This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, welcome back to part two of my conversation with Staceyann Chin about life, love, sex, Slave Play, politics, Me Too. We went everywhere.

[0:17] Staceyann Chin: I want to jump into that a little bit and talk about like these women who were who is my mother was.

[0:23] Tonya Pinkins: Mentally ill, yeah.

[0:24] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, I mean, um, where was your mother from?

[0:26] Tonya Pinkins: My mother's from Chicago. She had me at age 14. Um, and I an ex a realization I had just in the last year and uh this last few weeks was, you know, I know my mother used to beat me so terribly, and my oldest sort of feeling that I've carried my whole life, my most underlying feeling is I just didn't want to exist. Just didn't want to exist.

[0:46] Staceyann Chin: Not wanted to kill myself, just didn't want to exist.

[0:51] Tonya Pinkins: There was nothing about life, whether it was money or fame or success, that was worth it. It's like, oh, okay, I had that. Okay, yeah, I really wouldn't exist. And I think that it fueled my acting because it was like I would always act like, and let me just give so much that I might die at the end of this performance because that would be great. Um, I, you know, started doing some plant and animal and fungi medicine, and that went away.

[1:18] Staceyann Chin: And then I was in Peru, and it all came up really strongly, like just this overwhelming sense of you know what, you you're 57, there's no point in you being here anymore. If you die, your children will get a lot of money. Just go. There, you have nothing left to do in the planet. And um James, who was the help was integrating, he said, Well, when you do your next journey, why don't you try to find that little child self and see what that's about?

[1:41] Tonya Pinkins: And the next ceremony, what came up for me was remembering, you know, my mother used to wear these long polyester nightgowns, and she would, I would be naked and she would be squeezing my head between her knees, and I would be suffocating in this polyester nightgown, and then she would be beating my bare body as I'm bent over, you know, squeezing her knees with an extension cord. And remembering the pain of these beatings that were so much that I felt like I was gonna die. So I would have to leave my body in order to survive them.

[2:11] Staceyann Chin: And what came to me was that she was beating me because I existed because my existence ruined her life.

[2:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, my existence ruined her life. So she was beating me for existing, and I was like, oh, so that's why I don't want to exist. And I mean that that that whole like she has your her your head between her knees. That's remarkably intimate, you know, like it's you know, and it's it's all it's it's localized in her erotic zone as well. And your head is I mean, it's all so yeah, you know, tied up with all of what we've been saying.

[2:41] Staceyann Chin: I mean, uh my mother is the opposite as in she left me when I was born, and so and then the abuse happened at the hands of other people.

[2:49] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[2:49] Staceyann Chin: And but she came back when I was one week when I was uh uh nine years old for one week, and she like abused both me and my brother for the week that she came. And um, and then she left. But in my head as a kid growing up, I always thought that you know, like all the terrible things, all the all the things that I am that are sh, you know, falling short of being perfect, would have been not so if my mother had stayed.

[3:17] Tonya Pinkins: So in my head, it's like my mother going was the worst thing that happened to me, even as the other things themselves were like, you know, sexual as sexual abuse and sexual assault and you know, being abandoned and being mistreated by other people and beaten, and all of the things that happen to girls who don't have mothers to protect them, who are actively protecting them. And so, you know, I have this in my brain, and then I um I went to Germany when I was 25 and found her, and I found her with a seven-year-old daughter. My sister is now 30 years old.

[3:49] Staceyann Chin: And one of the struggles that my sister has was like, you know, my mother's mental illness affected her so badly that she's she herself struggles with like how she sees the world and you know how she moves through the world. And um, that is her story to tell. But watching her, you know, it kind of dawned on me that it was my mother's absence that saved me. Like my mother left me and saved me.

[4:11] Tonya Pinkins: Like my mother is so crazy, and she creates all these stories. My mother is such a crazy like person, if you can imagine the guy from Catch Me If You Can, just make her black and Jamaican. And you know, just make that character black woman Jamaican, and that's kind of who she is going across borders, living in different places, like taking money and time and like deceiving people from place to place. And she actually, I went to visit her once to kind of take her and my sister back to the US to visit.

[4:41] Staceyann Chin: And you know, it happened about four or five times, and she was there's always a story about why she couldn't or how she couldn't. So I would buy the tickets, I would go, we would go through all of these things like for two or three days getting ready to go, and then like she would just not get on the plane, or she would like disappear last minute, or just a whole bunch of crazy stuff. And then one time she actually didn't come on the plane, but she came to the airport, and then she came with a guy, she jumped off the subway when we were heading to the train, and then she's like, I have my little sister, we've got suitcases. I'm like, this is fucking crazy.

