The Paris Review - Fall 2016

suffering—I’ve been ’buked and scorned and all that—was dead. But why can’t
you write about the hardships that black men and women face in everyday life?
It was certainly hard for Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland. I mean, I
run into racial stuff every day. I was racially profiled in a cemetery.
A cemetery?
INTERVIEWER
REED
Carla and I were running errands and we went past this landmark cemetery,
the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. Lot of important people are buried
there. It’s very beautiful. So Carla and I separated and I lay down in front
of this mausoleum. I was listening to Randi Rhodes on the radio. It was a
beautiful day. Man, I was having a pleasant time. Next thing I know, here
come the cops. They called the police on me. Carla said, Maybe it’s a coincidence?
I told her, When I leave, they will leave. Which is what happened.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think there’s still value in the “I’ve been ’buked and scorned” narrative?
REED
I wouldn’t put it that way. But a book like Black Boy, for example, is very
important. Because you think you’re all alone, but then you discover that
a lot of people have been through what you’re going through. Because for
hundreds of years, they’ve told us that we’re not experiencing what we
know we’re experiencing. You can give them all the empirical data and all
the scholar ship in the world, but they will still tell you you’re lying. Not
only the yahoos or these Trumpistas, but the New York Times editorial page,
columnists like Nicholas Kristof doing that model-minority thing, why can’t
black people be like the model minorities. I mean, please.
INTERVIEWER
This idea of literature as a form of representational justice goes back to what
you were saying about Dante—that even as a young person, in your first
exposure to literature, you were excited about the possibility of literature
creating some kind of justice.
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