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EP. 132 Tony Keith Jr. and HOW THE BOOGEYMAN BECAME A POET
39 Plays4 months ago
Poet, writer, and educator Dr. Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry. The audio experience is a true delight, with Tony's writing and narration shared with such passion and joy - it truly sounds like a rap album!
Tony dreams about life after high school, where his poetic voice can find freedom on the stage and page. But the Boogeyman has been following Tony since he was six years old. First, the Boogeyman was after his Blackness, but Tony has learned It knows more than that: Tony wants to be the first in his family to attend college, but there's no path to follow. He also has feelings for boys, desires that don't align with the script he thinks is set for him and his girlfriend, Blu.
Despite a supportive network of family and friends, Tony doesn't breathe a word to anyone about his feelings. As he grapples with his sexuality and moves from high school to college, he struggles with loneliness while finding solace in gay chat rooms and writing poetry. But how do you find your poetic voice when you are hiding the most important parts of yourself? And how do you escape the Boogeyman when it's lurking inside you? Grab your copy of this powerful memoir today
Grab your copy of this powerful memoir today!
Listen to audio versions here:
Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/t...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2f3XyNg...
Zencastr: https://zencastr.com/It-s-Personal-Po...
Website: https://www.tonykeithjr.com/
Instagram:  / tonykeithjr
facebook:  / tonykeithjr
X:  / tonykeithjr
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Transcript
Introduction and Audiobook Admiration
00:00:00
Speaker
All right. ah Welcome back, everyone, to another episode. I am so excited. This is one of this was my first audiobooks of the year. And I was just sharing that I haven't read audiobook in a very long time. But this gentleman, i'm coming if you have not read this book, if you have not listened to the audio, and we'll get and get into it today. But this is a complete masterpiece. A complete masterpiece. I'm not joking, and I'm not vouch for this, and I'm going to tell people because I haven't heard anything like this in a very, very long time.
Meet Tony Keith, Jr., PhD
00:00:33
Speaker
um Can you introduce yourself, please? Wow. Peace. That's what's up. Thank you. Peace, everybody. My name is Tony Keith, Jr. PhD, actually. You call me Dr. Keith if you want to. Let's do it. Let's go. Dr. Keith, let's I like to flex it every now and then. We can talk about it later. about it i wanted to put My family wanted me to put PhD on my book, but I'm the author of How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, a young adult di debut young adult memoir written in verse, just launched ah this past February. So yeah, shout out to the Boogeyman.
Inspiration from Spoken Word to Writing
00:01:05
Speaker
Dr., I'm telling you. um I'm going to jump right into it because we just talked about it.
00:01:11
Speaker
If you are not into audiobooks or if you are into audiobooks, and you have to listen to this production. like Let's talk a little bit about how it came about and just like the process that went into to creating creating this book. um Specifically the audio. Specifically the audio. Yeah, that's a really good question because it was interesting is, you know, um I am not a, the world should probably you know, I am not a formally classically trained writer. I do not have an MFA, you know, I probably took maybe a couple of, I mean, beyond like English company, the normal stuff you have to take. But anyway, so the reason why I share that is, you know, I'm a spoken word artist. And so I'm used to being on the stage, you know, I'm used to performing, you know what I mean? And so when they came down to
00:01:57
Speaker
even getting to something like an audio book. Like you have to realize that it starts first with, I was a poet on the page, like I'm on the stage, I was performing. And so what I often tell people is what happened was, this is the real story. What had happened was, February of 2020, I am at the University of South Carolina with none other than the brilliant, amazing author and one of my dear best friends in the world, Jason Reynolds, right? And everybody in the world knows Jason has- Shut up, Jason. Shut up, Jason. He got all the books, man. And so, really, it's my brother. I love him. Best man in my wedding. I love him very much. So anyway, so, you know, so we're at this event. We're visiting schools, and we're talking about young people, and I'm talking about my life as a poet. He's talking about his life as a writer. Jason is a poet, too. But anyway, and so what happens is, after every event, there was always, like, a book signing.
00:02:43
Speaker
right? And so after one of these events, again, I'm sitting next to Jay, we're at this table at a book signing, and I'm just chilling. I'm just you know sitting next to him chilling. And um there's a lot of people that get book signed by him. And this woman gets out of line, black woman gets out of line with a little black boy. And I don't know if this was mom and son, whatever it was an adult, and and he comes right up to me. And he says, where's your book? I was like, like matt not not and the which in because it wasn't, um do you have a book, right? It's like the book that you had, like where is it? And I told him that night, I was like, I don't i published on the stage. right like i said something
00:03:22
Speaker
he and you know i went I went back to my hotel room that night and I was like, I wonder if that little boy was trying to figure some stuff out about himself.
Memoir Themes: College and Identity Journey
00:03:31
Speaker
you know maybe it's but My book is about how I became a first-gen college student, um how I started coming out of the closet, is gay, and that's sort of how I discovered poetry as my voice. And I was like, and I wonder... Where are the books for kids like him? And where's the books for like the adults in their lives, right? I was like, so those, but where are the books? And so I went back to my room and I had started writing 500 words of something. I didn't know what it was. And the very next morning, and I'm having coffee with Jay at Starbucks. And I shouldn't even shout out Starbucks, but it was important. part of you get it or We get it. We get it.
