week’s end
This has been quite a week–teaching in the evening, grading in the daytime, sleeping on the train, and in between worrying about my students. How do you *really* prepare someone for college? I hope I wasn’t too full of gloom and doom, but I did want to be honest and tell them the things no one told me before I ventured off to the snowy-white eastern townships of Quebec. I arrived at that school, took one look around, and KNEW I had made a mistake. I grabbed a journal and a pen, marched off into the woods, and wrote a long letter to my sister’s best friend, outlining what a fool I’d been. Perhaps that’s how I became a serious writer—I certainly became a committed correspondent while I was in college. I loved nothing more than finding letters in my tiny campus mailbox, and so I wrote to my grandparents and friends all the time (this was before email). I think before I got to college I had already figured out (or been taught) that suffering is something you merely endure…you can’t avoid it, so just hang on and do the best you can. Somewhere along the line I realized you don’t have to accept unhappiness—maybe it was Brooklyn that taught me that. Moving here opened up a world of possibilities, and when I reflect upon this day, I sort of marvel at my life…I remember the first time I visited Harlem and how devastated I was *not* to find the Harlem I had read about in all those novels of the Renaissance period; I walked down Lenox Avenue and saw once stately brownstones boarded up or burnt out…I learned something about the danger of delusion; it’s so easy to trick yourself into thinking the beautiful life is out there somewhere waiting for you…but we have to make it ourselves, and it’s hard work! I’m rambling now b/c I’m both tired and deeply grateful for the events of this past week. My students were so earnest and filled with questions and doubts and hope—and they wanted to be READY to face all the unknown challenges ahead. I don’t feel I did enough—but I couldn’t do much more in just one week. If you took those students and put them on 125th, would anyone know they were headed to college? They wouldn’t be read as students at all, I don’t think—just as I’m not generally read as an intellectual. Some of the young men were so soft-spoken yet so thoughtful. It made me glad to know they made it this far, knowing how much pressure there is for young black and Latino men to be hard and indifferent, uninvested in the life of the mind. As I left the Schomburg today, a gentleman who had made a statement during the Q&A approached me—he said a number of complimentary things, but what made me laugh out loud was this: “You got that Obama education!” How to interpret that remark…I was disappointed when the panel ended b/c I didn’t follow my notes as closely as I should have, and missed out on a chance to list my favorite blogs and all the white allies we have in the struggle to create change within the children’s publishing industry. Can’t bring myself to watch the footage, but you can find all the panels archived here. Tomorrow I head back up to Harlem for a writing workshop at the Studio Museum. Unfortunately, we only have 10 copies of BIRD, but I’ll be signing at 2:30 and reading from my book at 3pm. Monday will *definitely* be a day of silence…
Many thanks to the royal couple, Cheryl and Wade Hudson of Just Us Books, who pulled everything and everyone together *without* even breaking a sweat in this never ending heatwave. I’m toting around paper towel to keep myself from dripping on folks, and there’s Cheryl looking flawless (and stylish as ever) while Wade slipped into a double breasted suit before the panel began! These folks have been making change for decades, and I was honored to share the stage with them and the other great panelists (Nick Burd, Vanesse Loyd Sgambati, and Jerry Craft). Ok, if I’ve forgotten anything or anyone I’ll try to blog some more tomorrow—and I’ll be sure to take my camera since I left it behind today…
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