CSK Award Winners' Speeches
2004
Angela Johnson, author of The First Part Last
Like most writers I am consistently asked where my ideas come from, and I usually try to avoid answering that question. Today, I’d like to talk about inspiration. Though I can’t be completely sure about it, as there are no rules. It is NOT rocket science. Everyone’s got to find their own particles of truth.
I was lucky to be born in the very early sixties to parents who have to be the most patient human beings on the face of the earth. My two younger brothers and myself weren't burdened with too many rules when we were growing up (it being the 60s and 70s.) But when my parents did put their foot down...
On those days when the three of us seemed too big for one house, maybe even one solar system—our Mom or Dad would turn and say “Go rest your mind.” I understood what that meant at an early age, even though I didn’t always necessarily want to obey that instruction.
We weren’t to do homework, listen to music, watch television or even talk to each other. There was just the quiet of our rooms and the listening. To what? For me, the rain, to our dog barking in the backyard, to the wind blowing the sheers across my bed. To the sound of the words, thoughts and images that floated all around me and all the spaces in between words. In that state I could hear the world. I know now that the “go rest your mind” is the contemporary equivalent of a “time out” but I always ended up wanting to stay longer, in the quiet, listening for the words and the spaces...
But in those quiet times without my knowledge a voice had appeared that would eventually feed me as a writer.
It's never easy for me to speak about my writing. The truth is that I am a woman happily distracted by life. I would much rather talk about how my garden needs weeding, how do I get the squirrels out of my attic without hurting any of them and when is the cable company going to up the hours on my DVR.
I find that because I generally don't discuss writing with those around me I have to prepare for speeches, interviews and journal queries. But now I realize that for years before I was old enough to want to be a writer, before I secretly started calling myself a writer, I was preparing to write by listening to the voices of those who would inspire me.
Virginia Hamilton, E. M.Delafield, Eloise Greenfield Harper Lee, Frank Polite, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Nikki Giovanni, and the Beats.
I remember being overwhelmed as I read Hamilton's Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush:
“The first time Teresa saw Brother was the way she would think of him ever after. Tree fell head over heels for him. It was love at first sight in a while beating of her heart that took her breath. But it was a dark Friday three weeks later when it rained, hard and wicked, before she knew Brother Rush was a ghost.”
There was so much power in Teresa, a character so strong you knew the author wasn’t afraid to go wherever her journey took her, even if she was being lead by a ghost. This was great journey. And I followed it gladly, joyfully, painfully.
Following your character as a writer often leads you to places you normally wouldn’t or couldn't go on your on. Writing about a single teen father was someplace I would never have traveled without a group of insightful young women and an incredible editor knowing that, there indeed, was a story.
Someone once said that everything’s been written. It’s the order you put it in that makes it original.
So somewhere in fiction there is a character (a child himself) who is raising a child. It’s been written. There is loss of a loved one, confusion and sometimes joy. It’s all been written. Of course, as it is written, I changed the order so it would become a different reality, flesh and blood, boy and baby, pain and joy. And as ideas don’t wear diapers, have dreams or wonder what will be, Bobby and Feather had to take up that mantle.
Maybe that’s what happens when you let your mind rest. Your ears start listening, your eyes start truly looking and your heart skips more than one beat. And if you’re very, very lucky, it all suddenly becomes the ears, eyes and heart of some new person that you have created on paper to join the planet. His name could be Bobby Morris with a baby girl named Feather; a spirit so bright it almost makes the weight of being a too young father light enough to bear; while life's choices and burdens slightly diminish in their sharpness.
In my life as a writer I require solitary walks, days alone weeding or ignoring the weeding and letting my mind rest. Conversely, I need inspired lovers of YA fiction and children’s literature, a talented editor, an enthusiastic agent and supportive family and friends just as much. And this is an appropriate moment to thank all of them.
I'd like to thank the Coretta Scott King Committee who may have given me one of the most wonderful and memorable award calls I've ever received.
The chairperson of the committee said, “We loved your book and everyone on the committee would like to talk to you.” She put the phone out into the air and in one chorus they all screamed, “Yeah!”
I'd like to thank my editor Kevin Lewis at Simon and Schuster for his unending stream of possibilities, my agent Barry Goldblatt for faith and common sense, Debbie Hochman-Turvey for all the rescues and my family and friends for understanding. Peace.