Welcome to Angela Jackson-Brown's Alabama.

Angela Jackson-Brown [Photo credit: Chandra Lynch, Ankh Productions]

“Truth telling is what we need more of these days. Fear has allowed us to become apathetic. I refuse to live in fear and I refuse to keep my fictional characters in a place of fear. Even when their lives are traumatic, I work hard to always redeem their minds. I want their stories to end with hope. Not happily ever after, but definitely hope.”

— Angela Jackson-Brown

ALINA STEFANESCU: I want to start with your time in the South, with your childhood and the spaces that raised you. Tell us about Angela Jackson-Brown's Alabama--it's hidden places, it's hearths, it's favorite flowers, it's music, it's traditions, it's kin.

ANGELA JACKSON-BROWN: Growing up a little “Negro girl” in rural Alabama, I always felt the sense of community in the little town that I grew up in -- Ariton, Alabama. There, I was surrounded by family and friends who loved and nurtured me, and saw no limitations for me, even when society may have seen otherwise. In 1973, my daddy tried to enroll me in the local kindergarten. At the time, the kindergarten wasn’t part of the public school system; it was private, and the person who taught it said to our faces, “I don’t teach Negroes.” I was only about five years old at the time, but instantly I understood that I was different from the white children who went to that private kindergarten. From that woman’s words, I instantly picked up on the fact that I wasn’t always going to be as loved by the world as I was by my daddy, his family, and other members of the Black community.

Thankfully, I was blessed with a daddy who never believed in making excuses and who spent the rest of his life telling me my black was beautiful and my mind was brilliant. So even though I didn’t get the opportunity to attend kindergarten, I did learn a lot that year leading up to first grade thanks to public television. My preschool and kindergarten teachers were characters on shows like Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers, and Electric Company, not to mention my daddy who surrounded me with books from an early age. Somehow, this man who had to quit school at the age of 15 to help sharecrop with his family, understood the importance of reading and writing. By the time I made it to first grade, I was reading on a third grade level, out-performing many of those children who attended that segregated kindergarten.

Stories came to me before I even knew how to form words on paper. I loved the little books on my bookshelf, and somehow, I understood stories had power. They had the power to transport a little “Negro” girl from rural Alabama into far away lands.  So when I started making up little stories  of my own, long before I could even write words, daddy would proclaim to anyone who would listen, “My little girl is going to be a writer some day.” Daddy planted that seed early, and although he never lived to see the harvest, I wouldn’t be a writer today, had he not sowed seeds of hope and belief into me before I could hold a pencil correctly.

My Alabama was made up of summer barbecues; playing games outside with my cousins; seeing up close and personal some of the Tuskegee Airmen who I thought were just a bunch of chatty old men visiting my retired, Navy daddy, but who were, in fact, walking history books; sitting outside underneath the altar of Alabama skies, pecan trees, and starry nights as my daddy and his brothers told tall tales that I probably had no business hearing, but still they resonated in my spirit, activating the storyteller within me. My Alabama was growing up on a street that was integrated by virtue of the size of our little town. There was no suburbs; no “off-limit” streets to Negroes. No, we all lived amongst each other and somehow figured out how to negotiate our way through systemic racism that permeated the nation. Racism happened in Ariton, but love and community also happened there too. I played in the yard of my best friend Michele, a beautiful, young white girl who never thought twice about being my best friend. We saw color, but it didn’t stop us from loving each other like sisters. We were both happy to have a friend who kept secrets good and who had wide open spaces to play in.

My Alabama prepared me to believe, like Alice Walker stated, “activism is the rent I pay for being on this planet.”  When I was a child, too young to write words, I helped my daddy stuff envelopes for the NAACP. I went with him in the community when he was campaigning for various state and local candidates. I listened intently when he described his first time voting and having to walk through a double line of white men from the community holding rifles to intimidate the Black voters. 

My Alabama taught me that a simple phrase like “Bless Your Heart” could both be a curse or a blessing to the hearer. My Alabama taught me that no matter where in the world I resided, I would always be an Alabama girl at heart. I am fast approaching the age where I can say I have lived more years out of Alabama than within but I still feel that state coursing through every word, every phrase and every sentence I write. I tell people I am an unapologetic southern writer. My characters might travel to New York City for a spell, but it won’t be long until boiled peanuts, kudzu, and the Alabama/Auburn game calls them back home.

