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You are far less.
I'm Katie and I'm Eve's. Do you remember the last time you asked me for advice?
No? Not really. If I've ever asked you for advice.
You don't think I got words of wisdom or something.
It's definitely not about that. I usually don't seek advice from friends like I will if it's something that's really super specific to them that I think they could help.
Me with, Like if you wanted to know how to be the baddest bitch the side of the Mason Dixon.
Line, Uh, something like that.
It's common for folks to seek advice from people that they don't know personally.
You mean like a therapist, Yeah, or.
A vocation with less schooling and more direct answers and advice columns. Day's episode of on Theme is Advice for the Wise and Otherwise.
So are you super into advice columns?
I mean I have been in my day and which day was that? The days when my life was in shambles. Let me tell you something about me. I hate learning life lessons. Well, okay, let me say it right. I hate learning life lessons first hand I'd much rather read it in a book or simply watch someone else fuck up so badly that it's forever imprinted on my brain to never, and I mean it, never put myself in that situation.
That is so honestly a kav that is so shaby. But learning heart life lessons firsthand does kind of suck in a moment real bad.
So when I was in my down bad days, I would read advice columns and watch Lifetime with you girl to see what other pitfalls to avoid. But now that I'm out of that space, thank you Jesus, I can look at it advice columns in a new way.
What do you mean by that? Okay?
So you know, I've been doing research for my book about Black Bookstore. So one of the sources of my research are the archives of black newspapers like the Atlanta Daily World, New York, Amsterdam News, and the Chicago Defender. So I was just, you know, looking at the archives and came across an advice column in the Chicago Defender called Advice to the Wise and otherwise that's a great title, right.
It definitely caught my attention. So I started reading it and found out that the advice columnist is a woman who goes by Princess Mysteria.
That's another fun name.
A marketing genius of the day.
When was this advice column around.
From nineteen twenty one until Mysteria's death in nineteen thirty Okay, okay, So I go down this rabbit hole about this advice column and about Princess Mysteria, whose birth name was val Lda hill Strotter, and I started to look at advice columns in a new way, like more as storytelling devices.
And what led you to that, given that you've been reading advice columns and never really saw them that way before.
I think at first it was Princess Mysteria herself. She's using a pen name. She describes herself as a mentalist or mind reader, So there's already that element of performance and personal branding. But beyond that, Princess Mysteria was a Black American woman claiming to be Indian.
Okay, so she was just making that up.
Yes, girls, she was born in the southern United States, but it was common at the time for black women claiming to have psychic powers to say they were Indian.
Okay, So I guess it gave them that credibility to be considered foreign, I think so.
So that also got me to thinking what makes a thing a black thing, or like, what makes a piece of media black? Like is it the creator, the audience, the talent, the content. Because with Princess Mysteria, we have a black woman who is pretending to be Indian responding to black advice seekers in a black newspaper.
And I imagine that with black advice columns. Some of what people want advice on has to do with race, of course, Yeah, but not only that. Oftentimes advice columns in white newspapers wouldn't even respond to black advice seekers.
You know, we're talking early nineteen twenties. A white advice column editor was more likely to just want to help a white person, and if they did respond to a question about race, they were more often than not like pro white supremacy, pro racial hierarchy types of And so we saw examples of this happening with people. So they just wouldn't answer people if they were black, or those people wrote in they weren't the ones who were being responded to.
Yeah, it was rare to see a question being asked by that it had to do with race. So you're assuming it's a black person, because I mean it's pretty anonymous writing into these advice columns. So if you're saying, like, hey, my name is disappointed in the racist system, they're probably not going to apply to you, or they're going to, like say, some pro white supremacy stuff like stay in your place.
Who cares those advice column names, they'd be real specific to the issue that's going on.
For some reason.
That is a mainstay and advice columns to where the name of the person just has to be the situation, not just like it's cute not being on.
A smith, you know, not right, not even Jane Doe, you know.
But they gotta get they got to give funky with it.
I got too.
So it was very much like staying your place situation, very much stay in your place, Negro. So were there other reasons that you started to look at at vice columns in terms of the storytelling in them or was it just mostly princess mysterious performance?
