Tony Williams
Tony Williams was born in Brooklyn, New York, December 4, 1956 to Gloria and Theodore Williams. He came from a family with little means and was the oldest of five from the marriage and a half-brother from outside the marriage. He graduated from high school in 1974, but did not enroll in college for decades to follow, earning BA, Master’s in English Literature, and PhD in Victorian Literature from Temple University. His dream was to be a college professor and he has taught at Temple University, Montclair University, and New York City College of Technology. His childhood love was drawing and he continues to do so even after his academic achievements.
Editor’s Note for Tony Williams
Sometime in the 1990s I was meeting friends for breakfast at Odessa’s diner on Avenue A. As we gathered tables and chairs together for eight or maybe twelve people, I noticed a man sitting at a table by himself, reading. As usual, I tried to see what was holding his attention, wondering: contemporary, speculative, or maybe science fiction? I caught the title. “The Man Without Qualities.” Wow, he was reading the novel from the 1930s by Robert Musil. Who was this man reading such a deep, existential, philosophical work on a Sunday morning? As my friend Gail Williams joined us, she saw him and told him to come over. “This is my brother Tony.”
That was the way I met Tony. At the breakfast I was intrigued by his deep, complex, educated additions to the table talk enhanced by his unexpected, biting sense of humor. Since then, I’ve learned more about his life, his fascinating hand drawn artwork, and his teaching. Two years ago he had a stroke and gets around by wheelchair. Here is a short interview with Tony Williams from December 8, 2024, when his sister Gail Williams brought him to our apartment.
Jan Schmidt
Tony Williams Interviewed by Jan Schmidt
Schmidt
When did you start drawing?
Williams
I started drawing when I was maybe in the second grade. I don’t recall a period in my life when I wasn’t doing it. My sister Gail is a painter. I’m not a painter; I don’t know how to paint at all. The color for my drawings is done with dip pen and ink, and I try to stick to a very old-fashioned academic style. I guess that some people would call it Neoclassicalism. Somebody was looking at them on the sidewalk and he called my work Afrofuturism. I almost threw him out the window. I said, “Look, you dumb fuck, that’s not Afrofuturism.”
Schmidt
Why is it not Afrofuturism?
Williams
Afrofuturism has its own particular look. If you pay close attention—and I usually say this to Americans who are unable to pay close attention—Afrofuturism looks more like those science fiction book covers from the 1940s and ‘50s. That’s Afrofuturism. I’m Neoclassic, because that’s what I try to aim form, that academic style. I don’t know if I actually get it, but that’s what I aim for.
Schmidt
You had a stroke two years ago.
Williams
Yes, yes. I want everyone to know that I had a stroke and that made it very difficult for me to do any kind of drawing and even reading. And with the nurses at the facility that I’ve been imprisoned in, they’re very nice. They say stuff like, “Mr. Williams, the reason you’re fucked in the head is because you had a stroke and it’s affecting your judgment. That’s why you’re so fucked up in the head.”
Schmidt
So, obviously, the stroke affected your activities.
Williams
So how does “fucked in the head” translate into activities? I don’t know. There’s a lot of activities I can’t do the way I did before, because I can’t move around. If I try to answer the telephone, I’ll drop it. I can’t move around and try to find a comfortable place to sit, because it’s too painful. The people who do recreation at these places, I’ve gone to four of these places so far, and they seem dedicated to forcing old people like me into playing Bingo.
Schmidt
How old are you?
Williams
I’m sixty-eight. Knocking on heaven’s door. I had the stroke two years ago.
Schmidt
But now you have this fancy wheelchair.
Williams
This thing is fun. They’re still trying to force me to play Bingo, because they keep telling me Bingo is cognitively stimulating. You’ve played Bingo, right?
Schmidt
Yes.
Williams
How is Bingo cognitively stimulating?
Schmidt
It ain’t.
Williams
I got kicked out of one of the recreation sessions when the person in charge said, “Mr. Williams, don’t you think Bingo is cognitively stimulating?” And I said, “Bingo is as cognitively stimulating as eavesdropping on goldfish and listening to blue paint dry.” Oh, God. And they kicked me out of the room for that.
Schmidt
I’m not surprised. You were a literature professor, correct?
Williams
As an undergrad at CCNY, I focused on Victorian literature, and then when I went to Temple University for graduate school, I was a Ph.D. candidate focusing on Victorian literature, that too, which was pretty interesting. When a white person decides to study Victorian literature, everybody just looks at it and accepts it as, of course, but an African American male from Brooklyn walks into the director’s office and she’s giving him an interview, she ought to know better, because she’s the reason I went to that school.
People would ask me what was my major field of study, and I would tell them, “Victorian literature,” and they would give me a strange look. You know that strange look?
Schmidt
Nowadays, nobody understands Victorian literature.
Williams
Right. So they would give me that strange look. And just before they would ask that dumbass question, “Why?” I would lean toward them and whisper, “I like dead white people.” And I told them, I wanted to also study the literature of the 18th century, so that means that the deader the better.
Schmidt
You’re teaching. Where do you teach? Is it Victorian literature?
Williams
I haven’t had the chance to teach Victorian literature because these schools are afraid that students won’t understand my sense of humor. I taught a class called “The Modern Novel” at Temple. And I was teaching courses on race at Temple, and I put together the curriculum for teaching classes on race at Temple. And I think it’s all because of me that Donald Trump and all of these dumb Republicans don’t like Critical Race Theory.
Schmidt
So it’s all your fault?
Williams
It’s all my fault because when they say that the way people are teaching history is making them hate America, well, guess what? The way I teach history, these white boys leave school hating America. They want to destroy this fuckin’ place by the time they leave my class, and I’m, like, happy as hell. One time a kid threw a chair at me in a class. We were talking about the history of unions in America and I was talking about some of the documents that outlined how unions in the United States started out as racist because they were so exclusionary that they would only allow certain people, and in some of the documents they would even say that unless someone was a descendant of someone who had worked in such and such fields they were not eligible for certain types of housing. A young Irish guy threw a chair at me. It missed. He probably graduated. He’s probably teaching Critical Race Theory from the point of view of Irish eyes.
Schmidt
Before we end this conversation, do you have anything that you particularly want to say or talk about, about your artwork, about anything?
Williams
No, other than it takes a long time to do. One of the joys of doing it was when I’m sitting at my desk and I’m working with the dip pen, and you have to be very detailed with the dip pen. And I lift up my head, and my sister Gail is squinting in to see what I’m doing, and she’s outside on the porch laughing at me like she’s doing over there right now. She laughs at everything I do.
Schmidt
And Gail’s a painter also who does stuff completely opposite of you.
Williams
I know, and I don’t laugh at her.
Schmidt
Who’s older, you or her?
Williams
The good-looking one, me.
Schmidt
Thank you very much. I really appreciate this.
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