Ep. 317 The Ill Is Not the Outcome with Yahdon Israel

Written By Cherie Marquez

Today we are joined by Yahdon Israel – writer, founder of Literaryswag Book Club, and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster. A Brooklyn native and community-builder, Yahdon breaks down the distinction between the literary world and the publishing industry. Plus, Yahdon breaks down how he thinks about audience as who are you writing to, and who are you writing for?

The Stacks Book Club selection for May is No Name in the Street by James Baldwin. We will discuss the book on May 29th with Yahdon Israel.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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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 today I am so happy to welcome Yahdon Israel to the show. Yahdon is a writer and the founder of Literaryswag which is a cultural movement and book club aimed at making literature more accessible. Yahdon is also a senior editor at Simon & Schuster. His very first acquisition, Temple Folk, was a finalist for the National Book Award last year, among many other honors. Today, Yahdon and I talk about the literary landscape, how he thinks about authors promoting themselves and their work and the many books that have shaped you don into the fine and upstanding literary citizen that he is. Remember, our book club title for the month of May Is James Baldwin’s classic, No Name in the Street. Yahdon and I will be back here on Wednesday, May 29th to discuss the book. Quick reminder, everything we talked about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. Alright, everybody, I am so excited. I have a guest on the podcast who I have been wanting to have on the podcast for at least a few years, we’re finally got our act together. We are here I am joined by editor at Simon & Schuster. Here, Yahdon Israel. Yahdon, welcome to The Stacks.

Yahdon Israel 2:27
Thank you. Thank you, I want to just clarify for your audience. I got my act together not you. I was off mine. So I appreciate your patience and grace to allow me to be on the show at all. After the egregious amount of time I did I failed to respond to an email.

Traci Thomas 2:43
It’s okay, we’re here now. And that’s all that matters. Plus, if I had interviewed you originally, I wouldn’t have been able to say that you are the editor of a National Book Award finalist. Because you were not that yet. So it was worth the wait to get to give you all your flowers and celebrate you. Before we get into all that exciting, great stuff. Will you just tell folks a little bit about yourself just like you know, doesn’t have to be your resume. It could be about where you’re from, other shit, your name to just give us a sense.

Yahdon Israel 3:13
So for you know, for people, you know, senior editor at Simon and Schuster founded the literaryswag book club that’s been around for eight and a half years. We we’re going are we’re on our 99th Pick. We we announce our 100 pick next month in April, got my MFA from the new school got my undergraduate degree from Pace University. I served on the board at the National Book Critics Circle. I was one of the jurors for you know, the Aspen literary prize for the New York Public Library scholastics. I taught at MFA programs from City College to St. Francis, also taught at The New School. What else- like I was the editor in chief for Brooklyn Magazine. I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m fly. like it’s, it’s you know, it’s you know, we run the game, like what is like what else would you want to talk about? I could talk about anything in any different direction. But like, I think that the way that I lay it out when I when I lay out my professional landscape, it’s you know, I’ve I’ve studied books as a student with the MFA degrees I’ve told them as a professor teaching, I know what kind of books get a certain kind of cultural and social coverage because I was an editor in chief for Brooklyn Magazine. I know what kind of books wins awards because I was judging prizes. And I also know what kind of books cultivate national, you know, cultural, you know, cultivates dialogues, I run a book club. So I consider you know, being a senior editor at Simon and Schuster, like the sixth Infinity Stone, you know, so that’s what I’m, you know, I’m here to snap, you know.

Traci Thomas 4:48
Okay. So let me ask you this. I was going to ask you this way later, but now I just want to know, you know, so many different aspects of the world of books. What surprises you? What has surprised you about books?

Yahdon Israel 4:59
I think how many people actually have their hands in it. And the bookmaking process, being an outsider to the industry. And I want to make a distinction throughout this interview, the distinction between like, you know, like a Venn diagram, there’s the publishing industry and as the literary world, and like they have overlap, but they’re not the same thing. They’re not synonymous. And often people use them as like, you know, interchangeable. And so I was in the literary world for longer than I was in the publishing industry. only very recently, by getting the job assignments used in 2021. Have I become a part of the publishing industry. And because so much of the narrative of publishing comes from writers, there was this notion of like the sort of singular creator of the book, like so I probably thought about like, you look at a book, you see a name on the front, you don’t see the editors, you don’t see, you know, the copy editors, you don’t see the book designers, you don’t see the marketers, the publicist, the sales team. And then when I got into publishing, and now I’m doing the book, me helping to create the books, you see, like there’s about like, anywhere between, you know, 10 to 20 people working on one book, and I think that it really expanded my understanding of books from this solitary pursuit to a communal endeavor. And so that’s been the thing that’s been most shocking is just how much how many people work on one book, which, which, which, to me, really disrupt this notion that like, you know, there’s only two people making a book, but there’s so many hands in a book that people don’t even know.

Traci Thomas 6:39
Yeah, yeah. I wish that books had credit pages, I wish that every book had an eye because I’m interested in who makes the books. Well, I have a tracker and I track who the editor is on every book I read and who the cover artist is. And I just wish it was easier to find that information and like to see an editor’s career and see what they’ve done and who they’ve worked with. Like I just I think that’s exciting and interesting for people who like books, I just wish it was more accessible.

Yahdon Israel 7:05
Yeah, I mean, they acknowledge acknowledgments are there, right?

Traci Thomas 7:09
And no, not everyone has acknowledgement. And not everyone names what everybody does, right, or acknowledgement.

