![]() ![]() Watkins grew up in Texas but was surprised at how central the state became to her story. “And they were just trying to escape like this extreme racism and tension in the rest of the country, or maybe go there and work on railroads and make money to travel northward.” “For some people who didn’t make it or didn’t desire to go to those most northern places, they ended up looking for places where maybe slavery hadn’t necessarily reached, like the West Texas region, which was settled after emancipation,” Watkins said. She says she wanted to explore experiences that were in between. One of its themes was Watkins’ study of Black migration. “Perish” is about a Texas family confronting its secrets as family members say goodbye to their matriarch. “I consider myself nosy and almost a spy as far as the way I eavesdrop and kind of snatch things that really aren’t mine,” Watkins said. ![]() “And she immediately – this is before her own death – she called me as soon as she finished and said, ‘Why did you kill me?’”īut Watkins says she drew from so much more than her own family in writing “Perish.” ![]() “I will say that when I wrote this, it was originally a novella, I sent it to my grandmother to read,” Watkins said. ![]() And it’s true even those closest to her have wondered. LaToya Watkins’ writing feels like it might be biographical because of its richness and attention to detail. ![]()
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