Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 85

Shadra's new book: White Water

My good friend Shadra Strickland has a new book out: White Water by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein. It's available today and the illustrations are amazing! Shadra kindly took a moment out of her busy schedule to answer some questions about the book:
In the blogosphere there has been a sense of fatigue when it comes to Civil Rights Movement stories, and this is your second project from that era (Our Children Can Soar). How do you approach this particular historical moment and what strategies do you use to create illustrations that seem "fresh"? 

Funny, I don't think of OCCS being a Civil Rights Movement book. The pioneers in the book do span across that time period, but it isn't solely about the Civil Rights Movement. When creating the Ruby Bridges painting in OCCS, I did have to focus on one moment in time which was a lot more challenging for me, especially given the fact that Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With is the iconic image of that historical moment. My goal in that painting was to add to the heart of Ruby Bridges's story. I read her autobiography, watched the movie, and read Steinbeck's account of her first day at school. In the end, the most significant moment was when she bravely crossed the threshold of an all white school. The challenge of coming up with a new perspective is what added to the freshness I think. I was able to add my own ideas to the narrative, which is really important. I have learned that it isn't enough to just reiterate in pictures what the author is already telling us.
My goal in every project is to visually tell an interesting and coherent story and I approached White Water from that angle first. If anything, I was hesitant to add fantasy elements in the art because I didn't want to trivialize the events in the story. I was also against using the same linear devices in White Water that I used in Bird. But thinking about childhood and how imagination is impervious to the harsh realities of life, I felt more confident in telling the story with a few visual surprises that relate solely to the wonder of being a child. When I build a character, I think a lot about their internal world. Michael was very courageous and smart. I thought he probably read the Sunday funnies and had a hero from one of the strips. I researched the local Opelika comic strips but couldn't find anything that I could really use in my art. I then thought of my cousin and how growing up he was never without army men or action figures. It made sense to me that Michael would look to similar symbols of courage as well.

You've won so many awards–the most recent being the Ashley Bryan Award–yet you're still in the early stages of your career. Talk about the impact of earning such acclaim and the future you see for yourself in the changing world of publishing.
Awards are terrifying and exciting all at once. They are fantastic for boosting the ego and validation, but they also make me extremely competitive with myself and self-aware. I always want to see growth in my work, but the awards that I have been honored to accept give me a heightened sense of responsibility in what I do—from the type of stories I accept, to how I tell a story visually. They also make me aware of the impact that picture books have on people's lives and how far reaching they are. When I share a book like Bird or Hurricanes with a stranger and they are moved to tears, it's quite humbling.
I can't predict the future. I do know that I will continue making books and telling stories for as long as I can and I will continue to grow and challenge myself as an artist. If I need to stop making books and find another outlet for my work, so be it. My mantra is simple: do good work and the rest will follow.

boys on film

My head's full of stories but I haven't allowed myself to sit and write. The fall semester starts in less than two weeks and I've been obsessing over my syllabi; new courses are always a challenge, especially when the course (African Civilization) falls outside my area of expertise. I like the course I've designed, and keep stumbling across texts that "fit"—like this response to historian David Starkey's racist rant on the BBC. Are the riots a result of "whites becoming black"? Did black people (and Jamaicans specifically) really teach white youth to act out violently? Nabil Abdul Rashid went straight to the Moors: "we taught you how to bathe." He goes on to use historical events to demonstrate that violence and looting are deeply embedded in British culture, predating the arrival of Jamaicans in the UK. He even suggests that the African slave trade was a form of looting…I see an interesting class discussion following this text. I also decided to show Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time" video on the first day of class as an example of how ancient African civilizations manifest in contemporary culture…

Saw two great films in the past week but don't have headroom for a thorough review. Gun Hill Road is an important film about a Latino father who returns from prison to find his beloved son is transitioning to a young woman. Mikey (Harmony Santana) has grown his hair out and regularly performs at a poetry club as "Vanessa." Accepted by her friends, her mother, and her mother's boyfriend Hector, Vanessa nonetheless struggles to live as a teenage girl; she's harassed at school, the boy she's servicing sexually (in part to raise money for breast implants) doesn't want to be seen with her in public, and her father—who was raped in prison—can't accept that his son is rejecting masculinity. Enrique (Esai Morales) learns that his rapist has been released from prison and brutally exacts revenge in an alley; he then takes Mikey to a prostitute and waits outside the bedroom door to make sure his son "becomes a man." Traumatized, Vanessa leaves home and finds sanctuary with Hector (who has also been menaced/mugged by possessive Enrique). This film is incredibly honest and Harmony Santana gives an amazing performance—her difficult sexual encounters left me with a knot in my stomach. But there are moments of tenderness in the film as well, and Enrique softens his stance before leaving the family once more. I have to admit that I left the theater wondering what would happen to Enrique—Vanessa still faces a lot of challenges as a transgender teen, but I felt more confident of her transition than her father's. How likely is he to "become a better man" in prison? At least one of Enrique's friends, though a petty criminal, was able to accept Mikey as Vanessa. Without that kind of support, it doesn't seem likely that Enrique will be able to address his transphobia, nor is he likely to receive treatment for his own trauma as a rape victim.

