Ep. 333 Writing a COVID Novel with Regina Porter

Written By Megan Caballero
Ep. 333 Writing a COVID Novel with Regina Porter.jpg

Today we’re joined by author Regina Porter to discuss her new book, The Rich People Have Gone Away. She explains what made her hesitant to write a COVID novel and why she eventually changed her mind. She shares the role of humor in her work, and what made exploring the trope of missing white women exciting to her. 

The Stacks Book Club pick for August is Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. We will discuss the book on August 28th with Jay Ellis.

 
 

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

To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

Connect with Regina: Instagram
Connect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | Subscribe

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website.

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, Regina Porter joins the show. Regina is an author and playwright, and her newest book, The Rich People Have Gone Away just came out this month. The book is set during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and is full of hope community and reckoning with the past. It's an intense, propulsive and very cinematic novel with a ton of emotional chaos, set around the disappearance of a white woman. Today we talk about why she didn't want to write a covid novel, but ended up doing it anyway, what was interesting to her about taking on the missing white woman trope and how friendships and obligations play into this novel. Remember The Stacks Book Club pick for August is Master Slave Husband Wife, by Ilyon Woo, which we will discuss on Wednesday, August 28th with Jay Ellis. Quick reminder, everything we talk about on each episode of the show can be found in the link in the show notes. If you love the stacks and you want inside access to it, head over to patreon.com/thestacks and join the stacks pack for just $5 a month. You get to be part of a fantastic, amazing, wonderful, top tier book community. We have a very active discord where we discuss all things, books, food, pop culture and more. We have a monthly virtual book club meetup where we discuss our book club pick. We do bonus episodes each month, and you get to know that by joining The Stacks Pack, you make it possible for me to make the show every single week. Head to patreon.com/thestacks and join. I do want to say that if you like the show, you want to support the work of the show, but you don't want to be part of a bookish community, you should go check out my newsletter at Traci thomas.substack.com where I write about books and pop culture. I just wrote a whole thing about Olympic events as books, plus I'm giving you updates on what's going on here around The Stacks. Head to Tracithomas.substack.com to subscribe. Okay, now it's time for my conversation with Regina Porter.

All right, everybody. I am so excited. I am joined today by Regina Porter. She is the author of a book that just well, she's a playwright and author of previous books, but this book that just came out this month is called The Rich People Have Gone Away. It is sort of a literary mystery thriller. It sort of defies genre to me, which we'll talk about. But Regina, welcome to The Stacks.

Regina Porter 2:56

Oh, thank you. It's fabulous to be here.

Traci Thomas 2:59

I'm so excited. I well before we even dive in, in about 30 seconds or so, can you just tell folks about this book?

Regina Porter 3:07

Well, it's a novel set in New York, and it's about a group of friends, some more family and friends, some more privileged than others, and the fallout that occurs when one of them, a pregnant woman, goes missing, against the backdrop of the pandemic.

Traci Thomas 3:26

Yes, that is where I want to start. This is, I think, I can't say for sure, but it's the one that comes to mind. This is the most successful, in my opinion, Covid novel that I have ever read. And I feel like we're sort of getting to the beginning of what might be a few years of Covid novels coming. And I wanted to know, why did you want to write a Covid novel?

Regina Porter 3:54

Well, you know, it's really kind of wild. Initially, I didn't I was working on another project and another book, and I went for a walk, and it was in the early days of covid, and I The streets were so eerie and quiet. And I went back home, and I could not focus for the life of me on the novel I was working on, and a character came to me, this character, Theo, and he was my in and again, I struggled with, I didn't want to write a covid novel, so I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to find an interesting human way into this novel. And I think he was it for me.

Traci Thomas 4:49

What do you think? I guess, why didn't you want to write a Covid novel? What were you sort of apprehensive about?

Regina Porter 4:55

Perhaps, it being called a covid novel? I mean, we're still trying to really understand covid after all of these years, right? I wanted to write a novel about people being people, because we didn't stop being people. There were just certain challenges that we experienced, right? Yeah, and ways of of living and and and shifts in our lifestyle.

