1.
INTERVIEW
ELIZABETH
ALEXANDER
On the intersections of identities
Interview by Henry Jacob and Alex McCraven Transcribed by Grace BlaxillJuly 23, 2020
(Henry Jacob) Let's start with a warm up question: how
would you describe yourself in two sentences, one per-
sonal, one professional? Honestly, for the personal one, I
am Solo and Simon's mother. As to the professional, I am
an educator, a poet, an advocate for culture, and my own
kind of freedom fighter.
I want to dwell on the first part, on the personal, on the
mother of Simon and Solo. One of the most vivid sen-
sory memories of my youth is of spending time in your
garden. Of course, I remember the profusion of bright
flowers and graceful trees; but what I remember most
is the smoky smell from the grill. What is your most vi-
vid memory of a scent from your early childhood? I'm
glad you mentioned New Haven. Before we even go to my
childhood, we should discuss New Haven. I went to colle-
ge at Yale in the early 80s; when I came back, I started a
family. I had a long, joyful career teaching at Yale, helping
to build African American Studies.
Even when I left for New York New Haven still wouldn't
let me go. Both of my children made the choice to come
back and study there, and all of the friends and commu-
nity and scale of New Haven feels eternal to me. New
Haven is in my bones. I feel lucky to be a citizen of New
Haven and of Yale in three different roles: student, faculty,
and parent.
I was born in New York, but I grew up in Washington
D.C. I remember the intensity of the ambient heat and
humidity in the D.C. summertime. Washington had a
southern feel; you would be on the street and speak and
say hello to folks. That’s how I think about my childhood,
homas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies,
Elizabeth Alexander is,in her own words,a mother,educator,
poet, advocate, and her own kind of freedom fighter. Among
her many accomplishments,she is president of The Andrew W.Mellon
Foundation, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Biography,
and the author of fourteen books.The YHR had a chance to sit down
virtually with her over the summer to discuss her past,her poetry,and
her thoughts on the present.
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2.
Elizabeth Alexander is also a Chancellor for
the Academy of American Poets as well as
the former chair of the African American
Studies Department at Yale.
Photo courtesy of elizabethalexander.net
as people talking to each other in public spaces. That was
always very, very important: being part of a community.
You have tied the two threads of advocacy and public
spaces together. I recall that you have said that politics
was in your “drinking water” while growing up so now
I have a much more vivid image to relate to that phrase.
But now I would like to shift to your formative years as
a poet. What was the first poem that you wrote? How
didyourinteractionswithyourcommunityintheswel-
tering streets inspire you? I have always been a storytel-
ler and very attentive to the storytelling of others. I was
a huge, huge reader of all kinds, and I was a very serious
dancer when I was growing up. I think that that sense of
what it took to commit to your art form, what it meant
to have artistic discipline, led to freedom of expression,
which is a vital part of making poems or making any kind
of writing, I didn't discover it till much later.
I wrote fiction in college. I worked at the Washington
Post as a journalist, but it wasn't until I later, as you've re-
searched, presented myself to Derek Walcott that he really
saw a poet in me. I think that it was a culmination of that
sense of ear, of language. of discipline, and of discovery.
When you write poems, when you enter the garden, you
do not follow a straight path. You make your way through
and exclaim “Why, look! Here's a rose bush and here’s a
woodland creature.” it's all about discovery to get to the
finished product.
Alex, do you want to ask a question about either the
political engagement or the intersection of the creative
and political, because I know you had a lot of thoughts
on these themes, both for Dr. Alexander’s Yale expe-
rience and otherwise.
(Alex McCraven) Yes, I'm really curious about how you
envisionphilanthropyasanagentforsocialchangeand
how you see this new shift of the Mellon Foundation
being at the forefront of that. Leading into that and,
again, linking together place and politics, advocacy and
justice, I grew up in Washington DC, a place where the
government is very close. We lived on Capitol Hill, six
blocks from the Capitol, a few blocks from the Supreme
Court.
Also,myfathercommittedhimselftocivilrights.Toname
just a few things, he was President Johnson's advisor who
liaised between the civil rights community and the White
House. With the passing of John Lewis, we found a pho-
tograph at the White House with my father, Dr. King, and
John Lewis. Dad had brought those people to help advise
the president. Watching him play such a central role at
that extraordinary moment where history seemed to be
moving very, very quickly inspired me.