Attack the Block also attempts to redeem predatory masculinity—like Super 8, this film follows a group of teenage boys who discover that aliens have invaded their government housing project. For the first half hour of the film I had to agree with the white female character (Sam) who, after being mugged at knife point, described the boys as "fucking monsters." Of course, she later realizes that the real monsters are the greater threat and aligns herself with Moses and his crew after they defend her and kill one of the aliens. The best moment in this film—for me—was when Moses' prospective girlfriend jumps into action to save his life; paralyzed by fear, Moses hides as one of his boys gets killed by the aliens, unable to repeat his heroic samurai sword act performed earlier in Sam's apartment. His female counterparts grab a halogen lamp and an ice skate (I'm still laughing as I write this!) and disable the alien, giving Moses time to find his courage. Nonetheless, he's saved by Sam who daringly plunges a kitchen knife into the alien's jaw just as it prepares to devour Moses. There are witty jabs at white liberals throughout the film, and unlike the innocent boys in Super 8, the teens immediately accept Moses' theory that the Feds (police) planted the aliens on their block just as they sent in drugs and guns to decimate the community. The film's ending was pleasantly surprising—Moses realizes his own aggression (killing the lone female alien) is to blame for much of the chaos, and we see (through Sam's eyes) the neglect he faces at home, which made him self-reliant by pushing him into the street. Read against the recent riots that swept across the UK, Attack the Block offers an honest and entertaining look at a multiracial, working-class "band of  brothers" who demonstrate loyalty, creativity, courage, and humility. I know it's showing in Toronto and NYC—do go see it if you have the chance.

do rioters read?

When I heard that the one store left untouched during the recent riots in London was a bookstore, my heart sank. This article in The Guardian asks all the right questions, including this one: "Are you more or less likely to riot if you read?"

Maybe it's just a question of class. As the author Gavin James Bower says, "Jobs in publishing overwhelmingly go to white, middle-class people. The product reflects this, which isn't much good if you're a working-class kid." If publishing is full of white, middle-class people is it any wonder that bookshops are too? The writing community can be as diverse as it likes – in class, race, religion and genre – but if publishers don't know how to market these books, they're not going to find readers. Or maybe it starts even earlier, in school, where according to the journalist Kieran Yates "young people often don't feel like they can empathise with a syllabus of literature that is so far removed from their own lives".

love endures

In June, after attending the ChLA conference, I posted my paper here on the blog along with some of the photos I'd shown in my Powerpoint presentation. Yesterday something miraculous happened: a man who once attended college with my father wrote this email that sent my heart reeling. He has kindly given me permission to share it here on my blog. I know it likely won't mean anything to those who never knew my father, but as Mr. Greene pointed out, others might come across this blog and find meaning in his memory of that place and time. What I've learned from this amazing encounter? Time passes. Love endures.

Hello Ms. Elliot:
Yes I knew your Father. I was not in the graduation picture you have in your blog because I am a few years younger than George. I have thought about things I would like to say to you and now that I am sending you this email I hardly know how to begin. So I'll relate to you the things I remember about George. The first thing one noticed about George, besides his good looks, was his dignity. His bearing and graceful way he carried himself. Not once do I recall ever hearing him complain about anything, and he had much he could have griped about.
EPC [Eastern Pilgrim College] was racist to its core. Generations of ingrained racism that seemed absolutely normal to us whites at the time. And I my dear Lady was the worst of the worst. I was born in Mississippi. My family was Klan, and some knew about or participated in the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss. in 1964. The year I first went to EPC,  I was vocal in my disrespect of black people. I was known on campus as THE racist. So why George chose me, out of all the guys at EPC to accompany him on his home calls to the projects and ghettoes of Allentown and Bethlehem, Pa. I did not know. But I went. He never preached to me. He never said anything to me about my racist views. What he did do was take me from apartment to apartment as he counseled with all of those poor desperately needy people. Most were single mothers with a lot of kids. George selflessly gave of his time and money to help as many as he could, and always sharing the Gospel. Ms. Elliot, he showed me people trapped in poverty with no hope for the future. No way out of their situations. And so we went from place to place and it was all the same, children going hungry, mothers trying to feed four or more kids on a few meagre food stamps, and no husband in sight to help out. He did more to change my attitude and perspective by quietly having me accompany him on his rounds than a thousand lectures ever could have.
But that's not all he did. George did not follow the example of the people at EPC and limit himself to only helping black people. Because they were content with helping only the whites. He reached out to the white gang members in the projects. He worked with them. Talked their language. Arranged for them to play basketball. And took them to Church. Well, that opened up a whole can of worms because the good people of the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Bethlehem, Pa. were none too thrilled with all those rough ghetto kids attending their Church. That was the first time many of them had heard of Jesus Christ outside the context of a swear word.  But those good people started to murmur and complain, and soon those kids knew they were not welcome. And all the headway George had made with them was wiped away.
On campus, in the churches, and in the neighborhood George was surrounded by girls. White girls. Now just try to imagine being a handsome, healthy young man, and all those girls every where, and he can't be with any of them. There was a young girl, I think she was a sophomore, and she was beautiful, and she did have a thing for George. It was obvious they liked each other. They became bold and began sitting with each other on the campus park benches just talking. But George knew he would never be allowed to take her out on a date to a concert or anything like the rest of us did. He would never get to hold hands with her, and God forbid if he ever actually got a good night's kiss, like the rest of us did. There was no chance that they would have engaged in sex or immorality because they were Christians, with principles like every one else. But George was black and she was whilte and that's all anyone could see. No sympathy to their plight at all. And I remember thinking what would be the harm? Wow, talk about me doing a 180 degree turn around.  But the tongues started wagging and George and the young lady got warned by the administration not to see each other any longer. And I thought that's just not right. George is a good guy, and she's a good girl.
In your blog you alluded to George going through a period when he became militant. I don't know what happened to George after EPC. I got drafted in 1966 and I never saw him again. But down through the years I have thought about him. I just always thought he probably became a preacher. For if ever anyone had a pastor's heart it was George Hood. In the late '70s a black minister, one of two brothers, came down to our Church to preach. He was from Canada, and very soft spoken and eloquent. After one of the services I asked him if he knew George and he said yes he knew him very well. I asked him how he was doing and the minister said George was doing very well and active in the work of his church. I asked him to tell George hello for me and he said he would.
I for one would never blame him if he became bitter. Ms. Elliot, your Father gracefully endured more racism among and from his Christian brethren than most black people are ever exposed to. And he conducted himself with dignity and in doing so in the end he won. Because that college no longer exits. In fact the denomination no longer exists. It was merged with the Wesleyan Methodists.
I hope that I have in no way offended you. I said all of these things to you because sometimes children do not see the tough times their parents may have had. I wish I could see George again just so I could tell him how much I admired him.
Sincerely,
Tom Greene

lunch–with attitude

Today we had lunch in Brooklyn with Miss Attitude, otherwise known as Ari, the amazing teen blogger at Reading in Color. I confess, there were times in the past when I wondered if she was really just a teenager—how could one young woman read and write so much on top of her school work and extracurricular activities? But I'm happy to report that Ari is legit, just as impressive in person, and it was a real pleasure to have lunch with her and her mom. We talked books and politics—the politics of books—and then took some photos before parting. Here's Ari with Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Lyn Miller-Lachmann. And below is Lyn, Ari, her mom, and me.