00:04:05
Speaker
so And so I was like, yo, I'm going to write a book. And he was like, yeah, OK, Tom. And sure enough, we fly back to DC in March 2020. COVID-19 hits, right? And so there was sort of this moment of like, I have no choice now but to sit sequestered in my tidy apartment with my new husband at the time and write this thing out. I had to get this thing out. And so that's kind of at least the impetus to the book. It was inspired. This little boy came and kind of called it out of me. Like, where is yours? Like, the one that, like, where is it? Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. That is crazy. And it's crazy how much experience can influence what you do in the future. And that was just like, if you wouldn't have taken that as like a, you know, an aha moment or like a wondering, you could have taken it so many different ways, right? But you took it as like a seed to plant something. I did. Which is phenomenal.
00:05:03
Speaker
which is phenomenal. It really, really meant something to me, you know, and I thought, you know, and I really had to check myself, right? Because it was sort of this, you know, Tony, you know, it's not as if people have not asked you before where your book is, right? People just tell you when you're going to publish your, man, when we're going to get your book. I would hear this, but I would never really
Challenges and Language in Tony's Life
00:05:21
Speaker
entertain it. Because I was like, what am I going to, what am I going to write? Who's going to, what do I have to write about? And so, and again, shout out to Jay again, because of his sort of burst opening into the young adult publishing world, right? Especially a black author, black man, writing to, for the most part, black and brown kids, reading his work and other young adult writers, Mahogany Brown and Elizabeth Acevedo and Candace Elo. And like reading, I was like, oh, maybe the audience is this younger, because I'm a black man with a PhD. I write to these adults all the time in these peer reviewed academic journals with words in the 13 letters long. You know what I mean? And so trying to think about, yeah, so I wanted something that was translatable and accessible to communities outside of higher ed and all that, but give me a, so that little boy, shout out, I call him Big Ron.
00:06:09
Speaker
that yeah um and that And speaking of little boy, you speak about the little boy in you and you know how the boogeyman came up with it. And um without me saying, because I've read, I've listened to the book, tell us a little bit about um little tony like what did that look like for you yeah yeah so in this book i'll contextualize it for quite a few uh for all y'all out there right is uh this book takes place in spring 1999 and it ends in fall 2000 right so this is in terms of the time period i want folks to know that when they enter this book right tony is going to be 17 years old
00:06:50
Speaker
I'm going to be in my senior year of high school, right? I'm originally from Washington, D.C., but I was attending schools in Prince George's County, Maryland, right outside of the city. And i I'm in my senior year of high school. um All of my friends are put on my spot going to college. I have no idea what am I going to do, like no one in our family has ever been. I have a girlfriend at the time, but I'm also pretty sure that I got some crushes on some boys, although I ain't never done nothing. right And also you know I'm also secretly writing poetry to myself in the middle of the night or where no one's looking about all of my feelings and my emotions. right and so that that that's what like So little Tony was a little boy who grew up a single parent household. My father was in the military but wound up having to get out because he was addicted to
00:07:33
Speaker
crack cocaine and alcohol and all kind of ugly, messy messy stuff. and And I moved around quite a lot. My mom moved us around a lot. So I was just a kid just dealing with a whole lot. And I was also a kid who had found my way, um at least found my voice via church. This is also an important... part of the stories you probably have in this book. um I'm also a young boy singing in a church choir. So you can imagine all the things that I'm battling against is beyond.
00:08:05
Speaker
you know, homophobia. yeah as int because right Because a boogeyman for the most part represents a metaphor for all of these heavy topics, right? And so internalizing homophobia, because I'm bullied and I'm teasing school for being a little soft, right? A little skinny. um I couldn't play sports, but had nothing to do with my sexuality, which is nobody ever taught me. um And so I'm dealing with this code switching of like, yo, I'm trying to be straight, but I think I might be gay. And then I'm also learning that in order for me to go to college, I got to write differently than I speak. So what readers will also get in this book, as you probably know, Gary, is, you know, I speak in African-American vernacular English as my first language. And so I make sure that in this book. You do it so well. Oh my, you told me you do it so well. Like you switch so well. When you did, I was like, oh, I was like, yes.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yes, like you're I mean, I'm listening listening and then your voice would change and it would be it's so funny I had this intro I I had this conversation with someone earlier how like, you know academia is so interesting in the way that words are laid on the page and the I was listening to you and I could hear you switch every single time and it was so Purposeful every single time you did it. I mean I really appreciate that. Well, it's OK because I think because again, it it gets to sort of a but bit more about what your earlier question was, was I was a kid who was sort of forced to learn how to code switch without someone telling me that's exactly what was going on. Right. You know, like, what you know, I mean, I had a clearly I talk in this book about, you know, I had a lot of English teachers, mostly white English teachers who would always tell me I spoke wrong. Right. Or that, you know, somehow that my yeah my English was not good enough, but there was a multi-eight that are not like this idea that there was a better
00:09:49
Speaker
way of speaking. And I'm like, well, what's wrong but with the way I i don't understand my mama speak like this? mu I don't know. What's the problem here? Right. And so, yeah. And then, of course, now, you know, once I figured out academia was trying to kind of I say scrape all of. but soul out of you. I'm like, you know what, no, you're readers who speak like I speak or write like I write or think like I think, not all, but I mean, how about that representation in there?
Overcoming Linguistic Challenges
00:10:15
Speaker
Like, hows that like i so it was, I have so many questions for you. I have to ask you, I have to ask you this first. Could you
00:10:22
Speaker
like i As I was reading, there's so many moments, but one moment that stuck out to me was the spelling test. but fucking have a core like a believe It's like so many of us have had those, and I mean when I say us speaking specifically about black people, we've had those moments. where, you know, first off, we are sometimes, not all of us, sometimes already feeling reluctant to share because we're in spaces that may not look like us or we already don't feel smart enough or whatever the case may be, but then there's this one person.
