A police encounter inspired Natalie Baszile’s new novel about race and friendship

A decade ago, novelist Natalie Baszile was celebrating her wedding anniversary when she received a disturbing call from her daughter: A police officer had come to their home looking for a suspicious man.

The encounter stayed with Baszile, raising questions about race, safety and the assumptions people make about who belongs in a neighborhood.

Those questions became the foundation of “Friends and Family,” her new novel exploring how race, trust and perceptions of safety can strain even the closest friendships.

Baszile, whose debut novel “Queen Sugar” inspired the acclaimed OWN television series, will discuss the book Tuesday at Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue Research Library in a conversation with novelist Tayari Jones.

In “Friends and Family,” longtime friends Babs, who is Black, and Nora, who is white, find their relationship strained after a police officer responds to a neighbor’s report of a tall Black man carrying a weapon. The officer confronts Nora’s adopted son, Nathan, at Babs’ home.

“The novel is the best way for me to explore the questions I was asking. I needed that big canvas, the space to create characters, and move through time to get at these larger truths,” Baszile said. “The encounter with the police was traumatic nevertheless, but what was fascinating to me was to see all of the dynamics that unfolded.”

Jones, the celebrated Atlanta-born author whose latest novel “Kin” debuted at No. 3 on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list, praised Baszile’s ability to explore difficult subjects through fiction.

“Natalie knows how to hit that sweet spot. Her work is so compelling, readable and yet so profound. We’re going to have a lively, energetic conversation but we’re really going to go there and talk about the hard topics,” Jones said.

Jones said she is curious how Atlanta audiences will respond to a novel rooted in Northern California, given the cities’ different racial dynamics.

“Atlanta is a chocolate city that has different types of issues, so I wonder what parts will connect and what ways are they different,” she said.

Baszile said she chose Jones as moderator because she wanted a conversation that would resonate with the women she had in mind while writing the novel.

“Everybody’s welcome, but I wanted to write it from the point of view of a Black woman of a certain age in that particular time and place in her life,” Baszile said. “Tayari is going to be a wonderful conversation partner, because she brings her own wealth of experience and gravitas but also joy and delight. It’ll be lively, dynamic, juicy and real.”

Expanding the Black experience

Baszile explored complicated relationships in her 2014 debut novel, “Queen Sugar,” about a Black single mother who relocates from Los Angeles to rural Louisiana to run a sugarcane farm left to her by her deceased father.

The book was adapted into a scripted drama created by Ava DuVernay and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey. The series premiered on OWN in 2016 and ran for seven seasons, with each episode directed by Black and other women of color.

Baszile said she, DuVernay and Winfrey shared a commitment to creating opportunities for emerging storytellers.

“The requests I made for both Ava and Oprah are to please maintain the heart and spirit of the novel and continue the conversation I started, because my desire is to open the aperture of what we see as the Black experience,” she said.

“It opened up doors of possibility for people who have not had opportunities, and it looked different with storylines that were rich, evocative and true.”

Baszile said she incorporates agriculture in her work to highlight its connection to Black history and identity.

“It’s part of our legacy understanding land stewardship and ownership as a means of intergenerational wealth,” she said, “but we have not always had an opportunity to harness that for ourselves. Part of my work is to remind people and us of the value of that connection.”

Finding her own voice

Before Baszile became a writer, she worked in sales for her father’s metal distribution company for 11 years. The Bay Area native wanted to pursue a writing career but felt an obligation to her family.

“For 10-and-a-half of those years, I was absolutely miserable. I was fulfilling my obligation as an older daughter, but I realized how quickly those years passed,” she said.

“I knew if I didn’t take control of my life, I couldn’t only live my life for my dad’s dream. I had an obligation to myself. I was terrified, but I was also thrilled and invigorated.”

In 1995, Baszile earned her master’s degree from UCLA in African American studies with a concentration in literature. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Warren Wilson College.

She said pursuing her education gave her the confidence to try creative writing.

“Everything was feeding me, and I was bathing in Blackness all the time,” she said. “I didn’t want to spend my life writing about somebody’s theory of the creativity. I wanted to be the creativity.”

In 2021, Baszile published “We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land and Legacy,” a nonfiction essay collection.

She also co-directed “Harvest,” a documentary about Black sibling farmers in Louisiana, with her daughter. The film is scheduled to air on PBS next year.