The Fiction of Gloria Naylor: Houses and Spaces of Resistance

Appendix. Opening Up the Place Called Home: A Conversation with Gloria Naylor

Appendix Opening Up the Place Called Home: A Conversation with Gloria Naylor The following interview took place between Gloria Naylor and Maxine Montgomery at Naylor’s home in Brooklyn, New York, on May 3, 2007. Maxine Montgomery: Ms. Naylor, I’d like to begin by asking you about events of national or international significance. The first has to do with the circumstances that took place on September 11, 2001. How did that event or those events affect you personally? Gloria Naylor: Well, there was no immediate impact upon my physical environment because I live here in Brooklyn, and that was in lower Manhattan. But what I did think about with the enormity of the tragedy was the fact that this is the result of America’s foreign policy. You know, America has been all over the world dumping on people, signing with leaders who are not democratic, supporting Israel in its occupational goals against the Palestinians, being totally unfair to other nations, and ultimately those actions came home to roost. MM: Do you feel that America has changed in a lasting or meaningful way as a result of that incident? GN: Oh definitely, definitely. Now that the terror has been brought home, Americans feel the insecurity that the rest of the world has always felt. Because terrorism is nothing new to Europe or the Middle East, Americans realize that events transpiring across the ocean have repercussions that can affect the United States. I don’t know how many really realize that, Maxine, because the media is so quick to spin a story in any direction they want it to take. So 82 Opening Up the Place Called Home | A Conversation with Gloria Naylor they spun September 11 into a search for terrorists as opposed to a search for the reasons that these people hate us. As American citizens , we need to understand the rationale underlying the negative image that our country has in an international sphere. MM: You speak fondly in interviews about the Black Revolution , the Civil Rights Movement, and the Million-Man March. I’m wondering if you feel as though we will ever regain the same momentum that we had in the sixties or the seventies. GN: No. No. I don’t think that is ever going to happen again, because racism has gone underground, and so you have to look for it in little, subtle ways. Since there are no more segregated bathrooms , you can’t target bathrooms. The plight of blacks today is like the plight of the poor and working-class whites. Jobs have gone overseas, so there has been some mobilization against global movements like the World Trade Organization. Not long ago in Seattle, fifty thousand people showed up to protest. Because when jobs leave this country, they don’t just leave for white Americans. The jobs leave for black Americans as well. But I think as far as there being some kind of concerted Civil Rights Movement, I don’t think such an event will ever happen again in this country. MM: Are you troubled by the current political climate with the tendency toward conservatism or neoconservatism? GN: Well, this country has been in a conservative swing since the seventies. We’ve only had two Democratic presidents since the seventies—that is Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. And they are not what you might call liberal Democrats. You know, they were conservative Democrats. So what worries me is that the political scene seems to offer no viable choice to pick a leader with, because the Democrats have been running after the white male vote that they lost to the Republicans in the seventies and eighties, and they take for granted that they’re going to get black support, Latino support, union support in what they’re doing. MM: So you’re suggesting then that the Democratic Party has been moving toward currying favor with the white establishment while virtually ignoring the needs of black constituents? 83 Opening Up the Place Called Home | A Conversation with Gloria Naylor GN: That’s not what I’m suggesting; that’s what I’m saying outright. That is definitely what I see happening, and it makes the country, it makes democracy less viable as a result. Because when people don’t have a true choice, you know, that is why there is usually no excitement about elections. That is why we tend to have...