Deciding to Write in Dialect
When my mother started teaching, the word Ebonics hadn’t yet been coined; nobody had grappled in the academic journals as to whether to accept it in the classroom or make [...]
3
Feb. 2015
26
Jan. 2015
What makes a story resonate?
My mother was known for being a storyteller. As she grew older, she repeated the stories more and more, but I still listened. I knew exactly what she was going [...]
19
Jan. 2015
Fears About Writing About Race
I’m nervous even as I write this first line. How does a white person write about her interactions with black people in a way that doesn’t offend anyone? There are [...]
12
Jan. 2015
Family Reaction to My Writing
Not very long ago, I wouldn’t have been able to write much about my sister Connie. She’s nine years older than me and I imagine she didn’t find me particularly [...]
29
Dec. 2014
How I Became Cyrano de Bergerac
Writing in my mother's voice came in handy when she decided to seek my father’s input on her journal. They’d been divorced for thirty years, but she still valued his [...]
15
Dec. 2014
I’m no expert on the civil rights movement.
When people ask me what my book is about, my standard response is to say that when I was ten years old in 1967, my father transplanted our family from [...]