how to be happy
Several years ago I started to think more about happiness. As someone who has lived with depression and anxiety since I was a teen, I worried that my mental health issues were preventing me from finding and/or experiencing joy. Then, when I started tracking my own happiness and found I was pretty happy much of the time, I started to worry about claiming an identity as a depressive. I’m high-functioning, highly productive and the past few years have probably been the happiest of my adult life. I still have blue days but I seem to have found the right balance—my anxiety pushes me to get things done but depression helps to slow me down, turn inward, and become more reflective. In 2015 I went to London for my birthday and couldn’t believe how happy I was to be alone in the city, doing research for The Ghosts in the Castle. Lately I’ve been thinking about the word “sovereignty” and this writer’s life provides so much autonomy—a key factor in my newfound happiness. Being a spinster suits me; I still think about having a family and raising kids but what makes me happy right now is being accountable to no one—making decisions based on what I need or want. Sounds selfish, right? I just booked another trip to London for my 45th birthday in October and I know most of the choices I make wouldn’t be possible if I had kids. I like being an aunty—having occasional contact with kids and minimal responsibility—and this summer I’m going to try to get up to Nova Scotia to see my nieces. Writing Aunt Joss in The Ghosts in the Castle was a lot of fun because she was a version of me: a single, middle-aged Black feminist professor who adopted a son with nerdy tendencies. Aunt Joss is still bitter about the way she was raised in the UK by her Caribbean parents and she’s determined NOT to pass imperialist ideas on to the next generation. When I finished presenting at the NCRCL in London last spring, the director of the center stood up and read a passage from Ghosts in which Aunt Joss complains to her sister about the problematic “classics” they read as kids—books that still hold appeal for contemporary kids. I was having a good writing day yesterday and it got even better when Debbie Reese posted a tribute on her blog to radical aunts. There are two aunts in Ghosts but only Joss is willing to break with tradition and challenge the conventions that harm our youth. Joss delivers a few mini lectures in the novel and Debbie appreciated the aunt’s role in telling the truth about colonization. How can you take a child to a museum and NOT talk about how all those artifacts were acquired? Please stop by American Indians in Children’s Literature to read her review of The Ghosts in the Castle and the latest Lola Levine novel by Monica Brown.
I’m averaging 500 words a day this weekend and that’s a good thing because I am FINALLY finishing the 3000-word story I was supposed to write back in March. I’m at 2600 words so I really need to tighten the narrative and use precise language. I took a week off after finishing The Return and it’s with a couple of editors now. My new picture book story is also under review and I was pleased to hear from a publisher in the UK who wanted to see some other manuscripts. Purple Wong has finished the preliminary sketches for Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged and I’m pausing to get some feedback before we move forward with that picture book. And then on Thursday the summer issue of African Voices magazine came out—it includes an interview by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie about my experiences within the kid lit community. You can find the digital edition here.
The summer’s disappearing before my eyes! Just six weeks until the start of September, which always signals the end of summer for me because I’m still on an academic calendar. I’ll be teaching a creative writing class on ghosts & portals for Uptown Stories at the end of August—if you know kids in or near Washington Heights, check us out!
