biography – Madam Mayo

Q & A with Biographer David O. Stewart on the Stunning Fact of George Washington

“We usually think of him as this marble man, this cold image on dollar bills and coins, but part of his great success was his emotional intelligence and accessibility.”
— David O. Stewart

This blog posts on Mondays. Fourth Mondays of the month I devote to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

Just in time for the 4th of July, this last Monday-of-the-month Q & A features acclaimed biographer David O. Stewart and his latest work, George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father which, by the way, just won the coveted History Prize from the Society of the Cincinnati. I am very much looking forward to reading this biography for, I would suggest, dear writerly reader, that the qualities of George Washington’s leadership in the American Revolution and in the founding of the United States, and his personal evolution, are something vital to both comprehend and contemplate in this covid year when a good portion of our society— on all sides of the political rhombozoid— smombified by screens, self-delivered serfs to the tech lords and their algorithms, tweeting fury to the cyber-winds— seems to be stumbling towards the edge of…

But on to the Q & A.

“[A]n outstanding biography that both avoids hagiography and acknowledges the greatness of Washington’s character… Mr. Stewart’s writing is clear, often superlative, his judgements are nuanced, and the whole has a narrative drive such a life deserves.”
— Wall Street Journal

C.M. MAYO: In brief, what inspired you to write George Washington?

DAVID O. STEWART: I wanted to understand a stunning fact about him: that he won four critical elections (twice as president, and also as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775 and as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787), but also that he won them UNANIMOUSLY. Who does that? How did he do that? The book is an attempt to answer those questions.

C.M. MAYO: As you were writing, did you have in mind an ideal reader?

DAVID O. STEWART: I always try to write for curious readers, not for specialists or history enthusiasts. Some of the best stories are true—it would be hard to invent a fictional Washington, someone that complex, brave and impressive, yet also with significant flaws that he struggled to repair yet (because he was human) never entirely fixed. So my best reader is someone who wonders about this world and how we struggle to make our way.

C.M. MAYO: In your researches, what are the one or two things that most surprised you to uncover?

DAVID O. STEWART: With George Washington, I wasn’t prepared for how frankly emotional he was. Much of his leadership was based on his ability to connect with others on an almost pre-cognitive level. Sure, he was large and usually calm and centered, but he also had the gift of listening to others (John Adams called it his “gift of silence”). Contemporaries called him “affable.” At highly-charged moments in his life, Washington wept in public. When he lost loved ones, he wrote movingly about the pain. We usually think of him as this marble man, this cold image on dollar bills and coins, but part of his great success was his emotional intelligence and accessibility.

C.M. MAYO: Which writers have been the most important influences for you as a writer of narrative nonfiction (biography)? And for George Washington in particular?

DAVID O. STEWART: I read for entertainment and enlightenment, and am not usually looking for instruction. I can be knocked out by someone else’s book— any of Robert Caro’s, for example— without ever thinking that I should write that way. I may pick up a tip here or there (Joseph Ellis’ American Sphinx teaches that you can write a fine biography that overtly skips the dull stuff). But other writers have their own magic. It’s not mine. I try to figure out the best way to tell well the story I’m working on. As for Washington, many writers have taken him on with great success —Freeman, Flexner, Chernow, even Washington Irving— but I think I learned the most about Washington from some less-well-known writers like Don Higginbotham, Paul Longmore, Peter Henriques.

C.M. MAYO: Which writers are you reading now?

DAVID O. STEWART: I’m halfway through Ted Widmer’s Lincoln on the Verge, which is a remarkable snapshot of America careening into the Civil War; it’s digression as an art form. Since I also write fiction, I usually have a novel or two going. I’ve recently discovered Tana French’s Irish police stories, which are wonderfully written, and very much admired Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. I’m resolved to read a couple of Barry Unsworth’s historical novels; I read two of them a while back and enjoyed them immensely.

C.M. MAYO: How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?

DAVID O. STEWART: For a lot of years, I was a trial and appellate lawyer with a dozen or more active cases at a time. I used to describe my work as a life of interruptions. Clients called. Colleagues dropped by (remember offices?). Opposing lawyers called. Dumb firm meetings. Interviewing job applicants. I was constantly dropping one subject to pick up another. I tried to be in my office by seven a.m. to get some uninterrupted time. So these days, working at home by myself, I actually get antsy if I don’t have a few interruptions. I’m used to working for a stretch, taking a few minutes off to do something stupid (see social media) or annoying (see call health insurer), and then getting back to work. It’s normal.

