Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 46

overload

I haven’t been reading or writing lately, which isn’t good. This past week I taught eight workshops—starting on Monday morning with two up in the Bronx co-facilitated with my former BMCC colleague Yadira Perez Hazel—and then my residency wrapped up on Saturday with a fantastic reading by my BPCS middle grade students. Because I was running the event, I didn’t have time to take photos, nor did I have time to feast on the many sweets laid out for guests, which is a good thing since I’ve been eating ice cream every day. Nonetheless, yesterday I put on a new dress and walked out the house knowing that this chapter of my writer’s life is nearly over. I’ve submitted one version of our anthology to Create Space and will try to meet with the students one last time to get their feedback. Then I need to finish my picture book story and novel about Weeksville before turning in my final report. For the past two months I’ve tried to say “yes” to just about everything, and I am definitely ready to say “no” for a while. My adult class, Magic & Memory, wrapped up last Wednesday; we had a small group of eight students but we still had a great discussion about Afrofuturism and the legacy of slavery. My students wrote some touching messages in the card they tucked inside the folder containing their course evaluations; I won’t be ready to read the latter for a while yet, but the card really made me feel like we achieved something meaningful over the 5 weeks we spent together. And it was nice to know that I haven’t lost my touch in the classroom. Folks keep asking if I’ll be teaching anywhere else this summer, but right now I have nothing lined up—and that feels great! Saying “yes” to so many different gigs means I should have earned enough this spring to get me through the summer. And the fall? I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll have more author talks lined up through the BPL. They sent me to Explore Charter School in my own neighborhood on Wednesday morning. I’ve never seen 80 middle grade students enter an auditorium so quietly! And their teachers sat *with* the kids, snapping photos of my presentation (the one below was posted on Twitter).

On Thursday I did two back-to-back presentations at Weeksville Heritage Center for 70 members of Mrs. Field’s Literary Society; I met some very nice women, including the sister of my alma mater‘s current president! It’s a small world, and I hope the relationships I formed during my Weeksville residency will flourish in the future. There are so many writers with stories just waiting to be told! I did two presentations at Launch Expeditionary School on Friday and at the end, a sixth-grade student raised his hand and asked how kids can help me write my stories. I told him that talking to kids about my books often inspires me to develop new stories and/or to finish works-in-progress. But I know what he was really asking: will you come back and write something with US? I’m not sure how to make that happen; now that I’m operating without a professor’s salary, I can’t afford to do as many free school visits. But schools and libraries have limited budgets, so what’s an “artivist” to do? I suspect I’ll have to start looking into grants this summer…

parting thoughts

I’m leaving Toronto in a few hours and should have blogged days ago because now there are too many thoughts and too little time to get them down. My phone doesn’t work up here and so I took lots of photos but can’t post any online and somehow words alone don’t seem sufficient to describe this trip. What the photos show is just how happy I’ve been the past few days…usually my trips to the Great White North are fraught and uncomfortable for me. But this trip was different. I saw lots of friends and relatives but didn’t feel pressed or pulled in a dozen different directions. There was enough time to just BE with people, and I hope the memories that linger are of the times I didn’t bring my camera along—when I walked the Belt Line after dinner with my two cousins, their husbands, and their puppy Frida. Or yesterday when I spent half an hour in a small park filled with families and didn’t feel like an outsider because my other two cousins just made it seem so natural that I would be there to hold the dog’s leash or push the kids on the swing or walk home holding hands. Normally I would feel very outside myself in those moments but we were remembering the parks we played in when we were kids and somehow that anchored me. Everything this weekend felt continuous—like a continuation of old customs and traditions and habits that used to drive me nuts. Like having to put on a sweater as soon as I reach my mother’s house because the windows are wide open, letting in the cool lake air. And having three cups of tea in two hours because my mother always has the kettle on. And popping next door to see our long-time neighbors who were like parents to me when I was a child. Or chatting for three hours with my high school English teacher over a sumptuous lunch on the waterfront. We just pick up where we left off and despite my random, unplanned life, folks kept telling me they were proud of me, inspired by me! I have to head out now to meet my aunt for lunch but will try to pick this up when I get back to Brooklyn tonight. Yesterday I met a friend I haven’t seen in over ten years at the Art Gallery of Ontario. We saw the Basquiat exhibit and then talked about turning 40, leaving the academy, and building the life you want. This painting, Exu, was one of my favorites (because of the fox, of course)…

