Award-winning poet, performer, playwright, and educator Maria James-Thiaw has published several books of poetry and founded the Reclaim Artist Collective, which seeks to to raise consciousness about social justice issues impacting marginalized communities through its arts-based, anti-racist curriculum. Her latest collection, Count Each Breath, examines her experiences as a Black woman in the American healthcare system.
Maria joins me today to have the conversation we floated when she first came on the show in 2019, about the intersection of art and politics. Is it even possible to disconnect them? We tackle this question, as well as the political implications of the focus on STEM education, what happens when we relegate the arts to an afterthought, and how driven creative folks find ways to earn money from their art or artistic skills.
Show links: Maria James-Thiaw
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Maria refers to Amari and the Night Brothers during our conversation.
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Transcript: Maria James-Thiaw
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Award winning poet, performer, playwright, and educator, Maria James Chow, has published several books of poetry and founded the Reclaim Artist Collective, which seeks to raise consciousness about social justice issues impacting marginalized communities through its arts based anti racist curriculum. Her latest poetry collection, Count Each Breath, examines her experiences as a black woman in the American health care system. Maria joins me today to have the conversation we floated when she first came on the show in 2019 about the intersection of art and politics.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:51]:
Is it even possible to disconnect them? We tackle this question as well as the political implications of the focus on STEM education, what happens when we relegate the arts to an afterthought, and how driven creative folks find ways to earn money from their art or artistic skills. Here’s my conversation with Maria James Chow. Maria, welcome back to Follow Your Curiosity. I have been looking forward to this.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:01:15]:
Me too.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:17]:
So last time you were here, which was a good while ago.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:01:21]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:22]:
We went into your creative history and all of that, so we won’t rehash that here. If anybody wants to check that out, that’s what back episodes are for. But back then, we talked about just briefly enough to say, let’s come back and have a longer conversation later about the idea of art and politics. And I feel like the last couple years have been moments that probably have made art even more political than before. Though this morning, I was also thinking, isn’t art inherently political? Because all art makes a statement, and all politics is about making a statement, standing up for something. And what’s what’s the difference between making a statement and shining a light on something and actually being in the arena and standing up and saying, we need this policy. Let’s make it happen. And I’m not I mean, obviously, there are functional differences.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:23]:
But at the core, I’m not sure there’s a huge gap in in that space. What do you what do you think?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:02:31]:
Well, I think I think if you are not part of a privileged class, your very breath in the world is is political. I think that there are some that traditionally have had the, the privilege for lack of a better term to just write about sunshine, lollipops, rainbows. But, but everyone can’t do that. I tried that. And the sunshine was, the heat of the indignities against me. Like, I can’t. I can’t. I Right.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:03:23]:
I tried to write about snow and birds and no. It just doesn’t work for me. So I always and it’s it’s it’s not, forced. It’s not in like, if I sit down with the intention of writing a political poem. It’s just part of my everyday walking on the planet. Just part of my being that when art comes out, it comes out political. I don’t know. I do think some people can avoid.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:04:03]:
They they avoid that, but I don’t know. For me, that doesn’t work. So
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:10]:
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense because it’s your lived experience, and everybody’s art comes out of their lived experience in one way or another. And I think that there’s nothing wrong with sunshine and rainbows and flowers and unicorns, and I know that we’re being extreme to a certain extent with those examples. But but it if that’s the only thing that you have to talk about, I wonder how much you pay attention to what’s going on in the world around you. And I I wonder how many people can really be that oblivious without actively working at being that oblivious?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:04:49]:
Right. Because even if today you’re talking about nature, you’re you’re talking about something that we are actively destroying.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:58]:
Right.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:04:58]:
So how how can you talk about this beautiful animal without talking about how this animal will not be here in fifty years? You know? Or this this, I mean, we could write about lanternflies. Do you have that Oh, yeah. Problem where you are? Oh, yeah. My gosh. I’m surprised I haven’t written about lanternflies yet, but this too is a political statement, The invasion.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:32]:
Really?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:05:32]:
Really? The invasion of this destructive, thing and the way, like, even little kids have been prompted to murder them randomly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:44]:
Oh, yeah. It’s my favorite game now in the summer is how many can I stomp on in the parking lot Yeah? Which is really twisted now that I say that.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:05:55]:
It’s like,
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:56]:
you know, everybody says if you see one, kill it. So okay. You know? And, obviously, you can’t kill hundreds of them in the parking lot. That would that would just the the cost to benefit ratio is not great there. But, but, yeah, it’s almost like a video game come to life. Right? Yeah. How many lanternflies can you kill? That’ll probably be the next one.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:06:18]:
Somebody is gonna make that game. Somebody’s making it. House.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:24]:
But they’re such a great metaphor too. Right? They come in. They invade. They get everywhere. They annoy everybody that was there in the first place. I mean, they’re they’re kind of like nature’s little colonizing force.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:06:39]:
Oh, they sure are.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:41]:
They are. Them and stink bugs.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:06:47]:
Ugh. I had one
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:47]:
of those land on me the other day
Maria James-Thiaw [00:06:49]:
for the
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:49]:
first time, and I didn’t know what it was. A friend of mine knocked it off because I was like, what is that buzzing? Those things buzz loud.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:06:57]:
Hey. Yeah. They do. They and they knock into stuff, and I think it’s on purpose.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:05]:
Like, it’ll be like, blink. I mean, they’re basically made of armor, so what do they care? Yeah. Right? But, you know, I I mean, I’m thinking there’s there’s a potential, you know, political comment in there too because the stink bugs came over from Asia. Mhmm. And, you know, probably in a shipping container, and now they’ve taken over the universe. Do we do we blame Asia? Is it their fault? I don’t think so.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:07:31]:
They’re the two largest.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:32]:
If you wanted to yeah. Right? I mean, it’s the China bug if you wanted to go there. So though I’m not exactly sure what part of Asia they come from, it might not be China. But but, you know, I mean, it it it takes no effort to get from stink bugs are horrible and annoying, and I wish they would go away to stink bugs came from Asia and, therefore, is all Asia’s fault. It takes none. Whether it’s justified or not. And as we have seen in recent years, justified is not necessarily a requirement anymore. Alright.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:08:08]:
We can just say whatever.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:12]:
Yes. Now we can say whatever we want.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:08:14]:
I mean, like, remember seems to care. Remember from well, I I don’t know. I my degree is in communications. I don’t know what your this, but I remember from those communication classes how, oh my god. Orson Welles, you know, gotten so much trouble for, for, you know, the aliens.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:36]:
War of the worlds.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:08:38]:
Yeah. And I think today, I don’t think he’d get in trouble. I think he’d get a spot on Fox News.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:47]:
Right. I think I think some people would have a problem with it and would say so. And then because some people were having a problem with it and saying so, somebody else would try to elevate it as, yay, free speech, whatever, which is not
Maria James-Thiaw [00:08:59]:
to say that Orson Wills
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:00]:
violated free speech. Though I do know somebody whose grandmother so so Grover’s Mill is not far from where I live. And and her grandmother was I think it was her grandmother, probably, because the dates are about right, was listening to War of the Worlds and was starting to, you know, like everybody else did, freak out about it when it was live on the air. And and then there was a line about how, you know, there’s this huge line of traffic at Grover’s Mill, and she looked out her window and said, no. There’s not. I didn’t kill the magic of the moment for her, but that was also when she stopped panicking. So, you know
Maria James-Thiaw [00:09:42]:
Oh, good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:43]:
Yeah. But, yeah, there’s a Grover’s Mill coffee company near here, and they’re they have a big painting from War of the Worlds in their
Maria James-Thiaw [00:09:50]:
coffee shop. Oh. Yeah. Oh my god. I have to visit there. You do. Shops. Yes.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:09:56]:
Yes. You do. We have to go.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:58]:
I know. It’s been too long. But anyway, yeah, I mean, it’s it is fascinating to me how everything that comes out of somebody’s mouth now ends up being politicized. We politicized a virus and people died because of it.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:10:19]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:20]:
People are still dying because of it. We politicized a vaccine. I mean, good grief. You know? Vaccines have been I mean, you think about you know, people were talking about this. My parents were talking about how, you know, they lined up to get the sugar cube when the polio vaccine came out, and there was no question whatsoever you were gonna get it because polio was so horrible. Every single parent in the country was like, me first. Let me get in line. I want my kid to have this thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:49]:
And now we’re running around talking about this. Like, it’s got alien tech in it, and there are people who think that it does, and that just kind of boggles my mind. I mean, I’ve watched a lot of science fiction in my life, but I’m still not sure how they think that could possibly work. But but, yeah, I mean, we turn everything into politics, so it doesn’t really surprise me that therefore and I would guess even twenty, thirty years ago, it was true that art is, to a degree, inherently political depending on how far you wanna take it, but still political. Mhmm. But now every single word that comes out of your mouth is political.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:11:33]:
Yeah. I and it’s funny. Some sometimes, like you said, with the alien text, sometimes it’s nonsensical. Like like, there’s no way that can be true, but you’re you still got, like, 50 people outside holding a vigil because you said, like, Elvis lives in here or something. Like, they just make up the craziest stuff. And I was actually just looking for something I can tell your listeners about. Here in Pennsylvania, some I’m thinking probably QAnon people. We’re putting we’re putting, notes into food packages.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:12:24]:
So that is very scary. So I’m thinking, like, that they must let be in the, you know, must work in the factory or in the grocery stores, but but it’s like Cracker Jacks. Like Wow. I had a student that opened a box of cookies and there was this note inside. And I had taken a picture of it, but I’m not finding it at the moment to I mean, I I I did it. I read it out loud like a soliloquy just completely making fun of the thing. But, basically, it says that there are signs everywhere and there’s aliens and that there’s dragon headed people that are taking over, and they’re they’re from the KKK, and and they Obama was in on it, and Trump will save the day. And it was the most ridiculous thing I ever read, and we were laughing hysterically.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:13:27]:
But at the same time, you’re scared because you’re like, you’re in my food. Like, what?
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:33]:
Right. And these people really believe this
Maria James-Thiaw [00:13:36]:
stuff. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:37]:
You know? Like, the case with the pizza parlor in DC that didn’t even have a basement, but bad things were going on in the basement.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:13:45]:
Exactly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:46]:
Yeah. I mean, that just sounds like a fever dream. You know? Like, somebody somebody really you know?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:13:56]:
And wasn’t there some there was someone that was I think they were caught, if I remember the news story correctly, but they were planning on assassinating people because of things happening in that basement.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. The guy went there and was like, where, you know, where is it? Went there with a gun. And the owners are like, what are you even talking about? And, you know, called the police on him and everything. They’re like, there’s not even there’s no place for this to happen. Yeah. And I think that’s the only way that the scales fall off anybody’s eyes at this point. But even then, I think some of them could come up with a reason why there doesn’t need to be a basement.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:35]:
You know, like, the the hold the conspiracy theory hold is so strong. And I’ve heard QAnon described as a religion, and I think that there is, you know, reasonable justification for calling it that. You know, that it has kind of replaced religion and you’re a true believer
Maria James-Thiaw [00:14:54]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:54]:
No matter how nonsensical it is. I mean, you know, like, I think about the vaccine stuff, and I’m just like, seriously, I I remember Fantastic Voyage. Yes. You shrink people down in a little ship and inject them into somebody’s body to go fix the thing. Right? But it’s fiction. Exactly. You know? There’s there’s a line there. There may be a statement being made about wouldn’t it be great if we could do this to cure people or, you you know, maybe someday we’ll go too far.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:26]:
I mean, come on. I’m a Doctor Who fan. We’ve got the Cybermen, which are the classic example of sixties paranoia about going too far with medical implants that may not be that paranoid. I don’t know. Are we crazy enough to just start replacing everything? Possibly. But it’s, you know, it’s a cautionary tale if nothing else, but it’s fiction. You wanna think about, wow, what would the world be like if that happened, and how do we wanna proceed with that? That’s kind of what it’s there for is to provoke that discussion, but nobody is thinking that you’re going to take it seriously.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:16:04]:
Yeah. Oh, I found the crazy note from them.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:07]:
Oh, you did?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:16:08]:
Yes. I’m not gonna read this whole thing. I don’t wanna, like, convert anyone who’s
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:14]:
Right. But just representative sample.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:16:17]:
Yes. It’s it’s basically it it’s has these huge parts that say lies, lies, and then it has tiny little print and lots of abbreviations where it’s almost like you have to decipher it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:33]:
To decode it.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:16:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. It is really crazy. But there’s basically saying that, that there are secret societies, and that’s why there’s mass shootings. And, JFK and Lincoln warned us about them. And, and they are and it’s basically saying that the Vatican, the Jesuits, you know, bad Catholics are, the Illuminati, which also somebody read somebody read some Dan Brown and take it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:13]:
I was just thinking of Dan Brown.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:17:18]:
Oh yeah. The Vatican’s got its own mafia. Let’s see. There’s secret messages in China in the Chinese and Islamic symbols of the Crescent. And, yeah, there’s all kinds of secret messages. We see KKK capitalized. Oh, and, Exxon Exxon’s, sign has secret messages in it. And there are dragon kings who are an ancient race of people with long skulls from Easter Island, and their agenda is socialism.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:58]:
The dragon people are in okay.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:18:01]:
It’s just
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:02]:
Somebody needs to stop getting high while they’re watching Game of Thrones.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:18:06]:
Thank you. Yeah. It is it’s wild. It’s wild that people don’t want to think critically.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:18]:
Oh, god. What’s critical thinking? I mean, come on.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:18:21]:
Is that and and they’re mad at the institutions of higher learning.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:27]:
And teach them to think critically. Maybe that’s why they’re mad at them.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:18:30]:
That’s exactly what they need, and that’s what they don’t want. And maybe there’s a reason that, I’ll just say it. Maybe there’s a reason that certain politicians want to support for profit schools, because if we can just give them something, a piece of paper from a degree mill, then maybe they will vote for us because they didn’t learn to assess what they’re reading for bias. And they didn’t learn to, think critically about what people are saying. They didn’t learn about rhetoric. So now we can just talk about, you know, the star the Saturn rings where the dragon kings came from and the and, oh, and the Purina sign that has some type of secret messages in it and, you know, Oprah is aligned with Putin. That’s what it says. So
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:32]:
I can’t even keep track of all of this, but I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, which is and and this has become political too. Right? Education and the focus on STEM. I have nothing against science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Nothing whatsoever. But if we lose the arts and if we lose actually teaching thinking skills, which I
Maria James-Thiaw [00:19:58]:
think so.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:59]:
Rate like, if you’re going to be a good scientist or a good engineer or a good mathematician, you can’t do those things without some good thinking skills because you have to be able to solve problems. You have to be able to troubleshoot. All of that stuff requires some solid critical thinking. But if we’re, like, cutting it’s it’s like cutting off half your brain. Right? And I know that the analogy is old and possibly not strictly scientifically accurate anymore. But if you’re only going with your left brain, you lose everything you get from your right brain.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:20:35]:
That’s right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:36]:
You need you need both halves. You need the intuitive, imaginative side. Because because what are you gonna design as an engineer if you can’t dream something up?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:20:45]:
Thank you. It’s creative. Science is creative. Absolutely. Inventions. You need creativity to to invent something. Also, where do they think all this came from? And, also, we’re not just whistling Dixie, although we could because music is mathematics.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:05]:
Yes. It is.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:21:06]:
And so if you, so kids that learn music do better in math.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:13]:
Yep. I I can’t tell you how many choral singers I know who are engineers.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:21:19]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:20]:
Tons of them.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:21:21]:
Mhmm. Yeah. It is important to to be able to learn the arts, to learn, you if you’re doing architecture, you you need art. You need to know shape, balance, distance. You need to know, like, spatial, you know, have spatial awareness. You need that stuff. And so, when schools are cutting programs, cutting the arts first is like cutting education. Like, they need that.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:21:55]:
They need that. So that’s not a good place to cut programs.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:00]:
No. And architecture is such a great example of of all of it coming together in one place. Yes. You have to have design, but you also have to understand how a building works.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:22:10]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:11]:
And that is pure science. You know? Gaming. Materials work here and what you have to do to to hold up a wall and all of that.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:22:20]:
And gaming is a multimillion dollar industry, probably billion dollar industry. And, to build a game, yes, you need computer science. Yes. You need programming and coding, but you also need three d modeling. You need animation. You need to know color theory. You need to be able to write a story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:40]:
I was just gonna say, yeah. If your game doesn’t have a story, nobody cares.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:22:45]:
Exactly. Characters, it’s they need characters. They need plot development. They need all of that. So we have to work together. And Yeah. Our our society has to stop treating artists like we’re I don’t know. They treat it like it’s an illness.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:06]:
Yeah. I I mean, and and I I was thinking earlier, you know, with with the STEM stuff, they need creativity, but they won’t call it creativity. They call it innovation.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:23:18]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:18]:
Right. Because innovation sounds more professional and business like and whatever. And I’m like, what the heck is wrong with creativity? I mean, if you if you think best when you’re trying to design something, you know, by finger painting, who cares? Who cares? I mean, who is gonna judge your finger painting? They don’t care what how you got there. They care what you produced. You care how you got there because you know what works for you. But what works for you is the only thing that matters.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:23:55]:
That’s right. And you know what else? Studies show that by writing by hand or coloring can bring down your blood pressure. It it has the same benefits as meditation and yoga. Mhmm. So, like, the people that are building these STEM projects, whatever their industry they’re working in, they need art to, even just survive and thrive. You know? So people don’t know that. Everybody’s not gonna feel safe in a safe and comfortable in a yoga studio, but you could write in your journal, you know, and that’s art Mhmm. And writing about your day.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:24:50]:
So I think yeah. I I loved being in France where people were where art was so much a part of the culture that’s so important and it would even be subsidized like, this level of patronage for the arts. It’s it’s important. I wish we could establish something like that. Instead of so many artists banging their heads against the wall in corporate, in these corporations or other places with the golden handcuffs that they’re attached to. It’s really hard. It’s really hard to be surrounded by these neurotypical left brainers that think they’re God’s gift to the world.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:39]:
Don’t forget extroverts because most of them are. We’ll just defend everybody in one comment.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:25:48]:
I think I’m I’m not a born extrovert. I think I’ve become an extrovert, but I used to be shy and quiet. And, I don’t know. I’ve I learned to be I’m still I’m still a little shy. People just don’t know. But when I perform, I’m I’m.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:09]:
Yeah. But, you know, introversion and shyness are not the same thing. It’s where you get your energy from.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:26:15]:
Oh, that’s yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:16]:
You know? So so I a lot of people will insist to me that I am not an introvert, and I’m like, oh, yeah. I am. Like, yeah. I can be in a room, and I can have, you know, really active, vivacious conversations with a bunch of people, but it’s not gonna be with more than maybe three or four at a time. And I’ll be exhausted when I’m done. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, but then it’ll be like, okay. It’s time for me to go home and just spend some time with some music or a book or something that does not involve other people for a good long while. And and they don’t understand that, you know, having having an active personality among other people does not mean that you’re not introverted.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:00]:
It just means that you got a limited budget for that, and then you have to go and and recharge.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:27:07]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:07]:
But yeah.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:27:08]:
I had to teach my son how to be polite in those situations because he would just growl at people and run away and then, like, lock his door.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:22]:
There were moments when I could totally get behind that approach. But, yeah, I I think, you know, when when you were talking a minute ago, I was thinking about how, like, you would nobody I I cannot think of anybody anyway. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who would. But the image of taking crayons away from a three year old. Right? No one would take crayons away from a three year old No. Or a 10 year old. You know? It’s it’s once you start to become a teenager and you have to grow up that crayons become for kids.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:28:05]:
Yeah. Isn’t that
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:06]:
You know? And it’s like the whole act of making art becomes for kids or something that, you know, most serious people don’t do because, oh, you have to make a living, and you have to do this, and you have to do that. And it’s like, if it’s good for kids, why isn’t it good for adults? You know, just like you were saying with the coloring and and that kind of you know? Like, that’s been such a huge thing for a couple of years, I think, for a reason. Because it’s like adults have been given permission to go play like they did when they were kids. And, obviously, we’re probably gonna stay in the lines, and I am not sure if that’s a good thing or not. But, you know, it’s like But being
Maria James-Thiaw [00:28:48]:
it’s like like, the act of
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:50]:
making art itself is to an extent, you know, the subject of societal approval or disapproval, and that is also something that’s got a political weight behind it, especially because it does influence things like curriculum and careers and stuff like that. And and I think we don’t we don’t see how integrated art is into our existence because we’ve been told that it’s optional and that we don’t actually need it, that it’s a luxury. You know? And and it’s odd to me. It’s a luxury, but we don’t we don’t you know, it’s not important to do it. It’s not important to do it, but you pay big bucks for somebody else to come in and and paint you a mural. Right?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:29:31]:
Right. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:33]:
Isn’t that a little unbalanced and strange?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:29:36]:
Yeah. It’s very strange. It’s a messed up part of the mass culture and, basically, capitalism, where I really question the values of a capitalist society that’s so focused on making money. That, something that makes a child feel alive is silenced. Mhmm. So that child walks through the world feeling dead. Right? Feeling dead inside. And that is so painful.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:30:21]:
And, it’s very sad. I worked for an art school, and you would often have parents that didn’t really want their kid in there, but the kid like and they’re in high school, the kid, you know, cried and screamed or batted their eyelashes or did whatever they had to do to get in. And I often had to tell parents, no. This isn’t just playtime. They they can make a career of this. There are writers making $50.60, $70,000 a year just on publishing. I’ve I’ve run into people publishing, like, 30 books. I mean, like, it is a career.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:31:04]:
It depends what you wanna do. Do you want to be a freelancer? Do you want to be a journalist? Do you want to, you know, be a poet like myself? But there are paths to, money if you have some marketing knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit. And why do we have to stay stuck to some corporation making some man rich, lining his pockets and feeling dead inside? I I don’t think you have to do that. I really don’t think you have to do that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:41]:
I agree with you. And and I had a bit of this conversation recently, and I’m blanking on who I had it with. I think it was John Riddell, but I could be wrong. But because I I saw this conversation on TikTok with somebody who, you know, is a a counselor who said, look, you know, don’t do this to your kid. Don’t tell your kid that they can’t make a living at their art. If they really are dedicated to their art, they will figure out how to do it. And it may not look like what you think that it would look like. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:20]:
Right? If you are the parent and you are not an artist and you don’t understand where your kids’ artistic bent is coming from, or maybe you are an artist and you weren’t able to figure it out and you didn’t have the drive or you succumbed to the messages saying you can’t do this, and you’re imagining your child starving in an attic apartment somewhere in the dead of winter. Have a little faith in your kid because your kid’s vision is gonna be really different than your vision. Your kid may already see an avenue to make it work, or they may just, what a concept, have enough faith in themselves that they’ll figure it out. Isn’t that what anybody wants for their kid? For them to have enough belief and faith in their own abilities to be able to figure something out? Mhmm. You know? I I mean and and I know, like, I I talked to Annie Ruggles about this recently, and, you know, she was a a theater major. And she knows people who are out using that theater major to do all sorts of of things that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a theater major. But because they have the skills that you learn as a theater major, they are able to, you know, coach people to be better speakers or be great salespeople or all sorts of other things. And, you know, who most people don’t think of sales and theater in the same sentence, but that’s not necessarily a mutually exclusive thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:52]:
That may not be where every theater major lands. But if if you find that that’s your best use of those skills, go for it. And that certainly does not mean that your theater degree was a waste.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:34:04]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:05]:
And people were just coming down on this guy on TikTok left, right, and center and saying that this was irresponsible parenting, and it’s my job to keep my kids from getting their hopes up unrealistically and stuff. And I was just like, oh, man.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:34:21]:
That’s a shame. It’s it’s it’s really I don’t know. Maybe if you it’s the educational system. Like, they they haven’t seen the greats or they think all the greats are dead. Like, there are great living contemporary artists as well. You know? Yeah. There and there are avenues. Like, I, am a poet and playwright, and I started Reclaim Artist Collective, which is, soon to be a nonprofit organization.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:34:58]:
It’s a bit of paperwork. But but, we I have a board, and I’m about to have an intern and all kinds of things. It’s and we’re finding a pathway. By having that organization, We can get grants you’re just awarded, through we partnered with the Harrisburg, chapter of the Links Incorporated and, got a grant for forty five hundred dollars that’s gonna go towards putting on my next play. So, yes, I’m a a writer, but I’m also a business owner and and finding ways to get what I need to let get my art out there. So and we’re also doing, workshops. We’re doing, writing workshops. We’re doing anti racism workshops.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:36:00]:
Oh, awesome. We’re using the poetry that I write in along with, like, drama and improv and music to show, audiences that, you know, to to make them think critically about, racism, implicit bias, you know, those ish issues, that we’re dealing with. So I’m doing that for a major corporation, next year. So there are things that we can do with our art. And with the the book, like, I’m gonna be whoop. It’s Count Each Breath. Oh, yeah. We’re not on screen.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:36:46]:
That’s right. My book is, Count Each Breath, and I just had the epiphany. I want to make a guided journal to go with it, because I think that women people that are suffering from chronic illness need to ask certain questions. They need to remember those questions. They need to, take note of how they’re feeling on different days and, the things that they’re they’re going through, and take that with them to the doctors and let the doctors know that they’re on top of things, and that and that they deserve to have respect and have their questions answered and things like that. So it when you’re creative, the ideas just keep flowing. I can’t imagine being in a boardroom where there were no creatives in there. They’re just left brainers.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:50]:
Right. Well and, you know, I really believe that everybody is creative, but some people have been taught to believe that they’re not. So it’s a good chance that some of those left brainers in the boardroom are actually stunted creative folks who don’t know how to get in touch with it. And then how does that manifest itself against people who have, oh, the possibilities are endless.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:38:13]:
Wow. Closet artists. Right? Right? I mean out day.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:20]:
I you know, I I mean, I’ve met people who will insist to me that they don’t have a creative bone in their body and, like, yeah. And yet you solve problems for people all day every day. So explain to me how that works again because, it doesn’t.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:38:34]:
Exactly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:35]:
You’re totally creative. You will figure out the way to fix the thing.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:38:39]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:40]:
You know? Which is why I’ve made a point of talking to people who are accountants and mathematicians and, you know, things that people don’t typically think of as creative on this podcast because it’s everywhere, and we just need to learn to see it because we’ve been taught not to.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:38:59]:
Right. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:01]:
I mean, you know, you’re you’re talking about the medical system. Show me a doctor that has never had to be creative to help a patient.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:39:11]:
Yeah. Seriously. I love watching, medical shows, and I think about that sometimes how, like, something goes wrong and they they have to problem solve and, they have to be creative. Like, okay. So we were taught to do it this way, but we might have to do this, this, and this. Gosh. I even look at bariatric surgery. I’m like, let’s add that up.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:39:44]:
Like, you know, if the thing was smaller, maybe there’d be less food in it and this could work. Start sewing it up. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:57]:
I I mean, it’s all ideas coming together in unexpected ways.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:40:02]:
That’s right. That’s right. That’s what it is. Yeah. And, man, when when I worked at the art school, it was so funny because, you had a lot of kids on the autism spectrum that were so brilliantly creative. And, it’s so funny because people used to say that they that that group couldn’t be creative, but my God, the things that they would make, the the artwork, the things they drew, the things that the poems that they wrote, just beautiful. And, we had some wonderfully creative teachers and everything. Administration, not so much.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:40:51]:
Yeah. Got issues with them still. But, but, yeah, it was it was a beautiful group of students and that and it was awesome to be able to let them just be them. When when I first got there, one of the best things was I look out into the hallway and there is a very large black boy twinkle towing and spinning down the hall. And I was like, he feels safe to do that. This is awesome. This feels awesome. He’s like, I’m going to do a pirouette down the hall.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:41:28]:
And Yeah. That’s cool.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:30]:
You know, that reminds me, you know, when I was teaching and I taught ESL kids, and I always wanted to do creative writing with my ESL kids. And I would literally have other people in the school say to me, what are you thinking? ESL kids can’t do creative writing? Which for me, it was just like, you have thrown down the gauntlet, my friend, and I am going to prove to you how much ESL kids can do creative writing because why on earth would you even say that?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:41:57]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:58]:
I mean, their language skills may not be perfect, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t write a story or a poem. What what?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:42:04]:
Yeah. And look at writers like, Kamal Breathwaite who he writes in Patois, and it’s beautiful. Am I saying that right? But anyway, it’s beautiful. And, there are others that, you know, the they might write in Spanglish, like, Martinez Spada sometimes and Elizabeth Acevedo, that the mix of the languages, is beautiful. And you don’t have to you don’t always have to know every word to see the beauty of the poem there. Mhmm. No? You might not have to know every word.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:45]:
Well and it’s also I mean, why why as an ESL teacher would I not wanna give my students the opportunity to play with the language that they’re learning? Yes. And, you know, there are great moments in there. There are moments that are funny because it’s like, yeah. That doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:43:02]:
That’s right. You know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:03]:
Of course. Yes. Or or moments that are are great teaching moments. And one that comes to mind that was both, I had this this kid from Taiwan who wrote just the most fabulous sort of, like, manga, anime, fantasy short story. I mean, it was it blew me away.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:43:25]:
Wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:26]:
But there was a moment in there where these two characters have a fight, and he wrote that one of them fell down and lost his mind.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:43:37]:
Wait.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:38]:
And what he meant was was knocked unconscious.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:43:42]:
Oh.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:43]:
But he didn’t know that term, and I think probably translating roughly equivalently that, you know, that would have been what he would have said. And I looked at it, and I thought, I kind of love this just the way it is. I know it’s, you know, I know what he means. It’s not how he meant to say it, but there’s something really great in the idea that when you’re knocked out, you’ve lost your mind. Right? I mean, you have. It’s just that it doesn’t play nicely with the idiom of losing your mind in English.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:44:13]:
He might be a great surrealist poet.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:17]:
Maybe. I’m not sure what he’s up to now. He’s definitely not a kid anymore. But, you know, and I explained it to him. And I said, I really love this, and a big part of me doesn’t want you to change it. But as your teacher, I need you to understand that in English, this is what losing your mind means. And so this is how people are gonna read it. So you probably need to change it, but I want you to know that I love the poetry of how you wrote it anyway.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:42]:
You know, but I mean,
Maria James-Thiaw [00:44:44]:
you know, come on. Why?
