Anna Deavere Smith - Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines

C O N T E N T S

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER, ANNA Y. SMITH,

A TEACHER IN THE BALTIMORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, WHO WAS ALSO AMONG

THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TALK TO ME.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

To my hosts in Washington, the Honorable Amory Houghton and Priscilla Dewey Houghton, for welcoming me into their home and for giving me a base from which to work. For their spirit, humor, friendship, and generosity.

My editor, Ann Godoff, for introducing me to another kind of writing, another way of looking at character, another way of creating voice, another way of inhabiting words and talk.

My agent, Gloria Loomis, for being there, always, with her particular, unique combination of savvy and grace.

Kate Niedzwiecki, for her constancy and her editorial assistance.

Sarah DImperio, Anns assistant.

Jessye Norman, for conversations that influenced the formation of some of the ideas in this book. For her performances, which have taught me many lessons about the relationship of a single voice to an audience. For her passionate interest in this country. For how she speaks to us, all over the world, in our souls, through songssongs in different languages, songs from all over the worldsongs written now, songs written in the past. Some of those songs come from the United States: spirituals about hope in the presence of suffering and unfairness, and then patriotic songs about glory and promise. Songs that she sings and has sung in the acoustic perfection of concert halls, in churches, in opera houses, in schools, against the granite background of monuments, in the huge coldness of convention halls. Songs that manage to bind us, even through our differences. For the magic of her communication to our hearts, beyond words, beyond cultures, across boundaries.

The presidents who were willing to meet with me, and their staffs who made it possible: President Jimmy Carter, President George Bush, President Bill Clinton.

Stephen Rivers, for his diligence in helping me move around the beltway world. Peter Osnos, for early conversations about this book, and his encouragement. Diana Walker, for her humor, inspiration, and generosity, and for her perceptive, sometimes theatrical, photographs of presidents since Carter. Catharine Stimpson, for her common sense. Stephen Hess, at the Brookings Institute, for being the first to translate Washington for me. Riley Temple, for giving me confidence from time to time, right on time.

With gratitude to, and in memory of, Maynard Parker, former editor of Newsweek, and Charles Lyons, former chair, Department of Drama, Stanford University.

Alison Bernstein, Andrea Taylor, Christine Vincent, Barron Tenny, and all of the people at the Ford Foundation, for conversations and experiments about how to enliven democracy and the ways in which we talk to one another across the lines of power, race, class, and difference; in institutions, cities, and countries; and between individuals.

Suzanne Sato, a patron saint and wise woman, for helping so many of us take risksintellectually and artisticallyin our disciplines, forms, and communities. For being forward-looking.

The Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como, Bellagio, Italy. Special thanks to Gianna Celli and Susan Garfield for my residency there.

Adria Popkin, for her clerical assistance on the first draft of this book.

David Chalian, Stacey Shorter, Roberta Goodman, Kimber Riddle, Diana Alvarez, Sandra Smith, Jane Kennedy, Irene Mecchi, and Shana Waterman, for their intelligence, friendship, and support.

The artists, core audience, and staff of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, who have been experimenting for three summers with the art of conversation in public.

Colleagues and deans at Stanford University, for being flexible and making it possible for me to take the time needed to research, prepare for, and follow the 96 campaign.

The students in my Arts and Civic Dialogue class, Fall 1999, for their energy, inventiveness, openness, appetite for civic responsibility, and, most of all, idealism.

Stephen Richard, Kitty Eisele, Nora Connell, Marcos Najera, Lynette Turner, Matthew Francis, Andrew Goodman, Cori Nelson, Stacey Schwandt, and Eryn Rosenthal, for the research and creativity needed to develop an understanding of the presidency and the press in history and now. For all the logistics and long hours provided to move me through the presidential campaign trail in 96, and to the South, where churches had burned that summer.

This book was inspired, in part, by a project I developed called the Press and Presidency Project. One of its dimensions was as a project for the theater. It was originally commissioned by the Arena Stage Theater: Doug Wager, artistic director; Stephen Richard, managing director. It was subsequently produced at the Arena Stage Theater, the Mark Taper Forum, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. Its development was also supported by the Intimann Theater and the Goodman Theater. Many thanks to all of the theaters, artistic directors, managing directors, boards of directors, the Friends of the Press and Presidency Project, and the actors, designers, dramaturgs, historians, stage managers, production assistants, staff, and audiences that dedicated their time, commitment, and talent to giving that project a lifefinancially, logistically, intellectually, and artistically. Its life in the theater (a play called House Arrest) provided the opportunity to represent ideas in the form of character, spoken words, and metaphor in front of live audiences. It also provided the opportunity to talk to actors and other theater artists about language and character in new and different ways. Finally, it provided the opportunity to talk to audiences after shows and to invite them to talk to me, and to one another.

Stanley and Betty Sheinbaum.

Stephen and Daryl Roth.

Gordon Davidson.

Cinder Stanton, Monticello.

The White House.

The Maryland Correctional Institute for Women.

Maggie Williams, Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt, Mike McCurry, Sheila Tate, Jody Powell, Peter Mirijanian, John Sullivan, Susan Mercandetti, Tina Brown, Rhonda Sherman, Wendy Smith, Robert Kaiser, Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, and Don Graham.

To all of the people who invited me to their homes, their favorite restaurants, their parties, their offices, and their prison visiting rooms in and around Washington. For your fellowship and your generosity in opening doors that otherwise would have been impossible to open.

I interviewed more than four hundred people in the course of working on this project. To all of the people who provided interviewsmost of which do not appear in this bookthose hours of interviews, your words, are the heart of the project and the foundation for my work in general. Thank you for talking to me.

P R O L O G U E

W I L D W A V E S A N D B O N F I R E S

1971

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

A HOWARD JOHNSONS PARKING LOT NEAR I-95

I PACKED AN OVERNIGHT BAG AND COUNTED OUT EIGHTY DOLLARS, all the money I had in the world. My mother drove me to a Howard Johnsons near I-95. A car pulled up with four friends, each of whom had come from a different point north of Maryland. At age twenty-one I left my family, my hometown, and, with my four friends, took off for California. We wanted to see America and to make sense, each in our own way, of what to do with all the breakage and promise that had been released through the antiwar movement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the beginning of the environmental movement, and the bra-burning, brief as it was, of the womens movement. And there was the masculine glamour and fashion of the black liberation movement. Years later I would talk to some of those Black Panthers. One of them mused openly, I think we got caught up in the theater of it. We began to believe we were in a movie. One of the Chicago Eight would similarly say, It was theater, until the cops showed us the difference between reality and theater, and hauled some of us off to jail.