Q & A with Bertice Berry

Your first book, Redemption Song, was a huge success. How did your first book's success change you as an author?

Wow! In so many ways. I guess what it mainly did was enable me to see the power of writing. I have been writing for years, but until Redemption Song, I didn't realize that I could do it this way and have an impact.

Aside from your successful career as an author, what else are you involved in?

I have a Ph.D. in sociology and I have continued my work in the field. I also do corporate and education lectures and seminars, about two-hundred per year. I am also developing a new TV show with a production company in LA, I have just written my first movie, which will be produced this year. It's called Fighting the Wind, and it's a karate movie. No, I don't know any karate, but that's another story. I am also raising five beautiful children. Okay, maybe just four, one's in college and I just give a speech and write a check. She is raising me. I am involved with prison outreach and community outreach here in San Diego.

What influence did your career as a comedian and inspirational speaker have on your experience writing The Haunting Of Hip Hop?

I really try to keep everything separate, but life doesn't work like that. When I'm out speaking, sometimes in the middle of my speech, I get an idea for a book. I have to try to write it down as I'm talking. Then I come back to it later when I am in a quiet place. I try to allow humor to come into everything that I do. I have never thought of myself as a clown, but I love to make people laugh. Laughing comes from the gut and releases junk that has been there for too long. The Haunting is a powerful book, and it can spook you. So I have interspersed the humor, so the reader can breath and get what they need without too much pain. Truth is often painful, but the hurt doesn't have to last. The humor helps us to heal.

The main character, Harry Hudson, is a hip-hop producer who moves into a haunted Harlem brownstone, and discovers the importance of respecting and remembering history. Do you see yourself or your friends in him?

Absolutely. He actually came from a real experience I had one night in New York. A friend and hip-hop producer took me to see a brownstone that he was buying. It was late, there was no electricity and the place was spooky. "True Master", I said to him, (that's his name, not what he makes me call him), "This is a book". That night I started writing. I see myself in Freedom in many ways also. The young fatherless person who calls on the ancestors for guidance without even realizing that this has been done. I am that young kid with the chip on their shoulder because something is missing. The transformation in the book represents the one we must all go through if we intend to become all that we are.

The Haunting Of Hip Hop is somewhat controversial in its take on rap culture. How do you feel about the rap industry and its influence on our culture?

Well, first of all the industry and the music are too different things. It's the difference between Wall Street and money. But, I'll stay way from politics and philosophy. Anyway, hip-hop is a very powerful medium. It's the drum brought back. This is why we hear the beat and need to move. The lyrics are often something completely different. Too often we see the music and the industry as the same. We also see all of the artist as one hip-hop artist. There is variety and power in the music. Most of what becomes popular, however, is not what we are about. This is the music that has to be influenced by something true and powerful ... this is the music that has to be haunted. But we can't just criticize the artist, we have to nurture and educate them towards what is righteous.

The Haunting Of Hip Hop is essentially a tale of honoring the past and the spirit of ancestors. Is this something you've drawn from your own life?

Yes. I don't like to sound like one of those folks who talks to dead people, but I feel that the memories of those who have gone before us, are still with us. I have often relied on their wisdom to teach and lead. I talk to Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman. I ask them how they were able to move folks who didn't want to be moved? I talk to my grandmother and great-grandmother, and so on. It's not like they talk back, but I get the answers I need. Doing this is as old as time. Unfortunately, we have gotten out of touch with the place we are all from. We need to go back to go forward, only then can we make the progress that has to be made.