Let the Circle Be Unbroken—A Lasting Impact
It’d be easy to answer the question of which book changed my life with a singular answer: “Why, the Bible, of course.” I assume, however, that the answer desired here is one that encapsulates the power of work outside of the Scriptures. So though I have spent the past year reading the Book of Genesis and have found in it countless insights about the complexity of humanity and the character of God, I will respond instead with my own personal genesis into the creative world of fiction and its remarkable ability to impress upon us so many truths of humanity, of history, and of the utter necessity of introspection.
The book that comes to mind every time I think of my entry into the world of storytelling is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. I was in fourth grade, I believe, when I first met Cassie Logan and her brother Little Man through that very book and came out of that encounter with questions, the first being, “Mama, did the inside of your schoolbooks look like this?” I held open the page of Roll of Thunder, which listed previous students’ names and included a running assessment of the book’s condition. Cassie held the book in her hand as she tried to understand her brother’s sudden distress. The inside cover evidenced degradation over time from NEW to EXCELLENT to GOOD to FAIR to POOR and ultimately to VERY POOR before the book had been passed to her, to him, to the entire class of Black children.
My mom’s affirmative answer juxtaposed itself against my own analysis of the notations on the inside cover of my schoolbooks. I was fortunate to never receive a book in VERY POOR condition, but my mother’s experience had been like Cassie’s, only without the empowerment she and Little Man took hold of, without the stubbornness inspired by their mother, Mary Logan. This was how I learned that at times our elders had merely accepted insults as non-negotiable and had often later neglected to share their stories of discomfort and pain. That truth inspired me to read books that could give me leverage to ask the questions that would release the stories my elders had forgotten or refused to share. Subsequently, Taylor’s entire Logan Family saga shaped the fullness of my belief in the capacity of fiction to open our eyes, our mouths, and our ears, allowing us to unpack our hidden histories.
Now, forty-one years after reading Mildred Taylor’s work for the first time, I find myself still curious about untold stories, still seeking opportunities to sit at the feet of my elders and draw out the stories they’d rather not tell, still drawn to the power of fiction to spark such conversation, and now committed to writing that work myself through characters as real and as compelling as the Logan family—Cassie, Stacey, Christopher John, Little Man, Mama, Papa, Big Ma, Uncle Hammer, and Jeremy Simms—the entire lot of them who opened my eyes all those years ago and who inspire my pen today.