Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 21

comfort

I love bells. My latest picture book story mentions how chiming church bells make clocks unnecessary, and last spring I wrote a haiku in tribute to my West Philly neighborhood as well:

wind chimes and church bells

baptize us; in the gutter

blossoms blanket grit

Right now I’m sitting alone on a church pew on my cousin’s porch; she’s at a maker’s market downtown and her husband is out walking the dog. It’s just me and the birds in their sunny backyard and the breeze sometimes swells enough to trigger their wind chime. This is bliss. After a fairly intense week, this is just what the doctor ordered—24 hours of calm and quiet and communion with folks who take me just as I am. I tend to think of myself as being alienated from my family, but really I have families—or rather multiple configurations of family. Sometimes I feel invisible when I’m with kin, and other times I feel fully seen. My mother has seven living siblings; on that side of the family I have twenty-five cousins and they’re some of the kindest people I know. All week I’ve had friends and family checking in on me, asking about my mother’s health and offering assistance. Do you need to talk? Do you want company? Can I drive you anywhere? Witnessing my mother’s increasing frailty has been hard, largely because I can’t always make things better and she’s often embarrassed by things that are beyond her control. But it’s also humbling to realize the limits of my own generosity and capacity for compassion; we aren’t close and too many past resentments keep resurfacing. I mostly managed to push past those but after helping my mother out for just three days, I fled to Hamilton to recover. While my cousin worked on a project about designing better affordable housing, I sat out in the sun and read or dozed. The plaza in front of City Hall had Adirondack chairs and two cascading fountains; when I got too hot, I moved into the shade and used the free wifi to catch up with folks in the US. Then my cousin took me to a farm-to-table restaurant that serves comfort food; we had a delicious meal and speculated on alternate lives—what if you quit your job? how much money do you need to be happy? what if you left the country? We talked with our Jamaican server’s about her vision for affordable housing in Hamilton, and then walked over to a nearby donut shop and picked up dessert. The streets were lined with quaint Victorian homes, and for a moment I thought: “This is what I want.” And it’s almost what I have in Philly—a quiet neighborhood with pretty houses, a sense of history, shady trees, and good food. Those small brick homes cost close to a million dollars, so I won’t be moving to Hamilton any time soon, but it was the vision—how the picture and the feeling matched what I sometimes see in my mind’s eye. We came home and I got a tour of her beautifully renovated home, including the large garden. I padded around in my sock feet, plucking weeds and tasting flowers my cousin assured me were edible. Then we went back inside, plunked down in our respective comfy chairs, talked about our favorite films, debated the last season of GoT with her husband, and savored our donuts (mine was maple rosemary). When we decided to watch Chernobyl, my cousin’s sweet Labradoodle kept coming over to me for a head scratch or to show me one of her toys; finally she hopped up on the couch and just snuggled against me. This sounds so mundane as I’m writing it, but I could totally see in that moment why people get married, buy homes, and have pets. I don’t think the first two options are right for me, but maybe I could use a therapy animal! I went to bed realizing—not for the first time—that I’m not doing enough in my life to meet all of my needs. I spend too much time alone. I don’t do enough for others. I say I’m not a joiner and use that as an excuse not to get involved in my community—then I complain about feeling disconnected. I haven’t built up the emotional stamina to really invest in others…and that’s because I over-invested in some folks in my youth and got burned. And it’s the Scorpio way to swing between extremes, but that’s not the best way to live.

I ate the rest of my donut for breakfast. I’ve had too many donuts this week but I’ve hit my step goal almost every day and will get back to eating right tomorrow. We’ll be heading to the airport soon and I really need to think about building a fuller life in Philly. I’ve found a broker to help me with the apartment search and she seems to think we’ve got plenty of time to find the right place before my lease expires. But I don’t just need a space that’s big enough to hold all my belongings, I need to plug back in—spend less time in my head and more time engaged in the world. It’s easier to just keep moving than it is to stay put and build. Time to stop taking the easy way out…

 

home?