hope for Baltimore

There’s a lot going on in “Charm City” right now, but I hope that parents will bring their children to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum on May 9th for this wonderful event. Please spread the word!

3rd Annual African American Children’s Book Fair










A rare chance for children to experience the world of kids’ literature focused on African Americans and people of other ethnicities. The event is fun-filled, while exposing children to their diverse world, and kids who look like them, through childrens’ books and illustrations. Enjoy author readings, illustration workshops by illustrators, cultural performances, and craft activities. Purchase hard-to-find titles in the Book Village. Free children’s books will be distributed while supplies last.  Special guests include poet Eloise Greenfield. Celebrity reader is Dr. Gregory E. Thornton, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools.

This program is presented in partnership with Baltimore City Schools, Enoch Pratt Free Library, and Mocha Moms Inc. Sponsored by BGE. Free museum admission 12-4pm. For all ages!

RSVP online to this free event.


Date and Time: Saturday, May 9, 12:00 pm

For more information call 443-263-1800

Activities

Deborah Taylor, Coordinator of School & Student Services of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, will lead a workshop on how to choose multicultural children’s books
Reading literacy information, provided by Reading Partners Baltimore
Live performance by Uncle Devin and Drum Tales
Toddler’s activity area, provided by The Walters Museum
Interactive story activities by teaching artist Culture Queen of Culture Kingdom Kids

Authors and Illustrators Scheduled to Appear:



Everett Todd Adams
Jerdine Nolen


Floyd Cooper
Sherika Sadler


Zetta Elliott
Jared Parks


Eloise Greenfield
Shadra Strickland


London Ladd
Kinya Shakur Travis


James A. Merritt
Linda Trice


Frank Morrison
Renee Watson


Lori Lee Nelson
Carol Boston Weatherford

self/image

I don’t cook. I know how, but I find it irritating and time-consuming and when you’re single, it’s just too much work to endlessly plan and shop and prepare your own meals. When I DO decide to cook, I have to fill my pantry with all the basic things one needs to make a meal—last month I made goulash (which is basically jazzed up Hamburger Helper) and spent $30 on ingredients that will now sit in my cupboard gathering dust. It would have been more cost effective to just buy takeout! Getting ready for last week’s salon felt a lot like cooking. I don’t own much makeup so I made do with what was already in my medicine cabinet and got a recommendation on Facebook for blush. Of course, I don’t know how to apply blush and the sales assistant at Sephora wasn’t interested in sharing her techniques with someone who clearly couldn’t be bothered to “put on her face” each and every day. Wearing makeup is agonizing—and expensive—when you don’t do it very often. After my good friend Stefanie came over to roll my bobbed hair into a 1940s Victory Roll, she helped me apply black “Sharpie” eyeliner (purchased at 8am that morning at Rite-Aid) and then gently scolded me as I sparingly applied mascara (“Is there any ON the brush, Zetta?”) and urged me not to rub off all the blush I had dabbed on my cheeks. With Stef’s help, I finally made it out the door and caught the train over to the Center. I put on my heels, which started to hurt my feet after half an hour, and wobbled back and forth along the grass path that leads out to the historic house. I still don’t feel totally satisfied with the salon, but seeing Valerie Caesar’s amazing photographs this weekend (top left and right) helped me to realize that I did achieve at least one goal: we left a record and, therefore, made history. People think I’m a perfectionist and that’s not the image I’m trying to project—and that’s definitely not how I see myself. I actually wish women were given more opportunities to just be ourselves—no makeup, no Spanx, no killer heels. When I moved to NYC in 1994 I found a place within a circle of women who were totally natural—no one permed their hair (so I stopped) and no one wore makeup everyday (so I gradually gave that up, too). We were working with kids and it felt important to be our authentic selves when we were with them—isn’t that what it means to be a good role model? Not to be perfect, but to be true to yourself. To talk honestly about your strengths but also your limitations. To be imperfect but still be THERE. I don’t have a problem with women who wear makeup or Spanx or killer heels. But my eye is always drawn to the women who defy convention and present themselves in ways that are deemed “unfeminine.” Those queer women make space for women like me who aren’t invested in upholding traditional beauty standards. It was fun to get dressed up for half a day but I am SO glad I don’t feel the need to do this every day. I’m grateful for friends who accept me as I am and point out my strengths when I can only see my limitations. And I think it matters when I walk into a school with just a little lip gloss and cropped hair. I’m very aware of the way Black and Latino girls read me, how they wait until the end of my presentation to come up and tell me that they like my eyes or my hair—no mention of my books, which are deliberately about girls who look like them. I’m about to film a video for some high school students in MA who are making a movie about colorism, and I have a LOT to say on the subject. Because it’s complicated…

