Doreen Sanfelix
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
That makes it intergenerational. That makes it ripple. You get to see the wake continue.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Because you say it like that, the great migration, it's literal, but internally it's not.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
For 17 years, she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood in, mixed it with the rest of the blood on it. Every day, God breathed life into her body. She rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over. Play something for me, Bernice.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
The piano is a living, breathing object. It's a living, breathing altar. It's a portal. It's a door. It takes up so much space. in the design of the home, and it takes up so much space in the consciousness of everyone in the house. It's Big Mama-esque.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
And its language is just much more stealth and loud considering, right, it's silent or it is being forced to be silent. Right. And that's haunting. It's dangerous for people who want to grow in any real way. Right. That's why it's pushing on both of them. Like, do you really get to grow because you get money?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Do you really get to grow because you're going to get some land at a time where white supremacy and Jim Crow are not interested in any kind of black American cultural growth? And are you really going to be upwardly mobile? Just because you have a job, just because you're not in the South, just because you align with a man of the cloth? Are you really going to grow because you present well?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Is that true growth? The piano is questioning both of them. And everybody in the house, their end gets to be questioned. Right. It's pulling both of them in to really assess who they think they are and who they really want to be and who they think they are with or without each other.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
They don't know who Bernice is. No, we didn't have a conversation. None of the guys. Malcolm and I did. Malcolm and I dove. Malcolm and I talked about the spiritual trajectory. We talked about Zora Neale Hurston.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
So at the time, I had been reading her letters. Mm-hmm. That thick book of letters, right? This thing that people don't really do to communicate intimacies anymore. But just how bold she was. How playful and mysterious she was. How free. And Bernice is not exactly that. Or perhaps is working to get to that in the best way she can.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
So she felt like an inspiration, like Zora's an inspiration or someone she could have witnessed and seen as a flicker, as a long-form figure. She's the person who's moving back and forth in time and between the spaces that are haunting Bernice. Bernice hadn't been back to Mississippi.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Zora's going back and forth all the time. Bernice is entrenched in traditional Black American Christianity. Zora's leaving the country. She's going to Haiti. She's chilling in the South learning about hoodoo. She's doing all of the things. So that contrast just felt significant to hold on to. Because the other end of the coin is the Captain Maternal that she witnessed in the form of her mother.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
And this is the thing that made her fearful of a true self, of her authentic experience, of acknowledging it outwardly.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
It's a light one. Light work. Oh, my goodness. History is... Largely orally passed down in black communities. Information is spread in all kinds of ways. Musically. In movement. In work. In modes of survival. In the way you practice at home. The way one cleans. That's a specific history. There's a whole bunch. But I think about those when I think about the ways that it's most immediate.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Yeah. The subconscious is major when it comes to passing on history.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
That's why it's important to block out all of the books and block out all of the conversation in institutions and educational spaces so that it can't be in your subconscious, right? If I get it out of this space, then I can assuredly keep you from questioning in any other space. It won't be on your mind all the time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
You won't be able to think negatively of others or question society or question your place in the world. History making, histories being developed have to take place in your quotidian life. It's imperative. You learn stuff from cats on the street corner who's just sitting there all day As much as you learn from a teacher in the building.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
It seems that it surrounds the way they've built themselves. And everybody didn't come to it immediately, it seems, right? John David wouldn't play ball, even though he knows he loved it, right? And Malcolm was a big basketball player and thought to do a certain thing in a certain way at one time. But it's just been life force for them.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
And when you get to a mature stage and realizing who you are, by our forces combined, we are. You know what I mean? That's what that feels like. And everybody has been doing things consistently, individually or in duos like John David and Katya have been on set together already. And, you know, you can't. You just see people who are bringing everybody into the fold now.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
They are a collective spirit unto themselves. And then you extend beyond. So when you say family of sorts within me, like literally this family. And then there's a family that's being made film-wise. And then there's a greater family that is being made audience-wise. That's just, that's what you do with art. I mean, that's what the stories are when we all sit.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
Or the stories are when we have dinner. Or the stories are as we tour. Like, what does it mean to have been a part of these historical moments? This is how, you know, histories are passed, right? Histories are passed by the dinner table. Histories are passed whilst you're making the thing. Histories are passed on set. Histories are passed while you're gardening.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
You know, I'm thinking about my grandma. Like, histories are passed as we keep doing things together. And you just continue. Keep doing things together through struggle, through joy, through lovemaking, through challenge. And that's what the Washingtons feel like. You keep making stuff. You keep coming back to each other. You keep forging ahead. You keep... Rebirthing.