I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.

I think that we're just too invested in that myth that we are not connected, and are all potential millionaires if only we put in the work. I think that's destructive and ignores history and is one of the reasons we as a state are consistently at the bottom of all the lists because we handicap ourselves.

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

I feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta, and maybe that's because sharecropping was a fairly recent phenomena. I feel like the past is closer and it bears even more heavily on the present there than it does in the rest of the state.

I came to the realization that I had failed in some respects because I had been more of a benevolent narrator than the world I saw reflected around me, and in the lives of the people in my community, and in my family. There was no benevolent God sparing us pain and loss and grief and struggle. If I was going to continue to write about the place where I am from, and the kind of people who live in my community and who are in my family, I owed it to them to be honest with what our lives are like.

While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.