Traci Thomas 5:27

Yeah, right, yeah. I mean, you're, you're a playwright on top of being a novelist. Did you ever consider that this story might be a play?

Regina Porter 5:36

No, no, because it came to me visually again, walking around part slope that the quiet neighborhood, the windows and doors, it actually was so visual. It reminded me of something there's a great horror film, I want to say, 28 days later, do you know? And I had that sort of feeling with what's going on behind doors? Like, where are all the people? I was out running an errand with my dog, and there were just very few people out, you know.

Traci Thomas 6:10

So for your plays, if your novels come to you visually, how do your plays come to you?

Regina Porter 6:16

Listening to the world and hearing the world, hearing something someone says and sort of running with that. But for fiction, it tends to be visual. Character does something and it stays with me.

Traci Thomas 6:34

Yeah, that's so interesting. So this what I really found fascinating about this book. It's set in New York, both in the city and upstate, though we also get to go a few other places with some of the characters. But mostly, you know, it's a New York City or New York novel. And you sort of frame this book among these two tragedies, covid and also 911 and those are both huge, you know, events in the book and in the characters lives. And I was wondering how you were thinking about those two things being connected.

Regina Porter 7:08

Well, some of the same fears and phobias came up, I think, again, say with anti Asian bias, right? That kind of spiked during covid and then 911 and post 911 so we, we were sort of psychologically and emotionally in similar places with uncertainty, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wanted to explore that and how humans respond in a crisis.

Traci Thomas 7:43

Yeah, I also feel like one of the things that I was thinking I had not occurred to me until I read the book, was also how, like in these moments of fear and unknown and terror and all of this stuff, not just terror, like a terrorist attack, but just the terror of covid or like the terror of something's happening around you to your community, that it often time is a time for people to sort of, like, reevaluate their priorities and reset and like, think about, you know, what if this happened to me? Am I living the life that I want to live? Am I the person that I want to be? Am I, you know, doing the things that I should be doing? And I feel like that is you really represent those kind of questions, those existential questions, so well in the book. And I could so relate to the characters who I think they all sort of question like, Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? Was that something that you were like, really thinking about, like with each?

Regina Porter 8:41

I started with Theo, and I wanted him to really sort of think about his privilege. He's not someone inclined to be guilty. And I don't think guilt really works so well in fiction. I think it kind of helps to have a character, I won't say, Who's beyond guilt, but who, who who sort of puts a little bit of distance between himself and the world and his feelings, but covid starts making him analyze his identity, what he's been told, and what's happening in in in real time In the world around him. And you also have someone like Ruby, who runs with her partner, Katsumi, and they run a high end restaurant, afro, Asian fusion in in the Bowery. And she sees the growing homeless community, and she feels a sense of responsibility, and she starts thinking of even more about food and food sustainability and so and and we're having these conversations now, right? And even when we talk about lifestyle choices, there are some pluses that have come out of of covid. Where people have decided I want to spend more time with my family. I'm not going to work five days a week in the office. It's been amazing to me that people are holding their ground and everything in this manner. And so from a tragedy or tragic period, there have been some blessings, too, that I think we'll see more and more as time goes by, as well as humor. And I did want to inflect humor in the novel.

Traci Thomas 10:35

Yes, that was the next thing I was going to say to you. I was going to say, I feel like this is a book that when you hear about it, it's like, this is a serious book, and it is a serious book. There's serious things going on, but like, you really found ways to find the humor. And I think, like, I could tell that you were a playwright in reading this book, because so many of the scenes I could see on the stage, right? Like, there's like, this dinner. And I was like, This is August Osage County. Like, this is a play, right? Like, this is act two of August Osage County. Or, like, there's these, there's another scene where Theo, this character that came to first, and his wife Darla, are on a hike. And I could see that scene, that scene, I saw more as like a movie, though, because I needed a little more like, you know, they're on a hike. A hike is hard to do on the stage, but in all of these scenes, and in all of these characters, there is this sort of underlying humor. And humor is such a huge part of my life, and I can't imagine my life without it. But I'm wondering if that's hard to bring to the page to make it feel authentic, authentically funny or humorous, or, you know, whatever, without it feeling like jokey?

