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Bennett. Even though we’re not spell-
ing it out for you, what you need to
know about Blackness and living within
a white- supremacist country, it’s right
there. You do the work ... Bringing it
back though to this idea of a Black cre-
ative renaissance, I wonder what the
difference is between a cultural renais-
sance and a trend.
Woodson: A renaissance is a
continuum. We’re here because of
the Harlem Renaissance. All of our
work has come before in some way,
shape or form. As our country shifts
racially, the creative work is shifting
too. And I don’t ever expect to see that
white-boy narrative again. I don’t ever
expect to not be invited to somebody’s
wiener roast in the way that we were in
the ’90s.
Carroll: Really?
Woodson: Yes, there’s no way of going
back from here. We come from a people
who were not allowed to learn to read
and write, and here we are. We’re not
going to unlearn. We also come from a
people who were storytellers, and that
was oppressed forever, and now that has
broken open. We know our stories mat-
ter because the writers who came be-
fore us have showed us how we’ve been
silenced and we have a right to speak.
We’re not going to shut up. And in
this, in the writing, we’re teaching our
daughters.Carroll: We just came off of a really
tough year. But in that latter half of the
year was this chorus of “Listen to Black
women. Trust Black women.” What
would it look like to truly listen to and
trust Black women in this country?
Bennett: There was a way in which it
rang pretty hollow to me. It falls into
these various cultural expectations
of what white people demand from
Black women, whether it is wanting a
mammy who cares for you emotionally
and endlessly sacrifices herself, or a
Black super woman. These various
tropes kept cropping up—Black women
are swooping in to save America from
itself. It’s like, no, we’re trying to save
ourselves. A vision of America that is
fair to Black women would by necessity
also be better for a lot of other types of
people, a vision of America that pushes
back against misogyny and racism and
classism and all these other isms.
Guillory: After the Georgia election,
there was a lot of “Put Stacey Abrams
in charge of the vaccine rollout.” You
know, she should take a vacation first.
She’s just had a pretty busy year.Carroll: The expectation very quickly
went from her being capable to her being
supercapable to her being absolutely
other. And that’s what happens with
Black women in this country: it starts
with the trope, and then it ends with a
hyperversion of the trope.
Woodson: Our work is to take care of
ourselves in some way. I’m tired of ex-
plaining to white people. If 2020 taught
me anything, it’s that: it’s not my job.Carroll is a writer, cultural critic and hostNOVEL
WOMEN
THE AUTHORS’
CHARACTERS STICK
WITH THEM: Guillory
wonders what her
protagonist, written to
live in her neighborhood,
would think of the
new pizza shop. And
Woodson warns, “Don’t
kill a character off. They
will haunt you forever.”