Special Re-Release: Jewell Parker Rhodes, BLACK BROTHER, BLACK BROTHER
[0:00]I had the immense pleasure of interviewing the legendary author,
[0:04]Jewel Parker Rhodes, a few months ago.
[0:06]And we really had this great connection.
[0:09]And since then, she has been amazing.
[0:10]She wrote an essay for We Found Time.
[0:12]We found Time.com along with her amazing daughter,
[0:16]also an author, Kelly McWilliams.
[0:18]And I wanted to re-release Dr. Rhodes's episode today
[0:24]in the midst of the hashtag Blackout Tuesday
[0:28]and Black Lives Matters week of trying to amplify black voices.
[0:32]And I would amplify Jewel Parker Rhodes' voice no matter what color she was.
[0:38]I think her voice, her book, black brother, black brother,
[0:42]and her other many, many, many books.
[0:43]And her whole approach to life is just amazing.
[0:46]And she knows what a huge fan of hers I am.
[0:50]And I'm excited to re-release this episode
[0:52]in case any of you missed it the first time.
[0:54]And I think it's a really important episode
[0:56]to listen to you right about now.
[1:06]Hi, I'm Zivee Owens.
[1:07]And you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[1:10]Mom, don't have time to read books.
[1:12]I'm so honored to be here today with Dr. Jewel Parker Rhodes.
[1:15]Settle in because this is kind of a long while
[1:17]because she's such a rock star.
[1:19]Dr. Jewel Parker Rhodes is an award-winning
[1:21]and best-selling author of many books,
[1:23]including her most recent Black Brother, Black Brother.
[1:25]Her books include Ninth Ward,
[1:27]which was the winner of the credit-cut King honor,
[1:29]sugar, winner of the Jane Adams Children's Book Award
[1:32]and Ghost Voice.
[1:33]Both the hardback and paperback editions of Ghost Boys
[1:36]are New York Times best-sellers.
[1:37]Ghost Boys is also an indie-bound best-seller,
[1:39]number one, kids, indie-next-pick,
[1:42]and ALA 2019 Children's Notable List,
[1:44]picked among others.
[1:46]And I have to also say it's a Walter Award,
[1:48]Eevee White, Read a Loud Award,
[1:49]and Children's Choice Book Award.
[1:51]Dr. Rhodes is also written many award-winning novels
[1:53]for adults, like the American Book Award-winning Douglas's
[1:57]Women, plus two writing guides
[1:59]and a memoir called Forged Stories,
[2:00]a grandmother's guide to happiness.
[2:02]Her adult literary awards include the American Book Award,
[2:04]the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction,
[2:06]the Black Caucus of the American Library Award
[2:09]for literary excellence and the Penn Oakland
[2:11]slash Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing.
[2:13]When she's not writing,
[2:14]Dr. Rhodes visits schools to talk about her books
[2:17]and teaches writing at Arizona State University
[2:19]where she is the founding artistic director and chair
[2:22]of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.
[2:25]Originally from Pittsburgh,
[2:26]she received a BA in Drama Criticism,
[2:28]an MA in English,
[2:29]and a doctorate in arts in English,
[2:32]creative writing from Carnegie Mellon University.
[2:34]She currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
[2:37]Welcome, Dr. Rhodes.
[2:38]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[2:39]Have time to read books.
[2:41]I am so delighted and hello to all the moms
[2:45]and being a mom for me is the best job,
[2:49]next to writing that I ever had.
[2:51]It's a pleasure.
[2:53]Okay, I have to hear more about that.
[2:54]So why is it the best job?
[2:56]People have all sorts of views on motherhood.
[2:58]Why the best job ever?
[3:00]You know, actually, well,
[3:02]I always wanted to be as much as possible a good mom.
[3:06]When I was about eight months old,
[3:08]my mother left the family
[3:10]and she didn't come back until I was in the third grade.
[3:13]And then, you know, by the time I was 15,
[3:16]she was kicking me out of the house
[3:18]and I was on my own.
