summer reading: Freedom Summer (and deadlines)

Whew. I've had deadline-brain. I turned in the revision and backmatter to the Kent State project (book, now), which publishes in April 2020, and that intensity, on the heels of bringing-in the last bits for ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy (publishes October 1, 2019), shoved me right over. Tilt. 

Noodle-brain, I started calling it. For days. I'm slowly pulling it back together, and so back to Summer Reading. Let me finish writing a bit about my first book, FREEDOM SUMMER and then on to RUBY next time. 

I often say that Mississippi was/is the landscape of my heart. It is certainly the geography of my childhood. Both my parents were Mississippi born and bred, so it become our homeplace each year, as we lived all over the globe in an Air Force family. I started school in Hawaii (before it became a state!) and I graduated high school in the Philippines, at Clark AFB. 

Mississippi was the place where everyone knew me and couldn't wait for me to return each summer, to pinch my cheek and tell me how much I'd grown, and to celebrate their most famous citizen (or so it seemed to a young girl then), my dad, who had left this tiny town of a few hundred people in the middle of nowhere, and gone out into the world to become a pilot and a war hero. If the town had been big enough for parades, I thought they'd have had one for my father's return each summer.

Those childhood summers were idyllic for me, with nothing to do, and nowhere much to go, except to the cemetery to visit all the relatives, to play piano in the unlocked (and un-air-conditioned) Methodist church, to ride to the Cool Dip for ice cream in the next town over, and, if you were lucky, to go roller skating and swimming at the Pine View.

Here's what the Pine View Cafe across the road from the pool and roller skating rink and pond looked like before I was even born, probably:

We ate there once that I remember. It was the first time I'd heard the term "blue plate special."

This was the roller skating rink, and next to it (hidden by cars, but on the left in front of those pines) was the pool.

In 1964, the year I was 11, the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the pool closed. The roller skating rink closed. The Pine View Cafe closed. The Cool Dip closed. The Bayless Theater in Bay Springs, the county seat a few miles away, closed. The public library closed.

It would be years before I began to understand what had happened. And even more years before I wrote about that time in FREEDOM SUMMER. And even more years before I revisited that pool. 

I have been to see it many times since, have photographed it in all seasons, and show those slides when I speak at schools or conferences, after I read FREEDOM SUMMER on slides. And always, there is a hush. You can hear a pin drop. The proverbial pin.

My pool (as I have taken to calling it) was abandoned in 1964. (In the book I have it filled in with tar/asphalt, the way the pool in Greenwood, Mississippi was turned into a parking lot.) I can't stop visiting this town, every time I go to Mississippi. I still have precious family in Mississippi, although my parents have both died, and I still feel pulled to this geography of my childhood, this time and place, this trying-to-understand. 

I'm still trying to write about this time, which I've done specifically in REVOLUTION (Freedom Summer in novel form, and Book 2 of the Sixties Trilogy), and in THE AURORA-COUNTY ALL-STARS, and in A LONG LINE OF CAKES, in which the Pine View Cafe becomes The Cake Cafe. Possibly I will write about this time in our American history for as long as I live, in one way or another. It shows up in all my novels, in some form.

FREEDOM SUMMER got me started. Here's how.

In 1997 I went to the (then called) IRA -- International Reading Association -- conference in Atlanta (I lived in D.C. at the time, and went to support a friend). I met Anne Schwartz there, who was then at Simon&Schuster/Atheneum. My good bud Deborah Hopkinson introduced us and said, "Debbie is working on a book about the civil rights movement for children."

I wasn't. I had been writing and submitting manuscripts about my southern childhood for many years, and had collected a sizeable batch of rejection letters, but I hadn't sold a book yet. 

At IRA, I'd sat up late the night before with Deborah and another writer buddy Jane Kurtz, and each of us had talked about the book we'd write if we got only one book to write in our lifetimes. I talked about the summer the pool closed. "But that's not a book for children," I said. And Deborah said, "Why not?"

On the exhibit floor that day, Anne shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, "If you write that book, I want to read it."

