Rachel Eliza Griffiths
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I'm a storyteller.
You know, the minute I could hold a pen or pencil, you know, I just wanted to make art and listen to stories and tell stories.
And growing up, you know, some people in the black community, if you tell stories, you're a liar.
To lie is to tell a story.
So immediately it's like,
Well, I want to tell stories, you know.
Oh, I'm a liar.
But my mother, I would find out, wanted to be a journalist.
And she never got to see that through.
And so then she has this daughter who arrives after she had actually had a stillborn child.
And I'm saying, I'm going to write.
I'm going to be...
This is a writer.
I think that must have been really complicated for her.
And I have to share, too, you know, after she died and I was going through her office, I opened up this bookshelf.
And on the bottom two shelves were Rachel Eliza shelves.
There were newspaper clippings.
There were stacks of little literary journals I'd given her.
This is all your writing?
Yeah.