“I hope that readers recognize themselves in the story and that they understand that this story was written with love,” Jabari Asim said about his debut novel “Only the Strong” (Agate Publishing).
The novel hit bookshelves Tuesday, May 12 as his literary follow up to “A Taste of Honey,” a collection of short stories set in 1967 St. Louis.
An acclaimed author, academic and journalist who currently serves as executive editor for NAACP’s The Crisis magazine, Asim will return home to talk about “Only the Strong” in three weeks (7 p.m. Thursday, June 4) at The St. Louis Public Library’s Central Branch for a talk co-presented by Left Bank Books.
“Only the Strong” catches up with the city in the aftermath of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Rage and unrest boiled over in a city divided by racial tension and misunderstanding.
Sound familiar?
“One of the things I’m trying to do in these stories is draw a line from the past to the present – and show how one event led to another,” Asim said.
His work on “Only The Strong” was well underway before Michael Brown Jr.’s killing in Ferguson – and in “A Taste of Honey,” which was published in 2010, one story deals with a character being harassed by police and an unarmed black teen being killed by an officer.
“I want people to see those patterns, but I also want to show people a degree of hope and optimism, because as black people we have been going through this a long time,” Asim said.
“We’ve been dealing with brutal police, and the killing of unarmed black people at their hands, since there have been police. I hope that people will have a sense of history and understand that what happened in Ferguson is a culmination of events that started decades ago.”
More important than highlighting intergenerational systemic dysfunction was looking to the past to show the city’s ability to move beyond the pain.
“What was transformative for me was taking the characters through their individual journeys and realizing that we continue – that it was a temporary setback,” Asim said. “We will always miss Dr. King, but he would expect us to get up and keep moving. In many respects we have, and we will continue to do the same after the Michael Brown tragedy.”
He also seeks to capture the soul of the city by presenting the heart of the people in the community.
“There are a lot of colorful people in St. Louis,” Asim said. “If I went to the corner store when I was a kid, there would be this group of old men sitting outside and they would be so memorable, charming and witty – and, sometimes, wise.”
His interest in making St. Louis the backdrop for his fiction was rooted in a chance meeting with one of his literary heroes, when his friend and mentor Eugene B. Redmond introduced him to acclaimed author John Edgar Wideman.
“He said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said ‘I’m from North St. Louis,’” Asim said of Wideman. “He said, ‘Somebody needs to be telling the stories of North St. Louis. Are you doing that?’ And I stuttered a little bit, but I never forgot it. Years later, I was like, ‘Maybe he’s right. I’m looking all over the place for a story, and there were stories all around me as I was growing up – even as an adult living in St. Louis.’”
So he embarked upon the creative mission of bringing the narrative of North St. Louis to the forefront in literature, as Wideman did with Philadelphia and playwright August Wilson did for Pittsburgh.
“It’s an affectionate remembrance of our community in the seventies and how vibrant and funky and resilient and wonderful it was,” Asim said. “Some of those things we accomplished and enjoyed during that period we still can today. Wherever we congregate as black people, we are capable of producing a certain magic.”
Jabari Asim’s “Only the Strong” is available in bookstores and online nationwide. He will sign the novel 7 p.m. Thursday, June 4 in the Carnegie Room of St. Louis Public Library’s Central Branch, 1301 Olive. For more information, call (314) 367-6731 or visit www.left-bank.com.
