By Lisa Rose
In 2007, I met Carolivia Herron at a Jewish Literature Conference in Detroit, MI. There were several speakers, but I can’t tell you one thing about them. However, I can tell about how Herron’s passion for literature and life lit the room. I can tell you about how she wasn’t just a knowledgeable person but a wise one. I can tell you how she managed to get rather stoic, middle-aged women to dance around the room like pre-schoolers. Her presence touched me so much that when thinking about this column I wanted to include her. I tried contacting her several times and each time my email was sent back: Message Failure; until somehow, despite another Message Failure, Herron answered and we were able to e-meet. I asked her several questions and as expected, she gave very thoughtful answers. I tried to cut, revise, and shape my article like I usually do, but I couldn’t. Herron has accomplished so much; just highlighting one thing wouldn’t be fair. So I give you the complete interview and hopefully, you will understand why Carolivia Herron is so exceptional.
Lisa: You have an interesting family history, which you discuss in Always An Olivia. Could you briefly share it?
Carolivia: I am an African American Jew whose Jewish ancestors were exiled from Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition. My family traveled from Spain to Portugal to Italy where they settled for several hundred years. In 1787 my great grandmother’s great grandmother, Sarah Shulamit Bat Asher, was born in Italy. In 1805, when she was a teenager Sarah was kidnapped by Barbary pirates and carried across the Mediterranean to Tripoli in Libya. In Tripoli, she escaped the pirate ship with the help of one of the pirates. The Jewish community in Tripoli hid the two escapees from the pirates for a short time before they were rescued by the US Marines. The Marines brought them to the Georgia Sea Islands to live with a community of Geechee people, free descendents of West African slaves. Sarah and her ex-pirate husband married and their children intermarried with the Geechee people. Before Sarah left Tripoli, the Rabbi gave her Shabbat candles, candles that Jewish women traditionally light on Friday evening, and asked her to remember her Jewish heritage even if she eventually settled in a place where it was not easy to remain Jewish. Sarah did not practice Judaism in her new home, but she did light the Shabbat candles on Friday nights and she taught her daughters to light the candles as well. The lighting of the candles on Fridays passed down to my paternal Great Grandmother, Olivia Smith, and to my Grandmother, Ernestine Griffin.
I was told this story of my Jewish heritage by my 103 year old Great Grandmother, Olivia, when I was nine-years-old. Somehow, in spite of a lifelong desire to be Jewish, I forgot this story until I was in the process of conversion to Judaism as an adult. I was in South Hadley, Massachusetts praying over the candles one Friday night; my parents were visiting me from Washington, DC. As I completed the prayer over the candles my father said, "My mother used to pray over the candles like that on Fridays." When he said that my memory came back of my Great Grandmother telling me this story. Great Grandma Olivia also told me that we maintain our Jewish tradition by naming a girl in every generation "Olivia" which they consider to be a form of Shulamit, since we are descended from Sarah Shulamit. Boys were periodically named Asher or Oscar in honor of Sarah’s father, Asher. I am the Olivia of my generation. Both my father and brother are named Oscar.
Lisa: Could you also share your professional background?
Carolivia: My desire to be an author began when I was three-years-old and sought for a way to express my grief at the death of my infant brother. When I discovered Milton’s Paradise Lost at the age of 11, my desire to be an author linked with my love of epic literature. I published my first collection of poetry, Sojourner, when I was a sophomore at Howard University, and in 1985 I received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania. My dissertation focused on the epic literary genre in Europe, Africa and the Americas. My creative writing project was the draft of my first novel, Thereafter Johnnie, which was published by Random House in 1991. I also have degrees from Eastern Baptist College (now Eastern University) and Villanova. I spent most of my professional career as an Assistant Professor and Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. I also taught at Mount Holyoke College, California State University, Chico, the College of William and Mary, and several universities in Central Africa. In 2005, I retired from University teaching in order to focus on my own writings and to develop literacy programs in Washington, DC. I am currently the president of EpicCenter Stories, a nonprofit organization that promotes the writing of community epics and provides educational programs about classical and contemporary epics.
Lisa: You studied Judaism as an adult. What made you decide to learn and practice the religion? How do others react to the choice you made?
