Episode 94: revelry // Wednesday, July 8

Kara: I am not ashamed to admit that when I saw Black Lives Matter painted in the giant letters on Pennsylvania Avenue leading to the White House, I cried a little bit. Because I just realized, Oh, this really is mainstream right now. I'm so used to us being a blip, a moment, and people are like, ‘Oh, that's terrible.’ And then that's it. And it feels exciting . . . and scary . . . this might not just be a blip in the news cycle. 

Laura: When you open the pages of FIERCE: ESSAYS BY AND ABOUT DAUNTLESS WOMEN, one of the first things you’ll see is a list of words that each of the authors chose to describe her essay. The author I’m speaking with in today’s episode chose “revelry.”

Merriam Webster defines revelry as “noisy partying or merrymaking.” And while we talked about some sobering things, our conversation also included a lot of laughter. Maybe even a little merrymaking.

Kara: Hi, I'm Kara Lee Corthron I am a playwright, a novelist, and a TV writer. I am African American and black lives matter. I'm a writer for YOU on Netflix and a show called The Flight Attendant, which will be on HBO Max. That's something that's very active in my life right now. It's actually why I moved to LA. 

I grew up in Western, Maryland, like a really small town. And I think because of that, I was really looking to move into a bigger city when I was grown. So I was in New York for 18 years and I loved it at first. And there are times when I still love the city, but I definitely was pretty exhausted being there my last few months before I came out here.

Laura: Looking at Kara’s list of accomplishments, it’s easy to understand why she might have been exhausted. She’s done as much work in the last decade as most authors hope to do in a lifetime.

If I told you about all of the awards she has won for her playwriting, we’d be here for a while. I’ll put a link to her website in my show notes for today so you can read them for yourself. 

In addition to writing for shows on Netflix and HBO Max, Kara is also the author of two young adult novels, including one that is coming out in October, and has taught writing students of all ages. She’s had an impressive career. I asked her to tell us how she ended up where she is now. 

Kara: Oh, man. Careers are so funny because they're so weird and winding. I started as a playwright, and even that I kind of fell into. My older sister is a playwright as well, so I kind of felt like, well, that's her purview. I want to do other things. So I was a performer for a long time.

I studied dance in college, but quickly realized that I didn't have the discipline for it. So then I moved over to acting and I really thought I was going to be an actor for a long time, but I burnt out on that lifestyle. And I was also getting  called in to read for parts. I kept finding myself thinking, ‘I can do better than that. I know I can do better than that.’ So originally when I started writing, I was thinking I would perform my own material--kind of, you know, a solo performance type deal. But the more I did it and the more personal and vulnerable it became, I thought, no, I think I'd prefer to see other actors do this and me be outside of it.

And then it was like, well, duh, that makes me a playwright. I literally had to put those words in my mind to actually say I was a playwright, because I just didn't take myself seriously that way. And so  I went to Julliard, where I studied and got a lot better.

I also had  a longstanding dream of writing young adult fiction, and I actually did write a novel years and years ago, before I knew I was a playwright. And I was really young and dumb and I didn't know how life works. So I was encouraged to send it to a major publishing house. And I got a rejection letter back that was two pages single-spaced, basically trashing the book from top to bottom--like all the things (that were) wrong with it, the reasons why I should never be a writer. Basically saying I had no talent whatsoever. So then I was like, okay, I can't do that.

And I put it to the side. It took almost a decade, like nine years later. I was like, you know what? That was one person in a bad mood who felt like punishing some little person without power. I'm going to write a book because I want to. So that's how I started doing Young Adult. 

And TV work kind of came through playwriting. It's such a hard thing to explain trajectories because I feel like so many things are about luck and timing and, just pursuing what you want when you want. You have to always just manage your expectations and know that just because you're ready, it doesn't mean other people are ready for you yet. But we have to hang in there and stuff comes around. 

My theater agent of many years, moved to a different agency and took me with her, which is called APA, which is larger than where she was originally. And she was just networking with some of her coworkers, one of whom was a young TV agent. And he said, do you have any playwrights that you think would do well in the medium? So she sent him some scripts of different people and he really connected with my work. And I connected with him. And I also said at that time I was open to move to LA. I'd been in New York for many, many years, but I was getting a little tired of it. And so he started submitting and I moved last August. So August of 2019. 

There's a lot that I still haven't gotten to see, because we're technically still sheltering in place. Recently, a lot of things were opening up, but I think already they've realized that was a mistake, that they opened too soon, because there's been actually a pretty major spike in cases in LA County in like the last week or so.

There's times when I think it'd be nice to see LA sometimes, like, I don’t know when it will happen. It's made me appreciate a lot of little things that I was taking for granted. Like being able to use the Metro, and saying, Oh, it's a really nice day. It's hot. Let's go to the beach.

It's a kind of interesting deprivation. It's just made me realize how much I rely on lots of things outside myself for entertainment. So it's led to me being a little bit more creative. I've definitely been writing a lot more, and some of that is by necessity, but some of that I do think is because I'm here so much.

We adopted two young cats, like a few weeks before, so we didn't know what was coming. And they just turned one. They're very sweet, and, you know, God bless them, but they've been driving us crazy because we're here all the time and they're here all the time. So that's kind of been an interesting fun, cabin fever, side effect.

