Suzan-Lori Parks - Author Spotlight - Interview

She has won a Pulitzer Prize for drama (the first Black woman ever), for last year's Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog, as well as a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," and praise from critics. James Baldwin seemed to see it all some time ago. When Parks was a student at Mount Holyoke, she enrolled in a writing workshop taught by Baldwin, who suggested she become a playwright. Her success in theater led to screenwriting--Spike Lee's Girl 6 and her current work for Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, adapting Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison's Paradise for film. She was interviewed by EBONY about her first novel, Getting Mother's Body, and her world of writing.

Q: The characters in GETTING MOTHER'S BODY are so vivid. Are they based on real people, or are they composites?

A: They're like people I know, but they're like people a lot of people know. The preacher-who lost his church, and the aunt with one leg. Or the girl who's fast and going nowhere fast. We all have people like that in our families.

Q: Don't they also represent something?

A: Exactly. It's their humanity. I'm not interested in judging them, or having the reader judge them. I'm interested in showing them. Part of the journey of the novelist is to discover the humanity of all people and how they're all connected. All these people are dependent on one another. They're all connected.

Q: This is a completely different experience for you, the playwright--writing for this invisible audience.

A: It totally is. They're invisible, but they're so necessary, because the book, in a way, the experience of the book doesn't exist without them. My writing the book is only 50 percent of the job. The experience of the book--reading it, and what the readers bring to it--is the other 50 percent. Because ultimately it makes them think about their own lives. And I think that's what good literature does.

Q: When you get a story idea, how do you decide what form will best serve the storytelling?

A: It's like velvet and corduroy. It just feels different. Or salt water and fresh water. It tastes different. Plays need space and air. Like spider webs. Novels need to be strong, but they need to be more like a bridge, something that can carry you somewhere. You need to have more things filled in.

Q: You're doing two film adaptations. How do you approach retelling stories that already have been told so brilliantly?

A: On the one hand, you're ensuring that it doesn't get reduced to the lowest common denominator. But on the other hand, you are cutting away everything that does not work for the medium for which you are adapting. You have to be kind of ruthless. You can't get too attached to the brilliance of the writing.

Q: Your workshop experience with James Baldwin was a turning point for you. Did he teach you, or guide you in teaching yourself?

A: It's like the sun, like flowers, like daisies, like heliotropism. Flowers turn toward the sun. That's what being in his class was like. You began to realign yourself because you were sitting in the presence of the sun. He had high standards. He was very generous. So, with everything I win, I always remember to be generous. The person in the audience who wants to write a novel is just as good or as worthy as me. There's no fronting. There's no need to make the person feel less blessed. Why not make them feel more? You really learn that from a man like James Baldwin.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group