[3:19]So that's the trauma.
[3:21]So to be a good mom was an important goal of mine.
[3:25]And I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter Kelly,
[3:29]everyone said, oh, this will take away your time.
[3:33]This will ruin your writing career.
[3:35]You know, they had all these negatives.
[3:37]And in truth though, I had written a draft of a novel.
[3:40]It wasn't quite ready.
[3:42]I found that motherhood, in fact, made so much more sense
[3:48]in terms of my entire life,
[3:50]that my emotional death grew, my intellectual death grew,
[3:54]and sometimes it's just writing,
[3:55]seeing my little baby in her cradle.
[3:58]It had a new purpose that I was like,
[4:00]my career was bigger than myself.
[4:02]And so I actually told my daughter when she was having her baby
[4:07]and everybody said, oh, you're your writing career will go out.
[4:10]The window.
[4:11]And I says, no, baby center and focus you children do that
[4:16]that make it all wonderful.
[4:19]And I have this policy that when I was writing
[4:21]and as the kids were growing,
[4:23]that I would leave my office door open.
[4:25]And I actually got this from Tony Morrison
[4:27]because there's a picture of her trying to write
[4:30]an edited fandom house,
[4:31]and her children are totally in, you know,
[4:34]crawling along the floor.
[4:35]And so my theory was that any task of my writing
[4:40]that couldn't withstand the interruption of a child,
[4:43]then the idea wasn't good anyway.
[4:45]So that my kids would come in and out
[4:51]and true enough, the ideas that really had legs
[4:56]would stay with me and I would continue writing them.
[4:59]And when I was also writing,
[5:01]I would pretty much write when the kids were, you know,
[5:04]asleep, you know, not all the time,
[5:05]but sort of I would go to the latter hours
[5:08]because I really enjoyed so thoroughly
[5:11]my son showing me aunts, my daughter talking about,
[5:15]you know, let's make a butterfly garden
[5:17]or taking shaving cream and putting it in the sink
[5:20]and letting them make a mess.
[5:21]In those days, we didn't have all the fancy things
[5:24]that kids could play with, probably shaving cream
[5:25]wasn't a good idea, but we did it anyway.
[5:28]So I was absolutely thrilled and feel that it's a great
[5:34]wanted to cry.
[5:35]I feel it's a great gift in terms of increasing,
[5:39]and I mean, just selfish here,
[5:41]but in terms of increasing my humanity,
[5:44]being a mom is the best thing that ever happened to me.
[5:47]So for that, I think my children
[5:49]and I try to show my things every day.
[5:52]Oh, that's so beautiful.
[5:54]Also, by the way, I have my kids play with shaving cream
[5:56]a lot.
[5:57]In fact, I keep it in the shower, obviously.
[6:01]And every so often they say, can we play with it?
[6:03]And I decide whether or not I can deal with the mess
[6:05]after and if I have the time to deal with a mess,
[6:08]then I say, go for it and they put it all over it.
[6:10]We have a glass, you know, like a glass door.
[6:13]So they put it all over and then they draw pictures
[6:16]and I can get a lot of stuff done by the way
[6:18]while they're sort of in the shower with the shaving cream
[6:20]and I'm on the outside.
[6:21]You make me so happy.
[6:23]I thought that was way out of style
[6:25]because my kids are now in their 30s.
[6:27]So I feel really good.
[6:28]Go shaving cream moms.
[6:31]I mean, maybe if your kids are in their 30s,
[6:33]they should not still be playing with shaving cream.
[6:35]That's okay, good.
[6:36]All right.
[6:40]I know.
[6:41]I feel like the shower is like the best resource for a parent
[6:44]because if your kids are in there playing,
[6:45]I take all the plastic toys.
[6:48]I probably shouldn't have blood pressure.
[6:49]It's not PC to have plastic toys.
[6:50]But anyway, the little figurines that we have
[6:53]and I throw them like a bucket of them in the shower
[6:55]and they stay in there for a long time.