[5:08] Tonya Pinkins: And then we get to the airport, and I'm waiting, waiting, waiting to get on my flight. And then she comes hurrying in with this guy, and then she says to this guy, Okay, I'll thank you very much for everything. And he goes, and then she takes my sister and she's like, Oh, I'm so sorry. Like, and she tells some big crazy story about why it is that she can't go because somebody took the passports and blah blah blah. Anyways, I get on the plane, and who am I seated next to? The man that she came in with.

[5:30] Staceyann Chin: So I know my mother is prone to telling not so truthful truths, you know. Um, and she's she said to she I said to the him, like, who is that woman in the multicolored skirt that you came in with? And he's like, Oh, she's this nice woman. She lives in New York, she's a writer and a performer. She just came here to visit her family members. She came to pick them up, and things didn't go well, so she's going back now by herself. But she's a writer and she travels all over the world and she's written a book. My mother just stepped into my life and pretended to be me.

[6:02] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god. Woo!

[6:05] Staceyann Chin: But you know, and and that's like, you know, I mean, I I went to Canada the other day, and I just um I just discovered somebody came to my last one-person show and handed me a box of things that my mother, my mother was married to a man, and then she got divorced from him in Canada. She was living with him for 11 years, and he didn't know anything about where she was from or who she was, and she was lying about a whole bunch of shit. So she divorced him. I mean, they got divorced, you know, after like 11 years. The next so then, and then they sold the house, and then she got half the money for the house, and then the next thing you know, she was living with the man who bought the house, and then she was about to marry the man with who bought the house from her, and then his family came and be like, No, no, no, no, no, how you mean you're gonna marry him? You're gonna own the house two times.

[6:53] Tonya Pinkins: But you know, I mean, so I mean, that's this woman she brought she found a box in the basement of that man's house. Her father, who was now uh uh had like you know, Alzheimer's, and she found this box, and she googled all the names of like letters and stuff, and they found letters that I'd written to her when I was like nine, like you know, to asking her to come home or whatever. Like, I mean, and so if they gave you this box of box of things, like pictures, and that's when I found out because up until now, my mother has lived in Montreal, in Toronto, in um Germany, maybe more than one place, she's lived in London, and there was a rumor that she had lived in Rio for a while, and and but there was no, and the only reason people knew was because she had got sick in Rio, and somebody in Rio had to call her sister in Jamaica or something, and then I found these pictures of my mother.

My mother had been like uh an on stage performer in Rio, all these like flamingo outfits and you know, like glittery sequin like bathing suits, and I have I know nothing about that world. I don't know where she's from or who she's met or what she did there, but she had this whole other life in Rio that no one knows anything about. So now I'm writing this book trying to figure out who the hell my mother was.

[8:07] Staceyann Chin: It's this interesting thing about mental illness. Like my mother was very much in many ways the most competent and in in and brilliant of all of her siblings, but she was crazy and violent, yes, alone, and and you know, you could be having a conversation with her, and it's going really, really straight, and then it would just turn, and you just don't, and now you and did your family admit that she was mentally ill, they just thought she was she you know, she's just like that.

[8:34] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, she knows better, she could do better.

[8:36] Staceyann Chin: Exactly. Nobody I did not know my mother was mentally ill until I was an adult, and and and and it and I found out because I was in an acting class and they'd given me a Spoon River anthology monologue. I don't know if you know this is like this monologues that I forget who even wrote them, but I had the one about the woman who the the um the walls were talking to her and the cows were talking to her, and they told her to burn the house down. And you know, I went in and I did that monologue, and at the end of the you maybe doing it, but the teacher was like, you know, the the characters mentally ill. And I'm like, what do you mean? No, no, no, no, no. That my mother has that happen all the time.

[9:08] Tonya Pinkins: And it wasn't until he said that that I then he was like, No, this is mental illness, walls don't talk to them. Like, no, they the walls talk to my mother all the time. And literally, my my mother could tell you things that happened that she wasn't there. I mean, she could look at a Rubik's Cube and make it work, and she tell you she was just on another level.

[9:28] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, there's these powers and things that they have, and in many cultures, those are the shaman. These people who are literally traveling to other places and can embody other spirits and stuff, they would be the person who the community would rally around and and encourage them to go deeper into that so that they could become the healers of the community. We of course don't have that in America.

[9:47] Tonya Pinkins: I'm I you know, I have never been a believer in spirits or you know, I'm like a real like two plus two equals four. This is the science of it. I did my first degree in biochemistry, physics, and math. You know, even like my philosophy and literature, it's about like how these arguments go together to make this thing that I believe in work. And so I never believed in the spirits, and for a long time I resisted, I didn't have anything to do with the church. I thought this was all bullshit, like, you know, even people, close friends of mine who are spiritual. Like, I'm like, I'm the one who rolls my eyes when they're like, listen, you just have to, you know, about your chakra. They want to talk to me about like my chi and my aura, and I'm the one who rolling my eyes.

I get the fuck out of here with this fucking chi and shit. You just need to earn the money and like go find a job and pay a rent. That's how life works. And I'm you know, I don't sit around chanting money into my fucking account, right?