No, there are other reasons. So we know that advice seeking and giving has been around for a long time in some form or another. I mean, advice columns themselves made back to the late sixteen nineties. But around the end of the nineteenth century, newspapers became an ideal form for folks to seek advice.
So what was going on with newspapers at the time.
Well, first of all, they're becoming cheaper because paper was becoming cheaper, so they're more accessible, and so they start becoming mass produce, and women were starting to be seen as newspaper readers, which wasn't the case before. A lot of the times, the women even though they might not be the breadwinners for white women, like they weren't really working outside the home, and for black women, they were working outside the home, but they were also kind of
in charge. With the famili's finances and the United States being one big commercial there were ads in the papers. So newspapers were like, we're going to have these ads. These women are going to be like reading the newspaper, finding out what's going on in the economy, finding out what's going on in their neighborhoods. So women were really targeted in that way with newspapers in a way that
we hadn't seen before. They became more accessible and in terms of storytelling, the fact that a lot of these advice columns were in newspaper is very fitting to me because the news is often like called the first draft of history. Have you ever heard that?
No, can you explain what you mean by the first draft of history?
Yeah, So, like, say something happens today, like breaking news, you'll see that in the newspaper tomorrow, and you know it's not going to have that analysis of like fifty years down the road, like all that was going on, all the implications of that, but it's telling you, like
what's happening right now. Basically, so when people like me are going through the archives of these newspapers trying to figure out, like what were people thinking about this particular subject, you're looking at the first draft of that history in the newspapers. So for advice columns, I don't see those as the first draft of history, but they are like people's interior thoughts in our personal worlds, and they often are colliding with these big societal changes that you are
seeing being reported in newspapers. And I think the questions and answers revealed that relationship between the two.
So it was kind of like you got to get this professional buttoned up like in a suit version of what was happening in the day. And then you also got to get this like version of the news that was a lot more casual. So if the news is the first draft of history, would you say that at vice columns are like an edited second draft of a journal.
That's a good way of describing it, like, send me polished, edit it for print. Innermost thoughts. If I compare it to modern times, I feel like advice columns were kind of like Twitter. It's like a medium to build community amongst folks who usually would be strangers, but it also has that element of anonymity, and you know, people be flexing.
So you're telling me there were people who were keyboard warriors. I guess what would you call them back then? Pencil pen warriors, pen perpetrators, pin perpetrators.
Okay, yeah, there's nothing stopping folks from embellishing a bit or obscuring some of the facts about themselves to make it sound a little better in their favor. Or you'll have to see people writing in and not even asking a question like.
The I don't have a question. It's more of a comment person after a panel, Yes, just be talking like what is your question? You know you have beef with those people. Katie and it's so funny to me. Okay, So I'm curious what types of advice did Princess Mysteria dish out.
Oh, I forgot to mention, and I think you'll like this. Princess Mysteria was a performer on the Vaudeville circuit, which was like a variety show that included stuff like singing and mental shows and acting, and she was often referred to as a magician as well as a mentalist or mind reader.
Oh you know, I like that. Black magicians do have a special place in my heart.
I know. But you'll have to wait till after the break to find out what she was talking about. So part of her act was answering questions from the audience, and these audience members got personal. They asked about love, illness, lost money, all out in the open for everyone to hear.
No shame, but it sounds like they liked the answers they were getting, because that was Princess Mysterious segue into her column Advice for the Wise and Otherwise, And that column became the most red black advice column at the time because even though it was in the Chicago Defender, because of the great migration the Chicago Defender was circulated around the country.
So all of Black America was locked into her column, a good chunk for sure. So based on her larger than life persona, I imagine that her advice was larger than life too.
That would be a good guess. But surprisingly, her advice was pretty concise and to the point. She did focus on racial uplift, even though she was pretending to be Indian a little paradoxical there, and her advice was more feminist than many others at the time. So if you look at a lot of the well known white advice columnists, they kind of shied away from anything like too controversial, Like it would be very rare to see Dorothy Dix who had an advice column called Dear Dorothy, Like she
wouldn't tell people to leave their husband or anything. Like they kind of focused on like happiness.
They had to maintain an image.
Yeah, yeah, so Princess Mysterias, she responded to topics that were kind of considered off limits for advice columns, like divorce, abortion, sexual assault. But that being said, she was real respectable.
