Names Have Power

Tope Folarin talks about autofiction, double consciousness, and double memories

Yes, it’s Friday, but it might not feel like other Fridays. It’s been quite a week. We’re all tired, and we’re all anxious about what comes next. As I’ve said on various platforms, books will be an important way forward for many of us—as sustenance, as solace, and as sources of information. We are not doomed to repeat history if we remember it. We don’t have to fall in line with ideas we don’t believe in. We can keep working for change.

With those thoughts in mind, I’m thrilled to share my all-too-brief interview with award-winning author and scholar Tope Folarin about his novel A Particular Kind of Black Man:

The Book Maven, Season 1, Episode 6 Show Notes 

Books on Tap:

Tope Folarin joins me to talk about the importance of a name, double-consciousness, and different kinds of privilege. Tope’s book A Particular Kind of Black Man was published by Simon & Schuster in 2019.   

#FridayReads:

Our Friday readers are devouring Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell, Like Mother Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight, By the Lake of Sleeping Children by Luis Urrea, and Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles. 

Canon, or Can It?:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is debated in this week’s Canon or Can It. Does this novel about love, friendship, quarrels, and class live up to canon expectations, or should it be canned forever? 

Six Recs: Escape to Bridgerton

This week, my Six Recs are: The Bridgerton Cookbook by Regula Yeswijn, Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen by Rory Muir, The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain by Ian Mortimer, Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, and The Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank.  

Find me on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. 

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack. 

All titles mentioned: A Particular Kind of Black Man, by Tope Folarin, Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell, Like Mother Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight, By the Lake of Sleeping Children by Luis Urrea, Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles, Happiness Falls by Angie Kim, The Devil's Highway by Luis Urrea, The Wedding Singer directed by Frank Coraci, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, All the Year Round by Charles Dickens, Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Bridgerton by Julia Quinn, The Bridgerton Cookbook by Regula Yeswijn, Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen by Rory Muir, The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain by Ian Mortimer, Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, and The Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank.  

Transcript: 

BP: Hello readers, welcome to my new show, The Book Maven, A Literary Revue. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great, or not so great, classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode, but first, I spoke recently with Tope Folarin about choosing a name for his character stand-in in his novel A Particular Kind of Black Man. We start off talking about choosing between fiction and non-fiction. But we also spoke about W.E.B Du Bois and double consciousness as well as the double memories of a first generation immigrant. 

BP: I'm really especially interested, as someone who is working in memoir right now, in how and when and why you decided to write your first novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, as fiction rather than memoir. So that's what I'm really interested in today is when do we, how do we make that choice?  

TF: Yeah, such an important question. As you can imagine, I grappled with this for such a long time. When I started writing my book, I didn't know if it was a memoir or a novel. I was reading extensively in both realms. I was reading a bunch of novels, reading a bunch of memoirs. I had that moment, you know, like inspired by other writers and people I admire who, you know, they said, if you want to write something, just write, worry about it later. And so that's what I did, I just started writing. And I was writing from memory at the beginning and sort of, you know, writing about a very difficult moment in my life. And I think that's another reason why I just started doing it, except I knew that if I didn't start, I would, you know, I wouldn't want to confront some of that stuff. And so, I started writing and, you know, I was waiting for a feeling and I noticed that as I continued to write, I should say too that like initially when I started writing, the character was named after me. The brother character was named after my brother. It was probably a memoir at that point. But then I started having this sense and this is where we get into mystical territory where the character I was writing about was doing things that I had not done. And I thought that's interesting. And I just felt the story moving off in a different direction. Like it started from my life and then it started moving off.  And I resisted that initially. I thought, well, that didn't happen. And let me kind of get this back. But I felt incredibly comfortable in that sort of groove that was developing. And so I just moved in that direction. And I think that's when I said, okay, this is actually a novel. And that's when I changed the name. Like it was a very symbolic moment for me when I changed the name from Tope to Tunde. And that enabled me to kind of distance myself from the text a little bit, and evaluate like, really interesting parts of my life from the outside looking in, which was also incredibly important. And that's one reason why one of the storylines in the book is that Toonday has what he calls double memories. You know, he'll remember something and then maybe remember it a different way. And part of the inspiration for that was the way that the book was developing.

BP: That's so interesting that you talk about the double memories, because of course, and you know this far better than I do, but here in the United States, the problem of double consciousness for people of color is, you know, something I think so few people who are white really understand. And so to be brought up in the United States with this African background, and to confront not just double consciousness and something, if you were brought up in Nigeria, you would not have had, but then the double memories. How does the double consciousness play into the double memories or are these completely separate things? Is that a fair question? 