I learned that you need to fight for things, you need to ad-
vocate for other people, that anything that you might have
yourself was only meaningful if that privilege extended
to other people. You had to metaphorically and literally
bring people with you into the room and make space for
them. My parents raised me on the philosophy of not clo-
sing the door behind you.
I brought this lesson to my time as a professor in African
“I learned that
you need to fight
for things, you
need to advocate
for other people,
that anything that
you might have
yourself was only
meaningful if that
privilege extended
to other people.”
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2 ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

3.
American Studies. I took recovery as my duty and told
the marginalized stories. I brought forward the extraor-
dinary poets and writers who did not fit not within the
canon of the English Department — this has always been
the good fight. It feels natural to continue this work at the
Mellon Foundation. I take it as my duty to be an advocate
for different cultural voices, for the complexity of Ameri-
can narratives.
I also address the unfair distribution of resources in Ame-
rica.Enslavedlaborbuiltthiscountry;weneedtoconfront
this history at wealthy institutions such as Yale and the
Ford and Mellon Foundations. The initiatives I led and
lead at Ford and Mellon respectively might differ from
what the original Ford or Mellon families envisioned. In
the same vein, the founders of Yale couldn’t imagine what
it looks like now. The Yale that Elihu conceived has evol-
ved. There is no steady state that's not with an element of
design, evolution, and advocacy. I have always operated
with this epistemology and I can see it more clearly now
in retrospect.
(HJ) I love the word you’re using, your “epistemology.”
I want to press a bit more on your epistemology using
your comments on seeing artists as workers for souls as
a springboard. I find a spiritual resonance within your
own poetry and in your public speeches. Please com-
ment on the role of transcendence, or even the sublime
oftheeveryday,asarecurringconceptinyourlife.That's
a beautiful question. Transcendence and the sublime are
to be found in the everyday. Sometimes it speaks to us
in very large and dramatic ways. We may stand before a
physically large painting on a larger-than-human scale in
a museum like the Met and feel transcendent. But you can
also feel transcendence at a much smaller scale. Transcen-
dence can be intimate.
Transcendence, to me, is about being attentive to the mi-
raculous aspects of this life. Art makes something out of
nothing, it gives form to the human and the soulful in
a way that can be communicated and be meaningful to
others. The different aspects of craft allow us to do this;
but we also shouldn't mistake that we bring forward mys-
terious moments of the soul.
I'm glad you mentioned my public statements about the
uses of art. We need artists and historians to confront the
very, very, very, very challenging time that we're living
through.
Last night, I watched the movie “Just Mercy” about Bryan
Stevenson. and there was that extraordinary moment
when the gentlemen who are incarcerated talking among
themselves and one man, Mr. Richardson, is soon to be
executed, and he has PTSD, he's a Vietnam War veteran,
and he becomes periodically tremendously anxious. Wal-
ter McMillian, the lead character played by Jamie Foxx,
asks Mr. Richardson to breathe with him, to close his eyes,
and to envision the Alabama pines. At that moment Mr.
Richardson transcends as terrifying a circumstance as I
can imagine.
That is what art does. I also want to note one of the grants
that I'm the most excited about: The Million Book Project.
Dwayne Betts, a PhD candidate at Yale and YLS graduate,
will put 500 books, books like the ones we read and love,
in every prison in every state, Puerto Rico, and Washing-
ton DC. If we believe that transcendence is to be found
in books—and again, here I'm talking about books as li-
terature, but I'm also talking about history—if we believe
that critical thinking with which we can make sense of
our world in our lives is to be found in books, if we believe
that we can, in some way, become free by reading and ac-
quiring knowledge and learning, for whom could that be
more important than someone who is incarcerated? Be-
cause that person is a part of larger society, [and] we can't
think that by locking people away that they are no lon-
ger part of families and communities, and that they will
not hopefully come out into families and communities,
so what do we hope they come out with? I hope that they
4 ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
“If we believe that we
can,in some way,become
free by reading and
acquiring knowledge and
learning,for whom could
that be more important
than someone who is
incarcerated?”

