00:00:10.040Welcome back to the Missing Witches podcast, to the Witches Found edition, version, universe0.59
00:00:19.080of the Missing Witches podcast, where we get to talk to brilliant people, practitioners,
00:00:24.140researchers, poets who are out there doing the work themselves of making new kinds of
00:00:29.980of witchcraft, new kinds of practice, or who are finding those other missing stories and helping in
00:00:36.860this great collaborative work of unearthing what we sometimes like to call a feminist history of
00:00:43.440ideas. Today, I feel really lucky. I felt really lucky the moment that Nadra Niddle reached out
00:00:51.900because she reached out with a book that she's launching in October of this year about Toni
00:00:59.340Morrison and she shared the book with us and shared this kind of huge labor of love of digging
00:01:06.920into all of these stories and the world they offer to us of folk tales and of black women who are
00:01:15.160magic and powerful and of the sort of violence that is deep in the blood and bones of the American
00:01:23.980experience and the Canadian experience as well and so much more just like some of the best
00:01:28.760fucking books I've ever read and Nadra dug into them and sort of told this story that we don't
00:01:33.560get to hear enough about about Toni Morrison's spirituality in the way it combines African0.99
00:01:39.540folktales and magic and the weird magic of Catholicism and all of that and so I'm sort of
00:01:45.680going off the rails with excitement of all the things I already know I want to talk to you about
00:01:50.060But Nadra Niddle is here. She's a journalist and a storyteller and a historian. And I'm just really excited to have her here and also to have her here kind of bringing the voice of Toni Morrison into this world of Missing Witches.
00:02:07.460I wonder, Nadja, if you would introduce yourself in whatever way feels appropriate.
00:02:13.120What are you thinking about these days?
00:02:14.540What brought you to this side of Toni Morrison's spirituality?
00:02:18.460Also, how is it where you are and how are you?
00:02:23.560I would describe myself as a journalist and a storyteller and on some level an activist as well.
00:02:33.560I got into this aspect of Toni Morrison's spirituality a few years ago, actually before her death.
00:02:43.220An editor at a Catholic publication just randomly reached out to me.
00:02:48.680I had never written for them before. I'm not personally Catholic.
00:02:52.940but she reached out to me and wanted to know if I could explore the fact that Toni Morrison
00:03:00.660was a Catholic and and what that meant um for two of her books Song of Solomon was one of them
00:03:09.520and um also I guess her body of literature overall but Song of Solomon and Beloved were
00:03:17.220the two books in particular I explored in this one article. But because it was a Catholic
00:03:23.060publication, I couldn't really get into some of the witchiness in both Morrison's personal life
00:03:31.920and in her books as well. So when I got the opportunity to write this book, I really wanted
00:03:38.100to explore the full spectrum of her spirituality. I want to talk about activism and magic and
00:03:45.240california and and more of your own experience writing for the atlantic and the new york times
00:03:50.840and all of the incredible work you do but i also just want to get right into tony morrison and
00:03:56.880witches so i will plant both those seeds for you and you tell me which way makes the most sense to
00:04:02.340go next sure we can we can dig into tony morrison let's do it yeah tony morrison's witches yeah
00:04:11.600So Toni Morrison, she grew up in the 1930s and 40s, and she came from an African-American family in Lorraine, Ohio.
00:04:23.660Both of her parents were transplants from the South.
00:04:27.600Her father had come from Georgia and her mother had come from Alabama.
