For Black Girls Like Me: A Review and a Giveaway

In 2018 I read Nancy Johnson's article on Writer Unboxed encouraging writers to figure out what their novel's big question is. I saved it on my desktop and went back to it several times as I wrote Half-Truths. That question is in my mind and shaping the sequel.

So, it's no coincidence that after I finished reading For Black Girls Like Me (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019) by Mariama J. Lockington one of my thoughts was, "What is the big question this book answers?"

I don't know if Ms. Lockington has this in her mind when she wrote this middle grade book, but my question for this book would be, "What does a black girl experience who was adopted into a white family and never knew her birth mother?"

REVIEW

Using free verse poetry and poetic prose, the novel provides powerful insight into eleven-year-old Makeda June Kirkland's reality. Readers are immersed into the life of a girl whose hippie mother named her after an Ethiopian girl who died in a famine. Makeda's response: "I like Keda for short. I am not a dead girl." (p. 8)

The book opens with Keda, her older sister Eve, and her used-to-be-concert-violinist mother driving across country to New Mexico to meet their father who has taken a job as the principal cellist in the New Mexico Symphony. "Mama is up front with one hand on the wheel. Her violin in the passenger seat. The neck tipped down like a bottle being emptied into the seat." (p.3) This image poetically foreshadows  Mrs. Kirkland's battles.

Music, according to their father, is their legacy. Forced to play piano, but loving singing more, Keda wonders if she sounds like gibberish when she sings since her father outlaws the gibberish of  rap, hip-hop, and R and B. Keda's constant question is, "Where do I belong?" 

I love Ella and Billie Holiday and oh I just can't get enough of Nina Simone. These women sing and I feel like they are talking to me. Like we are speaking the same language. Like they know what it is to feel loved and lonely all at the same time. (p. 18) 

Although Keda realizes her parents love her, that knowledge doesn't stop her from wondering about her birth mother. "Even though these days I can't help feeling like I'll never be whole. That somewhere out there is a woman with my face. Another mother. Missing me the way I miss her." (p. 33)

Keda's voice is in the songs she makes up. 

.... I try to imitate different instruments with the sound of my voice. I don't sing any real words. I just open myself to the sounds and sing what I feel. I close my eyes and sway back and forth. I like to think about notes as colors and shapes. I like to swish the notes around in my mouth. Taste them on my tongue. Then I try to fill the whole world with my breath. With my sound.

In Albuquerque, Keda misses her best friend Lena (who is Haitian and was adopted by a white family) and has problems at her new school. Although Keda is used to people staring at her parents and then at her, trying to figure out where she came from, this time it is particularly painful. A teacher assumes she is from Africa, a fellow sixth grader calls her the N-word, and Keda's fragile new world breaks apart.  

A brief stint of homeschooling is followed by a disastrous summer. Her father goes on tour, her mother pulls away from the girls and into her own world, and Keda stops hearing from Lena. In a manic turn of events, her mother suddenly decides to take the girls on a trip to Colorado which ends in her attempted suicide--for which Keda blames herself. 

The end of the book is a symphony of clashes between the sisters that climax with new empathy and forgiveness. The ways in which the family pulls together after Mrs. Kirkland's hospitalization are painful, tentative, and yet authentic. 

I loved one of the final scenes when Keda's mother's violin-playing invades Keda's dream--and she realizes that it's not a dream. After her mother ends her impromptu concert, the two speak honestly about her mother's mental illness and her mother suggests that Keda take formal voice lessons. That night Keda sleeps better than she has in months. In the morning her fantasy friends who she calls the Georgia Belles, sing their last song to her ending with:

Peachy girl

You are ripe

You are

Your own magic

You don't need us to be free

All you need is a song

Diddlee-do-ee 

So I fling my blinds open, I open my mouth. I smear my ripe voice all over the morning. And let it ring. (p. 316)

GIVEAWAY

I am giving away my autographed copy of this book. If you are interested in receiving it, please leave me a comment (with your email address if you are new to my blog) by November 14. Want an additional chance? Post this on your social media of choice or start following my blog. Please let me know what you do and I'll add your name twice. Continental United States only. 

Linda Phillips: On Marketing, Celebrating Mental Health Month, and a FANTASTIC Giveaway!

