Marlon & Me

Marlon James rolled through Miami's Books & Books Book Store Saturday night and I was there for Black Leopard, Red Wolf discussion and book signing. Here are a few notes from the event:

Full house (I’d guess about 150-200+ people, many had to stand), I got there fairly early to get a good seat. She scanned my ticket and handed me a first edition pre-signed signed copy of BLRW. (However, I had all his other works that I wanted signed too, so it didn’t save me any time.)

There was a café attached to the store, so I had a nice salad, wine, and logged on for bit while they were setting up. Met some nice people from the Key West Literary Society.

Apparently, Marlon has a relationship with the bookstore owners. It was revealed he helped them open their bookstore in the Cayman Islands YEARS ago and they’ve kept in touch. He makes an effort to come through Miami on every tour; a reciprocal show of support on both their parts.

Imagine my surprise when Edwidge Danticat stepped up to introduce him; she looked and sounded great -- a very graceful, charming speaker. She said we should be honored because when the world-renowned, long-time NYT editor, Michiko Kakutani, comes out of retirement to write a review for BLRW, you know it has to be something special. I wanted to catch up to her but lost her in the crowd afterward, so I’m not sure if she stayed on after his discussion. She encouraged us to listen to Marlon’s podcast from a few days ago.

No one was taking photos or taking notes, so I was hesitant to do so….thus here’s what I remember:

• He opened by reading several passages from different parts of the book; warned us about the language and sexual references; but made no apology for them. (A mother brought her 12-ish y.o. daughter – they were sitting fairly close to front row, so I think that’s shy he said something).

• He said the inspiration for the novel evolved years ago from a potential friendly argument with a friend upon the reveal of the Hobbit’s Cast; primarily the obvious lack of diversity in the adaptation of a fantasy novel. The friend argued that Lord of the Rings was inspired by British folklore/myth, thus obviously Caucasian/White/British cast is/would be expected or preferred. Marlon argued the book is a fantasy novel, thus it’s not true so what harm would befall the viewing audience to see an Asian hobbit in the shire? (Laughter).

• Apparently, the witch’s character is inspired by a character in “the real” story of The Lion King. I didn’t read or see the movie - but it sounds like there’s a big disconnect between the Disney?-produced version and the authentic African tale.

• He then spent two years of reading and research primarily between the African regions below Ethiopia to about Ghana; and of course, he leveraged what he knew of his childhood stories in the Caribbean (Anansi, oral storytelling, repetition of same stories with a slight twist, etc). He learned a lot and blended in what he learned in subtle ways. This is an African inspired story, so he didn’t want to mimic European/British type of storytelling, so even with speech patterns of certain characters he adopted African styles which may seem a bit awkward to the Western reader (I noticed this too and I think I mentioned it to Ms. Beverly months ago) - For example, The Wolof? (don’t quote me) people’s verbs are all present tense, so there is no “She went,” it’s something more like “She did go,” and he cited other tribes’ formation of sentence structure, storytelling that he mimicked that might confuse the reader. It’s intentional.

• The “African Game of Thrones” reference was originally a joke he made in the presence of his PR people and of course they ran with it. It got the attention of George R. R. Martin who called Marlon to discuss it. Marlon was honored that he’d called. GRRM had read the book; Marlon asked for a blurb/endorsement from him -- well, long story short, he didn’t get it and in telling this story, Marlon kinda laughed it off and thanked Neil Gaiman for the endorsement. Re: GRRM’s lack of rubber stamping - I kinda get why - this book is soooo NOT a GoT, so people who pick this up expecting a GoT vibe will be seriously disappointed in that regard. Granted, they still may enjoy the story, but GoT it is not!

• The other two books in the trilogy will be a retelling of the same event/story from different two other characters besides Tracker; so it’s a play on the Rashomon Effect and it’ll be up to the reader to discern what is “truth” from the various perspectives of the same story. So we may get the story from the witch’s (Sogolon) and/or Nyka’s perspective or others. He hasn’t started the second book (so it might be a while).

• Someone asked if he intentionally wrote African characters into the story - he said, “Hell yes, I wanted to write a Black-Ass book!” He said he mentions white people once in the book - “the people the color of sand who live in the cold North; who eat their god and drink his blood every seven days.” Laughter.

• He dislikes the labels/categorizations used for books, especially the term “magical realism.”

• On Homosexuality - He said don’t be fooled; many a gladiator/warrior and their respective clansmen/warrior squads were homosexual. They only laid with women to procreate or for coin, land, other material gains. It was widely known and accepted. Thus the actions and relationships in the book were much more common than many would suspect.

• He threw out so many titles and authors that he read for his research; I wish I would have written them down! I’m glad I got a chance to see him - it was much better than I expected. During the signing, I noticed no one was taking pictures of/with him - I thought they might not have allowed it to keep the line moving. I waited in line for about 30 mins, but there was still a LONG line behind me. So when it was my turn, I asked if he’d mind a photo if I quickly ran behind the table to get a photo while he signed my 5-6 books, he said Sure – I’d love to...so the one photo above is what we got - no time for do-overs!

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