Ep. 186 We Need Better Voices with Danté Stewart

Written By Megan Caballero

Today we are joined by debut author and minster, Danté Stewart to discuss his book, Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle. Our conversation carries us through and around the intersections of race, religion, and nationality as we discuss the stories we inherent around Blackness, the need for a more radical church, and the texts that give us meaning.

The Stacks Book Club selection for October is Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan. We will discuss the book on October 27th with Nichole Perkins.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08

Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host Traci Thomas and we are joined today by Dante Stewart. Dante is the debut author of Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle. Today we talk about his book that focuses on the intersections of race, religion and nationality. And he answers questions about a more inclusive Christianity and the voices that inform his work. The Stacks book club pick for October is Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan. We will be discussing the book on Wednesday, October 27th with Nichole Perkins. All right, now it's time for you to hear from the wonderful Dante Stewart.

All right, everybody. I'm very excited. Today we have debut author of Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle, Dante Stewart, welcome to The Stacks.

Dante Stewart 1:53

Yo, what's up, Traci, good to be with you, my sister.

Traci Thomas 1:57

I'm so excited that you're here. This is really a treat. I have only 100,000 questions for you. So I'm gonna try to like get it together and ask you the really good ones. But I have so many questions. We always sort of start in the same place, which is in about 30 seconds or less. Can you tell us about the book?

Dante Stewart 2:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool, cool. Cool. So at a 30,000 foot level, because that's, you know, if I'm on an airplane, if we if we traveling in the airport, and I'm going to pitch my book to you. I'm gonna tell you this, like I told the people, when they were deciding on if they wanted to take a shot on me or not. So at a 30,000 foot level, my book is a real intimate, vulnerable, honest wrestling with the question, what does it mean to be black and American and Christian? And a ways in which those identities and my own kind of lived experience intersect in like the most beautiful and terrible ways possible? That really was the question at the heart of my book was likened to the ways in which Audrey Lorde wrestle with the ways in which she remember her life in her body. We're in zombie, she writes, and this is really what that question that we structured that sentence came from, she writes, I remember what it was like to be young, and black, and gay and lonely. And so each one of those experiences represented different things. And they were connected, but they must be separated, and wrestle with and wrestle through. But also, they can't be too separate. Because each one of those things make us who we are. So me in particular, I wanted to wrestle with the question, what does it mean to be black and American and Christian? Because, you know, I'm in ministry, I'm black. I'm Jung. Mary, I'm gonna do you know, yeah, I am, I am, I am straight, and all these things, all these identities I needed to wrestle with, and the ways in which either I became the worst in those areas, or I embodied the best of what they could be common. So yeah, that's, that's my pitch.

Traci Thomas 3:56

Okay, we love it. Now we can dive in, we can come in for the descent, you know, kind of get into the nitty gritty, you already brought up things I want to follow up on, but I'm gonna start where I plan to start, which is, when did you realize that the three identities that you sort of tackle in the book blackness, Americanness and Christian mess Christianity? Were at odds? Like when did it become clear to you that this was something that was worth unpacking? Or that that was more than just who you were?

Dante Stewart 4:26

Hmm, great question. Yeah, I think even growing up as a kid, I always was a questioner, I would be the kid that will look up into the sky and look at the Big Dipper and wonder about the Big Dipper. I would just not just like look at comic books, but I would want to know about them. I would not just read books, but I would want to know about and I wouldn't do just art and I want to know about art and video games and things like that. So I'm very inquisitive as a child and as a kid, and even as I'm maturity then, you know, to college and beyond. And so even as I'm thinking about where we're the beginning of that questioning I have to go back home, even when I wrote in the chapter womb where I learned what bodies were meant to be loved and what bodies were meant to be hated. And so oftentimes, so many of us as we've grown up in these kind of religious and social and civic institutions, many of us have experienced sometimes the best of those institutions and what they have to offer, but oftentimes, you know, some people have experienced the worst. So I was actually talking not too long ago, with a friend. And we were talking about the black church and I serve in historic black church tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta. I'm a minister here. And we were talking about church and and you know, the ways in which so many Christians speak of either our religion in general, and institution was built in general in very pure narratives, or speaking about the black religious space in ways that's very triumphal, that collapses history that makes it seem as if all black religious spaces were on the right side of civil rights. On the right side of, you know, liberty of movements during the 70s, or 80s. On the right side of black lives matter, matter on the right side of me, too, on the right side of equality for LGBTQ, and others. And we came to the conclusion that, you know, if you're a black straight man, as I am, your experience of the church may be a great experience, in a sense, if we're thinking about what what that space protects you from, what that space justifies for you what that space allows you to do and to become, but if you're a black woman, or if you're black and young, or if you're black and gay, or my as Audrey Lorde said, if you do if you're in the LGBTQ community, oftentimes the religious space is not a space of liberation. But it was a place of law is not oftentimes a place where you feel like you can be free and question and become the best of yourself and the best of your humanity. But oftentimes, it is exposed, where your humanity is devalued, and then sometimes it is destroyed. And so my memories of the beginnings of this question begins back in my Pentecostal church, but then, in my black Pentecostal church that I was raised in, there were so many things, even when we did not, we're not allowed to question I talk about my bishop in the book, and you feel this tension of who I'm trying to become, or who others are trying to become, the good that they're doing and teaching us who we should become in the world and the type of consciousness and awareness that they are trying to help us embody and the character traits and a particular development they want for us. But oftentimes, you know, they didn't want us having too much fun, right? You know, they didn't want us ask too many questions. So let's we, you know, let's we start actually talking about power dynamics, and whatever language 16 1718 year olds talk about, you know, power dynamics, and things like that. And so, the questions really became visceral, though, when I went off to college, and when I started to get inside of the white church, you know, there's so much that our black religious spaces protect us from that we are not forced to deal with and that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I want my children to be able to grow up in a world where they feel like they can have a childhood, too, oftentimes in our country, our childhoods are stolen from us, either, because if we think about black girls and black boys either were sexually assaulted, and are sexualized way earlier than, than we need to be, or you think about that young black kids, as my students had to do have to wrestle with what it means to to look at live or be reminded of the ways in which your body is hated within your country. Too often, our kids are forced to grow up in ways they never should have. And that's probably the beginning of that question. But then going to Clemson and in a white shirt, is when that question was exacerbated. And it in some sense that episode in my life, probably, indeed, that question became the hardest to answer and found my way through.

