TRUTH AND MORE TRUTH

WORDS BY ABI SLONE

From top: Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir by Rebecca Carroll (2021); Billie Was a Black Woman - podcast (2021); Come Through with Rebecca Carroll - podcast (2020); Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America by Rebecca Carroll (1997); selfie (2022); In Love and Struggle (2021).

Rebecca Carroll, writer, interviewer, journalist, podcaster genius woman is both the ultra-cool friend you’ve always wanted and hoped to be and a deep full breath. Carroll calls the truth when she sees it and is unabashedly present in her life and experiences which she brings to everything — work, friendships, relationships, motherhood. From Carroll’s book Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls published in 2004, to her must-read memoir Surviving the White Gaze which is out in paperback now, she is always in motion. Currently, Carroll is immersed in television projects still to be announced and part of the team behind a new online feminist outlet called The Meteor. No wonder, the woman is truly out of this world.

THE CRONING: Hello! When was the last time we saw each other (even though this time it’s digital)?
REBECCA CARROLL: I think it was the Toronto Film Festival. 2016. 

TC: It feels like we’ve all lived a million lives since then.
RC: I know. A lot has indeed happened. 

TC: What’s been happening in your universe?
RC: Well, it’s been a remarkable five or six years in many different ways. After Biden was elected, my [16-year old] son voiced this in a real way — it kind of feels like [Trump] is still the president. It's like we’re managing and trying to make sense of what happened during those four years, while also trying to stay whole. There is going to be major PTSD from that presidency. 

TC: Although I don’t live in the U.S., it was like the whole world was living Trump-redux, Trump-adjacent lives. How are you coping with the aftermath?
RC: Currently I'm struggling more with how absolutely vial a human being he was. I mean, we talk a lot about politics. We talk a lot about disparities and inequalities and misogyny and racism and all of these things that he represents, but he was such a vial person in every possible way. We know that white presidents before him were racist and misogynistic and all the rest, but the way that he walked in it every day at every opportunity. I have to try to find a way to forgive that part of the country that just allowed that to happen, even encouraged it. I think about this a lot and I draw a metaphor between adoption and transracial adoption. And if we are to see America as a family, I don't know if I can accept those guys at the table.

TC: Family and adoption and particularly transracial adoption is something that not only you have lived and are living, but is part of your work. Your memoir Surviving the White Gaze which talks about growing up black in a white family and white community has been experiencing success and is now out in paperback. How was that process? Mining the memories?
RC: Firstly, I was very cognizant of excavating certain experiences and putting them on the page and being like, 'Okay, now. Bye-bye. Have a nice life in that book, because I'm done with you.’

TC: Doing all of that work though must have brought up a ton of things. No matter how much work we try to do over the years, there remains, however faint, a permanent aftershock.
RC: Oh God. A hundred percent. I mean, I feel quite resolved about my relationship or lack thereof with my birth mother. That [relationship] really took its toll over and over again, and I don't have any more reason to engage with her. I will say that she was quite on-brand in terms of her response to this book, which was, she emailed my publicist, my publisher, the first venue that I was reading at, the business affairs office at MGM who have optioned the book — all to express her feelings. She essentially behaved in the way that I wrote about her. 

TC: Well at least she’s consistent…
RC: My mom, who in this sort of carousel-trifecta-quadrant of parents is the most loving and non-agenda-driven parent and person, has struggled with [the memoir] too. I think in writing a memoir, you have to manage your expectations in such ferocious ways because it's your truth, right? Other truths are also in existence… I waited a very long time to write this book, until I could absolutely stand in that, and have the emotional fortitude and the intellectual strength to say, ‘This is what this is and I'm not going to second guess it. And I'm not going to let you all gaslight me.’ Because that's sort of the point of the book. 

TC: Do you think if you wrote the book 10 years ago it would have been the same?
RC: No. It would be a very different book and I'm deeply, deeply grateful that I waited. I see some of these young folks at like 25, 30 putting out memoirs. God bless you because in 15 or 20 years you're going to have a very, very different experience and feeling. It’s all good — people make their choices, but I'm very clear on the moment that I decided that it was time to do this.

Michael Brown was shot in the summer of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, and my son asked if he was going to get shot. If I was going to get shot… If we were going to get shot.

And the torrent of rage and protectiveness I felt I had never experienced before. Here in this city (New York City) I had raised a self-aware black son who was worried about his safety and my safety. And the reality that my parents and all of the white people around me growing up had never thought about my safety… it was then that I thought I needed to tap into some of this because this is the clarity. This is the moment.

To put a finer point on it, towards the end of the manuscript revisions I called my sister with whom I have a difficult, but ultimately loyal, relationship. I called to fact check something and I asked her if she remembered when my boss called me the N-word. She said, ‘No, but I remember when such and such called you the N-word and then dropped you in the water to let you drown.’ 

I wrote an entire memoir about surviving the white gaze without knowing that someone actually tried to kill me when I was a child. 

TC: It is incredible the things we don’t remember. I don’t even know if that’s right to call it not remember, or choose to forget. It’s really survival. 
RC: Exactly. It’s like how many of those occurrences happened? I remember one time, visiting New Hampshire after I'd had my son. I was going for a run and these two white men with a gun rack in their pickup truck slowed down [past me] and said, ‘Hey, Blackie.’ I mean, what even is that? But that sort of began this real shift, especially through my son's eyes who is so much more sophisticated, culturally and racially conversant and aware than I was at his age.

