it coexists. It’s, it’s for me, it was like, I’m trying to understand how I had grown from that time. And also thinking about the ways in which we don’t ever, we don’t ever forget those things, but we make space.

It feels really subversive to be able to claim joy in the face of a reality that wants to deny joy to certain members of our communities. And I think that is such a powerful thing to be able to say that I do get to have the good bits, and I get to have the love, and I get to have freedom, I mean, freedom, it shows up in so many different ways in both novels, I mean, especially Small Worlds, but in both novels, freedom is experienced in wildly different ways. There are different expectations of freedom. And I think that expectation really jams up a lot of people, I think expectations are the thing that you know, you can have the thing that’s here, right you can have the moment and the expression and the pure pleasure, even if it’s something as simple as like ice cubes in your drink kind of thing. Like, I mean, tiny, tiny stuff, right? Or, you know, you take a bite of a sandwich, and it’s the best sandwich you’ve ever had. I mean, these things happen. They happen. But it doesn’t mean that the world isn’t the world. And it doesn’t mean that we’re sitting in a corner going well, nananana boo, you can’t make me see this. It’s not that it’s just it’s really subversive to be able to say, I understand that’s there. I know that’s there. I feel it every day, I experienced it every day. And at the same time, I am going to find the most incredible tiny thing. And I’m going to let it bring me joy. I love that for us. I really like that is so important. Even if it’s a line that’s repeated, right like dancing is the thing that’s gonna make it all better. I’m paraphrasing you poorly, but the characters who say like everyone gets a moment that lock.

CAN

Yeah, yeah, this kind of, because even though this is Stephen’s novel, it’s a really was a an opportunity for me to like have these moments where everyone could really like rise and really like take a moment for themselves, you know.

But also the Stephen that we meet is a product of all these people, right? There’s this line in Japanese, “Okage Sama De” which is I am who I am because of you, is like a vaguely literal transmission. But he is, like his parents made him who he is not literally from DNA, but also like from upbringing and their experience. And, you know, all of it and watching his brother be Raymond. You know, Raymond seems to have a little firmer footing on the ground, but he’s also older. I mean, all of these are his aunt? Right? Like, and what happens to her, Uncle T all of these people. They’re all part of who Stephen is and I love that that is always clear that we are not…

CAN

It could never be.

Right. Like, why would we not want to have community? I mean, yes, there are times where you know, you’re stuck at a dinner with a family member. And you’re like, Oh, hi. Oh, yeah, I remember this part. And you just kind of nod and smile, bump your head around. Pass the peas, please.

CAN

But it’s also like, you know, even that, it’s like, it’s still you still get to go back to whoever and tell someone about that?

Oh, yes. Oh, those stories are meant to be ridden like ponies. Because you’re like, This is my world. And yet, I wouldn’t trade it. I would not trade it for a second. I wouldn’t. I mean, I just I wouldn’t trade any of it. Okay, so you’re working on the screenplays for both of these books, which I’m delighted to know because also the idea of you working in a visual format. Your language is very spare in the good ways. But the idea that you’ve got a stripped down very tightly written novels for the screen. One I want to see how that happens. I want to see what’s going on. But does that mean we have to wait for another novel?

CAN

I think there’s another one coming sooner or later, which I think is going to be, I think writing Small Worlds, I realized that the novels were existing in this kind of loose trilogy, about the reaching towards freedom. I think the third one has its beginning to do that thing and where it takes on. It takes on some shape. I’m really really excited. It’s a return to two people. It’s a return to a couple people.

I’ll be patient. I will sit here quietly in the corner and be patient but my can you see the hamster running in my brain? Okay. It could be these people. It could be these people. I’m hoping it’s these people, but I’m just gonna sit here quietly and let Caleb do the thing that Caleb does. Okay, who are you listening to this summer because you turned me on to Dave like how I missed Dave. I don’t know. But I now have a Dave playlist that is entertaining me to no end. And I was giving Dave as my summer. I’m late. I’m totally late to Dave. But who are you listening to? Who should we be listening to? Okay, well, then. Yay. All right, then I found my thing.

CAN

You’re good, Dave, I’m listening to a lot. I’ve listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye of late, actually.

I mean, sad story. Yes, but the music is amazing.

