Behind the Pages with Kennedy Ryan
Chatting with THE Kennedy Ryan about the rerelease of REEL
I still can’t believe that I got to interview THE Kennedy Ryan! It was the best night and definitely one of the coolest things that I’ve gotten to do as a bookish influencer.
BEFORE I LET GO was my first Kennedy Ryan book and I absolutely loved it. She became an autobuy author for me after that! I didn’t think anything could top BEFORE I LET GO, but then I read REEL last month. It grabbed me from the first few pages and didn’t let me go, and it’s now at the top of my list of Kennedy Ryan books!
Being in Kennedy’s presence is like a warm embrace. If you ever have the opportunity to hear Kennedy speak live, you must go because it’s an experience like no other. It was an honor to interview her and I’ll dive into the interview now so that you can read her words of wisdom.
If audio is more of your thing, you can also listen to the full interview below!
Nnenna: Hi everyone, I'm Nnenna of @notesbynnenna, and I'm a bookish and lifestyle content creator in New York City! I'm joined today by Kennedy Ryan, the author of so many incredible novels, including BEFORE I LET GO, THIS COULD BE US, and the recently rereleased REEL. Thanks so much for being here, Kennedy!
Kennedy: Thank you for having me! I'm so excited!
Nnenna: The opportunity to chat with you one on one is so exciting for me! To start, for people who haven't read REEL yet, what are five words or phrases that you would use to describe the book?
Kennedy: One of the big things I always say is that it's a modern love story with Harlem Renaissance vibes. It is sensual. There’s chronic illness rep, outrageous love, and it’s a love letter to Black creatives and history.
Nnenna: Could you elaborate more on that? When you say it's a love letter to Black creatives, how did you approach showing Black art in this book and celebrating Black art?
Kennedy: I think one of the main characters in this book is the Harlem Renaissance. I've always been fascinated by that era because it's such an explosion of Black creativity, but also in the context of violence here in this country, in the context of persecution for Black people in this country because this is the Jim Crow era. It's a hard time for Black artists.
So many of the great artists in the Harlem Renaissance actually fled this country and ended up going to places like London and Paris to blossom. We have this explosion of creativity, but we also have a very revolutionary period.
This is the rise of James Baldwin. This is the rise of Zora Neale Hurston. This is the defiant grace of Josephine Baker, who is an absolute supernova over in Paris, but can't even get into the front door of a restaurant in her own country. I'm looking at that dichotomy of struggle with soaring and the way when they are given the chance, their art blooms.
I wanted to talk about that. The art that came out of that, the music, the stories that came out of that period being kind of a backdrop for this modern love story. And I always compare it to (and this will show my age) Halle Berry, when she did Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and how so many people did not know who Dorothy Dandridge really was.
That's kind of how this character, Canon, who's the director, stumbles upon this fictional entertainer, Dessi Blue, and he's like, “I'm going to read, I'm going to excavate, I'm going to expose and bring light to these lost stories.” That's really what I wanted to do with this book.
There are all of these people who really shaped modern culture, whose stories have been stolen and commodified and overlooked and undersung, and I wanted to highlight them. That's why with REEL, the dedication page, the first page is nothing but all of these artists. Some, you know, and some you've never heard of.
Nnenna: Reading that page, I felt exactly that way. I was looking at it and I was like, “Ok, I know some of these names” and others, I was like, “I don't know these. I need to look these up!” And while I was reading the book, I felt like I was getting these pieces of history. I was stopping at points thinking “Wait, I need to Google this!”
Kennedy: One of the most common questions is from people who are Googling Dessi Blue and I'm like, “She's not a real person!”
Nnenna: But that's how you know you've created a character that's so real and grounded in reality that people think she actually existed in the 1930s.
Kennedy: When I was forming Dessi's character, she's really an amalgamation of people like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday. One of the books I read is written by Angela Davis and it specifically focuses on those three characters, those three women and their contribution to jazz, but it also discusses that were all Black and bisexual.
Nnenna: Which I didn't know!
Kennedy: I can't remember the name of it now, but it's a book by Angela Davis that's specifically looking at those three women and their Black bisexuality and the revolution of who they were. That's one of the books that I read as I was preparing for this story.
[Note: I think I found the book that Kennedy mentioned! It’s called BLUES LEGACIES AND BLACK FEMINISM by Angela Y. Davis.]
Nnenna: I would love to keep talking about this, but before we go, I’d like to ask, what's one thing that you'd love for readers to take away from REEL?
Kennedy: That women, women of color, Black women, are worth outrageous love.
Neevah is someone who is living with lupus. We're not all living with a chronic illness, but I think the extreme of someone who's living with a chronic illness that is actually life threatening and has physical implications like rashes and losing hair and all of that, is that they could easily think, "What partner is going to love me and accept me this way?"
There is radical acceptance, radical love, outrageous, unconditional love from this man for this woman, no matter the circumstances. So many times people talk about romance as escapism and as fantasy. And I understand that. But there's also truth there.
And the truth is that you're worthy of respect. You're worth someone who will be faithful to you. You're worth someone who you can trust. That's truth.
The romance book might be set with a billionaire. It might be set with a rancher. It might be set with whatever, but there's a grain of truth there. That is you are worth this and you don't have to settle. That's really what I want women to walk away from my books knowing is that you don't have to settle.
Nnenna: I love that message. What you said about truth- I always feel the truth in your books. I think that's why I connect so deeply with them because they go straight to my heart. They strike me to my core. They get under my skin because you can't ignore the truth.
Kennedy: That means a lot, thank you.
Nnenna: Thank you so much, Kennedy!
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Isn’t Kennedy incredible?! Thanks so much to Kennedy for chatting with me and for her publisher, Forever, for arranging such a special night!
You can get a copy of REEL here or wherever books are sold (even better if you’re able to support a Black-owned bookstore with your purchase!). You can also follow Kennedy on Instagram and TikTok to keep up with all of her latest news!
Have you read REEL or any other Kennedy Ryan books? Let me know in the comments below!