4.
come out with some of the critical thinking and transcen-
dence that is to be found in literature, including poetry.
(HJ) Wonderful. I know that Alex wanted to ask about
The Trayvon Generation, but I know that we don’t have
much time. Please ask, I’ll answer you succinctly!
(AM) Perfect! I am very curious to hear what moved
you to write your latest piece, The Trayvon Generation
and then, as a mother and as an educator, what has it
been like raising black children in America, and what
has it been like recently in this current moment that
we're living in? In addition to my parenting—again, I
keep coming back [to it], but it's so perfect to be talking to
you all to be talking to a Yale publication—my devotion
to my students over the years. In fact, now that you all,
and thus Simon, will be finishing up pretty soon, I think
to myself, I'm not going to have college students in my
life for the first time! Think about it, the first time in 100
years! So that's kind of crazy.
But, I am attentive to your demographic. It's been my job
to do so. And what I've seen in what I call the Trayvon ge-
neration—I think that you could say there's the Emmett
Tillgeneration,andI'vewrittenaboutthat,[with]Emmett
Till, not only his murder but also his mother's decision to
open the casket and then the photograph being published
in Jet and widely circulated, that was a marker of a gene-
ration in understanding racial danger and racial subjec-
tivity that had so much peril attached to it. Or perhaps
for my generation, there were things that we learned with
the Rodney King videotape, which I've also written about.
And that was at the beginning of when people started re-
cording things and circulating them—but for your ge-
neration, all of this, some of it police violence, some of
it civilian violence, against black people, not only black
men, but black black women, girls, boys, all of this danger
has been recorded, because everything's recorded now.
Young people see this violence on their phones in addi-
tion to on TV. You could have come home from school on
the school bus and see someone who looks like you being
brutally murdered 100 times before you're even in the safe
space of your home.
I want us to take stock of this. Darnella Frazier made me
think of this, the 17 year old who filmed George Floyd's
murder. I can't even imagine this 17-year-old. I myself
have never had four police officers this close to me. I my-
self have never witnessed a murder. This child, as it hap-
pened, opened up a global movement, a global civil rights
movement by being steadfast and brave in the face of ter-
ror. So the rhetorical question that’s also a real question
that answers why the Trayvon generation is: what about
Darnella Frazier? Who's thinking about Darnella Frazier?
Who's thinking about all of the young people for whom a
trip to the store can be perilous, and how do we teach and
support our young people to feel free, mighty, and bold?
We want you to figure things out that we haven't been able
to figure out yet, [but] how do we also protect you and
keep you safe? And what does it mean to feel unsafe in
your body?
One of the responsibilities of being a mother is “I gotta
keep this creature alive.” As you all get older, what does
that mean, how do you translate that to what it means
to support young people to thrive when there is very
real danger and, to take us to the last four years, when
we have violent, divisive, racist, hateful rhetoric from the
highest offices of the land? This isn't just hipster stuff. I
am concerned about depression, I am concerned about
people retreating into themselves, because we're facing a
great deal these days. How can we be helpful to you all,
to help you all be mighty and strong, but also smart and
safe? And I wanted to put that on a historical timeline.
I want to end by reiterating that this period is so hard, but
that you are also meeting this extraordinary challenge.
The racial strife of this time differs from before because
the allyship across races stands in an entirely different
place than it was when I was coming along (and for this, I
say, African American Studies!).
Growing up, I had plenty of white friends in school, but
none of them knew anything about black culture, black li-
terature, black anything. Today, I am heartened that more
people recognize the beauty and power of black culture
and history. We always taught that this truth lies at the
center of understanding the country you live in — so
there it is. Go to it. I think you are part of a really, really
hopeful generation. You have the tools. Show us where to
go, and we'll just keep on pushing alongside you.
(HJ) As this conversation has shown, you, Dr. Alexan-
der, guide the path for Solo and Simon, for Alex and
myself, as well as the current and future generations.
We need only listen to the final stanzas from Praise
Song for the Day: “In today’s sharp sparkle, this win-
ter air,/ any thing can be made, any sentence begun./
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,/ praise song for
walking forward in that light.”
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