Traci Thomas 9:06

I feel like one of the identities that you sort of touched on so far in this conversation, but that isn't part of that central question of the book is also the CES maleness of you? Because I think I think it's interesting. When we think about America, blackness, and the church, those are all spaces that are dominated by ces headed, man. And so I wonder why that part of you wasn't also part of the question.

Dante Stewart 9:39

That's actually a really great question. And in some sense, it was.

Traci Thomas 9:42

I mean, it's in the book, you certainly talk about it, but it's not like the thesis. It's not part of that like thesis question that you lay out at the beginning.

Dante Stewart 9:50

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think for me, so much of it was kind of wrapped up in Christian is because I think gender and sexuality and religion are so bound to what people Leave to be marked in the created order. But then also on another level, I felt that that was not the book. I knew, in some sense, that was not the book I needed to write because I want to read like, like, like, like, like, even as I think about my friends who are not sis and sysadmin. Mills, I feel like for me, I need their stories told, sure. I need them to tell and write their stories I need to write with care. Even when I went into my writing session, particularly the chapter on wound, like that chapter I needed to wrestle with, like gender and sexuality and these particular binaries that are so woven and inter woven into ideas of morality, and Christianity and orthodoxy. But also, I needed to, you know, particularly write the story that was mine. And I think, if I would have had to get out, yeah, I think in some sense, if I would have wrote that particular story, I do think that that would not have been fair to somebody else who must write it, that must be free in their voice and their experiences, because me, I only in some sense, know, the experience of being black sis has sis Atmel. But also, I needed to write those who are not within my story with care and consideration in ways that said, like, I see you, I understand you, I want to weave those who embody your standpoint, within my own kind of critical narration of myself and my own body. But also, I felt that like, the most visceral question that I was asking, what was not necessarily like, the what does it mean to like, like, in some sense, what does it mean to be young and black and gay and lonely? Like, I don't know if that was the story that I needed to tell, given my lived experiences as much as I wanted to, as a I felt the responsibility to weave their story. But I think also, that's a great question that I will have opportunity to continue to write about, and think about, as someone who's beginning and learning, and things that are such, but that is a brilliant, brilliant question. That was woven into how I produce.

Traci Thomas 12:22

Yeah, I think you're sitting there, like, I think you talk about it a lot. And it's something that, you know, I think the reason that I asked that, especially is because of the football section, when you talk about being Clemson, I just think of you know, football spaces as being so like sis hat men, right. And like that, we're talking so much about like masculinity in the most stereotypical flat possible ways, especially when we think not just a football, but like, sec division one football, like, that's a thing. And so I feel like, you know, starting at that point, it starts to come up a lot more and like, your masculinity starts to become such a part of the story. And so that's, that's what made me think of it. But I also want to ask you about, because I mean, what I really appreciate about what you've done in the book, is you go into some icky stuff that you've been a part of, that you've perpetuated, that you've experienced, and a lot of that comes in relationship to the white churches that you are part of, and in relationship to the murder of black people and sort of like the respectability politics, and all of that. And so I want to know what it's like for you now, to reflect on some of the trickier parts of your life. And I want to know what it felt like, sort of, then, when someone tells you you're not like other black people versus what it feels like now, when you think about those moments?

Dante Stewart 13:50

Yeah, yeah, I think for me, like honesty and vulnerability had to be the way I wrote, The had to be, in some sense, the posture that I took as a writer, when I approach the story that I was trying to tell because, you know, if we think about religious literature in general, you know, this is why I like so much of religious literature, it does not resonate with so many people, not only because so often, you know, I live our faith lives, you know, our collapse into this narrative that believes that, you know, in order for me to feel like I matter and feel like I'm closer to God, than somebody else must be put down, right? In order for me to feel like my space or faith matters, then I have to be the one who has all truth that that everybody must, must ascend to, or ascend to and when it comes to their status in society, and things like that, but also assent to when it comes to how they think about themselves, how do they name themselves how they name and EQ and walk in the world? You know, I felt that like, out of that reality, so many people don't resonate because so much of our Christian literature is So either triumphal or it's, in some sense bad writing, in a sense, because so much. You know, I gonna be too messy real quick, but like, you know, I am in, I'm in seminary and I'm in Divinity School. And my space that I'm existing in right now is, is, is in the religious study and theology department, my whole, this, this whole little bookshelf stuff regarding theology, history and ministry, you know, but oftentimes, I say, there's so much of our literature is bad literature, because so much of it is dishonest. Sure. And what I mean by this honest, it does not tell the truth of our experiences. And the whole picture, that does not depend on us being the hero in the end. And so for me, I could not be the hero in this story. I had to be so viscerally honest with myself, because at the end of the day, 18 year old me was 18 year old me 25 year old me was 25 year old me. And there are so many people who are still in those spaces. And there's so much harm that I did as those persons during those moments of which, you know, so much of that history, and those rallies still are with me, you know, the reality is that, like, I had to write some honest and vulnerable, because in some sense, writing was not going to, like, be full and final freedom and wholeness. But it was at least going to be a step in the right direction, right. And as a Christian, I felt like I had a responsibility to be as honest and vulnerable as I could, because I believed that at the heart of my faith, you know, at the heart of my orientation toward the world, the way I make meaning, is the reality, that vulnerability and honesty is a pathway to liberation, and not a pathway to losing and failing. And in some sense, failure is a part of that story, as well, of which I did some incredible failure, whether it was an athlete, or whether it was as a husband, or whether it was as a friend, or whether it was as somebody who performed a certain type of blackness, for white people as a or whether it was a person who, you know, in some sense, weaponized and be was weaponized and became a weapon and used it against us, that person of who I still am, because my, I'm still Dante as a part of my story. That's who I am. But also, I felt like, the way to freedom was saying, This is who I was, this is what I became. And this is the ways in which I change. And the story I want to tell is that change for us as possible, is messy, is hard. But it's possible in the life that we want, the value that we seek, is in our change, you know, as Octavia Butler was say, God has changed. And so it's this change that we find meaning of faith that I felt like, yeah, I needed to do. Yeah, I needed to do that.

