Listen to a conversation with Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck. Marcus Harrison Green of the South Seattle Emerald moderates.
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The Desk Set is brought to you by the King County Library System. The show is hosted by librarians Britta Barrett and Emily Calkins, and produced by Britta Barrett. Our theme song is "I Know What I Want" by Math and Physics Club. Other music provided by Chad Crouch, from the Free Music Archive.
Transcript
Emily Calkins:
You're listening to The Desk Set, a bookish podcast for reading broadly. I'm one of your hosts, Emily Calkins. In this special feed drop, we're sharing a recording of an event we did with Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck. Enjoy.
Emily Calkins:
Mateo Askaripour is the author of The New York Times bestseller, Black Buck, which is a story about a young man who becomes the star salesman and the only black employee in a New York City startup. Booklist called Black Buck "extraordinary" and Publishers Weekly said "It was winning and layered." Mateo's work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement no matter the obstacles they face. He was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in Entrepreneur and Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus and elsewhere, and he is joining us from Brooklyn.
Emily Calkins:
Marcus Harrison Green, he's our moderator tonight, is the founder and publisher of The South Seattle Emerald. He grew up in Seattle where he experienced firsthand the impact of one-dimensional stories on marginalized communities. After a stint working in the investment world, Marcus returned to Seattle with a new found purpose of telling stories in the hope of advancing social change. He was one of Seattle Magazine's most influential people in 2016, and he was recently awarded the Individual Human Rights Leader Award from the Seattle Human Rights Commission. And his essay collection, Readying to Rise will be published in September. So thanks so much to both of you for being with us tonight, and I will turn it over to you.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Thank you so much, Emily. Mateo, thank you, one, for being here all the way live from Brooklyn, one of my favorite places on earth. Well, I got to say before we get into the questions, I got to clear the air. After I got done with finishing this book, I was like, damn this man because this is the book that I wish I would've written. It's the wits, the flair, the verve, the poetry in your writing, I can't deny this is really one of the best books that I have read in the past 10 years. And so seriously, thank you for writing it.
Mateo Askaripour:
Thank you for reading it. It really means a lot. Whenever anyone takes the time to read this book, it means a lot when they enjoy it, but especially, the people I had in mind while writing it. So thank you for reading it.
Marcus Harrison Green:
I mean I know it's usually boiler plate to ask why did you write this? But the question I want to ask is why did this book absolutely need to exist? And why did you need to write it?
Mateo Askaripour:
To the first point, why did it need to exist? That's hard to answer. The person who reads it and has it reflecting their lives back to them and feeling empowered or seen because they read it, I think that they could answer more so, but it was important for me to write it because this was a story that was waiting to come out of me. It was born out of necessity. I had written two manuscripts beforehand that didn't go anywhere. They were about different topics, somewhat related, but very different plots, very different types of books. And I was at creative rock bottom. I said what am I doing? Am I actually going to do this? Am I actually going to be a writer? I was some guy coming from the world of startups and sales. It was at that point that I said I'm going to do it regardless of what it takes, but I'm no longer going to try to just get an agent or get a book deal. I'm rather going to try to write the book for the people I want it to resonate with in the way that I want.
Mateo Askaripour:
So right, you're talking about verve, you're talking about poetry, you're talking about some wild stuff going on in this book. I allowed, I gave myself permission to run free on the page knowing that the right people who read it at the right time will have these words resonating with them. And other people might read it and say, "Yeah, that was good. I liked it." Or other people might read and say, "Oh, I don't really get it." But none of that really mattered to me. I was just thinking about the type of person who I wanted to read this book, and type of person was, first off, Black people who have been the only one or one of the few in these types of environments. And then, anyone who has been the only one or one of the few.
Mateo Askaripour:
And I've had many people reach out to me and say, "I've been the only woman in this type of environment or on an executive team. I've been the only type of person with this specific sexual orientation or follower of this religion. And I know what it's like to be made to feel less than because I'm different." So, that was the purpose of this book. And if could answer directly, I think that's why it needed to exist to address these topics in a way that hasn't been addressed in this way before, especially focusing on this type of character.