My 4/21 visit to Launch Expeditionary Leadership Charter School. Photo by Dafina Westbrooks

Valerie Caesar’s wonderful group shot of the salon ladies in the 1930s historic house at Weeksville Heritage Center.

teach, learn, grow

Here I am looking carefree on my way to the salon when in reality, I was totally stressing out…

I’m not a control freak but when you live with anxiety, you do tend to over prepare. You try to think of every possible eventuality, and then you step into the classroom and all that planning flies right out the window! I think the best teachers are able to make endless adjustments—on the spot—but being spontaneous is hard for me. I’ve gotten some really great feedback about our salon last Saturday, but I left the Center feeling dissatisfied. We looked fabulous (group photos coming soon, I promise) and everyone was engaged, but the event didn’t unfold as I’d planned and I found it hard to just “go with the flow.” Then I had class with my middle graders on Monday and left feeling inadequate again. I sent the students an email reminding them to bring two drafts to class, but most of them didn’t get the email and so arrived empty handed. Only one student had a poem ready to share and we did do a brief critique, but that meant my carefully planned lesson wasn’t worth much. Several students had to leave early and so I had the remaining students do a collective list poem and then we hustled to clean up so the next class could come in. I tried out the mixer activity I used at the salon, and the students did seem to enjoy that. But now we only have one class left—will they produce enough writing to fill our proposed anthology? We have some great conversations but are the students getting anything out of this class? Why can’t I teach effectively in one hour? I’m realizing (too late, perhaps) that younger students need handouts and maybe more supervision, which means making time to write IN class. I am making adjustments but the class will be over by the time I figure out what works best. With my adult class, it’s a totally different experience. I left my Magic & Memory class last night feeling so exhilarated—we have a fantastic group of writers and everyone in the class seems open and engaged. I assigned Kindred for class but most people hadn’t finished reading it or weren’t able to get their hands on a copy. And you know what? That was ok because we were still able to have a topic-based conversation about neo-slave narratives, and not talking about the novel left us more time to share the poems they wrote last week. We took a break, had some snacks, and then continued thinking about home, belonging, and community as we read Maritcha Lyons’ account of the NYC Draft Riots. Maybe the middle graders are serving as guinea pigs—maybe testing lessons on them makes me more effective the second time around with my adult students. Maybe I just need to remember that this is a pilot program, and I’m learning valuable lessons that will strengthen the curriculum and improve outcomes for future students…

Ok, time to get back to this residency application (yes, another residency). And then I need to work on tomorrow’s faculty development seminar: “Using Journals in the Ethnic Studies Classroom.” Yes, the inadequate teacher is telling other educators how to teach more effectively!