Carolivia: I have been intrigued by Judaism since I was four years old and heard the story of Moses in my mother’s church, Third Baptist Church of Washington, DC. While listening to a sermon by Rev. George O. Bullock, I felt somehow transported to Sinai, and believed that I experienced Sinai directly. After the sermon I realized that others in the church had not experienced Sinai the way I did, and that they had not been directly there. I sought for a name to call my experience, I read what I then called the Old Testament, I became a good friend of the Jewish green grocer in my racially segregated neighborhood and eventually I learned to call my experience Judaism and myself Jewish. My family and community support me in my Judaism, indeed, they have always considered me odd and different. By becoming overtly Jewish I actually became more normal to my Christian family and friends, finally there was a reasonable and acceptable explanation of my difference.
Lisa: How do you describe yourself? Jewish? Black? African-American?
Carolivia: I describe myself as an African American Jew.
Lisa: In recent years there has been more conflict between Jews and African-Americans. (Historically, these two minorities were more supportive of each other.) Why do you believe this to be true and what can be done to help repair these relationships?
Carolivia: Jews and African-Americans started becoming estranged when Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver and others kicked white people out of the Civil Rights movement. The Black Power initiative, which included so much that was positive in my opinion, made a severe wrong turn in refusing liaisons with folks of goodwill, who were not black. They also made a mistake by asking black women to take a back seat while black men came to the fore. I was a student at Howard University at the time. The day I heard Carmichael and Cleaver disparage whites and Jews of goodwill, and plan to rise by curtailing the rights of black women, I was no longer a part of their movement. I am among many who decided to work for equal rights and justice in our own small ways rather than agree to perpetuate narrow racist philosophy.
Now the landscape is hopeful for a reunion of African American and Jewish ethical values. At my synagogue, Tifereth Israel, I have introduced many reuniting programs to a very receptive audience. Just two weeks ago my synagogue hosted a reunion of Jewish doctors who marched with the Freedom Riders of the 60s and provided health care to African American communities of the south during those turbulent years. I also volunteer as a consultant to several programs and organizations seeking to recall us to our best selves as Jewish and African American companions. The programs I have assisted include Washington, DC public schools, radio stations, churches, and local museums.
Lisa: Nappy Hair has been banned from several schools. The intention of the book was for the main character to take pride in her hair and her heritage. It seems it had the opposite reaction. Why do you believe this book has been so misunderstood?
Carolivia: Although my book Nappy Hair was packaged and promoted as a children’s book, it was not written for children and it was not written to promote pride in nappy hair. I wrote Nappy Hair to show graduate students at Harvard University the poetics of African American call and response as a form of epic. Hair was one of several topics I debated as the plot of the exercise but it could easily have been how my Uncle Richard (Mordecai in the book) cooks hamburgers. The book was intended as a praise song of African American culture as the source of particularly effective call and response. The controversy and banning of Nappy Hair came as a shock. I thought it might be condemned because I elevate my character Brenda so high over every one else, stating that she has the nappiest hair in the world and no one else comes close. I thought folks would be upset because they could have no part of the high nappiness of my character. Instead, a few folks were upset that I was calling all African Americans nappy-headed. Ruth Sherman, the teacher whose sharing of the book in class precipitated the controversy, helped her class to literacy using my book. The banning put Nappy Hair on the best seller list, and it still has more people who love it than people who approve its banning. At this time it is still banned in New York City schools - but nowhere else.
Nappy Hair is indeed misunderstood. Even people who love it see its purpose as didactic—a sermon as it were—of loving your hair. But my book is not sociology; it is art. The story has power in that it does not ask you to love your hair or hate you hair or accept yourself. Rather it is a joyful call and response invitation to participate in story telling for your own delight. If you want to make a social decision or unstraighten your hair or be more tolerant of yourself after reading my book—that is your own affair, that is not the purpose of the book. By being free of didactic intent my book is open for the reader to impose “readerly” intent. That’s fine—that is what art should do, make room for your meaning without imposing strict interpretation.
Lisa: Nappy Hair was also written in a traditional call and response style. Many African Americans are familiar with this style of learning from home and church and many schools are trying to incorporated this style into classrooms. As an educator, do you believe this will help the children be more successful? What will help African American children be more successful in our city schools? I live in the Detroit area and recently we have been getting a lot of press for having the worse schools in the nation. What will help improve this system—a school system where more children go to prison than college?
