Masculinity, More Liberated and Free (with Frederick Joseph)

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Intro – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes. I’m Blair Hodges. We're mapping out the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other. Our guide in this episode is Frederick Joseph.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I realized I did not have language—as a writer!—for most of the things that were inside of me. This chaos of directions I had been pointed to go that I didn't even know if I wanted to go, of what we define as a Black man in society, right?  What we define as being masculine in society. What we define as just simply being a "man" in society.

BLAIR HODGES: Frederick Joseph grew up without a father. And he's wondering if he wants to be one. As a kid he loved Broadway musicals, but some people thought he'd be better suited for sports. And today, as a writer, he resists the suffocating expectations placed on him as a Black man in America, making room for the full range of human emotions—sorrow, laughter, anger, pain, love, and joy.

His message is resonating. He's made the New York Times best-seller list twice. His latest book is a collection of poems called We Alive, Beloved. Frederick Joseph joins us now to talk about the intersections of race and masculinity in America.

 

Writing About Race – 01:56

 

BLAIR HODGES: Frederick Joseph, welcome to Relationscapes.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Thank you for having me. How are you today?

BLAIR HODGES: I'm really excited to talk about how your work explores the intersections of gender and race in America, and specifically for you, Blackness and masculinity.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, so much of that is at the root of my work, whether it's in poetry, nonfiction, or even forthcoming novels. I think it's important for us to unpack our intersections we live at, and how best to do that, and demonstrate doing it myself.

BLAIR HODGES: Do you ever wish you could kind of do other types of stuff? The reason I asked this question is because I remember something from James Baldwin where he said, imagine all the incredible things that we could write if we didn't have to try to address America's deep racism and reckon with all this stuff.

Does that ring a bell to you, or is this kind of in your wheelhouse anyway?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting. I started my career writing primarily nonfiction—The Black Friend, Patriarchy Blues, et cetera, et cetera—because I wanted to kind of get it out the way, like, hey, just in case something happens to me tomorrow, you know, there's some things here to kind of help leave the world a better place.

But, you know, in the future, my goal is to always tackle “the things.” But I think even in my novels that are that are coming out in the coming years, I give myself the opportunity to play with other aspects of my interests. Whether that's, you know, my comedic bone or even bringing up things in my work, like anime and things of that nature.

But I do think that it's—you know, I guess even as I'm thinking about it, even in those books I’m tackling the Vietnam War and stuff. So, yeah. We are constantly still doing “the thing,” so it does get tiring. But I feel like I was called to the work, so I try not to think about it too much.

BLAIR HODGES: I also think about the fact that everybody is engaging from their place of identity. And so, white authors, for example, might not feel the weight of writing as a white author, but even their work is shot through with all the background of white supremacy or their own perspectives.

So I think when it comes to more racially conscious authors, and especially Black authors, it's more out on the table because of the nature of racism. For white authors, it might seem like it's not there, and they can maybe even feel like they're writing from a raceless place. But they're not. Nobody is.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. No one is. That's an excellent point.

 

Masculinity Begins in Boyhood – 04:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, well, let's set the table with a reading from your new collection of poems. The book is called We Alive, Beloved. And the poem I thought we'd start with is called “Session III: To Eulogize a Man.”

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Absolutely.

[04:33]

Session III: To Eulogize a Man.

Rage once carved its home in the chambers of a man.
Boyhood pillars, barbed and tangled, became a cruel foundation.
I navigated the fortress of this binary, my heart under rusted lock.
My tears untold myths in the hollow of my eyes.

Can you see the tyrant’s sword I carried?
Masculine rigidness engraved, bloomed from roots
Rotting in ancient deceit?

But the Reaper's ledger bore my name.
In the way of a reckoning,
Cast naked into the underbelly of moonlight,
Beneath the shroud of the world's oldest mother,
I died—and then I became

A man, not by the measure of years,
But by the weight of the choices fossilized within my marrow.

A cemetery of selves, quiet within
Unmarked graves, housing faces I once wore.
Buried in the alcoves of memory,
Rabid ghosts gnawed at the peace of those
Who loved me.

Shall we gather tonight, in the ghost light?
So you might help me write the eulogy
For the people I once was.

No roses, no tears, just the quiet ritual
Of acknowledging the truth,
And letting it rest in the land of yesterday.
I nurture new seeds watered
with accountability wrung from my past selves.

BLAIR HODGES: That's beautiful, Fred. The reason I wanted to start here is because you're talking about past selves and how we all carry these past selves with us. Or we're haunted by them like ghosts, they're part of us. And you talk about boyhood pillars at the very beginning, which became a kind of cruel foundation.

I wanted to hear outside of poetry, how you would talk about those pillars. What are they? What are those boyhood pillars you were building on?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I think when we think of boyhood, especially in the context of Western society, it's typically seen through the lens of stoicism, violence, aggression, accomplishment, right? And I think that in a capitalistic society, when those things all meet, you're in for trouble, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: The intersection of all those things meeting is a lot of trouble.

I would also add, a void of emotion is one of the pillars, or at least emotion that lends itself to anything other than anger.

And so when I talk about these pillars, all the things I just named, it creates, or rather, you lay a home that is yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul, on these things, and they are rotting. While the home might stay up, what is falling through? What is falling apart? What is damaged? You might be standing up, but you're not a whole self.

BLAIR HODGES: It reminded me of an essay in Patriarchy Blues, your previous book, where there were some neighborhood kids that stole some of your Pokémon cards, or maybe all of them. They stole your Pokémon cards, and your mom told you to go get them back. And you were a kid. Didn't want to get in trouble, didn't want to get in fights. This is not the kid you were.

But maybe in the name of survival and a mother's fear for her child she said, I don't want you to come home till you get those back. Which in your case probably meant engaging in some kind of boyhood violence.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, you know, in that story my mom worked really hard to get me Pokémon cards. This is when Pokémon was all the rage. I think it is again now, if I'm not mistaken.

BLAIR HODGES: It’s back!

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, yeah. Everything comes back at some point with age. But we were poor. There's no other way of putting that. We lived in poverty, and so to have something such as Pokémon cards was a huge thing. My mother worked extra hours and took other shifts so that she could make that happen.

And when these kids stole my cards, I just didn't know what to do. And so I had asked for them multiple times, and they refused to back to me. And so I eventually went home, and my mother asked, where are your cards? I had, like, a little book that I had the cards in to proudly display and show people. I was walking around, and my mother essentially told me, “You have to go find a way to get those cards. Don't come home until you have the cards.”

Because she was trying to teach me a lesson in—It wasn't just a lesson in ownership, really. I think some people took that story that way. It was a lesson in being a Black kid in America. The way in which that part of me would have to harden for respect that would help me survive.

And I went back outside, and I kept on begging for the cards. And eventually I just became enraged at the idea that someone would not only take my property, but would put me in a position where I was essentially putting my mother in a position where her act of love and kindness was almost worthless. It meant nothing to them. It meant everything to me.

So eventually I got the cards back by wailing on the kids. I grabbed a really big, like, stick branch thing, you know, and just started wailing on these kids and not only took my cards back, but took other kids’ cards as well that they had taken and gave the cards back to other kids in the neighborhood who had lost their cards to these kids.

And, you know, and I think that's the difficulty about the intersection of violence because it's a language that sadly, some people only understand in our society. And so that's a difficult one to navigate. How do you communicate with people when they've been taught generationally only one language?