CAN

It’s really, really beautifully satisfying. I tried to listen to an album a day. It’s like my like, quest. And then we’ll get there’s this incredible rapper called Billy Woods, it’s a really unconventional in style. But he has an album called Maps at the moment. That’s I think his songwriting is so novelistic and form in the way that it like, writing reminds me of Jazzby Toni Morrison.

I do not take that lightly. Caleb, I am trusting you. I am trusting. I will go hunt that album down, but I am trusting you.Jazz is a novel that I absolutely, absolutely love. If I had the luxury of doing what you can do with NW and reading a book every year at that would be one of the ones

CAN

Jazz, was I think most direct influence. It was the thing that I read just beforehand.

Okay. Okay. Hey, have you ever read Gayl Jones Corregidora?

CAN

Yes.

I honestly, I figured you had but I was like, huh, there are not many people that I get to say, have you read this and “Oh, yeah, of course I have.”

CAN

That one. I was also I think I read that right at the beginning of 2020. Like you, I started to be like, Have you heard of Gayl Jones? Have you read this novel, it’s something else?

Kiese Laymon turned me on to her. I was like, I am so late. I should be embarrassed. And I read it. It was one of those like, you know, when you get to just sit down with a book and be like, it’s like you listening to an album a day, right? Like, the whole world falls away. And you’re just like, Yep, I’m good. I’m good. Gayl Jones was that for me and Jazz is that there’s so many I you know, books are a really cool thing. And you’ve done a really, really cool thing with Small Worlds. I’m so in love with this book. I’m just so in love with the joy and the tenderness and the characters and also the swampy summer-ness of the whole thing like, summer is a really specific choice. But that said, I knew this was gonna happen. I knew we were gonna bump up against time. I knew this was gonna happen. I could do this for hours and hours and hours and hours. Like I just want to sit on a bench somewhere with you and just go through your playlist. I have one of these weird epic 20 hour playlists. And now I get to add Dave it’s so good. I mean, it was going back to J Dilla. And Donuts I was like, okay, yeah, right. I’d forgotten how much I love this album. I know. I know. I should not have forgotten how much I love that album. But I did. And now I have Dave. I’m like, okay, my summers complete. Caleb Azumah Nelson, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over, Small Worlds is out now. If you haven’t read Open Water go back to that one too.

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer. I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Temple Folk is an extraordinary story collection. This book is so special. There is not a single story that’s out of place, there’s not a single sentence where a word is wasted. It is such a special story collection. Aaliyah Bilal is the author of said story collection and I’m smiling thinking about the characters in this book. I’m smiling thinking about her prose. I’m also smiling because I know the backstory behind this very special book and we are going to get into all of this. But Aaliyah, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over, it’s really great to see you.

Aaliyah Bilal

I am very happy to be with you today.

So let’s talk about the community that makes up these stories, I want to set that up because you do something really extraordinary you bring us into a world that not a lot of us know about. And I want to start there. And then we’ll get into some of the other fun stuff too. But let’s start with this community because it’s really beautiful.

The best way I can think to talk about the community is to talk a little bit about my own life. I grew up rather bookish, and in my explorations of literature, I never saw characters that reminded me of myself, even among Black writers. And I wanted to challenge myself to try to recreate the world that I knew growing up. Everything in the book is imagined. This is not auto fiction. However, it does draw from what I’ve come to know about the African American Muslim experience, and specifically, the Black Muslim movement. The world really draws on this history of African Americans who are moving out of the Christian Protestant churches into the Nation of Islam, and then abandoning the Nation of Islam around 1975. And moving into Sunni orthodoxy. So the book really chronicles that transition and we see a community in flux throughout the course of the stories.

There are 10 stories, you capture an entire world in each of these stories, I read a lot of short stories, and I’m really I’m thinking back on how great it was to read this collection for the first time. And you don’t necessarily use names that we might expect to see. But it’s very clear who you’re referring to, if you know your history, right, and your American history. And you give voice to so many people in really unforgettable ways. And we’re going to talk about all of these stories in sort of a very spoiler free way, because you are very good at delivering a little bit of a punch in each story that is always really emotionally satisfying. So we are going to dance a little bit around. And I mean, I mentioned a couple of stories to you before we started taping where it was like, oh, yeah, I was not expecting that. I was really not expecting that. So when did you start writing short fiction because you had a grant to study in China, which we will come back to that. So you’ve done a lot of academic writing, and you’ve had nonfiction pieces published. But when did you start writing short stories.