[6:57]Oh, that's great.
[6:58]Well, my granddaughter, who's three,
[7:01]had her very first shower yesterday.
[7:03]My daughter was saying she was just so tired
[7:06]and she was like just too tired to do a bath.
[7:08]Her husband's working like he'll 12, 14 hour days.
[7:12]So she said, let's take a shower
[7:14]and she said, Claire was a little scared at first
[7:17]but she then went in because her mom said,
[7:19]well, give you a sucker afterwards.
[7:20]Yeah, but no, which was probably bad.
[7:25]But she went in and apparently she loved it
[7:28]and Claire said, showers tickle and just laughing
[7:33]the whole time.
[7:34]So that's, yeah, so she's now going to have her adventure
[7:37]and our remind Kelly to try some shaving cream.
[7:40]You should rate it.
[7:42]Children's book about it called Showers Tickle.
[7:44]That would be funny.
[7:45]That would be great if, and if I do,
[7:48]I'm going to dedicate it to you and your kids.
[7:50]Okay.
[7:51]Maybe that would be so much fun,
[7:53]but you're right, showers tickle.
[7:54]That's a great idea.
[7:56]All right.
[7:57]Let's do it together.
[7:57]Okay, sounds good.
[8:00]So that was so much amazing information.
[8:03]I feel like I'm satisfied enough.
[8:04]I could just get off the phone.
[8:05]No, I'm kidding.
[8:06]I just finished your recent book, Black Brother,
[8:08]Black Brother, which was obviously so well written
[8:11]as everything you write is.
[8:12]It had some really interesting themes
[8:14]and I just wanted to find out what made you write that book,
[8:18]what gave you the idea?
[8:19]Tell listeners what it's even about.
[8:21]And let's talk about it.
[8:22]Okay.
[8:23]Black Brother, Black Brother is about two biracial boys,
[8:27]saying mom, saying dad, but one is fair skinned,
[8:32]and one is dark skinned.
[8:34]And the one who is dark skin experiences colorism,
[8:38]experiences prejudice and bias,
[8:41]and he is bullied and he's called,
[8:42]oh, you're the Black Brother, Black Brother, you know,
[8:45]which annoys him to no end,
[8:47]and also is discriminatory.
[8:49]It's actually based on the raising of my two kids.
[8:54]My husband of 30 some years is a tall Norwegian scotch Irish guy,
[9:02]and our daughter is fair and our son is brown.
[9:06]And particularly when they turned about 12 years of age,
[9:11]particularly for my son,
[9:12]the world started treating him differently.
[9:15]And he learned that there were some people,
[9:17]even though he had talked about it,
[9:19]he had never really experienced it in a visceral way,
[9:22]that some people saw him and would see him as a threat,
[9:26]would see him as a possible thief in a store,
[9:28]that he'd had to be extra careful while, you know,
[9:31]driving if he was stopped by the police.
[9:33]And it really just rocked his world, you know,
[9:37]as we had grown up in such an equitable home.
[9:41]So it's based on my personal experience,
[9:44]and then it's also based on the school to prison pipeline.
[9:47]When I was writing ghost boys,
[9:49]I learned that children of color,
[9:52]even starting at toddlers in preschool,
[9:55]were suspended disproportionately to white kids,
[9:58]sent to Juvie Ho-
[10:00]all are prison-discipline, unfortunately, to white kids.
[10:03]And we're punished more harshly,
[10:05]pretty much all across the United States.
[10:09]And in fact, the zero tolerance policy
[10:11]that some schools have literally makes it
[10:14]that if a child talks back,
[10:16]they can go to juvenile detention.
[10:19]And when you go to Juve,
[10:20]the criminal justice laws are completely different
[10:23]and that the judge has an incredible amount of power
[10:27]because now you're considered a delinquent
[10:29]and the judge can decide,
[10:31]yeah, we're gonna let you stay in Juve for six months.