Recently on Facebook a poet friend shared a meme; it featured a man making a statement in Arabic, which was then translated into English. Can’t find it now, of course, but the gist was: home isn’t where you’re born, it’s the place from which you stop trying to escape. Okay—I found the quote and it’s by Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. I can’t remember if I “liked” my friend’s post but I certainly paused to think about whether or not I agreed with the sentiment—and whether I’ve ever ceased trying to escape. When I first got to Brooklyn I was so in love with the borough that I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave—but I did eventually. I’ve been restless for several years and know it’s not really about my environment; it’s an internal dissatisfaction, hunger, anger…it’s a lot. Yesterday I got up at dawn, packed, took a cab to the train station in Philly, took the train to Newark, got the shuttle to the airport, flew to Toronto, took the shuttle into the city, took the subway to the east end, and caught a cab to the assisted living facility where my mother will be staying. The driver was an elderly Jamaican man and we talked about the shooting at the Raptors’ victory parade, and how to stop these young men from turning to guns (or knives) to solve their problems. When we pulled up, I paid him and was surprised to see him get out of the car. I had my bag with me in the back seat but it turned out he just wanted to shake my hand! And I realized that our 15-minute chat in the cab was the most comfort I’d felt that day. After traveling with a knot of dread in my belly, it was nice to just relax and connect with a stranger who felt familiar because we were both Caribbean, both immigrants, both aware of how hard it can be to make a life in Canada (he had family in the US that he visited often). My mother was late getting discharged from the hospital so never made it to the care home, so I walked the 3KM to her apartment and stopped along the way to pick up some dinner. In situations like these I just try to make myself useful. But I’m not a medical professional; today it was my aunt the nurse who noticed the care home staff were about to give my mother blood thinners even though the doctor took her off them due to the bleeding in her brain. Mom has moments of clarity and moments of confusion; it’s a big transition that may or may not be temporary. I’m not a very good caregiver—I have never cultivated the kind of emotional stamina needed to put others first. Teaching demands that at times but caring for a sick parent is something else entirely. I’m thinking about my father a lot these days and how I said fifteen years ago when he died that I would try to do better the next time around. Now the next time is here and it’s just as scary and bewildering and I have that same impulse to flee…but for now I’m taking deep breaths and working on my book proposal that’s due tomorrow. I’ll have lunch with my mother at the care home and hopefully she’ll start to settle in. We see the neurologist on Friday and then I head “home” on Saturday. For most of my life, family has been my greatest source of disappointment. As a result I didn’t want to feel bound to anyone or any place, and made choices that I felt would keep me free. But that’s not how the heart works, is it?

future vision

My lease is up in August. That means a) I’ve been living in Philly for almost a year and b) I have to start looking for a new place to live. I put a lot of effort into beautifying my current apartment but the rent’s going up so I’m moving on. Today’s appointments were eye-opening…in a way I felt like I’d gone back in time. When I was in my 20s, I’d never lived on my own before and so jumped at the chance to rent a 1BR apartment across the street from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Sure, there were guys selling drugs out front in the evening and the elevator often reeked of urine (when it was even operational). But my top-floor apartment was clean and bright, and I painted the walls my favorite colors. Now that I’m nearing 50, I no longer have to make those kind of compromises. But I’m also unsure about my future in this country, so I don’t really think about buying property and wouldn’t mind finding a cheap crash pad until I figure out just where I’m heading next. My mother’s recovery from her fall in April is taking longer than expected so she’s moving into a facility for a few weeks. We’re calling it temporary but I think we all know it might not be. Still, that means her 2BR apartment in Toronto will be empty with the car sitting in the underground garage. Do I want to move “back home”? Not really! But it just shows that life comes at you fast sometimes. It would be nice if we could see what the future holds, but perhaps the best we can do is try to be ready for most if not all possibilities.