Every day is kind of weird, but I'm lucky I've been able to keep working. I'm so keenly aware of my privilege. Because I know that for a lot of people, this has meant they've lost their jobs, or they're hungry.

There are times when I do feel like I'm at work all the time because I live here. I wish I could get a little bit more distance from that, even though at the same time, in some ways it's really good that I'm able to focus. I do have a different mind space or relationship to the work. I think I'm appreciating it more because it actually feels right now like a privilege to be able to be writing when everything is sort of falling apart around us

Laura: I asked Kara if she’d be willing to talk a little about some of the things that are falling apart in our world. As a Black Woman in America, her feelings during this time have been complicated.

Kara: I have a lot of feelings about it. It's been surreal. It's just that feeling of, but I already knew all of this. We already know.

We're hitting a tipping point and that's good. And people in all white towns in the middle of nowhere are having black lives matter protests. That's huge. But there is a part of me that's like, it's also 2020. Like, wow. Really? It's taken us this long just to realize that it's not okay to kill us whenever you feel like? And it's tough. 

On the other hand, I do get hope from  how widespread the protests seem to be this time. I was really amazed seeing a mural of George Floyd painted in Syria. You know, and Syria, they have their own problems right now. So that really says something that they're thinking about what's going on in the U.S. regarding black people.

I am, I'm not ashamed to admit that when I saw Black Lives Matter painted in giant letters on Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the white house. I cried a little bit because I think I just realized, Oh, this really is mainstream right now I'm so used to us being a blip, a moment, and people are like, Oh, that's terrible. And then that's it. And it feels And scary this might not just be a blip in the news cycle.  

Nothing is fixed, and that can be good and that can be bad. But change is inevitable. Change is always going to come, and it's going to be uncomfortable, and it's going to be hard, and you're going to have to live with it. 

I think what's most important is to never stop educating yourself. Don't be willing to accept easy answers or easy resolutions, because if it's easy, it's probably not the whole story.

Laura: The essays in Fierce remind us that when it comes to history, more often than not, we haven’t gotten the whole story. The Fierce women aren’t willing to accept easy answers and easy resolutions; in this sense they bear a strong resemblance to the women they wrote about. Those women understood that change is hard--but they were willing to fight for it--even though they knew they probably wouldn’t get the recognition they deserved.

Kara: The essay I wrote was called “Reveling and Rebelling: a look at the life of Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith.” She's a really strangely obscure figure, but she had all of these connections to people who are  major players in 20th century culture, particularly in literature, but she's barely mentioned in any books. 

If you read books about the lost generation, 1920s Paris, you might hear one mention of, “well, we went to Bricktop’s.” And for a long time, I didn't even realize that was a human, I didn't know what Bricktops was. I had to do some digging, and Karyn, who's wonderful, came to me and asked if I'd be interested in contributing to this collection. And I thought. Yeah, because women were just not part of the major conversations about history, and it gets really exhausting. I kind of hated it in school. I felt like history class was just moving from one war to another, and nothing else for context. It was, this war happened and this is what happened in this war happened and it's like, well, other things happen too, right? Or why did those wars happen? It was just fact, fact, fact. 

And so I liked the idea that we could go back and give a little piece of history that most people were going to have no idea about. So I'm really excited to contribute to something that's doing something different. 

That's kind of what leads me to write most anything, is that I want to know more about the subject. Because when I write, I learn. 

I do research. And that's just kind of part of my process. It was exciting for me that it gave me a chance to be a student of her as well.

Laura: You’ll hear more about Kara and her essay on Saturday, but before we end I asked Kara to tell us about her Young Adult novel, Daughters of Jubilation, which is coming out in October.

Kara: My newest young adult novel, Daughters of Jubilation, is coming out October 13th, and it's available for preorder on many different platforms. I'm actually gonna recommend one. If you go to bookshop.org and plug in my name or “Daughters of Jubilation,” it'll come right up, and then you can preorder from an independent bookstore.

Daughters of Jubilation is about a family of Black women with extraordinary magical abilities, from the South. They trace their abilities back to slavery. Some trace it back before. And the book takes place during the Jim Crow era, as a young woman--she's 16--is discovering she has these abilities. And they're really powerful when you're going through puberty. That's when they start to really go wacky. And the thing that's interesting is that they can also be dangerous. So she has to really learn how to get it under control. But the interesting question is, what is it like to have strange mystical powers in a world that's telling you you're nothing?

That's what I find most fascinating about it, is giving this unexpected power to someone living in a context where they're being told over and over again, that you have no power and you don't matter. 

Laura: I told Kara that it sounded like a book for our time, when so many young women are learning that they have power to change things. And it’s really what FIERCE is all about, too. About women who would not accept that the world they lived in was the only option. Even though they were being told over and over again that they had no power and they didn’t matter. 

It feels almost magical, reading about how these women decided to try and change things anyway. Sometimes the way they changed things was a little terrifying. Sometimes it was dangerous. And then sometimes it was a fierceness that looked more like revelry, like noisy partying, like merrymaking. 

I’m grateful to Kara and the women of Fierce for making room for both. It’s the daily sanity I need during this time. Maybe you need it, too. To remember that there will be days when the world tells us we don’t matter, when we’re tempted to believe it. And those are the very days when we need to remember what we’re capable of. Maybe we need to stand up and make some noise. Maybe we need to shout. Maybe we need to laugh, to do some merrymaking, celebrating the privilege it is to be alive.