Author Tara Stringfellow won awards for her debut novel, Memphis, which tells the multi-generational story of a Southern Black family. Stringfellow is now back with a new kind of debut in Magic Enuff, the writer’s first collection of poetry.
WPLN’s Marianna Bacallao sat down with Stringfellow to talk about her newest release.
We’ve cradled enuff black bodies of men we love
Bleeding out into uncaring streets
Learned to roll my hair with funeral programs
Climbed into sheets that may shroud my children
Black rituals. Emmett Till was my Peter Rabbit.
My mama only read from Exodus
I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee
Out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage
I wonder what most Egyptians thought
When the Jews cried with locusts and plagues
That their lives mattered
My father pulls from a Kool not a damn thing he exhales
Backing out the drive my mama comes running gasping
You’ll need this she says unfolds one long pearl rosary
— “Only Read From Exodus,” Tara Stringfellow
Marianna Bacallao: You dedicate this poem to Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police in Memphis last year. What about that tragedy brought you back to the story of Exodus?
Tara Stringfellow: You know, Memphis is named after Memphis, Egypt. You know, this is a Black city through and through. It’s an ancient city. My peoples have lived in Memphis, Tennessee for hundreds of years. My ancestors have lived in Memphis, Egypt for thousands. And to hear on the news, to see, to witness, a modern-day lynching, a beating of a Black artist. Just to be Black and alive in the city, and for that, it cost him his life. I had to write a poem.
MB: In many of these poems, Black motherhood feels like a kind of godhood. Even the title of this book comes from the line, “God can stay asleep, these women in my life are magic enuff.” Why was that theme so central to your work?
TS: The legacy of Black Southern women in particular always fascinates me, maybe because I was raised by Black Southern women. The fact that I’m writing poetry in a place where, you know, once upon a time I would have had my hand cut off for simply holding a book. My peoples weren’t allowed to be literate, let alone to be poets. So, I feel as if my writing needs to focus on the sacrifices that Black women have made in order for me to even be able to sit down and write a sonnet in this country. I think that’s a beautiful, revolutionary act.
MB: Throughout this collection, I was struck by how, in some poems, Black womanhood is deeply intertwined with divinity, and other times at odds with it. I got the sense of two gods, the god that came from a mother and kept company with women who were seen as social pariahs, and the god that men have used to justify great violence against women —
TS: You’re preaching. You’re preaching right now. No, that’s always been the case. You know, I’m also a Catholic woman, and I do rather love the Catholic Church in that we’re taught to doubt early on. The belief in a higher power should always be a kind of a tug of war in our psyche. You know, this world looks upon Eve as some unholy wretch who ruined everything for us. Whereas I think of her more as a Prometheus who gave us light and knowledge. And she was just curious. She just wanted more for herself than life with some partner she’s bound to, right? And so, I wanted to recognize that disparity in religion, how the foundation of religion is womanhood. Mary, we think of Mary as the first Catholic because she gave birth to our Lord and Savior. So, there wouldn’t be a Catholic church without a woman.
MB: You used to teach in Shelby County Schools, a district where the students are predominantly Black, but the curriculum features predominantly White authors. Statewide, there are laws limiting what teachers can say about race. How does that impact the next generation of authors?
TS: I taught my students Black artists anyway, and I thought I might be fired for it, but then so be it. I was determined to teach The Color Purple. There’s Memphis mentioned throughout the novel. I said, I have to teach it. Like, what other novel would I teach these children? And I got some pushback on that. But I said no. This is worthy of being taught. And it’s also, you know, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. I mean, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. ‘Dear God, I am 14 years old’ is one of the most beautiful sentences ever written in the Western canon. And to not teach that to my students, for what? Because a Black woman wrote it? You know, it didn’t make sense to me.
Stringfellow’s poetry collection, Magic Enuff, is on shelves now.
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