first ten days
Words seem to have left me. I didn’t write a thing over the holidays, and so I am using the subzero temperatures as the excuse I need to stay indoors and get this essay done. So far I’ve only got one angry paragraph about the Daniel Handler incident and a commitment to this opening line: “I can’t breathe.” I hoped 2015 would be different—insert page break, please—but we seem to have picked up right where we left off. A white man allegedly bombed the NAACP office in Colorado but the US media isn’t covering that act of terrorism (have you seen Selma yet?); they’re too consumed with the other act of terrorism in Paris, leaving many to ask—yet again—whose lives matter. I was anxious about teaching my diverse speculative fiction class at Pine Manor College, but I think it went well. Only three students registered but we had about 13 people in the end, and everyone seemed interested and invested in examining the power dynamics behind the writing and publication of spec fic. I miss teaching and so I’m glad I’ll be heading back into schools this month; I have 5 school visits booked so far, and I’ll be on the publishing panel at the Schomburg’s 3rd Annual Black Comic Book Fair on January 17. Several friends are coming in from out of town and I know we will gather afterward to break bread and analyze the field. It’s always good to be around creative people who also view the world through a critical lens. Last night Dr. Ebony Thomas (@Ebonyteach) filled my inbox with Twitter notifications by sharing my list of 2014 African American MG & YA Novels. We didn’t reach 40 books for the year and yet YALSA suggests 3000 YA novels are published annually in the US. You do the math. But somehow when I publicize this depressing fact, it becomes a bit more bearable. Because I know I’m not the only one who’s pissed off, and I’m also not the only one working to create alternatives to the traditional publishing process. I was really impressed by how earnest and engaged the MFA students at Pine Manor College were; when people are confronted with injustice, often the first response is to look away or clam up, but these writers were more ready to fight than flee. Later that evening I gave a reading from A Wish After Midnight and enjoyed hearing work by the program’s full-time faculty, Robert Lopez and Laura Williams McCaffrey. A couple of Canadian students came up afterward and we compared the prospects for writers here in the US and in the Great White North. Then I was called upstairs to sign copies of my books, which apparently sold out in a flash. It was COLD in Boston, but everyone involved with the Solstice program was warm and welcoming; Anne-Marie Oomen cooked dinner for the faculty and loaned me a sweater when she saw me shivering in the lounge, and the way things ran so smoothly was clearly due to the amazing organizational skills of Meg Kearney and Tanya Whiton. We’re only ten days into the new year and it’s clear there are challenges ahead, but as the Buddhist proverb reminds us, “the obstacle is the path.” Sometimes we just have to focus on moving forward…
