Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 63

if you can’t be free, be a mystery

For the past two weeks I’ve been watching an episode of Foyle’s War every day (sometimes two). New episodes are coming up on PBS and I’m anxious for summer to end—enough with this unbearable heat and humidity, weather that makes a cup of tea impossible, even with the a/c on. Soon my friends and I will resume our Sunday evening tea parties as we watch Downtown Abbey or whatever else comes on Masterpiece Theater. I wasn’t interested in crime novels as a young reader; I may have picked up a couple of Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books, but I preferred fantastic stories about Narnia and other faraway worlds (where creatures still made time for tea). These days crime dramas are all I seem to watch and all, with the exception of Law & Order, are set in the UK. Death in Paradise is set in Guadeloupe but the star is an uptight British detective who hates everything about the Caribbean (the blazing hot sun, the roosters invading his home, the vibrant colors splashed on houses and boats and bodies) and yet the efficient white male manages to solve crimes that baffle the unsophisticated local police (who are black, of course). As problematic as the show is, I do watch it every week and will be interested to see the new star—another white detective will have to be sent from London since the tropical climate really did overwhelm actor Ben Miller. My grandfather was a policeman in St. Kitts-Nevis and Antigua and I imagine he looked quite handsome in his uniform. Apparently he made quite an impression on the ladies, which explains (at least in part) the three or four children he fathered before marrying and migrating to Canada in the 1950s. I’ve often wondered whether my grandfather had anything to do with the institutionalization of my grandmother, Rosetta Elliott. He had a child with her in 1941 and five years later she was committed to the asylum. Today I got an email from the civil registry in Antigua letting me know that a search was conducted for 1955, ’56, and ’57 but no death certificate was found for Rosetta. So it seems that, contrary to family lore, she did not die in Antigua in 1956. She could have died earlier, I suppose. Or perhaps she didn’t die in the asylum after all—maybe she was released and simply decided not to go back to Nevis. Maybe people lied to my father and my aunt, thinking it was best for them to believe their mother was dead. For all I know, Rosetta could still be alive somewhere. I don’t have a team of detectives to work the case. I don’t have any witnesses to testify on her behalf. I suppose that’s the appeal of crime dramas—you know that at the end of the show, all the loose ends will be woven together into a believable account. The guilty party will be held responsible and/or punished, and the injured party will receive justice. But it’s never so tidy in real life. People lie or misremember the facts, records vanish or get swept into the sea by a hurricane, and as a result you’re left with only a distortion. Which made me think of Billie Holiday and these lines from “Canary” by Rita Dove:

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.
If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Billie Holiday kept everyone guessing. Perhaps I’m wrong to think of my grandmother as only a victim. Maybe she cloaked herself in mystery as a way to escape…

cupcakes & books in Brooklyn!

Author/activist Ibi Zoboi has launched the Brooklyn Blossoms Book Club and today’s event features NY Times bestselling author Rita Wlliams Garcia! If you’ve got kids or if you love great books set in Brooklyn, stop by Restoration Plaza in beautiful Bed-Stuy today. Here’s the line-up:

1pm – 1:30 — Community-Building Game/Activity

Double-Dutch Contest



1:30 – 2pm — 1969/70 Fashion & Photo Display (Courtesy of Tracy Chambers Vintage)

2pm – 2:30 — Collage Postcard Making Workshop

2:30 – 3pm — Mother/Daughter Letter Writing Workshop

3pm – 4pm — Reading, Q&A, & Book signing with Rita Williams-Garcia

*Greenlight Bookstore will be selling select book club titles.

