Happier Hour: Rebecca Walker and Tracy McMillan

Conversations From the Archive
December 2015
Los Angeles, California

Adé: A Love Story, Rebecca Walker
I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway, Tracy McMillan

Excerpts:

Tracy McMillan: I want to talk about authorship. “Author” is the root word of authority. I confer authority on myself. It’s the only obstacle to my success. You wear this so well.

Rebecca Walker: My authority. Growing up with a working artist [Alice Walker] helped a lot: her purpose; her right to speak; her need to speak. It was like growing up with a goldsmith.

I have a connection with other people in my generation. A calling to own my story allows other people to own theirs. [It’s about] being in sync with a sense of my people. Magic happens when your work meets those people. I didn’t doubt I was here to do that work.

Am I done writing? What do I have to connect? What do I have to give? I don’t have the feeling I’m the only one to do that work.

McMillan: I write about my dad. You write about your mom. We both write about our black parents. I’m not sure what that’s about. I’m having a mom healing [right now]. Ten-year-old Tracy was all fucked up by a thirty-one-year-old mother figure, but fifty-one-year-old Tracy can handle anything that now seventy-year-old woman can throw at her. This mother figure from Tracy’s childhood wanted to give Tracy’s eighteen-year-old son a substantial amount of cash. Her first reaction was to say no, but then she changed her mind.

I accepted money I do not need. I’m willing to see her now on my terms. I’m the grown child. I’m going to fly to Houston, have lunch, and get back on the plane.

Let it take as long as it takes. Then take action you don’t want to take. Then the healing happens.

Walker: I feel the longing to bring my father into the narrative. I changed my last name to my mother’s name when I was fifteen. He was very hurt, but he got over it. He said, “It’s about love, not about my name.”

He hated Black, White, and Jewish at first, like my mother. Now he has like twenty copies in his office.

McMillan: That’s a real parent: when the parent takes a hit, instead of the child taking the hit.

The thing about shame is you don’t want to be exposed. As a writer, you have to be exposed. It took me a lot of years. I didn’t write anything of my own until I was in my forties. It’s some version of “there I am. There it is. It’s okay, sweetheart.”

[For much of my life, I repeated the same thought]: “I’m not enough. I’m not enough. I’m not enough.” [Now it’s] every permutation of “I love you, Tracy. I love you, Tracy. I love you, Tracy.”

People will be mad at you. There’s a sacred contract with the reader. Write the truth. I’m not even who I think I am, so who are [the readers] mad at? Be fearless and thorough. Set the stage for other people’s healing.

Walker: I asked for three years for Black, White, and Jewish. That’s unheard of. That was the nineties. Writing that book, I was consumed with fear: fear of retribution; fear of being compared to my mother; fear of reliving painful moments; so many fears.

I would just cry writing. I can’t believe that little girl lived through that. It was painful to make that conscious, but it was great. That little girl isn’t me anymore.

I don’t know if we have endless stories to be told. I believe the story has to be told. Have I done it? Am I done? I’m not sure.

McMillan: That’s a courageous question because writers are always thinking, “I need stuff on my Wikipedia page. I need cash.” What you’re saying is it’s about service.

Walker: Who knows how long a writing experience has to happen. I’ve started writing for television. I’m regaining a sense of service there. Maybe it’s about shifting mediums.

McMillan: I grew up reading a lot. The relationship between the writer and reader is private. It has to stay between us. Sacred is the word that comes to mind. I get to say. I get to be. I grew up as a foster child hearing, “You’re nothing.” I had to do a lot of therapy to let others have their feelings.

Walker: I’m telling my truth as best I can. I’m still sad about the James Frey moment. What happened in the culture [as a result of that incident was] the contract with the reader and memoir was broken. It spoiled something for me. The relationship is different with autobiographical fiction. Autobiographical fiction is a way to regain trust with readers. I’m trying to suss that out.

At that time, memoir was selling for so much more money. [Frey and I] had the same editor and the same publisher. [The decision to call Frey’s book a memoir] was driven by the industry. They weren’t as interested in it as a novel.

[The fault is with] the way we categorize stories. Maybe we’re growing toward greater fluidity there.

McMillan: You’re one of the most authentic people I know.