I started trying to teach myself in earnest how to write short fiction after I finished a master’s degree at the University of London. It was a really interesting and misguided somewhat choice of a degree program for me. And I remember submitting my dissertation, walking across the Thames feeling like I’d made a huge mistake. As I midpoint on the Thames, a story comes whole to me, like something, the universe itself, smacking me upside the head saying, girl, don’t you understand? This is what you’re supposed to be doing all along. And so I rushed home and in one sitting, I wrote a story. And it wasn’t any good, and certainly nothing that I would feel comfortable sharing with nowadays, but there was enough there that I thought okay, let me try to hone whatever talent is within me. And so I started initially teaching myself how to read fiction for structure. And that took me a few years and then at around 2010, I started earnestly trying to write I didn’t write my first successful short story until 2015. And that story is included in this volume, it’s the story “Woman in Niqab”.

Oh, I love that story.

Thank you. I love that story, too. And the next story that I tried to write was “Janaza”. That also took me a while because I was teaching myself how to write men. Yeah, way that was convincing, at least to me. After that I sort of found a groove. And I was able to sort of put the stories together rather quickly. A lot of the stories in the collection. I wrote some of them in a single day or two days, and others took a month or just a few weeks. So my process is getting a little bit fast. That’s how I would describe my entry into the world of writing short fiction.

You and I share a love of the writer Edward P. Jones. And I will totally admit that this is one of the reasons why Temple Folk has been high on my radar for a while, is because both your agent and your editor had mentioned to me that you read and reread and reread Edward P. Jones in order to teach yourself how to write and I went back as I was prepping for this interview. I went back and reread Lost in the City, which I’ve read a number of times, and the novels All Aunt Hagar Children too I mean, I am a huge, huge admirer of Edward P. Jones, but Lost in the City was a really seminal book for me as a reader, so why was it Edward P. Jones, what drew you to his work that made you say, oh, I can use him as a model for what I want to do.

The first time I read Edward P. Jones, I think the first story I was introduced to is The First Day it’s a rather short story about a little girl going to school her first day and she learned some things about her mother on this journey to school. And as I was reading that story, it felt like first love. My eyes crossed. And I knew I knew I was in the presence of a master. And I also just recognized the rightness of his perspective on the black experience. It wasn’t saccharin, it wasn’t caramelizing. Nor was it pathologizing, it was straight up and down the middle. And in his work, I just saw this clean this thesis at the center of it all saying that we have the same capacity for virtue and advice, spring pavement and failure as all other people it was just so clean, spoken, elegant and everything I wanted to be. I found encapsulated in this collection. I just became a devotee. And I think my writing style is certainly my own. However, there are little things that I add into my stories, because I want it to be very clear that lineage that I see myself as someone who’s inheriting a legacy that he’s founded.

What are some of those little additions just for listeners who might not be as familiar with Jones’s work as we are?

So for instance, I make reference to Lorton prison. And Lorton I think, went defunct in the 1970s. But I place Lorton, in at least one of the stories, because I want to create that continuity, I want the world of Temple Folk, and the world that he creates in his short fiction to feel contiguous in some ways. And that’s one of the ways that I do that. There were a few other things that I do. But really, it’s I don’t see it as imitative so much as I see it as letting him know with these little signals, like, I listened, I paid attention and I, I love your work.

And he loves Temple Folk. This is the first book he’s blurbed in 15 years, I almost fell off my chair when I read the blurb that he gave this book, and anyone who picks up Temple Folk can see what Edward P. Jones has said, but it is marvelous. And yes, he has not blurbed a single thing in a very, very, very, very, very long time. So again, this is part of what got me excited. I mean, your stories aren’t just set in DC, they happen in lots of different places. But elegant is a word that I would use to describe your prose. And the way I got caught up in the way you tell stories, and you flip between the first person and the third person. It’s not like everyone is consistent. And the last story in the collection, which is more almost like a novella. I mean, it’s not technically a novella, but it’s very long, short story. But I love that story. And, you know, it’s just one of the ways you talk about hauntings, but I want to bring up something you say in that story, because it made me laugh and Angela Flournoy, also as someone who blurbed temple folk and I quite loved The Turner House, but she’s the one who introduced me to the idea of hates, because there’s a hate and Turner House and if you haven’t read Turner House, please go read it, your narrator, her aunt says you’re gonna keep dressing like that you’re gonna get a haint. And it’s that collision between sort of the Southern Christian and the Black Muslim extreme earns and it’s sort of sums up everything right there in that one line for me. Can we talk about the evolution of that story? Because it is, it’s, it’s a knockout that story.