Traci Thomas 18:12

Yeah, I mean, it's really, I mean, the vulnerability that you talked about, it's ever present, especially in a lot of those scenes, kind of in the post college days. You know, it's sort of icky. Like, it's, it's hard to read, but you know what it's not, but you're not a GI. And I've related so much to a lot of that, like, I've definitely had experiences, where I've been congratulated for my closeness to whiteness, and felt like good about that, you know, and like, oh, yeah, it was part of who I was also. And it's different for me slightly, because I have a white mother. And so I have a white family and like, it gets more complicated. But I recognized a lot of myself in your writing about that. And I was grateful that you did, because I think a lot of black people have had experiences, even if it's momentary, you know, being told, like, Oh, you're not like other black people, is really truly a disgusting and horrible thing to say about black people. But in that moment, it feels like a compliment, or it can feel like a compliment. So I appreciate you writing about that.

Dante Stewart 19:11

Yes, yes. Yeah, good. Good. Because we can we can stay in here like to stay there.

Traci Thomas 19:17

But but let's stay there. I don't I don't have to. I have nowhere to go.

Dante Stewart 19:21

Yeah, cuz like because, like, you know, I was talking to one of my boys, my best friend and just Watson, my boy, one of my teammates, and he's like, Yo, brah I've been reading your book and he was like, bruh this thing has been really resonated with me because like so often, me and Josh roommates, that man, that's my boy, my boy. And he said, You know, so often, you know, we gave so many people our sales and believed that in given them ourselves, they were finally going to make us worry that we were finally going to be accepted. We were finally going Want to be able to prove our worth and our value? And he was like, bro, you can put and I'm gonna literally I literally was talking to him and I'm like, Hey bro, Hey, hold on, like, let me let me go get my journal out real quick because I need to write this down, I need to write this down and he was like Yo, you can't put like your words in other people's hands, you'd like yellow. Like, we live so often for that praise because I as I grew up in the black, rural South, you know, the message that we in here I talk about these stories, you know, that we inherit that we are simply performers in, to be in a black rural South, oftentimes is to believe to be believe ourselves to be less than or backward or wayward. And so it's like I personally come from a small town, St. Matthew, South Carolina, I was in between St. Matthew, South Carolina, Swansea, South Carolina, and Sandy run South Carolina. You know what those into Department of Education called our area, they call it the corridor of shame. That's what they call it. We were at the bottom of the bottom when it came to education and the likes. You know, it was not because we couldn't attain because we are graced with Viola Davis. And we are graced with Michael Coulter we are graced with our Shawn Jeffery and so many wonderful, wonderful people. That's it. That's my dog.

Traci Thomas 21:25

He used to be my receiver when I played fantasy football, which I've since given up.

Dante Stewart 21:30

Yeah, that's when he was dog. Yeah, that's my dog. That's my dog. We are graced with that. And we never believed ourselves to be locked into some type of corridor. And that the the story of our lives were quote, unquote, was simply a story of shame. But that's what other people thought about the doubt about us. But it oftentimes affected how we thought about ourselves, of course, so when so when people say, you know, hey, like when it's time to go for signing day, and like, Hey, let's go, let's go play some football, we playing football, it's not like you always go to the HBCU, which between Orangeburg, South Carolina, between Columbia, South Carolina, Denmark, South Carolina, and the surrounding areas, yeah, it's filled of HBCUs is full of black history and black excellence, and black creativity. But so often we inherit this story of like, Yo, you got to get away as far as you can from the spaces that made you in order for you to make it in a world that does not love you. And so you have to become that type of person who put your worth and your acceptance in other people's hands. And you learn that guess where you learn in that church, you learn it at school, you learn it, when you discipline, you learn it when you're on the football field. And so we we believe that, you know, to be closer to success, and to be closer to God, and to be closer to ourselves, is to be distant from blackness to be closer to whiteness, and white social space. And so like, that's something that I felt like, I felt like, you know, I had to go there, though, like, like, because like, it was a part of so much of what I gave to white people during those critical moments. And white churches was, in some sense, me trying to find ways to cope with my lack of self love and self respect. And there is one quote by John Jordan, yo, that thing, that thing, it just blesses me. She says, I am black. She says, I am a feminist, you know, and, and my ideas, I'm paraphrasing her. She says my ideas of being feminist are as much in the same meaning of my idea about being being black. And it is this, that I need to love myself, and respect myself. As if everything depended on self love, and self respect. And my boy, when he when he hears, like, he's like, bro, I can't go to Warren I can't go to Warren yet because I'm on a flight. I gotta go back to Hawaii. Brian, when I didn't want to start reading it and Miss Song, you know? So so so he was like, Hey, bro, he was like a doll. Like, like, Yo joint really told me like, the harder your book is that it's like, we black folk and gotta be like, No, we ain't gotta be acceptable. We gotta do this. We got to do that. We can love ourselves. You can respect ourselves. Yeah. And as if everything depends on it. So I'll stop right there.