TF: It's an incredibly fair question because I, you know, I thought a lot about De Bois's concept of double consciousness, you know. To kind of butcher it, this notion that you, as a person of color, you have to be sort of two different kinds of people in a way. And that's something that I've certainly grappled with over the course of my life, and that is more or less what the book is about. It's called A Particular Kind of Black Man. It's one thread that runs through the book is Tunde has this notion that in order to be successful, he has to present and be one kind of person. Even if that kind of conflicts with who he is actually, like he has to kind of project this version of himself in the world. And I started to think about the double memory as the kind of internal analog to what's happening externally, like, because he's constructing, cause his father and other people are saying to him, this is how you have to be, that affects him internally. That affects him spiritually as well. And he begins to sort of, you know because he can't express himself, his mind starts to construct alternate lives and alternate ways of being as a kind of space for him to rest, and to exist because he can't do those things externally. Of course, I think as I was writing it and thinking about  Du Bois and other sort of incredibly important thinkers that that filtered into my work as well. You know, I, when I think about writing, part of it is that I'm definitely interested in ideas and I'm obsessed with ideas, but I'm also interested in obviously in storytelling. And I'm constantly trying to think of a way to merge those two things. And I think this is one example of me endeavoring to kind of connect this incredibly important and sort of persuasive sociological concept of a consciousness with a narrative like one question is how do you make that a story that's compelling for folks who maybe when it crack open, you know sort of Du Bois's work and engage with it. Part of it is showing how it plays out in the life of a human being. 

BP: One of the things in your novel that I found, and I know you've done a lot of other writing, and you're going to be doing a lot of other writing, but  I find it so powerful that there are versions of other kinds of privilege. There's the privilege of being In the real community of being with family, of being in Nigeria. And we all know that Nigeria isn't without problems. It's just a completely different experience. But I want to talk about that in a minute. And I'm sorry, I want to sort of jackrabbit back to that moment when you changed the name. So you said it was an important moment and I want to ask a little bit more about how that felt to say, I know it, I'm not going to call him Tope, he's going to be Tunde. 

TF: Yeah, it took me a while to get there. I mean, as you know, just there's so many decisions you make when you're writing and some of them are sort of craft based decisions like okay, this is what the story requires or or based on the way this thing is constructed, I need to move in this direction or that direction. Some of it is like you can't track it. It's sort of  kind of ephemeral, something will, and you'll have a feeling, a little niggle of something inside and you're like, okay, what does this mean? How do I reckon with this? And that was how, you know, as I thought about renaming my character, that's how it came. And I think part of what happened was that I sort of, I knew that that was something I needed to do. And so I started to test drive certain names and they didn't feel right, so that for me was a justification. Like, okay, I need to keep it, you know, Tope. And then the name Tunde came to me. I was like, you know, something about that feels right. And so much of writing is like, okay, that feels right. As opposed to like, doesn't feel right. And all kinds of things opened up once I did the kind of find and replace in my document. I did the find and replace. And I started reading it. I was like, okay, oh, this is interesting. 

BP: That's like the lowest tech way. I know, but I've done the same thing. 

TF: Yeah.

BP: It's really powerful. 

TF: It is. It's so powerful. 

BP: The last thing I think I want to ask is your next book. What can you tell us? Can you tell us at least fiction or non? 

TF: You know, it's on that line. 

BP: Ah, okay.

TF: So  yeah, I mean it's, you know, it's funny, like it's about, you know, that sort of reticence that people I've talked about.

BP: I do, I do. 

TF: It's about a marriage that's falling apart during the pandemic. Now I, my marriage is completely fine. So it's not about that. 

BP: I love Stephanie. I love me Stephanie. 

TF: Yeah, Stephanie is good. Shout out.  But we did have our, we had our second child on March 18th, so right at the beginning of the pandemic. I think the shelter in place order went into effect March 11th. And so we had all kinds of plans for our lives and who would come in to help. And we have, we had a then three year old and everything else. And we were left to our own devices with a newborn and a three year old and the pandemic and Stephanie had had a very difficult pregnancy and a very difficult delivery. And so it was a time. And so it starts in that place and then it goes off. 

BP: I can't wait. I can't wait. Thank you so much Tope, it was great talking to you! Thank you again, Tope. You can get a copy of A Particular Kind of Black Man wherever books are sold. Now, let’s move on to Friday Reads, where we’ll see what you’ve been reading this week.

BP: We're back with another collection of Friday Reads posts. And here to help me is my producer, Jordan. What have we got tee’d up? 

