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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, my name is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:10] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta speak to life.

[0:14] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta say one drill for you.

[0:25] Tonya Pinkins: We are deep into 2020 and a global pandemic.

[0:31] Tonya Pinkins: It's been a long time since I recorded.

[0:34] Tonya Pinkins: I am in Seoul, Korea, where in a population of 50 million people, they've only had 413 deaths.

[0:44] Tonya Pinkins: That's because everybody here wears masks everywhere all the time.

[0:50] Tonya Pinkins: Masks save lives.

[0:53] Tonya Pinkins: So today I'm very excited to welcome a guest who I have been a fan of ever since I read her debut novel, which spent six weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and it was Oprah Winfrey's pick for the launch of the Oprah Book Club 2.0.

[1:16] Tonya Pinkins: This is one of the finest pieces of literary fiction that I've ever read.

[1:21] Tonya Pinkins: I count it alongside my love of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude.

[1:30] Tonya Pinkins: And the name of the book is Ruby.

[1:33] Tonya Pinkins: And join me in welcoming my guest, the author of Ruby, Cynthia Bond.

[1:39] Cynthia Bond: Hey Tonya, how are you?

[1:40] Tonya Pinkins: Hi Cynthia, I'm good.

[1:42] Cynthia Bond: I'm good.

[1:44] Tonya Pinkins: So let's, you know, I know we're here for to have a conversation about some specific things, but let's talk a little bit about Ruby for those who have not read Ruby.

[1:55] Tonya Pinkins: Um I love the way you use language, um, the way you make trees talk and the land talk.

[2:08] Tonya Pinkins: And have you always uh had this gift for language? Were you a great student in school?

[2:15] Cynthia Bond: Um I was uh I I love to write, and I love to write from just my earliest memories.

[2:25] Cynthia Bond: I was uh my my first sort of award-winning uh uh story was called um Arnold W. Guinea pig, and it was the life of uh the life and the struggles and the death of our wonderful guinea pig, Arnold.

[2:42] Cynthia Bond: So I was in the fifth grade, and I won something, I don't know what.

[2:50] Cynthia Bond: And we were the only black kids at that school, and my dad taught um speech and uh Shakespearean literature at KU.

[3:00] Cynthia Bond: So believe me, he had me going over and over and over that story before I read it out loud for everyone.

[3:11] Cynthia Bond: But I wrote it.

[3:12] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, that was K U, what's K U? Where's that?

[3:16] Cynthia Bond: Oh, that's Kansas University.

[3:17] Tonya Pinkins: It's in Lawrence, Kansas, the J Help Texas.

[3:20] Tonya Pinkins: So it sounds like you moved a lot because I read online that you were born in Texas, you live in LA. Where did you go in between?

[3:27] Cynthia Bond: Well, uh, born in Texas, and my dad taught at Prairie View A&M, and my mom was a student, and he taught Shakespeare there and English, and then he was uh one of the first black uh professors they invited to KU, Kansas University.

[3:44] Cynthia Bond: So when I was about six, we moved there, and uh I got to meet amazing people.

[3:51] Cynthia Bond: Uh Maya Angelou came, uh Nikki Giovanni, my cousin Julian Bond, all of these people came, and he got to meet them because he was one of the you know few black guys there.

[4:04] Cynthia Bond: So it was wonderful, and then they divorced and uh we hit a bunch of other spots, but we landed in Kansas City, and then I went to school in Chicago and ran away from Chicago and lived in New York for about seven years, which I loved an actress in a horror film.

[4:29] Tonya Pinkins: I oh god lord, please just say what you're gonna say.

[4:37] Cynthia Bond: So, you know, I was really excited when I learned that Ruby started off as a 900-page novel, and that your editors decided to make it into three novels.

[4:52] Tonya Pinkins: So, when do we get book two?

[4:55] Cynthia Bond: Okay, so I will answer that, but I will go back and just say, yes, I was an actress, yes, I was in that very disturbing horror movie.

[5:05] Cynthia Bond: But I worked in New York, I did a lot of stage work in New York and worked with Negro Ensemble Company and Charles Fuller, and then came out here and did Shakespeare Festival and some interesting television.

[5:19] Cynthia Bond: But book two, uh, I have been working on it, you know, it's that sophomore, that really difficult sophomore challenge.

[5:31] Cynthia Bond: And so I've been working on it.

[5:34] Cynthia Bond: It's more than one year late.

[5:37] Cynthia Bond: I we don't need to say how many.

[5:39] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but I will turn it in in March and it will be out in 2022.

[5:46] Tonya Pinkins: Now, if you'd already written 900 pages, how could it be late? Hadn't you already written it?