 

home, community, & belonging

It’s hard to think about anything other than Saturday’s salon, but I need to take a moment to write about last night’s Magic & Memory class. We had fourteen participants and I didn’t spot any lefties (I always scan for my classroom for left-handed writers) but we had a fantastic conversation about home, community, and belonging. It’s so different teaching adults! I’ve missed it. And we have two hours to talk, so nothing feels rushed. Hopefully I’ll be able to strike the right balance—my goal is to share Weeksville history and then let those facts guide our creative writing. We’d just started talking about forgiveness when class wrapped up last night. What binds people together in a community? Things they have in common, including oppression. But what makes a community thrive? I’m hoping we’ll be able to talk about love next week. How do you hold onto your humanity in this country? I put my favorite Audre Lorde quote up on the board: “We were never meant to survive. Not as human beings.” Buying land, building a home, and forging a community—those are the actions of people determined to assert their humanity and their right to root themselves in the US. But can you ever truly belong in a place where you’re not wanted?

This is an activity we completed last night. Use five words or less to finish this phrase: Home is…

caged kids

I have so many things to say but I need to think some more so this post will be brief. I flew out to San Francisco on Thursday and guzzled about three liters of water during the six-hour flight to ward off a cough attack. Today I’m hardly coughing at all, but over the weekend I just couldn’t stop. I’m not really sick—it’s my asthma that makes this cough linger, and it’s exhausting but the trip was still totally worthwhile. I stayed with Laura Atkins in her beautiful new home and we got to catch up with Janine Macbeth and Maya Gonzalez on Friday at the ACL institute. As soon as we arrived we were greeted and warmly welcomed by Meredith Steiner; Amy Cheney found me in the crowd and I was thrilled to spend Saturday morning with her at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center. So far this is the main connection I’ve made between the conference on Friday and my time at the detention center: kids should NOT be caged but that’s inevitably what happens when you put profits before people. The ACL institute was all about “going there” and unlike other diversity events, there was a workshop on white privilege that broke down some key terms (like the difference between equality and equity). I’m not sure PoC needed to be present for that lengthy workshop, but we definitely needed someone like Maya in the morning session to point out that the panel on privilege in publishing was continuing to uphold normative whiteness. I personally am not concerned about getting white kids to read my books. It’s great when they do, but my priority is getting books into the hands of kids of color. And one of my main objectives at Rosetta Press is to publish affordable, inclusive books so that low-income families can build a home library for their kids. But once again on the morning panel we heard the claim that diverse books have to be profitable because at the end of the day, the publishing industry is a business. Jacqueline Woodson made this remark and then added that she and her partner are careful about what their kids consume; over Xmas they only saw Selma and Annie, and Jackie bought 10 copies of The Crossover to share with friends. I’m reading it right now and will be sending a copy to my young cousin, but I can’t afford to buy ten hardcover copies of every diverse book. And even if The Crossover didn’t win the Newbery and didn’t land on the bestseller list, that book would STILL deserve to be in print and in the hands of young readers. During the panel Laura gave a shout out to indie authors like me and alternative presses like Maya’s Reflection Press and Janine’s Blood Orange Press; our success in telling different kinds of stories gives her hope, and I’m glad. But it’s troubling to me that so many people are still buying into the idea that profitability matters most. After the panel I was having a lively conversation with some women of color about why a capitalist publishing model is so problematic when a white woman librarian politely interrupted us to ask Janine if she could please publish some books about Samoans for her high school students. Her request helped me make my case. A book about Samoan teens may not wind up on the bestseller list and make a huge profit for some publisher. But the NEED for those books is real, and those Samoan kids deserve to see their lives reflected on the pages of the books they read. And yes, kids of other racial backgrounds could also benefit from reading those books. But if publishers continue to think that books about kids of color “don’t sell,” and if they produce hardcover books that are prohibitively expensive, and if they have lily-white marketing departments that don’t even TRY to market books to PoC, then nothing will change. During my visit to the detention center I was telling a group of teenage girls about The Last Bunny in Brooklyn. “It’s an allegory,” I told them, “a story that has a hidden meaning.” And one girl turned to me and said, “Like subtext?” And I wanted to say, “You don’t belong here.” But then none of them belongs in a windowless cell. The detention center has incredible art in their administrative offices—art produced by the incarcerated youth. There were yoga mats on the floor in the girls’ unit because instructors come in to teach them yoga. So what if we provided art classes and yoga to ALL kids from pre-K through to college? What if every school and community and home had a library filled with diverse books? What if every school received the same funding and had teachers who aren’t paid according to their students’ test scores? We can create communities that put people first. We can ensure that EVERY child has books that serve as a mirror. But we have to divest from the profit mentality that turns everything into a commodity. For-profit prisons have helped to drive mass incarceration, which has devastated low-income communities of color. We don’t need for-profit publishers to “save” our kids. We can serve them more effectively ourselves with a community-based publishing model.

