Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Song and the Silence
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.yvette-johnson.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Yvette-Johnson/425940543
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2013053246
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2013053246
HEADING: Johnson, Yvette
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100 1_ |a Johnson, Yvette
370 __ |e Phoenix, Ariz.
371 __ |m yvette@yvette-johnson.com |u http://www.yvette-johnson.com/
372 __ |a Authorship |a Motion pictures–Production and direction |a Public speaking |2 lcsh
374 __ |a Writer |a Film producer |a Speaker
375 __ |a female
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Booker’s place, 2012: |b end credits (Yvette Johnson; writer, interviewee; co-producer)
670 __ |a Yvette Johnson WWW site, May 15, 2013: |b Bio (Yvette Johnson; writer, film producer and speaker) Contact (from Phoenix, Ariz.) |u http://www.yvette-johnson.com/
PERSONAL
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and film producer. Co-producer, Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story.
WRITINGS
Author of The Booker Wright Project blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Yvette Johnson was raised in California, though her extended family is from Mississippi, where racial divides are far more extreme. In her book, The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright, Johnson notes that stories of the racism her grandfather (Booker Wright) faced helped her to understand her parents and herself. The book grew out of the 2012 documentary Johnson co-prodcued about her grandfather: Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. In both, Johnson recounts the racism in Greenwood, Mississippi, as it was experienced by her grandfather. Wright worked as a waiter at an upscale whites-only restaurant, and he also owned and operated Booker’s Place, a restaurant for the black community. Wright appeared in a documentary about Greenwood in the 1960s, wherein he recounted the town’s extreme racial divides. Wright faced further discrimination in his community after the documentary aired, and Johnson relates the fallout in her book. In this manner, Johnson provides a personal story of the racial divides that continue to haunt America.
Reviews of The Song and the Silence were largely positive, and critics noted that the book is a well-written and moving treatise that is not only personal, but culturally and politically relevant. In the words of a Publishers Weekly correspondent, “Johnson brilliantly constructs a complex and empathetic look at racism in the South.” A Kirkus Reviews correspondent was also positive, asserting that “Johnson’s story is highly personal, but it folds easily into the larger story of African-Americans striving for economic and political betterment.” The correspondent then went on to call the book “a timely story of fragmentation and division.” Annie Bostrom, writing in Booklist, lauded the book as well, and she advised that “readers will find her [Johnson’s] highly researched story—about the grandfather she never knew, and so much more—profound, powerful, and extremely relevant.” As Elizabeth Hoover put it in her Dallas Morning News Online assessment, “The Song and the Silence is a daring combination of history and memoir. Her meticulous research infuses the book with a novel’s vividness, while her emotional honesty makes for a poignant read.” She added: “For Johnson—and for many black Americans—learning about race in America isn’t just about discovering disturbing discrepancies between America’s rhetoric and its reality. It’s about encountering the extreme trauma experienced by family. As Johnson writes: ‘This wasn’t a story from a history book or something I read in a headline and then forgot by lunch. For me, at least, Greenwood’s story was personal.'”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2017, Annie Bostrom, review of The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2017, review of The Song and the Silence.
Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2017, review of The Song and the Silence.
ONLINE
Dallas Morning News Online, https://www.dallasnews.com/ (July 28, 2017), Elizabeth Hoover, review of The Song and The Silence.
Yvette Johnson Website, http://www.yvette-johnson.com (November 20, 2017).
Yvette Johnson
Writer / Filmmaker
Professional Speaker
Humanity 101
Books/Film/Speaking
About
Contact
About
Stay Connected:
Find out what's going on with Yvette at her blog space The Booker Wright Project. You can follow Yvette on Facebook here and on Twitter here
Bio:
Yvette Johnson is a professional writer, film producer, and speaker. A documentary that she co-produced called Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story, premiered with rave reviews at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. The story of her film and her work was featured in a one-hour episode of Dateline NBC. In addition to appearing on numerous radio and television programs, she’s been a guest on NPR and her story was the subject of a one-page spread in the New York Times.
Yvette maintains a blog called “The Booker Wright Project" where she writes about growing up black in a predominantly white community, the legacy of oppression in the African-American experience, the power and pain that comes from being part of a family, the danger in ignoring one another’s humanity when dealing with race related issues, and the grace, strength and audacity that is required to write one’s own story.
Yvette explores these issues through the lens of her grandfather’s legacy and her efforts to discover it, lay it bare, and share it with the world.