00:04:32.860and both had learned, you know, African-American folktales, but they also had a way of viewing the
00:04:42.540world, you know, that some would deem as magical in the sense that they believed that they had
00:04:49.440visitations from ghosts. They believed that they had to some degree psychic abilities. So Toni
00:04:58.080Morrison grew up in this environment where those things were accepted as opposed to
00:05:05.120questioned. She grew up fully aware and fully comfortable with this idea that science didn't
00:05:12.960explain everything that went on in the world ad break and ad breaks are sponsored by missing
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00:07:38.460and when she was little she very small she and her older sister lois had an experience or their
00:07:50.320mother really had an experience on their behalf um they were exposed to turkey to tuberculosis
00:07:56.380when they were small children the doctors had wanted to put them in a sanatorium and
00:08:03.720Morrison's mother Rama said no I guess she felt that her intuition told her that if she put her
00:08:13.040daughters in a sanatorium that they wouldn't come out alive and so she made the decision to keep
00:08:20.880them out both of the girls lived and were healthy and that was attributed to the mother's strong
00:08:28.160sense of intuition. And Morrison grew up feeling that her mother was right to make that decision
00:08:34.100because at the time they didn't have a cure for tuberculosis. So a lot of people who ended up
00:08:41.420going into sanatoriums actually died. There was about a 50-50 chance. So that was one of the
00:08:48.360things that deeply affected Morrison when she was growing up. But she also, in addition to that,
00:08:54.920just grew up hearing ghost stories and her grandmother would make bets based on dreams
00:09:01.340people had. So she really grew up in a world where people believed in magic. But in addition to that,
00:09:09.680they were also Christians. And so in that way, I think they were similar to many other African
00:09:15.660Americans who kind of had these beliefs rooted in African spirituality. They had passed down
00:09:24.700folktales, but they also identified as Christian. Her mother grew up in the African Methodist
00:09:31.840Episcopal Church. But Morrison, when she was 12, she was really, I guess, lured by the rituals of
00:09:40.920the Catholic Church. She had some cousins who were Catholics. And so when she was 12, she made the
00:09:46.220decision to become a Catholic. So in that sense, she kind of departed spiritually from her immediate
00:09:53.480family but she kind of kept all of these influences in her personal life and in her writing
00:10:00.720you talk about in the book that that catholicism is like not un weird that it kind of like made
00:10:10.120sense in a way you know that it that it has this idea of the miraculous um in a way that maybe
00:10:19.280Protestantism or other religions don't or don't acknowledge as part of it and that maybe that
00:10:25.360was like a way for her to bring her feelings about the supernatural or about magic or about
00:10:31.360this element this this aspect of the world that wasn't seen into her faith do you think that
00:10:38.780there's like a root there for those of us who struggle with balancing the faith we grew up in
00:10:44.420with the sense that there's more to it all. Yeah. I mean, I think the difference between
00:10:51.360her mother's religion, the AME church and Catholicism was one, I think just as a child,
00:10:58.520you know, just the ritual of the Catholic church, you know, first communion, things like that. I'm
00:11:04.760sure she would, she would have seen her cousins, her age go through that ceremony. So she's,
00:11:09.820she spoke out a little bit about how just the ceremony alone, the aesthetics of the church,
00:11:15.820those things kind of lured her in. But also you're right in terms of how Catholics believe
00:11:24.460in miracles. And it's not that Protestants don't believe in miracles, but I think Protestants and
00:11:30.720And I grew up Protestant. I would say, you know, we tend to believe more in the miracles of the past that Jesus walked on water and, you know, what he did with the fish and loaves of bread and wine.
00:11:48.600We tend to believe in those sorts of things. But I would say Catholics right now in the here and now, they still believe in miracles.
00:11:57.240They still believe that they're, you know, crying statues of the Virgin Mary and they will send someone out to investigate those claims, which is very much different from the Protestant church.
00:12:11.680I think the other thing with Catholicism and African spirituality in particular is that the saints in Catholic church, many people throughout the African diaspora have seen similarities between the Catholic saints.
00:12:30.120And then, you know, the spirit, say, in the Yoruba pantheon and other West African religions, they've seen similarities between the saints and their own spirits, gods, whatever you want to call them.
00:12:49.100And so when Catholicism in some cases was imposed upon them, they they didn't give up their original beliefs.
00:13:00.460They they just kind of saw which Catholic saints correlated with their own with their own gods or spirits.
00:13:09.880And they kind of merged the two together. So they basically practice syncretism.
00:13:17.520And I think on some level, Morrison has never openly said that, but I think on some level, that may have also appealed to her.
00:13:31.480And I think she says it a couple times, or at least you quote it like a couple times in different contexts.