*Kiddietanicals will be selling natural hair products for girls, along with a few gift bag giveaways. (Courtesy of Soultanicals founder Ayo Ogun-McCants)

*Cupcakes will be on sale for $1 to help raise funds for the next Brooklyn Blossoms Book Club event!

black girls rock

I am not a hip hop head. I rarely listen to rap music but I do teach hip hop culture in all of my classes. How can I not? I always tell my students that I’m not a fan and they invariably tell me to listen to this “conscious rapper” or that “underground artist.” Some even make me a mix tape and if I dug up those CDs now, I know there would be at least one with tracks by Jean Grae. Her name always comes up, especially when we’re talking about hip hop and feminism, but I never bothered to take a look at her or her work. Then yesterday at the Afropunk Festival I actually heard Jean Grae perform. Despite the blazing hot sun overhead, she came onstage wearing a black hoodie, sunglasses, and dark jeans. She said something about losing a loved one and then asked for energy from the crowd so that she’d have the energy to perform. I just went to her website and it turns out she lost her mother less than a week ago—and Jean Grae’s mother was South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin! I hope she felt the love emanating from the crowd; I’ve written through my grief but can’t imagine getting up on a stage like that. There are dozens of images of Grae on the web and I was surprised by the range of looks she’s had over the years. Yet any one of those looks would have been acceptable at yesterday’s festival. I admit I felt out of place at times, and I fled when a mosh pit opened up during Jada Pinkett Smith’s performance with her band Wicked Wisdom, but after a couple of hours my friends and I started to blend in; we were ourselves within a sea of mostly black faces, soaking up the sun, cooling off in the shade, surveying the food trucks, the hairstyles, the retro clothes, the parents with small children in tow (one white child clutching her Ziplock bag full of Cheerios; a black baby snuggled against her mother’s chest with pink noise-blocking headphones covering her little ears). We started the day in the botanic garden then had brunch in Brooklyn Heights. From there we walked over to the festival and the day ended, as it often does, with friends falling asleep on my sofa as I watched a British crime drama on PBS. I’m heading up to Harlem to see some art today: Robert Pruitt’s Afrofuturistic women. And I’m grateful that there are so many spaces in this city where black women can take center stage. Wangechi Mutu will have a solo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum this fall (I’m taking my students). Black women authors are presenting at the Brooklyn Book Festival next month. My friends are producing scholarship, poetry, op-eds, performance art, and novels. It’s the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and every time I turn on the TV there’s a black man sharing his point of view. I haven’t seen a black woman interviewed YET. Things have changed but the resistance is stronger than ever. It helps to know that I’m part of an army still fighting for space to BE…

Afropunk?

A couple of days ago I woke up in Senegal. Keem was spending the summer with his grandmother after injuring himself during the championships. A year had passed since he’d seen Nyla and he had convinced himself he was over her. Then, while touring Goree Island with his cousin and older sister Nasira, a veiled beggar girl caught Keem’s eye…it was Nyla, of course, but their reunion was short-lived because The League was still pursuing her. Roan, their best tracker, got to Nyla first and warned her to slip away. But Nyla, now in control of her power, refused to flee…

Why do I get a flood of new ideas right when I have NO TIME to write? That story continued to unfold and if I had been writing instead of dreaming it up, I might have had a third of the novel done by now. I’m going to apply for a grant to travel to Senegal next summer. And after walking away from a respectable contract for The Deep, I’m thinking about self-publishing it next year. I don’t know that any editor will understand my vision for this book–and its sequel–and no one else seems to understand why this project feels so urgent. I just know there’s a black girl out there somewhere who NEEDS this book. I needed it when I was thirteen. And I wouldn’t have understood if some publishing professional came to me and said, “We have the book you’re looking for, but we’re not going to put it out until 2015.” Last night I spent almost an hour looking at font for the cover, which will be black with Nyla’s face in 3/4 profile…

We’re going to the Afropunk Festival this year. The photos on their Facebook page show some very glamorous women, which makes me worry it will be just another NYC event for “the beautiful people.” We’ll just be three geeky black girls taking it all in…

from Ghana, with love

GIVE BOOKS! One book can change a child’s life, but too many children don’t have access to the kinds of libraries we enjoy here in the U.S. You can support groups like Golden Baobab in Ghana and Hands Across the Sea in Bedford, MA. I had a chance to talk to Harriet Linskey last week and you wouldn’t believe everything she and her husband (and a team of volunteers) go through to build libraries in Caribbean schools. I would be SO happy if I never got another piece of jewelry for my birthday or for Xmas; for years I’ve been trying to get my relatives to make a donation instead, and these two literacy orgs are at the top of my list. Last week I received a bundle of letters from the girls at the Youth Institute for Science and Technology in Ghana—THIS is what even a small donation of books can do:

The reason why I am writing to you this letter is to say an appreciation for what you did for us at the conference. Madam, I want to tell you that I’m really happy to thank you because you donated us some books and bags and I think [it] is because we are genius students and how we speak our English. That was why you gave those things to us. May the almight[y] God bless you and your family and also increase your salary in any job that you do.  ~ Regina

The main reason why [I] am writing this letter to you is to thank you for the books you gave to us. In fact the book is interesting and good for us who want to be a writer. In my own way I think that if someone gives you something you should be grateful and show appreciation to what the person gave you because in this world not all people gives and so if someone gives you something you must show something so that they will know that you appreciate. Zetta, may all your dreams comes through. May you become a great writer. May you live to be 1000 years and above. May you live to see your great great great grandchildren give birth to another great grandchildren of yours. Thank you so much.   ~ Veronica

The reason why I am writing you this letter is that I want to be your role mod[el] and also I like writing poems and stories. And also I want to be famous like you. I also like you as my friend so that you will help me whenever I am writing poems or stories. And again on 19 May 2013 I read one of your books. I enjoyed it very much. So I want you to help me whenever I am writing a poem or story. Furthermore the reason why I choose you was that I like the way you talk and the way you walk. And also you are friendly. That is why I like you as my role mod[el]. I hope to hear from you soon.   ~ Doreenda

Also I have heard more about the famous people in Africa. I would like to tell you the person I like best when we went to the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. The person I like best was Zetta Elliott. The reason why I am saying this is that they were selling bags [but] most of us were not having money to buy some but this woman brought some to all of us. She also gave us about six or seven books. All her books were interest[ing]. That is why I like her.   ~ anonymous

Shortly after I returned from Ghana I received this email from the girls’ teacher, Kaitlin:

“On behalf of the Youth Institute of Science and Technology, I want to say thank you very much for your generosity. The girls were so enthralled by the books that you gave to them and they were so proud to bring them back to the school. Now everyone is enjoying the books- we have a library checkout and as soon as one student returns one of your books, about 10 more fight over who gets to read them next. Your gift to the school has brought joy to many students and gotten them excited to read again, which is priceless.”

GIVE BOOKS!

book news

I finally took the time to unpack my suitcase this morning. I got back from St. Lucia on Saturday night, and immediately starting reaching out to some of the people I met at the ACLALS conference. Then I spent two days revising my paper, “‘All Land Is One Land Under the Sea’: Mapping Memory in Canada and the Caribbean,” so that I could submit it to Caribbean Quarterly. Now I’m working on my writing intensive syllabus and as soon as that’s done, I am going to FINISH writing Judah’s Tale. Yesterday I was pleased to receive copies of the latest issue of Canadian Children’s Book News; a couple of months ago, to my surprise, editor Gillian O’Reilly invited me to participate in a roundtable of African Canadian authors and illustrators, including Tololwa Mollel, Dirk McLean, Nicole Mortillaro, and Sean L. Moore. I was surprised to see so many Canadian scholars attending the St. Lucia conference and since I generally feel invisible to Canadians, I wanted them to know about my books and my scholarship on diversity in children’s literature. When I finished presenting my paper last week, St. Lucian poet Jane King came up and asked why I have such strong feelings about my country of origin. In my paper I confessed that “I seem unable to write or talk or even think about Canada without becoming bitter and, at times, irrationally enraged.” It’s hard to explain how I can recognize how privileged I am to have spent the first twenty years of my life in a progressive, wealthy country like Canada while simultaneously resenting the fact that nearly every door I’ve knocked on up there has remained closed. I’m heading to Toronto next month for the Word on the Street Festival and hope to coordinate a book event for young readers in my old neighborhood of East Scarborough. I’m keeping my expectations low, however, since previous efforts to pull this off have failed. For the roundtable I was asked why I self-published some of my books and my answer, of course, was: REJECTION! Yesterday I went looking for a file on my computer and stumbled across a folder *full* of query letters to Canadian publishers. I’m sure if I opened my file cabinet I’d find a stack of rejection letters from those same presses. And yet I still have moments when I wonder if I tried hard enough to make a go of it in Toronto, and I suppose that’s why I keep going back and why I continue to write about my frustration with the status quo. As I work on The Hummingbird’s Tongue I’ve been referring back to my first memoir, Stranger in the Family, and I still wonder why that book couldn’t find a publisher in Canada. I look at the literary landscape up north and it’s virtually impossible to find a novel or film or play that reflects my generation’s reality; there’s a fair amount of “back home” or “over there” and not a lot of “this is what it’s like for us HERE.” So much work to do…