BLAIR HODGES: And you talk about in Patriarchy Blues, you say that after you just punched the crap out of this kid, you're looking at your bloody knuckles, you're looking at these kids, and you say that something died in you in that moment. And that took me to this eulogy where you're talking about the death of something in you. And that your mother was engaging in what a lot of people call “the talk.”

This is something a lot of white people probably aren't as familiar with. These are discussions with kids about racism in America and about who they need to be. And I think the more common way of thinking about the talk is that you need to be careful around police, you need to be unassuming in stores. You walk around without your hands in your pockets, don't wear a hoodie at night, like these kind of things.

But there's this other side of this hardness, this, like, survival thing of, you need to learn how to fight, because if you don't, then you're going to get wrecked as well. So that's another element of that talk that again, it's something I hadn't ever really heard about until I started engaging with this kind of literature.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think one of the docuseries that will put certain things into perspective, I think, for your listeners, is Exterminate All the Brutes by Raoul Peck. It just kind of talks about colonization from, you know, from the early instances of the Dutch colonizing what is now the United States to more recent instances of just the propensity for violence in this country and in other countries, against primarily people of color.

And the reason I bring that up is because for people like my mother, whose mother's grandfather, her great grandfather, was lynched in the South, this conversation about survival is not just a survival of police. It's not just a survival of the education system or the housing system or all the systems designed and crafted by white supremacy.

It's the survival of everything, because so much has been influenced by those systems, right? So you're talking about—

BLAIR HODGES: Scarcity.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. How do you survive in a neighborhood where white supremacy has had such a stranglehold, even on Black minds? How do you survive, you know, as an author one day in an industry that is extremely supremacist laden, how do you survive when you're leaving the house, when you're watching television?

So my mother was trying to instill in me a hardness just so she wouldn't lose her son.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And that hardness you talk about as a death in your poetry, as something dying in you. You became more violent. You were more prone to have fights or to be ready to fight. And we get to see that throughout your work.

 

Lacking Language – 13:21

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's turn to an earlier poem here. This is called “Session I: Learning to Speak.” This is earlier in the book on page 12, and I'll have you read that one to connect up with where we're going here.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Sure.

[13:33]

Session I: Learning to Speak.

I was an adult when I began the difficult labor of speech.
In the gray light of a stranger's office grew a wasteland of words
Catacombs of hidden hurts, of joys too fragile
To share, stubborn in my throat. Voice trembling like a newborn's cry.
Each syllable an act of creation, each silence, a statement of intent.

“Where should we start?”

Well—I'm Black, in a time where just being
Black isn't marginalized enough. Disabled, but not enough
for most to care. Fatherless, but I don't tell people
to avoid tropes. Mother-less when it matters,
even when everyone says “She's still your mom.” Depressed,
but who isn't these days? So I never
bring it up. Engulfed by trauma, not knowing
whether I'm a good husband. Riddled with anxiety,
wondering what being a good father looks like.
Questioning myself, about the extent of my writing
talent, if I have any. Oh, and the potential of being
poor again constantly over my head, like a cartoon anvil
that falls out of nowhere.

“How about we start at the beginning.”

Between my teeth, the syllables shivered, nestled like unlit candles.
But he could see my stories were a refuge: uprooted and lost,
Seeking sanctuary. Silence stirred like tea leaves, eyes with notes
Of a brewing storm. Before lips can know language,
The heart must know truth.

How strange it feels to bloom so late, after wearing disguises,
To camouflage in crowds, and in myself. But to speak at all,
Is to be right on time—at least that's what my therapist said.
As my tongue stumbled over the debris of dread, relinquishing
The paper fortress of loss, I sculpted sentences out of my sorrow.

With each word an island is born, rising from an ocean of unbroken
Self, fortified under the therapist's gaze, each nod
Of understanding becomes grains of sand gathered until
there is land enough to inhabit: a continent of voice.

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you.

So this one is “Session I.” We started with Session III, then we went back in time. You're sitting with a therapist, and they always say, where should we start? And then your mind just wanders. I see the idea of intersectionality arising here, right? All your different identities and how they're tied up into an idea of masculinity.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, it's so funny because I'm actually in the process of doing a consultation this week for another therapist, as a matter of fact.

But, you know, for me, that first session I ever had with a therapist was one of the most important sessions ever. And this poem kind of combines a few sessions just because the first session was actually before I was married, but you get the point.

But I realized I did not have language as a writer for most of the things that were inside of me, right? Just this chaos of tropes, this chaos of, you know, directions I had been pointed to go that I didn't even know if I wanted to go. And all these things rooted in what we define as a Black man in society, right? What we define as being masculine in society. What we define as just simply being a man in society. And so, you know, this poem was just like, what did it feel like to first start considering language for those things?

BLAIR HODGES: There's actually a term for that. There's a clinical term. I don't remember how to pronounce it, but it's in another episode where men especially often lack the actual vocabulary for different emotions. They literally can't say what it is. And this comes up again and again in different episodes. There will be an episode on Intimate Partner Violence where a man whose daughter was killed by her spouse can't even really talk about it because the words just aren't there.

And like you said, you're a writer. That's your craft. Like, this is your skill. And you found yourself confronting a deficit. And in therapy, learning, you had to learn new language here.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, I think that's the whole thing with therapy, I think that's the point to it. It's finding language. Even if that language is, like, not verbal, if the language is just in the body, right? Just how you talk to yourself, how you move throughout the world, throughout anything.

It's so important, I think, that a society where men begin finding the language is a society on the precipice of finally being decent.

 

Homophobia and the Complicated Mentor – 18:50

 

BLAIR HODGES: Speaking of intersections, you talked about disabilities. We can talk about sexuality, too. You're a heterosexual guy, but you also have to reckon with homophobia in your life, right? So I'm thinking, for example, of a letter you wrote to a drama teacher that's found here in Patriarchy Blues. And this musical theater teacher, he seemed to sense you had this innate love of musical theater, like, you loved it, but you soon came to pick up on, maybe that wasn't okay for a guy.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. Steven Zawel, may he rest in peace, was for a long time my favorite educator. He was a drama teacher, and he was someone—I mean, whatever a person thinks of a drama teacher, like, you know, think the 90s, and I mean, drama with the capital D! Like Drama, you know. [laughter]

And I went to a performing arts elementary school, and so you could take anything you wanted. You could be in band, you could be in drama, you can be in dance, so on and so forth. And so I was originally in band, and I was joking around, I believe, singing something, I can't remember what it was. And he was putting on a musical, and he heard me singing this thing in the hallway. And he said, “Hey, could you sing this?” And he gave me a few lines in the hallway. I'm all of, like, 9 or 10 years old, and it was from the show Oklahoma!

So he's like, can you do that? And I'm like, yeah, sure. And I do that. He's like, how'd that feel? And I'm like, good. He's like, okay, we're gonna get you outta band and get you right into drama, you know?

And while in there, I just loved it. I absolutely loved it. And because we were putting on, the first show I was in was West Side Story, you know, I got to not only act, but dance and sing. And I just, to this day, it's probably my first love. And somewhere along the way, I don't remember when it was, but I just remember somebody saying, something to the effect of, “That's what gay people do.”