C.M. MAYO: For writers of narrative nonfiction keeping notes and papers organized can be more than tremendously challenging. Would you have any tips to share / lessons learned?

DAVID O. STEWART: I have a very boring organizational system because I want to spend the least amount of time maintaining the infrastructure. With each new project, I usually start a timeline but then give it up after a few weeks as more trouble than it’s worth. I like maps. I keep a list of sources I want to consult and sometimes remember to cross off the ones I’ve read. I take notes on EVERYTHING, even if I have the source in hard-copy. And I type all my notes in Word so it’s all word-searchable. That’s it. No index cards. No file cabinets overflowing with stuff. No cellphone photos of key passages. No Scrib’d files. No diagrams on cork boards.

C.M. MAYO: For those looking to publish, what would be your most hard-earned piece of advice?

DAVID O. STEWART: Nobody asked you to write that book. You’re doing it for you. If you can’t get it published, accept that they’re all a bunch of morons and move on.

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?

DAVID O. STEWART: I’ve been working on a trilogy of novels inspired by my mother’s family’s history, starting when the first ones came to the Maine coast in the 1750s. It’s called The Overstreet Saga, and the first one (The New Land) should come out in November.

Excerpt from David O. Stewart’s George Washington (Dutton Books, 2021)

There was a real man named George Washington, one who stuffed his sixty-seven years with remarkable achievements. This book examines a principal feature of his greatness that can be overlooked: a mastery of politics that allowed him to dominate the most crucial period of American history. For the twenty years from 1776 to 1796, he was a central force in every important event in the nation; often, he was the determining factor. A former British soldier, far from an admirer, wrote in 1784 that Washington’s “political maneuvers, and his cautious plausible management,” had raised him “to a degree of eminence in his own country unrivalled.”One measure of Washington’s political skill was that when he denied having political talent or ambitions, people mostly believed him, and have continued to believe him ever since.

That those denials were disingenuous is beyond dispute. Washington won several major elections in his life: in 1775, the Second Continental Congress selected him as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army; his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 made him presiding officer of that pivotal effort to invent a system of self-government; then the new nation elected him as its first president, and re-elected him. As pointed out by others, the fact to linger over is that Washington did not merely win those four critical contests; he won them unanimously. Unanimous election was no more common in the late eighteenth century than it is today.

Washington did not achieve such preeminence due to natural advantages or happy accidents, or because he was tall, rich, brave, and married a rich woman. Nothing about Washington’s success was easy. He had modest inherited wealth, so had to acquire the money that made his career possible. He had a meager education, a temper that terrified those who saw him lose it, a cockiness that could make him reckless, and a deep financial insecurity that could lead him close to greed.

Washington studied his flaws. From a young age, he struggled against his own nature. His early missteps might have crippled the prospects of a person with less dogged commitment to self-improvement. He ruthlessly suppressed qualities that could hinder his advancement and mastered those that could assist it. Washington’s story is not one of effortless superiority, but one of excellence achieved with great effort.

That Washington was the paramount political figure of the turbulent founding era may be enough to deem him a master politician. Yet the appellation applies even more firmly because of the restraint and even benevolence with which he exercised the power his contemporaries placed in his hands. Acclaimed at countless public ceremonies through the last quarter-century of his life, he never became grandiose or self-important. Often called “affable” by those who knew him, despite a personal reserve he maintained in public, his intense modesty and sense of his own fallibility allowed him to seek the advice of others on difficult decisions without preventing him from following his own judgment. As the embodiment of the republican ideals of his time and place, he defined the expectations that Americans would have of their leaders for many generations.

Read more about David O. Stewart and George Washington at davidostewart.com

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

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Selected Cabeza de Vaca Books, Part II:
Notes on Narrative Histories and Biographies

Selected Cabeza de Vaca Books, Part II: Notes on Narrative Histories and Biographies

This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.

Last month I posted Part I of Selected Cabeza de Vaca Books, spotlighting the 1542 and 1555 editions and the various English translations of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación. (These translations included the Smith, Bandelier, Covey, and the perhaps unsurpassable Adorno and Pautz.) Herewith, for Part II, I offer some notes, tackled chronologically by their date of publication, on notable biographies and narrative histories of Cabeza de Vaca’s North American odyssey which I happen to have at-hand in my working library— what I have dubbed the Texas Bibliothek.