Mateo Askaripour:
The last thing I'll say is there's been many people who have reached out to me, especially younger black men who say, "I was waiting for a book like this to focus on a younger black man," someone that they can relate to. So that's just been a joy to hear as well.
Marcus Harrison Green:
This book skewers a lot of corporate culture and some of the performative diversity efforts and performative inclusion. Back when I was in the investment world, that definitely was something I experienced. I'm not going to lie, the first couple chapters, I was like, man, this is a little too traumatic. This, I'm having PTSD. He is experiencing this full corporate onslaught of attempting to transform him and change them into something that is palatable, if you will, for the taste of white folks essentially. How autobiographical, and so I'll say this, how emotionally autobiographical was this?
Mateo Askaripour:
The first thing that you mentioned, right, of how you were reading the book and it was giving you PTSD, right, I've had people, I've had Black people specifically at events or in emails or DMs tell me that the book triggered that and that it was necessary, but that it was difficult, very difficult for them to read because they had had these experiences, right. And it's not the same experience of like someone pouring a bucket of white paint on you, right, but things that can feel that way, even if on the surface, they are seemingly mundane or innocuous.
Mateo Askaripour:
So you bringing that up, I just want to put it out there that there have been many people who say that the book triggered them in that way, but that it also helped them because they realized that they are not the only ones. And I think that whenever we're going through anything in life, especially if it's very intense or traumatic, we can feel like we're the only ones experiencing it. And that's why sometimes we go to Google. That's why we want to talk to other people to know that it's not just us. There's something comforting about that.
Mateo Askaripour:
In terms of what happens in the workplace, when I was working in the world of startups, I did work in the world of startups for years, when I was 24, I was leading a team of 30 people who were cold calling and calling inbound leads, I was a top dog. And while, of course, there were microaggressions or just passive forms of racism, I didn't experience nearly what Darren, then Buck, did.
Mateo Askaripour:
For me, I experienced very visceral and bizarre forms of racism growing up where I did. And I took those experiences and I translated them into the workplace to show to my readers I know what it can feel like. This is in some ways very real and authentic and then in some ways, hyperbolic, but regardless of where you placed on the spectrum of real or absurd, I know that it'll feel true for people who've had these experiences because if you are one of the few in any environment, and then you have a bunch of other people trying to gaslight you and say, "Chill out. We're just making a joke," and feel like someone's pouring a bucket of white paint or someone's asking whether they should translate instructions into Ebonics.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Yeah, and I'll say I mean I think you handled that so definitely in your writing. As somebody, both of us who have been there in terms of having to navigate internal power structures, what were you really trying to say in this book about our self-sacrifice in order to just survive?
Mateo Askaripour:
The responses to the book, especially from Black people, specifically about Darren and what he experiences, people were talking to me this way, "I would've killed someone." And then there's other people they say, "I know what it's like to just take until you make it. I know what it's like to be silent when your gut is telling you that something that's happening is wrong, but you don't want to speak up because you don't want to be fired. You don't want to be labeled as the angry black woman or the wild black man or brown person or whatever. You don't want to stick out like a sore thumb."
Mateo Askaripour:
What I'm saying in terms of Darren's journey isn't that you have to do what Darren did. There are things that myself, as the author, are saying, and my personal beliefs are in there, but then there are just questions that I'm posing in the form of the plot itself and what takes place. So I put the burden on the reader to ask themselves would I want to take until we make it in order to get to the top. And then once we get to the top, help other people? You do what is in line with who you are. And then the question's also posed at the end of the entire book before the epilogue is was this worth it? And there'll be some people who say, "Oh, hell, yeah. Look, look at all that he did" and then other people say, "Hell, no." So I'm putting a lot of weight on the reader to figure out and decide what's what for them.