Yahdon Israel 7:15
But I will say that, I think that that has more to do with how writers conceive of labor and publishing. And because writers are the most front facing, I’m not saying that it’s the writers sole responsibility to do that. But I think that there is a way that being a product of an MFA program being a product of a lot of the narratives of the romantic author as solitary creator, like, I think that there’s a lot of subconsciously internalized notions about how to acknowledge labor. And, you know, the reality of it is, is like, I’ve never, you know, even when I sit through credits in a Marvel movie to wait for, like, what’s the next scene? It’s not like I’m reading and seeing who was the gaffer? Right? But it’s there for me to see. And what I have become more privy to becoming a part of the industry as an editor, I look at the acknowledgments and a lot of the information that we are looking for is there, right, like some people don’t have acknowledgments for, you know, like, if you’re a Stephen King, or you’re right, you know, JK Rowling, you don’t you know, you as an editor, you don’t want a million, you know, emails from people who want you to publish their, you know, your agent, you’re not trying to field that many submissions. And so, you know, so there’s a reason why that happens. But I will also say that that information is a lot easier to grasp, like, even on, you know, a hardcover book, if you look at them, I don’t have one right in front of me. But if you look at like the end, like the back flat, you know, who took the picture, you look on the inside flap on a copyright page, they tell you who designed the book, so the information is there, it’s just it’s knowing how knowing where to find it, and how to look for it, but to your point is like, how do you make it more accessible and more in your face and more explicit, and that you know, a lot of what my labor is in publishing, my my cultural work, is creating a sort of vision, like creating a discourse that enables people to understand the nuances and the logistics of publishing so they know how to find these things that you are laying out you wish you saw more of?

Traci Thomas 9:18
Yeah, yeah, I just I’m so I’m always just so curious. Because you know, when you do start paying attention to who the editor is and who the designer is, you realize that like, as a reader, you have favorite editors. Like I realized that Kathy Belden is my favorite editor, you know, like, but I didn’t, I would never have known that if I wasn’t reading the acknowledgments and like paying attention and seeing these things, or like, you know, the guy who does the cover designs over at FSG, Rodrigo Corral, I can’t remember his name, but he’s my fav and I love him and I love his work, but I never really like it never clicked in my head until I started writing it down and like tracking it. Okay, let me ask you this because you have so many perspectives on the book space and you would like have these different hats. that you’ve worn when you’re editing. Yeah, what are you looking for in a book to acquire? Versus when you’re picking a book for book club? What are you looking for in a book to talk about?

Yahdon Israel 10:13
It’s funny, you know, not funny, but like, you know, what I appreciate about this question is that like, is, this is where a lot of my overlap is like, I’ll be honest, like, I don’t acquire a book that I won’t pick for the book club that I run, like my book club in a lot of ways is informed my insight, my sensibility about what I would acquire, like, if I wouldn’t pick it for book club, I wouldn’t acquire it. Okay, I tell this story, often, because it’s a core principle of what of how I look for books. So, you know, when Barry Gordy was running Motown, Motown was at the height, he would play a song for the exec for the songwriters, and the executives and the marketers and everybody at Motown. Now you cut the song of an A, he would be like, if you had your father, last $5, would you buy this song? Would you buy this record? Or would you buy a sandwich and if people wanted to buy a sandwich, he didn’t release the record. And the reason why he did that was because he understood that the people he was selling albums to didn’t have 10 hours, they didn’t have afterpay, they didn’t have, you know, a firm or any of these things that enabled you to get what you want now and pay for it later. A lot. People had to make a decision between like a temptations or Jackson Five, or, you know, Diana Ross and the Supremes album, and paying their rent or paying for dinner that night. And because he understood sort of what I would call like a sort of creative ethic, right, which is, if we’re making stuff that we know, isn’t necessarily food, shelter, and clothing, we have to really be honest, that that’s what we’re competing with. We’re not competing with other artists, we’re competing with people’s livelihoods, and their lifestyles. And so when I look at a book, my thing is like, Okay, if this book is coming out in hardcover, and that means 2728 29 $30. Even if it’s paperback 716 17 $18 Like, that’s somebody’s dinner that night that somebody’s lunch, is this person, is this worth, that person’s lunches is worth a pair, you know, a pack of diapers is this worth somebody’s Hulu subscription. And that’s how I think about the book. And when I’m making the assessment is like, if it’s not already worth, it is like what would make this worth it. And if the writer then is capable of doing those things, and that’s the conversation I’m having. Because when it comes to the book club, and this is just a little quick thing about the book club is like the book club is a $50 subscription a month now most people be like, that’s a lot of money for a book club, especially when a book is not even $50. But it’s the community is the accountability is the discussion. And what I realized is that when you create a book club, you’re you’re serving a very particular kind of person. It’s a person who values not necessarily the books themselves, but the community and the ability to have a conversation about the books. And so I say that to say like, my question, even when I was creating the booklet was like, how do I make this worth the money I’m charging? Versus like lowering the price? And like, oh, trying to justify is like, No, I just have to make sure that it feels like it’s worth the investment. And that’s how I assess books large, like just the baseline, that’s what I’m looking for, is it going to be worth the money that someone pays and the time that someone invests.

Traci Thomas 13:17
Okay so, but how do you know, when you get a manuscript? How, what are you looking for to say this is worth? The $30? Like, are Who are you talking to? How are you assessing that? Is that just something you feel in? And having known so much about books? Or like, are there specific things that you are looking for a feeling or whatever?