(By the way, my own longform essay available on Kindle, “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” discusses Cabeza de Vaca’s odyssey and La Relación within a broader meditation on the Mexican literary landscape—not the usual take for a work in English.)

MORRIS BISHOP

Morris Bishop’s The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca (The Century Company, 1933) isn’t really necessary for my working library because, for all practical purposes, for the work of creative nonfiction I am writing, I can rely on the more recent and excellent scholarship of Adorno and Pautz and Reséndez. But I recognize the cultural / historical importance of Bishop’s work and so, for a relatively reasonable price, I wanted to have a first signed edition in my collection. (So, is what I have a working library or a rare book collection? I ask myself that every other day!)

Signed by the author to one “Alexander Campbell who not only reads books but buys them and who not only buys books but reads them.”

Edward Toledano’s cover illustration portrays Cabeza de Vaca leading Estevanico, the slave; his two fellow Spaniards, Dorantes and Castillo; and a retinue of hundreds of Indians.

CLEVE HALLENBECH

Cleve Hallenbech’s Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: The Journey and Route of the First European to Cross the Continent of North America 1534-1536 (The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1940) is another work I do not absolutely require for my working library but which, in recognition of its cultural and historic importance, and the very reasonable price for a near-fine first edition, I wanted to have in my collection.

That said, the maps are a wonder! I’ll be talking about these in my post, Part III, for the first Monday of next month, when I discuss the routes various scholars have proposed for Cabeza de Vaca.

The Arthur H. Clark Company was known for its high quality books on the West. (By the way, the University of Oklahoma Press has a book for collectors of works published by the Arthur H. Clark Company, which you can have a blink at here.)

One of the several pull-out maps in the Cleve Hallenbech, this one showing his version of Cabeza de Vaca’s route through Far West Texas. Crazy-hard to read, I know. I’ll be talking more about the route through Far West Texas, and showing some more readable maps, in Part III, to be posted on the first Monday of July 2021.

JOHN UPTON TERRELL

John Upton Terrell’s Journey Into Darkness: Cabeza de Vaca’s Expedition Across North America 1528-36 (Jarrolds Publishers, 1964) is well-researched, given the resources the author had access to back in the early 1960s, and aimed at the general reader.

The back of this first edition carries an ad for Erle Stanley Gardner’s *The Hidden Heart of Baja*, which for me was like coming across an old amigo. I had a bit to say about the ever-roving eccentric Hollywood screenplay writer in my own book on Baja California, *Miraculous Air.*

DAVID A. HOWARD

David A. Howard’s Conquistador in Chains: Cabeza de Vaca and the Indians of the Americas (University of Alabama Press, 1997) —currently reading. I was tremendously curious to learn more about Cabeza de Vaca’s later adventures in South America, which are rarely considered in-depth, lying as they do in the shadow of his epic journey in North America.

ALEX D. KRIEGER

We Came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America (University of Texas Press, 2002)—currently reading.

From the catalog copy:

“Perhaps no one has ever been such a survivor as Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Member of a 600-man expedition sent out from Spain to colonize ‘La Florida’ in 1527, he survived a failed exploration of the west coast of Florida, an open-boat crossing of the Gulf of Mexico, shipwreck on the Texas coast, six years of captivity among native peoples, and an arduous, overland journey in which he and the three other remaining survivors of the original expedition walked some 1,500 miles from the central Texas coast to the Gulf of California, then another 1,300 miles to Mexico City.

“The story of Cabeza de Vaca has been told many times, beginning with his own account, Relación de los naufragios, which was included and amplified in Gonzalo Fernando de Oviedo y Váldez’s Historia general de las Indias. Yet the route taken by Cabeza de Vaca and his companions remains the subject of enduring controversy. In this book, Alex D. Krieger correlates the accounts in these two primary sources with his own extensive knowledge of the geography, archaeology, and anthropology of southern Texas and northern Mexico to plot out stage by stage the most probable route of the 2,800-mile journey of Cabeza de Vaca.

