Mamalicious!

Here at the 32 Days of Black History blogathon, we’ve designated Sundays as “Black to the Future” days. In these entries, we will shine our spotlight on black folks you should know (but may not), folks you’re going to be hearing about in the future (if you haven’t already).

One wall of my study is cluttered with various and sundry bits of inspiration, humor, and irreverence, held in place by colored push-pins. One of these bits is a frayed, yellowing piece of magazine-print that I ripped, literally, from Savoy magazine nearly 5 years ago. The small article includes an intro and a Q & A. The featured author, Philly native Mat Johnson, caught my eye because he looks like a long-lost high school friend of mine–both are tall, light-skinned brothers with cocksure grins. Mat’s resemblance to my friend piqued my interest, but his words held it–and led me to grab a blue push-pin.

The interviewer began by asking Mat about his 2nd novel, the disturbing and entertaining, Hunting in Harlem, a tale of gentrification gone all kinds of wrong–dead wrong, in fact:

How’d you come up with this concept?

I’m not a thriller writer, but the concept came to me as I walked around Harlem thinking: This would be a really great neighborhood if we could just get rid of you and you and you. And then feeling really conflicted about that.

Your book is excellent, but there’s really no guarantee that people will read it, is there?

In our community, our primary art form is music, so we’ve incorporated sophistication into music, but it’s still hard to draw black audiences to good jazz. There isn’t a big black literary fiction following [either]. But the real issue is that there isn’t a big audience for literary fiction, period.

Is education part of the problem?

It’s one of the wildest things, but almost all of these “sistergirl” writers have a background in engineering or business, and they’re very proud of that. One of the reasons those books are so bad is because they don’t have a background in English.

[*head swiveling* Did he just say…?]

What was it like before your success?

I was just another poor dude walking around Harlem. I had my Payless shoes and wore them out so bad that they had holes in the bottom the size of a fist. I actually saved the shoes. It’s just my paying dues, but I’m lucky that I just took ‘no’ for an answer from the beginning, before the whole self-publishing craze. If I’d put out that original book, I would have settled and never have pushed myself to be as good as I am.

I thought to myself, That. Right. There. I want that kind of confidence in my writing. I want those cojones. I want to be that good.

Now mind you, I hadn’t read a word of Mat’s writing at this point. But whatever this brother was selling, I was buying.

Fast forward to summer 2007: Thanks to The Internets (where I cyber-met Mat’s wife and fellow writer, Meera Bowman Johnson) and to Pittsburgh poet friends (Terrence Hayesand Yona Harvey), I have applied and been accepted into Mat’s novel writing workshop at Hurston Wright Foundation’s Writers’ Week.

Mat’s great. A great writer, teacher, facilitator, and storyteller. He’s sincere, congenial, and incredibly accessible to emerging writers. He gives honest, helpful critique (”None of you,” he announced to the dozen of us who attended the workshop, “have read enough.” And he meant that in a good way). Mat genuinely cares about black writers and good writing.

Recently, Mat was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by the United States Artists Foundation. He teaches at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Until last summer, Mat blogged at the now-defunct NiggeratiManor. Of course you can read his best stuff in print:

The aforementioned Hunting in Harlem…

Mat’s first book, Drop…

The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York

…and Mat’s latest, Incognegro, a graphic novel that is “both a page-turning mystery and a disturbing exploration of race and self-image in America…”

(I didn’t realize this at first, but this is also a photo of Mat.)

(Photos linked to Amazon.com)

 

 

 

Happy reading!

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You are in the midst of a blogathon celebrating 32 Days of Black History! Yvette at Six Impossible Things…and I are joined by InkogNegro,Christina, Chris,Tami, and Mr. Shadow.Visit, comment, bookmark!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 11:32 pm and is filed under 32 Days of Black History, Black to the Future, Books and Writers, Cool Stuff, Currently Reading, Friends, Wordsmithin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.