Traci Thomas 24:11

No, that's okay. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think like sort of the the ways that the stories are written about us, not physical stories written about us, but like, the ways that the story is told to us about what it means to be black and who is black and what that looks like. I think all of that plays into what you said, like, you know, you learn it in, in church you learned at school, but you also learn on TV, you learn about the ways people talk about successful quote unquote black people versus not, quote unquote, successful black people. But I sort of want to flip this question and kind of rotate it to another part of your identity. I should be forthcoming with you. I was born and raised as Jewish. My mother is Jewish. My father was Christian, but he left the church. I think he had some issues with the whiteness in the church, but he was about his mother was a Baptist and for out there from the south. Anyways, long story short, I think some of the things we're talking about about worthiness. When it comes to black people in a proximity to whiteness, I think there's a similar sort of situation when it comes to Christianity like a worthiness and a closeness to this is hat patriarchy. That whole thing is so deeply entrenched in Christianity and you know, judgmental in the same ways we're talking about exclusionary in the same ways we're talking about. And so as someone who's in the church now who I've read your book, I know that a lot of those beliefs are not where you stand. I'm wondering how you see that the church can be a space for all black people, right? Like when we talk about Black Lives Matter, that's period, it's not black sis hat lives, it's not black, able bodied lives, it's not black skinny lives. It's not black, you know, it's Black Lives period. And I think like the black church, we see you know, they're not it's not a monolith, certainly blackness is not a monolith. And neither is the black church. There's so many different kinds in so many different places, but sort of generally, super generally, or I guess, specifically, how do you see the way forward to be a black inclusive space in the church that includes non Christians? Right?

Dante Stewart 26:18

100%. Yeah, all black people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. And I think, and I think so much of those type of questions you wondering, is so much a part of my journey, and where I landed, you know, and it really was, you know, we always stumbled and fall into being better, you know, becoming becoming more mature and becoming more whole, you know, is you're gonna have some wounds along the way. But we need to figure out how to become, as I was walking, say, being able to be the type of people who see scars and turn them into worlds. And so like, when I think about that, when I think about that ability, because in some sense that sits at the heart of the question, how does one turn the scars, of which the Bible, the church, our leaders, our history, our stories, we tell ourselves? How do we turn those scars? Or how do we allow space, where those scars in and of themselves, you know, because we have to give people agency, those whom we harmed, we can't be the ones who fix their wounds, we are a part of that healing work. But you know, when we harm people, then that should kind of change our orientation toward them. We should allow them dignity, agency and power within their own stories, to be able to, in some sense, work for their own freedom, given their context. But because I am a minister inside of the church, and this is part of my context, I will say that like, in some sense, we have to, I think we have to read the Bible better. Like I take the perspective, that there are many problematic passages and places in the Bible, where we must say that that does not reflect the heart of God. And in some cases, because that does not reflect the heart of God, then that cannot reflect the way we embody our faith. You know, oftentimes, you know, the Bible has been this almost as we was talking about in class the other day, the boy a borderless texts, a text in which transcends boundaries and borders, a text that transcends the ability to be criticized, a text that transcends the ability to be wrestled with, but I think it's in the ability of wrestling with the text within our own stories and within our context, that keeps this conversation alive and going. So so much of my understanding of the Bible used to be very white, very white, very conservative, very, in those kinds of frameworks, those traditional frameworks, like my professor was a fluke and say, he laugh all the time, you say, you know, he's black professor, he says, You know, I used to be a white Evangelical, and as a black man, and I was the same way. And so being that type of person embodying the type of tradition of faith, those traditions, our traditions, always have with them, ways that we talk about authority, and those authority and that story is always bound to power dynamics, as I write about what bodies are meant to be loved, and what bodies are meant to behave in. And so if the church is to become a space where, you know, love, you know, that makes us free and whole and better, can be a living reality and not just an abstract principle, then we have to do the critical work of thinking about our sacred texts, and the ways in which we need to be dislodged from it, deconstruct it and hold on to it, you know, because within any prints of literature, whether you believe it to be sacred or not, that piece of literature, that story, in some sense, is given authority by the community to which it which is scribes that authority, you know, Tony cave and bar and Toni Morrison are given authority. And James Bowman given authority, you know, yeah, they are authority is universal, in some sense in some capacity, but it's oftentimes they are given the tablet authority they're given because we resonate, and we're given meaning within those stories. Sure. Flannery O'Connor, or you know, somebody like, you know, a Walt Whitman and things like that they're given authority because they're their communities ascribe them authority. And so for us, I think we have to do that critical work of reading, but also rereading, and re narrating a story and trying to find better ways to think about ourselves and our faith. And that, in some sense begins with how we relate to the Bible, not as a rule book, but a book of stories of which can, you know, help us understand meaning in our own stories, but oftentimes, you know, needs to needs to be you know, deconstructed. Yeah, there's a story of how a Thurman the great mystic, who wrote Jesus into disinherited says, Christianity became the religion of the oppressor, and the powerful, should not make us believe that that was the case in the mind of Jesus. And oftentimes, our religious traditions be a Christian, be it Judaism, be it, Islam, be it, Buddhism in the likes, you know, so often, our traditions because of history, and, and our inherited stories and the ways history, shapes things, they oftentimes are not in line with the best of our traditions. And I would say that, you know, that too often, you know, we believe that our traditions are pure, and they're purely moral and things like that. But I'm saying, you know, like, Yo, we need to criticize our tradition, and we need to try and embody the best of our tradition. And I think for me, so much of that was expanding the canon, you know, we talk in canon language and literature and in religion, you know, a canon is simply a body of work that a community ascribes meaning and guiding principles, this, this Canon, kind of guides, how we think about our own self identity, and self conception of what what we want to embody in the world. And so for me, when whenever I got to the point where I was, like, yo, it's time for me, you know, to lead these white spaces, it's time for me to reimagine my faith, it's time for me to try and tell a better story, then I could not continue to, like listen to the same voices, I needed to get better voices, if we want to experience a better faith, we need better voices, right? You know, if we, that does not mean that we're going to indeed, like like that, that is going to actually happen all the time. But we do want to position ourselves that we embody the best of what we can become. And that means that I needed to give up you know, those white voices and those white men, those, those white, you know, straight men, those black straight men, I needed to go to black literature, you know, I needed to read queer theology and queer theory, I need to read Judith Butler, and have Judith Butler in conversation with Katie cannon, or Judith Butler, in conversation with Jesus, I needed to have James Baldwin in conversation with Jesus, I needed to go to Tony cape and bar and see the ways in which the lessons that the children learn on the street can be the same lessons that I learned from children that I'm teaching at a private Christian school, I needed to learn that the same sermon that baby serves was preaching about loving your flesh could be the same way that others around me could love their flesh, and that I could become better at talking about the ways in which my faith does not love flesh. And we need to have a little bit more body and a little bit more flesh and the way we think about ourselves, that meant that I needed to go to James Baldwin, and look in the Fire Next Time and say, like, Yo, if the concept of God cannot make us more free, and more loving, than we need to get rid of it. And so being critically examining the ways in which my faith did not make other people free, but oftentimes kept them bound, I needed to take on better voices, through black literature, through black arts, through our dancing, through Black Studies, through so many different spaces, I needed to go back home to my black Pentecostal upbringing that are oftentimes devalued, because they had something to say. And as tarryall Williamson writes, our books gonna last my name, that their world making the worlds that black people make is as much a starting point as others. And so for me, I think answering your question, can the church become a space of healing? And if it can't, how can it become that space? We need to take on better stories there are aspects of our faith that we need to deconstruct and dismantle. You know, that if our traditions and our theologies and are ideas about what is right and what is more and what is beautiful and what is creative than what is loving. If these ideas that we inherit and embody does not make us more loving does not make us more humble does not make us more free than these ideas must be dismantled because last time I read Jesus says in John 1010, that I that the enemy that the thief comes to steal, to kill and destroy, but I have come in, in some sense is in resistance to those ways of stealing, killing and destroying the ways in which our traditions and our institutions and our own individual lives, oftentimes steal from others steal their dreams, steal their money, steal their land, steal their resources, we often killed their bodies, we killed their dreams, we kill their ability to love and be free. We oftentimes destroy their bodies destroyed their personhood, destroyed their humanity, destroyed their ability to have a voice and find a home in our communities. If indeed don't our religions and ideologies and our traditions are those that steal, kill and destroy, and Jesus says that He came to have life if our what I embody and my faith does not bring life. Did I need to get rid of it? Yeah, because it does not help me. And it does not help anybody else.

