The Audacious Hope of Cynthia Bond:
A Conversation Between Cynthia Bond & Margaret Medina
Cynthia Bond's debut novel Ruby spent six consecutive weeks on The New York Times’ best seller list and was chosen as a selection for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club 2.0. Ruby was also a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and was shortlisted for the Bailey Prize. Ms. Bond was a guest on Oprah Winfrey's Super-Soul Sunday 2015. She is completing the second book of Ruby, a trilogy, and is also working on the screenplay version, optioned by Harpo Films. A PEN Rosenthal fellow, Ms. Bond teaches at Paradigm in Malibu, California, is the founder of the Blackbird Writing Collective and works with at-risk youth at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, where she lives with her daughter. Cynthia Bond was the Visiting Writer at the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing Program’s Port Townsend campus during the summer of 2016.
Set in an all-black hamlet called Liberty Township, in East Texas, Ruby is “the epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her.” A love story, a ghost story, a story of virulent racism, sexual violence, and voodoo, Ruby is also lyrical, haunting and a testament to the human spirit and the power of love.
Margaret Medina: My first questions are why Liberty, and what attracted you to the setting of a small Texas town?
Cynthia Bond: My mother was from a town called Liberty Community. It was an all-black town in East Texas. It was an unincorporated town, and that is where she grew up—unincorporated meaning there was no official city charter. It was formed by the people in Newton County. [For the novel] I changed the name to Liberty Township—but Liberty: the whole idea of what is liberty, and can we find liberty, can we find freedom? Liberty is on the quarter; it's on all kinds of money. What does it mean? There are so many different meanings.
MM: You know and capture these people in your book. Did you go to her town as you grew older? The paradox of that place is palpable.
CB: I was born in Hempstead, Texas. My grandmother lived in Beaumont. I had relatives all over Texas, but my mom moved away very young. I returned to Liberty with my mother, and I got to meet all these people, and I saw the red road at sunset. I saw my grandfather's house and the original house where my mother was born. The town was just crazy. There were crows and hawks everywhere. My nature research was from the Piney Woods Native Plant Center, which was so vital, and one of the poignant lines in the book was the “audacious hope of rooted things.” A seed never wakes up one morning and says, “Oh I'm just depressed, I'm not going to grow.” No matter what, the seed is propelled to move toward the sun. It doesn't matter where it’s thrown. It always tries to live and take root—and grow. It grows toward the sun, and that kind of hope is something Ruby was able to hold on to and helped her to survive. It’s what saved Ruby.
MM: How did Ruby start? Did you start out wanting to write a novel? My favorite image was “She wore gray like rain clouds.”
CB: I was in a writing class, and I was given a prompt, and whatever was going on in my life at the time was woven into the book. I was sitting in that class and I had a big, gray shirt on, and it was very comforting, safe and cozy, and it felt like I was wearing a cloud. That was the first line in the novel for years and years. I did not know I was writing a novel. I kept getting writing prompts in these writing classes, and these characters started to emerge. I started hearing Ruby. I started hearing Ephram. I started hearing Celia, and every prompt ended up being those characters talking, with the story unfolding. So that is how it came to be.
MM: Do you remember the actual prompt?
CB: (laughter) I don't know why I do remember. It was to “write about giving somebody a surprise.” In that one fifteen-minute writing prompt, I wrote the whole first arc of the book with Ephram taking the white layered angel cake to Ruby. It became much more multilayered and much more involved, but that was a powerful prompt. I still have those notebooks. I have them all.
MM: I was fascinated by your structure. How did you keep the integrity, consistency, and credibility of the story?
CB: I believe that writing is the marriage of structure and inspiration. You have to have both, and the structure is the spine of your piece. It is also a roadmap. When I was working on Ruby, because there were so many different timelines, characters, and there were so many different [characters] weaving in and out of timeline—I remember staying in a house that my mother hadn't moved into yet, and I took these huge pieces of butcher paper, and all around the walls, I had this butcher paper—I wrote the entire arc of the story. I wrote my outline in a two-dimensional way, and after that, I drew an arc for each character, and certainly [one] for Charlotte, Ruby's mother, and that is in the second book. I believe in creating structure. A lot of times there’s this idea of leaning on the mysticism of writing—and there is something otherworldly about it, without a doubt—but the truth is, it's also nuts and bolts. You need both. I'm not very organized in my regular life, but in this area, I'm very, very structured, and very clear. And around that, magic can happen and swirl and be, but it's got to have a skeleton for it to come to life.
