Friday, Nov 5, 2021 • 15min
Tiphanie Yanique and Dawnie Walton on music, monsters, and family baggage
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Novels "Monster in the Middle" and "The Final Revival of Opal and Nev" both delve into issues of race, the power of music, and the lasting effects of family trauma.
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Scott Simon
Dawnie Walton
Tiphanie Yanique
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Andrew Limbong
00:01
Hey, it's
NPR's
Book of the Day, I'm Andrew Limbong. If you heard the show on Tuesday, you know how much music can absolutely change your life. In just a bit, we'll hear how the two black women background singers in the Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense
influenced author Dawnie Walton's acclaimed debut novel "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev". It's a book about music and racism and how your parents mess you up, to paraphrase that Philip Larkin
poem, which are all threads in this interview we're going to listen to.Share
00:34
First it's with
Tiphanie Yanique
, author of the book "Monster in the Middle". It's a romance where the couple at the center struggles to really address some generational baggage. As Yanique
tells NPR's
Scott Simon
, "when you choose to love someone, you're not just loving that person's wounds, but their parents' and their grandparents' too". Here's the interview.Share
Break
Scott Simon
00:57
Fly and Stela meet early in the pandemic lockdown. Fly Lovett, he's in grad school, music theory. Stela Jones is in teacher training. Fly, who was born with the name Earl, comes from a family with a multiplicity of religious influences. Stela grew up a catholic school girl in the Caribbean.
Share
01:16
In the
Tiphanie Yanique's
new novel they and all of us carry the strands and colors of forebears and former loves whose path somehow deliver us to the time and place we meet one another, or sometimes just walk away. "Monster in The Middle" is the new novel from the acclaimed author of "Land of Love and Drowning". Tiphanie Yanique
joins us now from Atlanta,
where she's a professor at Emory University.
Thanks so much for being with usShare
Tiphanie Yanique
01:42
Oh, it's such a pleasure,
Scott
. Thanks for having me.Share
Scott Simon
01:45
I have a burning, intensely practical question for you.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
01:50
Ok!
Share
Scott Simon
01:50
Because this is such a beautifully intricate novel that ranges from New York to the Caribbean and Africa... how do you plot it all out? You index cards, wallpaper, what do you do?
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
02:02
I know writers are notoriously anal about these kinds of things, but I'm a reader. So mostly what I do is I just read and re-read. I've read this novel so many times myself so that I could do it in a way that made a reader feel excited about it.
Share
Scott Simon
02:20
Tell us please about Fly's father, Gary. Religious and then some. Longing for a lost love, well past what I'll call the expiration date.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
02:29
Gary is a person of deep and complex emotions, and he's someone who believes in things that are greater than himself. This is a gift that he has, but it's also... as many of us who experienced the world in this way, it can be a curse. I mean, being able to let things go is an important part of becoming an adult, and it's something that Gary really struggles with.
Share
Scott Simon
02:54
And tell us please about Stela. Gtowing up in
Saint Thomas
, the Virgin Islands. Her mother was an orphan. How do we see this perhaps affect the view of love that she develops and that Stela takes on as well sometimes?Share
Tiphanie Yanique
03:09
You know, we often think of ourselves as solitary people moving around in the world as individuals, but I think that our individuality is much more communal than we probably realize. Stela herself is a product of her mother, she's a product of her island, she's a product of her nation. Her mother has a lot of anxiety about not having had parents and then that affects the daughter. We think: where did I get this anxiety or this depression or these concerns from? You just have to look a few generations back.
Share
Scott Simon
03:41
Fly, as we noted, as a musician, and I think it's fair to say he was almost nursed on weed.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
03:48
Can we say that on
NPR?
I love it!Share
Scott Simon
03:52
Stela has an artistic view of the world, and something I think people can particularly relate to now: she has very vivid dream. She almost doesn't sleep, she goes to the movies.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
04:01
Yes, in a way she's really different than Fly - her, perhaps, beloved - who lived in a household where he was constantly being bombarded by exterior things. For Stela, her interior life is the place where she can go to protect herself, which is true for a lot of us too. But the other truth is that we are social beings, so what's happening inside of your mind it's not the all of you.
