Vulgar History Podcast
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, the Beyoncé of the Antebellum (with Tiffany L. Warren)
February 5, 2025
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster. Before we get into today’s episode, I do want to remind you that coming up this Friday, Friday, February 7th, I’m going to be in Fort Myers, Florida, and I made the time to have a meetup of listeners of this podcast. So, if you are there and you want to hang out, Fort Myers, Florida, this Friday, February 7th, just fill out the form at VulgarHistory.com/Meetup. Let me know if you’re around, and then I’ll know how many of us there are, and then we can make a plan of where to meet. So, stay tuned for future live events/meetup information. There’s something coming up in March, but I’ll talk to you about that in a few weeks.
Anyway, Vulgar History, I’m so excited by today’s guest and by today’s topic. When I’m thinking of people to talk about for this podcast, I mean, I’m really grateful. I’ve got a huge document of suggestions from all of you from people that you’ve heard about, or you’ve encountered. Like, there are so many people that I know will be great podcast people to talk about, but I’m always looking for, like, the lesser-known women from history, especially people from marginalized communities, especially people who were really famous in their era and now aren’t anymore. And you know, when you do a random search, like, the same names always come up when you’re like “Women from history.” It’s always, like, Cleopatra, Queen Victoria! And it’s like, yeah, but who are the next level? If we want to go deeper. That is what today’s guest did, and she found… She went down a historical rabbit hole not even looking for this woman and she found her, and now she’s written this amazing book.
So, Tiffany L. Warren is the author I’m talking with today and her new book is called The Unexpected Diva. This is a book that tells the story of a black opera singer named Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who lived in the US before the Civil War. She was super famous at the time and she’s so little known now. I thought the timing of it is great. The book was just published last month, February, it’s February, it’s Black History Month. And just as Tiffany talks about in this interview, it was really important for her to share this story. She explains, like, how she came across the story and how important it is to her. But also sharing stories of Black joy and triumph, I think is so important because often this time period, like the time period of like, pre-Civil War, even Civil War in American history, there’s so many stories of just… the torment and the degradation and all these horrible, horrible things that were happening to the Black community at the time. And then this story, this true story that inspired Tiffany’s novel of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield is it’s an interesting and it’s such a… I’m just so excited to have learned about Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield because of Tiffany’s book. I’m so happy Tiffany almost stumbled into learning about this herself.
Honestly, I’m just going to… I’m going to step aside so you can listen to Tiffany explain everything because she’s so passionate about this story and I think it’s such an important story. So, please enjoy this conversation between myself and Tiffany L. Warren.
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Ann: So, today we’re joined by Tiffany L. Warren, author of the amazing new novel, The Unexpected Diva. Welcome, Tiffany.
Tiffany: Thank you!
Ann: I’m really excited to talk to you both about your book, which is great and also about the woman who inspired it. I read your whole book start to finish, then I read, you know, the note at the end and you explained in there how you heard about her. So, can you explain how you came across this story in the first place?
Tiffany: So, let me just first say I have been obsessed with opera and opera music since I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when I was 18. I took a bus trip; that was a big thing in the ‘90s, bus trips. I’m from Cleveland and we would go on bus trips all over the place. So, we took a bus trip to Toronto to see The Phantom of the Opera. And so, after that, I just really was obsessed with opera music, opera singers and I had read a book a few years before that by Anne Rice called Cry to Heaven about the famous Castrati. So, I’d started writing, like, short pieces, short stories and novels about opera singers. So, I had a novel that I had written called A Multitude of Sins about an opera singer. This was completely fiction, it wasn’t about a real person in history.
My agent was about to start shopping it, but I was working on another historical fiction about Yolande Du Bois, which actually is my next novel that’s coming out. And I found when I was researching her father that he had a very short-lived record company called Black Swan Records and that record company, the name of it was paying homage to Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who was known as a Black Swan. And I was like, “Whoa. Who is she?” And doing historical fiction, you often fall down rabbit holes. So, I fell down this rabbit hole and spent all day learning about Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield. And I told my agent, I said, “Okay, wait, stop. We’re not going to shop A Multitude of Sins. I don’t want to shop that because I don’t want an opera singer story about a completely fictional character when we have this amazing real person who existed. I want to write about her.” So, that’s how it all started. And I just went off to the races writing a proposal about this amazing woman.