JA: Starting us off today, we've got from Lisa Eckstein. ‘I finished Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell, a sweet story about two high school friends, finding their way back to each other, despite the challenges of their personal histories and current circumstances’.

BP: Lisa, I'm so glad you chose Slow Dance because I love Rainbow Rowell. She has so many different kinds of novels that she writes. This one is realism and it is about high school friends, later in their lives, after life has dealt them some slings and arrows, they've each had various problems. And so, even though they know they'd like to get back together, it's not going to be so easy for them to get back together. So, I really do recommend that one. Very, very interesting. What's next, Jordan?

JA: Up next we've got from the penguin random house library this week's Friday Reads pick is Like Mother Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight. A daughter races to uncover her mother's secret life in the wake of her disappearance. 

BP: And they're reading it with their first look book club. They've got a link to that and look they are all all over the graphics here with Friday Reads, the book jacket, their first look book club, their, you know, borrow, read, repeat. And they've got a great blurb from an actual personal friend of mine and local writer, Angie Kim, the author of Happiness Falls. She says, ‘deeply satisfying nail biter’. So, love it. That's got everything in, in one post. Thank you. PRH library. 

JA: Awesome. And then we've got an exciting one up next from Linda Austin. She just finished By the Lake of Sleeping Children by Luis Urrea. Yet another stunner by this author who eloquently writes about realities we lucky ones are ignorant of. Heed the warning about the monkey chapter. 

BP: This one is really special. Uh, Luis Urrea is a really, really famous author. He also happens to another friend of mine. It's not that I know all of them. It just happens to be that those posts catch my eye. And Linda Austin goes by @MoonbridgeBooks on X. And so I have to say that is just a beautiful, beautiful hashtag. I'm not sure if it's an actual bookstore or not, but I'm going to check it out. And By The Lake of Sleeping Children, is Luis Urrea's  very, very difficult, but necessary nonfiction about the kinds of things that go on in Mexico. Its subtitle is The Secret Life of the Mexican Border. And although Urrea writes many novels, many kinds of fiction, they're not always about Mexican American relations. His nonfiction, including The Devil's Highway, is some of the most powerful, and it's why he draws so many crowds, because he is Mexican American and understands what it's like to live in both places, and he understands what it's like to want to come to the United States. So really terrific read for the week @MoonbridgeBooks, and I can't recommend it enough, Luis. My heart goes out to you. Talk to you soon. And let's go on to the next one, which is much, much different. I just want to say that in advance. Jordan? 

JA: All right. And then finally from Heather Bell Adams, My Friday Reads, and a picture of Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles.

BP: Claire Boyles goes by @BoylesFarms on X. And The reason I chose this is I haven't read it, although I'm sure it's absolutely delightful, but I love the fact that Heather Bell Adams is showing that she's reading an actual library book. I don't see that all the time in Friday Reads posts, but here we've got, you know, a library book with its, you know, plastic cover and its little white tag on the spine. It's so evocative because most of us grow up reading in libraries and many of us still check out many books from libraries. So when we see that, it's almost I mean, it's almost like I start to you know, anticipate a reading session the way if I saw, I don't know, a package of really good chocolate, I would anticipate a nosh. So there we go. That is another Friday Read set wound up. Thank you, Jordan, so much. 

BP: The holidays are rapidly approaching, and while you consider your black friday shopping lists, we wanted to revisit an old friend of the holidays, Charles Dickens. More specifically, we want to take a closer look at his novel, Great Expectations, to rule once and for all if it should live on in the literary canon, or if we should simply can it forever.

BP: Think back to sophomore year of high school.  Don't tell me you don't remember. I'm stealing a phrase from that Adam Sandler movie classic, The Wedding Singer. 

Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!  

You remember being in 7th period English, the afternoon sun making your classroom stuffy, as your teacher introduced your reading assignment- Great Expectations. You remember the collective groan as they passed out copies of the 400 page novel, And you probably remember passing out over your copy at home when you started reading it. The great exception to the Great Expectations coma was a student in your class who finished it in one night and peppered the teacher with questions about the symbolism of gravestones and wedding veils. Man, I was annoying. 

For this edition of Cannon or Can It, I decided to go back to school and read the Dickens classic, his 13th published novel, for the first time in decades. Would it hold up to my 15 year old enthusiasm? Or would it seem as boldy and time worn as Miss Havisham's bridal gown? 

First, let me say that Great Expectations, like many of Dickens’ novels, was initially published in serial form in All the Year Round, the author's own periodical. All hail the precursor to blogs and substacks. Second, the entire plot seems sad and tragic to me as a teen, in the way that things can only seem sad and tragic to a person who's entire life revolves around good grades. 