It was such a treat to gather with like-minded individuals while I was on the west coast. I’d be lost without the support and guidance of my fellow “rad women.” When I got back to Brooklyn on Sunday, Amy connected me with a librarian at a juvenile detention center here in NYC. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit this spring and share my books. One girl in Alameda was removed from our small group but later told me she liked my book about the bird—I thought she meant Bird but then she talked about the kids being underground, and I realized she was talking about Ship of Souls. I’m so glad librarians like Amy are making sure that incarcerated youth have diverse books. ALL our kids matter; no child is disposable.

me, Laura Atkins, Maya Gonzalez, & Janine Macbeth

present…tense

The magnolia trees are already in bloom in DC. It wasn’t sunny but it was balmy, so I felt like a typical New Yorker in my black coat and black fleece-lined tights (it’s only in the 40s here in BK). I reminded myself to be present and soon got over my out-of-place feeling as my gracious host (and Bee Me Bookshelf founder) Nina Candia drove me around DC. If I ever do leave Brooklyn, I just might head to DC. Not for the fried chicken and donuts, but for the beautiful historic neighborhoods, the architecture, the many galleries and museums that are FREE. Nina took me to the Phillips Collection where we saw Jacob Lawrence’s Struggle series before gathering up her two students who spent the morning writing poetry inspired by the art. We grabbed some Southern fare for lunch and then headed across the river and into Virginia. Madeira is a private school for girls, only some of whom are boarders. Nina kindly invited me to speak to the eleven students in her Black Women Writers class and we wrapped up with a reading from A Wish After Midnight. As soon as class ended, one student rushed back to her dorm and got a comic book she felt I’d appreciate: The Wicked + Divine. I had some time on my own and so perused it in the library—I wonder why comics folks keep trying to suck me in when I don’t read comics and don’t cosplay, but I have to admit they ARE some of the most creative writers out there! In exchange for her generous gift, I gave Barack a copy of The Deep. The young women in the class were very quiet—a big change from my boisterous students in Brooklyn—but I hope I planted a few seeds. Came back to Brooklyn with a migraine and feel very stressed today but I’m thinking of those magnolias and know they’ll soon be blooming here, too. The trick is being present in this moment instead of dwelling on the past or freaking out about the future. I’m still coughing and now my throat is super sore, but I’m looking forward to Friday’s diversity conference in San Francisco. And I’m really looking forward to meeting radical librarian Amy Cheney and the young women she serves at the Alameda County Juvenile Hall. Scattering seeds far and wide…

