By Kevin Murphy Wilson Photos provided
Crystal Wilkinson’s short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, Oxford American, Story, and Agni. Her much-lauded books include “Perfect Black” (winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award), “The Birds of Opulence” (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), “Water Street” and “Blackberries, Blackberries.” We recently caught up with the prolific author and Poet Laureate Emeritus to discuss her love for Kentucky and the book that is perhaps her most personal project to date, “Praisesong for The Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks.”
VT: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
CW: “I was raised in rural Kentucky in a place called Indian Creek. Being a part of that landscape, my grandparents’ farm, the ancestral agrarian legacy of my family, is what prompted me to become a writer—at least it was instrumental in the kind of writer I have become. Place and sense of place and the detail of the rural landscape is integral to my writing. I was grandparent-raised, and my family has been rooted in Kentucky since the early 1800s. So, although I was actually born in Hamilton, Ohio, Kentucky is both my home and the spine of my literary imagination. Every tree, every voice, every creek, every character begins with something that I experienced or imagined or even something that I’ve been curious about.”
VT: When did you first become aware of your calling?
CW: “I’ve always been a writer. I know that’s cliché but it’s true. My grandmother instilled in me the love of reading. She recalled that when I was a girl, she thought I was just mimicking the stories she read to me until she realized that I was actually reading along. Storytelling was a part of my everyday life. My grandparents were storytellers. I was a quiet girl but loved writing as much as reading. I wrote a story and bound it together on my grandmother’s sewing machine, so I think that’s when I became truly intrigued with the idea of making a volume of writing of my own words. The artifact of the book—how one wrote it—how it was put together—and mostly the writing and how to stack the words became a calling when I was about ten years old.”
VT: Do you think the literary and broader arts scene here in Kentucky has afforded you more freedom for exploration and collaboration than other places might?
CW: “We have something unique here in Kentucky—our literary legacy is unmatched—not just in the work that has been produced but primarily the generosity of our well-known, well-established writers. I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to move forward in my career without the institutions and individuals who bolstered me. The Carnegie Center and the great literacy and literary work that they do there is one of the institutions that helped propel me forward. The Affrilachian Poets and the great community we’ve enjoyed for more than thirty years; and then the individuals who were so instrumental in my career especially at the beginning: Nikky Finney, bell hooks, Wendell Berry, Gurney Norman, George Ella Lyon and my other friends and peers Silas House, Frank X Walker, and so many others. I think that we could easily take our community for granted but, of course, our rich and nurturing and supportive literary community has helped us all reach for the stars. And yes, Kentucky has an abundance of artistic riches to offer. It always has and of course living in that kind of environment surrounded by photography, art exhibits, music of all kinds, our food traditions, theatre, dance, festivals, a book-rich community is valuable for us all and it’s been a mainstay for me. I think it’s been that way for so many of our state’s artists and writers.”
VT: So, was music also a big part of your life growing up?
CW: “Yes. Music has always been a part of my life. The surprise is that a large variety of music continues to be a part of my soundtrack. R&B, Hip Hop, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Bluegrass Gospel, Country, etc. I have an extraordinarily long list of favorite songs, but Prince is still at the top of my list. I’ve written about his music and its effects on me as a teenager and of course music affects me as a writer. I often listen to music before I write. Not while I’m writing but before and sometimes in celebration after I’ve had a good writing morning.”
VT: How did your latest project, “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts,” come about? What makes this book special to you?
CW: “Of course, I lived this book, so in some ways I’ve been writing it my entire life. I have always included foodways in my writing because food preservation, preparation, and tradition are ways in which a place distinguishes itself from other places. I wrote an essay for Emergence Magazine a few years ago and this book evolved from that essay. It came down to there being an entire world behind that initial essay. A world that I had lived, but also a world that I wanted to research and to discover. It was a wonderful rabbit hole of digging into my own familial history through court records and family photographs as well as delving into the history of Appalachia and the history of foodways in the region. This book is special to me because it is not only my experience but so many people from the region and throughout the deeper south have read the book and been reminded of their own kitchen ghosts and their own culinary lenses. Exploring history and ancestry through food is a fascinating project and I hope to find ways in which to help others explore their own culinary legacies in the future.”
VT: These days, how does one measure success in the literary world?
CW: “There are so many moving pieces in the literary world, but the work is the only measure of success. One of the greatest things I enjoyed about being a student at the Sena Jeter Naslund/Karen Mann School of Writing at Spalding University was when Sena was the director, and she’d start each of our sessions by saying ‘Your competition is not in this room. Your competition is in the library.’ My test of success is based on the last book, not the commercial success of the last book, but how I feel about the job I’ve done. If I’ve given readers the opportunity that I set out to give them. That’s the only success that counts.”
For more information visit: crystalewilkinson.net.