Pip is an orphan, Estella is mean to him, Miss Havisham is set aflame, Magwitch dies in prison, etc., etc., etc. Dickens, however, wrote this novel as a satire. As I re-read it, I saw the humor in passages like two convicts fighting in a graveyard, Miss Havisham's swanning about in tattered lace, and Pip's nouveau riche condescension to loved ones.

Let us not forget the ambiguous power of Pip's final litotes. Look it up, book nerds. When he says he and Estella will have no shadow of another parting. Is it an HEA, happily ever after, or a bye bye forever? 

Choose your own adventure. Dickens again, so ahead of his time.  A quick plot summary before I wield the cannon or can it axe. Phillip ‘Pip’ Purip, age 7, lives with his sister and her husband, Joe Gargery, on the English coast. On Christmas Eve, Pip visits his family's graves and meets an escaped convict named Magwitch, to whom he gives a few comforts. He's cleared of any accusations of theft, accidentally. 

Some years later, a once jilted spinster named Miss Havisham asks her friend, Mr. Pumblechook, to find a boy to visit her, and he suggests Pip. While at Miss Havisham's house, Pip meets and falls in love with her ward, Estella, who scarcely gives him the time of day until he bests another boy in fisticuffs. 

Eventually, Pip comes into money, which he assumes is Miss Havisham's bequest to him for his kindness. He moves to London and proceeds to alienate all of his family and most of his friends, in his belief that he is now superior to them. 

Finally, Pip learns that his money comes from Magwitch, and stops taking it, while trying to help the man escape from prison. Etc., etc., etc.. Finally, even though Estella has been in the meantime married and had a son, she and Pip reconcile when she's widowed. 

What? Are you asleep yet? I think I am. A podcast first. The host takes a nap. Anywho, the recap. None of this seemed even slightly funny on a second read. Satiric, perhaps. It's clear that Charles Dickens found the mores and manners of London society ridiculous, and I can appreciate that. However, I'd prefer to appreciate it in one of his greater works, such as Bleak House, where he applies his love of satire along with righteous anger.

Or the The Pickwick Papers, which is pure Dickensian entertainment. Therefore, I am saying CAN IT to Great Expectations. No one need read this rambling bildungsroman unless it's assigned to them. I won't recommend that you cheat and use a study guide either, because listen, I'm an English teacher and pop go the quizzes we give on things you won't find in those guides. 

BP: Great Expectations is just one book that tries to take on the pillars of society and wealth. But modern readers and TV lovers know that breaking the rules a little is one of the best ways to highlight the arbitrary nature of society itself. One series that does this well is Bridgerton. So I’m here with six recommendations for Bridgerton Fans. We have another six recs. It's where I give six book recommendations in three minutes or less. And this week I'm going to be talking about Bridgerton, so more books for Bridgerton fans. Are you ready with the stopwatch, Jordan?

JA: We are rolling. 

BP: The Bridgerton Cookbook by Regula Yeswijn is perfect if you have a Bridgerton stan on your gift list. You need look no further. This is the pinktastic, photo laden volume of their dreams, complete with vin d'orangerie and that ice cream.  

Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen by Rory Muir. It doesn't matter if they've never even heard of Austen, Bethanne, clutches her pearls. This smart, savvy book will fill them in on the manners and mores that Bridgerton subverts.

Next, The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain by Ian Mortimer will fill in the blanks of Muir's more restricted guide. Here, you'll find the worlds of politics, fashion, the arts, all of it. warcraft, and more in the hedonistic heyday preceding the stuffier Victorian era.  

Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester is about Georgette Heyer, who wrote the books Your Great Grandmother, Grandmother, and Mother all devoured when their homework was done. Now you can see what the fuss was all about in a book based on Heyer's own plot points.  

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, is about a predecessor of Lady Bridgerton. And Georgiana, there's so much to say about her, we can't get too far into it. But let's mention that she lived in a de facto menage a trois for 20 years. Poor Georgiana. 

The Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank. At last, we've got a book that tells us about the smut. And we do mean smut, as in dirt and ashes. But we also mean crime and prostitution and gambling and theft and more crime and more sex. So, really fun book, especially for anyone who's following Bridgerton carefully.

Jordan, how did I do this time?

JA: Well, I have to say, we, not only did we, or did you break three minutes, but you broke two minutes, a minute and 56 seconds. 

BP: Come on! Wow! 

JA: That's an all time record. 

BP: That is an all time record. 

JA: Someone get Guinness on the phone.  

BP: Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Jordan. See you next time. Well that does it for this episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. It’s free! Talk to you next week!