[10:39] Staceyann Chin: So I have this like uh resistance to anything, but I when I was on Broadway the f um in 2001, Deaf Comedy Jam, 20 years, the poetry jam. My um, my I have family in New York, and I would say to them, I'm on the show. I think you guys would really kind of dig it. You should tell me when you could come and be on, you know, get some tickets or whatever. And they'll they would never ever respond to anything. And then, like, I also was traveling before that, so they would be like, call me up and say, you know, La Toya's having her um baby shower. Do you want to come? And I'm like, no, I've gotta go to Denmark for the weekend, I've gotta go to London for a week. You know, I'm going to Swaziland or South Africa.

And they're like, okay. And then one day my aunt, you know, we had these uh uh advertisements for the show that were on the side of buses, and she called me up and she goes, 'What the hell? I see your face on a bus here.' I say, 'Um, what do you mean? I tell you, I'm in a Broadway show, it's just advertisement for the show.' And she says, 'So you're really doing this thing? I'm like, Yes, I'm on a Broadway show. I am on TV sometimes talking about this thing. I am this is what I do. What do you mean if if I really do it?'

[11:49] Staceyann Chin: I thought you were your mother. They said to me, Oh, with we think your mother, we think you have the same thing your mother have that make you just tell lies. Oh, yeah. And nobody believed me for the longest while. And but there's a part of my mother, you know, my I I keep saying to people that my mother's dream for her life came true, but not for her, for me. So I'm walking through the world as a an artist, as a performer, as a thinker, you know, here I am being invited by Tonya Pinkins to have conversation about sex and class and race and all of that. That's what my mother wanted for herself. She wanted so much more. So when you said that your mother was like, you know, she had all this power and all of this way of like seeing the world, and like for 11 years, she was with this man in Canada, and this man didn't know that she really wasn't born in Britain, like she said.

[12:40] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[12:41] Staceyann Chin: And the next door neighbors that she was really, really close to for 11 years, and one of them was like her best friend, the husband and wife. One thought she was from one country, the other one thought and they're still together, they've been together 40 years now. And when I went back to Montreal to speak to them, it was in the conversation between all three of us that they were like, no, she's British. No, she's Canadian. I mean, you know, she's Jamaican. No, she's British. And these people have shared a pillow for twenty for 40 years. And how my mother has navigated with them, has made it so that each of them believed two different opposing narratives about her.

[13:19] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[13:19] Staceyann Chin: That's smart.

[13:20] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[13:21] Staceyann Chin: It is smart. And she's like, you know, been with like the most amazing people. And people have like this trail of shame that they've been with her. Because when it is that it becomes uh obvious or uh apparent that she is this kind of crazy, not loose kind of person, they don't know what to do with the fact that they were so entrenched. But because the feelings you had were real. I mean, the feelings that they had were real, and now they want to deny that. It's I mean, I have had this thing where I have psycho dar. Like if I'm attracted to someone, there's something wrong with them. They're a sociopath or something. Like, that is what is my attraction. No, it's really true. Yo, and and that's how I know. And so for a while, I just would date people that I didn't feel anything to because if I feel that, I know that feeling. That feeling means you are crazy. You are mentally ill or you're a conversation.

[14:16] Tonya Pinkins: But I would challenge you further to ask, aren't we all slightly a little bit ill?

[14:21] Staceyann Chin: No.

[14:22] Tonya Pinkins: I disagree with you.

[14:23] Staceyann Chin: I think if we were to, you know, I think that mental illness and mental wellness is on a spectrum, and we're all somewhere on it. And maybe you're talking about the people who are far left, you know, in the process of. That they're far right. I'll go with you. You know, that these people who are closer to the side of the continuum that is mentally ill, and then you have people who are closer to the side of the continuum that is mentally well. Well, let's I'm gonna go, I'm gonna agree with you because to me, our whole society is mentally ill. Okay, like this bread and circuses in impeachment shit is like that is the height of mental illness, you know, like that people want to be deluded and watch these crazy.

It's like it's just a show. The whole of our reality is it is it oops. The whole of our reality is a TV show. And that people are walking around and they're tuning into it and they're spending their time. It's no different. But that's part of screaming show. It's a part of the social media world we have where our entire existence is about presentation and curation.

[15:31] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but our whole world is curated. So when do people go to reality? Like, do they even do it at home with their family? I mean, one of my friends was married to a man, and 27 years later, he comes in and he tells her, I um, you know, I may have given you a sexually transmitted disease. And she's like, okay, well, I'll go to the doctor. And he's like, You're not gonna divorce me. And she's like, No. I mean, I'd like you to stop, but no. And but it turned out that he had been keeping journals of all of his sexcapades for the 27 years of their marriage in their house. And he left them out. He just assumed she would read them. She had not, because she valued privacy. So they were living together, living this completely different world. And then it turned out he wanted a divorce, but he was trying to force her into the divorce. And so he ultimately ended up divorcing her. But the story he told the world was that she did it.

