By: Laura Zarrin,
on 1/14/2013
By: Karen Strong,
on 5/24/2009
I was reading Justine Larbalestier’s post about segregated proms in Montgomery County Georgia. I remember an article about segregated proms in another Georgia town a few years ago. It even inspired the Lifetime movie For One Night starring Raven-Symone.
For me, it sparked a story idea but I thought it would be historical fiction because surely by the time I wrote the novel, high schools in Georgia would not be having segregated proms. How wrong I was.
Montgomery County High School is profiled in the NY Times article, A Prom Divided. Several seniors (there are only 54 of them—that’s how small this town is) discuss how they do everything else together but don’t go to the prom because it’s a “tradition.” Mostly embraced by the white parents. The black prom is open to everyone. The white prom—let’s just say you need an invitation.
But this school isn’t the only one. Several high schools in the South have segregated proms, which stemmed from integration in the 1970’s. There’s even an HBO documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, airing in July.
Almost 40 years later and this prom “tradition” continues.
It just makes me wonder. Do these teens really want to have one prom? Do the parents really have that much power?
For me, it brings up a lot of questions: How does a teen buck a tradition that they think is wrong? What must teens do to take a stand? What kind of courage (if any) would it take for a teen to tell his/her parents, “I don’t like this. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
These are the kinds of questions that first sparked my story idea for the “historical fiction” novel. You can even take out the segregated prom and use something else. When does a teen realize that their world view is different than their parents and/or family? That teen will be at a crossroads: Do I continue with what has always been done or do I break the cycle and change it?
For the teens in Montgomery County, these questions may have popped into their heads as they dressed up to go their separate proms. At least I hope so.
Being the queen of diversion and procrastination, I love playing with Wordle. They say it’s “beautiful word clouds.” I say word eye candy.
The most used words are the most prominent. A snap shot of words. Sort of cool to do with poems or scenes from novels.
Here’s my Wordle using text from last week’s posts of the Musings of a Novelista blog:
Anyway, check out Wordle and make your own word eye candy.
I saw Star Trek last weekend and was totally geeked out about it. It also didn’t hurt that Spock is super hot in this movie. Give the casting director an A+ for putting Zachary Quinto in that role. Yes, I’m a Trekkie! I got it honest from my mother, who is a science fiction fanatic.
Anyway, JJ Abrams is the writer/creator/producer of some of my favorite TV shows and movies. He had me at Felicity—a show that I’m still fond of. Then there was Alias —who wouldn’t love a spy who kicks serious booty? And I have to admit I was one of those people at the midnight showing of Cloverfield. Don’t even get me talking about LOST. I’m still pondering how I’m going to fill up my time until January 2010 for the final season.
I think it’s no coincidence that JJ Abrams is involved in all of these projects. He seems to have a knack of telling a great story—but also getting us to really care about these characters—making them fully dimensional with strengths and flaws. You find yourself rooting for them despite whatever mistakes they’ve made. Although his works in a different medium from novels, writers can learn a lot from watching his shows. JJ Abrams rocks!
I just finished reading an interesting blog post from Editorial Anonymous (EA), where he/she states that the Coretta Scott King (CSK) Award may no longer be necessary. The CSK award is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and honors African-American authors. EA states this in the post:
It’s interesting that someone in the comment section said that this post reminded them of a Horn Book essay by Marc Aronson. It reminded me of this essay as well. But there is also a flip side to this argument presented in another Horn Book essay by Andrea Davis Pinkney that also makes valid points.
Honestly, I can see both sides of this argument. Just look at what happened earlier this year with Kadir Nelson’s We are the Ship. If there weren’t a CSK award, would Nelson have won the Caldecott? We can only ponder that answer. Maybe, maybe not.
But then you have other statistics such as the one researched by The Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which stated that in 2007 only 150 of nearly 3,000 titles were by African-American authors.
So, if the CSK award did go away, would any books by African-Americans be spotlighted? What if the award did away with its consideration of race? Would it be okay for non-African-American authors to be honored? If that were the case, Laurie Halse Anderson could been have considered for a CSK award for her book Chains. That speaks of the African-American experience, right?
I can also look at it another way as well. If you look at the CSK award recipients, you see a trend of the same authors wining the award several times. Does that make it harder for unknown African-American authors to break through? I know that this is one of the reasons that The Brown Bookshelf came into existence.
Personally, I’m all about trying to remove the focus of race from children’s literature. It’s easier said than done. Especially when you’re coming for the minority side of the equation.
EA points out in his/her blog post, giving an award only to black people causes a divide. That may be so, but if African-American authors are not on the same playing field with the number of published books and there is a small percentage of editors of color, how large can that divide really be?
There are points made on both sides. I can see that this is a conversation that we will be having for a while.
This past weekend, I took a road trip with some girlfriends to see the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. The house of course is beautiful and totally ridiculous as far as the size and luxury. What would it be like to have this much money? The one common ground I felt with George Vanderbilt was his love of books. His library was spectacular and he had books everywhere.