I didn't even know what that meant, really. I'm at that point, maybe I'm 12 or 13. I didn't really at 13, I think, but maybe 12. I was like, yeah, I don't really know. And so I just started having this feeling like I shouldn't be doing this. And as I was having this feeling that I shouldn't be doing this, the things that I should be doing, especially as a young Black kid—Why aren't you playing basketball? Why aren't you throwing a football? Why aren't you watching football? Who's your favorite player?

People are like, oh, who's your favorite athlete? I'm like, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim. I don't know. [laughter] You know, I'm not into that. And so eventually, when I started coming to terms with what certain things meant and what it meant for how people identified me, again—And also, people have to bear in mind I'm also, you know, besides just being a boy, I'm a Black boy in poverty, just trying to find my way. I said, “Okay, I guess I'm supposed to step away from these things so I can be a real boy and become a real man,” you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And this teacher did so much for you, but you also talk about the complications here because he's such a positive figure, but he also is the one who introduced you to the musical The King and I, which you discovered was, like, severely racist.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, gosh, yeah. I think that's one of the things I've also struggled with.

So we did The King and I, and, you know, as a kid, preteen, whatever, I had no issue with it. And then as I got older and began to unpack some of the things we were doing—Even recently, I actually thought about him again, because he was a staunch Zionist, and I didn't really think about that until more recently and what that actually meant, you know, especially the intersection of thinking about him and The King and I, and the racism of The King and I.

And then, you know, his sense of, a kind of colonial mindset in terms of, like, settling lands and things like that.

BLAIR HODGES: And so, for really quick background, like, the king basically needs to be tamed. And the white people come on in and, like, fix it all, basically.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yes. So for those who have not seen The King and I, basically, you have this country, Siam, I believe it is, where you have just—absolutely disgusting—what's essentially supposed to be these brutish, ignorant, you know, brown people who need the English to come in and help them become refined and dignified and more Western.

And in large part, that is the job of—and I forget her character's name now, but the main woman in the show, where she's meant to basically teach the King of Siam's children how to be proper, good Western children. How to speak eloquently and things like that, from a Western problematic sense, and a white sense.

BLAIR HODGES: It's The Odd Couple with more racism. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yes, yes, there's so much to it. It's actually also very patriarchal, so there's a lot to that. And so, you know, after the fact, when I'm unpacking what it meant to play these roles, as a man, I'm unpacking the roles I was in love with as a kid.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I had to also unpack who Steven Zawel was, right? And for all his wonderful, amazing tendencies and also his flaws, I mean, he was also a very demanding educator to the point where he wanted Broadway perfection from 12-year-olds and 11-year-olds and 10-year-olds. And so, yeah, he would yell at us in a way like, where I would cry, weekly, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: If I missed a note, right? And he would say verbatim—He would curse to the point where parents would have to come in and actually complain about him. And I loved him so much I just never brought up to my mother—But he would say things like, “Are you f*cking stupid? That's not the note.” And you're 12!

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: But it's beautiful to see you wrestle with this because you also don't just unequivocally condemn this man. It seems like you're really wrestling with the dissonance of the fact that, like, people can be important in your life and also be really problematic.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, isn't that everybody? Like, I think the beautifully sad and honest thing about coming to terms with yourself and the people around you is that you find out that in our own ways, we're all a bit broken, all a bit dark, and maybe all a bit of someone's villain in their story. Right?

 At some point or another, because we're all trying to figure this thing out. And the systems are much older than we are. And so, when I think about Mr. Zawel or when I think about some other educators, or coaches. I've had my own, my mother, my grandmother.

Like people constantly say, I speak the world of my grandmother. My grandmother was my everything. My grandmother was also an alcoholic, but my grandmother was an alcoholic in large part because I can't even imagine being a Black woman raised in the Carolinas in the 30s, you know, during Jim Crow and having a father who was lynched.

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So, of course, I could be mad about your alcoholism, or I could look at the root cause of you needing an outlet. And there's just so many things like that. And I think that if we all had a little bit more space to consider, we would not be so hurt.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Frederick Joseph, and we're talking about his book, We Alive, Beloved, a new book of poems. And he also wrote the book Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood. He's received a ton of awards, including the International Literacy Association's 2021 Children's and Young Adults Book Award. He was a 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list maker and was also included in the Roots Top 100 Most Influential African Americans.

 

Stranger Danger Dad – 27:06

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, Fred, let's talk a little bit about your father. I'm going to have you read a poem about him called “My Father's Void.”

[27:15]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: My Father's Void.

The ink had not dried on my birth certificate,
when my father's form became vacant.
Casualties of Reagan's war on Blackness.
A cradle left to be rocked by echoes,
of sirens and fleeing footsteps.
Gone not as a thief, stealthy and kind,
rather as smoke dissipates, abandoning the fire.

But with his ghost, he left me
An inheritance. Not a void, rather a container—
A black hole. On the other side is me.

Pulling in fragments of cosmos,
From every soul who leans in close,
pouring into me parts of themselves
as hugs. Kisses. Laughter. Shoulders to cry on.

In the black hole my father left,
the vast expanse of that darkened space,
stars were born from every tear I shed.
I learned the dance of resilience, feet bare,
On the shards of what he could not give
I arose, clear and rare. Whole.

BLAIR HODGES: You say you don't look like your dad?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: No.

BLAIR HODGES: But you do carry his name.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: I don't remember if you've ever even met him.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: No. Well, one: I look just like my mother, but with a beard. And two: I have met my father once. I was—It's a really sad story, actually—I was maybe 6 or 7 when I was at a mall with my grandmother, and there was a man staring at me. And I was always taught, you know, like, stranger danger!

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And, “If you see this,” and, you know, I'm a kid born in the 80s, raised in the 90s. Stranger danger. Stranger danger. Hashtag. [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. White vans without windows around every corner in the 80s.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. Exactly. And so what happened was, someone was staring at me. And I told my grandmother, this man is staring at me. And she looked at him, and she's like, “He's staring at you because he's your father, and he's not saying anything because he's a coward."

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And then she just, like, pulled me away.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yep.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you ever talk about that moment with her again after that?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: You know, I don't think so. I don't think I talked about it with her or with my mother. I was one of those kids who is acutely aware of other people's pain and like, difficulties, right? Like, the type of kid who knew we were poor, so I would turn the lights off, knowing I wanted to, like, help with the electric bill or whatever.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So I just wasn't going to create any more drama, any more trauma. Things like that.

BLAIR HODGES: You even say about him, as you're trying to, like, think about why he became who he became—this kind of connects to what we were saying with your drama teacher. You're thinking about whatever pain and trauma he had that seemed to entitle him to cause others pain and trauma. Here's a quote from one of the essays in Patriarchal Blues.

“The thing about life is that every new day you have is an opportunity to be someone different, someone better. I can't judge the boy who made mistakes,” the boy being your father, you know, “as I've made a lifetime of them myself, and I expect to make many more. But I do judge the man who refuses to atone for what his younger self has done.”

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: So there's both accountability and trying to, like, have your heart feel what he's feeling.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. And I feel like that's everything, right? That's life. We can hold space for many things to be true at once. And I think that, sadly, our society just doesn't.

For me, I'm a Black man now who works with Black boys, Black teens, and so on and so forth. And I can see so much and I can't really imagine. I mean, like, when my mother became pregnant, the two of them were 18.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, they were kids.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. Children. And so on that hand. And your children growing up in the Reagan era, and in Yonkers, New York, which was one of the last places systematically desegregated in the country, actually. And so I can't imagine.