Ann: Everything about her story— Like, I read the Wikipedia first just to be like, “Who is this?” you know, before I got my hands on a copy of your book. If I hadn’t done that, I’d be like, “She’s making this up. There’s no way this can be true.” But every time I thought that I’m like, no, that’s that is her story. So, set the scene. Elizabeth, under what circumstances was she born? Like, the year, I know, is debatable but what was up in America at the time when she was born?
Tiffany: Right. So, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was born enslaved on a Mississippi plantation. And it’s so amazing the circumstances how she came, she just fell into this amazing situation. So, her mistress was Elizabeth H. Greenfield, and she was a widow. When her husband died, she decided to free all the slaves on the plantation. During that time in Mississippi, when you freed slaves, they could not stay in America. They did not want all these people who had formerly been enslaved to now be free because there were too many of them. There were not enough owners to then contend with people that they had formerly beaten and mistreated. They did not want them in America. So, the idea was send them to Liberia.
Ann: And why specifically Liberia?
Tiffany: Well, Liberia was created as a place to send formerly enslaved people.
Ann: Oh okay.
Tiffany: A bunch of, you know, people, wealthy folks got together and created this colony in Africa, this place to send— That’s why it’s called Liberia.
Ann: I had no idea! Oh, my god, okay. Thank you.
Tiffany: So, they created this place to send the manumitted slaves. So, Elizabeth H. Greenfield, this is so amazing how she did this because it flies in the face of patriarchy, so we have to think about how Eliza, the character from the book, how she was raised. She was raised by this woman, and we don’t know why she stayed behind when the rest of her family went to Africa. But instead of remarrying after her husband died, and she was an old woman, right? She was in her eighties, so she didn’t remarry. She sent all these people, and she set them up because they had to go with some funds to Africa or they wouldn’t have survived. So, she sent them, and it flies in the face of patriarchy because she gave them part of her husband’s wealth, sent them to Africa. Then she didn’t stay in Mississippi, she herself relocated to Philadelphia with the rest of the abolitionists to Pennsylvania, a free state, and then she raised Eliza in this community where there were so many free Black people who were doing amazing things on the Underground Railroad, she educated Eliza.
So, when we look at the amazing things that she was able to accomplish, Eliza in her life, we have to remember who raised her, this woman who was really one of the first feminists, she did some amazing things herself. So, she was raised by a woman who did not care about the patriarchy. She raised Eliza to be exactly who she was, someone who did not care about, you know, societal norms. She did exactly what she needed to do.
Ann: I was just looking up… I took a picture of this page of your book. There’s a part where a character says, “Your life is full of well-intentioned white people. Most of us have not been so lucky.” And I thought, it’s true! Right? This is where she was raised, that was a blessing. And like, thank goodness that’s… In this situation, that she was able to be in a situation where she was raised, like you described, by this outside the norm for that time or for our time by this woman. So, Eliza was able to be educated, and then it turns out she’s got this amazing singing talent. Can you talk about that?
Tiffany: Oh, absolutely. So, Eliza had a three-octave voice. And I read a comment that someone made that, “Oh! Well, for a classically trained singer, a three-octave voice is not all that uncommon.” It was uncommon in 1850. Now, of course, in today’s time, there are ways to train vocalists that, you know, can pull that out of them. But in 1850, this was raw talent, right? This was raw talent.
She had a three-octave voice, and it was unheard of. The next best thing to Eliza’s voice was Jenny Lind, who everyone knew as the “Swedish Nightingale,” she was, you know, pretty big time. She had a two-and-a-half octave range, Eliza had three. She was spectacular. When people heard her voice, they thought it was a trick. She had this deep baritone where she could sing songs that were meant as duets. So, Eliza would sing the male part and the female part. So, she had an earth-shattering soprano and the deep baritone of a man. So, her voice was just outstanding. It was a gift, and she trusted in that gift to make room for her, which is the major theme of the book, that wherever she went, she expected that gift to open doors and she just trusted in it. It was a faith journey for her every step of the way.
Ann: Well, and just saying truly, the meaning of, like, this is a gift. Because she hadn’t had the training, like she was growing up again, like, in this situation where she had, she wasn’t enslaved, she was surrounded in this community by abolitionists, by the free Black community, which was such a benefit to her. But she just could sing, that was just her talent. Like, she wasn’t, especially towards the beginning, not really well trained, it was just purely a raw talent. Can you tell the story of how she was sort of discovered on this steamship?