Share
Scott Simon
04:29
Let me ask you about some of the words you used to address the reader. "You're right, you're not falling in love with that one person, you're bringing it all. You're bringing us. When you meet your love, you were meeting all the people who ever loved them or who were supposed to love them, but didn't love them enough". That's a breathtaking idea.
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Tiphanie Yanique
04:54
Yeah. I think that's the truth. You know, any kind of intimate relationship, you are meeting that person's traumas, their wounds, their delights, their pleasures. Not even theirs, but you're also meeting the delights and traumas and pleasures and pains of their parents and their grandparents. Now, our parents have given us a lot, and some of it has been things that we struggle with and some of it is things that we are delighted and grateful to have. But it's all in there.
Share
Scott Simon
05:22
Fly - we will explain - has what I'll just refer to as vivid desires, sometimes.
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Tiphanie Yanique
05:34
You like Fly.
Share
Scott Simon
05:35
I'm kind of having a lot of fun with that character.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
05:38
I loved writing him, so I'm glad that you enjoyed reading him. I actually gave the first reading from this book in a church about two weeks ago, and I really did not think through that. The part I was reading that it's an indicator in the book Is also a part where there's a pretty graphic masturbation scene, but I can't shy away from the difficult or uncomfortable stuff.
Share
06:03
So, Fly is about 16 when he starts thinking about: what does it mean to be to have this body? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to desire a woman? It's all complicated for him.
Share
Scott Simon
06:14
Stela has challenges, let's put it that way. On the one hand it brings them together, yet on the other hand, that can ruffle stuff up between them too, can't it?
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
06:24
Isn't that the truth, though? I mean, the people who we find ourselves attracted to are often the people who have the kinds of wounds that sort of fit right inside of ours. And I think what's happening with Stela and Fly is that they are in some ways a match for each other, and the wounds that they have are complimentary, which means that they can bring a lot of pain for them.
Share
Scott Simon
06:47
And without giving anything away, I spent so much of the novel trying to figure out: okay, where is the monster in the middle? I'm going to try something on you: the anxieties we live with but often can't put a name on.
Share
Tiphanie Yanique
07:01
That's beautifully sad. I dedicated the book to my children, and I call them my monsters. I mean, children are also anxieties, in some ways. Things that we hold close, but that give us a lot of discomfort sometimes, and and fear. How that becomes actually physically realized for each of us might be different, you know? It might be your children, it might be your spouse, it might be your own interior self or it might be all of it.
Share
Scott Simon
07:28
Tiphanie Yanique
new novel, Monster in the Middle. Thank you so much for being with us.Share
Tiphanie Yanique
07:35
Thank you for having me.
Share
Andrew Limbong
07:56
Writing a fake band is hard. If you don't do it right, it just feels really phony. But by all accounts, Donnie Walton nailed it in her debut novel, "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev". And she talked to
Scott
about living all of her life drawn to a rock music scene that papered over black women just like her.Share
Scott Simon
08:17
There's starred reviews and much anticipation.
Publishers Weekly
, Oprah's
O Magazine, Elle
and more for Dawnie Walton's "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev". It's an oral history of the rise, fall and revival of a rock and roll duo that is so detailed, layered and compelling, you might be moved to look up the band and try to listen to their biggest hits. But you're in the grip of a great novel.Share
08:42
"The Final Revival of Opal & Nev" is Dawnie Walton's debut novel. She has worked at
Essence
, Entertainment Weekly
and studied at the Iowa Writer's Workshop
and joins us now from Brooklyn
. Thank you so much for being with us.Share
Dawnie Walton
08:55
It is an honor to be here, Scott, thank you.
Share
Scott Simon
08:58
What put this story into your mind and heart?
Share
Dawnie Walton
09:01
Well, in 2013 I was actually just at home, I was watching concert footage from Talking Heads' 1984 concert film
Stop Making Sense
. And you see David Byrne
, of course, who I love. And then to his left you see his background singers: two black women whose names I later learned were Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry
- and I had the urge to stick my hand into the screen and literally pull one of them to center stage with David Byrne
and watch what kind of magic would unfold for the rest of the concert.Share
09:34
And the voices just started coming from there. Opal's voice came first: I described her as the kind of artist I would have loved to put up on my bedroom wall when I was a kid. And then Dev came after, and then just a chorus of people around them kind of telling their story.
