The University of Massachusetts English department held their annual Troy Lecture on April 13, 2023 in the Campus Center auditorium, featuring No. 1 New York Times bestselling author and two time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead.
The lecture began with a statement from Professor Joseph Black explaining the significance of this event and how important it is to the department. Black says the lecture that encompasses “relationships of literature, culture, history and politics” is the “most important lecture of the year.”
English Professor at UMass, Gretchen Garzina introduced Whitehead, saying “his many books take us through new ways of imagining America. She continued, “all of the places in his books, real or imagined, are rooted in time and imagination.”
“Make the unfamiliar familiar, and the familiar unfamiliar,” Garzina said of Whitehead’s books.
Whitehead, the author of “The Underground Railroad,” grew up in Manhattan and discussed his love for science fiction and comic books, and how this interest separated him from kids his age.
Science fiction had always been interesting to Whitehead, and he liked it because, “You’re always drawing from scratch.” He added that by writing science fiction you are “always inventing a new world” and that he “found different ways of talking about the world” through writing science fiction.
Whitehead discussed his early beginnings as a writer and some of his earliest projects. He jokingly commented how he’d put “The Black” in front of famous book titles when writing and finding inspiration. He wrote two five page epics in college and explained his difficulty in finding success as a writer, but emphasized the importance of rejection in the formation of a good writer.
Whitehead experienced this rejection himself and said, “If you internalize that hatred early, you won’t be prepared to go out into the world.”
Whitehead, who gained early inspiration from authors like Stephen King and projects like X-Men and Spiderman, got his first job as a writer for a newspaper called the Village Voice, a media company based out of New York City. He began as a television critic, but this eventually transformed into writing novels. Whitehead joked that his first novel writings were “cliche” and he followed the path of wanting to “get back at everyone who wronged you as a child” through his writing.
A member of the audience asked Whitehead what he was working on next, and he revealed that he is working on a love story based on the eve of the Russian Revolution, which is different from his typical science fiction interest. Additionally, Whitehead said he was working on a “science fiction novel based in a Star Wars Universe” that has “the Death Star, light sabers and hyperspace.”
He explained that failure helped him “commit to the lifestyle.” He emphasized the importance of criticism and failure as a beginner writer and said, “If you feel things are going well, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
Abby Joyce can be reached at [email protected].