But then on the other hand, I am collateral damage from all of that, right? And so I have to hold space for both truths, like your pain and your struggle, but also my pain and my struggle.

 

The Question of Becoming a Parent – 32:02

 

BLAIR HODGES: I want to connect that to your own thoughts about being a father.

I also just want to add as a footnote, there's a great little poem before the one we're about to read called “Cereal Time Machine” where you talk about eating a bowl of cereal every week to help you stay alive. I still eat bad cereal. Like, quote “bad.” Like sugar cereals is still kind of what I do. So just wanted to shout that out real quick. [laughter]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I love that. You know, it's so funny when you're curating a collection of poetry it's almost like an art gallery to a certain extent. And there's some poems in it that I feel are very high brow and there's some things that—I don't think are low brow at all, but I think that they are, like, for specific people. [laugher]

And I'm happy that someone relates to that because I actually think it's a very powerful sentiment, this idea of like, you know, freezing time and still being young and a kid and enjoying the things that have kept you alive in that way.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I love that you put it right next door to the poem I'm about to have you read called “Legacy Born in Ash.” So with that in mind, that you still kind of use that time machine to get back to those probably Saturday morning cartoons and eating that terrible cereal, let's have you read “Legacy Born in Ash.”

[33:08]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Legacy Born in Ash.

I have watched rivers turn skeletal beneath an atomic sun,
Seen forests laid low and undone in the throes of
Merciless wildfire Set by no one and everyone.
I've choked on smoke-blackened skies
Bruising cerulean until they're gray
Palms smeared in the grit of a home in peril.

Still, each night, I rock the dream of an unborn child,
And wake with the excitement of an unfinished poem.

Then, in a voice weighted by day's gravity, I ask the mirror—
Could I invite a little one into this, a world
Unraveling like old wool in indifferent hands?

Maybe it's vanity. Trying to exorcise the ghosts
Left by a father I never knew,
Mother, whom I haven't seen in years.

Am I wrong for wanting to christen a child of a name
Drawn from the wellspring of our ancestors,
Gift them laughter from my favorite movies,
Pass down the colors of teens I cherish,
Show up for them in places I felt alone?

Could I bear the weight of a child's trust broken,
Knowing there was a way to protect them from it all?
As I yearn to press my own life into another,
I know evergreen love cannot be an everlasting shield,
For Black children still living as both miracle and target.

BLAIR HODGES: So those considerations—it's not just about the ongoing troubles in the world; a pandemic and climate change. But also the state of racism in America and everything that constitutes. And these are just some of the thoughts, let alone all your personal thoughts, about, could I be a good dad? Could I, you know, could I stand to see a kid's heart break, even if it's something I didn't do?

All these questions you're reckoning with in thinking about becoming a parent. Where are you now in this journey?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Oh, that is an excellent question. Gosh. It depends on the day. Today is one of those days where I think, especially transparently, with everything that's happened in Gaza, I'm not feeling good about parenthood. And for anyone who is a parent who will listen to this, you know, praise be upon you.

It's rough. I have trouble being a dog parent right now, right? Like, I'll be walking my dog in my neighborhood, and there's just, like, litter all over. And I live in a pretty nice New York City neighborhood, and it's just litter and trash and it's hotter this year than it's ever been already.

And it's like, yeah, you know, I'm just. All the things. All the things. So I'm struggling. I am, Blair. I am struggling deeply.

BLAIR HODGES: And you almost already had kids. There's a beautiful poem where you talk about the loss of a child, where you're talking about you and your partner. It's called “We Cry Together.” And maybe tell folks a little bit about that poem and how that connects to this. Because you're still struggling with the idea of becoming a parent while you almost were one at one point.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. And I think that the world for me looked different at that time. So that was now two years ago, you know, my wife became pregnant, and this is after trying for quite some time. And she has struggled with infertility. And so we went the route of IVF, and it stuck at first. And then we find out one day, on a random day that was supposed to be just a routine check-in that there is no longer a viable pregnancy. And so I wrote about that as probably one of the most detrimental and painful moments of my entire life.

Not just, not even just the period of time, but rather like the precise moment and the look on her face when she found out. Because I've never seen pain and disappointment like that in my entire life. And again, I struggle now even because, you know, my wife still wants to have children and be a mother.

And I feel like she has a way, whether it's a superpower or not I'm not sure, of disassociating a little bit with society at times just so she can, like, carve out spaces for her happiness. And I don't really have that. I think our careers are also different. You know, a lot of my career is, being ten toes down, neck deep in the pool of these things.

And so, yeah, that's the thing right now is kind of like this internal battle because of the external factors.

BLAIR HODGES: There are moments in this piece that I think anybody who has experienced IVF or experienced this kind of loss that will deeply resonate with. There's a gift some writers have to put into words the unspeakable. Maybe we could read this one?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: It's really beautiful. This is on page 42.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Sure.

[38:31]

We Cry Together.

Her shriek is raw, snapping all the world's quiet
As dreams, unborn, tumble into the abyss of almost.
I don't know this sound; an anguish that pierces my soul.
With what little strength I have, I grab her hand,
Weaving through the grooves of her sorrow,
Though my grip is frail.

The geography of her face is foreign to me,
As the doctor explains the terrain of a pain
I cannot mend. A black hole I cannot save her from.
Nah, this can't be right. Look again! Refusing to accept my wife's body,
As the sight of such an inexplicable banishing—
A promise left lingering in the world of daydreams.
She asks me and the doctor to leave the room,
Needing a moment to plead with the universe.

From the hallway, I hear her sobbing, an ocean devouring her smile.
My knuckles meet the steel door of a sterile hospital room,
Attempting to punch away our misfortune until I can replace it
With something she actually deserves. For all of the IVF shots,
The nights we debated over names, the anxiety attacks about money,
And the moments we pinched ourselves at the idea of being chosen
by Saadiq. Saadiq Joseph.
How do you stitch a wound living in the syllables of a name never called?

There is nothing to say, when spun into a vortex of unspeakable loss.
We spend weeks huddled around grief like a campfire,
Telling silent ghost stories about the people we stopped being
Just days before. Nurturing a flame so small it could be
mistaken
for hope.

In the most somber hours, when the world took its deepest breath,
I sat beside her, staring at the slight crescent of her unhoused belly,
For so long, I swore I heard a heartbeat, but it was actually planets collapsing
In the cavities of my chest. And I wondered, how are we going to survive this,
And in time, my question was answered:
Together.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Frederick Joseph reading from his new book, We Alive, Beloved. He's been a New York Times best-selling author twice. Once for The Black Friend and another for Patriarchy Blues.

 

Publishing Personal Things So Others Feel Seen – 41:28

 

BLAIR HODGES: When you wrote this, did you bring it to her first? What did you do with this piece?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Whenever I have something that kind of intimately discusses her, or anybody else for that matter, I try to let them read it first. Give their green light, thoughts, so on and so forth. And yeah, the piece was written shortly after we found out, but I don't think I had her read it for like another year and a half or something like that.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow. So you had to keep it. When you think about a poem like that, I mean, it's so intimate, it's so personal and it can mean so much to people. So the fact of making it public matters so much. But I wondered if you ever kind of wrestle with that, about how this is a sacred thing you experienced and what is it like to decide whether you're going to make something like that part of your public work.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I mean, I think for me, I think that's part of the work, is helping other people feel seen, right? I think, [laughs] I tell people all the time, I think I'm a good writer. I think if there's anything that makes me a great writer or a writer worth remembering is that that I've given you the things that I have so you could feel less alone, right?