Yahdon Israel 13:38
So it’s different with every book, I think the thing that unites all of it is that like, I look at who has this book, too. And I make this distinction all the time as like, you know, writers, as I’ve, you know, learned to understand is that there’s a distinction between who people write on like for, and then who people writers write to. And oftentimes, I’ve heard writers conflate them where the person that they’re often writing to is the person that think they’re writing for, but ironically, they’re communicating in the same way. So for example, right? Like, you know, James Baldwin, wrote a lot of his work, especially as nonfiction for black people, but it was written to white people, right, so like, as a black person, you could come and read Bo, and you could feel very much seen by what he was describing. But because of how he describes certain things, you knew he wasn’t talking writing to a black person, because they were things he was explaining, as Toni Morrison says, when she talks she was like, there’s things that he’s the Ralph Ellison’s of the world are explaining things to like, you wouldn’t have to explain that to me. So I know you’re not talking to me. You’re talking to someone else, but you are talking about me. And so I’m very much a what is it inverted in terms of how I think about bookmaking? I think about the audience first And then I reverse engineer it. So every book I’m encountering if I can’t see the audience, and I can’t see how to get this book from me, as you know, acquiring editor through the publisher through the bookseller, like through media, and you know, the press, and all these different things is like, how do I get this to the audience. And if I can’t see that path, then I don’t acquire the book.

Traci Thomas 15:27
I feel like a lot of people think of editors as like, there are people who edit the book, they tell you, you have a typo, or they say, like, this paragraph has to go or we should move the beginning to the end and the end to the beginning or whatever, like, let’s rework this. But I what I’ve learned about editors, which I really didn’t know, before, I got into being part of the literary world, which I love that distinction, because I never I hate when people say you’re part of the publishing industry, I’m like, I am not, I am a literary citizen, I’m part of the literary world, but I am, I do not work in the industry. But what I’ve learned is that editors are really the entire project manager for a book, you are there from the beginning, you acquire the book, you do the editing, you talk about the structure, what the point of the book is, but also you’re meeting with the sales team, you’re meeting with the marketing team, you’re meeting with the cover designers, you’re helping to put together the book tour, you’re helping to do all of these other parts of the book, and that the editing part is not necessarily the number one, or like the only part of the job, it might be the number one part of the job, but it is not the only part of the job. And it is not the only important part of the job. So would you tell like, kind of give us a condensed version of like, what happens for you from the getting of a manuscript to the publication of a book, like what things your hand is in?

Yahdon Israel 16:48
So I think the best analogy as a way to like help people think about what an editor who editor is, and what an editor really does is like think about an a&r at a record label. Right. Like, they’re the ones they’re doing the development, they’re, you know, they have a vision for everything about the book, right? And so they’re really the person who’s coming up with how do we translate the art to the public? The misleading thing, and a difficult thing about navigating publishing is that publishing is b2b. Right? And I, when I teach classes, various classes, to authors to writers to enter or even give lectures, I often ask people, How many of you buy your books from Simon and schuster.com, or Penguin, random house.com, and Macmillan and NPR, he is one of the few if not first, one of the few publishers, you can actually they are building the tools so that you can buy the books directly from them. Our consumer directly is not the end user. Right? So like, we’re not necessarily the Apple store in the sense of like, you can go to a Simon and Schuster store and buy Simon and Schuster books, we sell to Amazon and Barnes and Nobles and the Indies and this person and that person. And so the relationship that the reader, the end user, the consumer has, with the books is not directly with the house, when when I say I have my hand, and everything is not even in terms of understanding that I’m publishing a book. And this is something that I’ve learned very recently, as you know, or have, like, accepted very recently is like, I’m not publishing books, I’m publishing brands. So every book I acquire, I’m not just looking at the book itself, like what’s the writing, I’m looking at the entire person, like, what kind of person is this? How do they think about themselves in the world? What are not? They’re just their interests outside of books, but who are they in the world? Who are their cultural equivalents? Right? If they were in music, which artists? Would they be if there was in sports with athlete would they be if they were in the sciences, which sign like, I’m thinking about? Who are they in the world, because the average person is not looking at them. As an author, they’re looking at them as like, identifying with is this person aligned with the values or the ethics that I identify with? And that purchase of their book is a bit of an expression of their alignment. Right? And that’s what I’m really assessing is like, okay, there’s times where I’ve seen books that are dope and and I’ve had interviews, not like interviews, but like, you know, author meetings, and there was just times where my vision for them was bigger than the vision they have for themselves. You can it’s like, I can’t work with somebody who doesn’t have a big vision for themselves, not just their book. Publishing is a long haul- 96% This was in a New York Times article in 2021. When publishing had its best year, right in terms so the most books, even in the year we’re most publishing more books in the history of books. There was still two categories that outperformed everything else and it was celebrity authors. And backlist books, which is books that have been out longer than a year. And really what they were saying is that books between the year that were released are between three to five years, we’re getting the most sales at a minimum and an onward and then celebrities. So like 96% of authors who debuted still sold under 5000 copies- Toni Morrison, when she when her first book, Bluest Eye got published. So 2500 copies, so you could look at that as like, oh, that’s, that’s terrible. It’s like, no, that’s the name of the game, like a new person is there, there are new brands. So if I’m going into the bookstore, my $30, and I’m looking at a trusted brand, like a Toni, or James, or an Octavia Butler, or some book I probably heard for years, and I’m just now going to get, because, and then I see this new person I’ve never heard of I see this new brand is like, am I gonna pick Heinz ketchup that I always use, you know, I’m picking this other brand I’ve never seen before. And it’s like, there’s a finite amount of people that which is represented in the statistics, there’s a 4% chance that I pick up the new brand over the established one. So when I realized that I’m not publishing books, I’m publishing brands, I’ve had to reconfigure my entire messaging about how to help authors understand that really, what you’re doing is you’re building a career with every book, you’re not necessarily trying to get one book to define your career. And that’s what so many authors try to do is try to get their first book to be the definitive one, as opposed to like, the one that’s going to set the foundation for their career.