It got me thinking if I was independently wealthy would my focus on fiction be more intense?
It’s very hard to write fiction when you still need to eat. This is why I adore writers who make it happen with day jobs—which includes most writers since fiction can’t feed you until you’re published–and even then you won’t be eating porterhouse steaks unless you’re very lucky.
So I think that most writers—whether they’re single or have a spouse or sponsor supporting them—they have to write for art’s sake. Writing for food may be hazardous to your health.
In this economy, I feel blessed even to have a day job, so I won’t complain. Any money that I make from my writing will be honored and I’ll be very appreciative of it.
I’ve been reading this craft book, Finding Your Writer’s Voice. I first heard about voice in my first fiction writing class at the Callonwolde Arts Center here in Atlanta. It’s still very hard to explain exactly what voice is—other than editors LOVE it. But what about character voice? Especially 1st person point of view (POV)? When I [...]
I’ve always loved destruction and mayhem—maybe this is because as a teen I read dystopian fiction such as The Stand and Swan Song. I do like novels that show what the future could be like—and what it would be like if it wasn’t pleasant. I guess for me, it allows me to experience these worlds without [...]
I’m so excited about the Memorial Day holiday! For me this means extra days for writing.
This is usually what it always means to me. Extra days to work on my novel. This Memorial Day will be no different. I’m really getting into my stride with this revision and I think this holiday weekend will get me to focus even more on what needs to be changed (and there is a LOT). I may even come up with some new ideas—I’ve hit a stumbling block on a plot twist so maybe I can figure it out over this long weekend.
So hoping everyone has a safe holiday. Happy writing!
I was reading Justine Larbalestier’s post about segregated proms in Montgomery County Georgia. I remember an article about segregated proms in another Georgia town a few years ago. It even inspired the Lifetime movie For One Night starring Raven-Symone.
For me, it sparked a story idea but I thought it would be historical fiction because surely by the time I wrote the novel, high schools in Georgia would not be having segregated proms. How wrong I was.
Montgomery County High School is profiled in the NY Times article, A Prom Divided. Several seniors (there are only 54 of them—that’s how small this town is) discuss how they do everything else together but don’t go to the prom because it’s a “tradition.” Mostly embraced by the white parents. The black prom is open to everyone. The white prom—let’s just say you need an invitation.
But this school isn’t the only one. Several high schools in the South have segregated proms, which stemmed from integration in the 1970’s. There’s even an HBO documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, airing in July.
Almost 40 years later and this prom “tradition” continues.
It just makes me wonder. Do these teens really want to have one prom? Do the parents really have that much power?
For me, it brings up a lot of questions: How does a teen buck a tradition that they think is wrong? What must teens do to take a stand? What kind of courage (if any) would it take for a teen to tell his/her parents, “I don’t like this. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
These are the kinds of questions that first sparked my story idea for the “historical fiction” novel. You can even take out the segregated prom and use something else. When does a teen realize that their world view is different than their parents and/or family? That teen will be at a crossroads: Do I continue with what has always been done or do I break the cycle and change it?
For the teens in Montgomery County, these questions may have popped into their heads as they dressed up to go their separate proms. At least I hope so.
Borders bookstore is going to focus more on children’s books in this tough economy. Good news for writers. Children’s book sections will be expanding in every Borders store over the next 90 days. Plus they plan to move the young adult and teen section further away from the baby and youth books.
Personally, I’m glad that they are doing this. I frequent Borders a lot in my neighborhood because they have a bigger café space with more outlets for my laptop. But Barnes and Noble puts circles around Borders with their children’s and teen book selections. This is sort of overdue. Then, I’m still peeved that Borders has a separate African-American literature section—but that’s for another post.
Anytime someone wants to focus on children’s books is good news. Hopefully this will result in stronger sales in the market.
Check out the Publisher’s Weekly article.
Growing up, I saw Virginia Slims commercials on TV. I can’t even fathom those commercials being on TV today. Can you imagine?
Anyway, that jingle was in my head this past weekend, when during a procrastination tactic, I decided to open a file that sparked my writing journey. The file contained my first “focused” novel. I’ve written other “novels” if I can really call them that—but this was the first one I really worked on seriously. I had just graduated college and couldn’t pay someone to give me a job, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. But even after I got my first techy geek job, I finished the novel. I even remember going to Kinkos and getting the novel bound—yes, it was that serious. My boyfriend at the time started calling me Lil’ Terry—as in Terry McMillan.
How time can change a perspective. I actually cringed reading parts of the novel. 300 pages of bad writing. I have come a LONG way in my craft. Still improving and growing of course, but sometimes you have to see where you started to give yourself credit to where you are.
It has always been my intention to rewrite this novel. I’m really trying not to think about this “other” novel while writing the current one—it’s like infidelity. But I would like to rewrite it one day because the subject matter of social class and teens is something I find intriguing.