Carvell Wallace bares his soul in new memoir
Oakland writer Carvell Wallace spent 15 years working with at-risk youth in the Bay Area and New York before emerging in 2014, at age 40, as one of the distinctive voices in the last 10 years of journalism. Coming to fame with a passionate Facebook post following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Wallace almost immediately began fielding offers from major national publications, often writing about Black creatives — including pieces on Prince for Pitchfork and the defunct MTV News; a cover story on actor Mahershala Ali for GQ; and a collaboration with basketball star Andre Iguodala on the latter’s bestselling memoir “The Sixth Man.”
One of the most striking qualities of his writing is his ability to capture how and why people feel things, and that quality is acutely present in “Another Word for Love,” a memoir of essays reflecting on his experiences growing up with and without his mother, sometimes unhoused and sleeping in their car, while coming to terms with his identity as a queer Black man. Wallace discusses “Another Word for Love” with Shawn Taylor at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mill Valley Library.
Admission is free with RSVP. Register online at millvalleylibrary.org.
The Marin IJ recently spoke with Wallace to discuss “Another Word for Love” and the challenges of dealing honestly with your pain through writing.
Q You spoke to NPR about your desire not to write “trauma porn” while frankly discussing your experiences. What strategies as a writer did you use to talk honestly about your pain while avoiding this trap?
A The main strategy was to make sure that the book was focused more heavily on the recovery rather than the harm. Some description of the harm was necessary to situate the reader in the story, but it was very important to me that the book spend a great deal of time meditating on, exploring and dealing with experiences of love, connection and healing. There is a line in the book that says something like “It is not enough to hurt and to know that you are hurt, love requires of us to heal.” This line was as much about my life as it was about the theory of literature that guided this book.
Q You’ve praised B.B. King for his ability to communicate his pain, and you’ve also praised Kendrick Lamar for denying the listener a vicarious experience through his work. Did these musicians influence “Another Word for Love” at all? Are there any other musicians and songwriters who influence your writing?
A This is an interesting question. I write a fair bit about musicians in the book itself. In addition to a kind of review of golden-era rap artists who were important to me and my political and social identity, I also talk a lot about Donna Summer, Solange, Stevie Wonder and Frank Ocean and the ways they influence my world view and sense of community, which in a sense is the same as influencing my writing. Outside of that, the question of influence is a difficult one because I often think across disciplines in a way that is maybe a little abstract. I might look at a painting and say, “I’d like to write something that feels like this.” Or I might listen to a song and think that “the way this artist introduced the theme and then slightly distorted it in the B section is something I’d like to do with a sentence or a thesis.” There are so many songs and artists that make thoughts like this pop into my head that it’s hard to name them all. But, let me say that Thelonious Monk taught me a lot about the interplay between humor, pathos and violence; Jimi Hendrix taught me a lot about how to explore trance state in order operationalize a sense of queer cosmic mysticism; and Nina Simone taught me a lot about how to use and then purposefully misuse precision.
Q After your Facebook post went viral, you soon had bylines at publications like the New Yorker, GQ and Pitchfork. What were some of your biggest initial challenges as a journalist?
A Early in my career, the biggest challenge was writing at night while working a full-time job during the day and parenting little kids during the morning and evening. I did not sleep a lot, but also the hyperfixation kicked in heavy whenever I sat down to write, so I just let it happen, with the vague feeling that if I honored this impulse it might lead somewhere.
Q Many of the artists you grew up with (Eddie Murphy, Fred Rogers, Prince) had complicated relationships with the queer community. Did the process of navigating your own queerness give you a different perspective on these artists? Do you have any advice for readers grappling with people they look up to doing or saying things that hurt them?
A I’m not sure that I’ve ever really thought about my queerness in relation to Murphy, Rogers or Prince. They are strangers who have their own opinions and challenges. I more thought of it in relation to my cousin, brother, father and other family members, people I had actual relationships with. I thought Murphy was incredibly smart and funny. Rogers taught me a lot about listening and patience and what it means to prioritize a spiritual practice, and Prince actually did teach me a lot about an aesthetic of queerness and Black male femininity, even though he became something of a religious homophobe later. So I guess my advice is that someone being an artist just means they’re good at their art, not necessarily at anything else. And that goes for writers, too. So it is OK to take what you like and leave the rest. And it’s also OK to be like screw this person in general because of the harmful ways in which they use their platform.
Q I first found your work through your writing on Prince for MTV News and Pitchfork and was dismayed to find “Prince Can’t Die” had been removed from MTV News along with the site’s whole archive. What can people reading this piece do to help keep great journalism alive and preserve work like yours?
A Yeah, this sucks. I was gutted when I heard that the entire site had been scrubbed. Truly. I rarely get emotional about losses, but this one hit different. MTV News was a real strong lesson for me as a writer early in my career about how bad the state of commercial journalism actually is. A media property with millions upon millions of readers and deep brand recognition decided to engage in real high-level journalism, hired all of these brilliant writers, Doreen St. Felix, Hanif Abdurraqib, Charles Aaron, etc., helmed by Dan Fierman and the legend Jessica Hopper. We wrote our asses off for a year, truly engaged with culture criticism and real music journalism and then some exec decided they didn’t want to make other media conglomerates mad and it was all gone, replaced for a while with anodyne recaps of Miley Cyrus outfits and then everything was erased under the cover of night. It was really disappointing and gross and it was also a lesson on how good writing is always at risk under late-stage capitalism. The MTV falloff is really worth studying if you want to understand how this country got to the point it’s gotten to in the last 50 years. As far as what readers can do, support real journalism with subscriptions, and recognize the limitations of the ad-supported model. Also sometime in like 2018 it dawned on me that MTV might pull a stunt like this, so I saved all of my pieces in PDF form. It’s not all uploaded to my site yet, but the Prince piece is. Please read it! It’s one of my all-time favorites.