AS: “My Alabama” feels like the anaphora in a poem—and it is beautiful—and I want to thank you for that lyrical moment in the space of an interview which reveals why some writers (particularly, you) absolutely cannot exist without writing, which is to say, bringing the image and music into the moment. In a recent feature interview, you mentioned the role that your own life plays in your fiction, and how Sylvia Butler's (the protagonist of your novel, Drinking From A Bitter Cup) experiences "mirrored" your own. Did you worry about setting it in your hometown of Ariton, Alabama? Were you concerned with how friends and family back at home might "read" it? I have always been concerned by the way my Southern-set fiction might be misread by those close to me, especially when the story being told challenges southern myths. How do you deal with the way in which writing lays bare and makes solid things things drawn from life?

AJB: There was a time in my life when I would not have written either Drinking From a Bitter Cup or House Repairs. As the young folks say,” I included receipts” in both of those books that trace directly back to people both living and dead. I did not sugar-coat the truth. But it took becoming a mature woman and a mature writer, to feel comfortable telling my truth and not being afraid of the fall-out. Of course, it helps that I live 714 miles from my hometown, but even if I still lived there, I was ready to “birth these babies.” My family and friends knew my backstory when I wrote those two books, so when they read about it in DFABC and HP, they were not surprised. A few people reached out to me and asked why I was telling these stories now, but they were in the minority. Most people supported me telling my truth. Truth really does set us all free.

The other thing that allowed me to feel free to tell these stories, was that my daddy had passed away. He was unaware of most of the abuse I experienced, so I never would have published these books if he had been alive, or at least, I wouldn’t have blindsided him. I would have revealed to him the things I was writing about. But as far as everyone else, I had no reservations about telling my truth. I also work hard to protect the innocent. I don’t name names in my books BUT the major players know who they are and if they want to come for me at this stage of our life, I am not afraid. Truth telling is what we need more of these days. Fear has allowed us to become apathetic. I refuse to live in fear and I refuse to keep my fictional characters in a place of fear. Even when their lives are traumatic, I work hard to always redeem their minds. I want their stories to end with hope. Not happily ever after, but definitely hope.

AS: I love that your poetry collection, House Repairs, was published by Negative Capability Press, an Alabama publisher that has been supporting poetry for years under the wing of a generous poet, educator, and writer named Sue Brannan Walker. It is intimate, raw, and fearless. Both you and Sue used poetry as a vehicle to explore the  experience of adoption into verse form, and I feel as if that space is still undertrodden. Adoption is part of the fabric of life for so many persons, and yet it is rarely touched in poetry. A friend who was adopted once told me that she doesn't like to mention it because people tend to get nervous and quiet--she called it an "awkward-maker topic". I wonder if there is a taboo, a sort of wall of silence, that surrounds the discussion of adoption, and how your own experience speaks (or doesn't speak) to this.

AJB: I did not have a healthy relationship with my adopted mother. Ever. She never wanted to adopt a child. It was always my daddy who wanted...no...needed a child. He was meant to be a daddy. All of his nieces and nephews gravitated to him because he was always the “cool Uncle.” I had a few cousins who resented me when I came and took their spot with Daddy...LOL. In fact, Daddy was so determined to become a father, he said to his wife, after twenty-four years of marriage, either they would adopt a child or he was going to have to leave the marriage. She agreed, but she was never happy about it. I was abused by her -- physically and mentally. Mainly because I wasn’t her biological child, but also because she was never mentally healthy. Possibly due to her own abusive childhood and her inability to get pregnant. She made a special point of telling me at a very young age, before I was even in school, that I was adopted. And she said it in a way that let me know she felt adoption wasn’t a good way to get a child. My daddy, on the other hand, only saw me as his little girl. The word “adoption” never entered into a conversation between him and I. Ever. But, since this word “adoption” was part of my lexicon at a very young age, some of my first stories were about my birth mother. I didn’t know who she was, but in my stories, she always ALWAYS was on a search to find me. I imagined she was being held against her will by an evil tyrant but because of her love for me, she would find a way to escape and then she and my daddy, M.C. Jackson, would live “happily ever after” raising me and loving me unconditionally in my little stories.

Those stories sustained me. Kept me going at a time when a mother’s love was absent from my life and my daddy could only compensate for that so much. So, even when I became an adult, I still wrote stories about little girls and women grappling with the loss of their parents and the trials and triumphs of being raised by a parent who chose them (or not). Through writing I have been on a journey of self-discovery and healing. I don’t think I will ever not have “mommy issues.” I found my birth mother at the age of 32, and she and I formed a bond.. The bond wasn’t the same as it would have been had she raised me with her other children, but I am grateful for the 16 years she and I did get to have together before she passed away.

AS: Your poem, "I Must Not Breathe," speaks to Eric Garner's tragic murder at the hands of police officers. In the backstory for this poem, you mention music and how it readies the room or sets the tone of writing for you. What music informed your books, and did this vary by genre? What should we hear when reading each one?