 

meet Ranger Doug

One of my goals in writing about black history is to ignite the imagination of urban kids—many of whom walk past historical monuments every day without understanding or appreciating their significance. Ship of Souls will come out next year and since the book is dedicated to my cousin Kodie (who lives in Canada), I decided to make a short film for him featuring all the sites mentioned in the story. Today I stopped by the African Burial Ground monument and was lucky to find Ranger Doug Massenberg on duty—I first met Ranger Doug a couple of years ago and had the privilege of taking his fantastic tour of lower Manhattan. His passion for African American history is evident—and contagious! I'm definitely sending my students here for an assignment; my college is just a few blocks away and yet I wonder how many students (and faculty members) have stopped to pay respect…if YOU haven't visited the African Burial Ground museum and monument, put it on your bucket list now. It's necessary viewing…

The Birthday Party Pledge

Do you have kids in your life? Would you be willing, for one year, to give ONLY multicultural books as birthday presents? Last week I wrote a guest post for my favorite literacy org, Behind the Book. If you're looking for a way to encourage reading in children, I hope you'll consider making a donation to this wonderful program that brings authors into urban schools AND provides each child with a signed book. In my post I consider "The Real Value of Free Books," noting that books in the home make a huge impact on a child's academic success, yet the habit of book-buying isn't always present in low-income areas. We need to find ways to develop that habit, and the BPP is one idea. Do you have any others? Does giving away books diminish their actual value, or can a free book still be a prized possession?

headstrong/heartstrong

One of the things that surprised me most during my conversation with Jacqueline Woodson was her admission that she sometimes doubts if she can complete another book. At this point in my writing career, I feel like I've got lots of novels yet to come but when I think about my teaching…sometimes I wonder if I still have what it takes. I even have dreams where my classroom is chaotic, I'm unprepared, and the students are unruly! Next month I start my new job and I'm working on my syllabi right now. I want to develop several new courses because I see segments of the student population that aren't being served by the existing curriculum. And I was raised to simply fix whatever I see that's broken—my father called that "taking the initiative" rather than waiting to be asked. That approach hasn't always worked well at other jobs, however, because what I see as "broken" others often see as perfectly fine. And I do wonder—how will these students respond to my teaching style? Will my ideas and innovations be appreciated by the other faculty? Will I be expected to simply uphold the status quo? Then yesterday I got this beautiful, heartwarming email from a former student and it banished (almost) all of my anxiety:

Dear Dr. Elliott
  Hello, my name is ***. I am not sure if you remember me but I took your African American Literature class at *** roughly five years ago while you were a visiting professor. I have recently been thinking back on my time at *** and as a whole it was not a great educational experience. However, one of the few great moments of my college education was taking your college course. You unknowingly bestowed upon me an immeasurable amount of strength. You always forced me to look within myself, and take what I learned from class and attempt to use it within my own life. I remember vividly a heated class discussion we had one day. You asked the class, "Can being gay be equated with being black?" I had never come out to anyone outside of my closest friends, yet you made me feel secure enough to speak up and come out in front of the class in defense of being gay. I just want to let you know that regardless if you remember me or not I appreciate you. You have made a huge impact on who I am today and I will forever be indebted to you and I hope that many, many other people get to experience what I experienced. You were the bright spot to an otherwise dark education and i thank you so much for that. You were amazing and again thank you. I sincerely hope to meet you again some day.



With extreme respect and gratitude,



B

Jacqueline Woodson interview, Part 2

As promised, here's the second half of my interview with Jacqueline Woodson. You can also find a condensed version at Ms. Magazine's blog and I filmed our conversation, too (find it on YouTube).

ZE: Do you identify as a feminist writer?

JW: Um…

ZE: Or as a feminist at all?

JW: It depends on who the audience is. You know, if I was speaking to a group of feminists I think I would identify as a feminist writer. If I was speaking to a group of writers, I would identify as a writer who is feminist. It really depends. I feel like I get really nervous sometimes around the qualifiers because of who has to qualify and who doesn't have to qualify. Am I an African American writer? It depends. If I'm speaking to an all-black audience, then yeah, I'm an African American writer. If I'm speaking to a group that's not all African American, then I'm a writer who is African American. If I'm speaking to a queer audience, I'm a queer writer. And on it goes. But all of those things completely inform who I am and are a part of it. And so I definitely am a feminist but I really think that in order to create change in this world, we have to figure out who does the qualifying and who gets qualified and begin to change that.

ZE: Well, since you are going to have a teenager before too long—she's a tween already, right?

JW: Oh, man…

ZE: How do you think today's teenagers learn about feminism? I claimed that identity at age 12, but don't recall reading books with feminist characters until college. Sometimes I worry that young people today think the most empowered black woman of their generation is Beyoncé.

JW: She's pretty powerful! It's an interesting time to be a mom, to be a woman, you know, post-hip hop…

ZE: Are we post-hip hop?