[10:34]So, Black brother, you know, Dante, you know,
[10:38]he slams down his backpack
[10:40]because he's been accused or something he didn't do
[10:43]and they card him off the jail.
[10:45]Dante has a privilege, he's rich, his mom's a lawyer,
[10:48]his dad is in computer sciences.
[10:51]And so they're able to fight this,
[10:53]but he actually goes to the courthouse
[10:55]and he makes the association
[10:58]that if you're impoverished, how much more difficult it is
[11:02]to fight this kind of zero tolerance school
[11:05]to prison pipeline.
[11:06]So the third thing that my book is about
[11:09]because, oh, my books are complicated.
[11:12]They read, I hope, well, but I have lots of ideas.
[11:15]And the other third thing was that I was shocked
[11:18]when I was an adult and discovered
[11:20]that Alexander Dumas, the author of the Three Musketeers,
[11:24]the man with the iron mask,
[11:25]the kind of money his dough wasn't fact of black man.
[11:29]French Haitian and that his dad was called the black count
[11:34]and was the famous general of Napoleon's army.
[11:38]And then I thought, oh, wait a minute,
[11:39]if all the movies and television shows
[11:42]about the musketeers that showed them
[11:44]as also as people of color, that might have been another sport
[11:48]that, you know, young people would have gone into, you know?
[11:51]And we wouldn't see it as a kind of white aristocratic sport.
[11:54]So how options get closed down
[11:57]when we don't pay enough attention to diversity.
[12:00]Wow.
[12:02]So, and I could still go on, girl, buddy.
[12:05]And you can still go on.
[12:08]Well, I love hacking my books come with so many ideas.
[12:14]And they're important to me,
[12:16]but the big thing is not then to write a didactic novel,
[12:19]to write a novel about family, friendship, you know,
[12:23]I'd rather leave love, self esteem and affirmation.
[12:27]But I do like the idea that my books teach in a sense,
[12:31]they always have an element of historical fiction
[12:34]and that they sort of uplift.
[12:37]And I also like having characters from all kinds of cultures
[12:41]in my books.
[12:42]So in general, I've had Cajun, I've had Creole,
[12:45]I've had Vietnamese, I've had Chinese.
[12:48]And in black brother, you know, I make reference to
[12:50]in the neighborhood, there are Pakistanis, you know,
[12:53]there are people from India, there are Africans.
[12:58]And two twins who start learning how to fence are from Jamaica.
[13:01]So I just love that idea of a mixed blood stew,
[13:05]because my grandma told me that everyone is family.
[13:10]She says, we're all can or she said, she's unfortunately dead.
[13:14]She says, we're all mixed blood stew.
[13:17]So everybody is related, everybody is kin.
[13:22]And this whole idea that color would be a determining factor
[13:25]for someone to discriminate against you has got to stop.
[13:30]Okay, good, found down our fists.
[13:34]Stop, but yeah, I don't know if your listeners heard that,
[13:37]but I had ponded my desk.
[13:39]I pounded my desk too.
[13:40]We're pounding together, yes, you can't even see, we're on Skype.
[13:44]Well, you know, I thought it was interesting in black brother
[13:46]how when Dante goes to the police department in the first place,
[13:51]the mother, well, first when his dad shows up
[13:54]and they realize his dad is white,
[13:56]they treat him completely differently than they had
[13:58]when they didn't know that about him.
[14:00]And same as the judge when they find out that he fences
[14:03]and that his, what his family's like,
[14:04]everybody has a different impression of him altogether
[14:07]than they did at the beginning.
[14:08]Yes.
[14:09]And that, and that is me, go ahead, go ahead.
[14:12]No, you go ahead, please.
[14:13]No, I was just gonna say, and that his mother,
[14:16]when she was picking him up at the station,
[14:18]was just so shocked that they wouldn't think to call her.
[14:22]I mean, I think about this with Mike, like the idea
[14:24]that something could happen at school
[14:26]and they wouldn't call the parents.
[14:27]They would go right to the police.
[14:29]It's so crazy, and yet it's happening all the time.