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:47]:
Tell me this kid can’t can’t do creative writing. That’s like telling me the kid can’t breathe. He can’t breathe because he’s an ESL student? Of course, he can.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:44:58]:
Yeah. Of course.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:00]:
Yeah. I mean, this is crazy. And I had kids write beautiful things, wonderful things.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:45:05]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:06]:
And then we published all of them in the literary magazine because I was the advisor and we didn’t typically get a lot of submissions from kids
Maria James-Thiaw [00:45:13]:
who weren’t in the ESL program. Fantastic.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:17]:
Oh, it was like, really? You wanna see how much they can’t do creative writing? Here’s a copy of this year’s literary magazine.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:45:23]:
Enjoy. Wonderful. That’s great. That’s great.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:29]:
You know? But we go we decide that somebody can’t do x because they’re y. I mean, what?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:45:35]:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. My little boy used to be totally into, coding and robots and things like that. And then after COVID, COVID had him really kind of agoraphobic and he is on the autism spectrum and it really, he was not doing well. And so then, I got him into acting camp, which of course, I didn’t know how this was gonna go. I was teaching at the acting camp. So I was like, well, if he has a meltdown, at least they can just come get me and believe in Shane.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:46:18]:
And, oh my god, he fell in love with it. And then he started speaking publicly, singing publicly, and band together with the neighborhood children and wrote a TV script and wrote a play, and they performed it in someone’s yard. So this is a different kid now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:45]:
Right? I mean, like, there’s a reason why they call it doctor theater. Right?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:46:50]:
Oh, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:51]:
You know, your kid stutters, send them off to doctor theater.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:46:54]:
It’s really therapeutic. And after the but, unfortunately, when I worked at the arts high school, COVID hit, like, ten days later after I started. And so then everybody went to their Hubbles, and they became faces on on screens. And some of them checked out mentally. Like, absolutely. There were some that were in institutions, and they they they were gone mentally. So now the the teaching of poetry became therapy. And because they needed it, they needed to get rid of some of the, we all needed it.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:47:40]:
That’s why I wrote poetry through the pandemic too. So, the short stories, you know, the the things that we wrote, the things we created were therapy for all of us. And I I write with my students. And it would it’s important. It was really important. So I hope it helps.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:03]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I wanna make sure that we have time to talk about the book. Okay.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:48:11]:
Well, count each breath. It’s, it is a labor of love through 2020. I I stopped writing it. Not you know, it wasn’t edited yet, but it was New Year’s Eve twenty twenty when I was like, the last poem is in. I know the order they’re going in. This is it. I’ve got a manuscript. And it really it has three sections.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:48:41]:
It deals with being a woman of color with chronic illness and having to deal with those health care disparities. And then it goes into COVID and how life changed, and what I was going through at that time and what the neighborhoods were like and things like that. And then goes into the uprising and black lives matter and, how it felt to be someone who’s very vulnerable to COVID, but still wanting to be out there supporting supporting the uprising, things like that. So that that’s what my poems are pretty much about. Like, coming from personal experiences or things I’ve seen and witnessed and things like that. Just and although I do have a spoken word style somewhat, I I am literary as well. So they’re very vivid. A lot of imagery, very vivid poems that I think a regular person could get a lot out of even if they didn’t have an MFA like ours.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:00]:
That’s the idea. Right? You have the MFA so that everybody is finds your stuff accessible.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:50:06]:
We hope. We hope. Yeah. Accessible. That dirty word from some of the old heads still don’t like it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:14]:
Yeah.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:50:14]:
But I I do think it’s accessible, and I think it’s that that’s a good thing. Mhmm. And and, it brought me some healing to to write. And I’ve used some different forms that I haven’t used in, in the past, like haiku. There’s maybe, like, four haikus in there. I lost people during that time in COVID and have some dedications in there. Yeah. But, oh, can I can I read the words of, my blurb here? Absolutely.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:50:59]:
Vernita Hill, the author of Where William Walked, poems about Philadelphia and its people of color. Vernita said, in this coronacation created collection, Maria James Chow delivers personal poetic reflections on chronic illness and mortality, race relations, and family history. The speakers’ experiences form a colored chronicle of disparities as fluidly surreal as Dali’s melting clocks in which she folds up her some days in response to an immune system that unpeels her like fresh fruit. That’s quote from the book. There’s an image. It conjures music from even from suffering. Her pain prick body is a voodoo doll, and she goes goes on from there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:55]:
Wow. That’s an image too.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:51:58]:
Yeah. I have a poem called voodoo doll that it’s basically describing anxiety.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:05]:
Why don’t you read it to us?