JW: Well, the kids growing have never not known hip hop. And I think they haven't [not] known the beautiful brown girl who's super famous. We had Aretha Franklin. I had Michael Jackson and he was a young performer but he was male and complex, and he had brothers and some of them were cute and some weren't. But we didn't have all these icons who were similar to us to choose from. So I wasn't trying to say, "I could be the next Aretha Franklin or Al Green." I didn't want to. It was a different world. But here the worlds have come so close in this information age, everything is right up on us and we have all this information about everybody. And all this access and "friendship" too. So all of a sudden kids have–this is their world. I think one thing I've noticed is that my daughter has Tashawn, Toshi Reagon's daughter who is her cousin, and she idolizes her. And she has Kali, Linda Villarosa's daughter. Linda used to be one of the heads at Essence and she wrote the first lesbian story in Essence about coming out. Having those two teenagers in her life makes a big difference. Tashawn—you know who her grandmother is [Bernice Johnson Reagon], and her mother is, and now who she's become. It took her a long time to get there but she's like, "Toshi, You need to shower. You smell." And Toshi will be like, "Ok, I hear." Or, "Toshi, you need to stop looking at whoever the celebrity is and think about what you want to be." And it's so interesting that she can't hear it from us. But she can when it comes from teenage girls. I was looking at New Moon Girl, which is a feminist young girl's magazine I got for her—it's great. When she first got it she was like, "This doesn't have any advertisements in it." And I'm like, "Yes, that's the point." And she hated it at first and then I saw her sneaking and reading some of the articles. But they say young girls need older girls that they look up to so they have all these celebrities close but then they have real girls even closer. And that person needs to be someone on the up and up. Kali and Tashawn are two teenagers I trust forever and that's going to make a difference in her life. Also she's being raised by a village, and coming back to those Republicans and whatever they say about single parent families…they don't understand that culturally, that a lot of times these kids may have a single dad or a single mom but they also have these villages going on and people who are not letting them get away. And they don't have what I call "the nuclear insanity." Even when I was growing up with my mom and grandma, it was like, "This is the family. It doesn't go outside of the family. Don't tell anybody about that." And now we have the village and they're like, "Your mom is crazy if she thinks she should do that!" And so the kid has other adults to bounce things off of.

ZE: Multiple perspectives.

JW: Exactly. And so I think that's what's hopefully going to help her through all the dreck. And a lot of kids through figuring out who they are. But I think they so need those feminists who don't even know they're feminists yet. I don't know if you asked Kali and Tashawn if they're feminists–I think they completely are, but I don't know if that's the language they would use to describe who they are.

ZE: Well, many black women historically have rejected the "f' word and chosen some other terms.

JW: Who was it who said, "If there was a war between white feminists and black something I'd be shot in the back by someone who calls me 'sister'"? Maybe it was Barbara Jordan? But basically that fight, whose side am I really on? The person was a black lesbian. That kind of dilemma…it is true—the minute I think of feminist, I think: white woman. I think of "strong black woman" as the equivalent of feminist but I use different language for it.

ZE: Different associations, that's interesting. I never think of white women when I think of feminism!

JW: Really!

ZE: I get nervous when people ask if I can teach Gender Studies because I don't know any of those white women! All I know are the black women. So I could teach Black Women's Studies or Black Feminist Studies. But I'm at a loss when it comes to the rest of it.

JW: Didn't so many black feminists—did they ally with the white feminists?

ZE: Some people argue that the feminist movement comes out of the abolitionist movement. So you had these really devoted white women, black women, men who were committed to abolition and that form of social justice. But a lot of abolitionists weren't interested in racial equality. So then when you see the first wave feminist movement evolving out of the abolitionist movement and pushing for suffrage…certain black women got invited to speak in the north, but not in the South…so I just feel like there's always been these divergent histories and there are moments where they're bound together but it just doesn't seem genuine to me…Ok, we're almost at the end.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center keeps annual statistics on the race of authors of children's books, and these stats consistently show that authors of color make up less than 5% of all the books published for children. I sent you a long quote by Barbara Smith, one of the founders of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

JW: I can't believe you explained who Barbara Smith was!

ZE: I'll just read a short part:

"As feminist and lesbian of color writers, we knew that we had no options for getting published except at the mercy or whim of others—in either commercial or alternative publishing, since both are white dominated."

Now you are a prolific, celebrated, award-winning author. Would you say that the problems Smith identified in the 1980s have been resolved? For example, could you name five other black LGBT authors of children's literature?

JW: Um…I couldn't. I probably could name two, but that doesn't—I don't know if they don't exist. I don't know if people just aren't out. I think that's one of the interesting things that's still happening. Even with white children's book writers, I think there are people who are still very closeted. And since people of color getting published in the mainstream is still pretty new, I don't know how many people are coming out and having their first book be a queer book and saying, "I'm queer." I think it's still very loaded. I think you're dealing with children, and you're dealing with a society that automatically associates pedophilia with anybody who's interested in children in any way. And a lot of people who still think that queerness is some pathology. I definitely know there are not a lot of—I haven't come across a lot of young black writers that are new, but I feel like, if the book is finished and it's halfway decent, I feel like there's a home for it. And I don't know if that's me just being out there and not knowing enough about publishing. I mean, you're one of the new writers coming up. I think of Coe Booth, Brenda Woods, the woman who did Fly Girl [Sherri L. Smith]. I'm just thinking of African American and Caribbean American writers that I can think of off the top of my head. I think the writing is very different. I think you're one of the people who's potentially going to change the world of—I don't want to say "science fiction" and sound like an old school person…

ZE: Speculative fiction.

JW: Right, speculative fiction. I think Coe is doing more of the kind of urban stuff and then other people are trying to do some of the old school traditional writing. But I think in terms of publishers trying to figure out where it belongs, that's kind of a slower movement—especially with the business of books changing so quickly. And I also don't know what's happening on the web and what people are doing for themselves, the way Barbara Smith was able to create a press that was still publishing paper [books]. I don't know what's happening out in the world where people are saying, "Ok, to heck with publishing because they're not publishing me." But is starting your own press…

ZE: Well, that's me—I had to self-publish.