00:13:36.340But this idea, this often repeated folktale about Africans flying home and her like kind of haunting question, perhaps it was wishful thinking, but what if it wasn't?
00:13:52.500I love the way that that question, you know, even just from the perspective of like writerly magic, the way that that question opens doors in what the world is.
00:14:05.840And I also love that little bit of history that you share in the book about the colonization or the sort of missionary application of Catholicism in the Congo that, and you can tell it better than I can, that the sort of mapping of the faith onto an existing faith and just renaming that it, it almost wasn't even syncretic.
00:14:29.200It was just like they believed they had found a religion that had a wholesale understanding of God and then they just renamed it.
00:14:37.300Yeah, so the so the Kingdom of Congo, which I really knew little about before writing this book, but they're an interesting civilization in the sense that we often hear about, you know, Catholicism, Christianity, these things being forced on African people as the as the result of enslavement, as a result of colonization.
00:15:03.040But in the kingdom of Congo, Portugal was one of their trading partners in the 15th century.
00:15:12.480And so they were exposed to Catholicism due to that relationship.
00:15:19.560But they had not been colonized by Portugal or any other European power.
00:15:28.480And so I thought it was really interesting in the sense that we have this, you know, powerful African civilization that pretty much heard about Catholicism and decided, at least some members of their royal family at the time, decided that they would practice that.
00:15:49.920But like you said, they didn't just take, you know, the European version of Catholicism and take that as their own.
00:15:58.260They took their own, right, Central African belief systems and in some ways just noticed the parallels.
00:16:09.820And so they didn't necessarily have a name for what, you know, this religious practice that they were doing was.
00:16:19.560I mean, loosely, you could say it was Catholicism, but it was also distinct from the Catholic church in Europe.
00:16:27.820So they really kind of they were exposed to Catholicism and made it their own.
00:16:33.500And I think that's interesting because, like I said, we often hear about black people kind of having no choice as to what religion they practice.0.71
00:16:44.100And this was a case of a of a civilization that, you know, was interested in Catholicism, Catholicism. They started building Catholic schools and and churches on their own, but independently.0.60
00:16:58.780Would you say that's part of what is powerful and kind of witchy about some of Morrison's Black women characters to this idea that sort of flips the idea of their choice on its head?0.50
00:17:17.220like sometimes it's painful and tragic and it's a world of limited choices but there's like there's
00:17:24.840like sort of a a beautiful power there too I guess I'm thinking about Sula but yeah I mean I would
00:17:33.000say in Sula in every book there they're kind of these similar characters these you know typically
00:17:40.060older, powerful, very, you know, resilient, self-assured Black women who have really defined
00:17:48.500their own spirituality on their own terms outside of the bounds of the church, whether0.54
00:17:56.640it's a Protestant church or a Catholic church, whatever it is.
00:18:00.980So they end up kind of taking their own or kind of making their own way in terms of the
00:18:08.980spiritual world and it really starts in the bluest eye morrison's first book which came out
00:18:14.340in 1970 often these characters are not the protagonists of the book but if you read
00:18:21.920you know in each one you can find a character like this but in the bluest eye there was a
00:18:28.200character named madir she's she's only in there briefly but it's clear that she is the healer
00:18:36.260in the town. She lives kind of in the woods away from everyone else. No one really knows how old
00:18:44.320she is. And she, you know, she knows how to kind of listen to the body and determine what's wrong
00:18:53.460with people. And when, you know, traditional or, you know, kind of traditional Christian prayers
00:19:00.740or when conventional medicine does not work,
00:19:04.620they know that they need to go to Medir.
00:19:24.240And in Sula, there are characters like this as well.