[5:49] Cynthia Bond: So what's it?

[5:52] Cynthia Bond: Because basically, I had written an entire arc.

[5:56] Cynthia Bond: There was a, you know, it page 500 was one of the major climaxes of the book.

[6:05] Cynthia Bond: So there were a lot of things in book one that I had to, it's almost as if I had constructed this spider web, and I had to pull little things out of it and reweave it to create book one.

[6:18] Cynthia Bond: So book two has become it is not what it was.

[6:25] Cynthia Bond: It's much bigger, it's much more expansive.

[6:28] Cynthia Bond: In my book, there's this interesting kind of uh, she's a shapeshifter, so she connects with nature.

[6:35] Cynthia Bond: There's a lot of personification, but in book two, that expands even more so that she's shapeshifting not just with nature, but also with time, with some other elements.

[6:50] Cynthia Bond: So it's really in a way, I'm so glad that I had to split it up.

[6:57] Cynthia Bond: I mean, there will always be a part of me that regrets that it wasn't the book I planned initially.

[7:03] Cynthia Bond: So there's always a sacrifice, but this book, what it's allowed me to do is as I've grown, my character has grown, and my book has grown because before when I wrote Ruby I had never been to Paris I'd been to France but I'd never been to Paris and so uh with Ruby coming out I was in Paris twice I was uh you know invited to a couple of really amazing festivals and I'd never been so now there's this whole in book two this uh black cafe society is in book two because I sat in that cafe where you know so it's as you grow as you learn as you grow wiser so does your so does your work and you uh are a writing teacher and I have the privilege of being one of your writing students I'm a new student of yours this year and you're amazing if I can just say that I don't know if that's okay um so you know tell us about what you do in your your writing like what is it your sort of mission as a teacher to uh help students with.

[7:03] Cynthia Bond: Okay so when I first started teaching I worked primarily with at-risk youth so I worked with homeless youth at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and I worked with these kids on the street and it was all about getting them to define their lives and the way they define their lives and they basically created a parameter who am I because so many of these kids were thrown out of their homes they were cast aside, um, abused, came to LA, got on drugs, and we would, and the only way a point of the main point of contact for so many of them was that I was giving away free journals.

[9:01] Cynthia Bond: So my mission now is my mission then, and what that mission is and has always been to tell help people to tell their stories and recognize that that art of creation and the ability to create is it truly defeats any horrific thing that is happening because you are it's almost, and I've said this so many times it is as if you have a spindle, and all of just the shit and the horrible things that have happened in your life are like straw, just trampled straw on the ground of the cell.

[9:52] Cynthia Bond: And so you take that straw and you put it through the spindle, and not only do you transform it, you transform the story within yourself, but I also think that's how you get out of the cell.

[10:04] Cynthia Bond: That's how you find freedom.

[10:07] Cynthia Bond: And so that's and now especially I you know, I have the class, and it is so important to have everyone's voice heard.

[10:17] Cynthia Bond: I also just in my heart have a really important place and space for black women and black women's words and black women writing their truth.

[10:30] Cynthia Bond: Um these are voices that have to be like if you had a huge gong, it would just be they need to ring or a bell, a clarion bell.

[10:40] Cynthia Bond: That is I just wrote an essay about that the other day, how uh ignored the black woman's voices, and how in my most recent story, Red Pill the Movie, um, black women who experience it totally get it, and yeah, you know, non-black women tend to find it like that's not interesting, or why are we talking about that or cut that or and it's like, oh, you know, you talk about diversity and inclusion, but actually it's really you just want your voice with somebody else's skin on it, you know.

[11:13] Cynthia Bond: It's like everything out because when I present it to you the way it is, it's my voice, it's how I see the world.

[11:21] Cynthia Bond: Uh, people have to learn to step into somebody else's voice rather than choose to call it wrong, or that's not correct, or you're seeing wrong.

[11:30] Cynthia Bond: No, that's how I see.

[11:31] Cynthia Bond: Now you can come and see what I see.

[11:34] Cynthia Bond: I know that is the thing.

[11:36] Cynthia Bond: It is this, and and really this idea, what Toni Morrison talked about, the white gaze.

[11:42] Cynthia Bond: What I didn't realize it how strong it's as if, and I talk about this when I teach, there's this little there is this person on your shoulder, but who is that person?

[11:55] Cynthia Bond: And as a black woman, not only is it, you know, I've got a little committee there, it's the white man, it's a white woman, it is black men, all these and family, you know, you don't want to embarrass the family, don't want to shame your people.