MM: There are dark incidents in this book, and the poetry of your metaphors wrapped around those emotional, cruel moments is the light that guides us out of the senseless acts. Do you have any poetic influences? In general, who are your influences?
CB: I do read poetry. I love Pablo Neruda and I love James Baldwin. There are a bunch of writers that I re-read when I'm writing, but with metaphors and similes, I have to write things I haven't heard before. For instance, to the best of my ability, I sat at my desk, and there would be a feeling that I wanted to express, so I would really settle into myself, as if I were rooting myself, to sink into that world, to sink into that metaphor, and really try to find the way of saying it that felt right inside my heart and body. And if it didn't feel right, I couldn’t put it on the page—which is probably why I'm such a slow writer (laughter): I have to feel everything I write. As an author, I have to tell the truth. While I'm working, there is nothing particularly glamorous. I'm a workhorse. My grandfather was a farmer and a dowser, my mother planted sugar cane, cotton, and I feel like I'm in the field every day. When I am doing my best work, I'm going into the field—plowing, planting seeds, and it’s hard work. It doesn't come overnight, and you just go back out there, and that is what I think writing is.
MM: What is your favorite part of the book?
CB: The Ma Tante part. I like that character. I loved Maggie and the fight. The things that happen with Tanny and with Ruby, those ghost stories—not the scary stories—but [stories of] men and women who are no longer with us. One of my favorite parts is when Ephram was washing Ruby’s hair. That part is my favorite. I was proud of that piece of writing. As writers, we can create our biggest fantasies.
MM: I like the way each character comes together at the end, and on their accord.
CB: They are each fighting their battles. Ruby is fighting the Dyboù, and Ephram is fighting the magnitude of what the town thought. Ruby allows Ephram to see the treasures of her, and you can't unsee that. Ephram also found his inner strength.
MM: What are you advocating though this book?
CB: I was in social services for years and years, and I worked with young people to get them off the street and live better lives, and I taught them writing. Writing, the very act of creating, that was in itself a healing act. The rights of children are so important. How many children are alone in dark rooms right now where grown men enter? It's the actual monsters that hide in plain sight. That is one of the things I wanted to show. Along with the sanctimonious, and the different masks that people wear. Not just black people, but all people. It is enough when you look at the current things happening in this world. It's very easy to give up hope. It's just me. I've got just ten fingers, and there is a tidal wave of despair, and there is an undertow that can be strong, but the only real tool we have is to create. That is it. Our activism is to create. I'm a writer. I will speak, and I’ve written political essays, but it is where you enter into the soul of another person: that is my work. I do this work and don't get pulled into the undertow. Artists are sensitive souls, and when you open your soul, it is a daily battle to stay alive and write. If we don’t write, we die. I don't think I will survive if I don't write . . . so, happy day! (laughter)
MM: How do you see yourself as a writer in the world?
CB: Fiction is about empathy, taking the reader into the minds, smells, sounds, and hearts of the characters we create, that world. What keeps me going is that it might be helpful to someone one day. If someone who has lived this life, or has been touched by this story in any way, then I've done my job. To help people know that this is happening. I guess it's the social worker in me. When the book came out, I had someone write to me, “I am Ruby. This is my story,” and she came to one of my readings, and I met her. I told her, “You are the reason why I wrote this book. I wrote this book for you.”
MM: There are very sanctimonious, self-righteous people in your book and they all contain a wonderful three-dimensionality to them, and sometimes a fourth dimension. The Reverend Jennings, Ephram’s father, a preacher by day and evil man by night, for example. Could you speak about that brokenness?
CB: Yes, so many black people, we have generations of us who have shattered. We've been broken like glass. What happens when people become broken? There are several things that can happen. One of the things that can happen is that you can turn those shards of glass inward, or you can turn them outward and hurt other people. And there are many other things you can do, and there are many instances of resilience and strength in the black community and in this novel, but it is possible to hurt others because of the ways in which you have been broken.
MM: I think Ruby depicts a very harrowing and compassionate job in regards to what the black community was going through at that time, in 1963—and especially black women. What shifts have happened to you lately in regards to your experience as a black woman?