00:19:27.640um Sula's grandmother Eva Peace is a character who also in some ways um you know is a healer
00:19:37.720but there's another woman she's not even named so she's the mother of Sula's love interest Ajax
00:19:44.980and it says you know how she's she practices hoodoo so the African-American um folk tradition
00:19:53.180of of hoodoo um which has roots in west africa and central africa but she practices all of those
00:20:00.480things and people go to her because she can kind of um she knows how to read the weather she knows
00:20:07.360bad um you know bad omens good omens people come from her come to her for all sorts of things but
00:20:14.340eva peace who is more of a major character character in the book um is also very into
00:20:21.300dreams and when there's a tragedy that occurs with her own child she believes she kind of she
00:20:28.200should have already seen the signs um in her dreams and that's something again that Morrison's
00:20:34.760own mother and grandmother um really put a lot of stock in um were dreams they didn't believe
00:20:42.520there was really a difference between a subconscious world and you know the conscious
00:20:46.980world and I think that is that's reflected um throughout you know Morrison's literature but
00:20:54.000I also feel that a lot of African Americans at least of a of a certain age kind of grew up with
00:21:00.140that kind of cosmology or mindset that your your dreams meant something yeah I mean that goes back
00:21:07.640to that amazing line about the Africans flying back home like what if it was true you know what
00:21:15.880if what if it was true that that what they list what they heard in their dreams was telling them
00:21:21.460something what was what if it was true oh and I can explain that too so for people who don't know
00:21:27.840there's this folktale about flying Africans and it was really popular in Georgia where Morrison's
00:21:35.220father came from but the folktale basically is that during the middle passage so when Africans
00:21:43.540were, you know, forcibly brought to the Americas, you know, hundreds, thousands jumped overboard.
00:21:52.480But the African-American folktale is arguing that we don't actually know what happened to these
00:21:59.240people, that some of these people, instead of jumping to their deaths, actually were able
00:22:04.660to fly away. There's other versions of the folktale that suggest that those who actually
00:22:11.520did complete the Middle Passage and they ended up enslaved in the Americas. They resisted slavery.
00:22:17.980You know, they would be, someone would be working in the fields and all of a sudden they would say
00:22:23.480some magical words. And the next thing you know, they had flown home back to Africa. So that's
00:22:31.300the folktale and that's the basis of her book, Song of Solomon. I mean, it's heartbreaking,
00:22:37.220but i i do love the big the big what if in there it reminds me of um i interviewed um a writer
00:22:46.600named dr marina magouar about lucille clifton and um she talked about the idea that there are these
00:22:57.100stories of women and especially of black women and queer women and indigenous women that exceed
00:23:06.000the archives and that it's like it's incredibly heartbreaking that we don't have the stories and
00:23:12.200we don't know what happened but it's also in her view like incredibly empowering because they slip
00:23:20.140out of the edges of the control of the archive yeah no that's a that's a beautiful way to put
00:23:26.500it and I think Morrison you know she never came out and said you know whether she wholeheartedly
00:23:34.780believed in the flying african's folktale or not but she certainly seemed to respect those who did
00:23:43.100and you know she she never publicly said i mean she even at sometimes there was a new yorker
00:23:49.820interview and some other interviews she gave where she even seemed a little bit defensive
00:23:55.180where she would say look i know it sounds ridiculous but this is what you know the
00:23:59.900black people i knew growing up this is what they believed and she thought that that was you know a
00:24:06.380valid belief whether um it had literally happened or even if it was a way for people to kind of
00:24:14.660comfort themselves um in the fact that so many black people face just you know extraordinary0.89
00:24:22.100violence and subjugation that they turn that into something that was more hopeful by saying that
00:24:29.880somehow through magical means um some of these people were able to to liberate themselves
00:24:35.900I love the the idea that you outlined that she she made a distinction between
00:24:45.600this the beliefs and stories in those folktales as being um magical or or fanciful or fictional
00:24:56.260versus them being a part of the world of the real world of the natural world that was just outside
00:25:06.220the known bounds of you know white dominant culture knowledge you know that that these
00:25:13.920things could be could be possible or that there's that that at least those stories nod at a whole
00:25:21.740realm of knowledge that exceeds the grasp of, you know, current science, at least, you know,