Mateo Askaripour:
Really, this is a cautionary tale. We see Darren suddenly chasing this very American version of success to disastrous consequences, right? I believe that we all deserve the right to chase success, but you have to figure out how you define it. Because if you start chasing the wrong one, right, bad things could happen.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Can you have this pursuit of success and yet still stay true to who you are, I should say?
Mateo Askaripour:
I think that that's definitely possible. And people ask that question in different ways sometimes like did Darren have to lose himself in order to be successful? And what I say is Darren had to lose himself in order to become successful in that specific workplace, in that specific environment that is reflective of many environments where you walk in as an individual and when you're actually working there, you're an employee. And Darren's humanity was stripped and that's why he had to become Buck. He had to become someone else, but there's nothing to say that Darren couldn't have stayed true to his morals and ethics, and that he couldn't go somewhere else that celebrated who he was, and that he couldn't have been just as successful or if not more in that type of place.
Mateo Askaripour:
So again, this book, it's a cautionary tale. It's showing you what can happen when you chase a narrative of success that people are pushing you to chase. Meanwhile, it might not be in line with who you are and your purpose. So this is me positing to the reader, what does it mean to be successful? And what are the cost that some people have to pay in order to achieve it?
Mateo Askaripour:
I see that Annie Barton asked "Why this title?" There's levels to this title, but one of the meanings behind it is accruing some sense of financial freedom and not being beholden to the almighty dollar all the time. And that's just one form of attaining some level of freedom. Doesn't mean work for yourself. Doesn't mean go make a hundred thousand dollars by making someone else rich as well and you just getting that slice of the pie. We all have to figure it out. I don't have all of these answers. So, that's one meaning of the title.
Mateo Askaripour:
For those who don't know, the historical connotation of Black Buck was the enslaved male who the white enslavers believed to be unruly, untamable. He was going to burn down the plantation, steal the women, steal the animals and just really mess things up. I didn't name the book Black Buck to really provoke, but more so because that's the energy that Darren, later on Buck, is coming with. He's not burning down these workplaces, but he's burning down what they symbolize, even if only for a moment.
Marcus Harrison Green:
He is sort of tasked with being the magical Negro who comes in to sort of say, "I need to save the day." How hard were some of those scenes like that to write? Because I mean it's just, even reading it, I had to literally put down the book, do a couple of pushups, run around the block a little bit, and then come back to it. And knowing that you had to infuse so much emotion into it, were there ever points where you were like, I don't know if I can actually write this particular scene right now?
Mateo Askaripour:
There weren't parts when I said, I don't know if I could write this scene, but there were scenes that were difficult to write. It wasn't easy for me to subject Darren to what he experienced in the workplace and then have him go and hurt the people who loved him unconditionally. So it was difficult for me to work through some of that, but I had to. And it was important for me to have those humorous scenes and points of levity to keep it authentic to my experience, right? It's not like we wake up and say, "Damn, still Black, sucks," right? There's so much levity. There's so much triumph. There's so much humanity and success every day, laughter, smiling.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Mike Nichols, he's the director of that movie, The Graduate. And he said, and somebody had asked him before, they said, "Is this a comedy? Is this a drama?" And he said, "It's real life and life is infused with comedy. It's infused with drama. It's infused with tragedies, infused with humor. It's just that's just all of life. And I want to try to capture all of life as much as I can in this creation."
Mateo Askaripour:
Wow. I like that. I like that.
Marcus Harrison Green:
And that's definitely what it would've felt like with this book. I mean it's all of those things and more.