Traci Thomas 21:34
What’s so interesting, Yahdon, and like, this is something that I have been thinking about a lot, because I just did a tour for this podcast. And I had authors and we talked and we did it at like nightclubs, and comedy clubs and five cities. Yeah, we had a great time. We didn’t do it in bookstores. And one of the things I realized in that tour, I mean, it take it took me some time after the fact. But what I’ve one of my big takeaways is that book events as we know them as like, these places, when you go into a bookstore, and they have neon lights on, and like you sit between the bookshelves, and the author, like reads five pages, and then talk to their friend about the book is that we’re doing it wrong, is that the least interesting part of the book event is actually the book that everyone else thinks that the most interesting part is the book. But like, if the book just came out two days ago, maybe three people have read it in the room, why are you trying to convince me that I want to hear you read aloud, like person that I don’t know, right person that I already know, and love, and that’s why I’m here, I don’t want to read those three pages, I’m going to buy the book, I’m going to take it home, you’ve already sold me, I showed up, I came out in the rain, to in Los Angeles to see you talk. And I feel like what we’re missing is that the author’s like you’re saying the brand, the people, they are the product, they are the interesting thing. And if they can’t be sold, and if they can’t sell themselves, and if they can’t make us excited about them, maybe I’ll buy your book off of a great review in the New York Times. But I don’t know that I’m gonna buy your second book, because I’m gonna forget about you by that, you know, but like, if you excite me, if you are a person who I’m delighted by, I will remember you, even if I thought your first book was just okay, or your third book, you know, and so I feel like this idea of like, let’s go into a bookstore, and sit in folding chairs and have no experience and not consider the audience or the reader in any meaningful way, is doing a disservice to the people who show up but also to the authors and their ability to build careers off of like creating brands for themselves.

Yahdon Israel 23:32
Yeah, and one thing as you were speaking, I know, like, I want to, because I, I’ve, I’ve been on the side of writers in such a way where I know they’re going to cringe at the notion of them being products. And it’s like, I want to make a very clear distinction that like when I talk about branding, I’m not talking about them commodifying themselves, what I’m talking about is understanding that they’re that transition from writer to author, and that is like you’re going from the private artists to the public figure, there’s a there’s a way in which whether a writer likes it or not. Part of what they accept when they accept a book deal is that there is a kind of repositioning and reconfiguration, they have to do to decide not just that they’re going to present themselves to the public. But how and what many contemporary writers and when I say many, what I’m saying is like for every 10 writers I encounter seven possesses mindset that they’re in the headspace of like, all I got to do is really write my best books and disappear and I don’t have to do anything, and are really articulating an antiquated notion of how publishing used to work. But ironically, the way that publishing used to work really only benefited a minority of the people who are getting books published. And so, there is something that right like that. The challenge that I try to get authors to think about is how do you make genuine connections with the people who are going to become your readership Like maybe that, you know, 20 people show up to your book event. And then three people buy a book, it doesn’t mean that that book was that that event was a failure, it means that you have to think about how do I make sure that those 17 people feel like this time that they spent when he was worth it. And so often, when we have these conversations and publishing with authors about branding, the first thing they hear is, Oh, I gotta go on social media, I gotta post. And so it’s actually a lot more challenging in that it’s like, no, you actually have to present your humanity in a way to the people who you know, will recognize it and value it. And that’s a different kind of labor and extension to the labor that most writers think that they’re only responsible for, which is writing a book, right? So to your point about, like, people in the publishing industry think that like, oh, we have to sell the book. And what I’m understanding is like, No, you have to create experiences that will enable people to value the person who is the conveyor of this experience, and then they will invest in a book. So there’s like data that shows that the top two things that sell people’s books better than anything. First, number one is known author, right. And then number two was close friends. And so there’s a network and community effect of how like, we sell everything. And yet, we still put as an industry an overwhelming amount of pressure on like, oh, this book, got a New York Times review, but it didn’t sell and this like on the data will show you that book reviews aren’t the one things that move the needle. And yet, we still put an an, a disproportionate amount of enthused like energy into reviews where it’s like, Okay, what’s harder to build, and this comes back to publishing, being business to business, is that when you’re a b2b company, it’s very difficult for people within that framework to think about an end user, because we don’t interface with them directly. A lot of editors in order to have that vision, they have to be plugged into, like, they have to be deeply invested in what’s actually going on. But the conundrum of this job, is that part of what gets you to even do this job is that you to the extent you’re cut off, because you’re editing books, you’re reading manuscripts, so you have to find is this like, really tight, this high wire effect where you have to both be engaged enough to know what’s happening and what’s and what could happen, but then committed in detail. What’s the word disciplined enough to make sure that your the books that you’re already acquiring are are being done are being executed at that level that, you know, are worth the investment that you make when you you fight for the acquisition in the first place? So it’s not by means that easy thing?

Traci Thomas 27:38
No, it’s not. And I think like, you know, your I think it’s funny, your pushback of me saying that the author is the product. Because I feel like what’s what is so you know, I went to theater school. So I know so many actors and dancers and things. And so many artists feel like, Oh, I’m not a product, like I’m an artist. And I just I always laugh at that, because I’m like, maybe you’re selling art, what do you think that is? Like, that’s a product company, like you want me to buy it, you better act like it. But I just think it’s funny, because authors especially, I feel like from what I’ve seen, for the years that I’ve been working, you know, in this space is like, authors don’t want to think of themselves as a product or as a brand. And I just to me, I’m like, it feels so clear from the outside, like, as a reader who interfaces with so many readers, right? Like I am the I’m the opposite of publishing industry, I am interfacing only with the end product for the most part. And so to me, I’m like, No, you are a brand and like when I think of authors who are doing it well, or like even people who, you know, their first book, I was like, you’re going to be a thing, right? Like I knew, like two who comes to mind to me instantly is non Aquaman. RJ Brian Yeah, right. Like the moment I read Friday black, I was like, I’m interested in this person, the person behind these words, and then I started following him and I would see like, Oh, he’s into Pokemon, like, what a surprise or like, Oh, he’s like, it’s like, you get to see these glimpses of this person. And all of a sudden, he becomes a very clear brand in my mind, right? Like, I’m like, This is a clear, there’s a clear story being told not only on the page, but as the person so maybe like product isn’t a great idea, but like thinking, like you’re saying of the packaging of the person as like part as part and parcel with the art and not separate from the art but like, the person who makes the art is is exciting to the consumer as the art itself, right?

