Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 37

coming up

I have some public events coming up in the next few weeks. If you’re in or near Baltimore, check out the Reginald F. Lewis Museum’s African American Children’s Book Fair on May 14th. You can find information about the participating authors and illustrators here. In June I’ll be in dialogue with the inimitable Debbie Reese at the 2016 ACL Institute—and look who’s giving the keynote! If you’re in the Bay Area, do drop in…

overdue

I had my annual physical yesterday and picked up a flyer announcing free meditation and yoga classes at my clinic. I’ve got to try SOMETHING because running every other day helps me manage my anxiety, but I need some additional tools. I am completely wound up right now and should have gone for a run as soon as I rolled out of bed, but instead I ate some leftover pizza and now I’m too full to hit the park. There’s a Bernie Sanders rally in Prospect Park at noon, which means there will be loads of people and I really want silence and solitude today. My To Do list is wearing me down and I’ve made some progress this morning, but I don’t even feel satisfied once I scratch a task off the list—probably because I’m already stressing about the next thing I have to do. Learning to be present in each moment would be a good thing for me. I confess there were times at my launch party on Thursday when I was thinking ahead, wishing I could speed the clock up even though I was extremely grateful that folks took the time to come out and celebrate the release of The Door at the Crossroads. Even as I was reading from the novel, I felt my mind jumping around and had to force it to settle down. Monkey brain—that’s what Buddhists call it. Or is it drunken monkey brain? The point is, we have the ability to control our thoughts and I think some serious brain training is in order for me. Yesterday I participated in a symposium at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and each presenter had 15 minutes to talk about how s/he is reaching new audiences in the era of Black Lives Matter. There were some fantastic presentations but by the end of the day, I felt like someone else held the remote control for my brain and that person was flipping through channels instead of landing on one. Afterward I met friends for dinner and we talked about the importance of The Colored Girls Museum; Ebony suggested the museum founder produce a picture book and immediately I started constructing a narrative in my head. By the time I sat down on the train back to NYC, I’d chosen a title: Milo’s Museum. It’s about a Black girl who notices there aren’t many people who look like her at the museum, so she creates her own museum in her bedroom closet. Another friend of mine, Gabrielle Civil, once gave a performance in her closet and my other friend Marie is one of the artists featured at the CGM in Philadelphia. What Milo needs is a tete-a-tete with a Black woman artist—maybe a neighbor or a relative. One of my super talented artist friends came out on Thursday night; Cozbi brought her equally talented daughter, Jana (pictured above), who informed me she makes her own books! Jana’s the kind of girl who could easily open her own museum. Vashti DuBois founded the CGM in her own home, and over dinner last night we talked about how so many Black women still wait for outside approval instead of making things happen ourselves. One reason is that many of us have internalized the endless messages that tell us we’re inadequate or that our efforts are illegitimate without white and/or male authentication. Other times we want things to be perfect and so we wait until everything is in order—and everything is NEVER going to be in order. I’m not good at spontaneity and I try to be flexible when I’m teaching, but “just go with the flow” is a tall order for someone with anxiety. Children don’t worry about being perfect and they don’t overthink things the way so many adults do. I am a grown-up—I have to finish filing my taxes today—but I need to cultivate more of my child attributes. I doubt I’ll ever be “carefree” again, but maybe I could find more joy in each moment instead of trying to be “responsible” and “productive” all the time…

let it go

I just broke my favorite plate and dropped my dinner on the floor. I don’t keep the kind of kitchen floor you can eat off of, but I scooped up my chickenless tenders and ate them anyway! This week has taught me to let a lot of things go. Up until 7pm last night, I didn’t have ANY books for tomorrow’s launch. Then the UPS guy arrived with 9 boxes for me, and the 10th box arrived a few hours ago. So now I have books. The cover for Crossroads isn’t perfect, even after we made a last-minute fix, but it’ll have to do. The Kindle version that I did myself was apparently hard to read on some devices, so I pulled it and will repost on Amazon once the conversion has been done by a professional. I couldn’t find a plain black top to wear with the lovely skirt I bought expressly for the launch party, so I’m going to wear a less festive dress instead. I don’t have any jewelry to match the dress, but oh well. No one’s coming out tomorrow to inspect my jewelry. My skin has broken out—again. My hormones are as unpredictable as the weather, but what’s a girl middle-aged woman to do? The universe is definitely keeping me humble. Yesterday I had a full day and left the house feeling stressed. It was raining and our host librarian at the high school was absent, but our small group still met and those young people made me forget all about the zillion other things on my To Do list. I had 4 back-to-back appointments and at each one, I found myself laughing and hugging people and receiving assurances that everything would be okay. When I was in graduate school, a professor delicately pointed out that my excessive expressions of gratitude proved that I came from a dysfunctional family where kindness was rare. She was right—when you’re accustomed to being mocked and diminished, sometimes it’s hard to believe that people can be caring and considerate without expecting anything in return. So as I prepare my remarks for tomorrow night, I’m thinking about kindness, and gratitude, and how it’s okay to be imperfect. And how showing up and owning up to your mistakes is sometimes just the kind of example young people need to see.