[16:24] Staceyann Chin: But it's also, it's also this weird thing where people um, you know, I find that people are unable to be in situations where they're uncomfortable now. So no one, so no one wants to have any conversation that might rub you the wrong way, or that your opinion might be different from mine. You know, I already see that you and I could disagree quite heavily on an issue, and we would argue it out and cuss and cuss, and then next week you'll be like, You coming for coffee?

[16:49] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly. That's that's I love that. But people can't do that nowadays. It's like, you know, even this notion of like, oh, that's awkward, and you hear it on the news all the time, like, oh, that's very awkward that like um that that president the president didn't shake Pelosi's hand. What the mean? Of course it should be it should be more than awkward. Awkward is like, okay, if you open the door and I'm like wiping myself while I'm mid-period, like that's awkward.

[17:14] Staceyann Chin: But yes. But but this man trying to fuck over the country and we're they're trying to hold him accountable and the entire Republican senator core, you know, like gang is like pushing back and making sure that he can do anything he wants and making him into a king, that's not an awkward fucking situation. That's like beyond awkward.

[17:34] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[17:35] Staceyann Chin: So, like, so so and and this notion of like even I hear it with my kid now, she's eight, and she's like, Oh, that was awkward. And I'm like, in your life, if you are living it with any kind of honesty and push forward with truth, your whole life is slightly awkward.

[17:49] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, if you're engaging with people genuinely, it's always awkward.

[17:53] Staceyann Chin: Yes. And that's to me, I try to tell like my students are always this, oh, I don't want to do that. Oh, that that's triggering. Oh, I'm like, first of all, if you're a performer, people pay to see you triggered. That's the job description.

[18:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[18:03] Staceyann Chin: If you don't want to be triggered, then don't get in this business because that's what people pay for. And you know, if you are interested in having a relationship with somebody, it's not about avoiding the awkward. It's about going into the awkward, going deeper to have a relationship and understand and and struggle with somebody so that you actually know them and have an awkward. The closer you are to someone.

[18:23] Tonya Pinkins: And I, you know, I've even seen this within the context of partnership. Whenever people like, you know, because the closer you get to someone, the more they rub up against your stuff, the more conflict, the more friction you will have between you. But nobody wants to have that. Everybody wanted to be like smooth and like on Instagram, where every picture is like the right exposure, the right filter, it's got like the right tone.

[18:44] Staceyann Chin: I mean, people do this shit like they like, they start laughing and then do a selfie. I'm like, come on. Click, what is that?

[18:54] Tonya Pinkins: The presentation of life, the curation of life, yeah.

[18:54] Staceyann Chin: The curation of life. Your whole being is an art show, which is problematic. We have to be able to embrace the awkward. We have to be able to like teach this next generation coming up because God knows they can't. Anyone who is like uncomfortable, which is why like I run from the teaching as much as I can. If I need the money and I need the health insurance, I you know, I'm not sure what you're do that.

[19:18] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, these children, these children this year. Oh my god, man. The teaching is hard. I can't tell you that the sentence you're right is shit because you won't get hired again because they will write a bad review about you. And but how is it that you're going to know the shit is bad if somebody don't tell you it's bad if you don't know nothing about whether it's bad or not? You're acting, your hairstyle, your breath. God damn it, if my breath stinks, somebody please tell me.

[19:43] Staceyann Chin: Yeah. These people, they don't want to hear anything uncomfortable. And it is, it is, it is, and it's I mean, people love to talk about young people, but it's not young people, it's a whole fucking generation. All these old people, everybody's like, mm-hmm.

[19:55] Tonya Pinkins: And to me, that's also like not Jamaican culture shock. When I came here from Jamaica, and people would do this like slightly pressed, pursed lip that kind of looks like a smile, but not really a smile. I'm like, what the fuck does that mean? You want to look like you're Bernie. Like Ernie and Bert. Like, that's what are you doing? Are you smiling at me? Are you inviting me into conversation? Are you like pretending that you acknowledge me so that I won't say that you're racist? Like, what is going on with that smile? Can't you just say good morning?

[20:28] Staceyann Chin: Or just not say anything, like turn your back, and I know you don't want to talk to nobody black. But god damn it, man, like be a person. Like nobody wants to flesh, it's it's everything like that thing you said, that's for me a piece of gentrification. Like they move into neighborhoods that have been occupied by other people, and then they walk down the street like you don't exist.

[20:41] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[20:41] Staceyann Chin: They walk down the street like you're invisible. They just like riding by, and they can just blur out their eyes to the fact that they're singing and dancing and people walking, and they just, you know, are walking by like you don't exist soon, you won't, because we're gonna buy you all out. And I, you know, I like push against that when I'm walking through Harlem, like, hey, how you doing? And then then there's a jump, like, whoa, oh, yeah. Like, no, you moved into our neighborhood.