Carolivia: PLEASE INVITE ME TO COME TO A SCHOOL IN DETROIT AND DEMONSTRATE MY DETROIT MODULE OF TEACHING! In my organization, EpicCenter Stories, I have been extremely successful in bringing up the literacy of Washington, DC public school students. Indeed, my program, called PAUSE (Potomac Anacostia Ultimate Store Exchange) is a form of call and response that has been credited from keeping at least one school from receivership. The higher scores of the 30 students in my program are enough to bring up the entire school to a new level.
And, I have actually developed a Detroit teaching module called Deep River. I happened to be in Detroit (Sigma Gamma Rho convention) when I was completing the libretto of my opera, Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson. I sat in my hotel room looking out at the Detroit River and created an educational module based on Detroit. I’ve used the module in Washington, DC schools and am working with several New York City organizations (Julliard, New York Public Library, Bank Street School) to bring this module to the public schools of New York City. The module takes several images of Detroit (cars, music, underground railroad, Detroit River, Great Lakes), and uses these images to teach language arts, science, math, social studies, performing arts and visual arts. What a joy it would be to share this module with the city that inspired it.
Lisa: It has been almost a year since Obama has been elected. How do you think his election has affected the country? Do you think people are supportive as they were a year ago?
Carolivia: I am certainly as supportive of President Obama now as I have been. As a native Washingtonian in the shadow of the White House, I am familiar with the fluctuations in popularity and they don’t bother me, they are the sign that work is being done and people have different opinions. I had President Obama in mind when I wrote one of the songs in my opera. I dedicate the song, "Who Do You Think You Are?" to black men in particular, men who are often vigorously slapped down when they try to accomplish their life desires. The plot of the opera has two African American teenagers, Jo and Jack, racing to the Washington Mall in 1939 to hear Marian Anderson’s famous concert. (In real life, Jo is my mother and Jack is my uncle.) As they run downtown, Jack describes his desire to be an airplane pilot and is angry about his world that "doesn’t let black Jacks fly airplanes." What the audience knows, but the character Jack does not know, is that within a few years of 1939 the Tuskegee Airmen, African American pilots, will be flying airplanes in World War II. Thus I display the juxtaposition between what seems to be a fruitless hope and the actually accomplishment of hope. When I wrote the song President Obama had not been elected, but it was a song about the realization of hope and change for the better.
Lisa: MLK Day was recently celebrated. He is a hero for many people—regardless of race. Who is your hero and why?
Carolivia: My two heroes are John Milton and Phillis Wheatley. In the 17th Century, the poet John Milton tried to move England from a monarchy to a republic. That attempt failed and Milton, who was blind by that time, was imprisoned for treason. He dictated the greatest poem of the English language in spite of his grief over failed political reform. "Though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen." His words reached into my 11-year-old grieving over my brother’s death and he saved my life with his art. Phillis Wheatley, a seven year old slave from Senegal, lived in Boston in the 18th Century, loved the literary classics the way I do, did what she could to seek out freedom through language, and established African American literature by publishing the first book by an African in the Americas. My libretto for "The Journey of Phillis Wheatley" was commissioned by Boston Landmarks Orchestra and performed on the Boston Common in 2005.
Lisa: What are you working on now? Anything else you would like to add or discuss?
Carolivia: I am completing my second novel, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, a comic novel in which a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania can’t finish her doctoral dissertation because she keeps falling into her books. I use much of my own story in this elaborate fiction. In the opening chapter an 11-year-old girl, Shirah Shulamit, walks into a bookstore where the spirits of John Milton and Phillis Wheatley discover her and guide her to the library where she reads Paradise Lost for the first time. Other characters in the book include: Joseph of Egypt, Langston Hughes, Homer, Shorty Long singing "Function at the Junction," Beethoven, Angelina Weld Grimké, Dante . . . and everybody else!
I am also continuing to work with the Washington National Opera and the Washington Performing Arts Society in producing my opera, Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson, which was composed by Bruce Adolphe. I wrote the words, and Bruce and I are working together to create learning modules such as the Deep River Module that was inspired by my visit to Detroit. Let Freedom Sing premiered in Washington, DC at the Atlas Theater in March 2009.
The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History has asked me to be a consultant to develop Jewish Africana programs in conjunction with their upcoming exhibit, Beyond Swastikas and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges. I shall be setting up programs that highlight the intersection of Jewish and African American communities.
Lisa Rose is an educator in Detroit. She is currently working on her first novel.
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