00:10:58
Speaker
There's this one person who always feels as if they need to share. And the way you articulated that scenario was absolutely incredible. You like walk us through a little bit. And we talk about this all the time, and you know this better than anybody, like of the trauma that we have to you know go through as we are writing our stories. um Talk a little bit about that experience and why you included that experience in this book.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's really a good question. You know, um what's bubbling in my mind is this idea of meaningful moments, right? So writing a memoir, which took me a while to to be clear, because I'm not a classically trained writer, right? And so I had to figure, not literally, it took a while to figure out how to write, how to write this book. And so I knew that there was something about, well, Tony, you can't write your whole life because that's an autobiography. And so you need to, like, what are specific moments that really matter to you? And I'm someone who the world should probably, I love language. I'm fascinated by language and words and the, pop anyway, and so I kept thinking about what memories, and again, shout out to my editor, by the way, Ben Rosenthal. He's no longer at HarperCollins, but um
00:12:08
Speaker
He says, because I included a lot of memories in the first drafts of this book, the first couple of drafts. I mean, memories of just all kinds of things. And my editor was like, Tony, you only need to include the memories that really sort of matter as it relates to the message behind this book. And so I was like, yo, what are the ones around language?
Therapy and Emotional Discovery Through Poems
00:12:25
Speaker
What are the ones that I can remember around language? And I had this memory. And so for folks out there, I had this memory of being in a spell and bee contest in seventh grade. I mean, ah you know, mostly kind of mostly black kind of school, but, you know, there's a couple of white kids in there and there's this white girl and I call her a little Karen because I just wanted, you know, humor. I think humor is fun. And in the word that I had to spell.
00:12:49
Speaker
when this round was clavichord and I spelled it the way that I heard it, which was C-L-A-V-I-C-O-R-D. I did not know that there was an H between the C, anyway, and so what happens is Lil Karen gets up, and I get it wrong, and Lil Karen gets up and she answers the, the ah the she spells the word correctly, and then when she's done, literally has the audacity to say, Tony, like she said, The H you missed in clavichord has to do with its like English, German origins or something, some ridiculous thing. And I was like, wait, what? Like, how do you know something about the history of language so that it helps people? What is that? Like, why do you why do you know that? And I don't. That is not fair. I remember just learning. so it from i remember And so seriously, and so a lot of that happening was when I got into high school, I started taking Latin because I was like, I heard that there's something
00:13:42
Speaker
about learning the roots of words that help you figure things out better. Like, I was like, that's not fair that that white girl knew that. Why does she know that? Wow. Wow. It's crazy how much and ah like an experience like that, which is like what that was probably like, that experience in itself was probably like, what, 10 minutes, five minutes in itself? And then how much that has influenced the rest of your life? I'm 40 years old and I'm still holding on to that. Exactly. You talk about the trauma. I held on to that, which really really, right? I'm going to connect to a wonderful guy here, right? Related to like another thing about how this book came to be is in this book, I include um handwritten copies of handwritten poems that I wrote when I was a kid. And so here's how this came to be, because it's very much like the trauma. This is the truth. So in 2019, so a year before I knew that I was going to write some kind of book, I was legit in therapy, right? Like I just got laid off from my full-time job. I'm writing my dissertation. My husband, we had just got married the year before. He had just got laid off. It was a lot of mess going on. And so I'm in therapy. And my therapist was like, Tony, it sounds like you have all this like, uh, suppressed anger and sadness and like, it seems like there's a suppressed emotions and you are clearly projecting them onto people in your life that you love.
00:15:01
Speaker
but right Like, you need to, like, there's something about this. And I was like, yeah. And he was like, you know, um he says, and remember Tony, you told me that you have this box of poems that you've been lugging around since you were a kid. You know, he was like, I was like, he was like, where's that box? I was like, what's in the closet where I keep it? He was like, why do you, why do you keep that? And what, what's it, what do you, what do you, what's in there? Yeah. yeah And I was like, I never really thought about it. I just, I've always just carried them around. And so one week and I opened up that box and I spent a weekend reading and I had pictures of it. I'm reading all of these poems I wrote as my as a kid. And I was like, well, it was almost like a ritual. Some of them I ripped up, some of them I burned. I cried when I read some of them, but I learned a lot about myself and what I was, I was suppressing all the stuff that I was feeling. I packed into those poems. Wow. And I had been hoarding
00:15:54
Speaker
Literally, literally hoarding that with me. And so it wasn't so I got three of those. And then it was a matter of which ones do I keep, which ones served me. And so some of them are the ones that went into at least this first book, because there's a couple that actually go into a second books, I got a two books. Let's go, let's go. Let's go. let Let's go. Talk about range. Talk about range. Hey, let's go. That's incredible. Honestly, that's incredible. And I think just listening and and and what what was the process like? And i'm obviously you shout out your editor already. And what was the process like going through the memories or experiences that you originally wanted to put in the book versus what you had to take out? Because I know there's times where
00:16:41
Speaker
you have a moment and you're like, this is it. Like, this is something that I need in the book or I feel like it's going to fit in the book. And then maybe your editor is like, ah actually, maybe it doesn't fit. What was your process in weaving out moments that actually meant a lot to you um yeah and in in this whole story? Because I don't really imagine there was tons, which you even mentioned, like, are going to go into your next one. Like, what was that process like? It's a really good, that's also a really good question. And so the best way that I can describe it is my process, it it was, so I'll just say, so, ah yeah, I'll walk you through that. We've got the time. um So when I come back from with from USC with Jason and COVID-19 hits in March, 2020, I had just defended my dissertation like in October of 2019. So I fought. You did.