Baldwin was phenomenal. Didion, Morrison, I don't know that I am or will ever be at any of those levels. But what I do know is that I gave what I had and that people will walk away from it feeling less alone because I've demonstrated that we are all facing such similar things.

BLAIR HODGES: And the next question I ask, not to find out specifics, but are there pieces you have decided like, no, actually this one's for me.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Hmm. There are pieces, at least in this collection there are pieces that I actually didn't decide were for me, but I decided that they needed to be out in the world sooner.

So there's a few resources on my social media that I wrote while in edits of this. So, like a lot of pieces, you know, about current events, right?  You look at, you know, children who have been taken so heinously in Gaza and whatnot. And so I had pieces ready for this collection, I'm just like, you know, I want people right now, not in something they have to pay for, but right now you can just come to my page and share to feel like you're in community with someone.

And so I think those are the only times that I've ever, you know, used something or held something back from being—so it's still public, it's just not in the collection.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's interesting. The difference between, like where you're putting work even matters. Like just the thought process of like, okay, am I going to hold this one back, put it in a collection? Am I going to just put it out right now?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's been extremely important for me. Because I think another thing is that the collection also has pieces in it that wouldn't work on like a social media platform.

Because there are things in this collection that you have to actually—not just sit with because of what I'm saying, but I reference events, even. Like, as an example, if you don't know who Tyre Nichols is, right, you have to go Google who Tyre Nichols is. If you don't know who George Stinney is. And you have to go Google George Stinney and what happened to George Stinney?

There's a poem in the collection called “The Odyssey,” which I think is a five-part poem. Five or six part. And that's not a social media—that is something that you have to like legitimately—I have had to go back and sit with it and, you know, like, okay, okay. You know? [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: So wait, so when you're writing, is it kind of like you're not laboring over every word? What's the actual process like, then? And maybe it differs according to poem, but are you just kind of letting your mind go, or are you sort of, like, really trying to get the lyric and workshopping every word to see how it sounds? What's your process?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: You know, I write like a songwriter, I suppose, so I already have, like, a tune in my head, what I want people doing to it. Whether if it's like, I want you smiling, I want you fawning over someone, I want you, whatever. And so I just kind of, like, go with what the feeling is.

So if I want you angry, right? Like, I have a poem that I believe is in this as well, but it was originally actually on social media where I'm talking about gun violence. And it's a very brief poem, and I'm just, you know, “Guns Don't Weep for Us.” And I wrote it originally after the absolute heinous moment in Uvalde and hearing about all those children. Oh, God.

And it's just. I'm angry, right? And so I have in my head, it's almost like Rage against the Machine or something in my brain. And I'm just like, “the NRA” and “this is your fault,” you know? And so I just go from there, and then I'll go back to it and edit later with a clearer mind.

Like I am in the studio, if you would, when I'm writing, and then I come back after, and I kind of do what you do, really. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah, you got to cut it. You’ve got to piece it together, right?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah.

 

Suicide, Violence, and Thinking About Audience – 47:06

 

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned “The Odyssey,” this is a beautiful piece that reflects on suicide. And as you said at the beginning of this piece, suicide is the third leading cause of death for Black men ages 15 to 24 in the United States. And the number's not going down.

In your own life, as you're creating art from this, are you thinking about your own experiences? How personal does this piece get for you?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, I think for me, I've struggled with so much. I've not thankfully struggled with wanting to die by suicide, but I've been in places where I wish I could disappear, if that makes any sense. And I do think there's a differentiation between the two. I think that dying by suicide is wanting to legitimately take yourself from this world and cease to exist. I think I've wanted to exist just elsewhere, you know?

And so I've struggled so deeply with that at points where I'm just like, in tears very often, just like wake up in tears and go to bed in tears. And you have those days when you were looking at this world, right? Not just as a Black person, but just as a human being. Just like on a day where you see a father in another part of the world find his child under rubble with no way to identify them other than the thing they were wearing last.

BLAIR HODGES: I know exactly what you're talking about.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, it's hard not to go to sleep drenched in tears that night, right? And so I've struggled with that, right? I've struggled understanding wanting to disappear. It makes sense to me, someone who wants to die by suicide. And so I just think it's such an important topic to tackle, especially in a collection titled We Alive, Beloved. Because I think the idea of being alive is so multifaceted, but that also plays on the idea of being beloved. I do think all my readers, for me, are beloved beings who I am just so happy to be on this journey with.

BLAIR HODGES: You talk a lot, actually, about the thought process that goes into a lot of your pieces. And with the suicide piece, you're talking about violence, again you're talking about violence directed toward the self. Then you talked about the Uvalde piece, the piece about gun violence, about violence directed towards others. You talked about violence you struggled with as you learned to fight as a mechanism of survival and masculinity and learning to put that behind you.

And in Patriarchy Blues, there's a moment where—Well, there's a lot of moments where you say, well here's a quote. “It took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to frame this entry and more important, what I have to offer the conversation.”

So when you're writing a public piece like this, it's not poetry. When you're doing more of your essay type work, what audiences are you thinking about? Like, what are the calculations? And the reason I ask is because talking about, for example, your dad leaving you could easily be picked up by people who have tropes about Black dads, right? So even talking about it can be kind of used in really problematic ways.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: So, like when you're thinking about talking about this tough stuff, what are you thinking? When it comes to audience and how you're going to frame things, what are you doing?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: God, that's such a great question. For those who don't know my background, and you and I were talking about this before, my background is in comms. Originally, I got my MBA in marketing. And so I'm constantly thinking about audiences and segmentation and things like that.

BLAIR HODGES: It's kind of a blessing and a curse, man.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. Yeah, truly! And I have to just, at times, throw it by the wayside because I can't be beholden to everyone else's ignorance, right? I have to be authentic and truthful.

But I also think that's why I constantly reimagine existence, right? I push back against tropes by just writing a myriad of things.

So yes, if you have a Black trope about fatherhood, I've also told you that I want to be a father, right? And I know fathers. If you have a trope about violence, and you can feel as if I'm leaning into that. But I also have a piece in that same collection or in that same book about being tender with other Black men. And so I'm constantly pushing against, you know—

And then even in, like I mentioned earlier, forthcoming novels. My novels are probably the most tender I've ever been in my writing. Because you get to really imagine in fiction. And recreate.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, you can get into psychological states of your characters, too, in ways that I think you can't really do that in essays. I mean, you get there a little bit, like when you're talking about your dad and you're kind of imagining things that he went through, and you're sort of exercising your empathy there. But you can't tell a “truth” about your dad in the same way that you could if you're controlling the whole story as when you're writing a piece of fiction.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Exactly. No, that's exactly it. Because I think that, you know—Inside Baseball. So my debut novel comes out next May. It's entitled This Thing of Ours. And it centers this kid whose father passed away, and he has a difficult relationship with his mother, and a great relationship with his grandmother.

