We chat with author Christina Hammonds Reed about The Johnson Four, which follows a 1960s teen pop group who are determined to conquer the music world must contend with the cost of fame—and a ghost with a grisly past.
Hi, Christina! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! If we were at a party this is where I’d freeze up because as much as I love describing other things, I’m horrible at describing myself. I live in the Los Angeles area with my family and I’m a socially awkward semi-retired beach bum, a history buff, and full-time servant/activity director/jungle gym/mom to the most delightful toddler ever. My YA debut novel The Black Kids was a New York Times Bestseller and Morris Award finalist. I’m a bit of a chronic insomniac, which is horrible for functioning in general, but the dead of night is my absolute favorite time to read and write.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Ever since I was little, I loved making up stories in my notebooks and reading until the wee hours when I should’ve been asleep. I was the kind of child who generally preferred reading to people, (which probably wasn’t the healthiest, but all’s well that ends well). I feel super fortunate to have had parents who never said no to buying a book, who went out of their way to seek out diverse books for us to read, and even went so far as to enroll me in a summer camp at a local university for young writers where I had my first “published” work. I still remember the absolute high of seeing the bound compilation of our summer’s work!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: I was pretty constantly read to/reading so it’s a little hard for me to remember. I do know I was greatly impacted by reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. I read significantly above grade level when I was still probably a little young to be processing some things, but I remember having a visceral reaction to that book at a tender age.
- The one that made you want to become an author: It’s totally such a cliché but Little Women. I read it eight times in one year when I was in third grade and adored Jo and the March sisters and was super annoyed about Jo marrying Professor Baer. And I had very strong opinions about Amy and Laurie’s coupling as a small child.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Every time I read a good book I fall a little bit in love and can’t stop swooning over everything the author does right throughout. Last year, I found myself just ruminating over The Bee Sting and how it all comes together and what works, and how I felt upon finishing. I love a book that forces you to step back and kind of marinate for a good long while in what you read.
Your latest novel, The Johnson Four, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Musical family. Ghost stowaway. Chaos.
What can readers expect?
A lot of pathos, but also a ton of laughs. I think life (and death) is so wonderful and absurd and heartbreaking and funny as hell all at the same time, and my goal is to render that on the page as much as possible. The Johnsons are a messy family, but it’s because they love each other so hard, and are absolutely terrible at communicating that love sometimes. Even this little dead boy interloper, Christmas, who comes into their lives and cracks the whole family wide open, feels and wants to marinate as long as he can in that love. What he does in his attempt to preserve that feeling is what really sets us on our journey..
Where did the inspiration for The Johnson Four come from?
Everywhere, everything, all at once. 1. My grandfather had a beautiful voice, but wasn’t famous even though I’m sure he could’ve been. I’m fascinated by the level of black talent in any manner of spaces that exists but isn’t necessarily cultivated to be commodified. But also in what happens when it successfully is. 2. I’m a huge history buff and I love the personal as political when it comes to black and queer American history, but also global history. 3. I’m also of a certain age where Devon Sawa emerged as the human body of Casper and a generation of junior high girls swooned just a bit. Casper was definitely an inspiration for Christmas (in the most unserious of ways) even though I think Christmas is definitely situated within an overall tradition of Black ghost storytelling that inspired me, or perhaps just kind of lives in me. 4. Kobe died and Whitney died and Luther Vandross, and Prince and all these celebrities who had been “Black Excellence” but at what cost? 6. Unrelated, I’ve done a lot of grieving over the past few years and I keep trying to make sense of life and death in general, and this was one way for me to explore as much. 7. I became a mom and so much of what I’d already written became more actualized for me, but I also it allowed me to see what it means to be a family from a whole different lens.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I love Christmas, the little ghost child, he was my absolute favorite to write and he has some of both the funniest and absolute most heartbreaking scenes throughout. At one point I remember crying in a coffee shop while writing and feeling utterly absurd, but also like “hell yeah! I think I’m something right on the page in this moment!”
Did you create a playlist or find yourself listening to anything in particular whilst you worked on the book?
Absolutely. I love me a playlist to begin with, but for this particular book, given its timeline, I wanted to immerse myself in whichever decade I was writing at the time. So I was listening to a lot of 60s, 70s, and 80s music overall. But I also wanted to dig a little deeper and find some artists that my characters might’ve been into, even if they were artists with whom I only had a passing familiarity. I love research as a whole, but I especially love doing musical research. It was fun to do deeper dives into artists like Gladys Bentley, or Gal Costa, Louisa Mark or MC 5 who helped color the world I was trying to build.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I suffered quite a few personal losses over the few years that I conceived of, wrote and edited this book, almost all of which somehow found their way to the page, even if the exact situations were different. It’s easy to reduce The Johnson Four to the music hook, or the ghost aspect, but the novel is so much about family and love and death and what it means to really live. There are several scenes that were absolutely my way of processing specific losses. Writing is definitely my catharsis. As far as challenges faced on the page specifically, I struggled with wanting to write everything that had ever happened to this fictional family that I adored, while also wanted to keep the pacing and structure taut. I’m lucky to have such great editors who reeled me in as much as they could, while also allowing space for expansion/digression where necessary. I delight in an epic meandering book that fully immerses us in a world, but I recognize that one woman’s delight is another person’s “get to the point already”.
What’s next for you?
I’m brainstorming a few things, but I’m really excited by the idea of working on a children’s book for my toddler. Every night we read a ton of them before bed, and there’s just something so magical and pure and concise about writing for small children There’s a certain alchemy to getting a fidgety two-year-old to sit enraptured for 12-20 pages, while also entertaining the adult who has to read the story over and over again.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Vigil by George Saunders, Kin by Tayari Jones, American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee, the new Douglas Stuart and Colson Whitehead novels, plus I can’t wait to pick up my friend Kelly’s new book American Nightmare in it’s final form later this year. Honestly, I could keep going, there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to books by incredible authors coming out this year.