Traci Thomas 35:53

I'm having a hard time even thinking my questions, because you keep giving me so much more to talk about. You're really you're really messing with my float. Just kidding. No, but you have so many you brought up so many good point. One of the things that it made me think of is, are you familiar with IMO? So make sure I say this right? Can Sookie do? Have you ever heard that? It's the Japanese pottery, where if like, it was broken, and you put the gold-

Dante Stewart 36:20

Oh girl make me preach. I'm about to preach.

Traci Thomas 36:23

I mean, that's what what you're saying made me think of is like, if we don't have the right things, we got to break it and like, let the good stuff come through. Like I was visualizing like the gold, the gold in between. But I think and one of the ways you talk about this in the book, it's sort of like a little glimpse of like, a way to change the thinking, at least that's how I read it was when you talked about how rage is part of the gospel, and how rage is like the good news. And in the rage is there and I think like one of the things I went to Catholic school, so I have a little Christian understanding. Yeah, it's, again, not my religion, not my thing. Like I'm really not that religious. I love a tradition, but I don't particularly care for doctrine so much. That being said, one of the things I don't, that has always irritated me as a cynical person, is how obsessed Christianity is with this idea of love, which to me, feels really antithetical to a lot of the text, right, like so especially the first are the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, again, a Jewish person who went to Catholic school, we studied this stuff, but like, there's really not a lot of love there. And I know that like a lot of the Christianity stuff, and like the Jesus stuff is in the second half. And that's like, where the love comes through, or whatever. But I think that like, if you're, if your religious book is based on two texts, mainly, right, the Old and the New Testament, and the Old Testament is basically about like being vindictive, killing things, starting over burning the shutdown. And then you're like, but our whole religion is based on love. It's like, well, actually, your whole religion isn't based on that, like, let's take it back. But I and that's what I appreciated about what you had to say about rage is like the that is part of Christianity, that is part of the text. And I think, more honest readings of the Scripture. You know, we're all adults here, we can handle it. But I think it's like the bullshit about like, Everything is love. And Jesus is all good. And God is all good. And it's like, Well, God's not all good. Like, do you remember what he did to so and so it was, like, I don't know, I feel like pillar pillar or whatever, looking back at the salt. Like, I feel like she might not be like, that was all up, you know, and like, through. So I appreciate the ways that you sort of bring that gold that gold leafing into into your looking, because I guess the question there is like, do you feel like Christianity is asking, specifically black people, but I guess generally, anyone who believes in Christianity to feel or be less?

