Conversations with John A. Williams

Jeffrey Allen Tucker

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781496815378
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

One of the most prolific African American authors of his time, John A. Williams (1925-2015) made his mark as a journalist, educator, and writer. Having worked for Newsweek, Ebony, and Jet magazines, Williams went on to write twelve novels and numerous works of nonfiction. A vital link between the Black Arts movement and the previous era, Williams crafted works of fiction that relied on historical research as much as his own finely honed skills. From The Man Who Cried I Am, a roman à clef about expatriate African American writers in Europe, to Clifford's Blues, a Holocaust novel told in the form of the diary entries of a gay, black, jazz pianist in Dachau, these representations of black experiences marginalized from official histories make him one of our most important writers. Conversations with John A. Williams collects twenty-three interviews with the three-time winner of the American Book Award, beginning with a discussion in 1969 of his early works and ending with a previously unpublished interview from 2005. Gathered from print periodicals as well as radio and television programs, these interviews address a range of topics, including anti-black violence, Williams's WWII naval service, race and publishing, interracial romance, Martin Luther King Jr., growing up in Syracuse, the Prix de Rome scandal, traveling in Africa and Europe, and his reputation as an angry black writer. The conversations prove valuable given how often Williams drew from his own life and career for his fiction. They display the integrity, social engagement, and artistic vision that make him a writer to be reckoned with.

On Safari West

Jeffrey Allen Tucker / 2005

Interview conducted October 6, 2005. Courtesy of the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, University of Rochester River Campus Libraries.

Jeffrey Allen Tucker: We’re back with John and Lori, October 6. We’re discussing Safari West now, which is a collection of poems spanning most of your career, John, from 1953 to 1997. Many of these poems were published previously. Before they were published in this volume, they were published in volumes such as the New Black Poetry and in journals and periodicals such as New Letters and Callaloo. This collection, Safari West, was published by a press in Montreal. I’m going to try the name. Is it …?

John A. Williams & Lori Williams: Hochelaga.

JAT: Hochelaga. How did you come to publish with Hochelaga? It is a press in Montreal.

LW: My niece lives in Montreal. She’s a writer and teacher as well, and she is married to a writer and journalist. He’s an editor at the Montreal Gazette and a publisher, a small publisher. He had published one or two other things, I think, before this. He is an admirer of John and thought it was a pity that he never had a volume of poetry under one roof, in one volume. That was the theme for this, for doing this.

JAT: Was Safari West distributed mainly in Canada? Was it distributed in the United States widely?

LW: Well, I think he used a distributor in the States who didn’t do much with it, really, unfortunately, and he didn’t have the financial wherewithal to do a real advertising-and-PR kind of thing with it.

JAW: And I didn’t have the energy to push it any more than I did or could at that time.

LW: Old Ish gave it another award, Ishmael Reed.

JAW: Right. Yes. I had done another volume of poetry, which I had typed up myself and copied and sold. It was just called Poems. I’m sure there’s an old raggedyass copy around here somewhere. I’ve been writing poems for as long as I’ve been writing. Period.

JAT: It’s interesting that you say that because one of the blurbs on the cover says that poetry is your first love. Is that true?

JAW: Well, yes, because I first learned the magic of poetry as a Sunday school kid. When Easter comes, you get all these little pageants and things, and Thanksgiving, you get these little pageants and things, and Christmas … oh, boy.

JAT: You’d be reciting Bible verses and popular songs about the holidays and so on.

JAW: Yes.

JAT: That’s really interesting. You’re saying, though, that you’ve written poetry as long as you’ve written anything?

JAW: Yes.

JAT: Now, this other poetry volume that’s just entitled Poems, when was that put together?

JAW: I think that was in the fifties and sixties, and it was—

LW: I think earlier. Not sixties, certainly; it was before I met you.

JAT: Would we have a copy of that in Rochester, you think?

JAW: I don’t know.

LW: There was something in the booklet about it, so it must be.

JAW: It’s a mimeograph work, and a gray cover sheet with a big P on the front saying “Poems.”

JAT: Is anything from that in Safari West?

JAW: I doubt it very much. That was another life practically.

JAT: You’ve written poetry throughout your career. Any sense as to why poetry doesn’t figure more prominently?

JAW: Because I’m always torn between fiction and poetry. There are periods that I have when I do write poetry, and I’m sure I have a bundle of stuff that I haven’t collated or gone over again to see if I really want to use it. But I’ve got at least one ankle in poetry and will always have one.