Regina Porter 11:55

When I teach my students, I tell them that you can pull off anything if you know your character really well, and the humor is coming from the character. So for me, the humor works because it I don't just give a character a line, the character gives me the line, but I also understand every culture has and uses humor, and particularly in cultures where there has been subversity, humor can be wonderful and subversive. It is survival tool. So sometimes during challenging times, and covid was a challenging time, the humor is what we fall back on, and it's important to thread that into the narrative in a compassion so compassionate, sometimes a shocking way, um, because that's how humor sometimes is, right? It shocks us. It makes us a little uncomfortable, but it also brings us together.

Traci Thomas 13:04

Yes, yeah, I'm wondering. You know, it's the book comes out, you know, came out this month. It's 2024, it's been, you know, four years, sort of since covid starts. How has the book changed from maybe what you set out to write when Theo first came to you, especially since our collective relationships to covid, have changed so much, probably from when you started writing this book.

Regina Porter 13:33

It's changed in the way that I described, in terms of how I see our lifestyles now and how we balance time, as I said, people not resisting going back to a certain kind of day to day grind in their lives, that's a tough question, because, again, I think it's still evolving when we meet, when we meet Theo and Ruby and Darla, it's the early stages still, and it seemed like, for some people, the world was going to end. We didn't really know what was going to happen. So that there, I think the book has an urgency to it, in a way, do you know? And now we can sort of step back. I hope this is one of the pleasures of reading the book. I tried to construct it this way. As the reader, you know more than the characters. Do you know that there's going to be a time when we we we understand the virus is not past long during on surfaces do, there's certain things that we know that I think can give us an intimacy when we engage with the characters, and make us root for some of the things they do and shake our heads at some of the other things. They do, they're not so great.

Traci Thomas 15:01

That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in addition to the book being a Covid novel, which we've talked about, it is, like I said before, sort of genre. You can't define it. I don't feel like you can define it. I feel like I've seen some places people say it's a thriller, and I'm like, Well, is it a thriller? Like, I don't know. But I don't feel like it's just like, I don't know, I feel like it's doing a lot of things. That's probably the best way of saying it. And one of the things that it does really well is it alternates through perspectives. We have all these different characters who are related to in some way, to this central couple, Darla and Theo. Some of the characters we get in third person. Some of them we get in first person. And I'm wondering how those decisions come to you. How did you decide that we would get these moments, you know, with Ruby, where it's first person versus or that, like we would be closest to her, or how are you thinking about all of that part, like actually putting the story down on paper. Did it go through phases? Was it ever told just from one person's perspective, or did you always know it would be kind of multi perspective?

Regina Porter 16:11

Someone asked me about the connections in in because I think that's something I do in my writing and but I think I've experienced this in my life where where people have these strange connections, or, or people come into my life, or I've heard of other people's lives that they've that they've lost suddenly, or, and they return again. And it's just a very New York thing, it feels like to me, but in terms of structure, Darla and Theo live in a building in Park Slope, and a young man moves into that building called the teenager in a Cardi B T shirt, And he has a real name, but that's how Theo kind of sees him, and he sort of is a connection to other characters, too, and so I don't know. I don't have a clear answer for it. I think it just kind of the world just kind of builds and builds, because that's how I experience New York and encountering people.

Traci Thomas 17:26

Is the picture behind you on the wall, the picture of the boy in the Cardi B T shirt from the book?

Regina Porter 17:31

Yes, it is.

Traci Thomas 17:33

I had to go back and check the book.

Regina Porter 17:37

And speaking of six degrees of separation, my hairstylist, her son is extremely talented, and she was doing my hair, twisting my hair, one afternoon, and I said, Oh, that's, that's just fabulous. Her daughter's really talented, too. And she said that, that my son did that. And I said, you know, I think I'm going to, I have this idea, because I couldn't use an image of Cardi B, obviously, so, and so I commissioned that from him. He's a very good artist. Yes, I wanted to support both of them.