[14:32]It's really hard to believe.
[14:34]Oh, absolutely, it's the most frightening thing as a mom,
[14:38]but I'm not to notify you about the welfare of your child.
[14:41]But actually, when we were raising our kids,
[14:44]for Kelly, people very much thought that I was the nanny
[14:48]and were very dismissive towards me.
[14:50]And then when my husband was walking with Evan,
[14:54]they were confident that he was such a great guy
[14:57]because he adopted a black son,
[14:59]that that couldn't be his son.
[15:01]I mean, we even had vacations in Hawaii,
[15:04]say where the kids would go and make ladies
[15:06]and adults would tell them at the laymaking session
[15:09]that they couldn't possibly be brothers and sisters.
[15:13]And the kids would come back to us and just crying, you know?
[15:17]And then mama had to go on the war path.
[15:19]It's really, it's really amazing.
[15:21]And that's another thing which I don't go into
[15:24]that I think children by racial children
[15:27]have to sometimes deal with.
[15:29]And I didn't speak because I don't know enough about it
[15:31]from my children's point of view.
[15:33]But that every day Evan knows my son
[15:36]that society gives him his dad privileges
[15:40]that they don't give him.
[15:42]And a dear friend of mine, she had,
[15:45]there was named Robby's the neighborhood
[15:47]and they have had, in fact, a black son that they adopted.
[15:51]And the police wanted to explore, investigate their home
[15:55]and she thought it was necessary that she tell them,
[15:59]I have a black son in the bedroom
[16:02]because she was afraid he would be in danger
[16:04]if the policeman just entered the house
[16:06]and saw this young black kid.
[16:08]So the sort of mental toll that it takes
[16:12]on everyone is just horrible.
[16:14]And I love zippy how you said the way
[16:17]that people interpret Dante, you're absolutely right.
[16:21]And last night in my ethnic literature class,
[16:24]my student said, well, people interpret you
[16:27]in a certain way that has nothing to do with really
[16:29]who you are.
[16:31]And we've got to stop that.
[16:32]And we interpret you more positively,
[16:35]if you're rich, if you're so-called have degrees
[16:38]and educated when actually my grandmother
[16:41]who never finished third grade was the most brilliant
[16:43]person I knew.
[16:45]And we interpret you if you are a different skin tone
[16:48]and we do that for religion and gender
[16:50]and all kinds of things.
[16:52]And it's really a sad commentary
[16:54]because Martin Luther King said it should be
[16:58]the content of your character.
[17:00]And yet it's so hard for us to live that way.
[17:03]So what can we do?
[17:04]Well, I think that's why I'm a middle grade writer.
[17:08]I think that middle grade kids have such empathy,
[17:12]such wondrous hearts.
[17:14]And they are growing up in a time
[17:16]when there are more positive reminders of diversity,
[17:21]that we have made progress in our civil rights.
[17:26]And they've had friends of different colors,
[17:29]different religions, different classes.
[17:32]And my books remind them, or I hope it reminds them
[17:36]to keep that, to not become cynical and lose it,
[17:40]say, in high school or in college, to remind them
[17:44]that, yes, you are on the right track.
[17:46]And that's why I'm very often, and why not very often.
[17:49]But in my books, it's generally the kids who
[17:51]are smarter than adults, the kids, even in ghost boys,
[17:55]when the police officer shoots a young black boy,
[17:59]it's his daughter, his white daughter, who
[18:02]is able to say, dad, I still love you.
[18:06]But you did wrong.
[18:08]And I think that critical thinking that I try to remind kids
[18:12]about is what they need.
[18:14]So they don't wake up one day, and they
[18:15]are just following family tropes, cultural tropes.
[18:20]I'm thinking unconscious bias tropes that they stop and think
[18:25]and remember, oh, no, this is about how I choose to live.
[18:30]And life is always better with all different kinds of friends.
[18:34]I would pound my fist again if you could do that.
[18:39]Amazing.
