Telling The Truest Stories: An Interview With Dr. Eve L. Ewing
by William Toms
Photo by Nolis Anderson
This month, I spoke with Dr. Eve L. Ewing—a writer, cultural organizer, and assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. Most recently the author of the poetry collection 1919, Dr. Ewing is also the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches; the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side; the Champions and Ironheart series for Marvel Comics; and many more. We spoke via email about the habits of writing, finding your audience as a writer from a marginalized community, and telling the truest stories you can tell.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: We met at the Boggs Center in Detroit while you were touring for Ghosts in the Schoolyard, and Grace Lee Boggs used to ask this question a lot, so I thought it’d be good to start by showing her some love. What time is it on the clock of the world?
EVE L. EWING: It's the same as it ever was!
WASHINGTON SQUARE: You’ve said before that once you found the right idea, writing the short story “The Device” came naturally to you. Without other writers around, though, recognizing those epiphanies can be hard. What did that clarity of concept feel like when it arrived, and is there a pattern of thinking or doing that got you there?
EVE L. EWING: I think that for a writer there are a set of kind of competencies or mental and emotional habits that are helpful—we might call them “habits of mind,” borrowing a phrase from the arts education world. And these are things you can sort of practice and try to build stamina around. One is discipline, and another, that was really relevant for "The Device," is open-mindedness. Trying to untether yourself from assumptions about what your writing needs to look like is hard, but it leaves space for you to be expansive in your work and to try different things. And if you're not afraid to mess up or do things the wrong way, you might surprise yourself and make something decent.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: You have a deep and abiding respect for Studs Terkel. What did he teach you about the craft of writing?
EVE L. EWING: To me, the legacy of Studs is the reminder that deep listening is one of the fastest ways to arrive at good writing.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: A lot of us come from communities where brilliant stories are told so much more often than they’re read, and when I hear you discussing 1919, it sounds like you thought very intentionally about its accessibility among people who might not read much poetry. What advice could you give writers producing work for communities who the literary establishment suggests won’t be reading?
EVE L. EWING: Decide who your non-negotiable audiences are—the people for whom you believe the work is absolutely essential, the people whose readership you believe will bring life and purpose to the whole thing—and write for those people. Only you get to decide who that is, and only you can make the decisions you need to make accordingly. Whether or not the literary establishment thinks they read is not your concern. Your concern is telling the truest stories you can for the people who are going to find the most meaning in them.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: How does storytelling have to change to tell truthful stories of collective liberation? If today we tell stories about one hero, or a small band of saviors, how do we begin writing stories that recognize the interconnectedness of all people and the necessity of the community?
EVE L. EWING: I think you just answered the question—stories that ignore the ways that all struggle is community struggle are disingenuous and ultimately just don't help us very much.
WASHINGTON SQUARE: The craft of writing Afrofuturism has to be embedded in its politics, and the way it thinks about history and time. For a young woman of color who reads your work and decides she wants to write, what unanswered questions, unresolved tensions, or unrealized futures are on your mind that might be generative for her as she starts an Afrofuturist project?
EVE L. EWING: There are too many of these to count, but I'm trying to write it out as I work (very slowly) on an upcoming book project that will present a hundred or so unresolved tensions!