Traci Thomas 18:13

Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about the art in the book. There's maybe like 15 pictures throughout the book that show up. Why did you want to include those? What does that do? Like, what are you doing with those? Or hoping to do with those?

Regina Porter 18:30

Art and white spaces give us an opportunity to pause and think about what we've read. They also allow us to look at a scene in our chapter in a new light or a new way. Sometimes, for me, that picture, for example, I don't want to ruin it for the readers, but is about how the young man is seen. Do you know, and his back like how we are often seen. So since we're talking about identity, I think the pictures also explore identity, from darla's identity, you know, and later chapters and rubies and they help ground me as a writer in the world, sometimes I'll write now I'll just know intuitively an image needs to be here, and I'm not clear about the image, and I'll keep writing, and then by the time I've reached the end, I can look at the whole novel and and and figure out which images I need or want and begin searching for them.

Traci Thomas 19:48

Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. What about the chapter titles themselves? You You have chapter titles that have actual words. It's not just like one or whatever. So how do you. Think about naming those.

Regina Porter 20:03

Well, the teenager in the Cardi B T shirt, which is the second chapter in the novel I came up with, because Theo sees the young man, not as a young man, but as a teenager in a Cardi B T shirt, and then, usually, there's some element in the chapter that sparks a title. And I think, and that's a great question, by the way, those titles, because I don't always write in a linear fashion, those titles actually helped propel me forward, in a way, and open a door for perhaps how the following chapter will be plotted, or what I might need to come back to, if that makes any sense.

Traci Thomas 20:57

You don't write in a linear way. How do you write? What does that mean? What does your process look like?

Regina Porter 21:04

I don't always know where the story is going. I follow the characters, and then once I have a draft, I will go back and give the novel a shape or structure. Some of the structure is in place. But I might say, for example, with Ruby scene with her mom, who owns a bookstore that was earlier and it structurally, it wasn't right. I knew it was meant to be there because that also informs Ruby, so it's just how the relationships in the novel unfold might move around. So it's not always a to b, sometimes it's a to c, and then I go back to B and I rediscover a character from a different perspective.

Traci Thomas 22:01

Yeah, I want to ask you a little bit about the characters' names. You've got a lot of characters. They all have names. How do you name your characters? Where do those come from for you?

Regina Porter 22:20

Well, some of them, like Ruby, comes from the novel I was working on. When I stopped, there was a character in the travelers named Ruben Applewood, and he died suddenly, and he was one of my favorite characters. And I was frustrated that he had to die. And so I thought, Oh, Ruby, I'm gonna name maybe Ruby is his daughter, but it didn't. She ended up in, she ended up in the rich people have gone away. So that's how I initially came up with Ruby's name. Darla. I love horror films. I love a television show called supernatural, and I'm going to say one of my all time favorite characters on Supernatural was a character named Darla. So I named Darla after Darla because she was one of my favorite characters. Very different character.

Traci Thomas 23:22

I thought you were gonna say Darla from Little Rascals.

Regina Porter 23:24

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Traci Thomas 23:29

Amazing. What part of this book was easy for you to write, and what part of it was the hardest for you to write?

Regina Porter 23:38

I have to say, even though I come from a playwriting background, the dinner scene was challenging just building and building and building and writing Theo was challenging at times because he's not an easy character. But I have to someone once said, your your heroes are only as good as your villains. And sometimes, I guess he's an anti hero in some ways. So I really struggled with him, just trying to understand his way of thinking. Darla too Ruby at times, just getting because she's in Japan. Just I have been to Japan. I have family members in Japan, friends, but I wasn't able to go during covid, and that was really a little frustrating for me. So just trying to interview people and get certain things right. And the hardest part is faith that, or was fate that it would come together, because I didn't see the ending I but I knew I was writing toward it, and then when it came.