It somewhat plays on certain things that I'm pulling from my own life a little bit. But, like, as an example, he didn't want his father to abandon him. His father, actually, in the little instances where we hear about him and who he was, was extremely loving and caring. And he didn't die from gun violence. He didn't die from violence in any way. In fact, he actually died from, like, systemic violence in a very nuanced way against, like, Black bodies in medicine and in, like, expectations of Black bodies, right?

And so I get to—again to your point—take what I've written, take my experiences, take the things I see, and imagine more, imagine different, and also imagine the things that are actually also real, that are just not my experience.

I have plenty of friends who are Black dads and had Black dads and will continue to be Black dads, as an example.

 

Is the Internet a Net Negative for the World? – 53:43

 

BLAIR HODGES: This is where fiction can be truer, in some ways you can be truer in fiction than you can be in writing essays. I love it, it's so obvious that you have this communications background.

Like, you're always thinking about how there's levels, right? There's the message you're conveying. There's the messenger and everything that you're bringing along with it. Then there's the messages, the package, like, what you're doing, and there's the audience that it's packaged for, and then there's multiple audiences.

And sometimes the story could be something as simple as, like, a bad Airbnb experience, and then on Twitter it it becomes like—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: Let's spend a second on that! That's such an interesting piece—a bad Airbnb experience becomes a moment for you to reflect in a written essay.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: [Expletive] [laughter] Yeah. You know, it's one of the reasons why—Oh, God, the Internet is such a gift and curse. So during 2020—

BLAIR HODGES: Wait on that. Do you think we'd be better if the Internet straight up just never existed or not?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Oooo, gosh Blair!

BLAIR HODGES: I have this debate with my wife, what do you think?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I just posted something about that in a story that, like—I'm struggling with that more so every single day—

BLAIR HODGES: Me too. I go back and forth.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Because, without the Internet, you and I wouldn't be here right now having this conversation.

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yet for all the good that has been done by the Internet, I do think I could argue that more harm has been caused.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I think, like, COVID denialism is just one example among many, like, how many millions of people got sucked into that who wouldn't have otherwise.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: Versus, but then there's also the idea that marginalized people can meet up, can find each other that way, too.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, like, anything in life, you got to look at the plus minus.

BLAIR HODGES: But you're saying the ledger might come down on, like, maybe it's a little worse?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, I think so.

Gosh. The one way I look at it, like, using very specifically social media as opposed to, like, the broader Internet, or actually we could use the broader Internet. There's a documentary guy—we can probably talk for the next fifteen hours, but—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: There's a documentary talking about, it's on Netflix, well it's about a myriad of things. But they talk about Pizzagate and just like—

BOTH: QAnon

FREDERICK JOSEPH: —and all these. Oh, you've seen it, probably. I forget what it's called. And I had to ask myself, so I've done wonderful things thanks to the Internet, how many of the those sort of things, QAnon, Pizzagate, the Airbnb thing I'll go into in a split second, have happened versus, like the positive story about, like, you know, Blair Hodges who just saved a kitten from a fire thanks to somebody tweeting about it and, you know, him saying, “Oh, that's across the street. I can save this kid.”

How many instances do we have of that—to the point, using the Airbnb thing, make a long story short and this is gonna play right into it. So I think it's important to note that I actually came into public kind of notoriety, consciousness, if you would, or whatever, because I had first taken kids to see Black Panther for free, and I started the largest GoFundMe in history with the Black Panther Challenge.

So I have been given this—

BLAIR HODGES: Internet! [laughter]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a point for the Internet! So that is the one point I will give the Internet that I was able to do that thanks to the Internet, right?

Fast forward, years later, obviously had degrees in writing, so on and so forth, I’m a writer. Da, da, da, da. The first thing is—I don't know how much time we have, because the Airbnb thing actually started not with Airbnb, but it started with Elizabeth Warren.

BLAIR HODGES: I have as much time as you do, so.

 

Elizabeth Warren and Barbershopgate – 57:16

 

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Okay, so, I'll explain that really quick. I was a national surrogate for the Warren campaign. And when you're a national surrogate, they find people for you to go speak to in various parts of the country, people they think you will resonate with.

I am Black and grew up in the Baptist church when I was a kid. So they're like, hey, you're gonna go to churches. I'm also a six-foot-two guy who loves sports and all the stereotypical things that people assume are talked about in barbershops. So, hey, can you go to churches and barbershops throughout the South and talk about Elizabeth Warren.

BLAIR HODGES: They didn't send you to Broadway, though? [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right! Well, exactly. I would have been better served outside of a showing of Phantom of the Opera, to be honest with you. But they send me to churches. They send me to barbershops. And I'm also, mind you, I have also in New York a barber, and I've been going to the same barber—my barber actually recently passed away. Rest in peace.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm sorry to hear that.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, yeah. And I have been going in for fifteen years. So in the same way that, like, someone can be familiar with my work in passing or online or in my books, my barber, I see on a weekly basis—I'm actually going to the barbershop as soon as I get off this conversation with you.

BLAIR HODGES: Nice.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So my barber knows me. And I am a very political being, like, a socially conscious being. And so we talk about these things. That's important for what I'm about to say.

So going to barbershops. And I had been a victim of “Stop and Frisk” during the Bloomberg administration in New York City. Elizabeth Warren found this out, and her and I used to actually meet on a pretty decent basis on the campaign trail. So one time I'm in South Carolina and she's about to go be on the debate stage, I think, in a few days. And she's talking to me about my experience with Stop and Frisk.

She's so taken aback by this that she asked them to record a video with me. So I record a video about Stop and Frisk. And she gets on stage later that night and demolishes former Mayor Bloomberg over Stop and Frisk. Just absolutely obliterates him. My barber—

BLAIR HODGES: I remember this.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: My barber is just—Funny how this is, you know, behind the veil. My barber, who is really locked in to the election in the primary because his main client, who's his first client at his new barbershop, me, and has been going to him for fifteen years, and I’m—now he watched me come into public prominence, if you would—and I’m all in.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And so I come to the barbershop the next day. He had watched the night before with a few other barbers because I told them this might happen because I had a video out about it, blah, blah, blah. So I come in and he's like, like, “Oh, man!” Like, actually he said something to the effect of like, “Your girl really killed Bloomberg last night,” or something like that, right? Like, man, we all saw something!

So I tweet about this in just the moment. I go to a wedding a few days later, and as I'm at the wedding, my phone is just, you know, I'm like, what's all these notifications about?

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] It’s blowing up.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Like, what's happening? So I finally stepped out from the reception, I checked my phone. And these supporters of other campaigns and these low-level grifters on the Internet who make up conspiracy theories have said, “Oh, this guy's lying. This is not how they speak in barbershops. Like, he's lying. This never happened.” Like, they're just like things that never happen.

So really what you're talking about is you're assuming that Black and brown folks don't talk about politics. And also, very specifically, even if I didn't have my personal existence, we just talk about these things! What do you think? We just, “Ohhh,” like, you know, whatever. It's extremely racist, is what it is. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah!

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And it also just erases the identity that I have as a national surrogate who has social media. My barber can see me on social media talking about these things. Whatever. Fine. [laughter]

So then that turns into my own Pizzagate! It turns into “Barbershopgate,” literally. You can Google this. Google “barbershop gate.” Google like “Fred Joseph barbershop.” And people started saying this never happened. And they started conflating the barbershops I was visiting with the barbershop I attend on a regular basis and saying, “This never happened at a barbershop you just randomly went to in the South. Elizabeth Warren's campaign is making up stories. And they are inventing barbershops—” like, “literally they're staging barbershops,” because they're like, “Oh, look at this picture in this barbershop. This is not a real barbershop. What barbershop would have this on the wall,” and that and this and the other. And that became like the campaign's line, to the point where the press secretary had to put something out about like, “We're not lying about barbershops.”