00:17:31
Speaker
missy i thought' I thought that the book that I was going to write was a young adult version of my dissertation. I was like, oh, I'm going to write something that's going to like talk about how I interview these people who are poets and script word artists and educators. And, you know, I'm going to I'm going to literally like write like a dissertation young adult. I told myself.
Finding Voice and Storytelling Approach
00:17:54
Speaker
And so I wrote that book and I think I called it in my head on being an ad emcee or something like that, because ad emcee was my dissertation. And um it took me maybe, I don't know, maybe it like three weeks. I don't know what, and again, I'm not, and it it had some memories. It wasn't, it was just a ah bit of a, I don't know. So I called, this is the truth. Most people don't even know the other story. So I called Jason. I said, yo, Jay, I think I got the book, bro. And he was like, okay. And I'm like, yeah. He was like, well, well what are you going to do about it? I was like, yo, I think, I think, I don't know. I'm trying to publish a joint. He's a you like, you oh, you got to get a literary agent.
00:18:30
Speaker
This is important, right? So I'm like, well, I don't even know what that is or who that is. I don't know of the publishing industry. You know what I mean? So the short story is I'm doing all this Googling. What is a literary agent? How do you find them? What is a query letter? like I went on this like journey of figuring out how to acquire an agent. And so what I did was this is the absolute truth, because I got to tell you how I got to the memories getting taken out. This is how is how it happened. So, I query 13, this is what I did. I spent another weekend, this is my thing with weekends, looking over almost every agency website, literary agency website wow from this book, it's poetsandwritersdatabase.org, it's on clicked on it and started at the bottom and with all, clicked on every single agency, looked at every single agent for the most parts, what they were looking for. And any person that said they were looking for marginalized voices, underrepresented, I was like, you're looking, yeah
00:19:29
Speaker
people what
00:19:33
Speaker
that's me mean very my gay like I'm like, I hit a couple boxes. What's up? And so I query, I think, 13 literary agents. And within a couple days, it was very surprising, I had got feedback from some folks already saying, this is not quite for me, no thanks. But shout out to Annie Huang at Aisha Pandey Literary. We got on the phone and she was like, look, this thing that you're writing, is not as it's not a young adult version of your dissertation. and It is not that. She goes, you are embedding stories about you and how you came to be who you are. That's what's in here. She goes, and you write with this prose and it's really, really cool. So let's maybe let's let's let's work together to figure something out. So here's the truth. I thought
00:20:19
Speaker
Because I don't know much about form or, again, I don't know anything about the publishing industry. She thought that I would be, or my agent recommended that I would write a memoir and critical essays like Kaisei Layman. Oh, interesting. Or Kathy Parker, like most folks. Because she's like, Tony, this is your voice. You sort of write with this rhythmic thing. You've got the, but she was like, but I just could not get it together. We went through I think a year and a half of multiple drafts of memoirs and essays and like also, and she goes, Tony, you know what? This is the truth. She says, let's just go with a poetry collection. You have all the poems. You know, I've been with you since 2020. Here it is. It's 2021. We're about to go to 22. We should just know probably start thinking about what poetry collections don't really sell that well, but maybe boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so I put together a poetry collection and I called her Knucklehead. This is really important, again, how we get to the memories. Wow. Which a collection called Knucklehead, right? And it's poems, you know, just about being black, gay man in America and black man involved. It's just a really dope collection of poems, but it was traditional poetry collection, right? So we submit that, but in the proposal, we say that I'm also working on this idea of a memoir and verse, because that's when I started reading Elizabeth Acevedo, Mahogany Brown, Candace Ilo. Like once I started reading those authors, I was like, well, maybe the thing that I'm writing
00:21:42
Speaker
could be a memoir in verse. And so we said future works include this. Anyway, so what happens is we send it out, multiple publishers hit back, Harper, Nick Miller, and all of the, some of the, kind of good opinions hit back and they're like, yo, this poetry collection is cool, but what about this memoir in verse? Can we see that? And so in a weekend moment, another weekend moment, my agent was like, Tony, look, how soon? What can you do it in a couple days? Can you do what you do? Yes, I was like, all right. So I locked myself in my office and I wrote for three days. And so this is how it happened, is I did a dump.