Tiffany: Right. So, she had had some vocal lessons. She had had some vocal lessons, but her dream was to get more lessons in Europe. During that time, all of the major vocalists, like the opera singers that were on the world stage, were trained in Italy and in France. And of course, that was not afforded to her only because of the colour of her skin. She had the funds to do it but, you know, that was not afforded to her because she was a Black woman. And so, that was her dream.
Now, when Elizabeth H. Greenfield, her benefactor, passed away, she was left a sizable fortune and again, that was her benefactor’s… [chuckles] You know, she did not care about the patriarchy. She was going to leave her ward a fortune. She did not care. And of course, the patriarchy said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No. We’re going to contest this. You’re not going to leave a formerly enslaved person as a wealthy woman able to chart her own course.” So, it was contested and the case remained in court for many, many, many, many years, and in the meantime, Eliza had to survive, she had to live.
So, she decides, and we don’t know why she decided to get on that steamer to Buffalo, but she had a chance encounter with a woman named Electa Potter on the steamship. She sang for her and Electa was like, “Oh no, honey. Somebody’s got to hear this voice.” And so, another well-intentioned white person who found her way into history by being an ally for Eliza. She had Eliza sing at her house for all of these elite wealthy people in Buffalo and Eliza’s career took off after that. It was a whirlwind after that; she was able to do a tour in the United States and then she toured the UK. Along the way, there were, of course, pitfalls and the concert promoters that she dealt with… charlatans.
So, the book talks about how Eliza deals with so many things that today’s Black women continue to deal with; having her body policed, being compared with her white peers, being criticized in the reviews, having her talent questioned. Lots of things that you would think in 2025, in 2025, we’re calling it DEI hires but in 1850, it was the same thing. It was questioned, “Is she really this gifted?” when she actually was.
Ann: Well, and speaking of comparing her to, like, Jenny Lind, who is the Swedish Nightingale, right? So, Eliza is called the Black Swan. And I don’t know, what did you learn about how that name came about or how she started being known as that?
Tiffany: So, that nickname actually came from a review of one of her very first concerts, a newspaper reviewer. They did it not to be, you know, it was complimentary. They were saying, “Well, what do we need the Swedish Nightingale for? Because we have this American. Who needs the Swedish Nightingale? Give us the Black Swan,” right? You know, and Eliza in the book, she’s like, “I mean, swans aren’t even black. What are we doing here?” [both laugh] And in real life, Eliza kept trying to get away from that name and couldn’t because, you know, once a thing hits the media, it sticks, even in 1850, just like it is today. When something goes viral, it sticks. In the 1850s, viral meant it hit the newspapers. So, it stuck and at some point, she just accepted it.
Ann: Her hairstyle, too, right? She sort of presented herself, right?
Tiffany: Yes! So, she decided to lean into it. So, she changed her hairstyle, fashioned it after Jenny Lind. She was like, you know, “If they’re going to call me this, I might as well lean into it.” And I thought that was so humorous. There’s actually a rendition of a photograph where she’s wearing the hairstyle, the Jenny Lind hairstyle, that it just tickled me to see that because I was like, “Oh, she leaned all the way in.” I love Eliza’s spirit. She’s such a spunky, like when I saw that, I was like, “I have to put this in the book.” When I saw that image, I was like, “Oh, I have to put that in the book,” like, how that came about, I had to create that because that just tickled me so much to see that. You know, she experienced so many microaggressions and she was able to navigate that and still find success. And sometimes it’s hard because sometimes you can get burdened down by that and she found a way to rise above it and to still be triumphant.
I heard a quote by the late Nikki Giovanni. She talked about how Black women, even in times of heavy darkness and oppression, find ways to be joyful, and that is so true of Eliza. She lived in a time of heavy oppression. The Black women in the country, the majority of them when she lived, were still in chains. And Eliza gave people a reason for hope. She was talked about in the Frederick Douglass newspapers and not always in complimentary terms because, you know, lots of activists thought that she could be doing more. But she gave people a reason for hope. And so, we still find ways to be joyful and triumphant, even during times of oppression and I think that Eliza’s story is evidence of that.
Ann: Well, and you talk again, I think it’s in the afternote in your book about how you sort of pieced together… because there’s not a lot of, you know, journals, there’s not diaries, there’s not letters. But you’re looking at where did she perform and what was happening in those cities and what might have happened. And just so the listeners know, to be clear, like, this is pre-American Civil War when she’s doing this. This is the time period we’re talking about, it’s the 1850s in America, and she’s touring around. Can you tell the story about she was doing a concert and then Black people were forbidden from attending it?