“This book consists of several parts, foremost of which is the original English version of Alex Krieger’s dissertation (edited by Margery Krieger), in which he traces the route of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions from the coast of Texas to Spanish settlements in western Mexico. This document is rich in information about the native groups, vegetation, geography, and material culture that the companions encountered. Thomas R. Hester’s foreword and afterword set the 1955 dissertation in the context of more recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries, some of which have supported Krieger’s plot of the journey. Margery Krieger’s preface explains how she prepared her late husband’s work for publication. Alex Krieger’s original translations of the Cabeza de Vaca and Oviedo accounts round out the volume.”

ANDRÉS RESÉNDEZ

Ring-a-ling to Dr. Jung! Reséndez and Schneider (below) both published their narrative histories about Cabeza de Vaca’s epic journey in North America in the same year, 2007. Andrés Reséndez’s A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca (Basic Books, 2007) is an award-winning historian’s beautifully written and extensively footnoted narrative history. No one writing about Cabeza de Vaca, whether creative writer or serious scholar, should overlook Reséndez’s masterwork. I went for the paperback so that I could mark it up with my pencil all whichways.

That is not actually Cabeza de Vaca there on the cover, and it ever & always annoys me to see it. Oh well! I don’t know what he looked like, no one does, and I don’t think he looked like this rather sharp-eyed character who keeps on getting recycled as “Cabeza de Vaca.” HMPH!

PAUL SCHNEIDER

Paul Schneider’s Brutal Journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the Epic First Crossing of North America (Henry Holt, 2007) is a riproaring adventure read, well-researched and elegantly written, and one I would warmly recommend to the general reader.

The catalog copy gives the explosive flavor:

“A gripping survival epic, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors, bound for glory, who landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes’s gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors of the Narváez expedition brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive.”

DONALD E. CHIPMAN

Donald E. Chipman’s Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: The Great Pedestrian of North and South America (The Texas State Historical Association, 2012) offers a short (only 70 pages), albeit authoritative overview by an academic historian for those with an interest also in Cabeza de Vaca’s South American odyssey. From the book’s back cover:

“Between 1528 and 1536, explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca trekked an estimated 2,480 to 2,640 miles of North American terrain from the Texas coast near Galveston Island to San Miguel de Culiacán near the Pacific coast of Mexico. Later he served as the royal governor of Asunción, Paraguay. His mode of transportation, afoot on portions of two continents in the early decades of the sixteenth century, fits one dictionary definition of the word ‘pedestrian.’ By no means, however, should the ancillary meanings of ‘commonplace’ or ‘prosaic’ be applied to the man, or his remarkable adventures. This book examines the two great ‘journeys’ of Cabeza de Vaca—his extraordinary adventures on two continents and his remarkable growth as a humanitarian.”

A 70 page paperback available from the Texas State Historical Association. (Sorry, but I just cannot get over the use of the word “pedestrian” in the subtitle. It always makes me think of the Beattles’ Abbey Road album cover.)

ROBIN VARNUM

Robin Varnum’s Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014) is an accomplished and, as best I can ascertain, the latest scholarly biography.

The cover of Varnum’s excellent biography features the sculpture of Cabeza de Vaca by Eladio Gil Zambrana, which is in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. (I’ll say it again: although we see him portrayed on many book covers, we do not actually know what Cabeza de Vaca looked like.)

JAMES J. (PETE) DREXLER

The Route and Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca (self-published, 2016)—currently reading.

Cabeza de Vaca’s adventures as passed on to us from his La Relación have spawned a small but enduring cottage industry of books, essays, documentaries, websites, and more, which started picking up serious steam over the 20th century. My own sense is that we will see books about Cabeza de Vaca being published for as long as we have books, and I expect books to go on, at one scale or another, for many hundreds of years more. Movies and videos and websites and electronic whatnots? That, too. How about an opera?

In “Selected Cabeza de Vaca Books, Part III,” to be posted the first Monday of next month, July 2021, I will be discussing the wackadoodle differences in the various maps of Cabeza de Vaca’s epic journey, with a focus on his route through what we know now as Far West Texas.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me by simply clicking here.

Selected Cabeza de Vaca Books, Part I:
Notes on the Two Editions of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación
(Also Known as Account, Chronicle, Narrative, Castaways, Report & etc.)
and Selected English Translations

Carolyn E. Boyd’s The White Shaman Mural

From the Texas Bibliothek: The Sanderson Flood of 1965;
Faded Rimrock Memories;
Terrell County, Texas: Its Past, Its People

My new book is Meteor

Find out more about
C.M. Mayo’s books, articles, podcasts, and more.