[18:41]So just to go back, so when you grew up,
[18:44]you said your mother had left your family.
[18:46]You had gone through this trauma.
[18:47]Is that what prompted you to start writing?
[18:49]And did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
[18:52]Great question.
[18:54]I would say that when my mother left,
[18:56]it spurred my imagination.
[18:59]One, I thought I was responsible.
[19:01]So I would escape through my imagination,
[19:03]and I used to hide in the closet buried underneath
[19:06]all the winter coats and just sort of like daydream
[19:10]or I would lay in bed.
[19:13]And I would also like stare in other people's windows
[19:16]or cars that were driving by trying to imagine what
[19:19]their lives were like.
[19:20]But I started writing as soon as I became a chapter reader.
[19:24]And so particularly around the third grade,
[19:26]I wrote my very first short story called The Last Screen,
[19:29]which I still have.
[19:31]And I led it to all my fellow classmates.
[19:34]And I was really hooked by that connection
[19:36]between writer and reader or writer and audience.
[19:40]But though I wrote always after that poetry, bad poetry,
[19:46]stories, starts of novels, I never
[19:49]thought I could have a career as a writer,
[19:52]because I never read a book by a person of color
[19:56]or even a non-American or British writer.
[20:00]Oh, ever.
[20:01]So I didn't know Black people wrote books.
[20:04]And even when I was in college for undergraduate masters,
[20:07]Dr. Varts degree, I was never assigned a book
[20:12]by a person of color.
[20:13]And one day I was walking in the Carnegie Mellon University
[20:16]Library, and on the shelf, they had a book called
[20:19]Curricadora, New Fiction, which was written by Gail Jones,
[20:23]who was a Black author.
[20:24]And it was like a revelation when I read it.
[20:27]Wow, Black women write books.
[20:30]And I literally changed my major that week to English
[20:33]and started writing.
[20:35]In my class, I was the only person of color.
[20:37]So when I wrote my stories, my classmates
[20:40]would say, why didn't you tell me your characters were black?
[20:43]And I'd say, why don't you tell me your characters are white?
[20:48]But I realized then that I too had learned to read white
[20:51]unless people told me the characters were of color.
[20:55]And I went on a mission to write my stories
[20:58]and then came a page in terms of the university
[21:00]in terms of black studies, to kind of studies.
[21:04]And so it was a great time.
[21:06]But I almost missed my calling simply
[21:08]because I never saw writers of color.
[21:12]I was never offered that.
[21:13]And I was certainly not given a book in an educational system
[21:17]that showed anybody who was non-white.
[21:20]It's so funny how things have changed.
[21:22]I mean, when I went to college, I
[21:23]took a whole class of just African American literature.
[21:26]I mean, you don't even think that it's not that long ago,
[21:30]that you couldn't even find the books.
[21:32]It's really crazy for me to think about it.
[21:34]It is, and simply actually to put it in context,
[21:37]I was in my late 20s, and now I'm in my mid 60s.
[21:40]So I was in my late 20s when they were just
[21:43]starting African American studies programs.
[21:46]And when I was coming out, looking for work
[21:48]as a assistant professor, I wanted to be a writing teacher.
[21:51]But everybody wanted me to be an African American studies
[21:54]person.
[21:55]But I hadn't studied that.
[21:57]But I did on my own study it.
[22:00]I didn't study it within the university
[22:02]because they didn't offer it.
[22:04]So in fact, I eventually went on
[22:06]to become a professor of African American studies
[22:10]and creative writing.
[22:11]So a lot of us, that first generation professors
[22:14]who taught African American literature, we were self-taught.
[22:19]And then started creating the degrees.
[22:21]Isn't it cool?
[22:22]Yes.
[22:23]And then when I was a little girl, we had Dick and Jane.
[22:26]I mean, you don't remember Dick and Jane
[22:28]who had the nuclear family, the little dog name spot,
[22:31]and the picket fence.
[22:33]Yes.
[22:34]I mean, that didn't look familiar to me either.
