Thando and Themes of Trust in Mara Brock Akil's Novel 'The Revelation Of Dionne Daphne'

One of the things I love about this book too is that one of the things that the reason it's called The Revelation of Dion Daphne is that once she goes to get the AIDS test, it starts to reveal a lot of the why of the why of the why she's behaved the way she has. Why has she had so many lovers? Why does she, you know, behave the way that she does? And also reveals, you know, all these things about family and family connections and why every time her mother's on the phone, oh, your father wants to say, wants to say hello and why she never wanted to get on the phone and all of that. Yeah, you just start to, and it looks just like, oh, I'm busy. I'm, you know, I'm booked and busy and I've got a promotion in my life. Because she had to compartmentalize that. Yes. So I love to read books at the same time as my daughter girl, Tondo does. And I gave Tondo a copy of this book and she was, would not shut up. Hi, Tondo. I'm so happy. I love that. That's having a conversation. Being able to have a conversation about it. And we were like, into like, can you believe Dominic? Can you believe what is okay. Hi, Tondo. Hi. Hi, how are you? So tell us why you like this book so much. Why was it a page turner for you? Page turner. I literally, I finished it in 24 hours. Oh my God. Okay. Let me pause on that one for a second. Okay. I love that. Thank you. I'm not kidding, mama. Am I joking? You're not joking. I said to you, I said, I'm going to send it to you. Just read to page 105. And then you call me and said, I finished it. Oh, that page you were on 105? Yeah. I said, just read to page 105. Let me know, catch up with me and then I'll continue reading with you. And then she goes, I finished it. I go, what? Thank you so much. Because how could you not? How could you not? I want to know what happens after the 12 days. I've got to a point where I was like, oh, I'm desperate. I need to know. And if this causes her to lose her whole, you know what, first of all, such important themes, because we almost have forgotten that HIV was a thing. It was such a stigma. It was, it was such a, it was almost a death sentence. I was born in South Africa where there was an era where we lost so many people in our family. Every single week there was somebody who has been lost to this illness because of the fear of the shame of the stigma that it was to. In your own family, in your own family. Yeah. In my own family. Yeah. In my own family, because of the stigma that it was to even go to the clinic to get those results. Exactly. You know, to even have the courage, the courage she had to, to write down the list, go back to each person. You know, some people would rather live in absolute silence and die in the quiet of the night because it just takes so much to go to the place where you're revealing to anybody else that you're living with this, even when it's not your fault. This is the thing about Dion, the fact that everything was great by all the measures and metrics of success and the way, where she was headed, everything was great. She, you look at her life and the trajectory of it and you think, oh, she's above shame. She's above an experience like this. She's above the words, I am HIV positive, you know? And so yeah, that overwatching thing, super brilliant. Bravo for me. Oh my goodness. I'm enjoying just, thank you for that. The generosity of the reflection of it. What's interesting to me about, my children play video games and you know, there's the main character. We always talk about main character energy, but there are all these non-player characters, right? I'm always interested in those people. And to play, you think that they're just moving along. I'm just successful. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm above shame. Let's pluck them out and let's put them, let's look at them. Let's open them up. Let's reveal them. Let's understand them. Let's understand their why. And so that was, that was a journey, not only for me, but it was fun to then incorporate what is happening around us today. And it's interesting about HIV. You did, you did. That gas station, you did. Anyway, I'm like, Dominic. Oh no. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What's your question? What's your question? Okay. This, the thing about this book centers around trust a lot and trust that is, that revolves around her long-term relationship, parents. There's, these are trust people. You give trust in the grandest measure, you know, her and her partner were doing things like going house shopping. We're talking about rings. We're talking about, so at this point, you know, they're so far in their relationship that it is solid. She trusts, she trusts him without a doubt, without a question. Now I want to know what it is that we misunderstand about trust because how with the person that you think, you know, absolutely everything about you at this point, they're planning on getting married. You're like, I know him. I know this man, you know, and for him to pull out that kind of, that surprise on her, I was as shocked as she was, if not more, the way she was avoiding even having the question. I said, girl, I know, don't even look at him. He has betrayed all of us. You know, it's interesting trust. I don't think we're really going to get to that level of idyllic trust in others if we're not that to ourselves. And as much as she did all the right things, I don't believe Dion never took stock of what happened. She never faced the storm of her life. I thought he was giving her signals all along. Oh, he, I thought he was telling her all along. He was, but we don't want to. I don't feel that she should have been putting all of that trust in him because he was signaling, signaling to her that he was not the one. But you see what you want to see. But you see what you want to see. And this is what you and I were discussing, but she had this ideal of who he was and she saw herself in the picket fence in the house. She was trusting the picture in her head, not the person in front of her. That's right. It's so many women do. They're living to the possibility. They're living to the possibility. He's got the Ivy league pedigree. He's got all of that going and they're just living to the possibility instead of the reality. Absolutely. I feel like that is, that, that is, that is then that is now that is happening. And so that's allows for Dion or me to have a conversation with you right now, because to your point, are we, since how do we trust? And that would be the question then is how do we do that? How do we, how do we see that if we are looking for something outside of ourselves all the time? And isn't this a movie? Didn't we say this? This is a movie. Come on. Come on. This is it. We're reading the book. We need the movie by next year. Thank you so much. Get to it. I said, it's definitely a movie and I'm submitting a tape for it. Way to go. You look amazing. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.