50:10

Well, thank you, Due North I would consider to be the central thesis of Temple Folk, the project of this book goes slightly beyond simply wanting to tell the stories of Black Muslims, I’m really trying to engage the academic discourse of African American religion, and find a way to situate the Black Muslim movement with in Black religious history. When I was teaching myself how to write about this world, I was approaching it from a framework that I had learned growing up in the community, which was that we, African American Muslims within this particular community, were reverts. And revert is a term that’s particular to Muslims in Muslim minority contexts in the West. So not only African American Muslims, but of European Muslims, various kinds of Muslims, we refer to ourselves in this way. And what it means is that we conceive of ourselves as born in a state of fitrah, or a born in a state of nature. And through the course of our life, we lose our way, and we find ourselves coming back to Islam. So it’s a cyclical kind of process that happens that we become Muslims. And for African Americans, there’s a second layer of meaning to that, where upwards of 30% of us were Muslim, when we were stolen from Western Africa. We come to America and become Christianized. And we become Muslim of them again. And so it’s that same kind of pattern. And I was trying to write fictions about this world from that perspective and getting nowhere. And I finally realized that there was something fundamentally flawed about that thesis, at least when it came to approaching the fiction, that what I was trying to describe was more of a continuity, a kind of progression from one idea to the next, as opposed to a return to an old idea and original religion or something of that sort. I think all of the stories do something to show the movement forward. But Due North in particular really summarizes this progression. If African American religion is indeed defined as the practice of freedom, there are ways in which all of our religious traditions Christianity, Islam, etc, have worked to further that project and other ways in which it has hindered securing freedom for African American people. And so in the story, Due North, I’m trying to show that tension, how, from generation to generation, people will latch on to an idea and feel like this is the idea that will bring me my liberation, but we see in the following generation, the ways that that has worked and hasn’t.

And I’m going to stop you there only because there’s some stuff that happens with the current generation, the younger generation where, let’s just say more will be revealed, right? But I want to get back to a story and I’m hoping I’m pronouncing this properly, Nikkah. There’s a character Khedira. Am I saying that correctly? So, Qadirah is a convert. And her parents are a pastor and his wife in a very prominent Christian Church in their community and she’s left her parents behind. And we also find out a little bit about her parents’ history in the context of this, but when I put that story next to Due North, you’re covering a lot of ground, you’re covering a lot, a lot of ground with two very tightly written stories. But here’s the thing with a story like Nikkah do you start with a character? Are you starting with that premise that you just told us about with Due North because your characters are so a lot men and women, regardless of age, they’re so alive on the page, that I have a hard time thinking that you’re just starting with an intellectual idea that somehow you get this voice, right, whether you end up telling it in the first person or the third, and you kind of go from there.

Well, with Nikkah, that the origin point for that story, the nucleus really of that story is the biblical tale of David and Bathsheba. I started reading the Bible a few years ago and was really stunned by my reading juxtaposed to the sermons that I was hearing about these biblical stories. It’s not hard to be scandalized by the contents of any religious texts, like not singling out Christianity. But I was a little scandalized by some of the stories that I was reading in the Bible, and particularly the story of David and Bathsheba, which in the sermons I was listening to, from these Protestant Christian churches, they framed that story in one way. But to my reading, I saw like, this is pretty racy right here. And you know, this is rather interesting. And the story sort of built itself around that. Okay, even though I mean, so structuring the story, David and Bathsheba, that story was the core of it. But when I think about what I hope the reader takes from the story, it’s really a portrait of Muslim normalcy, this idea that there is a way in which Islam is depicted in the West. And then there are the ways that ordinary Muslims actually live their lives. And it’s something that’s rather easy to bypass, you know, if you’re not really paying attention. I mean, every story presents its challenges and its own point of entry. And I typically think that stories are contained in their ideas, at least, in the way that they occur to me, I will not see the images I need to begin writing, if I don’t have a very clear notion of the forces acting on a story, I will not be able to imagine the story. And so it’s often important for me to work that out first, before I begin the writing.