Maria James-Thiaw [00:52:07]:
Okay. I will. Let’s see. Lifting through. Almost there. Here it is. Okay. Voodoo doll.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:52:23]:
My teeth free float in my mouth. Held only by a thread of flesh. They avoid the electric walls of my gums. They are bells tolling. If I could sleep, they would grind. My eyelids are glued open. My throat is sewn shut. A witch sticks pins in my joints, drills her thumbs into my hips, pounds my head till my stomach turns.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:52:52]:
They call this morning. I wake up in it. Every day I remind myself to breathe. Not the quick shallow breaths I feel, but slow, steady, deep. I tell myself, I still want to. Oh.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:16]:
I mean, you came very close to dying at one point.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:53:20]:
I did. When I I was I had some severe pain, abdominal pain, and I tried to ignore it for a few days because my mother-in-law actually passed away that same week, and I didn’t want to I do this. I think about other I didn’t want my husband to have to worry about me too, but it was getting worse. And so I asked them to take me to the emergency room. It was the first day that ER decided to get rid of almost all the beds and have chairs. So I’m sitting in a chair with a curtain between me and another woman with abdominal pain sitting in a chair. I got the TV, though. I’m telling them I’m in severe pain, and they didn’t oh my god.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:54:17]:
It was there so long before they offered me anything for that. And, they did run the test, but I I had told them who my doctor was, but it was fourth of July weekend. Right? Oh, jeez. Yeah. That’s not a good time to get sick. Thanksgiving or fourth of July, Christmas, don’t get sick. And so couldn’t couldn’t find the doctor. They’re taking tests.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:54:45]:
They actually saw what was wrong. A 13 centimeter, cyst on my ovary. I told them six months ago when I was in the ER, that thing was only four centimeters. Oh. And now it’s 13. And yet, they they asked me to stay overnight and then let told me to go home. I said, are you sure? Like, aren’t don’t they wanna take this out? Well, you don’t seem that bad. I got a direct quote.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:55:28]:
So I’m still in pain, but you’ve given me some medicine now, and now you’re telling me I don’t seem that bad. So they said just you have a appointment with the doctor on Wednesday, and I believe this was Sunday. Yeah. It was Sunday. And they’re like, you have an appointment with the doctor on Wednesday. So just, go home and don’t take more than a 150 steps. Okay. So now my my son, Mohammed, who was, he was a little guy.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:56:01]:
Oh my god. He was so cute. But he he said, okay, mom. You can’t take more than a 150 steps. And he’s walking all around the house. Right? And then he comes to my bedroom and says, mom, the only thing you can do until Wednesday is walk to the bathroom and back once or walk to the kitchen and back, once. You can’t go to the car. It’s too far away.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:56:30]:
Like, because he’s going around the house counting the steps. So, anyway, to make long story short, on Tuesday, it ruptured. And I was I was home. I felt it go boom. And there is a poem, true patriot to that moment, because, you know, I could I was stuck at home and the sting went pop like, like a gunshot to the gut. And, I called I immediately got sick. Immediately started, you know, my body started, like, trying to get rid of everything. Mhmm.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:57:15]:
And, I called them and they’re like, well, you could come in a little earlier tomorrow. Like, it still wasn’t an emergency to them. By the time I got there, by the time I got there on Wednesday, it’s like, let’s just go to the hospital. The doctor is back. We go to the hospital. When I was on the table, the surgery, took two hours. I was told there was three liters of blood in my abdomen. I was getting septic, and I ended up in the ICU and it just was horrible.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:58:00]:
And then after that, my whole digestive system was paralyzed. So then I couldn’t digest any food. And oh, yeah. And a nurse came right after the surgery and was and gave me a turkey sandwich. And then Did she not get the memo? Yeah. She did not get the memo. I did not digest that turkey sandwich until about seven days later. And that’s the poem, Ilias.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:58:32]:
Yeah. So it was it it was terrible. It was a terrible experience. And my poor husband lost his mother-in-law days before and then had to deal with, almost losing me as well in the same time frame. So it was a crazy time.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:57]:
Yeah. Oi.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:59:00]:
And it just goes to that. I I’ve found research that shows that, black women Mhmm. Their pain black people, their pain is often dismissed, not believed. They they are often, like, ignored. Like, the things that they’re reporting isn’t believed. They’re considered thick skinned. So, you know, this isn’t gonna get to you. You’re tough.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:59:29]:
You know? Right. All these things. In fact, one comedian said, thank you, racism. Because of you, we’re not impacted by the opioid crisis because we can’t get pain medicine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:48]:
Yeah. I mean, I know that that women’s pain in general is discounted.
Maria James-Thiaw [00:59:52]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:52]:
But then you’ve got that whole extra layer on top of it. And, you know, a friend of mine broke her ankle recently and told me that when she left the hospital, they gave her 15 Vicodin. And I thought, really?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:00:05]:
How many
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:05]:
would you have given me? Yeah. And how many would you have given to my brother? Because I’ll bet you that it would have been three different amounts.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:00:15]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. So you had plenty of source material for for this book.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:00:24]:
I sure did. I sure did.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:27]:
It’s amazing.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:00:28]:
And I really think about, for many years, doctors have been trying to guess, what’s wrong with me, like, overall. Many point to autoimmune diseases, but the the tests always come back either negative or a weak positive. So they’re like, well, that’s not enough to treat. We don’t know. But it’s probably this. One doctor, and this is a quote for in the book too. He said, those things come back negative for seven years before they’re positive. I’m just like, that’s reassuring.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:01:10]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:11]:
That doesn’t sound like the voice of expertise to me. Call me crazy, but I think I would be like, you’re nuts, and I’m finding another doctor.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:01:24]:
But on average, women are not diagnosed for four and a half years after initially having symptoms of lupus or rheumatoid or Sjogren’s or any of those autoimmune diseases. It takes four and a half years to get an actual diagnosis and some treatment. So it’s wacky.
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:47]:
Yeah. You have to fight for it.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:01:49]:
Yeah. So I think count each breath is is really great for women, not just African American women. People have shown me that they really can relate. There’s a woman that showed up my church last weekend said, when you were writing those poems, you were writing about me and you didn’t even know it.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:15]:
I have a feeling a lot of people would say the same thing.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:02:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. We were suffering too much. And I think the, I think there’s a lot more diversity in the medical field now, but still, I have this wonderful pulmonologist who I have a dedication to in the book. And I noticed that when male doctors would come into the room, they treated her like a cute little thing instead of like a highly educated, Ivy League educated, brilliant, grown woman that she is, and it was really obvious.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:57]:
So That’s so frustrating
Maria James-Thiaw [01:03:00]:
too. Problem.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:01]:
Yeah. Well, I I also wanted to talk about your experience publishing this book because I know that you had some issues along the way. Yes.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:03:16]:
People that follow me on TikTok may see me, expressing expressing my frustration with, KDP, and that is the Amazon company, like, Kindle that Mhmm. Publishes, what’s on your Kindle. I don’t know who’s running things over there, but they are really kind of attacking small publishers. My book was published by Wilding Publishing of a small, kind of new, publishing company. And, she puts a file up as a placeholder while she, got because because the book was not out yet. Oh, she got some other things together for the book. And suddenly she got a message from Amazon that said that count each breath was banned for content violations. Now I just told you what the content is.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:04:26]:
What could be the violation? Like, there’s not even any curse words in it that I
Nancy Norbeck [01:04:32]:
Well, and that was my thought when I first saw your TikTok saying it was banned. I was like, what on earth could possibly be bannable in her book? Exactly.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:04:40]:
Exactly. It was ridiculous. The only thing like, it talks about racism. So it’s like, are these the same people attacking the school boards around the country or what? So she the publisher kept trying to get more information, like, why what’s going on? And they would not be and they said you can appeal it this way, but they they would not even say why. It’s just we don’t like the content, so it’s banned. So she she went around them, went to, IngramSpark. They call it going wide. Went to Ingram Spark and, this major distributor and Ingram, posted my book.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:05:31]:
And now you can get it on Amazon. But what we found out, thanks to you, Nancy.