JW: Yeah, so you self-published but you also have your blog, which is a new part of publishing. And you're an academic so you're writing about it and changing the world that way. So I think—

ZE: You feel optimistic then about the future of publishing.

JW: You're like, "Shut up."

ZE: No! It sounds like—

JW: I think I feel optimistic but I think people can't expect it to be the old way of doing stuff. I mean, I start doing this in the '90s—my first book was published in 1989. And that was before the web, it was before so much changed about publishing. I think if I was starting to write today, I would be self-publishing.

ZE: Do you really?

JW: I totally think so.

ZE: Why?

JW: Because I think—especially if I started with a book like Last Summer with Maizon. Maybe if I started with Maizon at Blue Hill, because that's something other—a black girl going into a white environment. So I think that book might have made it into the mainstream. Or the book I just wrote. But I don't know about Miracle's Boys, I definitely don't think Last Summer with Maizon. From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun? I don't know. Because a publisher's first question is, "How is this going to sell? And how much money can I make off this?" And if they think it's going to sell to 1000 people, that's not good—or if they think it's not going to have a long life or win an award. All those things inform what gets out in the world. It's sad, but we do what we've always done, which is, make a way out of no way. And I think people must be doing that because there are so many writers in the world.

ZE: So do you think it's less likely for a writer starting out today—for, say, a writer like me to have thirty books published in my lifetime with traditional presses? Or will it be a mix of digital publishing and self-publishing…

JW: It depends on how you write. When I started out I was writing three books a year, now I write about two. And if you look at it over—how many years have I been doing this?

ZE: Twenty.

JW: I think it's possible. I don't think they'll be books. They might be e-books, or self-published. They might be books that go straight to film. I think there are all these doors that have opened that are great. So negotiating contracts is different now—what happens when iPad wants to buy your book? Which I still haven't figured out, not that they've offered. They might be books that start on the iPad, that you're commissioned for, and none of that makes them lesser than. I don't think self-publishing makes a book lesser than a mainstream publisher because you have all the same outlets for getting the book published. And also you have the same places you can send them to for awards.

ZE: A lot of places won't accept self-published books. A lot of review outlets won't accept them. At Kirkus, for example, you have to pay to have a self-published book reviewed.

JW: But you also have to pay to have a book on the table at Barnes & Noble in mainstream publishing. So I think if part of self-publishing is paying Kirkus for a review, if that means it gets a good review and gets the book out there, I think it's worth doing. I just don't see it as lesser than. I think it's a new world and this is a new way to get the book out there. It's going to be interesting to see what survives. Mainstream publishers are taking books out of print by the minute. Whereas you have all this control over how the book stays in print, how long it lasts, how many ways to get it out into the world. I feel like, one of the places I'm at is, having for years depended on the publisher to do all the publicity and make the book last. And then you have something like the bind-up of If You Come Softly. Barnes & Noble didn't pick it up and it's about to go out of print after a year because the mainstream publisher depends solely on Barnes & Noble, and if they say "Stop, we don't want this," then the publisher goes, "Wow! Now what do we do?"

ZE: They passed on it? Because of the cover?

JW: I don't know why. I have no idea why they passed on it.

ZE: I think that's one of your most popular books, from people I talk to.

JW: I think they'll carry If You Come Softly or Behind You [separately]. I haven't seen it in a long time in the neighborhood B&N, but when this [bound edition] came along they said, "We're not carrying this in our stores."

ZE: That's happened to a lot of authors I know of—authors of color specifically.

JW: Interesting.

ZE: And then publishers try to change the cover to make it look like it's not about people of color—"Don't panic!"

JW: "You can read this!" So I think one of the cool things about being a writer now is that you're already on the forefront of how to get the stuff, you know, how to do the work that needs to be done to get the book in the world in a way that I'm not.

ZE: Are you interested in the blogosphere?

JW: To blog myself?

ZE: Or to follow other people's blogs?

JW: Yeah, I like reading blogs but I can't even imagine…whenever I think of [starting] a blog I think, "I should be working on a book, I should be answering fan mail."

ZE: It can be a huge time suck. But people would love to know your every daily detail.

JW: I tweet though.

ZE: That's true. Does that make you feel more connected to your readers?

JW: It does. It also makes me have to think about each day in a different way. Today I was tweeting about a nine-year-ld kid I saw walking down the street reading a Kindle. He tripped and I thought, "That's the book. That's the book talking to him!" And a part of me went, "Yes!" But Toshi's sister is getting a Kindle for her birthday because she lives between two houses and she gets mad when she leaves her books at one house. And that makes sense. But it gives me pause because so much change is happening so quickly. But no—I love your blog but I won't be joining you there.

ZE: Ok. For all those bloggers out there, I tried. To conclude, you mentioned you have a book about meth addiction. When can people expect to see that on the shelf?

JW: That's coming out in January of 2012.

ZE: Oh, good—not that long.  And I think you said you have books scheduled to come out for the next five years?

JW: I have books coming out until 2014. I have a picture book that EB Lewis is illustrating, Each Kindness, about the year that a girl is not kind, and the aftermath of that, how one can't go back to a moment, the moment might stay with them always. And I'm excited about it. And I have another picture book called The Rope that James Ransome's illustrating. And I have a book called Baby's Brothers Red and Blue that actually spans many decades. It's a novel that starts in 1910 and goes to the 1970s, about two brothers from the Negro Migration through the Viet Nam War. A lot of stuff happens. And right now I'm trying to finish up a book about a girl who time travels back to pre-Civil War. But it's not going so well—yesterday I stopped writing early.

ZE: When you stop writing do you pick up another project?

JW: Yeah. I'm doing that play [on African American folk artist Clementine Hunter]. I'm actually going to the library now because I refuse to buy any more books. I need to get a bunch of librettos to read because I just don't know how to write one.

ZE: You've done an adaptation before.

JW: Yeah, that's Locomotion. But I'm doing an opera with Robert Wilson, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Toshi Reagon. And so since it's an opera and I'm writing the book, I don't know how to do that. But I did the adaptation of Locomotion, and that was fun.