Dante Stewart 39:02

Hmm, that's a really great question. I'll preface you know, take what I say with a grain of salt as I'm continuing to learn. Sure. So I'm going to leave, I'm gonna leave the harder questions to the scholars, scholars in the room. So I will say that in some sense, like, you know, I am growing and learning in my knowledge, particularly as it relates to, you know, our history and things like that. And one of the things that, you know, I think so, in some sense, yes, and no, so like, my background is in sociology, and my field now is in theory and theology. And so there's always these questions must be nuanced, in a sense, like, you know, there may be maybe not in some instances, yes, sure. And this is not especially when we think about you know, the biblical texts like I'm of the perspective that like, particularly as I'm thinking about the ways in which women as scholars read the Bible in the likes of Emily Townes, I am Sean Copeland, or Katie cannon who sits above my shoulder or even Ways in which black theologians in critical times of the 70s 80s and 90s, read the text as well, and things like that, when I think about what they're thinking about the Bible, you know, they're saying, you know, yes, something can be problematic and still sacred, you know, something can be problematic and exist, like, there's no this kind of one justification for all things that go on at all time. But we need to talk about these moments and avenues of looking at the biblical texts and ways that, you know, we can still develop meaning in the sacred texts, while also being able to deal with and embrace the messiness. And so at some moments, you know, there are going to be times where we say, you know, hey, yeah, that works. And there gonna be times where we say, No, that does not work. And so I would say, more so that like, like, like, in some sense, does our religion require that we be less than? It depends? It depends on on the context, because like I said, we there's no such thing as a singular Christianity, I think about Judaism and in many traditions, and I think, you know, not as a way of say, you know, we're not a monolith. So that people, you know, wet them white evangelicals, the religious right at doing, you know, that's not us know, at the end of the day, that is us. And we need because guess what, when I step out into this world, I don't step out into this world, you know, hey, I'm a black Christian, I'm not I'm a progressive Christian, I'm this I'm that I'm this and that. No, it's all about what other people experience of me and the community to represent a name. So whether I believe me and Donald Trump don't, in some sense, there's this continuity, there's continuity between what me and Donald Trump represent in the world. And I need to deal with that to say that Donald Trump, he's the worst of my tradition. Sure, those white evangelicals, they're the worst advisors and those black people who are upholding those who hate who are anti LGBTQ, those who uphold the ways in which black men assault others and, and justify their domination of others. Those who and substance devalue others, they have the worst of our traditions. And it's inside of that not distancing myself from them. But saying, Okay, there's continuity and discontinuity. And that's the complexity. That's the tension of living. That's the tension of faith. It is in that we're better able to embody what we believe to be the best of what we can be and can become. And so this is why I felt like Rage was so necessary for me to write about because the kind of public idea of Christianity especially when you're thinking about Dylann Roof, when you're thinking about, you know, George Floyd, when you think about, oh, my goodness, the with both them John and his younger brother, I was absolutely filmin and his brother hugging that white girl, and quote unquote, forgiveness and, and in some sense, looking at the ways in which many in the Christian community responded to him hugging her. It was like, not in that moment, in that moment. Nah, I didn't want to hug her. She would have had to see me we had to throw some hands. Like I told my wife, I said, If I ever get murdered like that, like-

Traci Thomas 43:04

You don't need to forgive today, okay, like, take a few years mourn my death first, thanks.

Dante Stewart 43:10

Legit like, like, if I No, no, no, no, don't don't, don't get nobody, no hope. Because guess what, what tends to happen is, we believe that our expression of forgiving those who harm us will make us closer to God, right. And that belief, has justified all types of violence, has justified all types of oppression has justified all types of terrible things. When we put things that harmless whether you think about you know, it's funny, you know, thinking about the Exodus narrative, we just were freed from Egypt, and now we exterminate the Canaanites. And then like is that it's the complexity of that, like, we came from this, and this is what we became that oftentimes that belief, you know, we can bring God on the side of our violence, we can bring God on the side of our oppression, we can bring God on the side about the value in others. And I felt like yo, in some sense, I didn't even like a part of me wanted to go to the Bible, because I talked about the story of Nehemiah and the ways in which, you know, if somebody was like, Yo, you need to reread the Bible. And I wanted to do that. That's what I was doing. I wanted to do a certain type of rereading to say like, Yo, rage is this at the heart of what we want to talk about when it comes to our fate. So like, even when I think about this idea of rage in a way I wanted to write about rage. I wanted to write rage. It's like a spirit of virtue that can be helpful, you know, in the ways that we think about how we embody our faith and what we're we dream and imagine for ourselves and for other people. So like when I when I did that certain type of rereading of the biblical story of Nehemiah, you know, I wanted to say like, Yo, like, the same word for his rage and his anger is the same words in the Christian scriptures that we use for Jesus idea of compassion. It consumed his very being. It was that which was the very public expression of his pipe private ideas. And it was the public expression of his inward reality. And so rage did not, in some sense, disconnect him from God. But it, pressed him deeper into to God raised it, not disconnect them from other humanity. But it pressed him further into their humanity, and what he needed to do to make sure that they were human, and were able to be seen and loved and protected. And I think too often, anger in general, is not seen as a virtue, but it's seen as a vise, because we believe that like, we believe that oftentimes, you know, God wants us to put up with a world that oftentimes harm people more than God wants us to get out and get our hands and feet dirty, to make sure that they are free. And this is oftentimes at the heart of so many people's inability to talk about black suffering and Black Death, or any suffering or any death for that matter. Because we believe that, you know, the thing that we really need to talk about is, is love and unity and coming together. But as I remember, I'm reminded of, you know, the sister, I can't remember her name, she said, unity is good, but freedom is better. And I think, you know, in order for me to get to that better, then I need to have something within my arsenal, you know, that allows me not to just lie about reality, or make reality a fantasy. But what made me like be honest, like, Yo, like, the situation that many people find themselves in, in our country, and our churches and our institutions are not right, and they need to change, and that I need to use whatever art and creativity or theology or witness that I can do, or friendship that I can be or, or whatever, I need to use whatever I can, that I have been given as a gift to make other people free, not as, you know, something that just simply, you know, it'd be like, Yo, let me get mine, you know, I'm good over here, but not not not as Audrey Lorde. Right about, like the use of anger, the use of anger is to break the silences, you know, in SR I outside of where she talks about the inner transformation of science to language. And there are so many silences to be broken. And the way I wanted to write about, you know, rage is to, in some sense, contextualize it, and historic historicize it, because I talked about the difference between white rage and black rage and in our public memory, the ways in which we remember white rage. And oftentimes, when black people are angry, we're not judged by the anger and the visceral feeling that we feel when it comes to being in a system in a country, and oftentimes in churches, and communities that devalue us and disempower us. But oftentimes, we're judged against the terrible things and ways white people can become. And this is the response that people have, because they know what white people have done, and they don't want to, quote unquote, allow us to have that same power. And so even the ideas of rage and anger, and religion, and what we embody, in some sense, is very anti black. And the way we think about it, or in some sense, is very triumphant abstract, because it just simply says, you know, you got to forgive you can't be any you got to forgive, you got to forgive, you got to forgive, well, I'm just not there yet. I may not be there yet, you know, or I may not want to, but I want to push against systems of dominance. And I can't push against those systems of dominance, you know, in the same ways that like, the system gave me the same tools that it gave me back to Odroid. Right, the Masters tool, you cannot dismantle the Masters House, and what it is the tools that we've been given, especially we think about anger, I think that there's no room for it. Yeah. And for me, talking about rage in that section of my book, was trying to figure out in conversation with Carol Anderson, and conversation with Audrey Lorde, in conversation with Jesus and conversation with Fanon and Alice, Angela Davis, and Fred Hampton. And even, you know, back in the day to Richard Allen, and even today to Black Lives Matter, I wanted to think about this, this relationship between the Bible, the body, blackness, and rage that can be life giving, that just doesn't simply say, you know, you need to just simply quote unquote, love and everything will be okay. Because in some sense, you know, rage can be an expression and is fundamentally expression of love. Because I want people who are mute and invisible, to be broken from the silence and be free.