[12:10] Cynthia Bond: And so it is writing, you have to write past those people and write and find a way to tell your truth.

[12:23] Cynthia Bond: But oh my lord, it is hard.

[12:26] Cynthia Bond: And the thing that's really hard, and this is the biggest thing to overcome, is it's not just that there's a lack of understanding of this perspective, but a sense that there's no need to go and learn.

[12:47] Cynthia Bond: There's there, what is the point?

[12:50] Cynthia Bond: And um, and that is um boy, that's the main thing you have to do is know what the point is for yourself, because you can never change what's going on out there.

[13:05] Cynthia Bond: But if you can unlearn all of those lies that are programmed in as a black woman, I can just speak for myself.

[13:17] Cynthia Bond: I have had so many lies, I was programmed in so many ways.

[13:23] Cynthia Bond: And lies are ways you were programmed.

[13:25] Cynthia Bond: Oh my lord.

[13:27] Cynthia Bond: Well, first sex, you know, I mean, early, it's you know, as a young black woman and also just dealing with abuse issues, but um, but you know, I was I was defined by how sexy I could be.

[13:45] Cynthia Bond: I was a black woman, so I would date a lot of there were white men I would date, and I I knew the the kind of it's almost like, yeah, you're gonna be the I'll just I don't know, but you know, just the hot black chick with the arm candy.

[14:04] Cynthia Bond: I I definitely had that as a young woman.

[14:06] Tonya Pinkins: You're the artist, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[14:08] Cynthia Bond: Yeah, but there's something sexual and wild, you're animalistic, you're a black woman, you know.

[14:15] Cynthia Bond: And so it's and that, so the sex part was um, you know, it is still, I mean, now that I'm older, I, you know, it got me some COVID gray going, and I'm like, it's good to be free of some of that, but that was, and and really over and over, and I found this when my book came out as well.

[14:44] Cynthia Bond: Um, and I don't remember what publication this was in, but you know, as a writer, I am very left brain and very right brain, and I really do a lot of planning. It's almost as if there's a loom, and you have to build the loom for me, which is an outline, which can change and shift, but that and the story that those are the threads that are woven through that loom. Well, what happened when I was um when I was being interviewed after the book came out, I had someone ask me about, and this happened a lot. They asked me about my process, and I told them about my process. There was a very spiritual, intuitive, like ancestor connected part of my writing. There's also a very, you know, meticulous planning, these arcs, this loom.

No one ever wanted to hear about that side of it. It was always, oh, the spiritual, emotional, the ghosts, the this. That's real. Exoticizing you. Tell yes. Tell us about the looming process. Okay. So, you know, there are a lot of, well, I just want to I want to say that, but I will say that. But what I want to say is there was one particular article that came out, and I I told people a lot of specifics about my mother, who was a college president, a community college president, chancellor, has won awards from everywhere, really seminal work. And I told the story about how she had little scars on her body, and that's how we from growing up on a farm. Guess what was in there? Nothing about my mom, you know, who's a world traveler.

She's just, you know, this stunning, sophisticated, amazing woman. No, instead, it was all about East Texas, and my mother was this woman with a bunch of scars. And I and I just gleaned stories, and there was just this woman sitting there with scars everywhere. Um, but that was the picture, and the rest of it, the craft, the artistry. So back to the loom. Um, there are many story structures, and many people after the fact look at a particular structure and say, oh, that's what that structure is. Um, I believe that a story, you know, there's the braided story as one of the arcs, you know, where you have three characters and you're or more, and you're going between each character's lives, and you sort of braid that together.

But for me, I really think that it is a loom. I I really have so many different um colors that I that come from different directions and create patterns. And that is, you know, each character is its own color. It some characters are only just a few little threads, but they are important to creating this whole um tapestry. And that is what that is how I also have another structure that I've believed that I've not heard of, and it's a North Star story structure, and it is it is the it is the slave who longs for freedom. It is the slave who is the imprisoned person who every step, regardless of how often they are thwarted, every single step is a step towards freedom and a step towards uh towards being able to put their feet on free soil.

And even there's something that James Baldwin has in the Fire Next Time, and he talks about basically this um sense of um when you survive the worst, you have this sense of uh uh you can define oneself, one can define oneself, and the idea that whether you live or die, you are still headed to freedom. Whether you live or die, and the minute you stop searching, the minute you stop looking for it, even if you're alive, you're dead. And so if you continue on, if you are alive, you are you are still heading towards the North Star. And many people in my stories are dead, you know, they die and they continue on. The quest for freedom remains. So death is not the end. Death is not the impediment to finding release and freedom.