Because one of the things I keep coming back to whenever I think about Temple Folk, whenever I think about your stories separate and as the collection, the voice is really, it’s gentle, and it’s loving. And it’s really, it is very elegantly done. It’s attractive, it’s engaging, it makes me want to sit with a community that I know very little about and have very little experience of, and yet, you’ve made everyone in these stories feel very, very relatable because they’re so human. And I’m having a moment where I’m like, Well, wait, you just described a process that actually I sort of, just from reading thought, oh, wait, she must start with character because the voice is so strong, and every single, and I understand exactly what you just described, but it’s funny how close I feel to these characters when I have, again, very little experience of them. But I really I, especially the women, the women are, I mean, you do a great job with the men, please don’t misunderstand me. But like Sister Nora, I’m thinking about Sister Memphis, like there are some women in this book. They’re great. So when you’re sitting down, and you’re assembling this collection, and this is also a way for me to set up how we got this book published. Were these the 10 that you knew you were going to use? Or were there more that you said, Oh, maybe, maybe not? Because you had sort of a different path to publication than some people?

Yeah, so I had six stories on the ready. And those are the six stories that I submitted to my editor. Yahdon Israel. The other four stories, the longer stories, all of them were written in the last year. I had one other story that I was planning to include in the in the collection that I had also intended to write in the last year. But working through the ideas, I realized it was rather flimsy and dark, I try to write work that is serious, but where there’s always some light that enters. And this story, there was no opportunity for that and so I abandoned it. Okay, so the these are the 10.

So Yahdon, who’s the senior editor at Simon and Schuster put out a call on Instagram and he said, I’m looking to publish differently and you didn’t even have an agent. You sent him the six stories. And he turned around and said, Hey, I want to publish this. But we need to get you an agent and your agent happens to also represent some other authors I quite like, which was very fun. But this is entirely unheard of, this is not typically how things go. And I’m smiling, just thinking about it because you know, special books, special circumstances. Okay, it doesn’t work this way, always. But I love that you found the right home in the right way and it wasn’t exactly what people were expecting.

No, it wasn’t, I still marvel at it. And that’s part of why I treat every step of the process like something holy. You know, it really shouldn’t happen this way. This is not traditionally how things happen, where someone in my case can be plucked from obscurity, and published without an MFA, you know, I don’t even have a professional credential to be doing this work. I feel very fortunate. And I take it very seriously. You know, I just hope that I’ve done a good job. Yeah, when I think about that, and everything that preceded this in my life, it just feels like, you know, I just want people to hold on to their dreams. And to know that there isn’t anyone who should be able to discourage you or put you off of the path. As long as your compass is strong, and you have an accurate assessment of your own talents and abilities. Just keep going. And I just hope that everybody can have a moment like that in life. And whatever their field of pursuit where they are just given an opportunity, just an opportunity to show what they can do.

Temple Folk is a really good reminder that reading is an act of community, right? It’s not something that you do. And there’s this perception that because you’re holding a thing in your hands, right, whether it’s a physical paper book, or device or whatever, that you’re holding a thing in your hands, or you’re listening in your air, and it’s just you doing a thing. And it’s actually not that, it is the reader or the listener in communion, right, with the writer and the voices that this writer has created in this world that this writer is built. And I just I think that’s so important to remember, especially when it comes to stories, because there are some folks who, you know, will say, well, I just want the emotional terrain to remain consistent throughout. So I prefer novels rather than story collections. And the one thing I’ll say about Temple Folk too, is it does, it does not read like linked stories, it does not, it is a story collection, but the emotional terrain is remarkably consistent. And the emotions that you create for us and your characters create for us is really, really consistent throughout the collection, and you broke my heart more than once you surprise me more than once this book is a treat. It really is a treat. And I did laugh out loud too, because at one point, Farrakhan is referred to as the Calypso singer. And I think not a lot of people know that he did actually sing Calypso in Boston before he went on to the NOI and became Louis Farrakhan. As we know, I had a couple of moments like that, where it’s like, okay, I see what you’re doing. What did you learn about yourself, though, writing these stories, and putting together this collection? Because writing stories and assembling a collection are not actually the same.

Wow, what did I learn about myself, I learned that if I have an idea for fiction, I can always get pretty close, it may not end up being what I had originally envisioned. But I can get close enough that the emotional impact that I felt in, you know, dreaming this stuff up, it lands on the page somehow, I feel like, this is my lane. There are lots of great writers, you know, and I’m just frankly, very, very proud of myself and proud of the way that I have worked in community, as you say, to bring this work together.