Traci Thomas 24:55

Yeah, I have a question about Theo. So the book. This is not a spoiler, because this is how the book opens, but the book opens with Theo and his sexual proclivities, and we find out what Theo's kink is, yeah, and I'm curious to know why you wanted to start this book with that?

Regina Porter 25:15

Because that's what came to me, because I see this as a book about, sort of a psychological thriller about what happens when our lifestyles are forced to change. And that happened for a lot of people, and this was a very heightened way of his lifestyle changing, because people weren't going out much, right? And so he's forced, and so something that is just part of his being. I think of the song too. When I get that feeling I need sexual healing. Sexual healing, you know, I think that's how he approaches sex, but his inclinations are kind of hampered by the pandemic. I think how he likes to have sex influences how he functions in the world, and I think he's a highly functioning person. And so I thought, Oh, that's interesting, because I can go with that. That's an interesting and I also think, though, human way of looking at the pandemic, and also an entertaining way.

Traci Thomas 26:32

Yeah, yeah. This is not a spoiler, because it's on all the blurb copy. So I'm going to just say, if you can find this information easily, I don't consider it a spoiler, but Darla, who's Theo's wife, goes missing in the book, and she's white. She's blonde, and as I'm sure, people who are alive currently and have ever thought about missing white women, it becomes a thing, a cultural thing. It blows up. What? What was interesting to you about this whole like, what missing white woman trope? Why did you want to explore this? What did you feel like you wanted to think about or add to in this conversation?

Regina Porter 27:18

I wanted to explore a friendship, because her best friend is Ruby, and Ruby is seeing this blow up, and Ruby's getting to see how the search for Darla plays out. And she's a privileged black woman, but it makes her think about her privilege. Yes, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that. So it was also an opportunity to explore friendships, and when someone stops and goes, Oh, my God, do we have the same privilege? What is privilege? I'm privileged. And how would this play out? I'll add this to last night I was listening to NPR, and they said that a study since covid has shown that African American women, I may have the number wrong, are 30% more likely to have something go wrong during labor. So this whole idea of value in life, you know, and lives even before a child is born. And so I think these issues are there, but they're playing out through relationships, human relationships and characters. I hope that answers your question.

Traci Thomas 28:36

It does, yeah. I want to shift to your writing process a little bit. Something that I always love to ask writers is, how do you write how many hours a day, how often do you listen to music? Or know, are you in your home? Are you out in the world? Are there snacks and beverages? Are there rituals? And I guess for you, does it differ when you're writing a novel, your process versus when you're writing a play?

Regina Porter 29:01

Um, it does differ. I think when I'm writing a play, I need to be out in the world more listening to people, not necessarily listening to their dialog. But no two people speak the same way, so the rhythm is very important. And I really? I really pay attention to the rhythm of speech for novels one, one thing is consistent. I need coffee. Coffee is part of my How do you take your coffee? I take my coffee with milk, no sugar. I used to take it with sugar, but the past few years, gosh, it's been like five, six years. Now I don't have sugar in my coffee, and I usually walk my dog. I'm a morning person. I had, I had to be, I think now. Naturally, I'm wee hours of the morning writer. But that shifted when I became a parent, and I I started getting up early in the morning to write, as opposed to 12am to three. I'm being my original group, you know. So I had to really, yeah, I had to really reframe my my writing patterns. I don't write every day. I know, for example, say, now a new novel is is forming even as we're talking so I'm watching a lot of movies. Movies give me a lot of joy. I don't think it's a coincidence that people say, well, sometimes the novel reads like a film. It's because I watch a lot of films. It's what I do to unwind. But I also think it informs my work.

Traci Thomas 30:57

Yeah, it's so funny. I this one definitely reads like a film to me, I for sure, like, was imagining some of the characters. And, like, I was like, who could play this person? Like, this is, um, were there any specific movies you were watching while you wrote the rich people have gone away.