Mateo Askaripour:
Thank you for that and thank you for giving me that verbiage around it because what's tough about a book like this that blurs so many lines is we, as people, want to place things in boxes. And if they don't fit into boxes very neatly, then we become upset at times. At least that's what I've found in my experience. With Black Buck, it's so many things and it's changing from page to page or part to part that once you think it's this one thing, all of a sudden, it's going to become something else. And you're like, what the heck is this? It's just real life as you said. It's just real life.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Yes, yes. Even the twists and turns in the book, and there are quite a few, it's like you follow along with it. And there's times where you're like, "No, no, don't turn down that road," right? It's inevitable that he's going to do it. Without spoiling the ending, I'll just say that it was good to see that the love he gives is there for him at the end. That pain that he's causing, and grant you, when he caused a lot of that pain when he himself was in pain. Pain is kind of what gets him to where he ends up getting to towards the end.
Mateo Askaripour:
Yeah, yeah. The ending is it's complex, putting the onus on the reader to say what's what. In my opinion, he's in a better place emotionally and spiritually than when he was working in that organization. The ending is just there are a lot of questions and it's on the reader to make heads or tails of how they feel about it. I want people to feel, not one thing, but many things because I believe that if I do my job and they feel a lot, then they will remember that far longer than anything they think about the book and anything that takes place.
Marcus Harrison Green:
You have this way of infusing every single character with humanity. Why was that important for you to not have these one-dimensional stick figures?
Mateo Askaripour:
It was important for me to make them three dimensional because if Frodo was just someone who was comical all the time, he would be a literary device. He would be comic relief. So I had to figure out who is this guy? And you find out in the book that he got into sales because his dad used to be a used car salesman until he became an alcoholic, right? He wasn't just some football player.
Mateo Askaripour:
Now, different readers perceive different things. There are readers who don't see the humanity even in Clyde, the main antagonist, and I understand it's hard to. And then there's readers who have never met anyone like Wally Cat or Jason and they say, you wrote a stereotype. If ever a character could be perceived as a stereotype, I was going to add things to them to change that.
Mateo Askaripour:
Soraya, right? Soraya's going over there hanging out with Darren. She's a powerful woman. She's not just puppy dog, puppy loving eyes all the time. Her dad is from Yemen. He's Muslim, but he's not keeping her in the house all day as people would think stereotypically. So yeah, it was for the people who read these books and know that a character like Jason, that a character like Soraya, that a character like Ma, that a character like Mr. Rawlings, even Clyde or Rhett are people that they actually know in their real lives.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Right. Right. And I thought you did that so well with even dialects in how Jason, his cadence and how he talked. I was like, man, that's a brother I know, Paul over at the barbershop. That's literally him.
Mateo Askaripour:
Exactly, yeah, exactly. Now in terms of my experiences, emotionally, this book is a hundred percent me. To write a character like Clyde, I have had to experience the hubris that he has, right. To write a character like Soraya, I have had to love someone and receive love. To write a character like Ma, I had to know what it was like - not to be her. I'll never be a single mother, right, but to receive the love of a mother and to be able to empathize and put myself in her shoes. There are risks in writing out of your direct experience. But I wanted to take those risks because I believe that I could inhabit those characters and their lives because there were parts of myself in them.
Marcus Harrison Green: There are so many quotes in here and so many beautiful passages, but there's one in there in particular, at one point Buck says, "What I want most for you is to be free." Where does that desire come from?
Mateo Askaripour:
You know, Toni Morrison says that if you have power, it's your job to empower other people. And in Black Buck specifically, I wanted to empower people. I wanted to inspire them to know that they are worth chasing their dreams. And then I wanted to give people some tools, some of these sales tools to help people be able to advocate for themselves better, advocate on the behalf of other people who they love and who they want to help.
Marcus Harrison Green:
And admittedly, you have these different axioms that he says and it's sales advice. But in many times, it's really life advice that's interspersed through it. What was your sort of source of wisdom for that?
Mateo Askaripour:
So I wanted every piece of advice to double as sales and life advice, for sure, right? For people who have never been in sales before, have absolutely no interest, I still wanted those asides or axioms to be of value to them. In terms of how I came up with them, it's just my life, right, things that I've probably read, sales manuals that I read getting into sales. Who knows? Some of them, I'm sure I made up. Others were things that I'd learned when I came into sales or the world of startups. And then there were life lessons that I've learned that I had to reformulate so that they would also apply to sales at the same time.