TC: During your formative years, when you were finding your way in the world, did you do work to find community? Meet people with shared experiences, move out of a white environment into the broader universe?
RC: Oh, for sure. Even before I understood that's what it was. You know, I started the black student union [when I was in college]. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew that’s what I needed. And it was absolutely in service of community creating and cultivating community for myself and for other folks. 

TC: As primarily a writer, you’ve had a chance to collaborate with other creators. What have been some of the best experiences you’ve had?
RC: That’s a great question. I think anytime that I have had the opportunity to work with film and filmmakers, whether it's as a film festival programmer or as a film reviewer, or as a consultant on a film — I love the combination of voice and vision. I just love the way that you can be in collaboration with a film or a filmmaker or actors or the content of it. I feel like film and television are a place where it all sort of works for me. I love visual art as well, but I love to see [a story] move. 

TC: And who are the writers and creators that have inspired you? 
RC: When I took my first black literature course and started reading Zora Neale Hurston and Tony Morrison and James Baldwin, it was bittersweet. It felt appreciative of the treasure trove of legacy and ancestry and beauty while also considering how, as white parents [my parents, or any parents], they’re going to keep this beauty and this legacy from their black child. It's not like it didn't exist. I felt the same way about discovering Romare Bearden and Kara Walker and Jacob Lawrence and other extraordinary black artists.  

TC: Okay, so speaking of writers and writing (and as we are here speaking), I am finding personally that, as I mature, my vocabulary has begun to escape me. 
RC: Oh my God. Right? It’s interesting that feeling, especially for those of us who work with words. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that. Sometimes I'm quite kind to myself and give myself some grace around it. Other times I just feel like, how can this be happening? I'm generally so lucid and sharp, but it’s beyond your control and that’s a lot to reckon with. The flip side is that the best thing about getting older is evolving. You do have this wisdom, and that is very dope, like being wise and having information that makes sense experientially. That’s is precisely why we're here on the planet.

TC: When you think about how you’ve grown through the years, what do you see as your evolution — into this stage of your life, personally and creatively?
RC: With this book and my experience with my family, it's like, they chose to remain in the world that they created for us when I was small in that beautiful farmhouse on the hill. I left that bubble physically and intellectually a long, long time ago. But now with the writing of this book, it's clear that emotionally, their love is for me is still in the bubble.

And I can't survive in that bubble.

It’s like the question of relevance along with the question of success and what are the markers of success. We live in this culture now where everybody's amazing. Everything's amazing. But what if you're not amazing? And on the socials, if you're on the socials you can't help but see how specifically dominated it is by young people. I certainly continue to participate. I don’t know if I am making a fool of myself or if I am like, stay in it, girl, you got this. All I can figure is that it is my instinct and who I am, to stay in it. I have to believe that and ride it out.

TC: I have a friend who is stepping into their croning years in a major way — they are unafraid of middle-aged reality, they are harnessing all of the power and resilience that comes from their experience in the world, and they are channelling L.L Cool J circa 1992 on the fashion front which is a bold choice in the era of wide-legged linen trousers. For you, how have things changed in your 40s and now 50s? Your perspective? How you are in the world?
RC: You raise an interesting and very relevant point, which is that the older you get, the more confidence I feel. 

I feel like I've always been extremely resilient and have come to realize it as I was revisiting memories from when I was a kid. And as I look back and, and see the ways in which I navigated some of my life experiences on the spot, I am proud of myself. In terms of things that I would do now that I never would have before? I mean, I'm never going to skydive, no matter what age, because I'm not that person. And I've always generally done what, what I was drawn to do.

As a mother, I try to keep it a hundred, keep it real and keep it as safe as I can. When I think back on being a risk-taker, I mean, I probably put myself in danger in ways that I should not have, which seems like a lifetime ago. Since I became a mother, it's just a different ball of wax. Especially in this last year with the pandemic. We just moved into a larger apartment, but for the last five years, our apartment was [small] so we bonded. But also I was doing my zooms at the kitchen table and my son was listening to me, negotiate deals with Hollywood. He was listening to me record my podcast. He was listening to me being and doing who I am, which I thought was really good for him. And I was proud that he could see that.

TC: Not being a parent, I can literally only imagine, but what is it, or how is, being a parent and continuing to not only create, but push forward and move needles and be growing versus winding down?
RC: It can be a lot. He's another human everything. He requires everything. But he's heart outside of my body. I still take joy in making him a perfect bacon, egg, and cheese on a bagel. He still hugs and I love that. So when it comes to him, there’s no hardship. I don't feel like I’m sacrificing anything that I wouldn't want to for him. At the same time, I'm very proud that he can see me working and working for myself. He's reading my book and has come to me with very specific questions, which makes me feel like I've done a good job if he feels comfortable coming to me and saying, what were you thinking when you did this?

Truly he is the single most magnificent, important human being to me on the planet. 

TC: For as long as I have known you and your work, you have always been going — multiple projects, multiple goals. Now that you are, for all intents and purposes, working for yourself, how do you feel?
RC: Well, It’s the first time I've worked for myself without feeling like I was going to die or not make rent or, desperately phone a girlfriend because I need to borrow 20 dollars. I was a freelancer for a couple of years and I did some writing residencies but that was just a daily panic. And of course, back then you had to write the invoices and then wait for the mail to come with your check. When I was 40, it would have been scary to leave a very good job just after being promoted to adapt the limited TV series of my book. But at 52, given where I am and what I know I can do, it's very freeing, it's exciting. It’s challenging, which is different than scary. And for the first time working for myself, I'm in good stead.