ZE: Do you like the idea of reaching different audiences with different formats?

JW: I do! I'm really starting to like the play format and it's kind of my go-to when I'm really stuck as a writer. It makes me feel like, "Ok, I got this."

ZE: I feel like writing plays helped me to hone dialogue. You really have to embed action in the dialogue because they're on a stage, they can't be running around doing all kinds of different things.

JW: It is really true. It creates a much cleaner line. And that tightness comes back to my fiction.

ZE: And congratulations—you just won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor award for Pecan Pie Baby. I was talking to illustrator Shadra Strickland—she just won the Ashley Bryan award and I asked her if she had a space in her studio for her awards. And she said, "I can't! I have a space right above my desk but it's just too much." What do you do with all your awards?

JW: They're behind me.

ZE: So at your desk. You don't face them, but they're there.

JW: Yeah, I can turn and look at them. If they were right on the wall in front of me I would be stressed out. And it took me a long time to put them up in my office. I still have a bunch in the storeroom. But I definitely don't have them facing me, and I actually don't work in my office so much. I go in there once the book is finished.

ZE: What's the greatest reward of being a writer if it's not the award?

JW: You know, I feel like when I finish a book, that's when I'm happiest as a writer. When I know I've written that last line, before I start having the cover fight with my publisher. It's such an accomplishment to say, "Ok, this is done. I've done this." Before I start stressing about the next book. So usually I'm working on more than one book at a time, but when one is coming really well, I'll stop and just work on that. And when I write that last line, there's no other feeling. So that's cool. And I love when a new story comes. I don't know if this happens to you, but when you've written that last line you think, "This is it. This is the last book I'll ever write."

ZE: I can't believe you think that, having written 30 books.

JW: Thirty's pretty much a whole number. So this is the gift that the universe gave me, it's enough now. I do think there's a time to move on.

ZE: What would you do if you weren't writing?

JW: Dream dream dream? Like, if I could do anything I wanted to do? I'd play pro ball.

ZE: Basketball? Get out of here—like for the Liberty?

JW: No, no, for the Nets, for the Knicks, for the Phoenix Suns, or the Chicago Bulls.

ZE: Ok, explain that to me.

JW: Well, you said, "dream."

ZE: You would want to play in the men's league?

JW: Yes, yes. I'd want to be tall enough, powerful enough. I love basketball.

ZE: Interesting. Why not the WNBA?

JW: I like the NBA. It's faster, it's bigger…

ZE: It's more physical.

JW: Yeah, it's much more of an adrenaline rush. I respect and love a lot of the women who play for the WNBA, and I'm glad it's there. And I think also, from childhood it was my dream to be the first woman player in the NBA. And then the WNBA came along when I was an adult.

ZE: Well, you know, the Nets are coming to Brooklyn. They'll be in your 'hood soon enough.

JW: I know, I know. But I want to play for the New Jersey Nets!

ZE: Ok, I think I have exhausted my questions. Thank you so much for doing this!

Jacqueline Woodson interview, Part 1

In May I had the opportunity to meet with Ms. Magazine associate editor Jessica Stites while she was visiting NYC. While strolling through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, we tried to think of ways we could collaborate around the issue of equity in publishing. A conversation with veteran author Jacqueline Woodson was one of our ideas, and I'm happy to share this link to the interview on the Ms. blog ("Writing Children's Books While Black and Feminist"). Here on my own blog I've decided to post the unedited transcript in two parts; you can also find video footage of our hour-long talk on YouTube. Enjoy!

ZE: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Let's start with your early influences. Scholar Rudine Sims Bishop has argued that, "readers often seek their mirrors in books." She also suggests that books can serve as "mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors." As a child, what books offered you a reflection of yourself, and which ones opened up another world for you?

JW: That's a good question. I don't know the sliding glass door reference. I know about the mirror…

ZE: The sliding glass door often gets left out of it.

JW: Interesting.

ZE: So the window, obviously, is that you can look into someone else's world, but to me that's voyeurism. So I love that she suggests you can open that sliding glass door and enter that world and kind of exist as an equal with other kinds of people.

JW: Yeah, that's important. I'm glad that's in there. I think that looking back on it, now that I'm past my angry thirties of [having] no mirrors, I feel like I was able to make the journey of kind of finding myself in any book. Because that was all I had. So I would read something like Are you There God? It's Me, Margaret and I was flat-chested like Margaret so—ok, this was where we kind of met each other. And the books that really kind of opened doors for me—one book that in retrospect made me gasp was Stevie by John Steptoe. Just the fact that they talked like I did, they were brown like I was brown. They lived in the city, it looked like they lived in the apartment in the illustrations. And everything just made me say, "Whoa, I know these people!" And Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry just 'cause my family was from the South and I think that's a book that I've read so many times and each time I read it, it never gets old. I mean, I've revisited some of the books from my childhood and some of them feel real different than when I was reading them as a kid, but that one has held up. Zeely was one of the first books I read that was by an African American about African American people. Sounder to this day still makes me angry.

ZE: Reading it?

JW: Yeah. It's a room I'll walk out of.

ZE: Did you also see the film when you were a kid?

JW: I saw the film and I actually loved the film but the book was just—ugh.

ZE: What made you angry about it?

JW: It was supposed to be my people and it wasn't and I couldn't tell how it wasn't. So I felt like, almost kind of like I wasn't, like something almost was wrong with me. Because if this is supposed to be who we are and this is so different from who I am and who I know, then how am I legitimate? And you know, as an adult I realized that no one had a name except the dog. They were supposed to be Southerners but they never touched each other, and you know Southerners are always hugging and kissing and saying, "Look how you've grown!" And remarking on things you don't want them to remark on.

ZE: They were a sharecropping family, weren't they?