00:25:28.080I love that. Yeah. And one thing I talk about, too, is just, you know, Morrison's relationship
00:25:34.360with the word magic. It's a word that she used, but she also was concerned about when it was
00:25:42.380applied to her work, especially magical realism. So she kind of took offense to the term magical
00:25:49.440realism because she didn't want people to think that the magic in her books was just a literary
00:25:56.580device she was pretty adamant that you know any magic you see in her books it was not a literary
00:26:04.040device this is what you know her characters just like you know many black people in the real world
00:26:12.440this is what they believed in this is what their belief systems were and she's arguing that
00:26:20.400you know the belief systems were called magic by you know their colonizers who who kind of
00:26:28.720discredited their spirituality and religious beliefs but she's saying you know their their
00:26:36.640their beliefs you know west african spirituality or african-american traditions like hoodoo etc
00:26:43.760that these beliefs and practices are just as valid as christianity as judaism as any other
00:26:53.080religion so she you know kind of defended her work against the term magical realism but at the same
00:27:01.640time she she did use the word magic herself but i think she wanted people to understand um
00:27:08.860that these beliefs you know were valid but also she she was very um adamant as well about the
00:27:20.380fact that black people believed in magic that this was part of african-american culture um she
00:27:27.360talked about one person you know asking her that pretty incredulously um you believe in magic and
00:27:35.180her response was yes you believe in germs don't you that's part of our culture so she certainly
00:27:42.980believed in magic herself and just believed this was a part of african-american culture at the same
00:27:49.040time she was concerned that younger generations of african-americans had kind of turned away
00:27:56.800from magic from folktales from all these cultural traditions that they they had grown embarrassed by
00:28:04.320them and as they assimilated more to you know white american norms and european norms that
00:28:12.220they wanted to distance themselves from magic and that was something that it saddened her
00:28:18.060so what do you think tony morrison would say or maybe what do you say with your knowledge of tony
00:28:25.520Morrison and the collages you can make of her ideas to we we've had um black listeners tell
00:28:32.240us and I just had a conversation with a an incredible poet um black witch about this
00:28:39.100this sort of pull that can be painful if you grew up in certain kinds of uh white churches or black0.99
00:28:47.780churches or churches in the south that like as a you know Canadian in the woods of Quebec I have
00:28:53.140I have really like a lot of ignorance about but you might feel like drawn to an idea of your own
00:29:00.280power being framed as witch or you might be drawn to the idea of like magic and things in the natural
00:29:07.580world having you know a spirit or something that calls to you but you might be scared of the devil
00:29:16.740like in a really profound way um but or you know or even scared of of a witch and what that means
00:29:24.060you know of a relationship with the devil um yeah what do you think she would say or what do you
00:29:29.120feel like saying based on what you know she said yeah I mean based on what I know about what she
00:29:35.380said and she explores a lot of this in in her book paradise um which came out in the late 90s
00:29:42.800She explores a lot of those ideas about kind of, you know, conventional Christianity through an African-American lens versus, you know, some women of various backgrounds in the same book who end up practicing condom blay, though she never describes it as that.
00:30:04.740I know that she actually did research about that particular Europa-based practice that's widespread in Brazil.
00:30:14.400So I think I definitely don't think that, you know, Morrison seemed to fear that somehow, you know, embracing these ancestral, you know, African traditions meant that, you know, she was evil or that her characters were evil.
00:30:37.400I think her body of work is really a response against that. But I certainly know what, you know, the people you're saying you talk to, you know, are disgusting because many people, sadly, I think one of the worst effects of white supremacy is that it taught people throughout the African diaspora to view their own ancestral religious beliefs as evil.
00:31:03.620And when you're, you know, watching TV shows and movies and, you know, say voodoo comes up, it's almost always framed as something that's an evil religion.
00:31:15.480The characters who are practicing these religions are always, you know, are often doing harm to others and frequently not for, you know, reasons that are justified either.
00:31:31.140So there's this kind of pop culture framing of African-based spirituality and religion that's very negative.0.83
00:31:40.300And I think in some black churches, for sure, they would also look at anyone who kind of had an interest in these ancestral practices as doing something bad.