Regina Porter 31:15

Oh my gosh, probably older movies, like the third man. I'm not a literary snob, and I think that's a blessing as a writer. So I can say that I have watched Game of Thrones so many times, but I think if you think about the the the power plays, the characters, the flaws these things are, are fascinating. And, of course, the dragon

Traci Thomas 31:45

So, yeah, yeah, you didn't give us any dragons in your book. Don't tease the people. If you guys read this book, you're getting no dragons.

Regina Porter 31:54

Oh no, no, maybe another time you'll get dragons, not in this one.

Traci Thomas 31:58

I'm not a big dragon person, so I'm very grateful. You know, yeah, I am not a Game of Thrones person, but everyone else in my family is. So I've seen a little bit, but it's not, it's not for me. But I do, I do love, I love a family drama, whether it's fantasy or reality. I love family drama, which I think is what I really like, really enjoyed about your book, I just love those dynamics of people who are beholden to each other for certain reasons, but also like, don't necessarily want to be Yeah. Like, don't I just love that, um, what's a word you can never spell correctly on the first try?

Regina Porter 32:39

Oh, my gosh. Maybe doppelganger.

Traci Thomas 32:44

That's a hard one. There's so many letters.

Regina Porter 32:51

Mississippi, pause, yeah, and go, wait, wait.

Traci Thomas 32:55

I have to do like. I can't just spell it. I have to do like, M, i, s, s, i, s, i, p, p, i, yeah. Are you generally a good speller?

Regina Porter 33:04

I'm a I'm a decent speller. I'm a decent speller. My vision isn't great, so sometimes they're typos because of that.

Traci Thomas 33:13

I'm a terrible speller. But I usually when people can't think of a word, like, right away, it's because they're like, kind of good spellers. That's my that's my analysis, my unofficial analysis. For people who like the book, the rich people have gone away. What is something? What are some other books you would recommend that are maybe in conversation with what you've created?

Regina Porter 33:38

Well, I love The Talented Mr. Ripley I've said that before. I love any book by Walter, Mosley, Chester, Heinz, was it Cotton Comes to Harlem? Oh, my God, I'm drawing a blank, but I have to tell you, it's a different genre, but I love Octavia Butler's Oh, I'm forgetting the title, the talents, Parable of the Talents. Yes, I there was one point when I was reading, reading the book, and I just remember sobbing, just sobbing. And I think she was, we know this now about her, but she was ahead of her time, and how she wrote about relationships, also against the backdrop of pandemics, so and in the world changing in different in in different lifestyles, right? I think she was really ahead of her her time. I don't like genre labeling, because someone might miss out on Octavia Butler, because she's. Sci fi writer, but I think she was so much more, and she was ahead of her time. So that's why it takes me a minute. And when I say I'm not a snob, or I've learned not to be a snob. Obviously, Baldwin, another country big, messy novel, but I love it. Giovanni's Room. I love Robert Jones, the prophet. You know? I just, they're just so many. It's a hard and Percival Everett, who's written something like 30 books, right? And now knows his moment.

Traci Thomas 35:35

Yeah I just, every time I think about how many books he's written, I'm just like, Wait, what are you I mean, I know there's other authors who write even more than him, but it is truly that level of output is impressive, just in and of itself. But he's also so talented that I'm just like, Wait, you're not just putting out books. You're putting out, like, good books every year for 40 years, basically.

Regina Porter 36:00

And I should I my favorite Toni Morrison book is Song of Solomon. As as I've grown older, I love Sula even more. It may i surpass it in some way, but my I think it's still Song of Solomon, but it's the friendship and the relationship between those two women in Sula and I tried to have some of that in the rich people have gone away with how friendships become fractured. But also, I should give a nod to to Zora Neale Hurston, because she always makes me pause to make sure I have a healthy relationship between an African American man and woman in the novel, I think there's some beautiful things in The Rich People Have Gone Away, and one of my favorite is Irvin's relationship with his with his wife, Nadine, and a conversation he actually has with his son who does not understand everything about the relationship. I think there's a point when the son says, The teenager in the Cardi B T shirt says, Well, Dad, do you love your your Blackness more, or do you love mom more? And he said, I don't see these two things as competing. I love both of these things. Do you know the father having that conversation with the mom? There's some other scenes when someone becomes sick and bringing over food these I loved writing these scenes, and I write these scenes because of Janie in their eyes. Were Watching God and Zora Neale Hurston and and her love for southern folk, you know and, and how that southernness travels. I'm kind of fascinated by, what is it, Not Like Us, right? And I keep I see the southern progression in that song, in that video, and it fascinates me. Do you know? If that makes sense.