Mateo Askaripour:
But I was thinking about a few different things, sales manuals that were given to me when I got into sales and how much they resonated with me and how it was just direct, no BS advice. I was thinking about Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, where at the beginning of every part or chapter, there was a maxim. This is how you get filthy rich in rising Asia. You stash some money away. You become corrupt. You befriend a bureaucrat.
Mateo Askaripour:
But at the time specifically, I was reading Mitchell S. Jackson's The Residue Years. And he breaks the fourth wall in a very inconspicuous way. He just says people comma. And you know that when he's writing people, that he's speaking directly to the reader. So it was after reading Mitchell S. Jackson's The Residue Years and then thinking about those other texts that I said, I've already wanted this to be a sales manual. Let me just punch it up and really break through with the fourth wall. And that's how I decided to write those direct addresses to the reader.
Marcus Harrison Green:
I know in the book jacket, it references Sorry To Bother You, Boots Riley, directing and writing. And if nobody has seen it, I really would recommend that they do. Who have been in terms of writers, artists, and creatives, some of your other influences for this book?
Mateo Askaripour:
The Sellout by Paul Beatty. I read The Sellout before I began writing Black Buck and I said, "Whoa, this book was published?" And then I said, "Whoa, this book was published and he won one of the most prestigious awards ever, the Man Booker at the time." From reading that I said, "Okay, I'm going to go big with this book." And the main influence was giving me permission to get a little wild.
Mateo Askaripour:
And I had actually interacted with the writer, Jason Reynolds. He's now a friend, but before I knew him, I ran into him at a bookstore in Soho, in Manhattan called McNally Jackson. And I got him a cup of coffee and we were talking about books, and I brought up The Sellout and he said, "Listen, man, be careful because if you write something like that, or if you push the envelope, you have to be good enough to do so." So that was a little advice that I got from him. And yeah, I'll leave it to the reader to know if I was good enough or if I stuck the landing.
Mateo Askaripour:
It's more so like you're saying the artists themselves, rather than the art itself, someone like Nina Simone is one of my biggest inspiration. Miles Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Nipsey Hussle, what stands out to me and inspires me most about them is that they lived their lives fearlessly. And if they had fear, then they pushed through it and they spoke up.
Mateo Askaripour:
You have a LeBron James, then a Michael Jordan, right? Michael Jordan wasn't speaking out about things because he just didn't want to and that's okay. I'm not saying that he had to, but I respect someone like LeBron more or Colin Kaepernick more because they have made their platform a part of their social justice agenda, right. LeBron's not just going to, as that woman on Fox News said, shut up and dribble. Those are the people that inspire me and I'm continually being inspired, not just by people whose names we all know, but by people I meet, by people whose work I read or work I watch. I mean I'm inspired by you right now, Marcus, for real. So it's like-
Marcus Harrison Green:
Oh, same, brother, same. So let me ask a question that showed up in the chat box. It says, "Love the book. And I'm now turned on to your essays and will share with my students." I love to hear about educators who did or didn't help you realize the power of your own story and voice.
Mateo Askaripour:
I only had probably three teachers in my high school experience and I'd have to really think, maybe like three to five teachers in my entire schooling experience who empowered me and made me feel special and valuable. And then when I say that, I'm like, okay, is it a teacher's job to make their students feel special? I mean I've never been an educator in that way, but I would say if possible, yeah. Whenever anyone believed in me, it made a world of a difference to my performance. I felt like this person actually believed that I could do something.