00:31:53.980But at the same time, like what I was saying about the kingdom of Congo, the black church, even, you know, the African-American church is different from white Christian churches, black churches.
00:32:07.180They are doing things that are rooted in African spirituality, you know, things like call and response or there's something called the ring shout.
00:32:17.720You know, people, I guess, say, you know, they're filled with the Holy Spirit and they start shouting and and moving in certain ways.
00:32:27.040That's not something that comes from white Christianity.
00:32:30.540That's something that comes from African, different African cultures, specifically West African culture.
00:32:40.180That's they've picked up those practices.0.98
00:32:43.940So I think that's what I would say to some of those people who frame some of those beliefs as evil or even something like jumping the broom when one gets married.
00:32:54.260You know, we can trace so much of these traditions back to Africa.
00:33:00.480So while enslavement, you know, one of the goals of enslavement was to kind of break, you know, Black people in a sense to dehumanize them and and break them as individuals.0.60
00:33:14.160You know, enslavement did not successfully sever, you know, our ties with Africa and specifically with African-based religions.0.90
00:33:25.580They're still there. I just don't think everyone, you know, including African-Americans themselves, sometimes realize how we're still practicing some of these things.0.55
00:33:35.600oh that's such a powerful answer and it makes me want to ask you this do you see your own work
00:33:43.360um as a historian as a storyteller story retriever as a writer activist as being
00:33:52.340part of a project of magic of world changing magic i don't know about world changing come on
00:34:02.020but I do think writing is certainly magical I mean I feel like I mean it's magical in the
00:34:11.220sense that I mean you're taking nothing you're taking a blank page right and you know creating
00:34:17.760something out of it whether it's a page or two or it's 200 pages I mean I think there's something
00:34:23.380magical about you know creating something from nothing and then there's this other idea right
00:34:30.900that it's not nothing that you're kind of a vessel I know many writers and artists believe that that
00:34:38.060we're kind of vessels or vehicles you know from you know whether it's spirits ancestors who knows
00:34:45.540that the we're being used as kind of a vessel to kind of get something out there you know that um
00:34:53.640um we are we're more like communicators than necessarily just creators if that makes sense
00:35:01.460that totally makes sense it's so weirdly witchy perfect that you would weave that into that
00:35:08.000question because so much of our season this season is about channeling and that was not
00:35:13.760something we set out to do it was just all the all the witches stories that we were digging into
00:35:19.100and the people we interviewed it keeps coming up this idea of of what what it is to do a channeled
00:35:24.780work what it means to be channeling um what it means to be you know a cup that spirit is pouring
00:35:32.000through or you know in my view sometimes it's like I'm I'm plugging into the mycelium networks
00:35:37.640of ancestors around me or something I like to rationalize it more to do with the trees or
00:35:42.400something maybe but um well that's funny that you would bring that in do you ever feel like
00:35:48.120you are are being used as a vessel I mean so I feel that the most when I'm writing late at night
00:35:58.380so there are times I've been writing and I've started to fall asleep and maybe I was struggling
00:36:03.620with something I remember in particular I was writing something I was writing an essay I was
00:36:08.020struggling with the ending and I kind of drifted off to sleep and I woke up at some point later I
00:36:15.360don't know. And I just had the ending. It was there. It was like something, you know, told me
00:36:21.420how to end this piece. So definitely for me, during those moments between, you know,
00:36:29.840the subconscious and the conscious, you know, when I'm in and out of sleep, I feel like
00:36:35.300there's some magic that happens. And I found out recently that Einstein, I think, and some other
00:36:41.340people they purposely kind of like to put themselves in that state of not quite awake
00:36:47.640not quite asleep because they felt that they were somehow you know tapping into um some body of
00:36:55.440knowledge that they otherwise would not be able to so I I definitely I feel like for me that's
00:37:02.300that's the uh biggest or that's usually when I felt like that um there's times in the past I
00:37:10.320I don't really write fiction anymore, but when I was younger, you know, I was exploring writing