Here’s a glimpse of the roundtable:

taking flight

Now that my panel is over I have time to blog about my first visit to St. Lucia. The island is beautiful and the beach across the street from our hotel is stunning. Rosa and I went over there late in the afternoon and the water was so clear, even when it reached up to our necks. I don’t have the same tolerance for the sun that I had when I was a kid, but we did lie out for a while and it was nice not to have to stress about my paper. I applied to this conference because I knew it would force me to make some kind of sense out of all the research I’ve conducted in and on Nevis. I’ve been thinking about The Hummingbird’s Tongue for months and months and I bet I could sit down and write the book in one month—IF I had a month with no other obligations. But the fall semester starts in a couple of weeks, I haven’t yet designed my new writing intensive syllabus, I still haven’t finished Judah’s Tale and that HAS to happen this month, and I’m still working to place The Deep. My article for Jeunesse will likely need more revisions before it gets published this fall, and that just doesn’t leave a lot of time for me to write this memoir. I wrote Stranger in the Family in about 5 weeks, but I was unemployed then and trying to hold onto my sanity while living with my mother in Toronto. While we were treading water this afternoon Rosa told me about some artists residencies in the Caribbean. I’m thinking I should plan to return over winter break and really try to get this book written. It weighs on me—I’m constantly remembering things from my childhood, and I’m discovering more about my family as I meet more and more cousins. I also think about my father a lot and that can be emotionally exhausting. Today my co-panelist Cyril Dabydeen came up to me and asked, “Is that your father at the back?” And for a split second I wished I could say “Yes.” But it was my other co-panelist, filmmaker Davina Lee, whose father was anxiously awaiting his daughter’s presentation. I have so many memories and ideas and questions; it’s all piling up in my head and I need to sit down at a table, spread everything out before me, and make it all make sense. I think I said I would post my conference paper here on the blog but as soon as the panel ended, the editor of Caribbean Quarterly came up and said she’d be interested in considering my paper for publication! That was my main objective in attending this conference and I wasn’t completely satisfied with the paper I pulled together this week, but with a little more work I think it will be worthy of publication. The hummingbird is almost ready to take flight…

I’ve had two migraines this week and Rosa and I have both remarked on how difficult it is to “turn off” our brains, which are always looking ahead, prioritizing items on the neverending To Do list. But on Tuesday we flipped the switch and took a day trip to Soufriere. The Pitons were stunning, even when draped in mist, and the off and on rain showers didn’t matter much since when we weren’t covered in volcanic mud, we were bracing ourselves for the HOT HOT HOT sulphur springs. We had lunch at Fond Doux, a nearby cocoa plantation, and then held on as our driver expertly navigated the narrow, winding road that led up and down the steep hills. Tomorrow we’re hoping to spend some time in Castries, the capital city, before attending the farewell beach bbq on Friday night. And then Saturday takes me back to Brooklyn! This isn’t a vacation but conducting and presenting research in the Caribbean definitely has its perks…

the repeating island

As I prepare to write my conference paper I’m reading The Repeating Island by Antonio Benitez Rojo. Islands in the Caribbean are not identical but during the 90-minute taxi ride from the airport yesterday I had a chance to compare St. Lucia to Nevis. These are just preliminary observations, of course, and Nevis is a much smaller island (often lauded by travel writers for remaining “unspoiled”).

Things that are the same:

The night-time chorus of frogs/crickets.
Even with all the curtains drawn, light enters your room before 6am.
Mourning doves start cooing before dawn.
Lush green vegetation everywhere and rainforest in undeveloped areas.
Enormous cinder block houses in various stages of construction can be seen from the road.
St. Lucians drive on the left.