Q & A: Sonja D. Williams on Writing “Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom”

Sonja D. Williams, author of Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom

Those of you following this blog know that I have bouquets of beautiful things to say about Biographers International and their super-crunchy conference, which I attended last June in Washington DC. One of the biographers I was delighted to cross paths with there is Sonja D. Williams, whose biography, Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom has just been published by the University of Illinois Press. Herewith some Q & A.

C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write this biography?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: In fall 1994 I had just started working as a writer/producer for the Smithsonian Institution’s Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was project—a 13-part series exploring the legacy of African Americans in radio. (The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., housed a unit that produced award-winning radio and television documentaries about the American experience). So starting in January 1996, our weekly half-hour Black Radio programs aired on more than two hundred noncommercial radio stations nationwide.

Of the five shows on my producing plate, I felt the most trepidation about the one exploring African American contributions during radio’s “theater of the mind” heyday of the 1930s and 1940s. Blacks were rarely featured in local or national dramatic broadcasts then. When I found out about Destination Freedom, I was struck by this radio series’ lyricism, dramatic flair, and fiery rhetoric. African American writer Richard Durham created this series in 1948 and for two years he served as its sole scriptwriter. A master storyteller, Durham seductively conjured aural magic, inventively dramatizing the lives of black history makers.

And Durham used his desire for universal freedom, justice, and equality to inform his storytelling choices.

Richard Durham had died in 1984, so my interviews with his wife, Clarice, actor/singer Oscar Brown Jr., and writer Louis “Studs” Terkel provided salient insights. Durham was an astute, Chicago-based writer who employed poetic, hard-hitting prose to entertain, educate, and promote positive social change. He stood behind his convictions, even when the consequences of his actions caused him emotional pain, financial hardship—or both.

Durham’s accomplishments reinforced my own belief that the media, in all its incarnations, should serve a higher purpose than just mindless diversion. His life was drama itself, full of unexpected twists and turns, of creative invention and reinvention. His story certainly fascinated me. So after the Black Radio series ended, I planned to work on Durham’s biography.

Unfortunately, other documentary projects monopolized my time. I also continued teaching in my academic home, the Howard University Department of Radio, Television, and Film. Appointment to an administrative position in my department eventually forced me to sandwich research for this book into spring or summer breaks and other far-too-fleeting time frames.

Still, a Howard University–sponsored research grant in 2002 enabled me to begin immersing myself in Durham’s world. Later, a 2009 Timuel D. Black Jr. Short-Term Fellowship in African American Studies sponsored by the Vivian G. Harsh Society enabled me to spend a summer in Chicago. I practically moved into the Woodson Regional Library, home base of the Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, where Richard Durham’s papers reside. Finally, a sabbatical from my university during the 2010–11 academic year allowed me to make significant progress toward the completion of this book.

C.M. MAYO: Did Durham’s family help and/or cooperate with you?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: Durham’s family members were extremely cooperative and supportive. Durham’s wife, Clarice Davis Durham (now 95), generously allowed me to interview her on numerous occasions, and she provided contact information for several of her husband’s longtime friends and colleagues. She also shared documents she had not donated to the Chicago Public Library’s Harsh Research Collection.

Mrs. Durham’s brother, Charles A. Davis and sister Marguerite Davis offered touching stories and historical perspectives about their brother-in-law, as did Richard Durham’s older sister Clotilde and younger brothers Caldwell and Earl. And Mark Durham, Clarice and Richard’s only son, provided a wealth of additional information and contacts.

C.M. MAYO: What were the most unexpected and biggest challenges for you in writing this book?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: If someone had told me in the early 2000s that it would take between 10 and 15 years to complete Word Warrior, I would have been convinced that this person had abused some crazy, judgment-clouding substance. The longest documentary project on which I had worked, NPR’s and the Smithsonian’s 26-part series Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, was about five years in the making, from its conception by artist/historian Bernice Johnson Reagon to airdate.

But additional documentary, teaching and administration responsibilities, along with other life demands, soon proved that Word Warrior would take a lot longer to become a reality. And at times I had to overcome serious personal roadblocks. Was I really up to this challenge? Who told me I could write a book? Was I fooling myself?

I got past those doubts, but not without struggle – and time.

