Bridgett M. Davis is a novelist, essayist, teacher, filmmaker, and curator and The World According to Fannie Davis is her first nonfiction book. The second novel from Bridgett M. Davis, Into The Go-Slow, was selected as a best book of 2014 by Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, BookRiot, Bustle and The Root, among others. Time Out New York named Bridgett M. Davis one of “10 New York Authors to Read Right Now”. Davis’ debut novel Shifting Through Neutral, published by Amistad/Harper Collins in 2004, was a finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award; A Quarterly Black Review bestseller and an “Original Voices” selection by Border’s Books. Bridgett M. Davis was selected as 2005 New Author of the Year by Go on Girl! Book Club — the largest national reading group for African-American women.
A major advocate for promoting and nurturing literary talent by people of color, Davis is co-founder and curator for Words@Weeksville, a monthly reading series held at Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn. Equally dedicated to her work as a teacher and mentor, Davis is a Professor of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College, CUNY, where she teaches Creative Writing, Film and Narrative Writing, and is Director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program.
When someone asks you ‘what do you do for a living?’ – How do you respond?
I say I’m a writer and a teacher. I always say both, because for me one compliments the other. They’re my twin professional identities.
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What are you reading at the moment?
I’ve just read Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry. It’s an advance copy of a beautiful slim book that comes out in September. I’m now reading My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and having so much fun (see our interview with Oyinkan Braithwaite). I love her irreverent voice.
What’s your earliest memory of reading?
I remember my father helping me sound out words in the children’s book, Put Me In The Zoo by Robert Lopshire before I began school. I can still recall the excitement I felt when I figured out the word “with”.
If you could encourage young people to read one book in particular, what would it be and why?
I’d encourage them to read Brown Girl Dreaming by Jackie Woodson, because it’s an evocative coming-of-age story told in verse. It’s YA, so accessible to young readers, yet so resonant and inspiring and timeless. To read that book as a young girl or boy is to see the possibilities of storytelling as well as a validation of your own experience. That’s transformative.
What is the worst job you’ve ever had?
When I was a young teen, I worked at a day-care center. I was too young for that job, and the children were too much for me. I wasn’t a person who “just loved” kids, so I found them utterly exhausting. When the owner came in one day and found me napping alongside the kids, he fired me. Thank goodness.
Do you read as much as you’d like to?
I read a lot, all the time – magazines, my NYTimes and Medium apps, online articles, books… Lately, I’ve been reading books I’ve been assigned to read, to review or blurb or judge for a contest. I enjoy being given an excuse to read books I wouldn’t otherwise, but it’s not the same as when I can simply make my way to a book that calls my name. I’m also reading a lot of screenplays right now, as inspiration for a screenplay I’m writing based on my memoir. That’s instructive and fun too.
What books do you feel are important reading for people on your career path and why?
I’m an author, so I just think it’s important as a writer to read any and everything that attracts your interest. I’m not big on “how-to” books, but as a memoirist I’d list two: The Situation and The Story by Vivian Gornick, and Inventing The Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir edited by William Zinsser, which has the text from an astonishing lecture by Toni Morrison called “The Site of Memory.” I return to it again and again.
Is there a book that you’ve read more than once? What is it and why did you revisit it?
I reread Daddy Was A Number Runner by Louise Meriwether when I began working on my memoir, which has a similar subject matter. Also, that book changed my life and in many ways inspired my writing life, so there’s that.
What book have you recommended the most to friends and family?
I tend to recommend whatever new book I’ve just read and loved, so the cast of characters change constantly. As of late, I’m recommending The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, Training School For Negro Girls by Camille Acker, Knitting The Fog by Claudia D. Hernandez and Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry.
Also, honestly, I’ve really encouraged my friends and family to read my book, The World According to Fannie Davis, because they all knew my mom, or knew about her, and I want to invite them all to know her in this new way – as a personality in a book that was written by her daughter.
What’s your favourite genre of book?
Fiction is my first love. I’m not a big genre reader, but other than literary fiction per se, if I had to choose a genre it would be magical realism in the vein of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
What do you think a world without books would be like?
I cannot imagine this world of which you speak, but I’ll try: We’d be more deeply rooted in the oral tradition, with more storytelling around campfires and in living rooms and at dinner parties. The MOTH, which is a nationwide program of stories told live, without notes, is an example of this out in the world. So is the popularity of podcasts. And theater! So while it would be a loss, that inability to engage intimately with the writer as a reader, storytelling would not go away. We need it as humans. (As a loophole, you didn’t say periodicals would go away, so I also think writers would revert back to writing episodic serials in newspapers and magazines and online sites. So no books, but literature still!)
Is there an author whose writing you’re such a fan of, that you’ll read everything they release?
Tayari Jones.
Do you think digital books will ever completely replace real books?
The pendulum swings, doesn’t it? Independent bookstores are having a resurgence, as it were, so no. The more digital we become, the more folks hunger for a tactile experience, like holding a book and turning its pages.
What book do you feel humanity needs right now?
Humanity needs so much right now, but if I chose one book it would be Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. America in particular needs to know its history and confront it, and no book as ever laid out the insidiousness of racist practice and thought like this one. It’s a treasure.
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What is the book that you feel has had the single biggest impact on your life?
Daddy Was A Number Runner by Louise Meriwether shifted everything for me when I read it at age 10. It is a beautiful coming-of-age novel about a black girl growing up in 1930s Harlem. Her father was a bookie for an informal lottery system that predates legal lotteries, and so was my mom, three decades later. So I saw my own parent’s occupation within those pages, and I also saw a black girl as the protagonist of a book, which I’d never seen before in my life. Double validation. As soon as I finished that book I decided to become a writer.
Are there any books you haven’t mentioned that you feel would make your reading list?
So many! Here’s a few that I recommend everyone read:
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones;
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy;
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson;
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez;
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro;
Fairyland by Alysia Abbott;
The Light of The World by Elizabeth Alexander;
Becoming by Michelle Obama;
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah;
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. The Kiss by Katherine Harrison and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson are three books that impacted me so greatly I had to slow down to read them, so as to catch my breath. Even though I read them all long ago, I can still conjure the feeling they evoked in me.
What books or subject matter do you plan on reading in the next year?
I plan on reading more memoirs, as I think about working on my next one. The New York Times just published its 50 Best Memoirs of the past 50 Years, and I’ve been thinking how fun it would be to make my way through the list of those I haven’t read. Plus the ones that readers added because a Best Of list is inherently incomplete and subjective. I think that would keep me busy for two years!
If you were to write an autobiography – what would it be called?
Being Fannie’s Daughter.
If you’d like to learn more about Bridgett M. Davis, you can find more on her website and on Twitter.
Photo credit: Nina Subin
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