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] “This is a real barbershop, uhh...”

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. And so you fast forward—

BLAIR HODGES: Carefully too, though, right? Because you don't want people going to the barbershop, like—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Precisely. Because we already know that, like, pizza shops were literally like—somebody went to a pizza shop with a gun, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah!

 

The Scare-Bnb – 01:02:03

 

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So fast forward to the story I talk about in Patriarchy Blues about this Airbnb. Basically, a few months later, during 2020, this is after Warren had dropped out and I'm, you know, whatever. This is just a few days, I believe, after the news about George Floyd had surfaced, right? And so I need to get out of the city. I need to clear my mind. We've also been protesting and—and all the things. I need to clear my mind, right? So I take my wife, my younger cousin, and my little brother, who at the time is maybe seven or eight. I take them to an Airbnb about two hours out of city.

We're driving to the Airbnb. There's Trump flags everywhere, so on and so forth, American flags—for people who understand that is very triggering and traumatizing for people who are, I would imagine, just, not white supremacists.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So we get to the Airbnb, and usually I'll go in and check to make sure everything's fine. And as I'm walking around the Airbnb, there are all these like—And I posted this. I posted the images, the literal images. It's not like, I'm just like. There's statues, for example, of, like, a dog having anal sex with a woman.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And there's, like, a taxidermied bird under one of the beds, and there's a carving of, like, some type of symbol for magic or something under one of the beds, and there's, like, Baphomets in all of the room, and there's all these different things.

BLAIR HODGES: It's occult stuff that you didn't see in the listing.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Precisely.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So I'm just. So I go call Airbnb. I'm like, hey, I'm not staying here. Especially because, like, I'm in this white area. And a lot of that comes from, I grew up very, I grew up correlating some of that to white supremacy in different instances. Now, was that correct? No. But sure. But this is what America has done. But sure.

BLAIR HODGES: And you feel it in your body. Like, you feel that, like, you went there to get a break. This is not a break.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Exactly. So I call Airbnb. I'm not staying here. And they're like, “Well, the Airbnb host says that it's just art, and they'll come remove the art.” I'm like, no, it's not just art. Under the bed where my little brother's supposed to stay, there is a taxidermied foul and a statue of a dog anally raping a woman. I am not staying here. I don't feel safe. So they’re like, “Well, there's nothing we can do about it. We're sorry.”

So they don't know that I have, like, a Twitter following, a social media presence. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm just gonna post about it. So I post a thread, you know, at the time, and whatever. And I'm just like, “Airbnb refuses to refund me for this satanic Airbnb.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Oh, boy!

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So…

BLAIR HODGES: Do you wish you never did it now because of what you're about to describe? Like, do you wish you're like, “oh, shoot.”

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Oh yeah! A hundred percent!

BLAIR HODGES: All right, all right go ahead. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I mean, I would just take the L on, like, the $3,000 or whatever it was.

BLAIR HODGES: All right.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: So I post that. Now, mind you, a reason I gave the story about the barbershop gaze, is because already on social media, there is this idea that I am a liar. I went from being, like, someone who, like, treats kids well to being a liar.

Not only am I a liar, but I have a book coming out. Like, my first book, The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person, was debuting a few months later. So, like, “He's trying to drum up sales, obviously—”

BLAIR HODGES: It’s the PR machine! [laughter]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah, right, exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: “He also has a communications background. It's brilliant!”

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right, right! “He knows what he's doing!” you know? And so I post about it. But mind you, I also post the images. I'm posting—

BLAIR HODGES: I went back and found it. Yeah. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Okay, cool. And I'm like, I am Black! And I am with my little brother! [laughter] And also, mind you, George Floyd was just murdered and Brianna Taylor. So, like, there's a lot in my body at this time, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah! And it really has the makings of, like, a horror movie. This is Jordan Peele’s next picture.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right! Exactly. And so what ends up happening is, a decent amount of people are just like, “Okay, this is messed up.” Airbnb refunds me. But then the entire, like, Internet, it felt like, descended upon me. Right? Like, you are trying to bring back a satanic panic. The Church of Satan guy—

BLAIR HODGES: Which is real, by the way. Like—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yes, yes, yes. The Satanic panic is real. Satanic panic is real. But I think, what I said earlier in our conversation, we have to be able to hold space for more than one thing being true. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

FREDERICK JOSEPH So like, I am not trying to bring back a satanic panic. Also, there are, there's occult imagery, and I am Black in America, meaning I probably grew up Christian, which is also because of white supremacy, but sure, nonetheless—[laughter] And I'm with a seven-year-old Black kid and just, there's so many things at play here.

And I'm also like—not to throw this around lightly—but I'm also like a public figure. And so there have been instances I've gotten death threats. So like, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody tried to lure me to an Airbnb and like drain me of my life! [laughter] That wouldn't surprise me. Worse things have happened, more surprising things have happened.

So anyway, the whole Internet descends upon me. People are just like, “You're a liar! This never happened!”

I'm like, “The images are right there! I'm not trying to—” It becomes this entire thing.

BLAIR HODGES: Before you could AI those images too, by the way. Now we've got another level of BS to deal with.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Exactly. It becomes this entire thing to the point where like, I just stopped using social media for a while. And it was really bad. I started getting death threats. The Internet just like turned on me. I will never fully understand that moment because it seems so, in part, rooted in white supremacy, right?  The ways in which people refused, even during like the quote unquote, “awakening.” Racial awakening. People refuse to see—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. May the awakening rest in peace, by the way.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: [laughs] Right, exactly. You know, people refuse to see like, “Okay, who are we tarring and feathering here?” Right? Like, this is a Black man who speaks out often about racism, gets death threats. It’s just all these things that are at play and, you know.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, there was like a think piece published, was it in like Slate or where somebody—or Buzzfeed or something? Like somebody even like—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Oh, so that was, yes. I forgot about that part. So it was not Slate, it was—

BLAIR HODGES: Buzzfeed or—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: No, it was. What's it called? With a V? Vice. Yes, Vice.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, Vice.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: It was in Vice. This piece comes out from this woman who's like—So she like says that I sent my, like, hordes of followers on this guy—at this time I had maybe 80,000 followers or something—on this person who owned the Airbnb. And I'm like, no, I didn't. I just literally never even posted where it was or who the person was. I just wanted my money back! And what you have now done as a white woman—who I've come to find out the white woman is into all of this same kind of, like, iconography and things like that, and even more, she's friends with the person who owns the Airbnb!

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, I didn't know that part!

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yes! She’s friends with the person who owns the Airbnb.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow!

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: And it's total—like, if there was whitesplain—we've got mansplain, and this was definitely like a whitesplaining piece here.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: And so I'm like, wait, so are you going to ignore that like, yes, I have 80,000 followers, don't mention this person at all, but you have now taken your millions of monthly and daily readers and sent them my way as, like, “the Black man bringing back satanic panic,” and, like, trying to undermine this thing that you, as a white woman, as white guy, are really into.