CB: Three things have changed my perspective on me as a black person. After reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad: the steady way in which he chronicles the horrors that blacks have endured through slavery and beyond. Also, there is another book called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Jay Degruy. And seeing Ava Duvenay’s documentary 13. Those three things have been poignant to me. When you truly see where we have walked from, and all of the things we have endured, and here we stand, then you understand all of the people who fell along the way. Some fell at the hands of whites, and some fell at the hands of their brothers, some fell on their swords. We have fallen, and those of us who stand and are still here, we have a cape behind us—of stories, and those stories are the living, and the dead, and they are connected to us—and we wear them like a shawl. Those are the stories that we are honored to tell. I am honored to recognize them.
MM: How long did it take you to write this book?
CB: Originally it was a 900-page book, and it took me on and off for fifteen years. I wasn’t writing the whole time, and so Ruby was the first of three books, and I’m working on the second book now to turn into my same publisher, Hogarth, which is part of Random House.
MM: Nice! We all can’t wait. 900 pages! I am sure you had to sadly part with some writing.
CB: There are enormous sections of the book that are gone, that I'll never be able to use, but maybe I'll use them in something else.
MM: Well, that gives us something to look forward to. We look forward to other writings and to book two! What can you tell writers emerging from various writing programs as they enter into the world with their writing?
CB: The great thing about Goddard is that [when you complete the program] you have a finished book, and if it needs more work, really spend the time to work on it. When the book is ready, get a subscription or go online, get Poets & Writers, The Writers’ Market, look for grants and contests. The PEN Rosenthal fellowship helped me to get representation. My agent was the one to tell me that there are three books here.
MM: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had a writing group called the Inklings. How do you feel about writing groups?
CB: Writing can be very lonely, and if you have good writers that you trust and respect, it can make the writing process better. I’ve often said, “Writing is like having surgery with no anesthesia.” My Blackbird Writing Collective helped me to finish the novel, and I enjoy teaching through the collective. Another mom and I from the group would get up at 5 a.m. and write. It was the pinnacle in finishing the novel.
MM: Well, as the song goes, “I could've danced all night.” We danced with words. Seriously, this was great. You always inspire me. Thank you.
CB: Thank You. This was good for me. It's always good to speak to other writers.
A Conversation Between Cynthia Bond & Margaret Medina
Cynthia Bond's debut novel Ruby spent six consecutive weeks on The New York Times’ best seller list and was chosen as a selection for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club 2.0. Ruby was also a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and was shortlisted for the Bailey Prize. Ms. Bond was a guest on Oprah Winfrey's Super-Soul Sunday 2015. She is completing the second book of Ruby, a trilogy, and is also working on the screenplay version, optioned by Harpo Films. A PEN Rosenthal fellow, Ms. Bond teaches at Paradigm in Malibu, California, is the founder of the Blackbird Writing Collective and works with at-risk youth at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, where she lives with her daughter. Cynthia Bond was the Visiting Writer at the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing Program’s Port Townsend campus during the summer of 2016.
Set in an all-black hamlet called Liberty Township, in East Texas, Ruby is “the epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her.” A love story, a ghost story, a story of virulent racism, sexual violence, and voodoo, Ruby is also lyrical, haunting and a testament to the human spirit and the power of love.
Margaret Medina: My first questions are why Liberty, and what attracted you to the setting of a small Texas town?
Cynthia Bond: My mother was from a town called Liberty Community. It was an all-black town in East Texas. It was an unincorporated town, and that is where she grew up—unincorporated meaning there was no official city charter. It was formed by the people in Newton County. [For the novel] I changed the name to Liberty Township—but Liberty: the whole idea of what is liberty, and can we find liberty, can we find freedom? Liberty is on the quarter; it's on all kinds of money. What does it mean? There are so many different meanings.
MM: You know and capture these people in your book. Did you go to her town as you grew older? The paradox of that place is palpable.
CB: I was born in Hempstead, Texas. My grandmother lived in Beaumont. I had relatives all over Texas, but my mom moved away very young. I returned to Liberty with my mother, and I got to meet all these people, and I saw the red road at sunset. I saw my grandfather's house and the original house where my mother was born. The town was just crazy. There were crows and hawks everywhere. My nature research was from the Piney Woods Native Plant Center, which was so vital, and one of the poignant lines in the book was the “audacious hope of rooted things.” A seed never wakes up one morning and says, “Oh I'm just depressed, I'm not going to grow.” No matter what, the seed is propelled to move toward the sun. It doesn't matter where it’s thrown. It always tries to live and take root—and grow. It grows toward the sun, and that kind of hope is something Ruby was able to hold on to and helped her to survive. It’s what saved Ruby.