Things that are different:

Drivers raise an arm in salute but don’t lightly tap their horns every time they pass a friend on the street.
Goats and cows are tethered and not roaming freely in packs (I haven’t seen any monkeys yet).
There aren’t any swales to allow rushing rainwater to cross the road as it comes down the mountainside.
St. Lucia has an active volcano.
St. Lucia has an impressive-looking mental health hospital.
There’s a KFC, Burger King, and Church’s Fried Chicken in a nearby mall.
St. Lucia produces its own bananas and sugar rather than importing these from neighboring countries.
Lasting influence of French rule (St. Lucians speak English and Kweyol/Creole).

Yesterday I shared a taxi with a scholar from Long Island University and a musicologist from Nigeria. I asked her if St. Lucia reminded her of Nigeria and she said that the setting did feel very similar. She then asked the driver if there was a KFC in St. Lucia and so he made sure to point it out as we drove by…

Time for breakfast. More later after I have a chance to explore.

 

symbolic substitutions

No, I am not going to write about that brilliant essay by Hortense Spillers. I just want to share part of this amazing blog post over at Hope Avenue. A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my frustration with relatives who feel entitled to comment on my weight. This advice will go in the letter I send to those women:

How to talk to your daughter about her body, step one: don’t talk to your daughter about her body, except to teach her how it works.

Don’t say anything if she’s lost weight. Don’t say anything if she’s gained weight.

If you think your daughter’s body looks amazing, don’t say that. Here are some things you can say instead:

“You look so healthy!” is a great one.

Or how about, “you’re looking so strong.”

“I can see how happy you are – you’re glowing.”

Better yet, compliment her on something that has nothing to do with her body.

Don’t comment on other women’s bodies either. Nope. Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one.

Teach her about kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself.

Don’t you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don’t go on a diet in front of your daughter. Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don’t say “I’m not eating carbs right now.” Your daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.

Do read the entire post—sometimes we don’t know how to change the dialogue because we can’t find a better script. This is it!

triple shot

When I sat down to write on Friday morning I realized I’d only written 850 words for the week and only 3200 words for the entire month. Spending a week in Nevis threw my writing routine, and when I got back I found it hard to reach my self-imposed quota of a thousand words a day. But what I’ve learned about writing is that you have to trust yourself—and you have to keep at it even when the results are disappointing. By 3pm yesterday I’d written a thousand words and to celebrate I went out and bought a pint of triple espresso gelato. After devouring half the pint in one sitting, I went back to the novel and wrote another 1500 words before calling it quits around midnight. Then I woke at 4:45am and managed to crank out another 300 words before heading to the park for a run. I also did a bit of pruning last night—it’s funny how being productive somehow gives you the courage you need to cut away dead weight. When you’re not writing, every word seems too precious to surrender but I *know* this novel is too long. And I know that when I finish these last ten chapters, I’m going to have to go back to the beginning and show no mercy. I’m at 88K words and will probably reach 100K before I’m done.

It took a while for me to accept that this book will not be the novel I set out to write in 2003. In fact, I recently accepted the fact that it will also need a new title because it’s no longer accurate to call it Judah’s Tale. I first envisioned a book told entirely from Judah’s point of view. But now I’ve got alternating viewpoints, which helps to reveal the journey that Genna’s on as well. What interests me most is the way teenage girls handle power and so I’m struggling to give Judah equal time in this novel. I just don’t know him the way I know Genna, and I thought I could redeem him in this book but so far that’s not looking likely. He’s a boy who’s bought into patriarchy and there’s not a whole lot I can do about that—not if I’m committed to realism. Even a fantasy novel has its limits…

Ok, there’s no food in the house (besides leftover gelato) so I better head to the grocery store. Samiya Bashir posted a brilliant diagram on Facebook a while back that argued artists can only do two things at a time: you can meet your deadline and a) practice good hygiene, or b) socialize with friends, or c) maintain good eating habits. This weekend I think I will opt for good hygiene. If I reach 1000 by 3pm, I’m heading out for a burger with fries (hold the shake).