Tiffany: Oh, absolutely. So, I like to call Eliza the Beyoncé of the Antebellum because she is touring pre-Civil War and most of the theatres where she performed, there were all white audiences because Black people were not allowed to attend the shows. There were some where they allowed her to have separate concerts with Black people; there were some where they allowed Black people to come, but they had to be, you know, up in the rafters where they could hardly see. So, there were some shows that they were allowed to attend. But most of the shows were all white because Black people were not allowed to attend.
So, because of that, Eliza got caught a lot of flak from the activists who felt like you can be pushing for freedom, you can be pushing for integration of the audiences. And Eliza had to grow into her activism. I love that in the story, she was able to choose the kind of activist that she wanted to be and that she didn’t allow anyone to chart her path for her. She wrote her own story. And that’s what any good heroine is going to do. She’s not going to let anybody write her own story. She’s a diva, you know, unexpected or otherwise, she wrote her own story.
Ann: And that’s what I love, I saw you say that before that she’s the Beyoncé of the Antebellum. And just having that in my head, it’s just like, yeah! Because it’s a touring, like, this incredible gift that she has that she’s sharing and as you described it, she grows into her activism, which we’ve seen with Beyoncé as well. And how that has got people, you know, to go from… I’m a similar age to Beyoncé, I feel like I grew up watching her just, like, achieve and achieve and achieve. And at first, it’s like, “Oh, Destiny’s Child, this is nice!” “Single Ladies,” everyone’s like, “Oh yeah!” and by everyone, I mean white people. [Tiffany laughs] “We love her. Yeah, she’s great.” And then suddenly she does like a Black power salute and people are like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” And now she does, like, Black Is King. Like, she’s grown into really expressing herself and her Blackness in the way that suddenly people who were fans are like, “Oh wait, what’s happening?” And I felt like Eliza did a similar thing where she progresses.
Tiffany: Oh yeah, she did. Yep, she totally did. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I think a lot of her white allies probably were surprised by that. But I think some of them encouraged her in that way, particularly Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She absolutely, I think, would have encouraged Eliza along that path because she for sure thought that Eliza was proof of what she was positing in her books, that Black people were more than enslaved people, that they have more to offer society. Whether or not you agree with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she had good intentions in what she… Eliza was irritated with Harriet on multiple occasions in the book [laughs] and I want people to enjoy those moments when they read it so no spoilers. But, you know, she was certainly well-intentioned and she had Eliza’s best interests at heart.
But you’re right. I do believe when Eliza grew into her activism, that some of her white benefactors were like, “Hold on, wait a minute now. What’s going on?” But Eliza grew as a Black woman and I think the things that happened around her, she started to see and experience things that made her understand. Particularly, there’s a concert that happens in New York that really impacts her, like, “I am a Black woman in this space. I am not just an opera singer. I am a Black opera singer in this space, and there is more than I can do, and I’m going to do more.”
Ann: Yeah. And it’s that, sort of, I don’t want to say it’s a pivot, because in your novel, we see that she kind of has this inside of her all along, but really, after that point, she just realized, like, it’s not just, “Oh, I could be doing more.” She’s like, “I have to do more,” because she’s experiencing these things. But then she knows that other Black people, what their situation is like, and she’s in a position where she can advocate.
Tiffany: Yes. She certainly has an aha moment, and she knows that it is time for her… She’s uplifted Eliza, and now it’s time for her to start uplifting her race, and she starts to make moves in that direction. I just love what happens when she gets to meet Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace. Like, that moment for me with her and the Queen is just so, it’s such a rich moment and that moment really happened. Like, of course, I created the conversation because that conversation is not documented. But what happened there, the choice of music, that truly happened.
So, Eliza was just an amazing woman and being able to document her story, even through historical fiction, I think, just brings attention to someone who should not be a hidden figure. I cannot understand why she is, but she shouldn’t be.
Ann: Yeah, do you know, I did an episode a few months ago about Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges and how his story is being reclaimed, and I feel like Eliza is like the American version of that.
Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Ann: Someone who is so talented, somebody who was unusual for the situation, like, a Black person excelling in this way, who is so famous in her era and then just completely forgotten.
Tiffany: Yes, and all of the Black opera singers that we know and love, like Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson, they stand on her shoulders. So, her name should be a household name just like theirs, and I’m hoping that it becomes so. I really hope that.