Yahdon Israel 29:27
If you let it be, right? And I would say that like, while the person isn’t the product, their book is definitely the product, right?

Traci Thomas 29:35
So in them as an author is a product, maybe not their whole person, maybe not the writer, but like the author prior to me is a product.

Yahdon Israel 29:43
This is going to come down to semantics. I’m like, I know how you’re saying it. Like the reason why I’m saying product is is like, you can’t Well you can buy people like depending on where you are. But it’s the notion of and this is what I keep coming back to and I’m in everything I do, I think about who’s listening to this, and what they might hear. And it’s like, I’m being very sagacious, about how I’m framing things. Because part of what I’m always trying to dislodge is the kind of stubbornness that writers think is benefiting them. And it’s actually harming their careers. And so they think, Oh, I’m going to do, I’m just going to focus on my art, my art, my art in this vacuum, right. And it’s going to just work out. And what a lot of authors are taking for granted is that that way of navigating through publishing only worked for a finite amount of people want us to that way of working no longer exists, like the world has changed four or five times since that kind of author wasn’t was able to exist in that way. So like, if you’re thinking about the John Irving’s the, the Don Delillos the the people who they were writing in a different generation. So they’ve already built their sort of base audience, right? It’s wild, like a Beyonce can drop an album without promotion. And then every, But it’s like, her brand was already 20 years strong at that point. So somebody who has no brand, history, no. Like you said, no snow relationship with the larger public, at least the people that they’re trying to reach and do the same thing. And I like what Beyonce did it. It’s like, we’re doing an unfair one to one where we’re not looking at trajectories, and we’re isolating moments in people’s careers. And we’re saying we want that. So like, the last thing I’ll say before you actually, next question is like Toni Morrison, I tell us, the writers all the time. Toni Morrison’s first book was in 1970, so 2500 copies, she doesn’t get her first best seller. Until beloved as 17 years later, that’s four novels in between, right? That’s a career, right? And so, and she doesn’t become an international figure until 1992, when she wins the Nobel, right. And it’s not like she was writing with the intention to get a Nobel, but she was building with every book, meaningful and consequential connections with her audience. So by the time she passes in 2020 2019, I believe, and she has that I’ll never forget, I covered this. I covered her memorial at like, I think Riverside Church, that room was filled, you know, with black women. And it’s like this of a lot of the people there, but it was disproportionately black women. And when you look at her career, it’s like she has been doing both on the page, but in her work in her interviews, the same kind of labor, but that’s a 40, 50 year campaign. And so you have writers who go, Okay, what Toni had 50, like, at over 40 years, oh, my first book, and it’s like, Oh, you didn’t even get that on her first book. So I like sometimes looking at the big authors who people like to look at and go, I want that kind of career. And I go, let’s look at the career. Yeah, you want to look at the moment, like the Nobel and it’s like, Yeah, but there’s a lot of her books getting reviewed wrong, there’s a lot of her books, not finding people, they’re like, you needed a whole Oprah to kind of come up and create a whole initiative extended to, like you said, the literary industry, you need somebody outside of publishing, to create a galvanisation for literature like hers, for it to even have the kind of mainstream, you know, breakthrough that it has. So I say this to say, like a lot of what I try to challenge writers to think about, and I tell them this all the time, it is very easy to every writer comes to me. And they all believe they have the exceptional book that’s going to break all the rules. And what I asked them is, are you comfortable being the rule, not the exception. Because if you’re not comfortable being the rule, and not the exception, there’s very little honestly and truly exceptional about you. Because even if you drop one good book, The world is gonna want the next one, right. And you don’t build a career by showing up to work on time for a year and then showing up late or not showing up at all, for that you get fired. And so I try to challenge writers to think long term instead of short term. And that’s really like, in terms of what we talk yeah, it’s just it’s, it’s, it is a framework shift. Because no one’s educating writers to think about their careers. Yeah, the implicit and explicit language is about what is you working on now? Right, the one book at a time, one book at a time, they’re not looking at, okay, wait, like, Where do I see my career? 30 years from now, and which book is going to be the book that helps me buy my house, which is the book that’s going to help me you know, get that residency which book is if I want to teach which book is gonna get me. They’re not looking at things like that. What a lot of this romanticism with art and artists does is it makes art and artists very exploitable. Right, because they are not assessing the value of their work. They’re not doing a harder labor of understanding what their cultural leverage and levers are to make good on the value they believe that their art is doing.

Traci Thomas 35:12
Okay, we’re gonna do it. Here’s the hard shift, we do a thing called Ask The Stacks where someone writes in and they want a book recommendation from us. So I’m gonna read the question and then we’re going to come up with at least one I’ve got three you can do anywhere between one and three. So the first or the question is from a person named Mary. And they say I would love some recommendations for narrative nonfiction, by women.

Yahdon Israel 35:38
Oh, we love it. narrative nonfiction is written about women. Lm here’s my subtext. I don’t know if she answered this. Does she want it to be about women or just it has to be written by women.

Traci Thomas 35:46
All she wrote was some recommendations for narrative nonfiction, narrative and nonfiction.