00:22:17
Speaker
like it was like a purging. It was sort of like, it was 50 pages of like all, everything that I could see that was coming to my, how I was born, who my mama is, how much, just a bunch of stuff dumped onto the page. It was not necessarily in any particular kind of order. There wasn't much of the strategy involved, but it was like, a but but it was verse. And what happens is Harper Collins was like, yo, we want both of them joints. We want both knuckleheads and we want how the boogeyman became a poet, but boogeyman needs to come first. Wow. So that occurred in July of 2022. So it took me about four months of writing and editing, going back and forth. I sent my editor 80,000 words first.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I think that, so to your point, I think that what I learned was I needed to, I needed to get everything out in order for me to realize what to take out, if that makes sense. Because I wanted to make the whole, make the whole bowl of ingredients, or the salad, but that but then, take like you know what, we need to take the carrot out. let's take you And so that's what, it became a purge. And the cool thing about that was it helped me connect a lot of dots. Because when writing, sometimes thoughts are a little bit, you know, there could be gaps sometimes in the timeline. And so when I got it all out, I was able to identify like, oh, this connects with that. It was sort of like creating a timeline. And so that's how I got to like fall 99. Wow. wow was And it was like, oh, I'm talking about this particular snapshot in my life. It was, you know, what it was giving me all, I'm like a, I'm a, I was born in 88. So I'm like, I consider myself a 90s baby. Cause I don't know a lot of 80s stuff, but like, it was giving me,
00:23:57
Speaker
So many memories like from like music and like just all the experience I have so many experiences written down like when you talked about um You talked about like the urinal experience I know I'm not the only person and I don't have nothing to do with sexuality I just think it's make you love my gosh when you said that i was like yes Yes, nobody like was like why no one else talking about this like this is like what I'm saying like this is really inappropriate readers need to know that there's a memory I write about when I go to the club with my friends like to like a just You know but that I'm partying we go to the bathroom and inside the men's room They're toilet. I mean toilet, but there's no there's like no stalls. There's like no guard little walls. Yeah wall And so it's like you and the people next to you, all of y'all just like, that's just really uncomfortable. It's so i uncomfortable. but yeah You had so many like, I think it is one of the things I loved that there were so many moments where you were able to go so deep. Yeah. And I mean, it was like gut wrenching and it was like heartbreaking. And then within that, you brought so much humor and love
00:25:17
Speaker
and like appreciate passion like And I was like, I mean, I wasn't surprised, but it honestly, like it was like giving me so many vibes throughout. like i i loved I loved how you used um um you kept using like the refrain, like they don't know, they don't know, they don't know. over and over again and one of them is said like they don't know that my mom is writing from her old bookie. I was like it like it hit me in my soul that you oh you just did such a phenomenal job. I really appreciate that you know some of the best advice you know I've ever when I really it wasn't even really advice I think it was just something I'd overheard again at the Jason Reynolds moment he had said something like yo I just want to make sure readers are taken care of and you know I thought about that you know when I was writing this book it was like yo what are the
00:26:04
Speaker
how can I just make, cause I'm like, I want readers to laugh. I want them to feel things. You know, I kind of want to bring them almost to the point of like collapse within like carefully cradle them back. You know, I was also thinking about like how to do that. Cause I'm like, I was like, my mama gonna read this book. My father gonna read this book, right? Oh, you're fine. Yeah. My mother's going to read this book. My father's going to read this book. You know, I'm just trying to think about like, how can I make sure that they can kind of be kind of credible? But I wanted to again have this is the thing. But once I kind of figured out what I was going to do about the book, it was like, yo, how can I embed? I don't know. i I was thinking like all sorts of things like, you know, there's there's there's, you know, there's subtle references to hip hop lyrics in there that some people might catch. You know, I was at my mom's house yesterday and my sister realized that I embedded a little nugget from the movie A Bronx Tale.
00:26:50
Speaker
in this book, aha. Most people, have you ever seen a movie of Bronx sale? I need to write this down because I don't remember which part this was. Ah, this would be fun. So if you go back and especially I think if you read it maybe, it's a part in the Bronx tale where Collodoro and Jane go, they're about to go on their first date.
Writing Style: Vivid Memories and Cultural References
00:27:09
Speaker
And there's this whole scene where he unlocks the door for her to get into Robert De Niro's car. And he walks around the back and he watches to see if she reaches over to unlock his door.
00:27:22
Speaker
Oh, okay. And it was like, oh, that means that that not a selfish person. And so. Wow. yeah Oh, I go back. I got to listen again. when The best part about this is the thing that you should probably know, Gary, is so i I did this on purpose. So when you go back and check out Bookie Man again, if you decide to read it again, I will. I will. I embedded all kinds of things in there. And I was like, I wonder who's going to catch them. They're like little nuggets, right? So there's another one where, you know, I had a great day because I think this is the one when I woke up and my mother made breakfast without bacon. There was no bacon. So mama made breakfast with no hog.
00:28:00
Speaker
Right? and And if you know hip-hop, you would know Ice Cube today was a good day. And so you would also know at the very end of that particular section, because I learned that I got accepted to Morgan State University. and right But also say like, you know, I got my grub on, but then pig out. Oh my gosh. Oh gosh. Oh, there's all kinds of things going on. I think that's why I love this so much because I'm like, i'm um'm ah I love hip hop. I don't know my hip hop history as much as like it's ok a lot of other people, but it's all right this is I think this is one of the reasons why I love the audio because it I felt like I was listening to like a rap album.
00:28:37
Speaker
yeah Honestly, yeah I'm aiming for I'm aiming for the if I could I'm a grand oh my god It was and you know what and I'm not just saying this either it would lend itself so well to film as well Like just like the way it's set up. I don't know if's about I don't know how that happens, but I'll put that in the universe. as I received that you can manifest But it kind of as i was watching as I was listening, I was envisioning you and your friends and your school and your experiences along the way. Yeah, I appreciate that. Incredible. I was having a conversation with them. I'm a fill back because I'm a mispronounced the sister's name, but I just finished reading her book. It's Where Sleeping Girls Lie. She's based out of London.