Congratulations to J.Q. Rose who won a 1000 word, pitch, and query letter critique from Joan Edwards on last week's blog. 

This week we're hearing from Linda Phillips who is a familiar face to many of you. Her book CRAZY, came out in 2014 and she's still marketing it--although this maybe a "novel" idea for many of you. Take it away, Linda! 

Carol:  I understand you tried a new way to market CRAZY.  Care to explain what you did and how you got the idea?

Linda:  I recently exhibited the book at the Blue Ridge Bookfest, which means I wasn’t a speaker but was invited to set up a table and sell my book.  While we are speaking about marketing tools, book festivals are an interesting lot.  You need to choose them wisely, unless you have unlimited time and funds.  Many times you have to pay a registration fee, sometimes you must join the organization with an even higher fee, most times you must foot your own bill for lodging, and they usually span two days of your time.  Unless you are the featured speaker or a well-known name, you will probably average around a half-dozen sales.  But the upside is the networking, and that almost always leads to lucrative new connections, ideas, or gigs.  

Back to the Blue Ridge. Someone mentioned a well-known author who originally boosted his sales by buying up his own books.  That got me thinking outside the box, and on the drive home, I came up with this idea.  My book is about a teenage girl coming to terms with her mother’s mental illness, and May happens to be Mental Health Awareness Month.  What if I bought up some of my own books and gave them away, with the asking price of a review on Goodreads?  My agent is currently shopping my second book and she keeps reminding me that potential editors love to prowl around and look at your numbers.  The idea seemed like a win-win situation.

Carol:  How did it turn out?  What were your expectations for this experiment?  Did you meet them?

Linda:  I’ve learned over the past year-and-a-half that lower expectations reap happier results.  I put a notice on our neighborhood list serve, as well as posting on Facebook, and told myself I would be happy if I connected with a half-dozen people.  On Saturday morning I parked myself at the top of my driveway with a lawn chair and a sign, another book to read, and a bag of my books.  Here are the results:

• Three responses from FB, including a hospital chaplain.  
• One neighborhood acquaintance who, unbeknownst to me, is a retired counselor.
• Two neighbors whose family members have bipolar.
• A college student majoring in Psychology who gave me the name of her professor.  (By the end of the afternoon, I had a presentation booked with this professor.)
• Another college professor had committed by email, and became discouraged when she discovered she couldn’t use my driveway and would have to cross the street.  
• And sadly, more than one person who quickened his or her steps to rush by me after reading my sign, or crossed the street before having to pass by me.  If you are counting, you’ll note that I made seven positive face-to-face encounters.  I’d call it cheaper, more satisfying and certainly as successful as any book festival I’ve attended recently.  

Carol:  Would you do it again?  How would you change it?

Linda:  Yes, I am hoping to repeat it a couple more times during the month of May.  Unfortunately most of the colleges are between semesters right now.  I’m toying with the idea of sitting in front of the trunk of my car in a key parking lot, but I haven’t firmed that up yet!  Certainly if I do it again at home, I will move onto the grass so someone can pull into my driveway.  We live on a busy street, and I just hadn’t thought that one through.  Ah, the intricacies of marketing!  And if I really get gutsy, the thought occurred to me that the idea might be newsworthy and a phone call to the local paper might be in order.

Carol:  Can you share any of the conversations you had?  

Linda:  The conversations with those who “connected” followed the same pattern I’ve seen since the beginning of promoting my book.  There is a look of understanding, something that clicks in the person’s life experience that erases stigma and opens the way for awareness and acceptance.  I know that is general, but it is really the best payback I have received with CRAZY.  My goal from the beginning was to start a dialogue about mental illness, and I feel gratified and thankful that it has happened every step of the way, one person at a time.

I would just like to add that I can step back and see the change that has happened within myself as a writer since October 2014.  I think being comfortable giving the book away marks a new phase for me.  You might call it not taking myself so seriously, not taking the writing life so seriously, getting a grip, chilling out, or you name it.  I think it’s like trying to get pregnant, or being a new parent.  Once you relax, good things start happening. 

*******

How about you? Would you be willing to read and review CRAZY? If so, Linda will send you an autographed copy. All you have to do is be one of the first five people to email Linda by noon on May 20 and promise to post a review on Goodreads. Here is Linda's email address: linda.phillips4866@gmail.com. Enter soon!

