Author Jill Nelson came to St. Petersburg College on Thursday to talk about her novel.
By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published February 22, 2004
SEMINOLE - A little sex and a lot of politics go a long way. So proved author and journalist Jill Nelson during a Thursday morning speech at St. Petersburg College.
With an auditorium full of people waiting to hear tidbits from her controversial debut novel Sexual Healing, the 51-year-old Harlem, N.Y., native focused less on plugging her book than on stoking the audience's political passions.
Nelson's satire about two black women starting a brothel exclusively for black women lured the crowd of roughly 150. Her anti-Bush barbs and scathing commentary on the nation's state of affairs hooked them.
"I was so stunned at the Super Bowl when we were so obsessed with Janet Jackson's boob, but we refused to discuss the boob in the White House," she said, to both mumbles and chuckles from the mostly white, largely student audience.
"It's important to look critically at what's being pushed and what we're being distracted from."
Using the last of the college's $5,000 speakers series grant, Nelson also spoke at St. Petersburg College's Gibbs and Clearwater campuses on Wednesday.
The first black woman to write for the Washington Post's Sunday magazine, Nelson read excerpts from both her novel and Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience. The book, a 1993 nonfiction account of her four years at the Post, bared Nelson's cutting edge.
She followed up with a memoir, an anthology and, last year, her novel. Currently, she is working on Let's Get It On, the sequel to Sexual Healing, and a nonfiction book about Martha's Vineyard.
Lesbian sex and menage a trois aside, Nelson said her novel contains imbedded political statements on everything from the black church to white feminists. Besides, sex itself is political, Nelson said.
"We're taught that our sexuality should be put in this box: you're either straight or you're gay. That's it," she said. "... Maybe we move along this continuum and that's okay."
While Nelson was reluctant to reveal too much of the novel's plot, she did let loose one secret about the two protagonists.
"They do not see the error of their ways. They don't get beaten down. They don't get married and live happily ever after. The brothel wins," she said, with a smile.
From talk of the war in Iraq - "This makes the Vietnam War look like nothing" - to discourse on America's leaders - "I am more frankly afraid of the government than I am of the terrorists, and I'm from New York" - Nelson proved unafraid to push people's buttons.
Not everyone Thursday was prepared for what Nelson called her "way left of center" points of view.
"I was surprised by her political stand," said Angela Judy, a 32-year-old student. "You expect people who speak at a college to be on that path they're supposed to be on. She wasn't."
Mildred James, 82, loved that about Nelson.
"She's very open, very truthful," said the St. Petersburg woman. "Those who have never been involved before are trying to figure out how things affect us. ... I think we (my generation) need to hear these kinds of things."
Two or three people walked out of her Thursday speech. Still, of the overall 350 she addressed during her visit, she said the most vocal opposition to her views came from a black man on Wednesday.
"I'm bored with that," she said, after her speech Thursday. "I told him, "Just because I put black women in the center, it's not an attack. If you want to read about you, there's lots of books or go write one."'
Nelson fielded questions running the gamut from whimsical to worldly. Ultimately, she always brought it back to politics.
"I'm going to make a living," she said, after her speech. "My book is selling. ... The political situation trumps my need to sell books. That's the urgency."
- Jade Jackson Lloyd can be reached at 727 893-8410 or jlloyd@sptimes.com
