- [Narrator] This is family business.
And family stay together.
- When we meet George and Hippolyta
it's immediately clear
that they're in like
capital L O V E, love.
But George's job is dangerous
and every trip he goes on,
he might not come back.
How do you think
that Hippolyta deals with that?
- Now, well.
- I know what that's like.
I live that now.
I live that when my boyfriend tells me
that he's going to the grocery store
after 10 o'clock at night.
I'm on pins and needles
until he comes home.
- That's it with going
to the grocery store.
- Yeah, he's going to the grocery store.
I white nano I'm going off right now.
He walks every day.
And I want to tell him,
don't do it, don't walk in a park.
He goes on his walk every day
and I'm scared to death every day
that he goes off for a walk in a park.
And until he comes home,
until he gets back in his
apartment, I'm not good.
- That's sad.
- I'm not good.
So, I know how Hippolyta feels.
I know and I don't have to
imagine how Hippolyta feels.
I know how Hippolyta feels.
So, there's that.
The other part of that is
she is a frustrated traveler
herself.
She's a traveler herself.
She's frustrated, she's
in a repressive situation
because it's the 1950s.
The community, the culture,
the marriage that she's in
and there aren't that many
black woman astronomers.
There aren't that many black
astronomers during that time.
There aren't that many
black astronomers right now
besides Neil deGrasse Tyson,
as far as I know, you know?
So, yet she wants to be out on the road.
She is a traveler.
She is an astronomer.
Her purview is the very constellation,
the very galaxy, the very universe.
So yeah, her George's absence
is fear provoking and it's also,
it stirs her desire for more for her life.
- [Narrator] They don't
like outside, is that all?
I found more than a few stories
about travelers being attacked
in this around the woods.
- [Woman] By what?
(suspenseful music)
(screaming)
- It's interesting too
because George is like
writing the books as a way
to provide for his family,
but it's also a way to provide
for a million other people
so they can have safe trips
from one place to another.
How did you think
about that aspect of
the character, Courtney?
- In order to survive back in that time,
there was a village.
If George stepped out,
when he goes on his trips,
because everybody knows
our house is the center
of the community.
'Cause we don't just write
the travel, that green book,
we fix cars, we post letters.
The post office kind of is,
'cause everything was
separated back in here.
Black water fountains, black post office,
Black grocery stores,
everything was separated.
So, we had to be in it
everything to each other.
And if we did it really well,
like they did in Tulsa,
they massacre you.
In 1921 or Wilmington, Delaware
as ingenue, let us know.
So, there was no,
you couldn't tell how white
folks were gonna feel.
If you stayed in your place,
they're mad at you
because you stayed in your place
and you turned your place into
some town into a business,
a Mecca, and then they're mad at you
that you've actually,
you're being uppity by
staying in my place.
What you wanted, you don't
want me to come over to you.
So, why would I come over there?
So, we got our own thing and you mad at me
if we go over to your
place you mad 'cause we
that mean so,
it was that kind of
that's what that needs to be understood
that there was no place for folks,
black folks to turn with their,
with any kind of wrongdoing,
any kind of injustice.
There was nowhere for black folks to turn.
And that's what
that I'm hopeful and hoping
that comes from this.
And shows like this,
to be able to get an understanding
of that feeling of hope
fullness, hopelessness
and that even though people
got to the end of their rope,
they didn't give up hope.
- [Narrator] Just because
they don't what you here
doesn't mean you're not supposed to be.
♪ Gotta get laid now ♪
- Is there any piece of the show
that you hope people take
and look deeper into the people,
say, I can't believe this
happened on that show
and I'm gonna go learn a lot more about it
and absorb that into my life.
- I just hope people
just start to see different people,
trans people, gay people,
black people and native indigenous people,
East Indian people.
I mean, people are different.
I'm intrigued by the
differences that we have.
'Cause we were raised
to treat people equally.
So, I'm not threatened by it.
We didn't raise our children
to be threatened by people,
people being different.
But some people are threatened by it
and that they raised their children
to be threatened by anything that's not
like themselves.
So, consequently they
continue to teach the hate.
And so the young people don't learn
and they're not learning anything
about different cultures in school.
So the hate is perpetuated.
And as I said,
what is it going to take for us to realize
we need each other.
We can't continue to foster the hate
and we've got to begin
to teach it somewhere.
Nobody's teaching the
history in the schools,
nobody's teaching in the homes,
in the information age of the fact
that we don't know about each other
is just, it's ridiculous.
- George and Hippolyta
clearly love learning.
They love books.
Do you have a favorite book?
Like one you returned to the most
or that's always sort of in your mind?
- I would say writers rather
than what's my favorite book.
I think Beloved is one
of my favorite books
by Tony Morrison.
The Bluest Eye by Toni is one of book.
And then there are a lot of writers
that I like.
I like Lauren Grosse.
She is a writer who a short story writer
that I love.
I try to read everything.
Everything that she writes.
I'm reading Karen Russell right now.
She's another really
great short story writer.
I read this really great
book called Perfect Peace
by this author, Daniel Black.
About this family,
this black family in Louisiana,
dealing with a family that
has queer members of it.
- I'm a huge biography reader.
I love Chernow Grant
and of course Hamilton and
Walter Isaacsons, Steve Jobs.
The fact that I read a 900 page,
Chernow's 900 page book
about a Ulysses S. Grant
and by the end of the book,
I'm shaking,
I'm weeping over this man.
And so, that's what books can do
that we've in this country,
we've gone away from reading
and how important it is to be
able to let your imagination
just sit there and just take you
and let another author's
experience take you
and having the patience
to actually sit there
and not have to have something,
everything done for you with
the movie or with the series.
Just sit there with a book so anyway.
- Can I say one more?
'Cause I have to say
as a Mississippi and I,
so I got a point out of Mississippi.
Kiese Laymon, his memoir Heavy.
I highly recommend it.
- Heavy.
- [Narrator] This is our family story.
♪ Say love to shadow ♪