00:37:14.780fiction and definitely, I would say writing fiction too, you kind of feel like your characters
00:37:19.980are informing you and kind of telling you what to do. So the characters in some ways, you know,
00:37:26.940kind of feel like spirits, you know, with their own stories that you didn't necessarily know about
00:37:33.320or think of when you set out to write something. So yeah, I mean, as a writer for me, I definitely
00:37:39.140feel like I've experienced that yeah me too even if it's just um you know I I'm I'm a skeptic witch
00:37:48.320atheist who talks to the universe you know so I I could turn myself in circles about this stuff
00:37:53.400forever but um even if it's just you know these these waves of energy that are all around us
00:37:59.980they're making their way through our dense and incredibly complex brains you know some somehow
00:38:05.600something about ritual or um drugs or sleepiness or like things that shift us into um you know
00:38:15.940what monica show and others have called the moon mind or a way of being a little bit less
00:38:21.000in fucking control all the time that lets new ideas happen um i wanted to to ask you to talk
00:38:31.200about this is not really a question but just like think tell me what you think about um0.98
00:38:36.700Sula and now and this idea that um that Sula was missing a craft or that she was missing an art
00:38:49.920you know that oh yeah I thought that was really powerful so Sula um for people who don't know
00:38:57.260that was Morrison's second book and it's about two friends who are growing up in um this town
00:39:04.240it's a fictional town medallion ohio and um they're they're two girls who kind of come from
00:39:12.520different sorts of families so nil is more um middle class with her her mother is catholic
00:39:20.300her mother grew up in louisiana and is very kind of prim and proper and catholic and her father
00:39:26.180you know as a successful businessman and then we have Sula who who kind of grew up in this house
00:39:33.820um filled with women um without any men and also it's kind of a it's it's kind of a community house
00:39:42.700an open house in the sense that her grandmother allows I'll you know anyone in the neighborhood
00:39:48.120if they need a place to stay they can they can stay um at at that house so Sula um
00:39:57.700she's also faced I guess some tragedy her her father died um when she was very small so she
00:40:05.320didn't know him and then she overhears her mother saying that she doesn't really like her that much
00:40:10.560and they have a Sula and her friend Nell have have another tragedy that kind of results in a
00:40:18.400young boy dying and this is something that kind of bonds them together without giving away too
00:40:24.320much if you haven't you know for people who haven't read it it it bonds them together but
00:40:29.240it also kind of shows uh the true nature of of both of these young girls so Sula um after after
00:40:39.420this one tragedy happens with this small boy, she's kind of broken in a sense. And she almost
00:40:48.440in some way, she loses, loses her empathy. And when she's an adult, she ends up kind of engaging
00:40:56.260in a lot of destructive behaviors, including betraying her best friend Nell in a very
00:41:03.880problematic way and so there's one part in the book where morrison says that if sula had a craft
00:41:13.140right she maybe she wouldn't have been engaging in these both self-destructive and destructive to
00:41:20.240others um sorts of behavior like betraying people and just kind of abandoning people and um
00:41:27.940mistreating her grandmother and a series of other things and the reason I think one reason she's
00:41:35.980framed as a I think the character is a little um autobiographical in the sense that Morrison
00:41:44.940was this woman who left her community Sula leaves her community to go to college um and Morrison
00:41:54.080has talked about how when she went to college she was a little bit of a wild child but she also was
00:42:01.080kind of anchored in art she was part of drama clubs obviously she was interested in writing
00:42:07.860though at that time she didn't know you know that she was um she was going to be one of the best
00:42:13.720novelists um in our country but she already had a love of literature so she kind of had something
00:42:20.400going to do with you know some place to put um this kind of wild child energy and there's a line
00:42:28.360in the book Sula where the narrator is saying that Sula didn't have a place for um this energy to go
00:42:35.980and so she ended up turning it outward to other people but the other thing I think was interesting
00:42:42.340about Sula is just you know the descriptions of how she's dressed um you know she when she comes
00:42:49.340back to town she's she's kind of described in a way that stereotypically looks like a witch like