Traci Thomas 49:33

Yeah. Okay, this is like such a hard turn, because we have to talk about writing, but I don't have a graceful transition. So let's go before we get to like the actual writing part. I want to know about the title of the book and I have a very specific question, which is the title of the book is shouting in the fire and I think you do a great job of explaining that in the book. So I'll leave that part to the reader. I want to talk about the subtitle and American a pistol. Why did you pick a pistol? Why didn't you call it a memoir? What was that choice because I know that's a choice.

Dante Stewart 50:01

Yeah, yeah, so that choice was really likened to Baldwin really, really a nod to Baldwin and Fire Next Time. And even the black tradition that I come from so much of Black Writing, and our literary traditions are rooted in letters, in some sense, very intimate personal writing, that, in some sense, you know, what were creative essays was memoirs and things like that was a nod to that tradition, and that type of writing to come from. So really doing it as an epistle, you know, was saying, like, these are my letters to myself, these are letters to black people, these are letters of love to black people, to, to these are letters about what I think about Jesus and Jesus and black religion. These are letters to white people, and what I think about whiteness and, and white supremacy, these are letters to my younger self, these are letters to my children, to my wife, to black writers that I come from. And so I want I chose that epistle, you know, for that, but also, I thought it sound good to, you know, write when it comes out when it comes to tone, you know, it sounds it sounds good. You know, when people see it, in stores, you know, an American epistle, will make them go like home, my, like, I felt my memoir was like, I felt like it wasn't like creative in a sense. Like, it just you can't just be like, you know, shouting and fire a memoir. I just don't that just just don't feel good. Don't feel like creative. But also it was about PSAs joint, an American memoir. Yeah, the way he did it, in a way he kind of flipped the American memoir on his head. And what I wanted to do was like, in what in what KSA was doing, you know, but also, I wanted to particularly do that story as a black Christian. And what does it mean to do that, you know, as you know, not saying KSA is not a black Christian, or the church doesn't form KSA. But like that being like, the front question that I'm wrestling with, as a writer, the genre that I'm trying to write in, so yeah.

Traci Thomas 52:03

That leads me to my next question, which is you mentioned, not just in the book, but also like, I've heard you talk and I read your tweets, all those things. You mentioned a lot of other writers that have inspired and influenced you. I'm wondering how you kind of incorporated their work into your own work?

Dante Stewart 52:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, you know, I felt that like, like, like we were talking earlier, like, if we want to embody better than we need better voices. You know, I like when I read James Baldwin, and drew Hall, white brother, coming out of the white church, when windrow gave me Martin Luther King's, where do we go from here, that was the first book by black person I ever completed, you know, and I'm a grown man at this time, and I hadn't, you know, you know, I hadn't read anything by anybody black. Usually, my office, my office is full of books now. But like doing that, this is only literally since 2017, or whatnot, that I became like a reader like this, because I felt like, I needed to know I needed to figure it out. And for me to figure out, I had to return to black literature, you know, so I personally wanted to read black literature and sacred texts, that, that when I think about sacred texts, you know, I think about the texts that give us meaning that shape, how we name see and act within a world that shape our vision and values that shaped the best of what we want to become. And so like, I needed to go to like Alice Walker to understand my mother being a nurse, and the ways in which and her joint and certified mother's gardens, she takes that which was used against black women, the term woman ish, and she made it into something beautiful that changed generations. And so for me, like leaning on black literature was me trying to be a part of a notice of addressing tradition. So like I wanted when people read my book, I wanted them to be like yo, like, like he's in a tradition of Robert Jones and dish Ophelia and, and Matteo and KSA. And Tana Hussey and Maurice Ruffin. And just all these brilliant writers like Jasmine Ward and and Sarah Brohm, and just all these brilliant writers, I wanted people to be like, Yo, he's in that notice of a tradition. So I needed to work black literature, within how I interpreted my own story, like the way I approached the craft of writing, people needed to not just be introduced to me, but they needed to be introduced to voices that shape how I understood and told my own story. So yes, people will read about Dante Stewart, but I also wanted them to know about Bill hooks, and Katie cannon and Franz Fanon, and Baldwin, and just all these brilliant, brilliant black creative voices that shaped so much of this country, but also shaped so much of my own religious understanding.

Traci Thomas 54:39

Love that. Okay, this is you listen to the show. So you know about this question. How do you like to write? Where are you how often do you have music? Are you eating snacks? Are you drinking beverages? Are you lighting candles? It's kind of set the scene for how you write?