My last guest post about The Door at the Crossroads, “A Girl Like Me,” is up over at Diversity in YA. April is National Poetry Month so I ended with a poem by Lucille Clifton, and I think I’m going to read it aloud tomorrow night. Maybe twenty people will show up—maybe a lot more since the event was covered in The Brooklyn Reader. But either way, I know *I* am going to have a cupcake and celebrate the fact that this novel didn’t destroy me and all the years of rejection by publishers didn’t stop me from getting it into the world. There’s always another novel waiting in the wings but for at least one night, I’m going to celebrate myself and my book and all the people who are part of this wonderful community of readers and writers.

potential & possibilities

The Kweli conference yesterday was AMAZING! So many great people gathered in one place, including two author friends from Canada: Nadia Hohn (left) and Carol-Ann Hoyte (right). The panels were engaging, and it was encouraging to meet so many aspiring writers of color. The room was full of people of color, and I only wish the publishing industry were equally diverse. I decided to point that fact out on my morning panel: “Publishing Industry Overview.” The conference organizers did an excellent job finding people of color from marketing, publicity, sales, and editorial departments, but their existence in the industry doesn’t mean they’re likely to play a role in the submission to publication process for most writers of color. White women dominate the industry and I felt it would be dishonest not to point that out. Still, it was nice to be in a space where we formed the majority—for once! This past month I’ve really felt the “self” in self-publishing, so it was great to be surrounded by other voices and ideas and so much positive energy. And I want to thank Laura Pegram and her team for inviting me to share my self-publishing perspective. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a valid option—and sometimes the only option when all others doors close. My favorite moment from yesterday came after the morning panel. I’d had some trouble with my microphone—in fact, the two mics closest to me went berserk and it took a few of us to sort it out before I could have my say. A conference attendee told me afterward that he was a reiki practitioner and knew something about energy. “When the microphones went crazy I thought to myself, ‘That woman’s a force.'” I’ve mostly felt like a spent force lately, but hope to get my second wind this week. I’ll need it because the launch is on Thursday! Tomorrow I search for the best cupcakes…

alternatives

I’m heading up to Scandinavia House for the Kweli conference this morning–hope to see you there! I’ve already connected with a great bookstore—WORD UP—that’s entirely volunteer-run and operates without big book distributors. Community-based publishing, community libraries/booksellers…so many possibilities! I’m looking forward to talking with The Book Smugglers soon about their relatively new role as publishers. They posted an essay of mine on Thursday in which I discuss what it means to “reach your readers:”

Last month I talked to students at Harvard who read AWAM in their American Studies class, and the following week I had an equally rigorous discussion with book club members at a homeless shelter in Manhattan. When that editor says “success” what she really means is sales, of course, though she forgot to mention that AWAM was never reviewed by any of the major outlets. My next novel with Amazon, Ship of Souls, did get reviewed by Booklist, who named it a Top Ten Sci-Fi/Fantasy Title for Youth in 2012. Did it successfully reach “my readers?” I suppose that depends on how you define “success.” I’ve found that when I dare to step outside the traditional publishing world, I find other “outsiders” who understand that publishing isn’t just about profit—it’s about power. I know how Black youth feel when they finally find a book in which they are the hero and they wield the magic that saves the day. Connecting “my readers” with my books can be a challenge, but self-publishing for me is an act of resistance in an ongoing battle to change the (mis)representation of Black youth.