Last month The Horn Book celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Award (CSK) with a special issue. There are some fantastic pieces by major players in the kid lit community, but this one by Stephanie Toliver is EVERYTHING. Why, over the course of five decades, has the CSK only gone to a handful of sci-fi/fantasy (SFF) books? And could that be why publishers are so reluctant to acquire speculative manuscripts from Black writers? When we don’t give Black children the fantastic stories they crave, what happens to their own ability to dream about the future? I’m honored that Stephanie cites CIN’S MARK as an example of a SFF title that meets the criteria for the CSK. Here’s a bit of what she had to say:

Ultimately, using a SFF novel, Coretta Scott King and her future husband engaged in a dialogue about the future of humanity and the Black experience in the United States. They relied upon speculation to explore possible futures and the trajectories of the world. They saw Nichelle Nichols as an artistic expression of Afrofuturistic Blackness in media. Thus, I can only imagine the futuristic, visionary, and speculative thinking that could happen if the CSK Book Awards expanded their winner lists to better include these genres of literature. All Black children need more access to the kinds of stories that informed the Scott King family’s social justice philosophies. SFF is a part of the Black experience. We just need to acknowledge it.

Take time to read the entire essay—it’s an important conversation we should have had a long time ago…

turn the page

I’m tired this morning but I felt energized on Saturday following a wonderful conversation with alumni of Penn’s Graduate School of Education. Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas invited me to present on my books following her own presentation on The Dark Fantastic—an important, accessible, and affordable scholarly book that has already sold out just weeks after its publication. I came home feeling more hopeful about my future as an author in Philly; it’s been hard to get into local schools so I was pleased to meet educators and administrators interested in scheduling an author visit. I sold most of the books I brought and then went to lunch with Ebony and our friend Akosua. Sometimes I feel like we should record the conversations we have over meals because they are intense—in a good way! Sometimes we wind up taking notes because we’re sharing resources and theorizing solutions to problems…I feel incredibly lucky to have friends who push me and lift me up and show me other ways of being in the world. When I posted this screenshot of my opening slide, several folks on Instagram asked me where I was going to publish my talk. It’s a slideshow but I *could* turn it into an essay…that’s not high on my To Do list right now, but I appreciate that folks are interested in what I have to say.

I’m not feeling that way about one of my publishers right now. The good thing about having four books in production this spring is that I can compare how different publishers invest in and promote me and my work. I’ve had quite a few challenges with Disney on the editing side of things, but their marketing team is amazing; Say Her Name doesn’t come out till January but they’ve already successfully pitched me for panels at NCTE, LRA, and YALSA, and will cover the cost of attending. I got sixteen ARCs back in March—compare that to the 5 copies I got of The Dragon Thief in February. That book comes out in October, but am I going to ALA this month? No. Has anyone on my contact list received a copy of *either* dragon book? No. Will there be a third dragon book from this publisher? Right now it doesn’t look good. At this point in my career I’m not interested in being treated like a second-class citizen by my publisher. I’ve done too much work on my own as an indie author to have to hustle just as hard because some marketing person isn’t doing their job and/or has decided my books aren’t worth the investment.

The new workbook is done and available on Amazon! I’ll be sending out a newsletter later this week but for now I’m working on an Afrofuturism session I’ll be facilitating on Thursday at the NYC Department of Education’s second annual Sexuality, Women and Gender (SWaG) conference. I was hoping to have copies of Find Your Voice to share with participants, but apparently UPS damaged the shipment I ordered last week so the books won’t arrive in time. Talking to teachers is one of my favorite things to do so I’m really looking forward to this conference even though I’m running on fumes at this point in the school year. I think the key is to push myself to present on new topics, which is what I’ll be doing this week. I can deliver most of my book talks with my eyes closed and feel myself going into autopilot some days. The workbook will push me to develop new poetry-writing workshops and maybe talking about my Viking novel will get me back on track. Summer’s coming and I need a clear writing agenda. I’ve watched almost all the episodes of Time Team on YouTube so I need to get out my literary trowel and start digging again!

what IS a poem?