JAT: A saying about books and their covers comes to mind, but I do have to ask about the artwork on the cover of Safari West. It’s a sculpture, and it’s described in the book’s front matter as a “lifesize head of John A. Williams by James Earl Reid, 1998.” Who’s James Earl Reid?

LW: As I recall, he had done a bust of Billie Holiday that was in the town square. Where was she born? Do you know? Because I have a feeling that the statue he did of her is in the town square of where she is from.¹

JAW: I don’t remember anything about that, honey. I can’t help you.

LW: He’d heard John and said he would like to do this bust of him. He started coming up that summer and spent … I forgot how many sessions. He came with that other friend, remember, who used to drive. Anyway, he would sit out there in the backyard, and he was sculpting.

JAT: Did he make a number of trips up here?

LW: Several. We assumed that he would fire it and make several and that we would get one, but apparently, he never was able to raise the money in order to do it. He was sort of a strange guy. We took some pictures of it when it was finished, but as far as we knew, he never did have it cast. It probably disappeared.

JAT: So we don’t know where this—

LW: No, if it’s even still in existence.

JAT: Was this picture taken here?

LW: Yes.

JAT: It’s fuzzy. Lori; you took the picture?

LW: I guess so.

JAT: It says you took the picture.

LW: If it says that, I guess I did.

JAT: “Cover photograph by Lori Williams.”

LW: My second cover photograph.

JAW: You’re getting there. [laughs]

JAT: Is photography a hobby for you?

LW: No. [laughs]

JAW: Point and shoot.

JAT: Because it’s a really good picture.

LW: It is.

JAW: No shade, point and shoot.

LW: I also took the picture of John and Dennis that’s used on the back of the Pryor book. That was up in the country.

JAT: I was surprised. I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know Lori was a photographer.”

LW: Just a fluke.

JAT: I’d like to ask you brief questions about some specific poems in the collection. It looks like I have questions about a lot of the poems, more than I thought I had. Let’s start with “Safari West” the poem, starting on page 14, from 1969. The speaker of this poem describes being in coastal Nigeria near Popo Channel and the Barracoons in which Africans who were shipped to the New World were held. I assume that the poem is based on your own visit to this location.

JAW: Yes.

JAT: What had brought you to Nigeria?

JAW: I forget now what it was. Was I doing something for Newsweek at that time?

LW: Possibly. I think Nigeria specifically—it was where Wendell was at that time.

JAW: That’s true.

JAT: Wendell?

JAW: Wendell Roye was an old buddy of mine. He was with the USIS.

LW: Some governmental agency based in Lagos.

JAW: How do I want to say this? It’s a cockeyed title because a safari west obviously was not a safari for Africans, and I hope people understood that.

LW: The irony.

JAW: The irony.

JAT: I appreciate and I take you at your word when you say it’s a cockeyed title, although I think it’s an apt title in some ways. I like Nikki Giovanni’s take on it. There’s a blurb from her at the beginning of the book where she says, “Yes, this is not my home, only my safari west.” Speaking not only about herself, but African Americans in general. The word safari, I think—I’m not completely sure about this, but I think it translates to journey or expedition. Certainly, the expedition of enslaved Africans into the New World was a forced one. It was an imp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• On Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light
• An Interview with John A. Williams
• John A. Williams: Agent Provocateur
• Interview—October 25, 1971 and Interview—June 9, 1972
• The Art of John A. Williams
• John A. Williams: On Captain Blackman
• Novelist in Motion: Interview with John A. Williams.
• John Williams at 49: An Interview
• The Black Artist in New York: An Interview with John A. Williams
• An Interview with John A. Williams: Journalist and Novelist
• Contemporary Authors Interview
• Cross-Country Chat with John A. Williams
• Interview with John A. Williams
• An Interview with John A. Williams
• Black Authors: John A. Williams
• On If I Stop I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor—Interview with John A. Williams and Dennis A. Williams
• John A. Williams
• An Interview with John A. Williams
• Clifford’s Blues: A Conversation with John A. Williams
• A Cry in the American Wilderness: John A. Williams Reflects on Life, Work, and the American Way
• Hard Truths: John A. Williams Illuminates the Black Experience
• Vanqui: Original Opera that Blends African and Classical Themes
• On Safari West
• Index