JW: They were sharecroppers, they were poor and sad. So this writer, who was not African American, could not get inside their story. I don't know what his connection was. I think in the forward he talks about someone telling him that story, like an old black man telling him the story of that family. But the fact that he could create a story where he couldn't see any hope or happiness in it…and again, I didn't know this when I was a kid. I just knew this book made me really angry. Later on, of course, I came to—I remember If Beale Street Could Talk when I was in the 7th grade maybe. Tish and Fonny, and they lived in Harlem or somewhere in the city and it was such a loving love story. I also remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a kid.

ZE: You talked before about your "angry thirties." I don't detect rage in your writing; I actually see a lot of grace. Where did that rage come from and where did it go?

JW: That's a really good question. I think the rage was more in my life. It wasn't until my early 30s that I really started thinking about the disparity between race and economic class, and all of those ways in which the world just wasn't working. I think that's when I started coming into more of a sense of myself as an outsider. And as a kid I felt it all the time because I was a Jehovah's Witness and you know, my family was kind of different from other families on the block. But in terms of my growing consciousness of who I was and how I fit into the greater scheme of things, it was kind of shocking to realize that no, I wasn't part of this privileged majority that had an education before college and that really had a lot of privilege and with it, entitlement. And I kind of had to learn about my right to be here. And that was through a lot of anger and then acceptance—not of that world as it was, but of the fact that yeah, I do have a right to be here and I do have something to say and I am as smart as and sometimes smarter than people who've been well educated or are able to pay for a lot of education. So that was definitely a period of growing, and growing through that anger, and I think the way the grace came through in the writing was it was cathartic for me. I think there were probably drafts that were angrier than other drafts and I realized I'm not going to be heard through the rage, I'll be heard through the love. And it's kind of what began to inform all of my life, including my writing. If that makes sense.

ZE: That makes a lot of sense, and it's something I could probably learn from since I'm still in my angry thirties! You're the parent of two children. In 2011, how easy is it for your children to find their "mirrors" in books? Has motherhood changed the way you write? I know you took your daughter to a literary festival not long ago, which I think is great, and I'd love to know how that went.

JW: Oh, goodness. One thing motherhood has done is it's given me even more of a sense of urgency in terms of what's at stake. What's at stake for how my children will see themselves in the world. I think before I was a parent I thought about it in terms of the child and children, but I didn't have a real personal connection to it except the connection that was me as a child and wanting what I didn't have as a child in the literature that I created. And wanting that for other children. Then once I had my children and seeing that they needed something [got me] really thinking more deeply and urgently. My daughter does not read my books. She says, "I'm not a fan." And maybe one day she will.

ZE: You're kidding!

JW: Yeah, she says she likes funny stuff. I'm not that funny. But my son reads or will let us read the picture books to him. We were at Putnam yesterday and they have posters of all the Caldecott and Newbery and Coretta Scott King winners and every time he came across one of my books he'd say, "I wrote that one Mommy." He'll also say he wrote Make Way for Ducklings. It's hysterical. But it definitely brought that sense of urgency to me. And I think I got funnier because my kids make me laugh so much. I never had that censor flag that I think some young writers have—you know, this is going to embarrass my family or make my parents mad at me. But I think now, with children, I do think if Toshi reads this in ten years, how is this going to make her feel or what is she going to think about me, and where I was in this place and it definitely informs how I'm writing stuff. When I was writing Beneath the Meth Moon, the new YA book about a girl addicted to meth, in terms of thinking about a young person addicted to drugs and Toshi coming to this book when she's 14 and thinking, "How does Mom know so much about this?" but also having that experience of that world in a way that hopefully scares her away from drugs but also makes her think about the bigger world and the greater good in a way that hopefully writing does for all people. But it is a tighter personal connection in terms of thinking about how my kids come to my writing.

ZE: I notice that in a lot of your books you represent alternately configured families and we just had the Marriage Equality Act passed here in NY state. How hard is it for you to sell stories that show children who have alternate realities?

JW: I love the way you put that—"alternate realities." It hasn't been a huge struggle in that way. I haven't really done the two mom/two dad thing, so I haven't kind of pushed that boundary. I think mainly because that story hasn't come to me yet in a way to tell it that's—when I think of a two-mom or two-dad family, I'm thinking, "This is the first thing I'm thinking about—this kid has two moms or two dads." And that's not the story. Kids don't care about that. So I'm constantly trying to think about what the deeper story is in there. Because I think novels do fail when they try to push the issue somehow, when they try to be didactic. And I never want to do that. But I do want to write about people who haven't historically been seen in literature and I think publishers are open to that as long as they like the writing. So when I put a single mom on the page, when I put a girl being raised by her grandma on the page, when I put a dad who's incarcerated on the page, when I put familial or regular foster care on the page, I have a sense of the deeper story. I was raised by my mom and grandma, so I know all the stories around that and not just, "I live with my grandma and here's that story." I think because the stories are multilayered the family can exist in the fiction in a way that is, of course, "universal," meaning other people will read it and like it and publishers will buy it. But I have had letters from The Notebooks of Melanin Sun—the first time I put a queer mom on the page people were upset about that.

ZE: Really?

JW: Yeah, I think part of it was that it was the '90s and the Christian right was really starting to skyrocket and it was published by Scholastic, which was a mistake in itself. You can't really do stuff at a conservative publisher and expect it to have the kind of life it would at a place that's more comfortable dealing with stuff like that. So again, I try not to think about any issue in the book. To me the families are families and this is what families are. To me, the mom/dad family is an alternative to my family. And so few of them exist, even on our block. That it's kind of like, when you see that it's like, "Wow—they're still together? Wow—that person's being raised by a mom and dad."

ZE: I would love to know what you think about the Iowa marriage pledge signed by some Republicans. Have you heard about that? It has a clause that claims African American children were more likely to be raised in a two-parent family under slavery than since President Obama was elected in 2008.