I didn’t shower today and I’m still wearing the clothes I fell asleep in last night. My permanently dented couch probably wishes I’d left the house today, but instead I paced the apartment to get my 10K steps in and worked steadily to finish my writing workbook. Since I’m making confessions, can I also admit that I don’t really love Audre Lorde’s poetry? Her essays are brilliant and I was thrilled to get permission from her estate to reprint “A Woman Speaks” in my forthcoming poetry collection. But most of her poems just aren’t my cup of tea. I found the same to be true when I was reading the collected poems of Gwendolyn Brooks last winter. It’s okay to say that, isn’t it? I wouldn’t expect any reader to love everything I write! I subscribe to poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets and reading a poem at the start of each day has taught me a lot about my tastes as a reader. Today I reviewed the 30 poems I wrote for NaPoWriMo and picked the ones worth including in my writing workbook. I didn’t call it a poetry workbook because it’s more generally about finding ways to express yourself. I also can’t claim to be a poetry expert, as I discovered when trying to teach my Canarsie sixth graders about Walt Whitman. Many of the students found it difficult to write anything other than sentences. They could write a letter to a loved one or describe their daily commute, but most struggled to let go of the rules that govern prose. There are prose poems, of course, but I think free verse is the most accessible type of poetry and wondered why they found it so challenging. I’m waiting on proofs of my workbook and suspect I’ll need to go back and model the techniques I’ve proposed. There are quite a few of my poems in the book but they only show up as the finished product; I demonstrate how I revise my work but I’m not sure that’s enough. I added some simple art activities and suggested would-be portraitists check out the work of Mickalene Thomas (right) and Makeeba “Keebs” Rainey (above). It could be a fun book to complete with a class or a book club. I’m hoping it will appeal to teens and adults alike, and it’s only $8 so perhaps that will temper folks’ expectations. I’ll leave it to the experts to teach us how to write sonnets and villanelles. I managed to write one of each for but wouldn’t turn to either of those forms when I need to get something off my chest. There’s more than one way to be a poet—I wrote that in Say Her Name and need to keep reminding myself that my approach is as valid as any other!

writing rage

They say you don’t need to speak for others—when you’ve got the mic, just pass it along. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. I meant to give some shout-outs while I was being interviewed in Toronto but my hosts had very pointed questions and things didn’t turn out as I’d hoped. I did manage to reference Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s new book The Dark Fantastic: Race & the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, but I didn’t get to talk about Whitney French who edited this excellent anthology or Nadia Hohn who is, I believe, the first Black Canadian author to be selected for the TD Children’s Book Week. It isn’t right that folks who are doing the work in the Great White North aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Neesha Meminger is another writer whose work everyone should know about; she’s got a memoir-novel in verse coming out next month, What Girls Know, and we decided to publish a discussion about writing, rage, and resistance. You can read the whole thing over at Medium but here’s a bit of “Truth-tellers & Troublemakers: a Conversation about Publishing in Canada:”

What Girls Know is an entirely different kind of book. It was fueled by a kind of rage that I really want to talk a bit more about with you, Zetta. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of essays and books about Women of Color and rage, and listening to podcasts specifically by Black women, around rage. I went through such a dark time (here, I mean dark as in the hermit walking through the night with a small flame to guide her steps) where my very survival, and the survival of my children was at stake, and it led me to this burning ember of rage. Not a destructive rage, but the kind of rage that burns everything down so something more sane, healthy, and true can be born. A rage that lights up the truth.

I started to see, with startling clarity, how desperate so many of us are to be seen. How desperate I was to be seen and validated and recognized. And how natural it is to want to be recognized for our value and worth. How, as BIPOC women, we are devalued from the moment of birth, how we fight to be seen and acknowledged at every turn from that first moment. How we are thrust and embedded into systems that were never designed for us, were never meant to exalt our gifts or contributions.

And yet, we go through our entire lives seeking some sort of validation or approval from these very systems.

We sure do! Last month I was happy to sign with a new agent, Johanna Castillo, and we’re working now on a publishing plan. This industry has a LOT of problems, and it’s not easy to be “in it but not of it.” I’m proud to be an indie author but I still make certain compromises to advance my projects, and it’s hard sometimes to see other authors getting the red carpet treatment for books that don’t seem better than mine. It’s easy to be seduced by power so Neesha’s comments were right on time. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read our conversation—and watch for the release of her new book!

home again?