Ann: Well, and again, you were just talking about the like performance for Queen Victoria and stuff. And that was something where I’m like, you couldn’t make the story up! The narrative is right there. Make a movie. Like, this is…
Tiffany: Make a movie! Make a movie! [laughs]
Ann: [laughs] Option this book. Make a movie. I mean, the narrative is right there, you don’t even… Yeah, just follow the events of her life, it’s such an incredible story.
So, your novel takes place in, sort of, this important time period where she becomes a professional singer and then kind of moving into her activism. And she lived for quite a while after that. Can you talk about just what I read about it, like, in your afterward, but just like she moved into philanthropy and really being a mentor to other Black singers?
Tiffany: Yeah, so she had a huge cause. Her cause, her biggest cause after her first tour, because she did tour again, but after her first tour, her biggest cause was Black orphanages, because even though her family moved to Liberia, after Elizabeth H. Greenfield died, she was for all intents and purposes an orphan, right? She didn’t have any family to speak of in the United States. And she did lots of fundraisers for orphans in the United States, Black orphans. And she did many, many fundraisers for Black soldiers during the Civil War. She did tours in Black churches, she raised lots of funds for Black churches. She also mentored young Black opera singers. She had the Black Swan Opera Troupe, so she became a mentor for young opera singers, which I love that she did that, because she started to pour into young singers, to the next generation of opera singers. I love that she did that. And she became a fixture in Black Philadelphia after she stopped touring professionally. The Shiloh Baptist Church, she was a member of that church when she died in 1876. So, Eliza became a member of the community that nurtured her, she became a fixture in that community. I love that she did that because that community gave her the lift that she needed to become the Black Swan and so she poured back into it.
That is just the thing that is big with Black people. We are big about our communities, and I love that Eliza went back home. After everything that she did, she went right back home to the place where it all started and she took everything that she had learned going around the world, and she brought it back to day one. The first place where I went to research Eliza was a program book about her life. Clearly, it was written for a concert and there’s nothing mentioned in the program book really about the Black community, because, like I said, most of the people that went to her concert were white folks, so they probably didn’t care about that. It had a lot to do with Elizabeth H. Greenfield and the doctor who was her neighbour and helped her get singing lessons. They talked about all the white people that were in her life, but they didn’t talk about the Black community that she was definitely a part of.
But Eliza, when she came back home, she was not a part of the Quaker community. When she came back home, she was part of the Black community, she was part of Shiloh Baptist Church, which let me know that she was a part of that community before. So, that’s why I made sure that even though in my research of Eliza, it was hard for me to find these people like, you know, Michigan Street Baptist Church in Buffalo, I did not know that Eliza was part of that community. That’s all fiction. But I assumed because I know Black people, I know us, that when she went to Buffalo for her singing lessons, she would have found the Black people because that’s what we do. We need something to eat that’s made by Black people. So, we are going to find us wherever we go.
I purposely found historical Black churches and put them in the novel. Michigan Street Baptist Church is a historic Black church in Buffalo that was built by… It was one of the first Black churches that wasn’t donated by white people, it was built by the congregants; they raised their own money and they built the church. So, with my historical fiction, I make sure especially to find these little nuggets of important Black history and I put it in there. So, I had a lot of fun doing that. I was like, “Okay, in this city, what are the unknown, little-known Black history facts?” Because we read for entertainment, for sure, so it’s got to be a juicy story. Like, I’ve got to put Charles in there. We didn’t talk about Charles. We didn’t talk about him in a minute.
Ann: Oh, there’s some love interest in this book readers.
Tiffany: Oh, yeah, we got to talk about that.
Ann: Rest assured! [laughs]
Tiffany: But I wanted to find little pieces of history because with historical fiction, we’re entertained, and we’re also educated. So, I love that piece.
Ann: I mean, you just brought it up. So, I do want to say, Eliza in real life, as far as we know, and again, there’s not that much written about her, but she never married, she never had children. But you were like, she had to have love in her life, and you put it in this book.
Tiffany: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m not going to speculate on what she did or didn’t have in real life, but historical fiction and this is too rich of a world for Eliza not to have had a suitor or multiple suitors. The kind of woman Eliza was… I love her friendship with Lucian, her friend-zoned friend [laughs] Lucian was surely in the friend zone. But at the beginning of the novel, we remember that Eliza was raised by a feminist and, of course, when Eliza lost her inheritance at the beginning or while it was being contested, what choices did she have? Marriage? Nanny? There were not many choices. And of course, Lucian was offering her marriage, and she wanted to chase her dream. But she was a very young woman in her twenties and so, of course, she’s going to want romance. What young woman doesn’t want romance?