JW: Oh, man. Well, [those] Republicans don't know what they're talking about. It's so ridiculous because in ten years, of course, they're going to realize that that wasn't the case. When you read something like The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. In it she talks about how all the statistics at that time showed that people who were part of the Negro migration were more inclined to have children out of wedlock, to be less educated and less employed. And then twenty years later they did another study and realized that those same people were more inclined to have families that were "intact" and have higher education and have two or three jobs, who had come here with that idea of working and having a family and creating a better life. So when Republicans say that about African Americans I just have to roll my eyes, and say, "Ok, whatever you need to say about us right now to make you feel stronger, you can have it if that's all you have." When I took Toshi with me to Virginia for the conference, I made her listen to The Warmth of Other Suns on the way down and back up. She was like, "This is so boring." Chris Myers is doing a video and asking kids what does it mean to be American?

ZE: For the book he did with his dad [We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart].

JW: Right. So he's having this blog with videos on it. And I interviewed Toshi out here and she was like, "Whatever. I live in Brooklyn, I'm in Park Slope. It's America." And I said, "Come on, honey, you can be deeper than this." And she said, "What? America is America." So I said, "What does it mean to be African American?" And she said, "Well, you know, I was listening to this book with you, The Warmth of Other Suns, and I know that black people did a lot of good stuff, like we built this country. And if it wasn't for African Americans we wouldn't have Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson." And I said, "Ok, how about some non-celebrities, like the president?" And she said, "Yeah, we wouldn't even have Obama and I realize I could be president!" And that's so interesting because I don't think she can be president, you know, I'm not there yet—thinking a black woman could! I'm still at the point of thinking, "Wow, we have a black man as president." But she couldn't attach unless it was African American. "American" meant nothing to her.

ZE: You have written more than 30 books about an incredibly wide range of experiences, including foster care, teen pregnancy, witness protection programs, police brutality, and racial ambiguity, and incarceration. I notice that many of your characters move from isolation/alienation to a place of belonging. How do you develop ideas for your books, and is there a particular overarching message you want to send young readers?

JW: It's interesting that you say they move from isolation to belonging because that's kind of what I did in my thirties. And so I think I'm telling that story again and again in different ways and constantly figuring it out maybe just a little more deeply than the last time. Basically I start with the character, the characters have always come to me first and then I figure out what it is they want and how they're going to get it. I feel like so much of my life is trying to figure out what they want. Asking myself all of these questions: who is this person? Where do they live? What do they look like? What are the paradoxes in their lives? In terms of a message, I never know what a book is about until someone says to me, "I read your book about blah blah blah" and I'm like, "Oh, ok, that's what it's about?" I feel I'm so far removed, I'm very much in the process of writing but it's almost like being in a zone, really. And then with the characters and their world and by creating their world I walk deeper into their world and start seeing it clearer and clearer with each revision. Then as the characters get more clarity and the book starts moving along and then is finally finished, when I stand back I know I've written these characters and told this story but I really never know what the story's trying to say, really, until I read the good reviews because I don't read the bad ones.

ZE: I don't think there are any, Jackie!

JW: I beg to differ! I don't think I have a message aside from what I believe myself, which is that we all have a right to be here, and trying to show the many ways that people can be here and be whole. Which is what I'm constantly trying to reinforce in myself and my kids and the community. So if someone said, "Why do I write?" I think because this is the power I have, this is what I know how to do to feel powerful and to make others feel powerful.

ZE: If someone said your characters make African Americans seem noble, how would you respond?

JW: We are noble!

ZE: Some of us—some of the time!

JW: I think the fact that we're even here and standing is amazing. Given how we got to this country. You know, in the words of Audre Lorde, "We were never meant to survive."

ZE: "Not as human beings."

JW: Yeah! To go from dehumanization to humanization to creating change—or not creating change. But I think it's a miracle for a lot of people to be walking through the world given what their lives have been. But when I look at our people—not just African Americans but Caribbean Americans. Black people in this country did not come here easily, no matter how they got here. And even when you look at something like income versus wealth, and how people have been able to raise families and send their kids to college and even buy a home. We did not get 40 acres and a mule—some did, but a lot didn't, it's bootstraps. I always talk about, especially a lot of people in Park Slope, there is always some hidden money somewhere. Suddenly somebody has a down payment on a house…

ZE: That's wealth.

JW: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And for the most part we don't have wealth. We have income and maybe we have one generation of wealth. What we have is the wealth of our history and the wealth of our survival. The fact that when all else fails, this is what we can come back to. And it helps me when I'm writing a book—I'm writing the 30th book and I'm still like, "I don't think I can do this."

ZE: Really?

JW: Yeah! I'm sorry, it never goes away. That's one of the big bummers about writing. I tend to think, "That was a fluke," or "I knew I was able to do it for that one but can I do it for this?" And also because the stories, going from Christianity in Feathers to race and identity politics to meth in a Midwestern white community…

ZE: Do you do that on purpose? Do you push yourself into areas that make you feel insecure maybe?

JW: Well, Dr. Zetta…I just get bored! I don't want to revisit the same places because I don't think I have any more stories to tell there. So that's also why it's hard to write sequels. Because it's like, "I've done that!"

ZE: Oh yes…

JW: Are you in the middle of sequel writing?

ZE: I'm in the middle of two sequels. And I just read Behind You, which you kindly gave me, thank you. And I thought, "She called it a companion book." And I remembered having a conversation with another author who said, "Stop calling it a sequel. Call it a companion book because then it can exist on its own. And you don't have to fuss and worry about continuity." But it has to stand on its own in terms of dramatic action and that I struggle with a lot.

JW: But you know, from one book to the other they want different things.

ZE: The characters want different things, but readers have expectations from the first book.

JW: Yeah, that's true.

ZE: "Is she going to end up with so-and-so? And I know you didn't make her do that!" And I just think, let me just finish the book before anyone else says anything.

JW: It's true. I tend not to talk about it until I'm way deep in it and have a sense of where it's going.

[Part 2 of this interview will be posted tomorrow, but you can watch the entire interview now on You Tube.]