C.M. MAYO: I believe every book has many angels. Who were the angels for this book?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: So many angels hovered over this project. Durham’s longtime friends, artist Oscar Brown Jr., journalist Vernon Jarrett and writer/radio personality Studs Terkel were generous with their time, recollections and insights. Historian J. Fred MacDonald, who died earlier this year, was an angel from the start, providing all types of audio and visual materials and regular encouragement.

Vivian Gordon Harsh, an African American woman I never met, served as an earthbound angel during Durham’s lifetime and a heavenly one in mine. During the 1940s, this pioneering head librarian created and curated a special collection of Negro books and historical documents in Chicago’s George Cleveland Hall Public Library. Durham spent hours there, combing through the research materials Harsh provided for his Destination Freedom and other projects. Today, the Harsh Collection is the largest African American archive in the Midwest. It also houses Richard Durham’s Papers.

And of course, my family members and close friends – angels all – divvied up places to stay, reality checks and butt-kicking critiques.

C.M. MAYO: Were you able to listen to all of Durham’s “Destination Freedom” radio shows? (Where are they archived?) Did you have some favorites– and why?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: Of the 92 shows in the Destination Freedom series, I listened to all of the tapes that have survived. Northeastern Illinois University historian and author J. Fred MacDonald discovered and rescued those tapes and scripts from Northwestern University years ago and housed them in his own media archives (now located in the Library of Congress). From his archives, Dr. MacDonald sent me a huge box containing copies of every Destination Freedom script. I read every word. I also listened to Destination Freedom tapes in the archives of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Research Center of Black Culture, and in the Richard Durham Papers archived in the Chicago Public Library’s Harsh Research Collection.

It’s rather hard to pick favorites from such a rich cache of dramatic programs. Of course, a few stand out for their storytelling strengths and messages:

The Rime of Ancient Dodger examined Jackie Robinson’s integration of baseball, starring Oscar Brown Jr. as Robinson and Studs Terkel as a Brooklyn-accented, rhyming narrator. Denmark Vesey recounted Vesey’s revolutionary militancy and his 1822 slave revolt in South Carolina; Negro Cinderella portrayed artist Lena Horne’s young life and social awakening; Premonition of a Panther demonstrated how his sport’s brutality affected boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson; The Death of Aesop displayed the biting humor and wisdom of an Ethiopian slave famous for his fables; The Long Road explored the contributions of women’s suffrage activist and educator Mary Church Terrell.

C.M. MAYO: Durham was Muhammed Ali’s biographer (The Greatest, 1975). Did you find it challenging to write the biography of a biographer?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: In part because Muhammad Ali is such a huge personality and significant cultural figure – and because I was fascinated by his story and his fights during my younger years – Ali threatened to take over the chapter about Durham’s work with him on The Greatest. I had to fight with myself to make sure that Durham remained in focus by using Durham’s interviews with historian J. Fred MacDonald, magazine and newspaper articles where Durham talked about Ali, the tapes Durham personally recorded while following Ali during the writing of The Greatest, and relevant interviews with Durham’s friends, colleagues (including his Random House editor Toni Morrison) and family members.

C.M. MAYO: You’ve written for radio. Did you find writing a book to be similar or a very different process?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: While I never thought that writing a book would be a breeze, the research process felt very familiar. It required the same primary and secondary research muscles needed for documentary production. I loved digging for information and finding unexpected gems – like Durham’s letters to and from acclaimed writer Langston Hughes, or learning about Durham’s interaction (along with other labor union leaders) with a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King had journeyed to Chicago to seek financial support for the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott he was leading. At that point, February 1956, the boycott was in its infancy and struggling to survive.

But writing for the page (or computer screen) is different that writing for the ear, and my early chapter drafts contained clunky chunks of interview segments or script samples. It was as if an unseen narrator (me) briefly set up an audio clip and then let the clip run uninterrupted, taking up a bulk of the page. While I could let audio segments, sound effects, ambient sound and/or music guide listeners in radio storytelling, it was clear that I had to take a more active role as narrator/guide for a book.

I had to reorient my mind and my writing. A struggle.

But if I learned anything from past projects, my work on Word Warrior cemented the fact that hard work, persistence, and faith are essential elements for any creative endeavor.

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you?

SONJA D. WILLIAMS: I plan to return to my first love, music, and explore the lives, musical triumphs and personal struggles of some contemporary musicians. Wish me luck, faith and persistence!

> Visit Sonja D. Williams’ webpage
> Find Word Warrior on amazon.com
> Find Word Warrior at University of Illinois Press

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