This post was originally published on Audible.com.
Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Margaret Hargrove: Hi, listeners, I'm Audible Editor Margaret Hargrove, and I'm delighted to be speaking with Charmaine Wilkerson, author of the bestselling novel Black Cake, who is here today to talk about her highly anticipated new novel, Good Dirt. Welcome to Audible, Charmaine.
Charmaine Wilkerson: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with you.
MH: Charmaine, before we dig into Good Dirt, I'd like to start with Black Cake. For those who aren't familiar with the story, Black Cake follows two estranged siblings who must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past. It's a journey of discovery that takes listeners from the Caribbean to London to California and explores themes of identity, who we are, and how we fit into the world. I cannot tell you how much I loved this book, Charmaine. I'm a Caribbean American. My parents are from The Bahamas and Antigua, and I have never felt so seen or felt the Caribbean experience so well-represented as you did in Black Cake. Thank you so much for that.
CW: Well, thanks for your comment. This is something that literature can do for us today. Each generation brings something new to the page, and I think we're beginning to see more and more stories that have not been told in quite the same way in the past. And we're beginning to see a different view of the Caribbean as well.
MH: Black Cake was published in 2022 and went on to become a New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna book club pick, and was adapted into a TV series produced by Oprah's Harpo Films that premiered on Hulu in 2023. Thinking back to that time, when did you know that Black Cake was going to be such a massive hit? Was there a particular moment for you when you realized, "Wow, this is going to be a really big book"?
CW: Well, it's interesting because you used two phrases that perhaps I wouldn't use, “massive hit” or “big book,” and I so appreciate these glowing terms. Without a doubt, a lot of people have had the opportunity to read Black Cake. I do recall my publisher from Ballantine Books calling me on WhatsApp and screaming down the phone line to say that Black Cake had reached number two on the New York Times bestseller list. But I think that when these things happen, one doesn't really have any perspective. It all sounded wonderful, but it's difficult for me to go beyond that. I'm just happy when I know that a story that I worked on that came from my heart and from my imagination is resonating with readers, because it's really a conversation with other readers.
MH: Well, you won't call it major success, but I will. Coming off of the major success of Black Cake, did that experience at all influence your approach to writing your new novel? Were there any key lessons you carried forward into Good Dirt?
CW: One of the things that I did think about was the way in which, after writing the story, I had support from the publishers. They're also editors. And in the case of Ballantine Books, I knew that going forward I would have another set of eyes on the manuscript and that it would be a loving kind of commentary. That was reassuring, because I'm still a relatively new novelist, and I wasn't really sure how this new approach to a different story would be received. So, thanks to my editors in the US and also the UK. I knew that going forward I'd have honest commentary, but loving commentary, and that was helpful.
"I'm fascinated by the value that fairly mundane or everyday objects can carry within a family, because I believe in the power of the story, the story that helps to shape our ideas of self and family and home."
You write a book on your own, and it really helps to have another set of eyes on the book, but also one has to hold fast to one's own vision, and that can be a little nerve-racking. Having gone through the first experience with Black Cake helped me to approach Good Dirt with a sense of confidence in my vision, but also a sense of trust that the people who supported me through the publication of Black Cake would take a look at the manuscript with a helpful and perhaps critical eye, but also starting from a point of support, of love for the story.
MH: So, let's talk a little bit about the story. Good Dirt centers on Ebony “Ebby” Freeman, a member of one of few Black families living in an exclusive New England community. As a child, her family was thrust into the spotlight when Ebby's brother Baz was killed during a home invasion. And one of the family's most priceless heirlooms, a handmade, centuries-old jar they called Old Mo, was also destroyed. One of the things I found most compelling when I was listening to this story was how deeply you dove into the history of pottery-making as seen through the lens of the Freeman family's enslaved ancestors, tracing from West Africa to the American South. What made you decide to dive into that history so deeply? And I also wonder what kind of research was involved?