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:37]:
Just yesterday.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:05:39]:
Just yesterday is that, KDP instead of posting the final version of the book, they posted that old placeholder. So what people got about the ebook was gobbledygook and, probably typos and, like, old stuff, like letters on top of each other, ridiculousness. So so now my publisher’s fighting with them again to get rid of that and give people the actual we paid for. The yes. Yeah. The correct ebook will be placed there, and they’ll get rid of the ugly thing.
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:38]:
Oh, that’s good.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:06:39]:
So
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:40]:
I’ll let you know if I get a message saying there’s a new version of your book.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:06:46]:
Would you
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:46]:
like to download it? Yes. Yes. Because I’d like to read it.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:06:51]:
Not decipher it like that QAnon note. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:55]:
But, yeah, has has she heard from other people who’ve run into this issue with Amazon?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:07:01]:
There were some others. There were some complaints and people are posting, like, YouTube videos about it. So you might be able to find some of that, that they’re having trouble with KDP. Just, like, Google that, and you’ll see about the around the same time period. Like, they just that’s why I said they’re attacking small presses and indie publishers and and small publishers. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:30]:
Yeah. Amazon is such a double edged sword. You know? Like, my book, I published through Amazon. I also put it up at Barnes and Noble. I don’t think anybody’s bought a copy off of Barnes and Noble in years. It’s not exactly the world’s biggest seller, but, you know, every every so often, I’ll get something from Amazon saying, oh, here’s your quarterly statement, you know, and maybe I can go buy myself a pizza. But,
Maria James-Thiaw [01:07:52]:
It’s a great book, though. Everyone should read the Silverstone.
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:55]:
Thank you.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:07:56]:
I love
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:57]:
it. But, you know, it’s it’s so I didn’t have any trouble, but I published mine in 2015. So that’s a very, you know, a long time ago comparatively speaking. But just the other day, I got a thing from them about putting this podcast on Amazon. And I’ll have to go and read through the stuff because I got something from them a while back, and there’s a reason why this podcast is not on Amazon. And it’s because when I read through the terms of service, it said that I’m not allowed to say anything bad about Amazon in my podcast. And I’m like, this is a podcast where I talk to a lot of authors and writers, and Amazon is not great for authors and writers. You know? I mean, yeah, the ability to to publish your own book and get it out there easily is fantastic.
Nancy Norbeck [01:08:46]:
Don’t get me wrong. But you’re not gonna make a whole lot of money if you do Kindle Unlimited, at least as of the last time that I read anything about it, which it has been a while. So I hope this has changed, but I’m not holding my breath. You really don’t make much money. And so, you know, it’s it’s it is such a double edged sword. You can if you have the time and the energy to put into publicizing your book, you can do well with it. You can get it out there to a wider audience. But at the same time, you know, not everybody manages to do that.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:19]:
And and then, like, I have a Kindle. I love my Kindle. As a device, I love my Kindle. I love reading books on my Kindle. Like, the only thing I don’t love about it is that I forget that I have books because I can’t see them staring at me saying, are you gonna read me one day? So there are things on there that I’m like, oh, wow. I forgot I bought that, like, ten years ago. But you’re kinda stuck with Amazon. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:43]:
So, like, everything has to come through Amazon. It’s less true in the last few months since they finally decided to be EPUB compatible. So now I could, in theory, go to Barnes and Noble to buy a book and just manually put it on my Kindle. It’s not as easy. It’s probably less complicated than burning a CD used to be, so it’s not like it’s super difficult, but we’ve been trained now to just automatically have it show up there. So is anybody gonna do that? I haven’t yet. I hadn’t even thought about it until this morning, you know? So it’s yeah. It’s great, but there are the parts of it that aren’t great.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:21]:
And yeah. You know? Like, where’s where’s the sweet spot? Because the extremes are kind of extreme.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:10:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s tough. It’s tough, and it’s a monopoly.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:35]:
Oh, yeah. Or nearly so.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:10:37]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:38]:
You know, functionally close enough if not in absolute point of fact. Right.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:10:43]:
But that’s
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:43]:
why I’m like, gee, Amazon. I wanna be able to talk to people about the realities of publishing on Amazon. And if you’re not gonna like that, then there’s no point me putting my podcast on your service.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:10:55]:
That’s right.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:55]:
And you guys are not a huge behemoth of podcasting right now, so there’s no point even worrying about it. And I doubt that that’s changed.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:11:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh. I hope everyone reads their terms of service.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:09]:
Right? Because
Maria James-Thiaw [01:11:10]:
we don’t
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:10]:
so often.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:11:12]:
Yeah. We don’t.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:13]:
Yeah. Because your instinct is, oh, hey. You have another place for me to put my podcast out. Sign me up. And I’m like, then I saw that part. I was like, nope. Nope. Not worth it.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:11:24]:
It is not is not. I feel like I was gonna tell you something else about that, but it went away.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:35]:
You’ll remember.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:11:36]:
It’ll come back. It’ll come back. Right. That’s okay.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:41]:
So, I mean, we’ve been going for a good while here, and I don’t wanna keep you over long. But I appreciate this conversation. I love how it keeps coming back to, you know, that original question of art and politics. Right? Because whether or not Amazon will publish your book is kind of a political decision.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:12:01]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [01:12:01]:
Right. Also, like, should they publish that QAnon note? I would tend to think that that’s probably not in the interest of the public good, but free speech is a thing. So, yeah, why are they and I’m sure that they’re publishing self published QAnon books, but if they don’t wanna publish yours Oh. You know?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:12:22]:
Yeah. I’m that really makes me think. I mean, it it deals with racism. It deals with systematic racism. It supports Black Lives Matter. So if you decide that in fact, oh, she’s oh, I wish I had this just to show you because my, publisher said that they did send, like, this this text that said, it doesn’t meet our community standards or something like that. And then part of what the community standards was, anything supporting terrorism. I was like, if they are calling BLM terrorists again, I’m gonna be pissed.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:13:09]:
Right. Is that what they’re saying? Because, oh, that whole that was just so upsetting. I mean, you don’t
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:17]:
know for sure because they’re not telling you. Right. So you’re left to draw conclusions
Maria James-Thiaw [01:13:22]:
that
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:22]:
may or may not be accurate, and then Amazon gets upset if you say something bad about it.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:13:26]:
It’s very Orwell Orwellian.
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:29]:
Yeah. It is. Yeah. It is. Concerned where we’re like I’m not wild about that.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:13:36]:
I remember I I was trying to teach, dystopia, and one of the students was like, we’re living in it. Mhmm. Like, this is not creative. I’ll just pull a page out of my journal. We’re done. Like like, I’m so sorry.