00:29:20
Speaker
um so For Rita, Abieke. Oh, I'm sorry, sister, but I love her. um No, we get it. We were at a team book called in Houston and we were talking about how she goes when she writes. um She said she's I'm jealous of people who write and they see it like a movie. She goes I'm someone who can't do that, but I am. So for me when I sit down to write it's sort of this vision, like I'm writing about what I'm seeing in my head, if that makes sense. And of course there's a focus on the craft, but I'm like thinking of like a, there's a memory. There's like a, you know, I'm creating a movie. And so for me, cause I'm like, I want readers to have that experience. Like I want you to read the book or even hear the book and like this picture, like what's going on. It gives me all those like old 90s movie vibes, like, you know, like in like, like the soundtrack would be amazing. Like, gosh, like a picture, like,
00:30:14
Speaker
when you're at the prom and just like the music that's playing, like you play references to music, like just ah the way it's all set up is just like incredible. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. The other thing, you know, it's interesting because it's making me think about, I don't even know how it connects, but you know, in terms of what memories and like how all that stuff sort of showed up and at that time period, except what I wanted to make crystal clear was there's one, there's a whole hip-hop history, but also there's a history with black people right in his country in a mess and so there's a story and I tell about my friend Gary who was really shocked and killed by PG Common Peace Office in 99. So that's a real story and what readers probably don't know is what happened was this is the truth. I wasn't even sure I i knew that that moment meant a lot to me right. I couldn't figure out how I was connected to Boogie May becoming a poet until you know I really I
00:31:03
Speaker
Since I woke up three o'clock in the morning, I was in this house, I was working on the book, I was writing the book, and I just got to i forgot what part of the story. And a I woke up and i could I heard my friend's voice in my head. It's the truth. um And it was like, write my story, right? Or whatever. And i like I ran downstairs, right? So this to the computer, I'm talking. And I cried my way through writing that chapter. That is absolute truth. like I legit like poured out tears. For me, I think that was the what the writing was about, but like that's how much went into this. know like and I could tell just the way you talked about him and how much of it
00:31:42
Speaker
you know, not just friendship like brotherhood. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, yo, that was 1999. Black boy didn't kill black cops. Like, come on, it's not new. No, no. Wow. i I mean, again, just phenomenal, phenomenal work. And I'm thinking that the other line that I had here was like, you had um shattering glass windows with sticks and stones. Goodness gracious. there's awesome I mean, i i have a I literally have a list of lines. This makes, this excites me, this excites
Emotional Depth and Family Relationships
00:32:15
Speaker
me. Oh, I couldn't help myself. I honestly couldn't help myself. like And as I was looking through, I was like, man, how do you,
00:32:22
Speaker
How do you get to the point where you have so much you want to share, but then like, like you said, like you have to narrow it down. But I think you said it like you have more, this is number one. Yeah. well But you have more, you have so much more to say. And you asked yourself in the beginning, you were like, well, who wants to hear, like your story, etc. yeah Everyone needs to hear your story. everybody's here and I appreciate that. I'm just going to mention how, because another little nugget, because everything is, I forgot what page it's on, but it's right after, so in the book, it's right after I finish, or it's one of the last lines of the poem that I perform at the open mic when I'm at Towson University.
00:33:04
Speaker
u huh say um something about giving my audience a break halfway through, and they're going to have to come back to hear this knucklehead spit part two. That's because my second book is called Knucklehead. Oh my gosh, look at this is crazy. All the insights. All the insights. i think that That became the fun part. Like once I kind of got a grasp on like, I know, and so you should probably know something about like, even the title, like how the there's so much to tell you about this book. Like first of all, how the title came, the title came, I wrote a poem. This is important. I didn't start writing this book until 2022 ish, right? Or 2020, whatever it is. I wrote
00:33:44
Speaker
a poem that is the epilogue of that in the book called Awake and Awesome. ah right that That poem, and and We Feel What We Love, and the very last line is, and so the boogeyman became a poet. What people don't know is I wrote that poem in like 2012 or 2011. right I wrote that poem after Buddy Mine called me. He was having a bad day and I tried to cheer him up. It was sort of like, yo you know, anyway, we're not cheering him up with the poem, but like after trying to cheer him up on the phone, just with positive affirmation, just like as a kid, I still process my emotions by writing things. And so I got on that call and I was like, man, like.
00:34:18
Speaker
I feel like there's this poem about being great and amazing and awakening your greatness. And I just need to get that out of my chest. And I wrote that poem and the last line became, and so the boogeyman became a poet, which had nothing to do with my friend, had nothing to do with him. But I knew that all of my poems got something to do with me first. And so I'm gonna keep it. And I had a long time. And yeah so it wasn't until, and so what wound up happening was it wasn't until, um yeah, you need any wrote? All right. Hold on one second. I'll be right back.
Poetry as Social Change Advocacy
00:34:44
Speaker
so is for
00:34:49
Speaker
but but and My man like, oh yeah, y'all can either get like new Freon in your AC unit, which is like $1,300. Or for real, y'all kind of just need a whole new system. That's like, oh my god.
00:35:06
Speaker
Wow. At least you're getting it fixed though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. we we We got to. It gets, it gets, this funny thing about Washington DC is, you've I don't know if you've been here now, but it is the South. It's not like Southern, Southern, you know, at least US. It's hot. It is hot. Yeah, you know, mosquitoes and shit. boom a swamp along It's crazy. I have i mean, this this has been such great conversation. I had ah had a few specific questions. Sure. I kind of answered most of them. I guess one of the questions that I wanted to ask you about, and you kind of talked about it a little bit, um how do you see poetry and spoken word as like a vehicle for like social change and activism? And you've talked a little bit about
00:35:58
Speaker
it um um numerous times um through speaking engagements, you've talked about it online. um Are there like specific causes or issues that you feel particularly like compelled to address through poetry? so like What are they? um And and yeah these are really good questions. um Because the first thing the end the first thing I think about is the first thing I think about is voice. This is the truth. You know, as a kid, writing poetry to myself on the page was about it was an expression of my voice.