Because I was just gonna say it sounds like she was flouting respectability a lot.
But.
She was like very big into temperance for men and women, which I guess might be making her a little bit more progressive for the time. Okay, so this is Pansy g and Spokane, Washington. Pansy says, please tell.
Me why I always lose all of the fellows I've ever had. I treat them nicely and I do not mind kissing them.
If they ask me to. Okay, Pansy and Princess Mysterious says.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Pansy is an old saying, but truth, if you wish to attain the respect of your friends, be ladylike, reserved, dignified, and above reproach at all times and in all places.
All times, in all places. I feel like that's a lot to keep up with.
Yes, like what Pansy kiss?
But I do think looking at advice columns that answers these colonists, we're giving give us a peek into the morals at the time, or at least what people want to state the morals are in public, you know what I mean.
Yeah, So it was kind of like this Instagram filter over how we should be acting.
M and like, for me, it makes me think about who the hell is Princess Mysteria to be giving this, Like, what are the credentials I think a good advice columns? And I think we're seeing this more and newer advice columns they have as like some level of expertise on a specific genre of advice they're giving. So you mean like a couple's therapist giving relationship advice and an advice column. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be a formal degree. Lived
experience is great too. I know Jamila Lemieux has an advice column on parenting and she's been a parent for over a decade. And Elene welter Roth has an advice column talking about pivoting, something she's done many times in her personal and professional life. So what I'm saying is I see Princess Mysteria doing a bunch of moralizing to Miss Pansy, But is this really your expertise? And I
find like, do you? I remember when I first learned about the concept of an unreliable narrator and my mind was blown that you know, a book's narrator could lie, right, So the people writing in are definitely unreliable narrators, right, because like you have no idea if what they're saying is the truth, or like how much they're embellishing, how much they're like trying to say to make themselves feel
good or sound good or whatever. But also the people giving advice, I like the advice columns that are like really considered and like specific to that person's situation. Princess Mysteria she kind of positioned herself as like the relationship girlie, so like of course she would respond to this in some way. And you know she was over here promoting like racial uplift and temperance, so like, this is definitely something that I feel like she was comfortable replying to.
Why did Princess Mysteria think that she had expertise around relationships?
Well, I know there was also a Prince Mysteria girl, so they kind of did their show together, and so when they were on the circuit, I think those were just the questions people tended to ask, and they kind of wentn't with that.
Okay, she had already built up credibility for herself basically just by having him on the road with her as a person could speak on relationships.
Yeah, and you know she's a mind reader. Somebody she's like, you're gonna fall in love with someone with Kay.
She might have had some repeat customers and her advice callin that came to some of her shows. So give me another example of her advice. Is there any that you actually liked?
Oh?
Yeah, I found one, very funny and probably something I'd say if they were to ask me. This one is from Sam in Kansas City, Missouri.
Sam writes, Madame Princess, will you tell me the best thing for me to do? I left my wife and came west with another girl. The girl deserted me after two months, and my wife refuses to take me back. What must I do?
He's trifling as hell, and Princess Massia lets him know and replies with.
Retribution is slow in some cases, but swift enough in yours. Three cheers for your wife. She is strictly first class. And for you. If there's worse luck for you, which more than likely there is, I hope that it makes haste and comes to you.
Okay. She was not playing with Sam.
At all, Like, no advice given, just dragged him And I could definitely see other advice columns encouraging Sam to like do a romantic gesture that's actually just stalking. But Princess Mysteria basically told him to take the fast lane to Hell, and I respect that.
Yeah.
I also think there is a situation of missing information here too, though, because this is still just Sam's sid and so she was making a lot of assumptions as well.
She is strictly first class. You don't know that.
Yeah, she was definitely making assumptions. But I like that she dragged him because honestly, if you write that, I feel like you left out some other trifless stuff you did because what you said was already trifless.
That is true. You shouldn't have sent this Sam Sam.
But you know what, I hope Sam got his life together, not with his wife, but just in general.
So you want a happy ending, Yeah, that's very you like. That is very Katie.