So, when she meets this fine organ player at Michigan Street Baptist Church, I mean, listen. In my mind, he was looking like a young Idris Elba, so he was fine. He had to come along for the journey and Charles and Eliza had lots of fun on this tour, but we have to still think about the time period we were in. There were cultural rules and norms and societal norms that you were not just running around, you know, having random encounters with men. Like, there was not access to birth control. Where was that? You know, she couldn’t get pregnant because that was not a thing. There was no access to abortion. There were many things that kind of put limits upon what she could and could not have in the way of romance if she wanted a career, which is why women, their sexuality was not free, she didn’t have a lot of freedoms there. But she did definitely find ways to have fun with Charles and so that was an exploration that I had a lot of fun with in the book.
I definitely wanted to give space for that in this book and I wanted Eliza, because she was raised by a woman that was a feminist, I wanted her to not be trapped by patriarchal norms. I didn’t want her to be trapped by that and I didn’t want her to have to choose marriage when she wanted to be an opera singer. And we know that she did become an opera singer, but I didn’t want her to have to not have love. So, I enjoyed Charles through this book, and I think Eliza enjoyed him, too.
Ann: [laughs] It’s such a good relationship to read about. They’re both just such passionate people, about music and about each other.
Tiffany: Oh, yeah.
Ann: But yeah, I mean, also, you’re faced with the facts of this real woman’s life, which is like, we know she didn’t get married, and for a woman in that time and place, that was a choice, that was an unusual choice.
Tiffany: Very unusual. Very, very unusual for a woman to stay unmarried. And to be honest, during a time when the Fugitive Slave Act was a thing, it was not necessarily a safe choice for Eliza. I think the Fugitive Slave Act was, you know, plantation owners could come from the South and kidnap Black folks, whether they were free or enslaved, and take them and put them on plantations. The movie and book Twelve Years a Slave is exactly about that, about a man who was kidnapped, and he was free. So, folks were afraid of that, and Eliza… Marriage could help prevent that. You had a family, it was harder to kidnap someone who was in a family, who had, you know, a place in the community. So, being a single, Black, unattached woman was not necessarily the smart option. Now, being a famous Black woman could maybe be a protection and so that was the path she chose. Being famous could maybe keep her from being— You can’t kidnap the Black Swan, so that was her thought.
Ann: I mean, clearly, it’s coming across in everything you’re saying, you had so much fun researching this, like, filling in these gaps. You were given a gift, really, of just like, “Here’s the bare outline of this woman’s life and we know she did this and this and this,” and then you get to fill in the blanks and clearly that was so fun for you.
Tiffany: Listen, I did… So, I’ve been writing for 20 years, right? And I am a storyteller at heart. Well, I’ve been writing for longer than 20 years, but professionally for 20 years. I’m a storyteller at heart, I love to put my protagonists at peril, like, dangling them off cliffs, [Ann laughs] that is my favourite thing to do. What I will say about Eliza’s story in particular, because there were such sketchy details, I really enjoyed discovering Eliza’s why, and that’s the why that I created as a storyteller. It was so much fun coming up with that and I enjoy doing that with all of my characters but historical fiction just, it has really opened up something new and exciting for me, a new journey in my writing and I’m really enjoying it.
I’m working on the edits now for my second historical fiction and this one is even more exciting than my journey with Eliza. So, I’m really, really… it just feels brand new. It has echoes for me to the beginning of my writing career, which started in 2003. So, I just… It’s not that my writing career had become kind of routine, but I mean, I could bust out a novel in six months. I had been researching my novel that I’m editing, now I’ve researched that for over a year, took another year to write it, that hadn’t been a thing. So, this feels different. And it’s hard to come to do something different when you’ve been doing a thing for over 20 years for it to feel fresh and new, it’s kind of exciting. So, I like that.
Ann: Well, and just to bring it back too to what you wrote in your end note, you were talking about part of why you’re excited to share this story. So, you’re saying… “To celebrate Black joy where it exists in America’s history. Our stories do not begin on the shores of America, but when we were empowered and allowed to flourish, often greatness ensued.” So, like, it’s a happy story!
Tiffany: Yes!
Ann: And I think that’s so important.