[22:35]I mean, who are these blonde people
[22:37]with the little house in the fence?
[22:38]I mean, I'm living New York City.
[22:39]I'm like, I don't know.
[22:41]I mean, everybody's life is different.
[22:43]It kind of makes me wonder what classes
[22:46]or my kids going to be offered in college
[22:48]that I didn't get, like what literature
[22:50]will maybe expose to you that I wasn't
[22:53]and that I'm missing out on now or what's
[22:55]going to come up in the next 20 years.
[22:57]Isn't that amazing?
[22:58]That's beautiful.
[22:59]It's wonderful.
[23:00]Yes.
[23:02]Well, have a book, keep a book club with your children.
[23:04]And I say that to all moms and all of that.
[23:07]Because my son and I, we now have a book club.
[23:10]So all his friends are like 30, 31, 32.
[23:14]And we talk on the weekends.
[23:16]And each one gets to pick a book.
[23:19]And it's been the most refreshing thing ever
[23:22]because they're sharing their ideas.
[23:25]And I'm sharing my ideas.
[23:26]And I just love it.
[23:27]So whatever your kids are reading 20 years from now,
[23:31]join a book club with them, or make a book club
[23:33]and talk to them about it.
[23:35]And then you can tell them, oh, well, have you read?
[23:38]Then you can fill up one of your favorite books
[23:41]that from African American literature say.
[23:43]Wow.
[23:44]That's a great idea.
[23:44]I don't know if my kids would ever want to do that with me,
[23:46]but maybe some of them would.
[23:49]Well, my son's friends want to do a book club with me.
[23:53]But we have a great time talking.
[23:54]And I'm so privileged.
[23:56]I mean, if you were my kid's mom,
[23:57]they would want to do a book club with you, too.
[24:01]Yes.
[24:02]I want to do a book club with you.
[24:03]You should just like conference me in.
[24:05]That sounds fun.
[24:08]So what are you working on now?
[24:09]Are you doing, are you must be writing more books?
[24:11]So what do you have coming up?
[24:13]Well, I do have a picture book that I've
[24:15]been working on for a long time.
[24:17]And picture books are extraordinarily
[24:19]difficult to write.
[24:21]So I'm hoping they needed to do it.
[24:23]But in terms of a middle grade book,
[24:25]I'm actually writing about climate change
[24:27]and the wildfires.
[24:29]To me, living in California, being in the West,
[24:32]also seeing what's happening in Australia,
[24:35]having Greta get nominated as the team combat activist.
[24:40]I really want to talk about that.
[24:42]But also, I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to give a talk.
[24:46]And Jackson Hole, Wyoming is predominantly a white community.
[24:50]And in the audience, in the back row,
[24:52]we're a group of black kids.
[24:54]And I was like, wow, that's so cool.
[24:57]And it turns out that they were part of a project
[24:59]based in DC called City Kids, where they take young city kids,
[25:05]oftentimes kids of color, and they take them out
[25:08]into the wilderness so that they get a chance to experience it.
[25:12]And they do it for multi-years.
[25:14]And so by the time they become high school students,
[25:16]they're the mentoring middle grade students.
[25:19]And so also based on that, I wanted
[25:21]to talk about how our city kids are starved for nature.
[25:26]And also when I go visit the national parks,
[25:29]to me, this is a great tragedy.
[25:32]You see little diversity in national parks.
[25:35]It's just amazing.
[25:38]It's a grand canyon Yosemite.
[25:39]I mean, the lack of diversity for our public treasures
[25:43]is just incredible.
[25:45]But myself, I never went to a public park
[25:49]or I mean, the national park, when I was a kid,
[25:51]or I never learned how to swim when I was a kid,
[25:53]I just lived in the city when I was a kid.
[25:55]I didn't know the divorce.
[25:57]And so I want to talk about the healing of nature.
[26:00]And then also about what happens when
[26:03]with climate change or irresponsible activities,
[26:06]we make situations where we're burning up the very thing
[26:09]that is so good for our souls.