And four years later, S&S published FREEDOM SUMMER. 

Perhaps I'd become a better writer in the ten years I'd been practicing and collecting rejections. Perhaps it was an editor's challenge and invitation. Perhaps it was good friends believing in me. Perhaps it was a story I knew was mine to tell, and mine alone, and perhaps all those things came together in a moment that I was prepared for by all the days of my life trying to figure it out. I don't know. 

I'm grateful for this book, though. It has helped. I will read it to anyone who will listen. And I will learn from it, for all the rest of the days of my life.

dispatch from mississippi: belonging

I was born in Mobile, Alabama, while my dad was stationed at Brookley Field. He had gone off to the Korean War in 1951, just after he and my mother married, and now here I came, in 1953, on the heels of his return. We lived in Mobile for five years, until the Air Force transferred us to Hawaii. I have always claimed Alabama as the land of my birth, and I also claim Mississippi as home, as it was the land we returned to over and again as I grew up, and as my own children grew up, as my people were there. And so was my heart.

My mother was born in Mississippi and grew up in West Point, MS. My dad was born in Jasper County and grew up there. I grew up there, too, with the wacky grandmother who became Miss Eula in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, and the three maiden aunts who become Ruby's chickens, and all the cousins and aunts and uncles and a decaying town that is even more of a ghost today than it was when I was wandering its one main road and its cemetery and crossing the railroad tracks to visit Aunt Mitt and playing piano in the unlocked Methodist church.

Mississippi doesn't claim me, though. According to book committees who decide these things, I didn't live for five continuous years in Mississippi, so I am not in the club, even though I am a Mississippian by blood and by words.

This is a long story and one I hope to write about at some point, so I can figure out how I feel about choosing home. Home is in Atlanta today, of course, but home will always be where I've hung my hat: Hawaii, Maryland, D.C., South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia.... and Mississippi as well. "What you know first stays with you." I am a Southern Girl, through and through. I am a human being with stories to tell. What does that mean?

Here's what it meant this week, as I took part in the first-ever Mississippi Book Festival, visited that family I love so much (Uncle Jim is our patriarch now, about to turn 92), and that place that defined me as a child -- and as a writer. Photos below of what becomes Aurora County in my books LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER; EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS; and THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

And then there is my first book, FREEDOM SUMMER. I have never before posted pictures of the pool and roller skating rink that closed in 1964. The forest is claiming it now. I have taken photos there for many years, and have documented this abandoned place as it goes back to forest land. I wrote FREEDOM SUMMER -- and REVOLUTION -- to understand what happened. To keep this time and place alive, so we remember our history. So young people will know what it was like then. What it is like now.

Dispatch from Mississippi:

Picking up Kerry Madden along the way

downtown Jackson, Mississippi. My folks retired to Jackson after a long military career, and I kept coming to Mississippi with my own kids as they grew up... Mississippi has been a constant in my life, all my life.

With Ellen Ruffin at the Eudora Welty house on Friday night at the author reception

Kimberly Willis Holt, moi, Chris Barton, and Karen Rowell of USM.

Jamie Kornegay and Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi has been such a staunch supporter of my books. Jamie's new novel is SOIL. "It has saturated the South!" Jamie says.

Kelly Kornegay, who (among other things) reads and buys children's at Turnrow. She heard me whining about not being recognized literarily as a Mississippian and said, "Debbie, people who have lived here all their lives are trying to ESCAPE Mississippi!" which made me laugh and gave me perspective. She also said, "Your books are THE quintessential books on what it means to be from Mississippi, to be a Mississippian. You're IN." hahaha.

Fuzzy photo of a bunch of us including Lori Nichols, Ellen Ruffin, Greg Leitich Smith, Susan Eaddy, Kerry Madden

taking in all in. What a lovely evening.

We had to turn people away, in Room 113 of the State Capitol, for the Young People's Literature panel. It was that way on all panels, all day. The turnout was tremendous. HOORAY!