CW: I'm a character-driven author, meaning I think of a fictional character or a scenario and sort of follow it from an emotional point of view. But as I created this young woman, who essentially was trying to run away from her past and was feeling lost because she was also letting go of all of the good things in her past, I thought about the family heirloom. In the very first scene that I wrote, there was an antique jar falling off of the table, but I hadn't yet thought about where that jar came from. I was writing about a well-off family living in coastal Connecticut, so they could've owned something pre-Columbian. They could've owned something centuries-old from China. But I thought, "No, I want this family artifact or heirloom to carry emotional weight." Because there really is nothing tangible of value without the intangible, the stories that give an object power.
So, I started to research, I started to think, "What kind of object could reach this family in Massachusetts, where they have most of their roots, and eventually end up on the Connecticut coast? Where would this object come from?" I was already reading about another aspect of the history of Ebby's family. I knew that they would have seafarers in their recent past, and that would mean Black seafarers sailing up and down the coast of North America. And as I read about the period, the mid-1800s, I began to look at the pottery because I knew it would be a jar. I knew it would be ceramic, but who would make it? Where would it come from? And why would it hold so much value? I'm fascinated by the value that fairly mundane or everyday objects can carry within a family, because I believe in the power of the story, the story that helps to shape our ideas of self and family and home.
As I looked into the idea of this family heirloom and started to do research in the 1800s, I looked at the mass production of stoneware being run primarily by enslaved potters, enslaved turners—meaning people who produced clay objects on those spinning tables—and stumbled across an area in South Carolina, near the border with Georgia, near Augusta, in which I stumbled across historical information on enslaved potters who were mass-producing stoneware from an area in which the soil was particularly good. Good Dirt. The clay was just right for making a certain kind of stoneware, and they were experimenting with a kind of alkaline glaze.
So, that sort of fired my imagination, and the story began to evolve very quickly because I liked the idea of this big brown jar that might not look like much when you first saw it—it was just a food-storage jar—but which held great value for a family that had enough money to buy pretty much anything they wanted to in terms of ceramics. I was taken by that story. I love the idea, because especially when you look at many different cultures, but especially in the culture of African Americans, you look at families who have long histories in the United States, but because of the way in which they entered America and because of the way in which they lived initially, it was difficult for them to have objects of monetary value or even objects that stayed with them for very long.
And, in fact, this object has remained in the Freeman family for six generations. Why does it have such great value? Because it was produced by an enslaved potter in the American South, somehow ended up in Massachusetts, and then on the Connecticut coast in the home of a family that could've owned anything. But in that family, they knew that this was the most valuable thing they owned. Why? Because again, there is no tangible without the intangible. This jar carried stories. And so, as Ebby struggles to deal with the difficult parts of her past—the violent loss of her brother, the fact that she has grown up in the public eye, was being recognized as that little girl who survived a terrible family tragedy, and then later, that poor young woman who had a very embarrassing and very public romantic breakup—she began to look back at another part of her past, the jar that was destroyed on the very same day that her brother was killed.
"I love how a story can be embodied by a new person and it becomes something different."
That jar had represented so much to the family that was positive. The passage from hardship to prosperity, from difficult times to better times. The jar was used to teach the children of each generation that no matter how badly things go, there still is hope for things to go better. But then the jar is destroyed. So, all of those emotions are wrapped up, and she associates the jar with the loss of her brother. It's a struggle for her to turn around and look back at an object that her family loved because of the stories, because she was just a little girl when the jar was destroyed. The jar was a source of entertainment for each generation of children in the Freeman family, even though the story of the jar was a serious one of passage from enslavement to freedom, from hardship to better times. Also, the Freeman family knows that the jar contains a secret. No one else knows this. And so they guard this jar with even more interest and even more care.
MH: It's interesting that the jar is such a central character in the book. It even has its own chapter, which I love, and I love that perspective. I think that January LaVoy, the narrator of Good Dirt, does an amazing job of being able to give voice to all of the different perspectives in the novel from present day to the past. She's one of my favorite narrators, so I loved hearing her voice here. How did you come to work with her on Good Dirt? Were you already familiar with her work as an audiobook narrator?