A website created by GoDaddy’s Website Builder
Yvette Johnson
Yvette Johnson is a writer, film producer, and speaker. She coproduced the documentary Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
11/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Johnson, Yvette: THE SONG AND THE
SILENCE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Johnson, Yvette THE SONG AND THE SILENCE Atria (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 5, 2 ISBN: 978-1-4767-5494-9
"The only thing I felt certain about was how little progress I was making in understanding my grandfather"--a searching
quest for roots in the African-American heartland.Raised in Southern California, marked by "proper English and love of
Phil Collins," film producer Johnson was deemed "too white" by her black schoolmates and decidedly black by her
white ones. She admits to a certain discomfort with other black people, a sense that at least some of her kin were "trying
to make life sound harder than it really was in order to justify their own complacency." Much of that sense of privilege
melts away in the face of her on-the-ground experiences in her family's old hometown of Greenwood, Mississippi,
where her grandfather Booker was murdered in 1973. The circumstances of his death, at the hands of a black patron of
his restaurant, speak to untold complexities of race and class. As Johnson writes, Booker was "a difficult man to know."
Though he was reserved, he was blessed with a business acumen that had a "Midas touch" element to it but that also
brought him into conflict with members of both the white and black communities; he was generous with some, stingy
with others, and "so indecipherable that even those who worked by his side for years could only describe him from a
relative distance, as if he weren't a real person but rather a well-crafted representation of one." At ground zero of the
civil rights movement in the South, Greenwood proved a difficult place for one seeking to be left alone, resented by
poor whites and blacks alike for his success; Booker apparently returned the favor, winning enemies as well as
admirers. Johnson's story is highly personal, but it folds easily into the larger story of African-Americans striving for
economic and political betterment. A timely story of fragmentation and division and of picking one's way through the
minefield that was--and is--the racially riven South.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Johnson, Yvette: THE SONG AND THE SILENCE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487668463&it=r&asid=f458af16170297421cfdef8ef1d167cf.
Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668463
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The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family,
Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town
in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for
Booker Wright
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p11.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi
Delta While Searching for Booker Wright. By Yvette Johnson. May 2017.304p. illus. Atria, $26 (9781476754949).
976.3.
Raised in California by parents from Greenwood, Mississippi, Johnson was once determined to believe that race was
inconsequential, until she was married with two sons and when she saw a clip of her grandfather, Booker Wright, in the
1966 documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. In it, he speaks candidly about being a black waiter in a fine Greenwood
restaurant, where he would regularly sing the menu to pleased customers, an appearance, that, once aired, would cost
him dearly. Captivated by his presence and words, which Johnson soon discovered had reverberated throughout the
nation, she began a fevered search for information about Wright, her family's history, and their ancestral home in "the
darkest corners of the Delta." In the process, she examines her upbringing and attitudes about racial identity while
understanding her parents in a new way. In addition to beautiful, evocative descriptions, a great strength of Johnson's
writing lies in her unique ability to absorb and relay several dimensions of conversations about painful and emotional
topics. Johnson also produced a 2012 documentary film about Wright, and readers will find her highly researched story-
-about the grandfather she never knew, and so much more--profound, powerful, and extremely relevant.--Annie
Bostrom
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in
the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 11. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536084&it=r&asid=4a697957369b320c16745c3b266b7b3e.
Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536084
11/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1510676382630 3/3
The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family,
Race, and what was Revealed in a Small Town in
the Mississippi Delta while Searching for Booker
Wright
Publishers Weekly.
264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p76.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and what was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi
Delta while Searching for Booker Wright Yvette Johnson. Atria, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-14767-5494-9
Johnson's memoir (inspired by her 2012 documentary film, Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story) recounts the
complicated life of her uncle, Booker Wright, and his hometown of Greenwood, a racially divided town in the
Mississippi Delta. During the height of the civil rights movement, Wright worked as a waiter at Lusco's, an upscale
restaurant with a white clientele, and was the owner of Booker's Place, a thriving restaurant serving the black
community. In a short segment for a TV documentary on Greenwood, produced in the 1960s, Wright described --with
stark honesty the racism of Greenwood that terrorized his family and community, causing shock among his white
customers at Lusco's, who thought he was happy to serve them. The footage inspired Johnson to look deep into her
family's history. With profound insight and unwavering compassion, Johnson weaves an unforgettable story of her
family and a nation distressed by racism. Her quest leads her deep into the lives of both black and white Americans who
have suffered from racism's isolating effects. She interviews the former leader of Greenwood's White Citizens' Council,
whom she describes as "a tortured man." Johnson brilliantly constructs a complex and empathetic look at racism in the
South. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Song and the Silence: A Story about Family, Race, and what was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi
Delta while Searching for Booker Wright." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 76. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971689&it=r&asid=930a354ffd88122ec462554d572a8ca3.
Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485971689
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Painful, personal Southern history is revealed in the memoir 'The Song and the Silence'
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To uncover her grandfather's life story, this author must confront a dark legacy of racial violence and trauma.
In 1966, Booker Wright, an African-American waiter from Greenwood, Miss., appeared in the NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. He described how he performed affably for his white customers, smiling in the face of humiliation so he could provide for his children.
The Song and the Silence, by Yvette Johnson(Simon & Schuster)
The Song and the Silence, by Yvette Johnson (Simon & Schuster)
In The Song and the Silence, Yvette Johnson describes what Wright did on film as "deftly stepping from behind a carefully constructed veil." In three minutes, Wright delivered a "devastating, leveling blow" that left his customers "defrauded. ... The one Black man they trusted ... had built relationships with them out of a kind of counterfeit affection."
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The moment of honesty cost him his job, and he was also beaten by police.
Johnson discovered this footage while researching her family; Wright was her grandfather. Her research resulted in the 2012 documentary, Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story.
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The Song and the Silence is Johnson's memoir describing her experience conducting that research. An urgent and powerful memoir, the book poignantly explores how America's legacy of racial violence shapes black lives in the present.
An undated handout image of Booker Wright. (Photo used by permission of the author)
An undated handout image of Booker Wright. (Photo used by permission of the author)
The book centers on Greenwood, a focal point for racial unrest and violence during the 1960s.
Johnson writes about how her family survived that time as "the world stood on the sidelines throwing social and economic obstacles in their paths again and again, and then ridiculing them for not achieving more, for not going farther."
While her parents "made it," moving their family from Mississippi to California, Johnson grew up haunted by their racial trauma. As a child, she thought "being White meant having a story, or at least the hope of one," while black Americans were "beings in a post-apocalyptic world." As an adult, she decided to research her family's past to understand where that sense of shame came from.
She quickly discovered the speciousness of the timeline version of African-American history she learned in school: "Those dates didn't necessarily indicate the end of anything."
In much of the South, slavery didn't really end with the 13th Amendment. Instead it was replaced by sharecropping, a system just as destructive to the black family. In one of the book's most tragic chapters, Johnson tells the story of Wright's mother. A single, teenage mom, she'd left her son in the care of a couple on a sharecropping plantation to look for work. When she returned for her son, the plantation owner said she would have to buy him back. Miraculously, she returned with the money, only to be forced to flee under the threat of violence — without her son.
Yvette Johnson (right), one of four grandchildren of Booker Wright, with her mother, Katherine Jones (left), and aunt Vera Douglas. (Photo used by permission of the author)
Yvette Johnson (right), one of four grandchildren of Booker Wright, with her mother, Katherine Jones (left), and aunt Vera Douglas. (Photo used by permission of the author)
Just as slavery didn't end in 1865, segregation persists long after Brown vs. Board of Education. Greenwood has remained segregated for six decades since the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Some Greenwood schools are 95 percent black. This reflects national trends of increasing segregation in public schools.
The town of Greenwood maintained its strict racial caste system because of the triumvirate of the White Citizens Council, Klu Klux Klan and the local police force. These organizations used violence and humiliation to keep black Americans from voting, integrating, or gaining economic footing. Almost nightly, the KKK shot up or firebombed homes and businesses to terrorize people of color.
Despite these odds, Wright managed to carve out "a space that felt set apart and untouched by terror." He used his earnings as a waiter to open and maintain his own restaurant, Booker's Place. During his commute between establishments, he transformed himself "in a way not unlike a seasoned actor in the precious moments before stepping from behind the curtain."
Wright wasn't involved in the civil rights movement, but, for whatever reason, in that documentary he decided to speak clearly and truthfully about the psychological costs of performing affection for people who saw him as inferior. Johnson was never able to ask her grandfather his reasoning. He was killed the year before she was born.
The Song and the Silence is a daring combination of history and memoir. Her meticulous research infuses the book with a novel's vividness, while her emotional honesty makes for a poignant read.
For Johnson — and for many black Americans — learning about race in America isn't just about discovering disturbing discrepancies between America's rhetoric and its reality. It's about encountering the extreme trauma experienced by family. As Johnson writes: "This wasn't a story from a history book or something I read in a headline and then forgot by lunch. For me, at least, Greenwood's story was personal."
Elizabeth Hoover is a poet and journalist. She lives in Pittsburgh.
Book review: Yaa Gyasi creates an an epic family drama in ‘Homegoing’
The Song and the Silence
Yvette Johnson
(Atria, $26)
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