Ep 38: A Conversation On Black Writers, Black Resistance, And Telling The Stories Of Our Youth - Renée Watson, Co-Author Of The 1619 Project: Born On The Water, Talks Her Journey To Becoming A Writer

Renée Watson

#1 New York Times Bestselling author, educator, and community activist

This week’s episode features Renée Watson, #1 New York Times Bestselling author, educator, and community activist. With a focus on Black youth and particularly Black girls, Renée’s poetry and fiction explores themes of home, identity, and the intersections of race, class, and gender. Her children’s books and novels for teens have received international recognition and awards, including the Coretta Scott King Award and the Newbery Honor.

Renée most recently co-authored the children’s adaptation of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, titled The 1619 Project: Born on the Water. The picture book written in verse provides a pathway for young readers to learn and reflect on the impact of slavery and the history of Black resistance and triumph in the US.

Listen as we discuss Renée’s journey to becoming a writer, including how a school assignment led to her first published novel portraying the experiences of Black youth during Hurricane Katrina, and how her upcoming book, Maya’s Song, was an opportunity to honor one of the biggest influences on her career, Maya Angelou. We also discuss the importance of Black writers staying true to their vision and continuing to tell our stories, even amid legislation and national movements that seek to limit their ability to do so.

Conversation highlights

Myriha (Host): Can you take us back to one of the earliest experiences in your childhood when you knew that writing and poetry and its ability to allow you express to express yourself as a Black girl would have a profound impact on your growth in your professional journey?

Renée Watson (Guest): So I fell in love with poetry very young, I was in elementary school. My mother took me to the library and we checked out a poetry book that had several poets in it including Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. And I remember falling in love with those words. I think Langston Hughes was in there as well.

So I started memorizing poems and performing them at school, sometimes at community events, and I took to writing. I always had a journal and would write poetry and short stories. I remember being in the second grade and I wrote a 21-page story and turned it into my teacher. It wasn't assignment, I just wrote it at home and brought it into school. And thank God for the teacher who said, “Wow, I think you're going to be a writer one day.”

So I had this audience of my mother, and this beautiful, wonderful teacher who really nurtured and encouraged me to write and to take this natural talent seriously. So I've been writing and falling in love with words for a really long time.

Myriha (Host): How did the opportunity to adapt Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project into a children’s picture book come into fruition? Why did you personally feel it necessary to have this piece of work and the history of slavery and Black resistance accessible to school age children?

Renée Watson (Guest): When I first got the invitation, I was not sure that I would say yes. It felt like a big feat to tell 400 years of history in a picture book. How do we not traumatize young people? And I remember talking to my mom about it and saying, “I don't want to write a book about slavery. I have never wanted to do that.” And she was like, “well, you're not going to write about slavery, you're gonna write about humanity.” And I think that was a shift for me to be like, oh, right, approach it like I approach all my stories and just make sure that I'm still keeping in mind that you are not what happened to you; that these people have a history that did not start on a slave ship. And once I kind of just reminded myself of that, I felt like okay, I got this, we can do this.

She [Nikole Hannah-Jones] trusted me with leading the way in terms of writing the book in verse, allowing us to have more snapshots and vignettes of the history and not trying to tell this long narrative story in a picture book. But I also thought verse would lend itself to a softness that I thought young people would need when reading something like this, giving them a moment to pause so that if they can only read one or two poems at a time, that was enough for that day, and they could come back to it and pick up. And then also just the the oral tradition of Black, spoken word and passing down stories in this oral tradition of poetry. All these factors influenced the format of the book and then Nikkolas Smith came in with his genius illustrations. It was a very powerful and beautiful collaboration.

We felt like our young people need the truth, all young people need to know the truth of our history in this nation. And Black American kids, especially, we wanted them to know that their ancestors loved and were brilliant and smart and talented; that they were people who existed and that there was a humanity there that wasn't not just being slaves.

Myriha Burce