Pontificating. Which I am very good at.

This is what it's about at a Festival.

And this. Clara Martin is the children's book buyer at Lemuria Book in Jackson. Last year on the REVOLUTION tour, she had me sign her copy of LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER that she has had since she was a fourth grader. "My favorite book!"

Chris Barton signing Shark vs Train and John Roy Lynch in the Lemuria tent.

At dinner, Saturday night, with my loves.

My son Jason with his Great-uncle Jim. Both of them jesters.

Two more Jims: mine, and the cousin I have always called Bubba.

If you're a RUBY fan, you recognize this sign!

My grandmother's house, The Pink Palace, in RUBY, Snowberger's Funeral Home in LITTLE BIRD, House Jackson's home in ALL-STARS, and Young Joe's home in FREEDOM SUMMER. This was my world every summer, and the place I longed for when I wasn't there. Still do, I guess.

The back kitchen. Sloped ceiling, lightbulb on a string, Nanny eating buttered toast and milky coffee at the enamel table, closthepins in a bag hanging on the door, a pan of green beans waiting to be snapped. I did dishes in the deep sink with my Aunt Evelyn, who we all called Goodness. Once, when my mother sent me in to dry while Aunt Evelyn washed, Goodness waved me away with, "Go play. I let God dry the dishes."

My friend Howard now lives in Rhiney Boyd's house, across the road from my grandmother's. Rhiney had a son named Luther Rhinehart Boyd, which is where I took Mr. Norwood Boyd's name from in ALL-STARS.

Kerry listens to Merle's stories. Merle now owns my grandmother's house (The Pink Palace, in the background).

I adore Lois. She has just entered the Witness Protection Program. I think she got dressed just for us. "I used to wear all black and brown, but now I wear COLOR all the time." You go, Lois. Go on with your colorful self.

This is where I'm sitting this morning. Back to the pink chair and back to work. Knowing that it doesn't matter if Literary Mississippi claims me or not. I claim me, and those people who are, and who once were: moments, memory, meaning, as I always say when I teach. 

I will never live long enough to write all the stories asking for my attention. They claim me. And for that I am grateful.

on being a late bloomer

This is the hashtag I used on Instagram -- #teachinghongkong2015 -- to document in photos my trip to Hong Kong this month. You can find photos of the trip there, and even more on Facebook, here, along with a few thoughts about teaching writing to students who are learning to be fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

 We mainly focused on personal narrative and moments we could add color and flavor and texture to, characters we could create from those moments -- and how to make them come alive on the page -- and then we moved into fiction with them.

We used several mentor texts, including FREEDOM SUMMER, LOVE RUBY LAVENDER, and EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS.

I learned to write by reading like a writer, modeling my writing on what I admired, then making it mine, so that's how I teach. I turn my life into stories. I understand how I do it. I have broken it down to the foundations of how it works, and it's always a stretch and a pleasure to share it with young writers and their teachers.

I am a writer who teaches, and to that end, I will always be a writer first. I have developed my teaching over the past twenty years by teaching in classrooms, from K through college, and I know that what I have to offer is substantial, meaningful, useful, and offers a lasting toolbox partner for teachers and their young writers to use for years to come.

And yet.

I am thinking about who I am today, as Jim and I return home to spring in Atlanta -- we left in a February snowstorm. This ruminating always happens after I am thrust for a sustained time into an unfamiliar environment, where I am constantly thinking on my feet, meeting new people in new cultures, learning new customs and traditions (and food!) and discovering how people make meaning in their lives.

Traveling, especially internationally, invites me to rethink everything. Invites me to make meaning. It reminds me of my young life, when, as a teenager, I became a mother, and a wife to a boy I did not know, and moved to a place I did not understand, with no support, with people and customs I could not comprehend, and with fear and isolation so complete it would take me years to assimilate and integrate and create meaning from it.

So I am thinking.