So now all these white people who are, like, probably living in, you know, some hippie area of whatever part of the country are attacking me now. Yeah, that's great.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Well, and then underneath all that, you got Airbnb, which is collecting money. So there's layers on layers here.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right!

BLAIR HODGES: Like, the easiest thing would have been like, “This didn't work out, let's get some refund going.” But—

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. It's just. Yeah. So, you know, Twitter hates me.

BLAIR HODGES: So when you say, yeah, maybe the Internet is a net-negative for humanity, listeners out there need to weigh the direct experiences you've had with being the victim of Internet hordes and the swarming that can happen when you become the character of the day or whatever. [laughs]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Yeah. I mean, I think in a society that’s been taught anti-intellectualism and there’s a lack of critical thinking, which is woefully needed on social media, but nonexistent in most instances, yeah, it's a net negative for me. [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: All right! That's Frederick Joseph. He comes down on the side of “net negative” for the Internet. He's also the author of The Black Friend and Patriarchy Blues. Today, we're talking mostly about his book, We Alive, Beloved, a new book of poetry.

 

Tenderness and Masculinity – 01:10:57

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, Frederick, I wanted to wrap it up with some hope here, right?

We've talked about some of your struggles with masculinity, what it means, intersections with violence, with sexuality, with fatherhood, with being a son, with, you know, being estranged from a mother, and all of these tough things. But you aren't completely without hope. Like, you seem to be a person that is still, despite any of these circumstances, striving for a new masculinity.

Let’s read one more piece, this is on page eight. It's called “Him: Tender.”

[01:11:36]

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Him: Tender.

Is laughter until our abs hurt the reclamation
Of humanity? Should we find out? This way, brother?
Between the lines of their definition for masculine
Where we chuckle like children, until our cheeks hurt,
Build each other up, until our hands are calloused,
Voices rasp from being honest about our wounds.
In the wisdom of our tears, we remember old language—
Vulnerably stitching together a bridge to healing.
Or, if you need, we can just sit here and be silent.

BLAIR HODGES: Where are you finding it today? What do you recommend people do when they're looking for this healthier masculinity that is trying to reckon with and rid this baggage?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I say you have to be thoughtful about curating space with people. I think, even this conversation with you, realistically, even what we were just talking about with the Airbnb thing, I haven't laughed about that, like, publicly, ever. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Cool.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: This is the first time I've actually laughed about it because I'm so removed from it now. And I thank you for that, because I do think you've created a space between two men for healing and growth and just being alive. And so I've tried to do the same in my individual life, right? Where I've put myself around men and put men around me who are interested in—all the things, right?

Just how we laugh together, how we cry together, how we listen, how we speak, what words we use, intent, what it looks like to be more. How are we holding each other up when we're less? You know?

It makes me think of a book from my dear friend Joél Leon. It's entitled Everything and Nothing at Once, from Holt Macmillan.

And it's a collection of essays that's just about his Black manhood and holding space for his difficult relationship with mental health, with being a father of two, with, you know, what it looks like to have grown up being taught that, like, you're nothing, but then have people counter that consciously throughout your life, thankfully.

And so, all that is to say, I think I'm just. I'm just so grateful to be able to lean into masculinity that finds itself on an equal playing field within the same body as what we define as femininity. And let the two things swirl around each other and dance and intersect and just create something that's more liberated and freer than what many of us have known in the past.

BLAIR HODGES: And like you said, we're gonna find it in actual relationships with people, and we're gonna find it in the stories we can tell. And I think you, as a writer, are one of the skilled people who can speak for so many people and give us words we didn't have before, and give us words that we had but couldn't put together.

So I want to just say thanks for your writing. I've learned a ton. There's so much in these books that we could never begin to cover in the scope of an hour and ten minutes or whatever. So thanks for doing the work you do, and I can't wait to read more from you.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I deeply appreciate it. It means the absolute world. And I'm hoping to be back.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, man.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I'm hoping to be back. And I have some people who I would love, myself, to hear you in conversation with. So we'll talk about that offline.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:15:31

 

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, good. Well, we have one segment at the end here that you can choose what to speak to. It's called “Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises.” Is there anything you would change—let's make it specifically about We Alive, Beloved. Because it's coming out right now, and even though it's just now coming out, there might be something that you would change about it. Or what the hardest part about it was, or what surprised you most?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I would say a regret. Gosh. So, as I said earlier, there are certain poems that I put on social media and don't put in the collection, but I think there's a few poems about the current political and social moment we're in that I should have put in this collection solely because I think that a book will outlast social media.

And so if I never get to write another collection again, I do wish that those poems were in this.

BLAIR HODGES: But is it primarily stuff about Gaza? Like, more stuff about Gaza, or if a piece has been tweeted, is an editor less likely to say they want it in the book then? Or is it just like you feel like, “Okay, I've sort of published it, so I don't want to put it in there”?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Sometimes I think with this collection—and it's interesting, I went with a super indie house, Row House Publishing, because they primarily publish Black and brown authors, especially those who are marginalized with disabilities and things of that nature, or marginalized in their other identities.

BLAIR HODGES: So that can help elevate the press then, like “New York Times best-selling author” coming to that press.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. That's exactly one of the reasons why I went with them. So I just, you know, being really honest, I can't go with a house, without having certain resources for like some of my—you know, like a novel or something like that.

But for a poetry collection, such that this is their actual first book of poetry that they're publishing, my goal was to help increase the stature and launch their poetry division. And they were a really good partner about it. I'm like, “Hey, I posted this on Instagram 25 minutes ago, but I want it in the book.” They're like, “Okay, Fred, that's fine. Save some stuff for the collection though.” [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: Nice. Okay, cool. Well, all right. Any surprises or challenges?

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Surprises. Challenges, surprises. How difficult it is to sell poetry. And that's also the challenge. I think we just do a horrible job right now in our education system on the broad importance of literature and writing in general and teaching people how to read. Not just be able to read a sentence, but actually like sit with it.

Because that's the necessity of poetry, is that it demands that you sit in it, right? Even if it's just a stanza.

BLAIR HODGES: You have to slow down.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Right. And so I feel like helping people reimagine their own reading has been a challenge. And then getting them to actually buy the books has been a surprise how difficult that is, because I have had great success with that in the past.

BLAIR HODGES: On that note, I just want to recommend again, We Alive, Beloved. It's a book of poems from Frederick Joseph. It's terrific. I haven't read a lot of poetry. I want to read more. Your book made me want to read more, which I think is a mark of the best kind of poetry. Like, man, I need to read more poetry!

FREDERICK JOSEPH: I appreciate that. That means more than you could ever imagine. Thank you.

BLAIR HODGES: We'll leave it there. Thanks for joining us, Frederick. This has been a terrific conversation.

FREDERICK JOSEPH: Thank you for having me.

 

OUTRO – 1:19:42

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's it for this episode of Relationscapes. I’m Blair Hodges. Thanks for being here. I have a little update for you. Since we recorded this interview, Frederick actually deleted Twitter altogether, so you won't find him there. But you can check him out on Instagram or check out his Substack and other work at frederickjoseph.com.

If something in the discussion resonated with you, I hope you’ll pass it along. You can also rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also send me a message that might appear in a future episode. DM me or email me, blair@firesidepod.org.

Mates of State provides our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges. See you next time.