Tiffany: Yes. Because so many stories from this time period, in particular, the Antebellum, are stories of oppression and stories of violence toward Black bodies and there’s not a lot of Black joy in this time period, in the Antebellum. And to find this gem of a story during a very, very dark period, and not just Black history in American history. This was a dark period for America, and this is a gem of Black joy in a very dark period. I just feel blessed to be, just, the scribe of this very triumphant tale. I feel very blessed to have written this down.
Ann: This episode is going to be coming out just at the beginning of February, which is, of course, Black History Month. So, I think the timing cannot be better. So, if people want to keep up… We were talking before we were recording, you’re doing events, you’re doing readings. How can people follow you and find out how they can attend some of those events if they’re in a city where you’re going?
Tiffany: Yes, please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. I’m on Instagram @TiffanyLWarren, and on Facebook at Author Tiffany L. Warren, all of my stuff is there. My website is TiffanyLWarren.com; I’m there, you can find out all of my tour schedule there. I’m doing events all over the place. So, please come out and see me, I would love to hear from you. Please tag me on social media. I love talking to people, I love talking to readers, I want to hear your feedback. So yes, reach out!
Ann: That’s fantastic. And I’m just really excited. Every person who reads this book, every person who attends one of your events, that’s one more person who knows the story of the Black Swan.
Tiffany: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ann: And they’re going to tell someone, I’m sure, and then, you know, so more and more people are going to start knowing this story, which is such a good story.
Tiffany: Amazing story. And I want you to know about Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield in real life. I want you to research her, I want you to see the photos of her. I wish a recording of her voice existed.
Ann: I was reading the book and I was just like, “Is there? There has to be. No.” But so, I was just trying to imagine it.
Tiffany: No. Then the technology to record our voice did not exist at the time, but we can imagine it. I imagined it. There are track listings of what she’s sang in her concert. So, as I wrote the book, I did listen to some of the songs that she sang, you know, recorded by other artists to kind of get a feel for what she’s sang and, you know, learn about her, who she was and what she contributed to history because she was a very important person.
Ann: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I’m really…
Tiffany: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
Ann: When I read a book like this, I get excited about a historical figure. I’m just like, I feel lucky that I do a podcast so I get to talk to the author so I can tell you, it’s like, “Oh my god! I’m so excited about this.” So, yeah, thanks for coming to the podcast and, you know, best of luck with all of your events coming up.
Tiffany: Thank you so much. I have one tonight! Thank you. [both laugh]
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So basically, run, don’t walk to go to your local library, your local bookstore and get a copy of The Unexpected Diva or share this podcast with somebody like just let someone know who Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was and how incredible her story is, because we have to get first of all, make this a movie. And second of all, just people need to know the story. It does remind me, I think I said in the conversation, we did the episode a bit ago about Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who was so famous, the Black musician, the sword fighter from French history, who was so famous at the time and then largely forgotten. And then he’s had a real resurgence, you know, up to including the movie, Chevalier.
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, I think she needs her flowers. We need to celebrate this woman. It’s such an important story and it’s such an interesting story. And I also appreciated when I was reading this novel, but also just reading up on Eliza, just the way that her story interacts with other things we’ve talked about on this podcast. We’ve talked about the Quakers and the importance of the Quakers to the abolition of slavery in America, we’ve talked about the free Black people of Philadelphia. This is, like, the third time I think they’ve showed up on this podcast because they were so important. Sally Hemmings interacted with them when she was in Philadelphia, and then Ona Judge, they were crucial for Ona Judge and how she was able to escape enslavement. So, I just love that this community, the free Black people of Philadelphia are becoming every time they show up in an episode, you just know that something good is going to happen, something uplifting is going to happen. They’re going to help somebody. And I love this for that community. So, The Unexpected Diva by Tiffany L. Warren, everybody should read it.
And yeah, I talk about a lot of books on this podcast. If you want to see all of the books that I’ve ever talked about on this podcast, I do have a page on a website that’s called Bookshop.org, I have like themed lists. So, for instance, what I’m going to highlight this month is the list I have of books, novels and nonfiction books, Black History Month-themed books; books by and about Black people from history. Also, there are links there to all the books I’ve ever recommended, historical fiction. There’s a whole thing of just authors I’ve interviewed. So, if you could just find all of those there. Anyway, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But it’s Bookshop.org/Shop/VulgarHistory is where I keep all of those because reading books is a good way to learn about history and also to distract ourselves from the present, which can be sometimes pretty awful. But it’s the way to find joy! You know, like the story of Eliza, especially the way Tiffany writes it, like the importance of joy in troubling times.