00:36:31
Speaker
right It's what my voice sounds like, or at least what the voice in my head sounds like when I when i put it down on the paper. um And so there's the poetry on the page, but then once it's on the stage, once once my voice, I hear it amplified, like when a microphone amplified, there's something about it jets out. like you know I make a lot of references in my book to like a preacher and a MC, right this idea that like words can move crowds, like preachers can move congregations. I say, like Teachers can move classrooms, which by the way, education is definitely like my issue area, and for sure. Racial disparities, education, linguistic, racism, all that kind of mess. I think we have them.
00:37:08
Speaker
Yeah, racist foundation of education. In general, yes. Much of what we do. And everybody wondered why there's all these problems. I'm like, well, if the schools were never built for people like me to be great. Like, they just weren't designed to be great. um We're not designed to be. We were designed to be great, but the school system was not anyway. And so, you know, I write about those things. But when I think so much about, like, if anything, one thing I've learned is every poem that I write and every poem that I perform is not for everybody. Right. But if anything, it is for at least one person. I firmly believe this. I performed in places, thousands of people. I've also performed in places with two people. And those two people get the same
00:37:48
Speaker
level of energy and commitment and love and right because I'm like yo you are supposed to be here on purpose just like we're supposed to be here and I think that what happens is when when I'm able to share my poetry or to share poems or to tell stories I think folks are able to like feel seen, feel heard, feel understood to be like oh my gosh like that makes sense like you know even like my book for a great example you don't have to be and it a gay black boy to understand what it's like to be someone struggling with identity right or right or struggling with like the world and like feeling suppressed. and you don't write And so I think there's something about finding solidarity in that not that. That's where the advocacy and stuff comes in. It's like, yo, I'll spit this poem because I know somebody need to hear it. I'm either going to cheer you up
00:38:34
Speaker
I might piss you off. I might change the world. But I do know that this is an agency. like i can express I can amplify this thing. I can rally you up. you know i mean and so ah For me, it's where it comes from. And so when I think about issues, I'm always like, yo, it's education. It's racial you know injustice in education. um I write a lot about and perform a lot about Black masculinity. um This is really important as someone who absolutely identifies with hip-hop culture. I'm not a rapper, but I'm hip-hop to my core all day, right? And culture is just... in
00:39:07
Speaker
I'm 43 years old. I don't know a word without a hip-hop name, right? But I'm also a gay man. Right. And this is important. Like, Black gay man connected it. My PhD is an educated leadership with a focus on hip-hop. You know what I mean? But when you think about the context in which people like me are represented in hip-hop, it's never in these celebratory kinds of ways. And so it's interesting to see that through literature. through poetry, through spoken word, through the art of the word is weird. There's sort of this interesting space that I've been able to come and at me. And it's not just me, you know what I mean? But I think about shots of but people like Bettina Love, um Punish for Dreaming, also Hip Hop Head, but you know, gay. There's something about, I don't know, there's something in that there that I wanted to just share. And and i you know, so and so you talk about that and like that the book in itself, taught it it
00:39:51
Speaker
touches on that and it explains it in a way that is so accessible yeah as well. like every as a I mean, I'm an adult, but like a kid could look at that, read it, dissect it and understand so much about what you just mentioned by the words. That means a great, oh, the affirmations. because I'm telling you, I'm telling you. middle because is The other thing is, I mean, this is important because I'm again, I'm 40 year old, well, I'll be 43, whatever, 40 year old ish man. writing books for kids or at least for young people. It's important, right? Like to think about like my voice and like my editor would tell me sometimes like Tony sounds like you're trying to teach. You gotta like, you know, like you gotta, you can't force things on readers. And as an adult, we want to do this to young people. We want to teach them. We want to tell them. We want to, you know, like I want to write, you know, there's a, there's a black feminist perspective. I even throw in this book when I talk about being in the club, dancing with my friends and I'm like, yo,
Upcoming Works: 'Knucklehead' and Future Projects
00:40:47
Speaker
I don't try.
00:40:47
Speaker
you know like and But I was like, yo how do I write about this in a way that's accessible, right? And so something that I remember doing, I was really intentional about this was I was like, yo, if anything, I didn't know how in a world I was gonna get to college, but I figured it out. And I'm thinking about any other students or people who might read this book who might not know what that pathway might look like. I'm like, yo, I'm gonna talk about financial aid, at least in the US system, the FAFSA. I'm gonna include an example of a personal statement. right um
00:41:19
Speaker
ah hello right I'm going to figure out a way to make sure that young people, readers are going to get knowledge. I'm an educator. like I'm going to invade knowledge in this thing. this is my ances My ancestors put knowledge in poems, in songs. over i put Messages. It's so true. For the purpose of Black People's Liberation. I did that on purpose. It did. Totally. I mean, again, absolutely phenomenal. um i am I mean, one of the first books that I've read this year, listen to oh the only book I've listened to this year, one of the first books i've ive I got into this year, um I will be sharing it. I will be putting it into the world in hands as much as possible.