Share
Scott Simon
09:52
What does Nev, Neville Charles, the British guy, the musician, hear in Opal Jewel? He's an amateur's night. Black woman, bald-headed,
Detroit
, summers in Alabama, what does he hear in her?Share
Dawnie Walton
10:08
I think he hears something that he would like to hear in himself, which is something completely strange and interesting and compelling. She is someone who you can't take your eyes off her, but you can't really describe what it is exactly that she's doing. And I think that together he thinks that they will really make a splash.
Share
Scott Simon
10:32
This... I don't even want to call it a concert. This event that's at the center of the narrative, event with music and a mayhem is a showcase for acts in the old... boy, this sounds real! Rivington Record label. Opa and Nev are part of it. So, it is an act called The Bond Brothers.
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Dawnie Walton
10:56
Yes.
Share
Scott Simon
10:57
And they have a stage prop, which isn't just a prop, right?
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Dawnie Walton
11:00
It is not. So, the Bond Brothers are sort of a reflection of the southern rock of the era. And I was born and raised in
Jacksonville,
Florida
, which is the hometown of Lynyrd Skynyrd - but they were very sort of famous for having the confederate flag on their stages, on their albums... of course, as a black person is very complicated thing to have grown up around all my life.Share
11:28
And so the Rivington showcase was sort of, you know, the idea of bands that were completely different, had completely different fan bases and sort of putting them together in this one event and seeing what would happen.
Share
Scott Simon
11:45
And what happens is - well, I don't want to give away too much, but it's heard, and of course, you must have finished this novel a year ago, but it's hard not to think of events of January 6th.
Share
Dawnie Walton
11:57
Well, you know, I had so many people who had read the novel and saw the images of the man kind of parading through the Capitol with, you know - the literal flag of traders in the Capitol was quite interesting.
Share
Scott Simon
12:12
How long has this novel been a part of you?
Share
Dawnie Walton
12:15
Oh my gosh. You know
Scott
, I think it's been a part of me since I was a teenager and drawn to music that felt taboo for me to like, you know? I grew up loving alternative rock, indie rock. Music in which I didn't really often see myself. Because there is sort of a more clear tradition of black men and rock.Share
12:40
Of course you have Jimi Hendrix, you have bands like
Bad Brains
and Fishbone, but the women are largely sort of marginalized or erased. And it was interesting to get older and sort of learn that there are women that have always been part of the legacy of rock and roll.Share
Scott Simon
12:59
Well, they've been there every step of the way.
Share
Dawnie Walton
13:01
Absolutely!
Big Mama Thornton
, Sister Rosetta Tharpe
, you know? Every rock and roll band can trace their roots to something in that music, in the blues, in the church.Share
Scott Simon
13:13
Does music reveal who we are or who we want to be?
Share
Dawnie Walton
13:18
I think at one point when I was growing up, music was such a part of your life that it was almost like a lifestyle. It could define your friend circle and the way that you dressed, and it could even reflect sometimes your political outloo.
Share
Scott Simon
13:35
Boy, that's right, yeah.
Share
Dawnie Walton
13:36
I don't know if it works the same way anymore, though.
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Scott Simon
13:41
Now you've got me thinking about that, and I asked the question.
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Dawnie Walton
13:46
And now, music it's a bit more disposable. I think though that it is a good thing that it's not as defining of who you are, because it means you can like whatever you like and nobody is sort of questioning things about you.
Share
Scott Simon
14:02
So, Dawnie Walton, give us an Opal and Nev song to go out on.
Share
Dawnie Walton
14:07
Oh!
Share
Scott Simon
14:10
We'll try and find it on Spotify, but I don't know.
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Dawnie Walton
14:15
Well, you know what? One of the things somebody, a friend of mine, was like: it's gonna be so awesome, you might have a band makeup, write a whole song based on. Wouldn't that be amazing? I would love to hear Red Handed.
Share
Scott Simon
14:29
Can you recite or...?
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Dawnie Walton
14:33
I only know the one line from Red Handed and it's: I'm not the girl who can be caught, I'm not the girl that can be bought.
Share
Scott Simon
14:43
It's a great line! Dawnie Walton, her debut novel: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. Thanks so much for being with us.
Share
Dawnie Walton
14:52
Thank you so much
Scott
.Share
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Andrew Limbong
Dawnie Walton
Scott Simon
Tiphanie Yanique