MM: How did Ruby start? Did you start out wanting to write a novel? My favorite image was “She wore gray like rain clouds.”
CB: I was in a writing class, and I was given a prompt, and whatever was going on in my life at the time was woven into the book. I was sitting in that class and I had a big, gray shirt on, and it was very comforting, safe and cozy, and it felt like I was wearing a cloud. That was the first line in the novel for years and years. I did not know I was writing a novel. I kept getting writing prompts in these writing classes, and these characters started to emerge. I started hearing Ruby. I started hearing Ephram. I started hearing Celia, and every prompt ended up being those characters talking, with the story unfolding. So that is how it came to be.
MM: Do you remember the actual prompt?
CB: (laughter) I don't know why I do remember. It was to “write about giving somebody a surprise.” In that one fifteen-minute writing prompt, I wrote the whole first arc of the book with Ephram taking the white layered angel cake to Ruby. It became much more multilayered and much more involved, but that was a powerful prompt. I still have those notebooks. I have them all.
MM: I was fascinated by your structure. How did you keep the integrity, consistency, and credibility of the story?
CB: I believe that writing is the marriage of structure and inspiration. You have to have both, and the structure is the spine of your piece. It is also a roadmap. When I was working on Ruby, because there were so many different timelines, characters, and there were so many different [characters] weaving in and out of timeline—I remember staying in a house that my mother hadn't moved into yet, and I took these huge pieces of butcher paper, and all around the walls, I had this butcher paper—I wrote the entire arc of the story. I wrote my outline in a two-dimensional way, and after that, I drew an arc for each character, and certainly [one] for Charlotte, Ruby's mother, and that is in the second book. I believe in creating structure. A lot of times there’s this idea of leaning on the mysticism of writing—and there is something otherworldly about it, without a doubt—but the truth is, it's also nuts and bolts. You need both. I'm not very organized in my regular life, but in this area, I'm very, very structured, and very clear. And around that, magic can happen and swirl and be, but it's got to have a skeleton for it to come to life.
MM: There are dark incidents in this book, and the poetry of your metaphors wrapped around those emotional, cruel moments is the light that guides us out of the senseless acts. Do you have any poetic influences? In general, who are your influences?
CB: I do read poetry. I love Pablo Neruda and I love James Baldwin. There are a bunch of writers that I re-read when I'm writing, but with metaphors and similes, I have to write things I haven't heard before. For instance, to the best of my ability, I sat at my desk, and there would be a feeling that I wanted to express, so I would really settle into myself, as if I were rooting myself, to sink into that world, to sink into that metaphor, and really try to find the way of saying it that felt right inside my heart and body. And if it didn't feel right, I couldn’t put it on the page—which is probably why I'm such a slow writer (laughter): I have to feel everything I write. As an author, I have to tell the truth. While I'm working, there is nothing particularly glamorous. I'm a workhorse. My grandfather was a farmer and a dowser, my mother planted sugar cane, cotton, and I feel like I'm in the field every day. When I am doing my best work, I'm going into the field—plowing, planting seeds, and it’s hard work. It doesn't come overnight, and you just go back out there, and that is what I think writing is.
MM: What is your favorite part of the book?
CB: The Ma Tante part. I like that character. I loved Maggie and the fight. The things that happen with Tanny and with Ruby, those ghost stories—not the scary stories—but [stories of] men and women who are no longer with us. One of my favorite parts is when Ephram was washing Ruby’s hair. That part is my favorite. I was proud of that piece of writing. As writers, we can create our biggest fantasies.
MM: I like the way each character comes together at the end, and on their accord.
CB: They are each fighting their battles. Ruby is fighting the Dyboù, and Ephram is fighting the magnitude of what the town thought. Ruby allows Ephram to see the treasures of her, and you can't unsee that. Ephram also found his inner strength.
MM: What are you advocating though this book?