I want Sam to be be better, Sam, be better, Be better Sam. And you know, I feel like we've gotten to know Princess Mysteria. But I did want to check in with a more current advice columnist and get their take on advice columns as storytelling devices and on the craft in general. We'll be hearing from Damon Young, a current advice giver After the Break.
Damon Young, author of what does a killy makes you blacker? Host stuff? Stuck with Damon Young.
Do you have an idea why people come to you for advice? Like we know you're a very smart brother, is like that the criteria that people are like that's who I need to talk to.
I mean, I think I think there's a few things at play. I mean, one, you know, I'm assist. I'm assist ad man. And people like to go to men for advice, right, particularly about dating and relationship related things. So first answer is patriarchy, right. And the second thing I think that I've been very intentional with just like you know, I'm a I'm just a regular nigga from Pittsburgh, you know what I mean. I Am not like some guru.
I try to be thoughtful, to try to be conscientious, progressive, all that, but at the end of the day, you know, I think when people come to me, it's like, Okay, they're going to come to Damon. Damon is going to try to be as honest as he can possibly be. And Damon also, you know, might be vulnerable, might be absurd, might be silly, but you're not going to get like some concrete like men need to do this and women
need to do that, you know. I mean, we're real people out here, just all trying to figure out what to do, how to live, how to make a life. And it's a little bit of time we have on this earth. And so I feel like my vice reflects that.
Has there ever been a moment when you gave advice that you thought was thoughtful and conscientious and then you thought about it a little bit more after you gave the advice and you were like, I think I would like to change something that I said all the.
Time now, I don't think I've given someone like advice that was like dangerously wrong. Okay, So, for instance, one of my columns at the Posts, a person that written in and with concerned about her daughters. You know who I think is a college student her daughter's sudden weight gain and hair loss. And I wrote back in a way that I thought was thoughtful. She seemed to be experiencing a high level of stress right now, and she doesn't need you to be reminding her like, oh you're getting fat or oh.
You're getting bald.
No, you need to be supportive of your daughter who apparently is going through such a stressful time that is actually having a physiological effect on her. And so I wrote that out, you know, and I thought and again I thought that it was thoughtful. I thought it was conscientious. But then I read the comments and there were people who were saying, I, actually, yes, distressing might be true.
All that might be true, but it sounds like this, this this young person might have a thyroid issue, might have an actual medical issue that she might need to see a doctor about. And again that's something that didn't come to me at all while it was while I was actually writing it. But then I'll read the comments like, oh, I probably I definitely should have at least, you know, obviously you can't know for sure if this is true, but you are you know, I should have written that
in as like a possibility. The advice wasn't, as I guess, as complete as I thought it was.
Is there ever a gas between the advice you give and what you would actually do if you were that person in the situation, Because I know when my homegirls come to me for advice, I'd be like, what, I don't his take, don't play with me? Like knowing I would not do that, like are you ever in like I wouldn't really do that? But I'm gonna tell you to do that type situation honestly.
Not as much, not as much like I try. I do try to, you know, you know, give people the sort of advice that I would that I would do myself. Okay. For instance, another instance with the Washington Post or a person wrote in about a family member who had really like shitty, terrible politics, and you know, they were like they didn't know whether or not to keep this person
in there alives to cut them off. And my vice was like, yeah, I mean I think that you would not be in the wrong if you were to cut this person off or at the very least limit your interactions with them drastically. Like I'm not a believer in the idiom that you know. Family, you know, family knows best.
Like if someone has opinions, or someone has politics or beliefs that are actively right, antagonistic, actively harmful, actively in contrast to to what you believe, and and and we're not talking about something like you know, I feel like people need to I feel like rich people need to pay more taxes. No, I mean we're talking about shit like abortion rights or or trans rights or or or
race stuff or whatever. Then yeah, if you maybe need to in that relationship, and I don't have a problem doing that.
You're more matured than me. That's in your advice.
You also talk about your personal situations, like there was one in the Washington Post that you did where you talked about your car was repossessed, I think, and I was just thinking about, like how much vulnerability is seems I don't know if it's required, but that it seems like you've made a choice to put into your advice, and I wonder how that plays for you, Like how you make those decisions to be vulnerable in certain moments and maybe pulled back in other moments, and why you
choose to do so in those moments.