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:53]:
And yet at the same time, we’ve raised an entire generation, maybe two, of kids on dystopian novels. So they have been sitting here reading about fighting the systems that don’t work, and then we wonder why they wanna take on the systems that don’t work.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:14:10]:
Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s real interesting. There’s this when I didn’t realize until I read the Zen I think it’s called Art and the Zen of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Mhmm. Like, I didn’t realize that educators used to say that sci fi and fantasy was off limits and was not educational. I didn’t realize that that was a thing because I grew up on Star Trek. So, I loved I loved Star Trek, CS Lewis, and, like, all the things.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:14:51]:
I wanted to live in Narnia. So I didn’t realize that that was an issue. And, my husband who acts very much like my grandpa sometimes, love you anyway, actually said something about, like, well, you need to give him science books and history books and not all this fantasy or whatever you call it. And I’m like, he loves fantasy. He writes fantasy. He watches fantasy. He’s gonna read fantasy. Like, the kid is a book hound.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:15:26]:
He is a bibliophile. And if it’s Percy Jackson and Harry Potter that got him to be a bibliophile, I don’t care. He’s cheating. He’s reading. Same with, my little guy. He’s a reluctant reader because COVID struck in kindergarten. So he’s behind, and yet it was a Miles Morales, graphic novel that got him to open a book on his own, and he is reading that thing. So I don’t care.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:15:59]:
It is a superhero. I I don’t care. Like, that’s what he needs to read. He doesn’t have to read, like, War and Peace or, you know, or
Nancy Norbeck [01:16:11]:
Right. You know, my mother will talk about how she went out and bought every choose your own adventure book when we were kids because they were the only thing my brother wanted to read, and she didn’t care. She’s like, fine. You know, 50 of them. Great. Here you go.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:16:24]:
Yep. I I love those. I love, love, love those.
Nancy Norbeck [01:16:28]:
Yeah. Well and, you know, I remember an English teacher who really didn’t like science fiction because he didn’t even let us do much creative writing. And I think his his reasoning for both was the same that that it would just be an excuse for us to break the rules. And yet What’s the rules? I know. Right? But on the first day of class, we walked in and there was a book on every desk. And you picked your seat by which book was there or you just decided you didn’t care, you know, one way or another. I picked the seat with Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:17:08]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [01:17:09]:
So I don’t know how that got through, but I absolutely loved that book. And, you know, I was like, I’m not sitting over there with Ernest Hemingway. Uh-uh. I had to deal with that for the summer reading, so that was bad enough. I’m I’m Martian Chronicles. Here we go.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:17:26]:
Yes. Yeah. I love Ray Bradbury. I really do.
Nancy Norbeck [01:17:30]:
That’s great.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:17:31]:
And he was obsessed with reading. He went to the library every single day. And, the the way he he reminds me of my son. He really does. Just like it was toys and books. That’s it. And they’re everywhere. He’s surrounded by them.
Nancy Norbeck [01:17:52]:
Yeah. Well, he’s got a great quote that’s something about you have to stay drunk on on writing so that you can avoid the reality around you, something like that.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:18:02]:
Well, that’s that’s the truth. And I yeah. Shoot. That’s why the younger me was at Star Trek conventions because because, reality is boring. You don’t fit in. If you’re an artist, you don’t fit in, to what this capitalism is saying what you’re supposed to be. Like, even my my mom’s a good capitalist and she was a banker, a vice president of a bank, actually. And it seemed like if I created something, she would start thinking of a marketing plan.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:18:41]:
Like and I’m like, you know, I don’t necessarily have to be famous. I just I really just have to make a living doing the thing that I love. And, that and that’s happiness for me. That makes me feel alive every day. She doesn’t necessarily get that, but I love her for, like, she pushes me and makes me think bigger sometimes, and that’s awesome. But it is funny the how how she is a left brainer approaches poetry and stuff like that. It’s funny.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:24]:
Yeah. Well and I grew up with parents who didn’t understand science fiction and still don’t. So, you know, I would be watching Star Trek or Doctor Who or whatever, and and it would be, what are you watching?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:19:38]:
That’s my husband. That’s my husband.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:41]:
And I gave up trying to explain it, though I think it’s really fascinating that, like, my whole outlook on life, my value system, and everything was shaped by all of that that was basically trying to outline consciously or unconsciously, you know, how to be in the world. Yeah. You know, and how to build a better world and to stand up for the things that are worth standing up for and fight the things that are evil or just casually not good for for things. You know? And I I can’t be upset about that.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:20:20]:
Yeah. That’s that’s what it is. Like and now there’s this whole Afrofuturism movement, and, I am I’m obsessed with Octavia Butler. And, it shows like the we can create a future that is that has all kinds of people in it. Mhmm. And, and, and there’s a movement also in the Native American community, and just like a future where we’re here. And we’re here, and we’re heroes, and we’re doing things. If I might recommend a book, my my son, made me read, there’s the care main character is Amari Amari, a m a r I.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:21:17]:
And, it’s Amari and the whatever. But but it was just so awesome. It was so, so, so good because it starts in reality where there is a black girl in a white school, so going through the same issues I went through and, with, police brutality around and poverty around. I mean, it’s really in that reality. And then all of a sudden, someone comes to her door, and it is complete fantasy. Like, oh, by the way, you’ve been living all this time unable to see all the fantasy characters that live everywhere. And so now Sweet. Now you can see them.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:22:05]:
You can see the fairies and the dragons and the magicians and the witches, and you can see them all. They’re all here. And it’s it’s really a great book. And I saw there’s a sequel now, and that’s You, but I think, I loved it. So
Nancy Norbeck [01:22:24]:
Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with reading You books. There are people who get all fussy about that too. You know, adults shouldn’t read You. Why not?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:22:31]:
Why not? Why not? If it’s a well written book, I’ll read it.
Nancy Norbeck [01:22:35]:
And who are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t write or read? That. Or both?
Maria James-Thiaw [01:22:40]:
Yeah. Both because some are saying that I’ve also heard the argument that You books are too adult. But Mhmm. I think people don’t really wanna deal with some of the issues that teenagers are actually dealing with and going through.
Nancy Norbeck [01:22:58]:
I think they don’t even want to admit that teenagers are dealing with them and going through them.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:23:02]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:23:03]:
It’s like that’s just unrealistic. It’s not kids. It is not to come full circle. It is not all sunshine and rainbows, folks.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:23:10]:
Exactly. And that is the message today.
Nancy Norbeck [01:23:15]:
Yeah. And that’s why kids like dystopian books so much.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:23:19]:
Yeah. That’s true.
Nancy Norbeck [01:23:20]:
You know? It shows them they can fight back against the stuff that’s not right. Mhmm.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:23:26]:
That’s right.
Nancy Norbeck [01:23:29]:
So yeah. Well, thank you for coming back and having this conversation. I have really enjoyed it, and I hope that people get a lot out of it.
Maria James-Thiaw [01:23:39]:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Nancy Norbeck [01:23:43]:
That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to my guest, Maria James Chow, and to you. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app. And in it, tell us about a time when art was political for you. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to get in touch on any of my social platforms or even via email at Nancy@fycuriosity.com.
Nancy Norbeck [01:24:12]:
Tell me what you loved. And if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now and you haven’t yet signed up for my free email series on six of the most common creative beliefs that are messing you up, please check it out. It’ll untangle those myths and help you get rolling again. You can find it at fycuriosity.com, and there’s also a link right in your podcast app. See you there and and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.
Nancy Norbeck [01:24:53]:
It really helps me reach new listeners. Thanks.