I've been reading about fairies. Um, I'm reading uh Robin Ardison, her book On Caro Gwen, and uh talking about what's called the breath soul, and there's another the body soul and these different souls that can go and inhabit plants or can go and inhabit birds and animals, and um you know, when you talk about the uh personification of of everything in life, uh I can so relate to that because I I do believe that even rocks are sentient beings. I believe that completely. And do you find, because I find sometimes that being in connection with the world in that way, I often, I don't think that I'm like a fortune teller or anything like that, but it's like I can see, I can see where the world is going.

I can just see it. It's there, the the pattern is there. Uh, you know, in my movie Red Pill, I wrote about things that came to pass this year. Do you have that? Yes. And you know who else really has that? And you'll have her on is Chaiko. Chico Amuale supporting her uh as a you know, fellow writer and uh coach. And um I mean, that whole thing, it's happened already. It's like, okay, well, it's nobody's gonna believe that. Um, I do, I think um, I don't, I think that's more in my uh personal life. My writing life, um in my personal life, uh, and this is again, you know, you don't always want to talk about this because it's like, oh, the black woman, all seeing fortune teller knowing, you know, all of that, but there's a reality to being it, I mean, to me, it's just very clear.

Do you believe all things are living, or do you believe all things are dead? You know, uh, do you believe all life has value, or do you believe that it does not? And that is really the question because people who are able to rape the land, can rape a woman, can commit genocide, can commit all of these acts. Life there is life does not exist. There is not a vibrancy, there is not a true value of life. And it may seem a bit simplistic, but to me, it's just so I as I get older, I become deeper and deeper and more connected to all things being living. I mean, I have people write about I took a really wonderful workshop with um Lydia Yankovich, and uh in it, there was a student who wrote an entire, an entire story of the life of this woman from the perspective of the blue dress.

It was brilliant. I wish I remembered her name, but it just a brilliant, brilliant story. This table, you know, that I have this this table I've been writing on. I've been writing on this table forever. This table has got some stories to tell. This table has taken me and my tears, it is it it had a life before it came to me. This table has stories. I thought you know, that if Paris, if all those buildings in Paris could talk the stories they could tell, the things the people, uh yes, I definitely feel everything's alive. Now, I want to get to some politics and get to, you know, one of the main reasons we came to talk is like QAnon, you know, there's this whole theory going on in the world now that the the deep state, which is particularly the liberal West people are this big pedophile sex trafficking ring.

And um, in my story and in your story, there are these cults. And um, you know, so I have a fascination with cults with cult in Ruby. Um, but what I have learned and know about cults is politics has nothing to do with cults. Oh, yeah. People in a cult, there it's not like they're about the political thing is has nothing to do with the cult. It's all about power, and it's just power. And we were talking about this thing of uh chaos battle magic, Satan, Saturn battle magic, and the fact that people who practice these forms of magic, there's always a price to pay for what you want, and often children who are innocents, um, the blood, the sacrifice, the use of sexual energy, bodily fluids are are part of that.

And that's in the story of Ruby. Mm-hmm. It is, it is, and you know, there are a lot of different um, there are a lot of different people that I've connected with, and a lot of different things that I've, you know, I've really tried to understand. And one of the things is how uh this idea of how is child prostitution connected to satanic worship. And I remember speaking to um a really amazing therapist. Uh and um, I interviewed her, I spoke to her for hours and hours and hours, and she said basically, child prostitution is like the bake sale of, you know it's yeah it's it's this is how this is a a money earning that this allows a lot of money to come into the cult and you know the thing about cults and the thing about discussing them is um it it can be a a bit of a dangerous uh little road to talk about uh there are a lot of people who have uh survived uh some of these things and they have spoken and they are no longer with us um I believe for me and I'm you know I I went to journalism school I I sat down at an old fashioned typewriter I'm gonna date myself and banged out stories and loved loved love journalism school but I could never never and I've written essays and had them published and stories and some articles but really I'm a horrible journalist because the factual truth and the emotional truth it's hard sometimes to marry those two which is why I love fiction but in fiction you can write about anything you can you can you can have a cult that's connected to the KKK you can have a cult that's connected to the black community you can have uh both of those interacting and having a way of of connecting.

You can write about the truth as a fiction writer in a way that you never can. Um, well, I'm sorry for those who write nonfiction. I'll just say for me, I could never write the truth of all of the things that I've learned and gleaned and gathered along the way in the way that I I can with uh with with fiction. It is, but yes, you're absolutely right.

[28:42] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, my name is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT. That was part one of my conversation with New York Times bestselling author, Cynthia Bond, author of Ruby. Come back for part two.