What a vulnerability is something that I think is characteristic of my writing, of my work, and so to not have it with my advice, I would just basically turn into a different person, right if I were to remove that from it. Now, I don't pull back now, there
are times when I maybe hold back. And what I mean in terms of distinguishing two is like, Okay, I don't have to tell people everything about me, but I think one of the things that people want, the like when people come to me for advice, you know you're
going to get vulnerability. You know, you're going to get like, you know, maybe an unflattering instance of me doing a thing or a thing that happened to me that kind of relates to what we're talking about, right, And so I think to remove that would be you know, I think including that it's one of the things that maybe the thing was just made.
Parasocial relationships are such a thing in this day and age. So do you worry about that when you're being vulnerable? And is there any element of hesitancy around that? And how parasocial relationships could be formed with these people you're engaging with.
I mean, I don't have the sort of status where motherfucker's going to be coming to my door, you know, like fall in love, you know, or falling in whatever or hate or whatever because of some advice. Like it's not like that serious. But I actually like it when people feel like a personal connection with me throughout writing, because again, that makes them more interested in what I have to say.
One of the things about newspaper advice columns, it is like a storytelling entertainment space. Do you try to balance being informative and anti during the question for that particular person with entertaining and providing some escapism for the other people who are reading it that didn't write in.
Oh yeah, I mean it's it's a column. You're not just give them advice, right, You're you're actually writing a column. And so the writing of the column actually is for me, it would be like the most fun part, Like okay, because sometimes people write in and the answer is like a simple yes or no. But you have five hundred words. You know that you got the feel for this column, so you can't just say yep, that's the end of it.
You gotta, you know, you got to add some some stuff to it, maybe tell a story, maybe make an analogy, you know, maybe making maybe take them down the journey before you get to the yes, maybe explore why you Maybe take them like down a hypothetical where if you choose no, then this it would be what happen, which makes the yes.
More more apparent.
But yeah, that was the part that was really interesting and fun to me. It's like, oh, okay, well, let me figure out how to turn this answer into a column.
I think it's time for real credits.
Katie Ease, who what would you like to give credit to.
This week, I would like to give credit to rest.
I feel like that's something I always want to give credit to. But I realized the important stuff slowing down, of taking my time to do things and when I really need rest and to honor listening to my body in my mind when it tells me that I need rest.
Shout out, shout out to sleep.
Yeah, how about you, damon? Who are what would you like to give credit to?
All?
Right?
So I have an iPhone and if you have any Apple products, particularly an iPhone, you know that after you've had it for two years, they just start self destructing. And so my phone started doing that where it would only charge one charger and it was an iPad charger, and I also had to like make sure it was leaning like up against like a wall and like had a weight on it and all this shit so it would charge. And so I go to the T Mobile store.
There's a black woman working there, so I tell her to issue with my phone, and she's like, okay, let me try something.
So she takes a paper clip.
Sends it out and then this starts going inside, like the part where the charger goes in right, and it's just like doing stuff in there just moving like this paper clip around and she pulls out so much dust and lent. I felt like she pulled out a whole entire cheeto at some point. Right then she put the phone on a charger. Boom, and so my phone has been working perfectly since then.
Wow.
Shout out to her.
Shout out to her.
What about your credit, Katie?
I would like to give credit to Aaron Ross Coleman. He gives the best advice. I'm always going to him for advice, and yeah, I feel like he's a very calm person and I'm not so I need a calm person to like, you know, like let's think about this like a different perspective, and he's always gives me like a different perspective that's mostly always.
Better than mine. Love it.
Thank you so much for coming on on theme.
Damon, Oh, thank you, thank you for inviting me.
This has been a pleasure.
Thank you.
How can the folks keep up with you? They can't?
Man, can nobody catch me? I'm like, motherfucking leo and catch me if you can catch me, if you motherfuckers can now, I mean catch me if you got the art one. I g damon, young BSB. I'm also a writer in a residence at the University of Pittsburgh this year, so I'm on campus a couple of days a week.
Catch him if you.
Thank you, Thank you.
All right, all right, y'all, Thanks thanks for having me, Thanks.
Again to Damon Young for joining us.
And we'll see y'all again next week.
Bye on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Theme Show. You can also send us an email at hello at on Theme dot show. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.