Anyway, so just, you know, things to let you know about if you want to get your one-stop shopping Vulgar History content, Ann Foster content, sign up for my mailing list, please. I send out one email a month that just, kind of, it doesn’t list every single thing that I’ve been thinking about or doing all month but it is a way to keep on top of what’s the latest book news because my book is coming out next year. You know, I might feature some more behind-the-scenes info about the podcasts that just happened that month and then also information about upcoming in-person events, live shows, things like that, and also book and movie recommendations. You can sign up for my mailing list at VulgarHistory.com/News. You can also follow me on basically every social media, including on Substack, where I have every other week. I post essays there about women from history. That’s VulgarHistory.Substack.com.
Another way that I recommend, if you want to keep up with what I’m what my content is without being at the whims of the rotted billionaires who run various social media, Patreon is a company that is probably also run by a rotted billionaire, but there’s no algorithm. When you set up to get updates from me there, you get them because you sign up for them, because that’s what you’re doing. And so, the way that that works is every time… So, if you join Patreon, for instance, at the free level, which is what I’m talking about, you’ll just get an email or notification every time I post something new there. So, it might be a link to an interesting article that has to do with what we talk about on the podcast, or it might be, I don’t know, recently there was an auction of a painting of the other tits out, Frances Howard and that was pretty exciting so I shared that news there. Anyway, it’s also a place to just sort of hang out with other members of the Tits Out Brigade, which is what we call listeners of this podcast. So, if you go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, you can join as a free person and then you get updates as I update them probably a couple of times a week, frankly. Or you could probably, if that’s annoying to you, you could turn off the updates. You know what? Live your life. I don’t judge.
If you want to join the Patreon for $1 or more a month, you get early, ad-free access to episodes of Vulgar History. If you pledge $5 or more a month, you get all of the above as well as bonus episodes. So, Vulgarpiece Theatre, where we talk about costume dramas from history and by we, I mean myself, Allison Epstein, and Lana Wood Johnson. Also episodes of The Aftershow, where I just kiki with guests sometimes about random topics, and also, So This Asshole where I talk about shitty men from history. If you join the Patreon at $5 or more a month, you get access to our Discord. Discord is just, like, a big group chat where we can really get into it. Just the people are forming real friendships there and it’s really heartening to see. Basically, it’s a group chat, literally for the Tits Out Brigade.
And then also, you know, Valentine’s Day is coming up, if that’s something you celebrate or if it’s something that you aggressively don’t celebrate, why not get jewelry for yourself? You know, our brand partner is Common Era Jewelry, who I’m always happy to be working with. So, this is a small woman-owned business that creates beautiful jewelry inspired by women from history and also history, especially of the classical era. So, their designs, like, of special interest to you, the listeners of this podcast, they involve…. So, my favourite pieces are the ones that have sort of a face or the profile of the head of a woman from history, who often women who were thought of as difficult. And I think we all continue to be reminded that whenever a woman today in, like, Hollywood or wherever is referred to as difficult, we all know now that that’s code words for, like, “She didn’t take shit from some shitty man,” and we kind of all are difficult women in that way. Anyway, so it’s women like Cleopatra is there, Agrippina, Anne Boleyn, Hatshepsut, Boudica, lots of people, as well as women from mythology, like Hecate, Medusa, and Aphrodite. These pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. Vulgar History listeners, and your loved ones if you give them this code, or if you want to drop some hints about what you want to get as a Valentine’s Day present to the loved one, who’s going to get it for you, you can always get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or use code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout.
You can also get Vulgar History merchandise if you go to VulgarHistory.com/Store, that takes you to our US shop. If you’re outside the US, you can shop at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. If you want to get in touch with me, go ahead and use the form at Vulgar History.com, just click the “Contact” button from that website. And you can also keep up with me on social media. I’m on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads @VulgarHistoryPod.
Next week, what we have coming up for you is a very special classique episode. We’re going to be looking at revisiting an episode that I did in, I want to say 2020. We’ll be looking at it through a new lens and, just kind of reassessing is that the score that we would still give that person if I did that episode newly and now today? That’s coming up next week, but anyway, I mean, take care of everyone, read some books, listen to some opera, listen to some Beyoncé, and keep your pants on and your tits out. Bye.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Buy a copy of The Unexpected Diva by Tiffany L. Warren.
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Sign up for the Vulgar History mailing list!
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Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout
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Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)
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Support Vulgar History on Patreon
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