Yahdon Israel 35:50
So my favorites, Random Family by Adrian Nicola Blanc. One of my favorite books of all time, follows his family in the South Bronx. Over a tour, she’s lived with the family for 12 years. It started as her following this. She was profiling not profiling, but reporting on his teenage drug dealer named boy, George was a heroin kingpin at 17 got like 20 years in jail, but she ended up taking a liking to one of his girlfriends who was a teenager, her name was Jessica. And she was just really taken with how this young girl has so much power and her ability to move through spaces. And she ended up following her family for 12 years. And she tells that story, brilliant book, random family, if if people haven’t read Braiding Sweetgrass, I know it’s a perennial bestseller on a New York Times bestseller list. Kimmerer. Definitely a fire book. Um, and it’s about like, you know, the link, not the link, but she does a lot to reconcile. She’s an indigenous woman. And she’s like, articulating the link between like the Western construct of science around nature, and then the indigenous wisdom that is his own science. And she does it through like beautiful storytelling. One another book that I really love from a storytelling standpoint, Franchise: the golden arches and Black American Marcia Shatelain brilliant book about the relationship between McDonald’s and black people in America, and how when we talk about branding, like McDonald’s, as a global corporation understood the value of Mark telling meaningful stories to a community, and have as much as we can talk about, and it’s true, the unhealthiness of McDonald’s. But when we talk about seeing ourselves in our products, seeing ourselves and companies, McDonald’s has understood the importance of that. And so they were creating campaigns, you know, that were specifically geared to the black American community, and it shows like, you know, whether your comment, you know, capitalism and all those things accounted for, it’s like, there is a value that people who see themselves being validated and legitimized in the storytelling of how something functions has consequential outcomes for any company brand or whatever. So like, that’s definitely another one. What are yours?

Traci Thomas 38:16
Okay, so, you did good. You did so good. Um, so one of mine I haven’t read yet, but it’s the one that I’m going to read next. Okay. It’s called the brothers by Masha Gessen, and it’s about the two brothers who were behind the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013. And I love Masha Gessen. And so that’s what I’m gonna do. Okay. Um, the next one is tied to yours for random family, which is we were once a family by Roxanna is Garyun which is the book about the Hart family murders. But it’s a similar kind of like, following the story journalist follows these people. And it’s, you know, I just I found it to be fantastic. Also, invisible child is sort of in conversation with those two by Andrea Elliott. Okay. And then the other one I picked is like, much more narrative. It’s Lilyana is invincible summer by Christina Rivera Garza and it’s like sort of her investigation into her sister’s murder 30 years ago in Mexico, and she goes back and she like compiles letters from the sister to and from her friends and interviews the friends and like, kind of tries to figure out what happened but it ends up just being like a love letter to her sister, which is just so beautiful, right? So those are my picks for people who want a book recommendations, read on air email, ask the stocks at the SATs, podcast.com and Mary if you read any of our books, let us know what you thought. Yeah, okay, here we go. You’re on two books. You love one book you hate.

Yahdon Israel 39:37
Okay, two books I love off the top. I definitely want to put Hilton honors as the women. That book really shifted and expanded the way I think about my relationships with women. And before even before like before I became an editor and I was still writing. I was not really considering the interior lives of women before I read them. book I didn’t have a framework to do so. And that book gave me that. So that’s always going to be a perennial. Two book like one of the one of the two. I love another book I love. Oh, God, damn it. I’m sorry. I feel so much pressure.

Traci Thomas 40:18
I know. I’m sorry. It’s just two books you love today today.

Yahdon Israel 40:22
Oh, Multiply/Divide by Wendy S. Walters. I think it’s it’s a it’s an essay collection, written by a brilliant black woman. And half of the essays are fiction. And the other half are nonfiction. But when she tells you in the beginning, she tells you which ones are imagined and which ones are real. And then when you’re reading some of the real ones, you forget you when you’re reading, you’re finding I found myself going back to the beginning of the book, I’m like, wait, this one didn’t happen then you think there’s things you think didn’t happen that did and things that you think did that didn’t? And so what she does, which is form and how she uses the essay, as a way to get us to interrogate how we experience reality, and and how we talk about reality. Like that was definitely genre expanding for me in terms of what like what can be done with on the page. So windy as Walters. Hill knows when a book you hate. Alright, so I don’t hate books. No, no, I’m not. Genuine God, like I don’t hate books. I will tell you a book that I’m like, annoyed by that functions in that realm of what get what gets at the heart of your question is definitely the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Traci Thomas 41:48
Oh my god, don’t get me started on him.

Yahdon Israel 41:50
But like this is me being a young entrepreneur trying to figure out how to create some tipping points myself. And I bought that book very excited to like, you know, it, I thought it wasn’t a John Jonah Berger, contagious space. Right? Or maybe like the Adam Grant kind of book. And I read that book and not left, not knowing how to shoot tips, like the main premise of the book is like it’s not there. And and when I talk to people about that book, and it’s sometimes how I know people read the book or not, because they’re like, Oh, I love that book. And then when I give my assessment, they go, I don’t think I’ve finished it. It’s like, so it’s one of those books that I know. Like, he’s a wonderful storyteller. Yeah. But I think that what people fall in love with is the storytelling at the expense of like, what the promise of the book was supposed to be. Right? And I wasn’t expecting, like, here’s the secret to creating your tipping point, but he actually never explains how things slip. So even that famous example of like those kids in Lower East Side, Manhattan palmed off hush puppies. He doesn’t explain how it happened. He just explains that didn’t happen. And I was like, Yeah, this dude is you piece of work. He does that in all his papers and all his books, but you don’t you only gotta grift me once before I’m good.

Traci Thomas 43:08
So I, I think for me, I read a lot of his books, because I really liked the storytelling. And then as I got to be a more discerning reader, I was like, wait a fucking second here, pal? What are you reading right now?