All right. But that leads me to ask you if you have a favorite story in this collection, I mean, again, you’ve had this like profound experience that not a lot of people get, but you’ve also been living with these stories for a really long time.

It changes all the time. I really love Blue because it does so much in a little space. I love the ending of Blue. I read and reread that to myself like a prayer.

I can see that. I can totally see that.

Yeah, I also love Janaza a lot. That’s not a story that I hear mentioned very much, but I’m proud of the voice in that story. And I’m also proud of the subtle way that it moves. I love the tertiary characters that I create.

Yes, there is a wife who makes herself known and I was not expecting her and I was not expecting the way she presented herself. And that was that was a little bit of a snap and a pop. And I knew exactly what moment your brain to…

Let me share this. My favorite character in the whole book, if anybody cares to know is Don Cornelius.

Okay. Okay, I understand why you’re saying that. But I would really like you to share the reasoning behind it because it is. Yes, I understand. Yes. Can we please go a little bit behind the scenes there?

Certainly, well, I like humor. But I also consider myself to be a writer of very serious fiction. And the tertiary characters are a great way to inject humor without taking away from the seriousness. Don Cornelius, to me is hilarious, and spooky. And he reveals something about Carol’s inner workings. There’s like a foreboding aspect to this interaction that I think is telling.

And you’re right. Sorry, I’m just thinking about what you’re talking about. And I’m really, I’m very much enjoying. So what do you think is next though? Are you going to stick with stories? Or is there a novel? I mean, it feels like you were using Due North is sort of a runway, a little longer and a little looser and a little broader. I mean, obviously, stories are not always jumping off points for novels. But I have to say, I would really like to know more about that family.

Well, I don’t have any plans to retell that story. But you know, we never know what may happen in the future. I have so many really strong ideas, ideas that I’m as passionate about. And, you know, I’m currently at work on the next thing. We’ll see. I just hope that everything that I write, can be read with ease and with pleasure. And that there’s always something really probing and interesting on the level of ideas in everything that I do as well. So that’s my hope for the work that’s to come.

Well, there’s a swing and a soul to all of your sentences and all of these stories, and I really, I had so much pleasure reading this and I’m not alone. Jacqueline Woodson, Marlon, James Angela Flournoy, and yes, I know, I’ve mentioned Edward P. Jones. But I will never stop taking every possible opportunity to talk about Edward P. Jones. I will never stop. But I’m so excited that Temple Folk is out in the world. And I really hope people will take some time and sit with these characters, they are so fresh and so familiar and so relatable, and so human. And you’ve done a really special thing on the page here. And I just really want to be clear about that. I get very excited when I get to read something that is so beautifully written that, yeah, it just makes me think and think and think. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Okay, I knew this was going to happen. We’re running out of time. What’s the thing that you really hope readers take away from Temple Folk? I think there’s so much happening here. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to say, Wait, Nation of Islam, what, this is a really special book. This is a really special tender book, you must have something you’d like readers to know.

First and foremost, I just hope people give this book a fair shot. I also want people to know that it’s fiction, you know, I have not written an apologia for the Nation of Islam. Nor have I done that thing that so many of us are pressured to do, which is to pretend not to understand the circumstances that gave birth to the Nation of Islam, the very real fact that in our experience of life in North America that many of us have felt that we are despised and looked down upon and have even come to despise ourselves. and people joined the Nation of Islam to be rid of the self-defeating ideas. And what they found when they entered. Some people had better experiences than others. But it’s a fact of our history. And for that reason alone, it’s worth exploring in fiction, you know, and that’s all that I’ve tried to do is just to explore this part of our history in a way that imbues the people that live this life with the humanity that that that is theirs.

That’s all any art reflects its community, right. And with any luck, we find other people’s community and can connect with it. Because we see the truth of the universal right in the details of someone else’s life. I mean, that’s the fun of reading, that you get to say, oh, wait a minute, I understand this. I’m also going to shout out one more book Peniel Joseph’s Sword and the Shield, which is a joint biography of Malcolm X. And Martin Luther King, Jr. And it’s pretty terrific. And it’s, I think it’s a good entry point for people who might not have all of the history that you talk about, or allude to, I should say, because, you know, this is not about any one particular community. It’s about the people in the community. And I think that’s really important to remember. But thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Aaliyah Bilal. The story collection is Temple Folk. I’m so excited for people to get to read this. Thank you for joining us on Poured Over.

Thank you for having me.