Another
Have You Heard Interview at MyShelf.Com |
| Rita
Williams-Garcia Interview
Conducted I just finished reading Everytime A Rainbow Dies by Rita Williams-Garcia. Rita has won a number of awards, including ALA Best Book For Young Adults for Fast Talk On a Slow Track, The Coretta Scott King Honor Book award, ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Best book of the year by ALA Booklist for Like Sisters on the Homefront, and the PEN/Norma Klein Award. Her Young Adult books are about African-American teens in realistic situations, dealing with problems that are unique to them; but at the same time, universal. Rita's stories are not about race, but about teens dealing with life and growing up. Bev: Rita, please tell us about yourself....what
was growing up like for you? Rita: Thanks to my parents and the times that I grew up in, I had a childhood. When my family moved from Jamaica, New York to Seaside, California in 1960, my older sister Rosalind, my brother Russell, and I had the great outdoors as our playground. We played like mad. Dodgeball, kickball, freeze tag, bike riding, you name it. We'd sneak up on each other in the backyard, throw dirt clods and then run. My fingernails were always caked with dirt. But when no one was looking, I'd put on a dress and reenact a ballet I had seen on TV. I made my own dolls and sewed doll clothes. I was moody. I liked my thoughts, which was hard for my brother and sister to understand. Sometimes I didn't want to play. I wanted to daydream, or write. I wrote a lot. Before I was old enough for school, I'd fold paper into booklets and write stories. We were nice kids with average smarts, and were guided by our parents' firm rules. We came to the rescue of kids who got picked on and we believed in both God and comic book heroes with equal fervor. To this day I am excruciatingly nice. When we left California in 1969 for Georgia, then returned to Jamaica, New York, my sister, brother and I experienced culture shock. At twelve, thirteen and fourteen, we were still children in every sense, but our peers were not. We had no backyard to play in, no great outdoors. School was hardly a safe-haven. Fighting for the underdog became a thing of the past. We learned quickly to mind our own business. During those times, my journal became my confidant. I wrote in it faithfully.
Bev: Who were your favorite authors when you were growing up, and as an adult? Rita: When I was a kid, I read everything from Beverly Clearly to Eldridge Cleaver. I was on a mission to read every book on our school library shelves about black people. But, how many times can you read Mary Ellis, Student Nurse and Amos Fortune, Free Man? My elementary school librarian understood my frustration, and introduced me to two books about a Zulu girl growing up in Africa: Thirty-One Brothers and Sisters, and Nomusa and the New Magic. To encourage the developing writer in me, she also gave me a copy of Harriet The Spy. As a college undergrad, Ntozake Shange, who wrote For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Enuf, had a truly liberating and elucidating influence on me. It wasn't until after I left Hofstra University that I found my mentors, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston. Through those authors I began to understand fiction as literature. I love women writers. Jamaica Kincaid, Gayle Jones and Toni Cade Bamberra are among my favorite.
Bev: When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer? Rita: In the seventh grade, I spent many hours in my neighborhood library reading The Writer's Market and The Writer's Handbook. I sent out a manuscript every week. I wrote 500 words every night, in addition to keeping a diary and a work journal with my story ideas. I sold my first story to Highlights for Children at 14, and another story to Essence Magazine in my junior year of college. Most of the stories that I submitted at age twelve and thirteen were rejected. I was still learning my craft, and I wrote about an adult world I knew nothing of. As I recall, there was a story about soldiers wading through rice paddies in Vietnam, and another about a woman with amnesia who murdered her lover. I went to college, where I studied Economics and Liberal Arts, but stopped writing fiction altogether. I was too busy living. I didn't start writing again until my senior year when I took master workshops with authors, Richard Price and Sonia Pilcer. I wrote a first draft of Blue Tights in college, and sold it nearly ten years later.
Bev: Which of your books are your favorites, and why? Rita: I was very close to Blue Tights. Back in the early eighties, black girls seemed invisible in young people's literature, or the stories seemed to be about race alone. I didn't want my character, Joyce, to have to carry the race issueon her back. I wanted to write about an everyday, 'round-the-way girl, in her world. Thank goodness I couldn't find Rosa Guy's The Friends, or Alice Childress' Rainbow Jordan. I would have given up, satisfied that other authors had already broken ground for black urban females. Of all of my books, I believe Like Sisters on the Homefront was the story that I enjoyed telling. There is a song in this book that celebrates the oral tradition. As I wrote it, I'd wake up almost every morning praising God for this gift. I knew it would have profound meaning for my readers. I have met so many Cookies, Gayles, Greats, Ruth Bells, and Virginias-black, white, Asian, Latina, and so on. They have all connected with the characters and the story. So many of my readers have had a testimony to share with me. There is something so liberating about Like Sisters that make readers want to talk or laugh, sometimes cry.
