One Nightstand With Jesse Williams

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at The Blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

Growing up, Jesse Williams says that “reading was everything” in his household. His parents rarely allowed Williams and his siblings to watch television, instead taking them to the library to find entertainment. “My dad was drilling nonfiction into me. A lot of continental African history, African-American history, and Black cowboys to try to create some adventure,” the Hotel Costiera actor tells Bustle. “I also loved J.R.R. Tolkien — The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.”

But Williams says it was Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison that “turned the world into a five dimensional place.” The book was assigned to him in a high school English class, and he related to its characters and its author in equal measure. “I was certainly a self-righteous kid and very politically active. My parents were super politically active, so I agreed with Guitar, but I related to Milkman too,” Williams says. “These [characters] were all dueling thoughts or figures in my consciousness that I really enjoyed the company of.”

Williams also loved the writing in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead — but even more, he appreciated learning about a political mindset so different from his own. “The [brand of] heroism it was hoping to pedestal are real aspirations for real people that wield real power in our lives. It’s the romanticism [of these ideals] that, in many ways, drives what's happening on the right in politics today,” Williams says of the Rand’s focus on self-determination and rational egoism. “I think I'm an anthropologist. I like to understand the recipe. What's in the food that I'm eating.”

Another book that made Williams feel like he was putting his anthropologist hat on? A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. “​​I remember it being this puppet show of American self-delusion, grandiosity, and petulance,” says Williams, who likens the reading experience to watching Monty Python as a kid. “I was so politically wound up and everything was so high stakes and consequential [to me]. This let a little air out of the balloon. It was playful in nature and I think I just needed that.”

Though it was Of Water and Spirit by Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé that truly enabled him to take a deep breath. “There's a bigger story happening, there's a bigger plan afoot,” Williams says of what the spiritual-leaning memoir taught him. “That [belief] gave me some peace, presence, and validation.”

Watch the full interview below.