Power to the People:
Rita Williams-Garcia's latest novel, 'One Crazy Summer,' is full of
heartbreak and hope
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6727286.html?industryid=47054
By Rick Margolis
5/1/2010
It's 1968, and 11-year-old Delphine and her sisters are flying to
Oakland to visit their mother, Cecile, who abandoned them seven years
ago. They soon discover that she's involved with the Black Panthers
and couldn't care less about her own daughters. Since you and your
mom were such supportive parents, did it surprise you when a
character like Cecile popped onto the page?
First of all, I have to disabuse you of a few notions. My mother is
actually more Cecile than that character's incarnation in my other
books. My mother was a very creative person who was also very
frustrated. She could have her moods, and we as children learned to
deal with them. On one hand, she was very supportive, because she did
things that made us appreciate art and not look at things in the same
way all the time.
And on the other hand...
My mother went to work and left us home alone. She did. And she told
my sister what time to get the sandwiches to feed us and what time to
turn on Sheri Lewis and Lamb Chop. And our mother left us kiddies [my
sister Rosalind, my brother Russell, and me] alone so she could go to
Big Sur and go to the Monterey Pop Festival to see Janis Joplin and
Jimi Hendrix. We were very straightlaced Negro children and my mother
was Joan Baez衍oving and Billie Holiday衍oving and very artistic. But
she could also be very destructive.
You lived in the projects in Far Rockaway, NY, 'til you were two,
and your family eventually moved to northern California. As a girl,
did you realize how turbulent the '60s were?
Oh, sure. I'm wondering if I'd have felt it as much if I didn't read
the newspapers or wasn't glued to Harry Reasoner on the news. My
father was in Vietnam. We have a cousin, whom I've not met. He was a
UCLA student, and he was also involved with the Black Panthers, and
he hijacked a plane, a 727.
Was anybody injured?
I don't know. All I know is that everybody was scrambling to find out
what happened and where he was. There was so much going on. Even
though we lived in a town that was right next to an army base, we
still saw a lot of protests and a lot of the paraphernalia of the
times: people with peace signs and Black Panther emblems. There was a
Black Panther party not far from where we were, so you saw the
buttons and the jackets.
The mainstream media often portrayed the Black Panthers as militant
thugs, but you describe their caring, nurturing side.
I wrote the story that I saw as an 11-year-old. If I saw anything at
all firsthand, it was sickle cell anemia testing, which I got. It was
going for the free breakfasts, which we did, and my mother bringing
home a bag of free shoes from the Black Panthers. The thing is, we
only have a media view of them. We only see the guns. We only see
militant action and I'm not going to say they weren't about that,
because their initial purpose was to defend people in the community.
But they saw themselves primarily as being a service organization for
the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed. So a lot of their
mission had to do with fresh food and problems with housing, heat,
lead paint, and jobs.
You tend to write about tough topics, such as sexual assault and
bullying. Yet I have a hunch you're essentially a hopeful person.
I am. I think I'm a happy person in general. I say to myself, "If I
can take care of my small area, then I'm making my contribution"苔nd
I think my contribution is my stories. I'm always very hopeful about
the generation that's coming up and the avenues that are opening up
and how people are discovering that they can make an impact. I'm a
very happy, hopeful person.
.
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