Okay, I better hop on the train or I’ll miss all of Edwidge Danticat’s keynote address! You can find the entire program here. Only a few of my books will be available at the conference, but you can finally order your print copy of The Door at the Crossroads online.

spread love

Tomorrow I’m heading back to Massachusetts to participate in Clark University’s Youth Summit. There’s snow on the ground there right now, but I think we’re expecting rain by Thursday. This spring has been very unpredictable and as I noted yesterday, I’ve been all over the map, too! I don’t enjoy traveling but I love being in new places, and I’m really looking forward to meeting the diverse kids who live in Worcester, MA. I interviewed for an academic job there years ago and it felt very white, so I’m happy to hear the city’s kids come from many different communities. I’ve got a couple more train journeys coming up (Philly on the 16th and Baltimore next month) and I *just* checked the price of an airline ticket to Stockholm! I didn’t get into the residency in Denmark so I went online and searched for writing residencies near Birka, which is where the Viking woman wearing the Islamic ring was found. Turns out there’s a writers retreat ON the island of Birka and I’m hoping I can manage to spend a week there this summer.

Last week I wrote a guest post for a kid lit blog and felt really good about it once it was done. I also knew that it was probably too radical for that particular blog and sure enough, they took a pass. Binder friends gave me some great suggestions and the essay caught the attention of a Black women’s website, but when I didn’t hear back from them, I decided to post it on HuffPo. You can read “What’s LOVE Got to Do with It?” there, and here’s a little taste:

For me, self-publishing is a radical act of self-care because it redirects my energy away from a toxic engagement with those who are oblivious to the “urgencies” of my community (I am indebted to Robin Bernstein for this definition of obliviousness: “not merely an absence of knowledge, but an active state of repelling knowledge”). Self-publishing stops me from knocking on a door that will never open—or only open grudgingly.

Telling my own stories in my own way is also, for me, the ultimate act of self-love because it is an act of resistance. It is a rejection of the implicit messages editors send along with their “Thanks, but no thanks”: you’re not worthy, you’re not one of us, you have nothing meaningful or important to say.

All the files for The Door at the Crossroads have been submitted and I’m waiting on the second printed proof to make sure the cover fits properly. In the meantime, the e-book is available in the Kindle store. My Viking novel will NOT be 400 pages—I promise!

My latest newsletter went out yesterday. You can find it here.

roll out

There’s something happening in the universe. I do a lot of things for and by myself, and that’s usually how I guarantee that things will work out—because I’m on it! But I can’t publish a book all by myself, and my collaborators have faced challenges on their end that made getting this book out “on time” impossible. The first pub date for The Door at the Crossroads was 3/31 and then my cover designer had a health crisis, so I found another designer but then her internet connection was iffy, which made sharing files difficult…and so in the early hours of this morning I finally got the finished interior file for Crossroads. I hope to have the e-book out later today and the print book should be ready by the end of the week. Not a smooth roll out! And not how I like to operate. But maybe the universe is trying to teach me to let go and put my faith in others. What happens if the book isn’t ready on time? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! I’m aiming for Wednesday but if that doesn’t work out, it’ll be Friday instead. And that will still be okay…

The Book Smugglers have been SO patient with all my randomness, and graciously offered to do the cover reveal on their site today—you can even enter a giveaway to win a copy of A Wish After Midnight and The Door at the Crossroads! And if you’re free on 4/14, you’re welcome to join us at the launch party. The book will be ready by then!