CW: I was already familiar with January LaVoy's work and voice, but when one begins this kind of process, there's a conversation in which the producer says, "We have a couple of people in mind. What do you think?" But right away, I was very much in agreement on using January LaVoy. I tend to be a sort of pared-back person in terms of narration. So I thought, "Oh, it would be fine to have mostly one voice." What was amazing was to hear how January LaVoy embodied the different voices, and you've already touched on this. It was very interesting to hear that because Good Dirt is a story that goes back and forth between the past and the present, and it is told from the points of view of a number of different characters. At the same time, there's always sort of a narrator in this story. And I thought that January LaVoy found an ingenious way to somehow hold onto all of that. It was wonderful to hear the book.
MH: So, you have listened. What do you think of her performance?
CW: I thought that January LaVoy's performance of Good Dirt was brilliant. It was nuanced. She certainly has a range as an actress. She's able to embody a number of different personalities and ideas, and you're going to get that if you're reading one of my books, because I jump around in time and I jumped from one point of view to another. I think that's a challenge for any narrator, and I really appreciated it. It's always a little strange to hear your own work coming through someone else's voice, or even in the case of my previous book, Black Cake, seeing it on the screen. At the same time, the emotions come up and you find yourself, or at least I found myself, tearing up over certain passages or laughing and thinking, "Why am I reacting this way? Isn't that my book?" But it isn't anymore. I love how a story can be embodied by a new person and it becomes something different.
MH: So, a signature of both Black Cake and Good Dirt, like you said, is jumping around from the past to the present, going back and forth. Is that naturally how you think about your stories? Is that how they come to you? Can you talk a little bit about why that structure is present in both of your novels so far?
CW: I do tend to write naturally in short bursts. When I begin to write something new, I'm not always sure if it's going to be a short story or a novel. With Good Dirt, I sensed it pretty soon after. With Black Cake, I had a number of things that I thought might be short stories, but then one of those stories began to grow. So, yes, it's natural for me to write in short bursts, and this also allows me to finish one scene and then move to another scene, which may involve a different character. It does come naturally to me. Sometimes I wonder if that comes naturally to me because I worked in television news at the beginning of my professional life, in which everything had to be told in very short passages, entire stories. I think that has always stayed with me, even though the process of writing fiction is so different for me from the process of writing nonfiction.
MH: You mentioned your career as a former broadcast journalist. Are there any other parallels between your former career and your writing career? Has anything from your former career helped to inform how you write and approach your stories?
CW: In general, I tend to see stories in my head. And so I can see images and I hear sound. When you write for television news, you're not really supposed to describe everything. Why not? Because the viewer can see things or the viewer can hear things, so you don't need to write everything, you write around it. I do believe that my fictional style tends to do that. So, if I'm writing from the point of view of a particular person, I don't necessarily describe them. I might just describe something they see in the mirror or as they look down at their own bodies, because I'm looking at the world from their point of view. I think some of that does come from television. But Good Dirt, as a story centered around this young woman from Connecticut who decides to run away from home and run off to France to take a break from a painful past, is influenced directly by an experience that I had repeatedly as a television journalist.
MH: Oh, don't leave me hanging [laughs]. Tell us.
CW: Well, when you work in television news, as for any journalist, you meet a lot of people. And from a young age, I found myself walking into a person's home, a stranger's home, on what was literally the worst day of their life. This happened repeatedly. I would sit down and have intimate and very painful conversations with people, and I would go home and wonder, "How will they manage? How will they find their way forward? How will they manage to thrive in the future and somehow carry the pain of an unspeakable loss?” It wasn't always the loss of a person to violence, as in the case of Ebby. It could've been something else, but it would be something so painful that it would stay with them for the rest of their life. And I would wonder how they would do that when their personal pain had become news.
"The question remains, but each person has to find their answer. How do they thrive after unspeakable loss?"