AJB: Every story, every play, every poem I write, has some type of playlist attached to it. When I write, I often listen to music to take me to the era or time I am writing about. When I sat and watched the murder of Eric Garner, the only thing that brought me peace of mind was the gospel song by the late, great James Cleveland, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” That day, I was done. I thought, “I will never find words to show what I am feeling right now,” and then I thought about that song I remembered hearing play on the radio in my home growing up or sung at the church where I and my family attended. I realized that the very least I could do as a writer was to not grow weary and let my words attempt to capture the moment and perhaps bring clarity to some and comfort to others. Eric Garner lost his life that day. I had no space to claim weariness and that James Cleveland song reminded me of that fact, which led me to write, “I Must Not Breathe.”

When I wrote Drinking From a Bitter Cup, I listened to a lot of Motown, Gospel music, and Rock, particularly Pink Floyd, who my young protagonist loved. “Comfortably Numb” was one of the songs she listened to often in the book, and likewise, I tried to wrap my brain around this young, Black country girl and her passion for rock bands like Pink Floyd, Guns & Roses, The Rolling Stones, etc. 

When I wrote my play “Still Singing Those Weary Blues,” I listened to Bessie, Sarah, Ella, and Dinah on repeat. The blues singer in my play was their contemporary, so I knew not only did I have to be knowledgeable of that era, my characters had to be too. She had to know their music and where her music fit within the genre and the time. And having that genre of music, jazz/blues playing as I wrote, allowed me to be transported to that time. I literally felt like I was time traveling every time I wrote when that music was playing.

I can’t imagine the writing process minus music. The two are so intrinsically connected in my mind. Right now, I am doing the edits for When Stars Rain Down and my soundtrack consists of The Carter Family, songs from the Methodist hymnal, and Sacred Harp. All of this music found its way into my novel. So just like the music grounds me, it also grounds  my characters and it also grounds the reader. 

AS: Your new novel, When Stars Rain Down, is set in Georgia during the Great Depression. How did you choose this time and this story to tell? What sort of research was involved in setting this narrative during a time that intersected with Reconstruction and the rise of the Klan? I would love to know more about your novel-writing process in this case.

AJB: The  characters in When Stars Rain Down were originally part of my graduate thesis when I was a student at Spalding University’s low residency in creative writing program, so I knew, ahead of time, the era that they were living in. When Stars Rain Down started out as a short story, but then it became this expansive story. I knew Opal and her story and the stories of all of the major players in the fictional town of Parsons, Georgia which made writing this novel easier than some of my other novels where I begin with a blank page. My research for this novel was extensive. I read a lot of books about black domestic workers because my main character was a housekeeper, along with her grandmother, for a white family in Parsons. I wanted to reclaim the “maid narrative” in fiction and truly write a book that showed respect to the profession and those working in it. I grew up with family members who were maids/housekeepers, and I wanted to write a novel that reflected what I saw as a young person who often got taken to work by various family members to their places of work. So, I wanted to pay homage to all of those men and women who worked with dignity and diligence to do good work even when their employers might not have always shown them the respect they deserved. BUT let me preface this by saying I didn’t rest on the fact that I KNEW these characters. I did the hard work. I took nothing for granted and I went out of my way to make sure my characters were multifaceted and multidimensional. I was not content to have stock characters or caricatures -- no writer should BUT I specifically wanted to make sure these characters got the respect they so richly deserved.. 

Therefore, I read nonfiction books like The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South, Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South, to name a few. I also spoke with family members and family friends who cleaned houses and cooked for white families and asked some pointed questions about their experiences.  I shared my book with white friends and associates who grew up with Black domestic workers to get their insight. 

As far as the other historical details go, I spent time in Atlanta and McDonough, Georgia doing research. I went to The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta and The Genealogical Society of Henry and Clayton Counties, Inc. in McDonough as well as the courthouse in McDonough. I chose McDonough for some of my research because my fictional town of Parsons, GA sits somewhere in between Atlanta and McDonough. 

Google was also my friend. Google, when used strategically and thoughtfully, can generate a lot of information that once we would have only been able to find in a library. I also include some historical people  in my novel like Satchel Paige and his wife, Janet and the sheriff in the story. I read as much as I could about them and then I tried to make sure my inclusion of them in my stories honored who they were historically -- based on books, letters, newspaper articles, interviews, etc.