[21:13] Tonya Pinkins: This I I often feel like gentrification is a form of chemotherapy.

[21:17] Staceyann Chin: Talk to me about that, please.

[21:20] Tonya Pinkins: Well, you know, in neighborhoods of immigrants, of grey people, beige people, people of color, there's life. You smell the cooking, you hear the accents, you see the colors, everybody's on the street, you go out on the street because you can't afford air conditioner, so when it's cool out, you out of the street, arguments happen in the streets. There is a life, life, all of life is coursing through.

[21:43] Staceyann Chin: Yes.

[21:43] Tonya Pinkins: Then we get some other people move in, and it's like all of the life is killed. But it's the sounds, the smells, the taste.

[21:51] Staceyann Chin: But it's interesting. Don't they move in for the life?

[21:55] Tonya Pinkins: Of course. The life is what brings them.

[21:57] Staceyann Chin: Well, also they move in because uh a lot of times there's a political strategy, like in Chicago after the 68 riots. My daughter's father was working um in the in the county assessor's office. And so he was privy to meetings and hearing things that black people get to hear because white people treat us like we are invisible. Like if we told the truth, we knew no one would leave us or listen to us anyway. So we know all their truth. And so he was privy to the conversations where they said, Let's give these niggas that stretch of the lake front.

[22:29] Tonya Pinkins: And that's where they put the Robert Towns and homes and all the projects on the lake front in Chicago.

[22:35] Staceyann Chin: They said, Let's give that to them. And in 30 years, we'll blight it and take it back.

[22:42] Tonya Pinkins: So there's a political urban planning strategy.

[22:45] Staceyann Chin: To what end?

[22:46] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, what to what end it is, is that they give you a an area that they can't afford to buy, like that real estate-wise, it's too expensive. So they do some get get government money to put underprivileged people there. And then they say you all are not developing the area sufficiently for economic imminent domain. And so now we can drop the prices to rock bottom and sell it really cheap. And now we make a whole lot of money because you all destroyed the area. So we blight it. And then we take it back and we make a lot of money. And that there's books about it in in Texas, in Illinois. That is economic strategy.

[23:27] Staceyann Chin: I have nothing to say. Like I'm kind of shocked by that.

[23:30] Tonya Pinkins: As as so being so like um purposeful.

[23:33] Staceyann Chin: Very purposeful, very intentional.

[23:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, that's crazy. You know, when you think about it in terms of purpose. I always like envision gentrification as just you know, people kind of looking at the life of that neighborhood, wanting to walk in and you know, snuff it out and take it for themselves, and then we you know, I I you know, I seven, 12 years ago I had a dog. You know, I or maybe yeah, I had a dog in in in Crown Heights, and then I used to be like uh just one in like a bunch of like you know, black people who had a dog, and we would walk and we would talk, and now um 12 years later I have a kid and I have a dog, and the neighborhood has been gentrified out, and my building is mostly white, and uh I go to the park and I feel like I am in their space.

[24:17] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, I feel like I'm you know, I I they all meet each other like, hey Joe, hey this, hey that, oh were you oh, you were there? What time did you leave last night? And I'm like, nobody invited me to this party that they have any money.

[24:29] Tonya Pinkins: It's in your building, you weren't invited.

[24:31] Staceyann Chin: Oh my god, and they all know each other. They don't all know each other's dogs. They watch each other's dogs, and I feel so kind of excluded from whatever community is happening in the these blocks that I've lived in for 20 years. And then I'm looking at a place to buy and like trying to figure out. And you know, I went to the loan people are telling me, well, maybe, maybe you can get a loan in a different, you know, city.

[24:57] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[24:57] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, you, you know, you just like coming out the side of your mouth telling me me, black woman, immigrant who came to New York City and helped to build it for 20 years. You telling me that I should just get up and leave.

[25:08] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[25:08] Staceyann Chin: And then what is affordable again? They keep putting up these affordable in quote apartments. You know, $1,700 for a studio apartment. What the hell does that who is that affordable for?

[25:19] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[25:20] Staceyann Chin: Donald Trump and his funny looking chiron? Like, I mean, I do I don't, you know, it's like, and and I don't know, you know, and then these down payments they're asking you for, and you can't get a hold. I I don't know what we're gonna do.

[25:32] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know what we're gonna do.

[25:33] Staceyann Chin: What's the answer, Tommy?

[25:34] Tonya Pinkins: We're gonna keep living. I mean, definitely. I mean, we're going to keep being. That is not I don't even worry about that. Like, I'm about to beg, borrow, and steal. Perhaps you can set me up with your dumb sub community.

[25:46] Staceyann Chin: Maybe I can make some money that way.