00:42:55.520she's wearing you know a black hat and a long black you know coat and there's a um all the birds
00:43:02.920die when she comes back so there's there's a lot of magic that accompanies her return to town um
00:43:10.560that's that's kind of magical so many people in the town view her as a some sort of evil force
00:43:18.760um that they hope goes away but they don't actually extinguish and then her friend um who
00:43:25.280believes in her and just sees the best in her abuse her is bringing kind of this magical goodness
00:43:31.020back to town so i don't want to go on too much about that but that that's in the gist some of
00:43:37.220the things that's that's going on with that novel and i would also say just really quickly there's
00:43:42.500also a lot of religion in the book as well though it doesn't seem super obvious it's there
00:43:49.300yeah I want to sort of tuck that into our hearts listeners that like when we're um flailing or
00:44:02.880um being wild childs or you know walking through town full of power and the birds are falling out
00:44:09.920this guy or um having a lot of sex or or making like shitty choices or our powers like sort of0.76
00:44:17.480sprawled out all over the place um tony morrison suggests that witches are in need of a craft0.85
00:44:23.800so i think just keep turning our hands to to creation to imagination because i think we need
00:44:33.780it i think our bodies call for it and i think i i love that tony morrison saw that in herself
00:44:39.560and in Sula who she has so much sympathy for and who I also love um we frequently end these
00:44:49.520strange podcasts um by asking our guests if there's something and you know you could frame
00:44:59.560it in whatever way makes sense to you but like um a practice um you know we're going to be heading
00:45:07.580into the deep part of the fall the final harvest um you are a writer admirable in your labor and
00:45:20.240output and in the places that you have found to share your voice maybe you have a personal ritual
00:45:28.760or incantation or just a writing practice that you do something that our listeners could borrow
00:45:35.960from you and sort of tuck into their lives at the end of this episode? Sure. Uh, I would say
00:45:44.160there are a couple of things that I like to do. Um, uh, one thing that really helps me, I would
00:45:51.400say would be guided meditations just based on what I feel at the time. So it could be a guided
00:45:58.160meditation, you know, about healing, for example. If I'm not feeling well or guided meditation
00:46:05.860about confidence, if, you know, sometimes as a writer, I get anxious and I'm not feeling so
00:46:11.680confident. So I think listening to guided meditations, especially again, to bring back
00:46:17.820that, you know, in between kind of wake and sleep that time, I think it really has a strong effect
00:46:26.300on my subconscious so if i listen to a guided meditation as i'm going to bed or when i first
00:46:34.080wake up i think that helps me i also you know like to sometimes not all the time really you
00:46:42.280know light candles and um say affirmations especially you know this idea that audrey
00:46:50.260lord discussed about um you know self-care being a political act that's one thing i try to tell
00:46:58.260myself and affirm for myself in a world where i i don't always feel very valued
00:47:04.600yeah that's a really powerful one and i hope that next time you are chatteling
00:47:15.540audrey lord and reminding yourselves that self-care is a revolutionary and political act
00:47:22.660um nadra you know that you're deeply valued and your magic is world-changing
00:47:28.700because we are lucky all of our listeners feel a little bit changed i'm sure and a little bit
00:47:38.400lit up by your research and also by this window into this like monumental novelist who offers us
00:47:46.920a little bit of belief in magic and i i'm really thankful for that especially when the world feels
00:47:56.940dark and shitty and it's hard to find anchors for our craft and our activism so thanks can you tell
00:48:03.320the people where they can find you so i have a website called nadra niddle so it's n-a-d-r-a
00:48:10.620niddle it rhymes with little but it starts with an n it's nancy so nadraniddle.com i have a website
00:48:18.940there and then you can also find me on twitter so that's twitter.com backslash nadra kareem
00:48:28.380k-a-r-e-e-m as in mary perfect thanks we'll also share those links in the show notes as we always
00:48:38.380do and yeah just thank you again so much for being here thank you all of you who come to join us in
00:48:45.420this strange coven we make between our ears as the days get darker and we try to hold a light for
00:48:52.660each other in faith, in the magic of the world, and in each other. Be safe, guys. Blessed fucking be.