00:42:05
Speaker
um and You mentioned it and you can share as much as you can. um yeah I am excited about more. um yeah i um I'm really interested in what you do next. um If you can share because I know as an author, you know. Sometimes there's a great area there, but like, what what did you what do you have next? What are you looking forward to? It's no great. I'm happy to share because it's coming. And it's interesting because now is the time of year, because around this time last year is when um i they had just started releasing the advanced readers copies of the boogeyman and all that kind of like, you know, promotion was picking up marketing. There was a book cover announcement. And so at some point,
00:42:47
Speaker
ah in the next couple months, the world will also hear that there's another book coming from Tony Keith Jr. and I'm very excited about this one because it is Knucklehead. It it is a poetry collection to Black ah boys and men, especially the gay queer ones and the people who love us. So I'm like, yo, you love me and this book is for you, right? But what it is, it's it's a collection of poems and what the the best part about it is I learned a new language now that I'm in the publishing industry is after writing Boogie Man. So remember, look important sort Knucklehead was sort of written as a whole collection and then Boogie Man needed to be written, right? So Knucklehead just kind of stayed where it was, right? While I wrote Boogie Man. After I wrote Boogie Man, I then knew how to write Knucklehead differently.
00:43:34
Speaker
This is important, right? There was sort of this thing of like, wait a minute, I don't know if I want the kind of poetry collection where it's like, ooh, let me go to the love poem section. right love yeah Or we could just like piece it apart. I wanted something that readers would be like, yo, from beginning to end, from cover to cover. What is a poetry collection that could look like that? And out of nowhere, not even really out of nowhere, last summer,
00:44:05
Speaker
I was doing some workshops with about 40 black high school boys from Washington DC. That's around black masculinity and hip hop and poetry, all the things I love to talk about. And I mentioned to them, I got this book called Boogie Man coming out soon, because it wasn't even out yet. I was like, here's the cover. Here's some, I'm going to read something from it. And I was like, I got this collection of poems coming out too called Knucklehead. This is important. So on the board, I wrote Knucklehead, but I spelled it K-N-U-C-K-L. H-E-A-D. I missed an E. I missed an E. And I was like, yeah, these are poems. Like I'm writing poems for y'all. You know what I mean? It's for all black boys. I'm telling them about the collection and I read them some of the poems from the from the collection, right? Now this is before it was edit before I got to anyway.
00:44:51
Speaker
and so I was like, oh, I misspelled the thing on the board. And it was like, nah, keep it like that. You should keep it. You should keep keep it like that. Or maybe on a book cover, like maybe had him draw like the Lord, the Lord triangle was it editing. So anyway, so I know moment like I have to remember when I write knucklehead, I need to write it to these boys. Right? Not like some broad poetry collection. I need to write to them specifically. And so the language that I learned was epistolary, apparently. That's the word. But I wrote letters to those knuckleheads. Wow. so
00:45:28
Speaker
it's yeah so it begins with like this dear knucklehead you know have you ever had a planet lodged in your belly that was too big for fit or something anyway but it's oh it's good and so oh my gosh happened so so once there's like this sort of first letter that sets up like a theme like the first theme is you know around um ah ah Oh, I think the, what is the first theme? I should know this better. Anyway, but then there's some poems that follow, but it has the same flow of Boogeyman where the titles sort of service transitions, right? Oh, it's fine. Wow. Love poems in there about me and my husband. It's, um but yeah, but it's a series of letters to knuckleheads and it is, oh, it is it's sensational.
00:46:11
Speaker
no like it's You know, here's why. And I'm and i' not probably talking too much, but here's why. this And this is what my agent and I always have said. It was the poetry that got me here. right So those poems that were in Knucklehead existed before Boogie Man became recorded. And then it was just a matter of, and what's the other thing I should mention is some of the poems in Knucklehead make direct languages ah linkages to some of the stories of Boogie Man. Oh no! Oh yes ah no!
00:46:44
Speaker
e So there's going to be this moment of like, oh, you've got to read them together. Like my agent, it's like the memoir is the flesh, but knucklehead is the bones, right? um that's all the but yeah oh Oh, it's so good. I'm excited. I'm excited. um The last thing I'll say is some of the poems in knucklehead, this is the truth, are also original poems that I wrote as a kid. I just slightly witnessed them. But and it'd be great. I want to readers would ever figure out which one because there's no handwritten copies in this. These are just, you know, um oh guess think i'll say is there's going to be illustrations in this book and oh my gosh. Stop it. Yo, but the artist I can't I don't think I can say the name yet has
00:47:33
Speaker
Because I write with a lot of imagery, as you probably know, has specifically illustrated images of like little knuckleheads, like little black boys. What? Oh, it's so good. Come on. Come on. So that's coming that. And then you know later on, I want to talk to you about this because I have an interest maybe in writing a children's picture book. I don't know. hu You can. Tony, you you you like um i don't know yeah don't know you said the same thing about writing what you've created, right? And honestly, like i I said in the beginning, but I see you. I appreciate you. I want to see more from you. it it is you What you are doing is absolutely
Connect with Tony Keith, Jr.
00:48:18
Speaker
phenomenal. And I appreciate it so much. i received yeah of i received where where can we Where can people find you online?
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah, so first, um the good thing is is, I can't believe that I can say, I'm very Google-able now, this is bizarre, but tolakeethjunior.com or at tolakeethjunior on all faiths. I'm not as active on X because it's not on X and I miss Twitter. but um but you Instagram is usually kind of like my social media choice, but um yeah, they can find me there. Just, you know, pop in Google how the boogeyman became a poet, and yeah, that's it. i appreciate you likewise thank you this was amazing i
00:49:18
Speaker
I appreciate you. Likewise. Thank you.