[25:51] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, a very spiritual, airy fairy.

[25:54] Staceyann Chin: We are, we are very much uh nobody in there have a hundred thousand dollars they want to put on a down payment. You know, it is all about these are some powerful women.

[26:02] Tonya Pinkins: But that's what I'm saying. Like, this is what I want. I want some these white women who are weeping all over the place and saying, what can I do? What can I do to help? Fucking help me with a down payment so I could buy a house in my neighborhood.

[26:14] Staceyann Chin: How about you?

[26:17] Tonya Pinkins: I have no doubt, Stacey Ann, that you could magnetize that for yourself.

[26:23] Staceyann Chin: Yes, and will subdom for money for down payments.

[26:26] Tonya Pinkins: I don't even think you need to know that. I think that the company and energy you have to go on. Now I had asked you before you came if you would do a poem.

[26:33] Staceyann Chin: Yes, yes, yes.

[26:35] Tonya Pinkins: Will you do the one that you did at the 5050 by 2020?

[26:37] Staceyann Chin: Which one is that?

[26:38] Tonya Pinkins: The one about black women?

[26:39] Staceyann Chin: Was that it at 5050 by 2020?

[26:41] Tonya Pinkins: I can't I can't remember.

[26:43] Staceyann Chin: I think so. Let me get my um a book.

[26:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, because I got I got I mean, like, you're so powerful. Tell them a joke while I run again.

[26:49] Staceyann Chin: Um, all the jokes I like are kind of um off color, but it's you can't say that. So here's my favorite joke. Um, there's this plane and it's flying across the um ocean. And please, I'm this is no offense to Kobe or anybody else who's died or had lost people in the plane class, but there's a plane crying across the Atlantic, and all of a sudden the passions here and what's going on. And the captain comes on and he goes, Um, I know you heard that sound. We are having some difficulties, but um we've decided that if we could just lighten the load of the plane, we'll be able to get to uh uh some land. So we're asking permission from everybody if we could drop all of the luggage and the cargo in the plane so that we can get to safety.

[27:30] Tonya Pinkins: And people are like, of course, of course, drop the plane.

[27:32] Staceyann Chin: So you hear that all the luggage is going in. So then the plane is going smoothly along. And then all of a sudden, more turbulence. Oh, oh they're like, okay, okay, we thought that was a good one. Y'all are missing the physicality of this joke. You're missing the visual. You are completely not getting the whole situation.

[27:50] Tonya Pinkins: So we we we we we we lost, we we we've we've got, you know, we wait low lightened the way, but we need to lighten the load a little bit more, and so we're gonna have to ask for volunteers to jump off the plane.

[28:01] Staceyann Chin: I see.

[28:02] Tonya Pinkins: And there's there's their silence, and it's like, look, we're all gonna die, or a few of us can sacrifice our lives so that the majority of us can live. And it's just silence. There is no one who is volunteering their life.

[28:14] Staceyann Chin: So they're going along, it's turbulent. The captain says, Look, we we don't have much time left. So I'm gonna just have to do this democratically. We are going in alphabetical order. So I want all the African Americans to step forward.

[28:28] Tonya Pinkins: And nobody moves.

[28:30] Staceyann Chin: So he says, okay, then we'll take all the blacks.

[28:34] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[28:34] Staceyann Chin: And nobody moves.

[28:36] Tonya Pinkins: And so next he says, okay, then the next group will be all the colors.

[28:40] Staceyann Chin: And this little girl tugs at her mama and she says, Mommy, aren't we all three of those?

[28:46] Staceyann Chin: And her mama says, No, darling. Today we're niggas. And I like, I like the fact that there was like room to self-identify. Young folks would like this. The fact that there was room to self-identify. Okay, so I'll read this one. And if this is not the right one, there's no anything you read and it's powerful. So tell us the name of it. Which book is this from? This is from my latest book called Crossfire. Uh a litany for survival. It's a nod to Audrey Lord. Um, Tsunami Rising. It's called Me Too 2. In the balance of human biology, all bodies are created equal. Everybody is about 70% water, regardless of race, religion, gender, sex, or sexual orientation. We all die after about seven days without drink.

But the idiots obsessed with category have decided that a double X chromosome designates me, subordinate to those with an X and a Y. Intersect those two X's with a fact of my blackness, and my existence is now coded as dangerous, hostile, a direct threat to the endurance of the white patriarchy. And everybody knows that white men have spent eons, centuries appropriating what they wanted. The gold they found in Africa wasn't enough. So they submerged human bodies head to toe in a swamp of our own urine and feces. They dragged us across violent waters. Many of us drowned our young rather than let them live at the mercy of white men and their sons and their grandsons and their grandsons' sons, just to keep breathing.