Dante Stewart 54:53

Yeah, so it's 440 in the morning, I get up in the morning, I go and wake up. I Get my phone, I hit this, I hit the off button, and I go and I work out, my first hour is working out, and I shower. And then I come downstairs so so from five o'clock to six o'clock, I'm working out a shower, and then go downstairs, get my coffee made up and things like that. And then I sit down in my office, I open up my blinds, I turn on my lamp, on my desk, I turn on my lamp in the corner, I'm surrounded by pictures of of four of my influences, James Cohen, Katie Cannon, Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, because I want them I want to take them into every writing session, both as an inspiration, but as being involved in how I think about myself and think about my writing. And so I write, you know, I read well, actually, first thing I do is I read, so I always read before I write, so if I'm going in for like a 30 minute session of writing, I'm going to read for maybe 10 minutes, and then write for 20 minutes, that's I wrote my whole book that way. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to read for like 10 minutes, and I'm gonna write for like 20 minutes. So like, when I was writing my last chapter, my reading sessions consisted of reading every last chapter of Jesmyn Ward's books. So I'm reading constantly, and I'm going over and over and over and over again, as I'm going through certain sections I'm reading. I'm reading Robert Jones joining the prophets, and we're going to different sections. I'm reading the way Disha did her short stories, and things like that. I'm going down. I'm reading the way Sarah Broome built worlds and Inca Jameson built worlds are like the vulnerability of Kiese. You know, because when I get finished with whatever, I'm getting finished, and getting done with that, I want people to notice that I want them to feel that. So I hope by the time you went other finish that you felt like okay, yeah, I can see Kiese and there's I can see Jesmyn in this. I can see, you know, several minutes I can see them. Let's see Baldwin and Morrison. But also, you know, this is he is yeah, this is this is he is and so I will do that. And then this is the most important part, I write to the same music, I wrote my book to one song, I read my audio book to one song, I put one, one earphone in. And then I had the microphone their headphones on. And I had this song in it to help me with pacing. So if you notice about my writing, my writing is very pace. Yeah. Like it has a cadence to it. And the cadence of the writing was like based on max Richter's. It's Max Richter, the exhibition. Okay. I'll turn that on. I'll turn that on. And then I'll get to writing and then once I'm done with those 20 minutes of writing, I'm on to my day.

Traci Thomas 57:34

And then what are your snacks and beverages? Sounds like none.

Dante Stewart 57:37

Yeah, no, I don't I don't snack while I'm writing. Only thing I do is coffee and water.

Traci Thomas 57:40

I have to be honest. I knew you were gonna say that when you said you woke up at 440 in the morning because I just knew you're not my people waking up at 440 to exercise first I want to die. Okay, this. This is important, though. What's the word? You can never spell correctly on the first try?

Dante Stewart 57:55

Oh, a word. inconvenience.

Traci Thomas 57:59

Ooh, that's a hard one.

Dante Stewart 58:01

Yeah. inconvenience and light light. Like, like, I'll send people like, Hey, I'm sorry for inconveniencing you and it takes me to spill inconvenience. Like there's the I've come before II where does the Viet where's the C? Where's the O? Like, what? How do these letters get around like inconvenience? I can't.

Traci Thomas 58:16

Yeah, I think there's two C's. Right? There's an in there's a convenience has to cease? Yeah. It's a nightmare. Yeah, it's a nightmare of a word.

Dante Stewart 58:24

word. Yeah. That's why I write it don't edit.

Traci Thomas 58:26

Yeah, I surely I can spell it there. Okay, my last two questions for you one. And I think we've probably mentioned a lot of them. So if there's any more you want to add to the mix. For people who love shouting in the fire, what's another book you would recommend to them?

Dante Stewart 58:43

Oh, yes. So I can actually send you this. So I put together a playlist and a reading this goes along, shouting along with shouting in the fire. So like I started to run a Burg put together her joint shout out to Toronto unbound. She put together to play this in a realist and I was inspired by that. That was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And so I put together a play this in a reading this I can share with you. But I think one book that I would tell people to read in conversation we shot in a fire probably would be our I'll name two: Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward. And Heavy by Kiese.

Traci Thomas 59:20

Yeah, I mean, just two books we love around here.

Speaker 1 59:22

Yeah, those are the two books that shaped pretty much everything. My approach to crafting the skill of writing a memoir. Yeah, but definitely also Elizabeth Alexander's the black interior. That book. Yeah. I swear by that book.

Traci Thomas 59:41

Okay, here's my last question for you. If you could have one person dead or alive read this book. Who would you want it to be?

Dante Stewart 59:48

Jesmyn Ward hands down.

Traci Thomas 59:50

Easy. That was easy. Love it.

Dante Stewart 59:52

Too easy. Yeah, Jesmyn Ward. Like I want. You know, I would love Jesmyn to.

Traci Thomas 59:58

I feel like we can get this book to her.

Dante Stewart 1:00:00

If anybody can get it to so I got it. I actually got a dream this ruido so like, I won't ever do it so you asked me one person but I'm going to name oh, some names. Okay, so like just putting it into the universe. Yeah, I'm putting I'm putting it out there, you know, good vibes, you know putting it out there. I would love LeVar Burton to read it. I would love a rejuvenated read it. I would love Nikki Giovanni to read it. I would love Denzel Washington to read it. Because me and Dinsdale have the Pentecostal upbringing. I see him and I love I love them. So, of course, the Obamas.

Traci Thomas 1:00:33

I would love the Obamas you gotta have the Obamas. And also, you probably have to throw in Oprah.

Dante Stewart 1:00:40

Like, I'd be like a Oprah light. Like, I want to read it and be like, like, like, you know, hey, what if I look up and get like a book book book club. Like Oprah, like, show me some love, I want to read it. But more than anybody, I ain't gonna lie. And he can't read it. Because he because because he has dementia. Like, I want my granddaddy to read a joint. Because I felt like my granddad and my grandma, I want them and you know, like, you know, in the book, you know, I want them to have this and read this and they're up their upper 80s. And so, you know, the on the back end of life, in some sense, you know, and I would want my granddaddy to read this book, I wish I could travel back in time, when he had that mental capacity to do what he do and to be able to like, show him what I became, you know, and and things like that, because he doesn't know me, you know, he know me, but he'll know me.

Traci Thomas 1:01:32

Your grandparents are really great parts of the book to some really great chapters. Okay, everybody, on that note, sort of a little somber but it's okay. Dante's book is Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle, you can get it anywhere. It's out in the world. Dante thank you so much for being here.

Dante Stewart 1:01:56

Oh, yeah, it's been a blessing and I count it a great gift to be able to converse with you and be with you and your community.

Traci Thomas 1:02:02

Thank you so much, and everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

Thank you all so much for listening and thank you to Dante for being my guest. I'd also like to thank Elise Goldsmith Wiseman for helping coordinate this interview. Remember the stacks book club pick for October is Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday October 27 with Nichole Perkins. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you're subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram, Threads and TikTok and at thestackspod_ on Twitter and you can check out my website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
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