flex time

I’m less than thrilled about having yet another cold, but I’m grateful that I slept through the night and woke with enough energy to get 13K steps in by noon. It feels like spring today and there are more crocuses than I can count along the sidewalk that leads to the library. I walk this strip of Flatbush Avenue quite often and each time I marvel at the determination of crocuses—whether it’s pouring rain or threatening to snow, these tiny, purple flowers persist—INSIST upon their right to bloom NOW. I’m trying to be more flexible with my historical fiction class at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School. On Tuesday I started thinking about what it would take to develop an “Africans in the Americas” course for middle grade students. I wanted to show the Middle Passage scene from Amistad last week but had technical issues; this time around two of my students tried to fix the sound but we just couldn’t make it work. I was ready to give up but the students assured me they were fine (“There are subtitles!”), so we watched the gripping scene and had a rather abbreviated conversation after they wrote on their own for a few minutes. I’m realizing that I need to do more and less; I need to provide more structured writing time, more time for sharing, more time for processing all this information. And at the same time I need to accept that this is not a 16-week college course; I only have 4 weeks and so I can’t cover all topics in depth in the limited time we have together. Last week we talked about “home” and whether you can insist that you belong in a place where you’re not wanted; we discussed the colonization movement and whether African Americans belong in Africa or the US. This week we talked about the Black Lives Matter movement and I touched on some of the riots that took place in NYC (1834 & 1863) and the city of Brooklyn (1862) around the time that Weeksville was founded (1838). We talked about war but didn’t get to the conditions of peace…so next week we’ll slow down. At the library today I picked up another copy of Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Tonya Bolden; I bought 3 copies last week and scanned the pages covering the NYC Draft Riots so we’d have enough copies to go around. We read that section aloud together, pausing to create a cast of characters. Hopefully over break the students will start a diary entry from someone participating in the riots—African Americans who fled in terror, white police officers brought to tears by the chaos, a kind German neighbor who was beaten days later for helping Blacks escape the mob. I had a smaller group this week, which I expected, but these middle graders seem committed. I dropped off copies of A Wish After Midnight for all of them this morning so in our next two classes I can talk about how I took actual historical events/people and turned them into a novel…

photo by BPCS librarian Leslie Gallager

I was thrilled to learn today that one of my self-published titles, Room in My Heart, has been included in the Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Books of the Year, 2015 Edition. I can still remember my father throwing the handmade book aside when I first wrote the story back in 2000 or 2001. It’s about a girl who finds it hard to adjust when her divorced father starts dating a new woman. The father in the book is nothing like my father; he brought plenty of women into our lives but offered no reassurance that our place in his heart was secure. The first time I defied my father was when I was 8 or 9; my sister and I arrived for our weekend visit and found another woman and her two daughters living in my father’s house. Things quickly went from bad to worse and I called my mother to pick us up early. Now that I think of it, my father started calling me a “troublemaker” from that point on. Writing Room in My Heart was therapeutic for me, even if it enraged my father. I tell kids that my writing is guided by the principle of sankofa: there is no shame in going back to retrieve something of value you left behind. In some ways I’m still recovering from my parents’ divorce but I’m glad this story resonates with others, and I hope it can serve as a guide for divorced parents who are bringing new people into their kids’ lives.

A Woman’s Place Is in the Home

Women of Weeksville circa 1900

“A woman’s place is in the home.” I am a homebody. “Home is where the heart is.” Brooklyn is my heart.

On April 18 I will host a salon at Weeksville Heritage Center, inviting women artists, intellectuals, and activists to gather in the living room of the historic 1930s house. Our topic of conversation: “living room.” In her essay on Weeksville, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts describes the historic 19th-century African American community as “a room without an exit” where “we could huddle…and protect each other and comfort each other and tell stories.” This salon will ask guests to do the same while reflecting upon “the value of rootedness in a time when its lived reality is eroding.” As gentrification continues to transform Brooklyn, police brutality rages unchecked, and transwomen of color continue to die with little or no media attention, where do we find room to breathe—to live—to thrive?

In her 1987 poem “Moving Towards Home,” Jordan empathizes with the Palestinian people as she envisions a community safe from the forces of extermination:

I need to speak about living room

where the talk will take place in my language

I need to speak about living room

where my children will grow without horror

I need to speak about living room where the men

of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five

are not

marched into a roundup that leads to the grave

I need to talk about living room

where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud

for my loved ones

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I need to talk about living room

because I need to talk about home

WE need to talk about home. This event is for invited guests only but we plan to take portraits of everyone in attendance. I have no doubt this group of women will be as brilliant and beautiful as the sisters pictured below!