I want to chronicle some of that thinking here on the blog. I'm going to play with short posts about what I'm discovering, and just see where it leads me. I can feel myself entering a time of change. I'm working on a sort of manifesto for my sixties. God. I grew up in the sixties, and now I *am* sixty. 61. Talk about a late bloomer.

I raised a family first. I was homeless first. I was lost, first. I had to find ways to stabilize my life and my children's lives, first. I had to live some, first. Make sense of some things. Find my way into my life. Do a whole lot of different things with my life and teach myself how to do... pretty much everything. It would take me time to learn how to help myself, so I could help someone else.. I taught myself how to write so I could tell my stories and find home, belonging, safety, meaning, love.

My first book was published the year I turned 48. I went back to school that year and got my credentials to teach -- I'd been teaching informally for years without them. I became suddenly single that year. My heart was broken. I wrote EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS in response to that loss.

By the time I turned fifty, I had lost not only the long-years marriage, but my mother and my father and my siblings and my home of 25 years and my hometown. My youngest of four graduated and left home for college. I moved to Atlanta. The dog died. My beloved editor was fired. My publishing house was decimated.

The bitter was tempered by the sweet. I had created a support system by that time, and my friends became my family. They held the space for me, held me up until I could stand on my feet again. I met my husband, Jim. We had a three year long-distance relationship, a three year Atlanta relationship, and then we married. My books did well in the world, even though my life was so chaotic for a time, I couldn't always appreciate it or participate in the book community that celebrated all of it. Much of my life was a blur.

Little by little, though, I came back from a devastating time of loss. My children grew into interesting, resilient adults and began to blossom. I began to create a home, here in Atlanta, a family home, a home for friends, a home for my own heart to rest in once again.

It took me a long, long time to do this. I was scared, and once again lost, even in the midst of the sweetness. But I kept writing. I kept teaching. I kept on trying. I have been emerging from that difficult place, once again forging an identity and discovering who I am. Making meaning. It's a process. Life long.

I am happy to be here. I love my life. I know how lucky I am.

picture stories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An afternoon drive out of Atlanta, a patriotic rest stop, a Confederate flag flying over the Columbia, South Carolina Statehouse, an arrival at Mama's house on John's Island.

O Charleston, O Youth, O History of Long Ago. The marsh, the swamp, the salt, the breeze. Falling in love with the sousaphone player in the high school marching band who would grow up to be the piano man who would lure me to Atlanta, where I've lived these past ten years.

Yesterday we traveled, like we often do, to the place where we fell in love and parted from one another for 30 years, and then reunited when we were older and after we had found our life's treasure, what we wanted most in the world: music, family, home, good work to do. And now there would be love.

So we walked the Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper River this morning and waved at the Alzheimer's walkers, then came home and watched Donald pick the pears from the tree by the road, like he does every year. He showed us his haul of blue crabs. Jim made his mother a tomato sandwich from the last of the season's tomatoes. He made sure to use the Duke's and the pimento cheese, the way she likes it.

Then I settled beside Mom and showed her the little videos of her great-granddaughter in the wading pool with Grandma (me), making a cake for Grandpa (Jim), and the 15-second birthday videos of Jim -- her boy.

I'd put a chuck roast in the oven, and while the house napped, I sneaked away by myself for an hour. I returned with a "porridge cup" as the little label said, and its red-and-white saucer -- "I will use this for my yogurt and berries in the morning," I announced, and we ate our supper with Mom and watched The Roosevelts on PBS, but only after a re-run of The Voice, which I had never seen, but which Mom knows all about.

I like being in love. I like loving (and being loved by) a man, a family, my children, my work, my community, my struggles, my life. I am in love with the small moments that make up a life. I love the meaning they give my days.

I'm telling "picture stories" over on Instagram these days. Stories with a beginning, middle, and end, mostly in a circle, made up of small moments. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I like telling them. I like experimenting -- always -- with just what a story is, and how to shape it and tell it. These "picture stories" will find ther way into my teaching, I'm sure, but for now, I'm just curious, and I'm enjoying the exercise, the practice, and the surprise.

It's kind of surprising to be blogging again. I like that, too.