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Though she is perhaps best known for her poetry, Morgan Parker—the author of collections including There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night—is a multidisciplinary phenom. Five years after publishing Who Put This Song On?, her first young adult novel, she’s back with You Get What You Pay For, an alternately witty and searing essay collection examining the cultural legacy of Black womanhood and the meaning of finding “well-being” in a world that wasn’t built for you.
Vogue recently spoke to Parker about her new work, the danger of Black female identity getting “lost under facts,” and nesting as a form of solace.
Vogue: How did you prepare yourself to see this book come into the world?
Morgan Parker: Well, the writing of it took a really long time. It was a slog, and it definitely was a thing where I had to take a lot of breaks. There were stretches where I was like, I just can’t write this, which felt a little bit different. I knew that, because of the material and something about the nonfiction form, it would feel more vulnerable. I just knew that from before the writing of it. I’ve done this before and I know how drained I was then, so as of six months ago, I was talking to my therapist and saying, “Okay, I need a toolbox for tour.” I was already thinking ahead about how to protect myself while also engaging with the material on a really authentic level.
Do you feel like you bring different versions of yourself to your poetry versus essays and other nonfiction?
You know, the writing process and the conception process for poetry and essays are very close together for me. A lot of the content of these essays was stuff that I had traversed in poems already, so it almost was like, I’m going back to the same statements, but pulling them out into paragraphs. A lot of these ideas start with the same seeds, I guess. The writing process was different for this essay collection, but it was dealing with language on the same level from a lyrical perspective. So generating was easy in that respect, because it really was like, Let me not only pay attention to the narrative or the argument of the essay, but also the rhythm and the poetry and the lyricism.
Putting the book together and conceiving of arguing something over various essays was kind of a different process, though. There are so many different threads in the book. In a poetry book, I can kind of just lay all those threads out, whereas with this one, I felt more compelled to do some braiding and figure out exactly what that would look like. I was not always sure what I was writing toward, and then at other times I had an idea in my head and was trying to execute that, but I know from poetry that just because you have a plan of how something might turn out does not mean that’s how it goes. It was a process of having almost an outline for an essay, or an idea for what it would achieve and accomplish, and then also allowing for that kind of poetic process of running with the language and letting the work kind of pick up space on the page, and deal with it that way.
What do you wish was more commonly understood about Black women’s physical and emotional health?
I think it’s less about knowing things, because a lot of what I’m talking about we already know, and it’s just a matter of, How often does that come into your brain? I’m looking for a more holistic and present and permanent consideration, rather than, Oh, I know that fact, or, I heard someone mention in an article that doctors under-prescribe to Black women. I think sometimes we can get lost under facts; the physicality of an individual Black woman can get lost under that, so for me, it’s really just about paying attention to the person in front of you. I told a story about when I was walking to a reading and a white woman bumped into me, and then I saw her at the reading and it was just like, okay, you’re into this and you’re digging in and you’re thanking me for my words, but then as soon as we leave this bookstore, you’re bumping into a Black woman and not apologizing. Are you carrying that information in the world?
In the book, I quote some work from the ’60s about Black women battling low self-esteem because of the effects of slavery and the way that Black women’s bodies and minds have been disregarded. There is an understanding of that, but not so much a linking of it to our dailiness and what that does to our daily self-esteem. It’s like, I’m less inclined to go on online dating, you know what I mean? It’s really like, what are my daily and small interactions? How are they affected by these things? I think that’s something that we don’t understand as much or care to consider as much because it’s easier to see broad strokes rather than the tiny things. Really, I just want folks to understand how much is being asked of us in terms of being strong and filling our own self-esteem. I was telling someone the other day, the only esteem I have is self-esteem, because it’s not like I’m getting it anywhere else. That’s another thing that’s so unreasonable of us as a country—to expect Black women to be so strong and so resilient, but not to refill us at all.
What does safety look like to you these days?
I’ve been thinking a lot about that, actually. I mean, my apartment! [Laughs.] I was telling my therapist that I would love for my sense of safety to be able to travel with with me and be internal, but I have not yet achieved that. It feels very significant to me that I spend a lot of time decorating my apartment, and the way that I decorate it and organize it is based on wanting to be able to look somewhere and just think, Oh, that’s who I am and what I care about. It’s really about creating a space of non-judgement—creating a context where I make the most sense—because I think that’s really where the feeling of not being safe comes from. For me, it’s often about being misunderstood, which is a big fear of mine; the minute that you’re not understood, there is a potential threat. A lot of that has to do with wanting to assimilate and wanting people to think that I’m safe, but lately I’m just so aware of how hostile the world is, and nesting in my apartment has been such an antidote to that. I’m looking for ways to kind of carry that sense of home with me, because you can’t be comfortable in the world unless you’re comfortable at home, and if you’re not comfortable in your body, you can at least be comfortable in your home. I think the esteem really has to come from inside the house.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
