Tony: Is it a chance we wore the same name?
Toni: I do not know, you are the youngest, you are the one who going to tell me if it's pure coincidence or what…
Tony: I do not know, I don’t remember, I am reading your novels for so long and now. I don’t remember exactly the circumstances why I opened one of your books. Was it because of the “Toni” surname? Was it because it comes from my mother and I knew she wanted me to read it by letting it drag right on the coffee table? was it because of the cover with "tree woman" or ...
Toni: a tree woman?
Tony: Yes, the cover of "the song of Solomon" French edition displayed a black woman with an afro hairstyle. She had no hands but the whole body was a tree with roots....
Toni: How was it? tell me more about you reading the first words, the first pages ...
Tony: it's not as if there was a beginning, and first words or first pages, it was an all
Toni: oh, bad news ....
Tony: not so bad .... It was more or less like being into the heart of a maelstrom, or when you listen to gospel songs, felt lost among characters and voices, sometimes catching a specific voice coming out of the chorus and then searching who is the vocalist, felt supported by a wave into the character’s journey
Toni: why did you feel drawn into this story?
Tony: it nourished my teenager awareness of being colored, being a Caribbean Parisian was something specific I thought. This mythical quest of one’s history and roots was definitely talking to me. I personally identified .... The story of my own parents both arrived in Paris at the end of their teenage period required to understand who we were. Learning to know yourself through such surrealistic novels helped me grow with no fears (that feed you with complexes), no over pride (that replace words by violence). Just the awareness to have something specific to tell.
Toni: how?
Tony: yes "how" ... let’s wonder how instead of why? So you did in The "bluest eye”. How beauty embraces some and destroy other people. How beauty is fascinating, How it is powerful when you are part of it. How it is frightening when it has excluded you, It lets you all aside, then it atomizes you and spread all of that dust far away.
Toni: Why have you Decided to rename yourself with Tony Shudrack?
Tony: Because of Sula’s Shadrack, definitely my favourite character, the one who can freeze the uncertainties.
Tony : B..E..L..O..V..E..D is the strongest and toughest of your novels. I read it in french, then in english, and french and back to fnglish, looking for all the subtleties, all the words, all the sensations that may be different from one language to another. It was like having my favourite food, that I wanted to taste with various flavours, all to feel it from each perspective…
Starting your latest novel "God bless the child" was kind of disturbing to me. Because it take place nowadays. Your novels always tell us about identity search in all its violence, in its desire to regain past, confront and get over it. I wonder how to tell it with contemporary Bride and Booker? Then I realized that it is their personal stories damaged that these two tried to reconcile
