2019-09-26
1 小时 5 分钟My guest today, Bridgette Davis, grew up in Detroit in the sixties and seventies, a time where the town was largely defined by the automotive industry, by Motown, amazing music, and also a lot of political and racial change.
And she grew up in a neighborhood where her mom pretty much ran the household and was a huge figure in the community because she ran a business that was not entirely legal, locally known as running numbers.
She was the numbers person, also the local sort of manager of the lottery that was a family secret for a really long time.
And it also served to keep the family being able to actually sustain itself and be okay and let her mom sort of take care of helping Bridgette go out into the world and do amazing things.
And then when she wanted to take a really big risk and try and sort of make her mark in the world of writing and then teaching in New York, it helped start that journey.
The entire story is detailed in a really wonderful new book called the World according to Fanny Davis.
We dive into some really powerful elements of this story.
A lot of what was happening in the early days in Detroit when she was growing up, how her mom made this incredible thing happen, how unusual, kind of legendary her mom actually was that she didn't even really know until learning much later in life when diving into the research for the book, and also how she has sort of launched and crafted her own life, her own career, her own devotion to writing, to filmmaking, and to teaching and giving back and carrying on the sort of spirit of service and compassion and generosity that her mom so often led with.
Really excited to share this conversation.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I grew up in Detroit throughout the sixties and seventies.
Take me back to Detroit around that time, because it was a really interesting blend of things happening, some good, some not so good.
Yeah.
Each decade was really distinctive, I would say, because the sixties was really about this thriving auto industry.
And so many people had great jobs.
You know, they worked in these plants and they made really good hourly wages.
Unions were strong.
Michigan.
Detroit was like the birthplace of unions, if you think about it.
UAW and ones like that really pushed and made sure everyone was able to have a really good life, making salaries without advanced education and managing to be middle class.