CB: I was in social services for years and years, and I worked with young people to get them off the street and live better lives, and I taught them writing. Writing, the very act of creating, that was in itself a healing act. The rights of children are so important. How many children are alone in dark rooms right now where grown men enter? It's the actual monsters that hide in plain sight. That is one of the things I wanted to show. Along with the sanctimonious, and the different masks that people wear. Not just black people, but all people. It is enough when you look at the current things happening in this world. It's very easy to give up hope. It's just me. I've got just ten fingers, and there is a tidal wave of despair, and there is an undertow that can be strong, but the only real tool we have is to create. That is it. Our activism is to create. I'm a writer. I will speak, and I’ve written political essays, but it is where you enter into the soul of another person: that is my work. I do this work and don't get pulled into the undertow. Artists are sensitive souls, and when you open your soul, it is a daily battle to stay alive and write. If we don’t write, we die. I don't think I will survive if I don't write . . . so, happy day! (laughter)
MM: How do you see yourself as a writer in the world?
CB: Fiction is about empathy, taking the reader into the minds, smells, sounds, and hearts of the characters we create, that world. What keeps me going is that it might be helpful to someone one day. If someone who has lived this life, or has been touched by this story in any way, then I've done my job. To help people know that this is happening. I guess it's the social worker in me. When the book came out, I had someone write to me, “I am Ruby. This is my story,” and she came to one of my readings, and I met her. I told her, “You are the reason why I wrote this book. I wrote this book for you.”
MM: There are very sanctimonious, self-righteous people in your book and they all contain a wonderful three-dimensionality to them, and sometimes a fourth dimension. The Reverend Jennings, Ephram’s father, a preacher by day and evil man by night, for example. Could you speak about that brokenness?
CB: Yes, so many black people, we have generations of us who have shattered. We've been broken like glass. What happens when people become broken? There are several things that can happen. One of the things that can happen is that you can turn those shards of glass inward, or you can turn them outward and hurt other people. And there are many other things you can do, and there are many instances of resilience and strength in the black community and in this novel, but it is possible to hurt others because of the ways in which you have been broken.
MM: I think Ruby depicts a very harrowing and compassionate job in regards to what the black community was going through at that time, in 1963—and especially black women. What shifts have happened to you lately in regards to your experience as a black woman?
CB: Three things have changed my perspective on me as a black person. After reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad: the steady way in which he chronicles the horrors that blacks have endured through slavery and beyond. Also, there is another book called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Jay Degruy. And seeing Ava Duvenay’s documentary 13. Those three things have been poignant to me. When you truly see where we have walked from, and all of the things we have endured, and here we stand, then you understand all of the people who fell along the way. Some fell at the hands of whites, and some fell at the hands of their brothers, some fell on their swords. We have fallen, and those of us who stand and are still here, we have a cape behind us—of stories, and those stories are the living, and the dead, and they are connected to us—and we wear them like a shawl. Those are the stories that we are honored to tell. I am honored to recognize them.
MM: How long did it take you to write this book?
CB: Originally it was a 900-page book, and it took me on and off for fifteen years. I wasn’t writing the whole time, and so Ruby was the first of three books, and I’m working on the second book now to turn into my same publisher, Hogarth, which is part of Random House.
MM: Nice! We all can’t wait. 900 pages! I am sure you had to sadly part with some writing.
CB: There are enormous sections of the book that are gone, that I'll never be able to use, but maybe I'll use them in something else.
MM: Well, that gives us something to look forward to. We look forward to other writings and to book two! What can you tell writers emerging from various writing programs as they enter into the world with their writing?
CB: The great thing about Goddard is that [when you complete the program] you have a finished book, and if it needs more work, really spend the time to work on it. When the book is ready, get a subscription or go online, get Poets & Writers, The Writers’ Market, look for grants and contests. The PEN Rosenthal fellowship helped me to get representation. My agent was the one to tell me that there are three books here.
MM: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had a writing group called the Inklings. How do you feel about writing groups?
CB: Writing can be very lonely, and if you have good writers that you trust and respect, it can make the writing process better. I’ve often said, “Writing is like having surgery with no anesthesia.” My Blackbird Writing Collective helped me to finish the novel, and I enjoy teaching through the collective. Another mom and I from the group would get up at 5 a.m. and write. It was the pinnacle in finishing the novel.
MM: Well, as the song goes, “I could've danced all night.” We danced with words. Seriously, this was great. You always inspire me. Thank you.
CB: Thank You. This was good for me. It's always good to speak to other writers.