In 2021, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was still celebrating her fifth poetry collection, the award-winning The Age of Phillis, about 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, and watching as her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, rocketed up the bestseller list after Oprah Winfrey announced she’d chosen it for her book club.

Now Jeffers is releasing her first nonfiction book, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings (Harper/HarperCollins, June 24), in which she moves between poems, essays, and letters, concluding with tender, reckoning journal entries about time spent with her dying mother, the writer and teacher Trellie James Jeffers. The series appears under the banner “In Search of Our Mothers’ Forgiveness.” If that title sounds a familiar note, it’s because Jeffers has become friends with Alice Walker, whose classic In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens seeded and nourished the younger Jeffers’ nascent Black feminism. Other tenders of the familial-cultural plot include the poets Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, and the “goddess” Toni Morrison.

As a survivor of sexual abuse, Jeffers is compassionate and frank about shame and forgiveness. As a child of the South, she spins yarns and sprinkles “Miss” throughout this conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length.

So you’re teaching at the University of Oklahoma.

Actually, when the election happened, I made the impulsive decision to retire. I was on the phone with Miss Sonia [Sanchez]. She’s 90, but she is sharp as a tack. I’m talking to her, just kind of whining, and she says, “You know, my dear sister, I had the same conversation with Toni,” and I said, “Tony who?” And she said, “You know which Toni I’m talking about.” I took it as a sign and thought, This is God trying to tell me something. So I called my chair.

Still, it’s a big leap.

I was telling someone earlier that these kids need a lot of care in the aftermath of the pandemic. They suffered a lot during the pandemic. And I can say this publicly, white kids started taking their cues from the adults. And so, the first time Trump was in office, the kids started turning mean. I remember telling them, “My responsibility is to treat you politely and to teach you to the best of my ability. But you don’t have a right to my love. I give my love as extra. So if I’m giving you love, you don’t come up in here talking any kind of way to me.” Then in January, on the day of the inauguration, things started jumping off in education. I said, Honorée, it’s time to get on that Underground Railroad and get on out of here and do your best. And that’s why I always say, We thank God, and then we thank Ms. Oprah.

I was wondering what kind of impact the Oprah Book Club selection had.

I give her so much glory. I have new book contracts—this book—all made possible by Oprah Winfrey. I mean, I’d been working in the trenches. I had five books of poetry. But I still do not believe that all these people would have been reading an 800-page novel if it had not been for Miss Oprah. I believe the Lord sent her to me. I was able to take over Mama’s care because of the way Love Songs blew up.

Taking care of aging parents is so meaningful. Because of my dad, my folks had the military’s TRICARE for Life.

I say this as a radical Black feminist: The military was really a way that Black men could garner respect in a time where they couldn’t get it. All my uncles were military men. I don’t agree with war, but for me it’s been particularly abrasive to see the disrespect given to the military knowing what my uncles gave. My uncle Ted retired as a chief petty officer, then he went back to college. Uncle Larry, he’s the baby—he was adopted, but he’s still a blood relative—he was a Marine. Uncle Charles, he was in the Army. Uncle Ted was in Vietnam. And Uncle Alvester—he’s my favorite uncle—was in Korea.

How come this feels like one of many examples of you tussling with and embracing contradictions?

There’s always this tug of war between who I am as an artist, who I am as a radical feminist, and who I am as a Deep Southern woman who can fry chicken clean to the bone, you know?

There’s an essay in the book called “Toni Morrison Did That” that wrestles with Morrison’s towering stature but also imagines her creative vulnerability.

There’s a part in that essay where I say that I knew Morrison must have been afraid at times. Miss Lucille [Clifton], who was a second mother to me—I’m writing her biography—was edited by Professor Morrison. Knowing people who knew her just as “Toni” is interesting because when I see her on the page, she is a goddess. But to write something like that essay…it was just frightening. Because it’s almost like your parents. You don’t ever want to think of your parents as human, as mortal flesh.

Speaking of parents, you’ve included an essay your mother wrote but also write about your time taking care of her as she grew sicker. What a force.

I remember when we left Daddy, and Daddy was trying to starve us out to make us come back. That’s when I became a poor person. Though, strangely enough, I only realized I was poor a good three or four years ago. Because at the time, Mama was like, “Oh no, this is just temporary. We gonna get out of here.” I remember there was a rat in this house, and it ran behind this box. Mama just went over to the box and started kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking. There was this high-pitched squeal and then silence. He had given up the ghost.Mama pulled him up by the tail and flushed him down the toilet. Then she said, “Poor thing. He had a mama and daddy once.”

That’s kind of lovely—and fierce.

I thought, I’ll never be this woman. I’ll never be this tough. I’ll never be like this.

And yet there’s this scene when you’re in her care facility room, and she tells you that you’ve always had a “soft heart.” You begin crying and apologize. And she says…

…“I like you this way.”

Yes—“I like you this way.” It seems like she worked for that softness in you.

She did work for that! She did. I understand that now. And you know how I know that? Because—I’m just going to confess that I am a weepy person [pulls out a tissue]—I know because I want better for my baby sisters. That’s why I wrote the book. I want people to know peace is possible. The book’s not a how-to, but it is saying to you, this is what a rape survivor looks like. This is what a child molestation survivor looks like. This is what a person who has endured three decades of racist bullying in academia looks like. I have survived. I am always wearing a cute outfit. I am peaceful. I am doing the work that I was born to do.

Lisa Kennedy is a writer in Denver, Colorado.