You Can Read it Here First: Giving Away CRAZY by Linda Phillips

The winner of my my most popular giveaway contest to date, is Laura Kay who blogs at A Novel Review, and who won a copy of Necessary Lies. Thanks to all 21 of you who left me comments. I hope the rest of you will find Diane's book at your library or buy it from your local indie bookstore. Now here is your chance to win a personally autographed ARC of Linda Phillips' debut novel, CRAZY.

As some of you know, I have been chronicling my good friend, Linda Phillips', path to publication. In my last blog about her in March,  Linda shared some of that journey as well as information about bipolar disease; the mental illness that afflicts the protagonist's mother in CRAZY. 

It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda  over the last fifteen years as she has crafted her debut YA novel. From reading the first twenty poems in which Linda poured out her anguish as a teen struggling with her own mother's mental illness; through watching Linda add, subtract, and organize these poems into a story arc at the 2009 Chautauqua Highlights Writing Workshop we attended together; through hearing the up's and down's of finding her agent and publisher; to now actually turning the pages and savoring the poems--it's almost as amazing as watching the birth of a child!

Now I have the opportunity to share with you some of my favorite poems and parts of this book. I've read some of these phrases several times and they still catch my breath for their simple beauty and sensory imagery; others surprise me as if I've just discovered a new treasure. Without further ado, here are some gems from CRAZY. 

In the opening poem, the protagonist, Laura, is humiliated in home ec when the class decides that her best color is brown. This poem not only foreshadows much of Laura's conflicts, but also provides the subtext for the cover of the book:

So the class decided on brown
for my basic color, 
as in mud
rats
rotten bananas
swamp water
and dirty anything.

I ran out the side door after school,
thank heavens home ec was last period,
thinking my cheeks were so hot they must be leaving a trail of smoke.
I stopped by the canal,
swarming with hungry pelicans
and screeching gulls,
and I wondered,
just wondered and wondered
for I don't know how long,
what it would fee like
not to sit and dangle my feet through the slats
and daydream and watch
like I usually do
but instead to climb up on the railing,
and let myself just slip off and down
and down
and down.

I decided against it because, 
of course,
I'm not the crazy one
in our family.  (pp.14-15)

Laura's artistic talents are admired throughout her school. She sees the same talent--now unexpressed--in her mother. Laura wonders how her mother "had drifted from/creating brilliant oil paintings/to slapping paint on molded figurines." (p. 23) She asks,

"Why don't you take up painting again?"
I ask her one day,
admiring the pleasing arrangement she created when she was fourteen.

"Oh, I could never get back to that,"
she says, slamming a window
against the rising storm. (p.24)

Her mother's behavior becomes more erratic, irrational, and bizarre. One day Laura comes home from school and finds:

First thing inside the door
I smell turpentine.
I nearly trip over a wet canvas
propped against the door frame.
I follow a trail of smudgy rags
and scattered paint tubes
into the living room
where I find Mama,
her back to me,
kneeling
muttering
crossing herself
before a dripping canvas.
She's been painting again!

"Hail Mary, Other of God…."

A sickening sense of panic begins
crawling up my spine.
"What's going on, Mama?" I ask 
…………………..
She passes grubby hands absently
through her disheveled hair,
leaving multicolored streaks 
and smudges on her face,
and she begins crawling on the floor,
agitated, frantic,
looking for the missing paint
or who knows what.
……
Then it hits me.
This is my fault.
I caused this.
I pushed her over the edge,
oh my God,
I did this.
It was my suggestion,
"Take up painting again," I'd said--
oh my God….. 

I clean up the mess as best I can,
finally getting Mama to sit down in her rocker.
Still paint-splattered,
she rocks
back and forth 
humming
muttering,
staring past me
without recognition.
I watch her rock
almost in rhythm 
with the ticking wall clock
and I take deep breaths
trying to match the rhythm,
trying to beat down
the panic
surging through
my body.  (pp.65-68)

Here is Linda reading one of the next poems, "Nervous Breakdown."


