Another week trying to lose myself in contemporary literature, but I cannot block out current events. My book world and the real world collided recently when Jacqueline Woodson, one of the most gifted authors I've read and who just happens to write for young people, received the National Book Award. And was immediately hit with a racial slur.
That there was an outcry against the slur and that there are ongoing conversations have shown me that good will still remains. But I also hope that that is only the beginning.
So back to the beginning of this story, which has been in the news and diaried on Daily Kos. Woodson is one of YA's greatest gifts with her books in verse form and in prose. Locomotion, Hush, After D Foster and Tupac, Beneath a Meth Moon are all books I've shared with and championed. Woodson knows how to work with poetic conciseness in showing how people, especially young people, want to be loved for themselves.
Her latest book, Brown Girl Dreaming, is about herself and how she felt torn between the two places where she was raised -- New York and South Carolina. It has been hailed as glorious ever since advance copies started appearing. And it was rightly honored with the National Book Award. Woodson has been nominated for this honor before but not won until now.
And then. Whoosh. The oxygen was sucked out of the celebration before it got under way. National Book Awards host Daniel Handler, also known as children's author Lemony Snicket, had to tell everyone that Woodson told him she was allergic to watermelon. Tee hee. Isn't that cute, of all people to be allergic to watermelon?
Really? Whatever made you think that was an appropriate comment for one of the most important, happiest times in an author's professional life -- being recognized by an international audience for a national award for excellence?
And for the person making a comment to be someone who knows the author and who knows how good she is. Especially when the person is Daniel Handler. As Lemony Snicket, his Series of Unfortunate Events books made a point of never talking down to children. Those books are like a giant nod to fears and exaggeration and all the cliched tropes of "traditional" children's literature. As himself, Handler made a wonderful video (with accordian accompaniment) celebrating books.
The Twitterverse gasped as soon as the words came out of his mouth. The audience, based on Handler's embarrassed reaction during the live feed, didn't think it was very funny either.
Handler followed up with a genuine apology on Twitter, as opposed to the "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" non-apology apology. He also contributed to the We Need Diverse Books campaign and matched other donations, giving $110,000. As of last weekend, nearly $130,000 has been raised on the nonprofit's Indiegogo page.
Then Jackie Woodson provided a thoughtful, graceful, inspiring response in a New York Times op-ed piece,"The Pain of the Watermelon Joke", on Nov. 28. Her piece encapsulates decades of the African-American experience in a way that shows pain, the continuing struggle and overcoming adversity and a legacy of bigotry.
Here, she describes the moment that the "joke" was told:
In a few short words, the audience and I were asked to take a step back from everything I’ve ever written, a step back from the power and meaning of the National Book Award, lest we forget, lest I forget, where I came from. By making light of that deep and troubled history, he showed that he believed we were at a point where we could laugh about it all. His historical context, unlike my own, came from a place of ignorance.
And then she takes the step back that all creative people possess, that ability to look things over, by going from the personal to the big picture:
I would have written “Brown Girl Dreaming” if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we’ve come through. ...
To know that we African-Americans came here enslaved to work until we died but didn’t die, and instead grew up to become doctors and teachers, architects and presidents — how can these children not carry this history with them for those many moments when someone will attempt to make light of it, or want them to forget the depth and amazingness of their journey?
Woodson concludes that she is on a mission to make stories that show her past, her family's future and to create mirrors and windows.
Her eloquent response should be read often by all.
But what's next? What else? Especially when we are living in a time when we have to tell ourselves on social media that #BlackLivesMatter? When it's not unusual for an unarmed child of color to be killed by a white police officer? When the response of those who have no power is met as much disgust as Wilson displayed toward Mike Brown when he called the 18-year-old "it" and a "demon"?
I know I don't have the answers. This old white lady from a white-bread community is still learning how much I don't know.
About all I know is that through the experience of reading fiction, by the magic of narrative and characterization and theme, that window Woodson wrote about is there for me.
One of the best novels in recent years that provided me with a window was Marlon James's The Book of Night Women. It's a graphic, enthralling and engrossing historical fiction work about a slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation. His new work, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is another one I'm gearing up to read.
Earlier, Edward P. Jones wrote another historical novel about a subject that still blows my mind, African-Americans who owned fellow African-Americans, in The Known World. I need to read that one again because I really don't know what to make of it. I do recommend his short fiction in the collection All Aunt Hagar's Children.
Those are my the go-to books. But what else do you recommend? What other works of more recent fiction should be right up there? Who else should I seek? What will help our conversations and to reach out beyond our community?
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