I just looked at an international house sitting website! Even though I just got back to Philly after spending nearly 3 weeks on the road, I still feel restless and I’m not sure why. I’ve started watching Escape to the Country again; they just mentioned a monastery and it turns out it accepts guests! Now I’m listening to a discussion of medieval pilgrims…I feel like I’m wandering but without a clear purpose. I know why I was on the road recently: I participated in the Festival of Literary Diversity at the start of May, gave two radio and two television interviews with Canadian media outlets, and then presented at Youngsters 2, the annual conference of the Association for Research in the Cultures of Young People. Got home, had one day to myself, and then I took the train up to NYC for a week-long residency at MS 366 in Canarsie. I wasn’t sure my two classes of sixth-graders were all that interested in Walt Whitman (who turns 200 this month), but their poetry performance on Friday was great. I saw each class for an hour from Monday to Wednesday; on Thursday I went up to MA to present at The Common School. I rarely work with classes that are majority White, and it was interesting to compare the cultures of the private and public school. I was running on fumes by that point but got back to Brooklyn and on Friday morning welcomed my sixth graders to the Dweck auditorium at the central branch of the BPL. They were ready to go—some read Whitman’s poetry and some read their own original poems. One student had memorized her poem and asked me to stand beside her; when her memory failed, she asked for more support and several boys jumped out of their seats to circle her on the stage! I was amazed and stepped back only to have her turn again and say, “Will you stand beside me?” Middle graders can be quite a handful and my patience was certainly tested during the week, but in that moment I remembered that they were still kids…

I’ve done a lot of talking over the past three weeks; it was wonderful to see family and friends and to connect with new people, but I’m ready for some silence and solitude. I want to finish my writing workbook this week so I can print copies and try them out on some local students. I have three more NYC gigs and one here in Philly, but then I really do slow down for a while. But what will I do with my wide open weeks? I’ve been writing poems and I finished a board book for the youngest readers, but I need to finish a novel this summer. Will I get back to Sweden and my Viking girls? Or should I keep watching the news and go back to my dystopian tale? I put a lot of effort into beautifying my apartment but now I’m thinking about putting everything in storage when my lease ends in August. I love living in Philly and enjoyed walking around my pretty neighborhood this sunny Saturday morning. But being in Canada for ten days got me thinking…I couldn’t entirely give up my life in the US, but I could definitely use a break. Each day the news just gets worse and worse, and I do realize that it’s quite a privilege to be able to just up and leave. My sixth graders in Canarsie can’t do that. But I had the chance to work with some sweet first graders in Brampton and would like to connect with more Canadian kids. I haven’t forgotten about the students I met in Edinburgh last spring…and I left Scotland with the same realization: I can do what I do almost anywhere. So where do I belong? Where do I want to be? It was so easy to settle into a life here in Philly—do I need more of a challenge? Should I be looking at places where I don’t speak the language? Or should I try living in the same country as my family? We get along better with a border between us but my mom is getting older…every time I move I leave someone behind. And moves don’t have to be final—sometimes it’s dizzying to have a revolving door life but it might be the only life that’s right for me. Here today, gone tomorrow, but back again another day…

spark or seed?

A book is not a machine but it IS an invention—as a writer I’m part dreamer and part engineer. Yesterday I spoke with Stephanie Toliver, a doctoral candidate at UGA whose research is on Black girls’ reader responses to speculative fiction with Black female protagonists. Hearing about the girls’ reactions to CIN’S MARK absolutely made my day—and I felt vindicated, as any inventor would, that my creation was working as intended! It’s like putting levers into certain passages and you hope the reader will stop to pull the lever, agree with or challenge a point you’ve raised, and that’s what was happening within the book club. The girls started with BINTI by Nnedi Okorafor and that’s a tough act to follow, but I’m glad they’re relating to my teen protagonists. Whether I’m writing time travel or a ghost story, I try to first establish a relationship to the contemporary moment by creating characters who live in a world teen readers can recognize. It’s hard when you invent something you think will help others and then your invention gathers dust on the shelf, so I’m very grateful that such a skilled educator chose to use my book.