One day, I was thinking about that again, and into my head popped Ebby, this little girl shrieking on the worst day of her life. But as I moved on, she grew up and she grew up a fortunate young woman. She didn't want for material things. She was living in Connecticut. She loved being part of a New England family. Her family had had a proud history in New England. And yet one day she decides to run away. And that's because she has struggled for years with being that little girl in the public eye. That little girl who's seen on the news, who's seen in an award-winning photograph on the worst day of her life, and she's already living with a pain of having lost her brother, who was only 15 years old in a crime that no one really understands. They don't know who killed him. They realize that someone entered their home to rob them, but they don't know anything else. Now, they also know that in the tussle, the beloved family heirloom was lost. So that compounds their pain, a symbol of joy in their family and pride has been taken away, along with the most important person.
Going back to Ebby, I thought of her, and I decided to follow her. So, the story comes from a question that has stayed with me since I was a journalist, but I don't pretend to have answers. What I do know is that Ebby is going to have to find her way forward, because as I became older, as I continued to meet people who had gone through unspeakable things, I understood that people do find ways to thrive. We do. We are wired to hope and love and laugh and take care of people and do good things in the community. But a person doesn't always have access to that. Sometimes they need tools like therapy, but sometimes they're struggling like Ebby because she cannot get away from that part of her identity that is in the public eye. So, when she falls in love with a great guy and they're going to be married, but he's already getting a lot of attention on his own, they're this very attractive couple. They're a wealthy couple. He's white, she's Black, they get a lot of attention, and the romance falls apart.
Well, there she is again. And that sort of begins her present-day drama. She will begin to look back at her past and look at how the family heirloom is somehow connected to everything else that has happened to her, that has caused her torment. But since the heirloom was a source of positive stories and even entertainment for the children, it may just help her to find her way to the other part of her story, because I believe that our identities are all about stories. What are the stories you tell me about who you think I am? What are the stories that I am trying to tell you about how I see myself? What are the stories I tell myself? Ebby has been living with the story of her as that poor little girl, and she doesn't feel she can escape.
When she runs off to France, she feels instantly better with her anonymity. But her past catches up with her, and that will force her to take a look back at her family's history, at the history of the heirloom, and she will begin to find a new way to tell the story of her identity. The present and the past are always connected. The tangible is always connected to the intangible, and that will hold some of the answer for her. But I certainly don't know the answer for each person. It's an individual story that is connected to a question that I've had all these years, again, from my days as a television journalist. And the question remains, but each person has to find their answer. How do they thrive after unspeakable loss?
MH: This idea of inheritance and its impact on future generations does make me wonder, is there anything like Old Mo in your own family that's been passed down, or anything that has been passed down within your family that plays a significant role?
CW: Coming from parents who were born and raised in the Caribbean and who came from multicultural unions, people from yet other countries, I have been born into a family where we really had very little, like many African Americans, at least in the past. And this may be why I continue to write about identity and inheritance of stories, because probably the most interesting thing that I've inherited is the recipe for black cake that in part inspired the idea of the obsession with black cake in my debut novel.
That novel is not the story of my family. But the idea of a recipe that is so important because, well, it's a beloved recipe. It's associated with joy and celebration, but also it carries a story. That recipe is the closest that I have, I think, to an Old Mo or a family heirloom. For me, it's immensely important because it came to me in the form of a handwritten letter from my mother, and she talks about other things, which I don't share with people. But right in the middle is that recipe. And the recipe for me brings nothing but positive memories. Whereas in the novel Black Cake, of course, it's more complicated.
MH: So, Charmaine, I'm curious, what are you working on next? Perhaps another multigenerational and dual-timeline sweeping family saga? Or do you see yourself doing something different?
CW: I am working on something that involves food, but not necessarily cake. I'm also working on something that goes back and forth between different points of view and different timelines, but not necessarily multi-multigenerational. We are talking about a present-day situation, and it goes back into the recent past and the more distant past. I won't say anything more because it's a work in progress.
MH: Okay. Great. Charmaine, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing so many wonderful insights about Black Cake and your new novel Good Dirt. Listeners, you can find Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson on Audible now. Thank you, Charmaine.
CW: Thank you. I so appreciate that.