I spent months researching this novel before I typed the words Chapter One. I believe firmly in researching and outlining my books. I don’t like a lot of surprises. I try to work through the kinks BEFORE I sit down to write because that allows the writing to go much faster for me. So I spent about six months researching, doing character development, and plot development.  I understood these characters and their world to the point where I knew what was on every street and who lived in all of the houses. Yes, that is a pretty anal approach, I admit, but for me, it allows me to feel like I am writing about real, live breathing people, not fictitious characters. 

AS: This reminds me of the way Kwoya Fagin Maples prepared to write her poetry collection, MEND. In a workshop for the Alabama State Poetry Society, Kowya described immersing herself completely in the voices and history and time of the enslaved Black women named in Marion Sims’s autobiography: Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy. She did a tremendous amount of research before sitting down to give these women voices. Maybe this research--this painstaking reading--is how writers offer honor the silenced voices in fictional or poetic spaces. Your work is so impressive in the way it crosses genre boundaries and mediums. As a playwright whose work has been staged in multiple venues, how do you decide whether an idea or an inspiration is suited for a particular genre? Why does one story become a play while another one needs a novel? And what advice would you give playwrights trying to get their work published or performed locally?

AJB: Because I have directed and produced most of my plays myself, I truly think about the cost before sitting down to write a play. I know that sounds very “business-like” but literally, if my idea is so expansive that there has to be numerous characters and numerous settings, I will often say, “Okay, that’s a short story or a book. We don’t have the budget to recreate what you have in your mind, ma’am.” 

But if my idea is on a smaller scale and I can get away with five or six characters and one or two set changes that aren’t too expensive to recreate, then I think to myself, “Okay, that could work as a play,” because bottom line, I, for the most part, write plays for community theatre. That’s my lane of choice for now. And I know that community theatre companies don’t have Hamilton level budgets. So, I try to write plays that I know can be put on with props like a table and a chair for the setting, and basic costumes that can be bought at Goodwill or some other thrift store. I write plays that allow the audience to suspend their disbelief and accept my very minimalistic approach to storytelling. Now, I have a play, that if I win the lottery, I am going to direct and go full out with casting, setting, costumes, etc. But until then, I am content writing plays the way that I do.

So, my advice to new playwrights is to follow the KISS principle which is: Keep it simple, stupid. Hamilton is a phenomenal show, but if you are writing your first musical, don’t try to mimic what Lin-Manuel Miranda did. The budget for Hamilton was 12.5 million. The likelihood of getting that type of budget for your first, second, or 50th musical is nil next to none. So, think smaller….much smaller….if you want your work to see the light of day.

My first musical, Dear Bobby had six main characters with the option for a chorus. The amazing director, Deborah Asante of the Asante Children’s Theatre, in Indianapolis, IN, was able to put together a show that left the audience mesmerized, and the audience didn’t notice what wasn’t on the stage, they only cared about what was on the stage. So write a show that you know the local high school or community theatre can put on as well as a New York theatre on Broadway, if that is your goal. Simplicity is key. Write shows that are heavy on character, not on setting and costumes. Tell a story that is good, and you increase your chances of getting it produced somewhere other than in your own mind.

In other words, don’t give theatres a reason to say no. And now that we are living in the age of Covid-19, my best advice would be to write a one person play. Or write a play that allows for social distancing or write a play that can be performed outside. Think outside of the proverbial box and give theatres a reason to tell you and your play yes!

AS: Your words are so encouraging—they are a testament to your talent as well the passion of the following a dream and working ceaselessly towards its realization. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about writing, life, and all its wonders with us. And for AWC members, librarians, educators, and Alabama readers, please support this incredible writer by pre-ordering a copy of her new novel, When Stars Rain Down (forthcoming April 2021). If you are interested in receiving an Advanced Review Copy, those inquiries are welcome.

A special reading from Angela Jackson-Brown

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award winning writer, poet and playwright who teaches Creative Writing and English at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She is a graduate of Troy University, Auburn University and the Spalding low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novel, Drinking From A Bitter Cup and has published in numerous literary journals.  Angela’s play, Anna’s Wings, was selected in 2016 to be a part of the IndyFringe DivaFest and her play, Flossie Bailey Takes a Stand, was part of the Indiana Bicentennial Celebration at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. She also wrote and produced the play It Is Well and she was the co-playwright with Ashya Thomas on a play called Black Lives Matter (Too). In the spring of 2018, Angela co-wrote a musical with her colleague, Peter Davis, called Dear Bobby: The Musical, that was part of the 2018 OnyxFest in Indianapolis, IN. Her book of poetry called House Repairs was published by Negative Capability Press in the fall of 2018, and in the fall of 2019, she directed and produced a play she wrote called Still Singing Those Weary Blues. Her new novel, When Stars Rain Down, to be published by Thomas Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins, is forthcoming in 2021.