Q&A with Naima Coster

What inspired you to write What’s Mine and Yours?

I knew that I wanted to write a novel about the integration of a public high school. I was deeply moved by the reporting of Nikole Hannah-Jones. I first encountered her work on This American Life where she covered an integration program in Missouri, in the school district where Michael Brown graduated from high school. The episode, “The Problem We All Live With,” included audio footage of white parents at a community meeting opposing the admission of black students. I was haunted by the things the parents said, the riotous applause. I wondered about the black children sitting in that auditorium. I wondered about the opportunities that would open up for them, as well as the hardships and experiences that would leave a mark. When I was a girl, I participated in an education program that led me to a privileged, largely white school. It changed the trajectory of my life, but it was also hard, and that time is still with me. From there, I started to imagine Central and the story of Gee and Noelle.

This novel has a significant amount of empathy for all of its characters, even the ones that are difficult to like or you disagree with their world view. As a writer, how do you maintain this for a character, especially when they’re behaving at their worst?

We all contain multitudes, and as a fiction writer I try to express that reality in my work. Someone like Lacey May, for instance, is a fierce advocate for her daughters; she is also racist. Both things are true. They don’t cancel each other out or redeem her. I’ve never gotten caught up much in whether my characters are likable, which seems to be code for whether they’re “good” people. I’m not sure I believe in the idea of good people or find it useful. If you know anyone long enough, you’ll begin to see the discrepancies between who they say they are and who they actually are. I think we find the same is true for ourselves if we take an honest look at our lives.

As a fiction writer, I’m not interested in writing paragons of virtue or monsters; I’m much more interested in the full range of our humanity, the ways we long for and chase after the things we need to survive. It helps that I write close to characters’ perspectives. When we’re in someone’s mind, we can see the acrobatics, the distortions, and desires that drive them to behave so badly. It doesn’t excuse what they do, but there’s usually something recognizable in those impulses and longings, however misguided.

What’s Mine and Yours takes place in various cities and towns in the U.S. Do you have a connection to these areas in the United States?

In my early thirties, I lived in Durham, North Carolina, and my time there was so formative. While I lived in Durham, I worked in Winston-Salem, and I often traveled to the coast and to the mountains. During those years, I was sorting through questions about marriage and motherhood, social mobility and white supremacy, complicated racial dynamics within mixed families. I was also thinking about race and belonging in my new context, how different it felt to be myself in North Carolina versus New York City. Those preoccupations became the stuff of the novel.

And while the book isn’t explicitly set in Durham, I was certainly inspired by the city. I hope the novel reads somewhat like a love letter. It’s certainly a love letter to those years that I was sifting through those questions and feelings while driving on I-85, hiking the Eno River State Park, working with high school and college students, and finding community in Durham.

Did you learn something new about yourself during the process of writing this novel?

This book was so much fun to write. It reminded me that I write not only for what books do for readers and for the public imagination but also because I love to do it. There were so many characters who I got to be so very close to, and there’s such pleasure in that access. Fiction can give us that sense of intimacy that we long for in our lives because so often the people closest to us can be unknowable. Fiction lets us into that mystery of other people and ourselves.