Mateo Askaripour:
So I had an AP European and AP World History teacher, he was the same one. This man, Mr.[inaudible], I love that guy. He really believed in me. He made me feel like the sky was the limit. I had an English teacher and she was just blown away by my writing in that class and I didn't know if I was a good writer or not at that point, but I wrote something. And it's funny 'cause I wrote something and then I was sick one day and she had read the whole thing out loud in front of the class. And when I got back, people were clowning me for what I wrote. And 'cause I was writing about like snow and how it was sublime. But she said that she wanted to use it as an example because she liked it so much. So she believed in me. I had another history teacher who believed in me.
Mateo Askaripour:
So those were a few people, a few who made me feel special and like I was valuable. And then there were many people, where I went to school is a public school that was more a police state. We had teachers and students scrapping in the halls with each other.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Wow.
Mateo Askaripour:
Yeah. It was just like, if you did something wrong, it wasn't let's figure out why you did that and let's talk it through. It's ISS, in school suspension, right, or detention. I didn't like it. I actually left school a year early just because I was like, yo, I got to get out of here. And in New York State, if you're in advanced classes and then you take extra gym, you can leave school a year early so that's what I did.
Marcus Harrison Green:
This book, I mean it reminded me of The Great Gatsby, the great 20th century novel that sort of excavates a certain time period. And I think this, I hope 20 years from now, right, there are kids reading this in high school. What's next for you? I know you have the English tour.
Mateo Askaripour:
We're working to sell this into Hollywood. There's been a lot going on behind the scenes, and for anyone who follows along on my journey on social media or anything, when I know, you'll know.
Marcus Harrison Green:
This is actually a question that my lady had asked. She was wondering is Michael B. Jordan, would he be your first choice for Buck/Darren in a potential movie of Black Buck?
Mateo Askaripour:
No, no, he wouldn't be. Michael B. Jordan would be too old for Buck. I mean Buck is like 22 for most of it. And my number one pick would be a young brother named Kelvin Harrison, Jr. If you've seen the Godfather of Harlem, the movie Waves, he's been in so many things. He just came out in that film Monster on Netflix. He's like my number one pick. I'm working on another novel, but most of all, I'm working just to stay balanced, healthy, and present for my loved ones and those in my life.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Can you foresee potentially writing a sequel to Black Buck or are they sticking in that universe? Or is this one and done in terms of these characters and this particular story?
Mateo Askaripour:
There are people that are constantly asking about a sequel. And what I've told myself is if enough people actually wanted a sequel, I would maybe write one in 10 years, but I have so many other ideas. I have so many other things that I want to write and that I want to produce. I mean in my gut and what I actually want is for it to be one and done. I mean I don't know if I want to go back to this place.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Yeah. And then that's actually which leads me to one of the questions that I wanted to ask you is how do you sort of take care of yourself as a writer and a human being? The phrase self-care is maybe passe, maybe not. I mean but just how do you maintain?
Mateo Askaripour:
So yeah, I definitely do have some tools in my tool belt. I make sure that I take time for myself, I get into to nature when possible. I talk with family daily. I surround myself with people who love me unconditionally and who knew me before I ever wrote a published word. I consume other forms of media that I enjoy, TV and so forth. I read.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Now we have 82 people on here, I'm hoping the majority have read the book, but for those who haven't, what would you say to them in terms of why they should definitely pick up the book?
Mateo Askaripour:
If you read the description and it resonates with you, if you listen to this talk and it resonates with you, then read it. If this talk hasn't convinced you to read it, honestly, don't. We only have so much time in this life that we don't have time to read books that we won't enjoy, so I won't take it personally.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Mateo, seriously, brother, thank you so much for the privilege of your time.
Mateo Askaripour:
Thank you for your time, Marcus. Appreciate it.
Emily Calkins:
Yeah. Thank you both so much for being with us tonight and thanks to everybody who's in the audience. This is the last event of our Author Voices series for spring. We'll be back in the fall, but in the meantime, check out kcls.org for other online events and fun stuff happening this summer. And thanks again to both of you for being here. Have a great night, everybody.
Marcus Harrison Green:
Thanks for hosting.
Mateo Askaripour
Be well, everybody.