I’ve submitted a workshop proposal for the upcoming SWaG Instructional Equity conference in NYC: “I Dream a World”: Black Feminist Visions of the Future in Young Adult Literature. Many educators don’t seem to take speculative fiction seriously—especially when it comes to Black students. Instead they get the diet of “liver and Brussels sprouts books” full of noble characters who overcome oppression under slavery or during the Civil Rights era. But spec fic can teach readers just as much about social justice—and many YA novels can be linked to topics covered in social studies and science class. Plus students are excited by spec fic and once you have that spark, so much more can happen than when you assign a “classic” that kids find dull or irrelevant. I often say I’m sowing seeds but I also want my writing to be the spark that lights a fire inside kids who never thought reading was important or fun. I’m heading to Harlem tomorrow and then I’ll visit Girard College here in Philly next week. Hopefully I’ll get to see the students I met last month, one of whom wrote the above article for the school paper. I’m struggling with the poem-a-day challenge so I’m hoping that getting kids to read and write will light a fire inside of me, too!

riding the rails

I’ve been on the road for the past week—on the rails, really, since I took the train from Philly to Providence and then back up to Boston. It feels good to be home but it always takes a while for me to settle back into my usual routine. Just got some groceries and went for a run yesterday morning; much as I love seeing cherry trees and even magnolias in bloom, it’s hard on my allergies and those awful sinus headaches have returned. But I am READY for spring and I’ve got more trips ahead, so I figured I’d better blog about my travel otherwise it’ll become a blur. Last weekend I went to Rhode Island for the first time and presented on a panel at KidLitCon–“Diverse Fantasy in the Real World.” My copanelists Rajani LaRocca and with them and talk about the distance we’ve traveled in our lives since meeting more than a decade ago. Jane and I met when we were visiting profs at Mt. Holyoke College and we’ve both since pursued the “alt-ac” life. Jane told me about Sophia Academy and I was able to visit the impressive young scholars there; I gave a book talk and then led two writing workshops where I was blown away by the scholars’ creativity and thoughtfulness as we talked about identity and who gets to define us… I got to hang out with some kid lit scholar friends in Providence, too, and look forward to seeing them again in Madison, WI when we gather next month to hear Debbie Reese deliver the Arbuthnot Honor Lecture. After Providence I had a day to relax before getting back on the train to head up to Boston. This was my second invitation from Wondermore and this year we ventured outside of the city; on Tuesday I presented for over two hundred first graders in Bedford and the next day I gave four more book talks at McCormack MS and Sumner Elementary School. I won’t lie—giving 8 book talks in 2 days is exhausting! But when I’m in the classroom and the room is quiet except for the sound of my voice…or when I see eyes opening wide…or when hands shoot up in the air during the Q&A…then I feel so energized by the young readers, especially when they rush up at the end and want to get their hands on my books or give me a hug. Wondermore generously donates books to schools in low-income communities, and I left a couple of copies of Say Her Name at the middle school. Their library is entirely funded by teachers and staffed by volunteers…

Next weekend I head back to NYC for Kweli and then it’s Wisconsin, Connecticut, NYC again, before I fly up to Canada for the Festival of Literary Diversity! I’m supposed to get back to Sweden, too, but will have to play that by ear. For now I’m just glad to be home for a whole week!

 

book bling

My stickers arrived today! There’s nothing like having a little bling on your book. I feel like this has been a productive week even though I haven’t written much. I’ve read a lot and today I started my taxes (ugh). I’m heading to KidLitCon in Providence, RI next month and just lined up an author visit at a girls academy there. I also booked a trip to Madison, WI to attend the annual Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, which will be delivered by the brilliant Debbie Reese. I’m still thinking about Sweden and will need to head back to observe the arrival of spring and visit the Viking museum at Birka. I’m trying to have 5K words written by the end of this month and that still seems possible. I can hear my girl’s voice and the two ravens, Huginn and Muninn; Hami is coming to me slowly and I may just have to write his words and work on tone later. Tomorrow I’ll spend the afternoon at the library—my first visit to the central branch of Philly’s Free Library. I’ll be presenting at a local branch in Chestnut Hill later this month and at two other branches in March. Slowly but surely I’m connecting with kids in Philly! Sometimes you push and sometimes you wait…in time, it all comes together.