Bev: Writing for the young adult market must be the most difficult age level when it comes to producing meaningful fiction. Why did you choose that level for your writing? Rita: I didn't intend to write for teens. I planned to make millions from Blue Tights and then write adult novels. It was my visits to schools and libraries, that truly shaped my focus. Everywhere I went, my teen readers told me, "We will read, if you write something worth reading." I like writing for young people-although I didn't always. I had no idea what a YA book was, and felt too confined by the various considerations, such as using frank language. I felt I wasn't representing the kids that I saw. Eventually I found my way in YA fiction, and YA fiction has grown up a bit in the past ten years. I find young people interesting. They have such potential. Their thoughts and actions matter and have great consequences. There is nothing simple about their lives, which makes for fertile ground. When I was first submitting my manuscript, publishers would say "no teen books" or "no realistic fiction for teens." That has changed. There is a greater canvas, more story depth, and interesting characters. Teens are intelligent -- not as simple-minded as I was back then! My world was relatively simple. It is a challenge to write for teens. I love it when I get it right. That's important. Bev: The fairly explicit subject matter in Everytime A Rainbow Dies is right out of today's headlines. What kind of criticism do you hear about the inclusion of sexual assault in the lives of your characters? Rita: Rape and sexual assault is a common occurrence that knows no boundaries. You cannot pick up a newspaper without reading about children and teens that are sexually assaulted at home or at school every day. How could I treat this as a rare occurrence? How could I tiptoe around this? I couldn't. I also couldn't isolate the experience, as if this is all the characters have to confront. I made some grand leaps in Rainbow by focusing on Thulani and Ysa's relationship, but I had to talk about life and healing, so I couldn't write only about rape. I do receive some criticism for taking on mature or sensitive subject matter. I've had school visits cancelled because the teacher or librarian had read the book and decided that it was inappropriate. My most recent work, No Laughter Here, introduces to young readers the topic of Female Genital Mutilation.. When I talk about it at author appearances -- and I do -- people want to know why must I take on that subject? It's simple. If it happens, I must write about it. I have tremendous ego. I believe I can approach that subject, and do it well. I believe I can tell a story that someone will want to read. And if I can raise awareness about the plight of girls, I will. If I can help a reader value herself even more, I will. I have no sense of shame or taboo when I know I am writing a very watered down version of a child's reality. As sure as the 13-year-old girl didn't blink when she told an 18-year-old college-bound me that she was the mother of the child on her hip, I was determined not to blink when I eventually told her story. Every Time A Rainbow Dies has been included in the curriculum for Project Dream, a literacy enrichment program in New Haven, Connecticut, for at risk teens. A class reads a novel for the project and then meets with the author to make comments and to ask questions. When I met with the last class, there was more discussion than questions. The students had a lot to say about communication, and the characters' choices and how they relate to real life. It is wonderful to hear these well-formed observations. (No, they don't always agree with what I include in my work!) A story like Rainbow gives an opportunity to articulate points of view, without fear of self-exposure. I believe I get more out of these discussions than the students. I've also received e-mails from graduate students who have used this book for project papers and to talk to teens about coping skills and relationships.
Bev: I understand that an upcoming project for you is a biography of Queen Latifah. She should be a fascinating subject. Tell us about that. Rita: Ten years ago I proposed a biography about Queen Latifah (aka, Dana Owens). Queen Latifah was the perfect subject. She was athletic as a teen, had gotten into some minor trouble, started rapping with two classmates, and then became the top female rapper of her time. When other female performers only had sex to sell, Queen Latifah was strong, intelligent and beautiful. She wasn't a goody-goody, but she was big-hearted. She was perfect for my readers. Unfortunately, the only way I could have delivered the manuscript would have been as an unauthorized biography. Her then record company feared that I would write something that might ruin her "street credibility." I didn't want to write an unauthorized biography, so I abandoned the project.
Bev: What are your future plans in the writing world? Rita: Right now I am gathering research material for my next novel. I will pick up with Ysa's story, from Rainbow. I may possibly go to Haiti. We'll see. I only want to write the story that I am dying to tell. I believe that's partially why I keep a day job. I've had some experience writing screenplays. Nothing produced yet, but you never know. I like screenwriting. I like jumping from scene to scene.
Bev: Do you have any advice for young people who want to be writers? Rita: You don't have to be a maniac like I was, but keep a journal. Write a little bit every day. A paragraph. A thought. A story idea. A scene. Write for your own personal joy. Read everything that interests you. Daydream. Write. Rewrite. When you get tired, go outside and do something.
Bev: Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share with us? Rita: I think I'm done. Thank you! Readers can write to me at RitaWG@AOL.COM. Bev: Rita, thanks so much for telling us about yourself. I'm looking forward to the further adventures of Ysa! I really got attached to her and Thulani in Every Time a Rainbow Dies. Book
Review Reviewed
by: Beverly J. Rowe , MyShelf.com Thulani's mother returned to Jamaica to die four years ago, leaving Thulani with his brother and sister-in-law. The 16-year old boy is introverted and shy and spends long hours on the roof of their brownstone with his beloved doves. Thulani responds to a scream and witnesses a rape in progress in the alley beneath his dovecotes. His intervention chases off the offenders, but the girl is hurt and frightened, and doesn't understand that Thulani is not one of her assailants. He puts his t shirt over her, and helps her to get home. Later, Thulani finds her many-colored silk skirt in the alley. He tacks it to his bedroom wall where it symbolizes Ysa's beauty, and his growing obsession for her. Fascinated by her rejection and her beauty, he seeks her out and convinces her of his innocence in her humiliation. "Every time you step out," he tells her, "a rainbow must die." Rita Williams-Garcia handles the emotions and intimacy in the very touching scenes tastefully, and realistically portrays the pain of losing parents and the feelings of inadequacy of the characters, as well as their growing love for each other. This
book has a "can't put down" interest level for young adults
who are tired of the usual fluff contained in the majority of teen novels.
The plot is compelling, and the characters realistic and likable. For past Have You Heard Interviews, Click Here © MyShelf.Com. All Rights Reserved |