One of my favorite things about reading historical fiction is that it always teaches me something I didn’t know and sends me down a rabbit hole on Google. I end up learning about someone and start looking up photos, reading articles, and watching videos about the person or the subject, which as a naturally curious person, I love. And that’s exactly what happened when I read A Harlem Wedding by Tiffany L. Warren.
The novel follows the life of Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, as she navigates love, family expectations, ambition, and one of the most high-profile and talked-about weddings of the Harlem Renaissance.
While I was reading the book, I took so many notes and when I finished, I was so curious about Yolande and the different relationships in her life, that I knew I had to talk to the author, Tiffany L. Warren about the book — so I’m excited to share our interview today.
One line I can’t stop thinking about:
“Fiction is a window, and it allows you to have empathy for other people in the world.”
Tiffany shared that reading was an escape for her as a child. Books showed her lives beyond her own experiences and helped her understand people whose circumstances looked nothing like hers.
That idea sits at the center of A Harlem Wedding. While the novel introduces readers to well-known historical figures, it also asks us to see them as people navigating love, family expectations, friendship, ambition, and identity. By the end of the book, the history felt less distant because the people at its center felt real.
In this conversation, we discussed so much including:
How Octavia Butler helped Tiffany realize that she could become a writer herself
Why Yolande Du Bois because the perfect heroine for a Harlem Renaissance novel and what made her the “it girl” of her era
The complicated relationship between Yolande and W.E.B. Du Bois, and how his vision for her future shaped her choices
What years of letters, diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings revealed about the people behind the history
Why sad love songs often inspire Tiffany’s stories and the song that became the emotional soundtrack for A Harlem Wedding
How historical fiction allows writers to explore not just what happened, but the deeper question underneath it all: why it happened
If you enjoy historical fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, complicated family relationships or hearing writers talk about their creative process, I think you’ll enjoy conversation.
As always, you can watch or listen to the interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Podcasts, or Pocket Casts.
Connect with Tiffany L. Warren
📚 A Harlem Wedding is available wherever books are sold.
🌐 Visit Tiffany at tiffanylwarren.com
📱 Follow Tiffany on Instagram and Threads: Tiffany L Warren
A few more notes for the week:
📺 If you watched the video interview above, you would’ve seen my face when Tiffany mentioned the one song that kept coming to her mind while she was writing was A Harlem Wedding was Vesta Williams “Congratulations.” If you have never heard this song, or watched the video… prepare to clutch your pearls. Also if you can find it, I recommend watching Vesta’s episode of Unsung.
🎧 Speaking with Tiffany about the Harlem Renaissance made me think of my conversation with ReShonda Tate who wrote one of my favorite books of the year, With Love From Harlem. You can listen/watch to that conversation here.
📚 I just finished reading Take What You Can by Naima Coster and I have many thoughts and questions after reading the book. If you like complex stories about friendship, relationship dynamics, and like hearing about good food, I think you’ll enjoy this book.
📚 I also just finished reading Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl by Amena Brown, which is a collection of short essays and I both nodded my head and laughed while reading this book. I saw myself, and so many of my girlfriends reflected in this book. Amena talks about different things like learning how to cook, Waiting to Exhale, how to survive the hair shop, and different pop culture references, including one of my favorite RHOA references: “A white refrigerator? Please put your shoes up. Let’s find you a home.”
🔗 Inside the first official portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama together. I LOVE, LOVE this portrait and all the details that artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby included.