Some of us became one-dimensional in the public imagination, in real life, in books. We had to become one thing or the other, spinster or mother, victim or virgin, damsel or whore, some of us went underground. Some of us let go into that sunken place. Others revolted, took up arms, crawled through sewage, defied geography, to build new lives in new cities. And that's how the fuck I find myself in Brooklyn, spending my nights reading tales of Nubians bathing naked in the Nile, cush-eyed queens, equal to kings, all of them praying to a black woman named Isis, the most powerful goddess among gods. And I imagine if I were her, if I were Isis, I would use my might to smite every motherfucker who ever looked at a little girl with lust in his flesh.

I would exact vengeance on behalf of every black woman who has disproportionately borne the weight of racial and sexual violence, while everybody in the suffragette movement and the black civil rights movement and the LGBT movement turned a blind eye to her swollen lips, mouthing me too, too. Someone please help me too. Get him off me too, me too, me too. For centuries, black women have endured the culture of rape and racism combined. For centuries, the world has stood silent while black women and girls were bullied by black men and white men and white women alike for centuries. Anyone who wanted to hit something or own someone, they could decide we were it without consequence. Anyone could tag a black woman, a dark girl, the universal punching bag for centuries.

Rape was a word black mothers never spoke aloud, but every black daughter knew what it meant. It meant lie still. It will pass, keep quiet. It meant ignore that girl who screams too loudly. Don't you dare shame this good black family. And then one day, one day something brilliant happened. A black woman named Tirana Burke inspired wealthy white women to say, me too, too. And herein wriggles the strange rubric of America's particular strain of racism. Ironically, the viral mobility of the Me Too hashtag was only possible because a white one with power, a white woman with power retweeted a black woman's words. Two words which unleashed a wildfire of public testimony, pulling the shroud of sexual violation from the shadows, shoving it onto primetime TV.

Yet, 12 years after that first Tirana Burke's Me Too moment, black women are still largely missing from the public dialogue about sexual assault. And we, we, the black women are so tired of being disregarded. If you gave black feminists any room to speak honestly, if you gave us any room to speak honestly, this is the letter we might pen to you, white feminists. You whose crying consistently drowns out the sound of black suffering. Dear weeping white woman, even as we cannot find safe space to show you where or when or how we were torn open, we are only holding this sorrow in to keep our hearts from exploding. We are unable to process any of our pain with you because we are exhausted from the centuries of holding you and your children.

We have a hard time trusting you even as you stand here weeping. We have a hard time trusting you because you have never been able to stand up for us or stand by us, and we are tired. We are exhausted from explaining ourselves. And if you wish to know any more about the genesis of this rage, this iron white rage, please go and Google us or read Bell Hooks or Brittany Cooper or the blogs of the Bevy of White Women writers, your white publishers are too afraid to publish. For centuries, we have been carrying the weight of your white fragility, year after year, marching for everyone else's freedom, protesting everyone else's sorrow but ours. Well, this crazy mad gaggle of global witches and hags are done braiding beads of silent acceptance.

Simply put, in this century, black women intend to take up a whole lot more motherfucking space. Black women are crafting a collective response to centuries of being under everybody's water. We have become a rising tsunami of fury, come back to take back what was carried away without consent. And while we're still here being candid, I might as well confess to you that I don't give a fuck if you don't like me or my big mouth, black like my lover's ass. It has never endeared me to the gatekeepers of white civility. My proclivity to speak the unspeakable is essentially the only defense I have against this indefensible violence of your man-made history. Inside my house, inside my Brooklyn house, there is no shadow talk of birds or bees.

We trade indecipherable metaphors for concrete words that do not confuse my daughter. I tell her, your mouth, your elbow, your hair, your arms, your legs, your vagina, your whole goddamn body belongs to no one but you. And if you ever feel even a tiny bit unsafe, you open your mouth, you scream for help. If anybody, anybody at all does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, you tell me, and I will always believe you, my daughter, in a world that so regularly demonstrates how much it hates us. This is what it means to be assigned the label of black and girl. And yet we continue to survive. To thrive, to arrive into adulthood with the ability to laugh and love and wear hoop earrings and tight skirts and found social movements to liberate other motherfuckers from bondage.

If any of this sounds like I am speaking your story, this poem be for you, my love, if you have ever had to argue that you are no less deserving than your white counterpart. I am speaking to you and for you, my love, if you have ever been inspired by the magic of black women with thighs and asses that move mountains in their stride. If you have ever been told you speak too fiercely from the thick lip of your own truth, if you have ever been called a girl, like it was a fucking insult. If you have ever been called bitch, you step forward now if you are itching to light a fucking fire, a bonfire in the house of the white patriarchy. Come stand with black women now. If you want to be free like Harriet Tubman, weapon in hand, wading through the unfriendly waters, her power compelling the freedom of even those who did not want to be free.