[26:11]Wow.
[26:12]That sounds amazing.
[26:13]I can't wait for that.
[26:14]I don't know whether it's going to work.
[26:16]It's going to work.
[26:16]I'm going to put money on that.
[26:19]See, it's so wonderful.
[26:21]Thank you.
[26:21]So I'm going to call you whenever I'm feeling insecure,
[26:24]which I do feel a lot.
[26:26]And I guess maybe this answers your question earlier
[26:29]a little bit better, writing for children.
[26:33]I always wanted to write for children
[26:35]because I wanted to be able to see a book that
[26:37]represented their diversity and their wonder
[26:41]because I needed such books when I was a child.
[26:43]Even though I read about white authors,
[26:45]I learned empathy, humanity, books or books
[26:48]and they're wonderful, you know.
[26:50]But I am writing for the child of color.
[26:52]That's definitely until she's a junior in college
[26:55]to see another character of color.
[26:58]But to me, books kept my hope alive,
[27:02]kept me from being bitter,
[27:03]kept me from being closed off from the world
[27:06]and healed me in a way.
[27:08]So to write for a child to me is the highest honor possible.
[27:13]So even when I started writing and I wrote like seven,
[27:16]say adult books, I'd always say to my agent,
[27:19]but I want to write for children.
[27:21]And so I kept practicing to become good enough,
[27:24]I thought, to be able to write for children.
[27:27]And the day that Hurricane Katrina hit,
[27:30]I had an adult novel about New Orleans
[27:32]it published that day.
[27:34]And it was really traumatizing.
[27:36]And then two weeks later,
[27:37]my publisher sent me to New Orleans for book tour live.
[27:41]And I do book tour,
[27:43]but basically it's a devastated community in town.
[27:48]And that's when I knew I had to try to write
[27:50]about the children who had to survive Katrina.
[27:53]And the animals that had to survive Katrina
[27:56]and talk about their resilience.
[27:59]And that was when my middle grade career
[28:02]was born and I finally felt that ready.
[28:05]So I am living my best life now.
[28:08]And the thing about being a woman,
[28:10]about being a mom,
[28:11]we go through all these marvelous stages
[28:14]from when our kids, well,
[28:17]be pre-pregnancy, being pregnant,
[28:19]which I love, having the toddlers,
[28:21]the baby, going up the whole chain
[28:24]and then being an older mother.
[28:26]But it's like the stages that I've gone through
[28:29]just as a person are just amazing.
[28:32]And it just keeps getting better and better.
[28:34]And I think that's such a cool gift that we have as moms.
[28:38]So my writing career in terms of me doing precisely
[28:41]what I wanted to do happened later.
[28:45]So if you ever get impatient moms
[28:46]with what you're doing or not doing,
[28:48]don't, it's just like a symphony.
[28:50]Your life is a symphony and it has different movements
[28:54]and all will come to fruition.
[28:57]Wow, thank you.
[28:58]That's fantastic, fantastic advice.
[29:01]Well, thank you so much for coming on,
[29:03]Mom said I have time to read books
[29:04]and for sharing everything.
[29:06]And I hope I get to meet you in person.
[29:08]You're such a special woman.
[29:10]And I wish there were billions of you out there
[29:12]because you're spreading such a great message
[29:14]and being so inclusive and uniting.
[29:17]And I think that's really what we need right now.
[29:19]So it's really wonderful.
[29:21]Well, I think you're amazing.
[29:22]And I hope to meet you too, Ziti.
[29:24]And I'm gonna get offline
[29:27]and we should think about doing that tickle book,
[29:30]showers, tickle together.
[29:31]I'm in.
[29:32]And thank you for your podcast and your service
[29:34]and keeping books alive for everyone.
[29:38]Love you, love you, love you, bye.
[29:41]You've been listening to Momstone
[29:42]have time to read books with Ziti Owens.
[29:44]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[29:46]at zivioens.com to get more updates
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[30:17]Thanks for listening.
[30:18]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.