Johnisha Matthews Levi is the author of the new memoir Number's Up: Cracking the Code of an American Family. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Northern Virginia Magazine. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Q: What inspired you to write Number’s Up?
A: I was inspired to write Number’s Up when I made a bit of a shocking discovery. I was already working on some personal writing about my deceased parents. During the long days of the pandemic, I was cleaning up and consolidating all manner of things I’d collected from my mother’s condo.
That’s when I discovered this very innocuous folded-up piece of paper. This was my dad’s parole paper. And it revealed that he wasn’t released from prison until after I was born.
First, my family barely talked about the fact that my father had been incarcerated (albeit for a short time). Second, my mother (and by extension other family members) never let on that he hadn’t been there when I was born.
It just set off this real desire to learn the truth and to write about what I found. And just to really shatter once in for all this culture of secrecy in our family.
We had so many secrets – including that my father ran a numbers business (for those who don’t know, it was an underground gambling operation that predated state-run lotteries) and that he was both verbally and physically abusive. I thought, “It is time to stop being haunted and to reclaim the narrative.”
Q: The writer Andrew Maraniss said of the book, “A poignant, sweeping story that reveals universal truths family, love, abuse, race, and the blurred line between the personal and the systemic, this memoir will change the way readers see the world--and their own family’s place in it.” What do you think of that description?
A: When Andrew sent this testimonial to me, I felt very seen! I thought to myself, “This is exactly what I wanted a reader to get out of this book.” And Andrew is a writer and storyteller whom I deeply admire.
My aim was to do more than tell the story of my family in this book. I have worked for different social justice nonprofits, and I am a lawyer by training.
While I certainly wished to relate the unique experience of our family, I also wanted to pull back and examine it through the lens of this country’s brutal racial history.
I thought that this is a way that I can better understand my father. Because for so much of my childhood, I was really struggling to understand what was wrong with him. He was so unpredictable – where did his anger come from? This is what Andrew means when he talks about the personal and the systemic.
Q: How did you conduct your research for the book?
A: I think that in some ways, I was researching this book even before I knew I was going to write it! I am really an avid reader of African American history. I’ve always had this hunger to know our history since the time I was a little kid, and I that is something that my parents both fostered in me.
Beyond that, I availed myself of a lot of different sources. I spoke to family members, I read reporting (mostly in The Washington Post), I read academic works about the street numbers and even interviewed a CUNY professor. I was also able to obtain some of the legal filings in my father’s case.
I attempted some FOIA requests and I’m still waiting for the files, which I suspect that I will never get now with what is happening with the federal government! Specifically, my father has an FBI file. Maybe that is a part two or a revised edition if it ever happens!
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: The book was incredibly healing. Although my dad appears to be the “protagonist” in the memoir, I also think it pays tributes to my mother’s fortitude. The writing about my mother in Part III is some of my favorite, and I’m really excited for readers to connect with her through the page.
One thing I want readers to take away from this book is that families are ecosystems. Even if you grow up with the same parents, families can evolve in so many ways, such that you can grow up in a different family than the people that you are biologically closest to.
Birth order has a lot to do with this. When I was an undergraduate, I studied English literature. And there is this idea of the unreliable narrator. And it resonates in my life so much as the youngest child. Coming last in the family, I always felt like I knew less than everyone.
You will see this quite starkly in a conversation I have with my brother (who is 16 years older than me) at the beginning of the book. I have this moment where I am kind of like, wait a minute, you mean you knew this and you didn’t tell me?!?!
On the other hand, because I was the last out of the house, and in some senses, was an “only child” during a good portion of my childhood, I did get some one-on-one time with my father. And I really collected the stories that he told me as this unique window into his soul.
Another thing I want readers to take from this book is a respect for what I call the “hustle” and for the ingenuity and perseverance that it required for all Black Americans—but particularly Black people in generations prior to the passage of civil rights laws—to survive and thrive.
My father is a Jim Crow survivor and a Black WWII veteran. He didn’t have the opportunities he should have had after his war service. And it was in part because of his ingenuity and his commitment to do more for his family that I was able to earn a degree from an Ivy League institution and attend law school.
I want readers to know the sacrifices he made. He was a very flawed person, but he was also the victim of interpersonal and historical violence. That includes poverty, physical and verbal abuse, domestic terrorism, and war. These things all scar a soul.
I have a lot of empathy for him now that I am in my 40s and have more perspective. But I also realize that these collective traumas have reverberations for successive generations.
Also, stories of Black Americans and what we endured are more important than ever in this historical moment. With book bans and attempted erasures of content on government websites (I’m thinking for example the debacle with Jackie Robinson and the Tuskegee airmen), stories about ordinary Black Americans doing incredible things in a country that has been hostile to their very existence need to be told and amplified. We need to be heard.
As readers, I urge you to ask the older people in your communities and families about what they experienced. Sometimes they are reluctant to talk about these painful things, but we must do everything we can to preserve this history. Don’t wait until it’s too late! That is my PSA.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am in the early stages of researching a new nonfiction book that relates to criminal justice and mass incarceration.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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