Yahdon Israel 43:23
What am I reading right now? I’m reading a lot of things. And then this is aside from we know what I’m reading for my job. I’m reading comedy book, how comedy conquered culture and the magic that makes it work. Jason David Fox one, I would say are hands down the most brilliant book I’ve read about, like comedy, as theory comedy as construct and comedy as cultural criticism, and he really makes the case every chapter is broken down to a different theme song timing, truth, politics, and it’s about the role comedy comedians play in our culture. And like he gives the art it’s necessary attention. And I think that part of what makes art art is how we talk about it not just what’s made so yeah, so like, that’s definitely one of them ones. What else am I reading? I’m reading actually his new book called American Flannel.

Traci Thomas 44:22
Oh yeah!

Yahdon Israel 44:23
I love clothes. Anybody who knows me know I love clothes and I especially love textures. But the name of the book is American flannel. This is another one with a long as subtitled I’m a fine how a band of entrepreneurs are bringing the art and business of making clothes back home. I started that one, that shit is fire.

Traci Thomas 44:43
How much reading do you do for like outside of acquisitions manuscripts versus like reading finished books or upcoming books or books that are you know, not yours?

Yahdon Israel 44:55
It’s- This is why the work be killing me. It feels like almost 5050 Like, I feel like if I have 10 books I’m reading five of them are just outside because I’m always looking for inspiration. Another book I’m looking at celebrity nation, how American how America evolved into a culture of fans and followers by Landon Wah Jones and some fiction on that list. Let you know. My shit is a little bit diverse and I gotta get some poetry in it to Latoya Watkins. Oh, that long list book, you know, and I love these lists. They get dash it is about she she about that word? Oh my god. Like she’s really good. She’s really good.

Traci Thomas 45:43
Wait, I know what I didn’t ask you earlier that I have to ask you. So what did it feel like to have your book temple folk that you acquired and edit it was your first pub first published, but not first acquisition?

Yahdon Israel 45:58
No, it was my first acquisition.

Traci Thomas 46:00
But not first published

Yahdon Israel 46:01
Yeah it’s the second to come out, the first the first I acquired.

Traci Thomas 46:04
How did that feel when you found out that it was longlisted for the National Book Award?

Yahdon Israel 46:11
You know, and the reason why I can say this, is because I got the receipts, I felt gratified because I caught that shot. You know, and when you said when even when did the introduction, and he was like, you know, at that time, you wouldn’t have been that is like, I think it actually would have been a more historical interview. Because I would have said, what I told everybody on that like this is going to be nominated for the National Book Award, because when I presented it to sales, I was like, this is the kind of book that’s going to get knocked, this is the kind of book that gets nominated for a National Book Award. And we have to have, like, we create, like a goal list for all the things we want in our thing. And I remember being like, this was one of them, like, oh, the National Book Award, this is gonna be a National Book Award finalist. And I remember, you know, the room was kind of like, oh, you still knew like that. And then the long list happened. And now I’m getting these emails and like, Oh, my God, and then the shortlist happened. And like, what and I’m like, oh, like, I know. And sometimes that’s part of what this is, is you just got to trust what you know. And you don’t interrogate why you know too much because then you just discredit a part of a muscle you’ve built right? Like you don’t second guess, how do you walk? Because you trust that your legs know what to do? Right? But if you had to explain how you walk, you probably end up sitting down because you like this is too hard. So file, I trust it. Like I know that this is the kind of book that gets the kind of thing and yeah, all we got to do. All I got to do is make sure I don’t get I make sure I stay out the fucking way of it. And was ill. Is that like it’s also a shortlist shortlisted for the the Aspen wares literary prize. Yeah, it’s what is it, it was long listed for the story prize. Like we got some other stuff that’s coming out for like some some other stuff that’s coming down the pipeline. Like this is this, this is one of those books and the flex of it was founded on the internet. Like that was like two days into the job. And I did an open call and I was like, Yo, submit to me directly. And that’s the book that’s on the National Book Award finalist list. So it’s like, that’s to me. It’s not that I was going to get that thing. It was the fact that it’s how you do it. Everybody you know, like you know, when you do an ill shit the ill is not the outcome. It’s the prot it’s the way you did it.

Traci Thomas 48:27
Yeah. Oh, I love that. That’s probably gonna be the title of this episode. The ill is not the outcome do. Okay, this is sort of our fast fire round because we’re also running out of time. All right. What is the last book that made you laugh?

Yahdon Israel 48:42
The first thing that comes to mind is Samantha Irby like Wow, no, thank you. Like slash laughed out loud. Like she’s that that woman? It’s very hard to accomplish comedic timing on the page, but she does it.

Traci Thomas 48:57
Yeah. consistently.

Yahdon Israel 48:58
Consistently.

Traci Thomas 49:00
What about the last book that made you cry?

Yahdon Israel 49:03
Books don’t make me cry. Nah. I felt that warm feeling that like movies and TV shows make me cry. Okay, and it’s because it’s like there’s like an unexpected thing that happens like unexpected kindness makes me emotional. And there’s there’s like I need a lot to make me cry like the you know, being raised in a patriarchal society they’ve done a really good job on us I think I can recognize like, oh, that’s that’s that’s touching but like, yeah, crying I can’t say a book has made me cry. Okay, I want that experience. You know, last thing I’ll say like I’m curious to know what books made you cry because I will say I’d be loose. I don’t believe when people say the book be making them cry. Because it’s just never happened for me so I don’t like-

