Namwali Serpell

It's a way that she is emphasizing...

how we interpret the past, and it's inevitably going to misconstrue the past.

It's always going to mistranslate the past, right?

But I think she's also trying to preserve the sanctity of the real history.

It's a way of respecting the past and

by not trying to depict it or appropriate it, really almost extract from it.

So it's this kind of double vision in a way.

When she's writing about the story of Margaret Garner in Beloved, she says, when I was writing that novel, I didn't do too much research.

I didn't want to get too much into what actually happened.

Because I wanted to invent – I had been inspired by this historical incident, but I wanted to invent – but also there's this way that she wanted to respect the real history.

And you find her then turning to that real history in the libretto that she wrote for the opera, Margaret Garner.

So there's this way that these are – there are these double stories, right?

The stories we tell about the past and then there's the past itself.

And I think she's really keen on respecting that past.

Yes.

I mean, I think what's really – it's so moving, this moment in the play where you realize that it's a different black boy.

He got shot while he was trying to steal a kite from a store in Chicago.

And he's decided to pretend to be Emmett because there's this sense that he was more famous.

People actually cared about him.

Yeah.