If you desire to be confrontational like Sojourna, if you wish to be audacious like Audrey, antagonistic like Angela, gangster like Winnie Mandela, angry like Asata Shakur, you come roar with us at our rallies, sit behind beside us in schools, sing with us in church, stand with us where it matters, vote with us and vote for us at these motherfucking polls. Travel with us in the virtual, in the flesh, over these waters they have used against us as weapons, across these lands of this rock we all call home. Let us use the fire to crack the ground wide open with an uprising that will never again die down. Let us say to them, no more water for them. We're gonna use fire next time. What we say, no more water, fire next time, no more water. We use motherfucking fire next time.

[38:15] Tonya Pinkins: I'm in tears. Thank you for letting me do that.

[38:20] Staceyann Chin: Oh, thank you. You are a force. I mean, how do you how do you remain as radical, as provocative as, you know, take no prisoners? One of the ways in which I kind of hold on to my voice is that I don't, I don't, I'm not attached to an institution, so I can fucking say what I want and not have to cow too or explain it, or if I get in trouble, then I don't have to explain. How is it that you have for a whole life been attached to so many institutions that seem so powerful and still keep this attitude of take no prisoners, shoot now talk later?

[38:52] Staceyann Chin: Um I think a lot of it has to do with you know having been abused so terribly that there's just nothing that anybody else can threaten me with that I haven't gone through. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, oh, we're not gonna hire you. Oh, you're difficult. Okay, okay. So um it it is from that that space of like what you gonna do to me that hasn't already been done to me. That was far worse. And growing up in a crazy household where trying to hold on to what is reality and my sanity and uh in that has meant that I when I find something that feels so clear and right for me, I have to hold it. And I have to hold it in the face of any story that you're gonna tell you. I got hired a lot because George C. Wolf believed in my talent.

And you know, he six of the Broadway shows I did were George C. Wolf. Um George C. Wolf, if you're listening, produce Motherstruck. Yeah, George C. Wolf. I mean, George C. Wolf has a lot to do with it. Um Hal Prince gave me my first gig. Um, and and the fact that they're they were comfortable having me in their rooms until they weren't. And when I get in the room, I I kick ass. And so, you know, you know I'm difficult, and if you want to have me in the room, you have to expect that that's what's gonna come with me. So I actually have been turning down a lot more jobs because I'm less patient, less tolerant with the ignorance, and I'm like, you know what? I don't want to make y'all uncomfortable by doing me, so I'm not gonna even come in your room, even though you think I might bring something.

I'm not, because I'm I'm really radical now. I'm at the end of my life, and it's like yeah, it's just really radical. I just made, you know, my first feature film and it is about this election and the people that put them there. And it's a socio-political horror because uh that's what we're living in. So yeah.

[40:40] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I mean, uh, it's it's remarkably inspiring because um yeah, I've just like avoided institutions. I don't apply for grants, I don't, you know, I don't mess with big institutions because I know that what comes with that space is yeah, but but not but not having the institutions means you know I don't have to pay for my own health insurance. Yeah, you know, um I can't, you know, I you know I don't have a job letter to take to anyone that can say, um, hey, give me a loan for your a house. Right. The golden handcuffs do bring a lot of things, but for me, if the price of that is my soul, I I I just couldn't live with it. I just couldn't live with it.

[41:14] Staceyann Chin: Yeah, but it is it's good to see someone who is still doing work and f have done work for so long. It's nice to see it. It means that okay, even though it gets difficult that, you know, I should press on and keep on with my voice. Hold on to my voice. And don't consider this selling out business just because you need no you need something. And we're in the pivot. We are the women of the pivot. It's pivoting, it is shifting. It is a good thing. I like that. We should I'm gonna get a t-shirt that says we are in the pivot, because that moment, being in the pivot, is what makes us hold on when it is the hardest. Because once you know it's coming, no matter how rough it gets, no matter how orange it gets, then you can still hold on. So thank you for that.

[41:54] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you for the inspiration. I mean, I I was I liked I like being here and talking to you. Thank you. Thank you. I I can't say anymore. But thank you, Staceyann Chin, and you are welcome back anytime. And I hope you will invite me to your home. And next one. I love these conversations.

[42:09] Staceyann Chin: You can come to my home too. Absolutely. I will be there if you ask me.

[42:13] Staceyann Chin: Big, big, big, big love. And thank you for, you know, thank you for having me and like for having a space that we can have these like ridiculously crazy conversations that are mostly unwelcome elsewhere. Let's do it again.

[42:24] Tonya Pinkins: You are listening to Tonya Pinkins, You Can't SAY THAT, and I guess Stacy Ann Chin.

[42:32] Staceyann Chin: Oh yeah.

[42:33] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you. Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show Where You Can. I'm Tonya Pinkins. This is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales. Edited by Derek Gunther, music by Anthony Norman. Available wherever you get your podcast. And visit me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And let me know what you'd like to hear me talk about. For more information, visit VPN.fm forward slash YCST.