Traci Thomas 49:52
I don’t cry a lot when I read Okay, not aggressive crier in life or in reading, but the book that made me cry the most Post was a little life. I’ve wept. But a book that recently made me cry was I did get I didn’t have tears coming down my face. But I had tears in my eyes really, two different times when I read let us descend over two moments in that book where I was like, oh, so that but but I am not an aggressive crier. I know people are, I just, I don’t read. I don’t read in a way that I emote while I’m reading. Yeah. So like, I also don’t laugh out loud that much when I read. What about the last book that made you angry? And it could be for any reason? There’s many reasons what can make you angry, but just the last one that you felt like-

Yahdon Israel 50:40
Um, angry. Medical Apartheid made me angry. Harriet A. Washington- that shit. Because it was just like, Yo, there ain’t no chill. No, like this. It’s like, all the time. Like, just like anybody who hasn’t read that book. It’s about the medical history, the relationship between black people in the medical field. And it’s just very hard to get through that book. And not throw it across the room. Like that book made me like, I felt myself getting like fist like hot. Yeah, because it’s just like, Damn, I’m supposed to get on a train after reading this shit.

Traci Thomas 51:17
Yeah. Do you have any books that you feel embarrassed about never having read?

Yahdon Israel 51:24
I used to lie a lot about reading. Because when I think about embarrassment, it’s like, Oh, I’m not embarrassed. And it’s like, Nah, I got to think about it through the lens of which book that I lie about reading, oh, read that. I think I would say oh man in the sea. Or in that book, I’ve like, embarrassed by not reading not because I actually have felt embarrassment, but because I felt so compelled to not just say I didn’t read it. Like, I would have lost nothing in a conversation. And if anything, I would have gained a lot by admitting it because every time I’ve admitted what I didn’t read, it actually created an opportunity for me to learn about the book that made me want to read it. Versus like being in a conversation where I realized because I just like, I got to sit here and be like, yeah, exactly. Right. Like or, you know, so. I gotta, I gotta give him I gotta get that man. His was his respect. Like he wanted them wants to. I mean, yeah. Hey, I don’t go look for him on a weekend, but he wanted them.

Traci Thomas 52:20
Okay, the answer cannot be yourself. Okay. It’s not a memoir. Okay, who would you want to write the book of your life?

Yahdon Israel 52:29
You know what’s ill? I be knowing questions are coming, but I get smacked in the face by them.

Traci Thomas 52:37
I don’t ask this one very often, but I just know, you know, so many; you’re so plugged in that I’m like-

Yahdon Israel 52:44
I’m gonna put, I’m gonna put a big flex on this. I know, I’m gonna be one of them once we’re gonna get one of them big, those big biographies.

Traci Thomas 52:49
Yeah, I think so. I’m curious to know who you want.

Yahdon Israel 52:53
I would really want Imani Perry. That’s what comes to mind immediately. She has a deep understanding of like, the deeper implications of personhood. And she understands like, like, I want my I first encountered her work when she, Lorraine and me and the way she was able to like intertwined her narrative with Lorraine like it was it was just like it and now she she’s, she got that MacArthur for a reason. So yeah, Imani Perry, first comes to mind for me.

Traci Thomas 53:27
Okay, last one. If you could require the current president of the United States to read this to read one book, what would you want it to be?

Yahdon Israel 53:35
Yeah. I mean, what would I give that man to read? I really, I think you know what, I think dying of whiteness, I would give that man dying of whiteness by Jonathan metsu. Because I think that that whole trying to play that holier than now approach. Like I’m not Trump. And that’s that’s just not, that’s not a convincing platform to run on. And I think that when you understood when I read that book, it really articulated it really even broke me out of some of it gave language to some things that it’s like, it’s easy to kind of play that. What is it called that moralizing? Like, I can’t believe it, we voted for Trump. But you know what WEB Du Bois called the psychological wages of whiteness is a real, that’s a real like investment. And we don’t think about how white people pay for that investment. In the ways that black and brown people do, right? Like we can look at like a Kanye and see his endorsement of Trump as like largely incomplete and not always counterintuitive and delusional. Same thing with Candace Owens. When we look at White people who do it, we tend to kind of go, Oh, they’re white. So it kind of makes sense. And what that book lays out is like, No, it doesn’t even make sense for a lot of the white people who voted. They’re voting against their interest in because of the narrative that they have how powerful the narrative is. I think that, you know, Joe can benefit, you know, the mr. president can benefit from understanding that there are other things that motivate people to do things that are that function outside of quote unquote, round logic and shame, right? Like, there’s, there’s this emotional thing of being forgotten and feeling forgotten, and somebody who’s going to take up your cause. It’s a really powerful notion that we like, people on this left or whatever you want to call them, the Democrat Party, they’re not engaging with the human being, they’re engaging with this higher moral person. That’s like when people are scared, and people are uncertain. They want to hear us they want somebody who makes them feel like they can, they can believe in something he’s not really giving people something to believe in. And I think that that’s like, if a politician is good at anything, if politician can do that. I don’t know that they gotta they gotta do something else.

Traci Thomas 55:56
That’s such a good recommendation. Okay, everybody yields on we’ll be back with me, May 29th to discuss our book club pick for the month, No Name in the Street by James Baldwin. So go read the book. Yahdon, thank you so much for being here. This was awesome.

Yahdon Israel 56:12
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I appreciate everybody that is listening.

Traci Thomas 56:17
And everybody else we will see you in the stacks.

Alright, y’all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Yahdon for being my guest. Don’t forget the stacks book club pick for May is no name in the street by James Baldwin. Yahdon will be back to discuss that book with us on Wednesday, May 29th if you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks to join the stacks pack. And check out my substack at Tracithomas.substack.com. Make sure you’re subscribed to the stacks wherever you get your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from the stacks follow us on social media at the stackspod on Instagram threads and tik tok and at the stackspodunderscore on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin MacWrite. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Cherie Marquez https://www.cmediacollective.com/
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