”The devil said, I’m not evil. Not really. How could I be? Ain’t nothing in me God ain’t put there. Ain’t a thing in my heart God didn’t smile upon. All I want is to get back home.”
Rickey Fayne -The Devil Three Times
An audacious debut spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil.
Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power.
LISTEN
In this episode Lissa talks with author Rickey Fayne about deep philosophical questions inspired by his latest novel The Devil Three Times (Hachette Book Group, May 2025). Rickey Fayne is a fiction writer from rural West Tennessee whose work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Sewanee Review, and The Kenyon Review, among other magazines. He holds an MA in English from Northwestern University and an MFA in Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His writing embodies his Black, Southern upbringing in order to reimagine and honor his ancestors’ experiences. This episode was recorded at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, MN.
GO DEEPER
10:00 Rickey talks about one of the characters who is inspired by Robert Johnson, a Blues singer who claims to have met the Devil at the crossroads and supposedly sold his soul for musical talent.
22:00 Rickey references Arna Bontemps, one of the Harlem Renaissance figures who wrote about the Gabriel Prosser rebellion.
25:00 Rickey references Walter Benjamin’s thesis on the philosophy of history.
29:00 Rickey references Saidiya Hartman‘s thoughts on fungibility. Hartman argues that fungibility, the ability to be exchanged or substituted, was a key feature of the slavery system. She explains that enslaved Black bodies were treated as commodities, and their value was determined by their capacity to be used and exploited, not by their inherent worth or individuality. This reduced Black people to abstract, interchangeable entities, making them vulnerable to projection and exploitation by others. Roger Reeves, in his blog for The Poetry Foundation expounds.
LEARN
ENJOY!
Our production team for this episode includes co-producers Lissa Jones and Edie French, technical director Paul Auguston, the voice Yo Derek, and our artist of inspiration Ta-coumba T. Aiken. We thank Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota for supporting this series focusing on the intersection of health, race, and culture.