Traci Thomas 38:39

Say more! I want you to say more about that.

Regina Porter 38:42

Well, I can't, because I may be thinking about writing something, but I sit Okay, oh, my God. Oh, my God, he's managed to do so many young black people have left the church. I don't go to church regularly, but Lamar got so many people together and and that in the scene, the black and white scene, in the in the house like right? It feels southern. It might not be. There's something in the great migration in that video that blows my mind. It blows my mind. And there's something in the Great Migration, in the way Irvin and Nadine, they've carried that with them, and also a responsibility to to help others. Do you. And they're in the flawed, yes, but that's also Zora Neale Hurston. That's her gift to all of us.

Traci Thomas 39:47

Yeah, speaking of Nadine, she she was the character that I think I related to the most, because she was a dancer and I was a dancer.

Regina Porter 39:57

I'm glad to hear you say that; I get worried that she's gonna be overlooked. She's one of my personal favorite characters.

Traci Thomas 40:04

Yeah, and she went to NYU, and I went to NYU, and I she was there at the same time as me, ish, and like, I just, I think that was one of the other things I really enjoyed, is like, for anyone who spent any time in New York, any real time, not just like, you know, a weekend, but any who's lived there, even you know for a summer or whatever, I just felt like you get New York. So right in this book, and I know a lot of books are set in New York, I know a lot of people have lived in New York, but I don't always feel like I see a New York that I know in New York novels, and I felt like in this book, I not only did I know the city, even though I haven't lived there in years, I knew the city that you were writing about, and I also felt like I knew those people in the city. And I think sometimes the city can feel separate from the characters in a lot of like New York novels, and I felt like you really nailed the New York Cityness of it all.

Regina Porter 41:08

Yes. Oh, thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me, and I don't always know what's going to happen, beat for beat for beat. In retrospect, once it's laid out, it makes sense, because we can almost be led to believe that Nadine and Irvin and the teenager and the Cardi B T shirt are invisible. Do you know? But they aren't. So the framing whose story takes is the most important. That's a tricky thing, right?

Traci Thomas 41:47

It really is.

Regina Porter 41:48

It's tricky.

Traci Thomas 41:49

Okay, well, this is my last question for you. If you could have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it to be?

Regina Porter 41:58

James Baldwin. James Baldwin, I was going to say Tony Morrison, um or Zora Neale Hurston, but I think James Baldwin, because he was, he was born here, but he also, his people were from the south, so, but he was born here, and I wonder what he would think of this New York City.

Traci Thomas 42:18

Yeah. I love that so much. Well, everyone, please go get your copy of The Rich People Have Gone Away. It is out now. You can get it wherever you get your books. I read it off the page. I didn't listen to the audiobook, but I did see you have multiple narrators, so that's kind of cool. So you can also check out the audiobook, people. Regina, thank you so much for being here. This was lovely.

Regina Porter 42:40

Oh, thank you for having me, and I'm glad it worked out.

Traci Thomas 42:43

Yeah, and everyone else, we will see you in the stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to Regina for being my guest. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Vanessa DeJesus for helping to make this conversation possible. Remember, our book club pick for August is Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. We will be discussing the book on Wednesday, August 28th with Jay Ellis. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack and subscribe to my newsletter at TraciThomas.substack.com. 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, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. 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
Previous

Ep. 334 Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo — The Stacks Book Club (Jay Ellis)
Next

Ep. 332 For the Black Boys with LaDarrion Williams