bending time

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but one area where I feel most like a failure is family. I have a large, loving extended family but no meaningful contact with my four siblings, and my mother and I mostly discuss the weather. So when I’m around other people’s families, I’m not always sure how to act. I’m lucky to have friends who welcome me into their homes and treat me like part of their clan. I spent last week in Massachusetts and for the first two days, I was my usual self in spaces that were familiar to me: a college classroom, a women’s center, and a charter school. Then I took the train out to western Mass and found my identity somewhat destabilized. On the one hand, I was in familiar territory; I taught at Mt. Holyoke College from 2006-2009, and had no trouble finding my way around campus. When I gave my talk before about a dozen students and faculty, I felt completely at ease and remembered how it felt to teach at a college full of intelligent and engaged women. Then I piled into the car with my friends and their kids, and we went to school for a music recital. And I didn’t really feel out of place, but I marveled at the lives my professor-friends lead—their endless energy, their determination to be present and engaged parents, the thought they put into choosing the best school for their Black children, their sustained advocacy on behalf of their kids…I was in awe. I’ve been thinking about my own fertility lately and the rational side of me KNOWS I am not ready to become a parent (especially a single parent). But spending a couple of days with my friends and their kids confirmed that fact and quieted the irrational, hormonal side of me that still wonders what it would be like. I finally finished my letter-writing project and speaking to my child self stirred up a lot of stuff for me—as I imagine parenting would. On the train to Cambridge I started reading Robin Bernstein’s brilliant book Racial Innocence and remembered how much I like being around intellectuals. My friends with kids are also intellectuals and we had some provocative conversations while I was there. And somehow they manage to pursue their scholarship while parenting full-time, so clearly it can be done. Will I ever give it a try? I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to fail at parenting. I wouldn’t want to become a mother and then realize my writing mattered more to me. There were plenty of times when I felt like a nuisance or a burden to my single mother, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for making a child feel that way. So how do you avoid failure–by never trying? Or do you prepare as best you can and accept that you’ll always come up short? I’ve been stressed out for most of this month because The Door at the Crossroads was supposed to come out TOMORROW but a series of mishaps made that impossible. And things are still up in the air right now! Taking the train was more than a little uncomfortable because I had to endure sciatica and endometriosis pain at the same time—and there was NO quiet car! What if, in the midst of all this chaos, I also had to make sure my child’s needs were being met? I took 2 craft kits with me to MA and enjoyed sitting at a table with my (pretend) niece and nephew as we made paper cats and butterflies. The actual cat jumped on my shoulder twice and tried to burrow in my hair because that’s what she does to Renae. But I am not Renae, and I am not Robin. And after a couple of days, I came back to my life in Brooklyn and it felt SO good. Maybe it’s enough—for now—to write for and work with kids. Maybe once my novel comes out and I finish The Ghosts in the Castle and work my way through the other book projects in my queue…maybe then I’ll be ready to think about parenting. Maybe.

“Reflecting Our Communities”

On Friday I got a confusing email from someone who’d read an article about me in Brooklyn Family magazine. I’d done the interview back in January and didn’t realize it had come out, but passed a kiosk moments after reading the email and found myself on a two-page spread! So I ended the week on a high note but this weekend has not been very productive. Right now I’m supposed to be writing a letter to my younger self, but it’s HARD and I keep putting it off even though it was due last week. PBS is on a pledge drive so there’s nothing to watch, and I’m caught up on the latest episode of Vikings. I spend so much time thinking about my childhood…I don’t know why this letter leaves me stumped. My friend also suggested we try writing to our adult selves from a child’s perspective, but that feels even harder. Somehow I feel like my child-self would be disappointed with the woman I’ve become. I think I had a very different vision of myself when I was young, and definitely thought I’d have a family and be a loving parent by now. Instead I’ve birthed books—The Door at the Crossroads will bring the total to 23 (for young readers, at least). I spent a fair amount of time alone as a child but I’m not sure I ever imagined living so far away from my family as an adult. My sister once said, “You were such a happy kid—what happened?” I don’t think I’m a miserable spinster (yet) but my parents’ divorce definitely changed me, and then my prolonged “awkward phase,” followed by a bout of depression my senior year in high school. What do you say to someone who’s still evolving? “Be patient with yourself and be kind.” My friend had a dream where her child-self said, “You have time.” Which is sage advice! Everything isn’t as urgent as we’d like to believe. I’m a lot like my child-self still…I love to collect shiny, sparkly things, and I love being around trees and exploring wild spaces. Simple things amuse me and I’m glad that hasn’t changed. I guess I’ll try to spin that into some sort of narrative before this day ends.

thank you, Bank Street

In 2015 I found out that Room in My Heart was included in the annual list of Best Children’s Books compiled by the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature. This year I’m proud to have TWO of my self-published titles included in their 2016 list—I Love Snow and A Wave Came Through Our Window, which received a star for outstanding merit! I noticed that once Room in My Heart made the Bank Street list, both the NYPL and the BPL added the book to their collection. And when I checked their catalogs yesterday, I saw that three more of my self-published books were “on order.” So things are slowly starting to change! By the end of this month, I will have self-published 19 books and about 5 of those titles will be available at the library. I plan to keep pushing for inclusion and hope you will, too. And I’d like to thank the Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street for having open minds and giving my books their stamp of approval. No author should have to win an award or make a “best of” list just to have their book available in public libraries, but indie authors are generally held to a higher standard…which isn’t fair, but we persist!