As the book progresses, Laura wrestles with her own demon: her fear of being as crazy as her mother. With the encouragement of two new friends--a local gift shop owner who "stands out like an art piece herself/in a shift dress full of helter-skelter bright colors,/dangly earrings,/and the most beautiful long gray hair/I have ever seen" (p. 148); and her crush, Dennis, who pushes Laura to "dig for answers/don't run, dig"(p.272);  Laura discovers the work she must do to discover the truth about herself and her family.

**********

There are two things this review of CRAZY cannot do. First, I can't communicate how proud I am of Linda's accomplishment and how wonderful it is to see this book in print. In a previous blog I compared myself to a mid-wife but that's not quite accurate. Linda is like a sister to me. Since CRAZY is her baby, I guess that makes me a proud aunt. 

Second, I can't begin to tell you how Linda's poetry touched a place deep inside of me. When I finished reading her final poem in which Laura asks her mother for forgiveness, I was in tears:

In her typical way,

she brushes it off,

says I don't have need for forgiveness

but of course she forgives me,

and she understands my confusion and frustration

and she doesn't hold anything against me,

and she loves me very much.

I'm not sure if she gets it at all,

what I am trying to say,

but the important thing is

I get it 

and I did what

I needed to do

and it feels as good

as anything I have ever done.

I wouldn't want to say it,

but I think there has been some healing 

in our family

after all.  (p.314)

************

CRAZY's official release date is not until October 20, but you can read the ARC now! There are two ways you can win a copy. Leave me a comment and I'll enter your name for my gently used copy; the drawing will be held on Friday night, June 13. You can also go to Goodreads and enter the giveaway contest there which will run from midnight on 6/10 to midnight on 6/17.  And of course, if you don't win, you can support Linda by pre-ordering her book through Eerdmans or Amazon.

Introducing CRAZY by Linda Phillips- Part II

Last week Linda Phillips shared the backstory behind her debut novel, Crazy. As Linda's close friend, one thing I have witnessed is how much she has learned and how she has not taken any part of this journey for granted. In this second post, she shares more of her insights.

After the initial excitement of signing with Eerdmans died down, patience part two was required with the dog of all dogs: revisions.  But I have to confess that I learned a ton about my own writing through that process.  

Here are just a few of my takeaways: 

• One of the things I do best is repeat myself, especially if it has an emotional valence.
• I rarely place the relevant pronoun immediately after its antecedent.
• A large cast of minor characters is like trying to find a missing cat in dense fog.
• There is such a thing as tragedy overload.
• A little slang goes a long ways.
• If you are writing about a specific year in time, be sure you research the etymology of words relevant to that year (how shocked I was to find that 1963 was not a “groovy” year).
• If it serves no useful purpose, trash it.
• Give your protagonist a spectacularly unique personality and then, like a good parent, make sure she remains true to character throughout.

Last but not least, I think I am beginning to learn not to take myself or my writing too seriously.  (hold me to this when the reviews start rolling in!)  This part I can do only with God’s help.  The writing life is such a roller coaster ride and I am admittedly already a roller-coaster personality type.  There has been and will continue to be many nail-biting, hair-splitting moments, and many with positive outcomes.  But I have had occasion already to remind myself that “this is just a book” and there is life beyond these words and pages that I have poured so much of myself into.  

So my learning curve right now includes seeking a balanced life that includes quality family time, good health, and continued writing success.  Repeat after me:  This is not life and death, it is just a book. 

 ********

Here's a video of Linda reading "Nervous Breakdown" one of the poems from the book. You get one guess as to the name of her videographer and the beautiful setting in which it was "filmed"!

If you think Linda is sitting around twiddling her thumbs until her book comes out in October, then you're wrong. She's offering writing workshops and working on her next book about a teen struggling to understand the impact of Batten's Disease on her sibling. 

Remember, one of the ways we all can support new authors is by pre-ordering their books. Linda and Eerdmans will appreciate your interest in her book even before its October release date!

You Heard it Here First!

Two years ago I was pleased to share my friend Linda Phillips' news of signing with an agent. Today, I am even more excited to share her announcement of signing with a publisher! And you know that I'll be the first to offer an ARC or off-the-presses copy of her debut young adult novel when it is released.

Carol: Tell us about CRAZY. What were your significant milestones along your path to publication? How did you mine your own life experiences to write it?

Linda: CRAZY (my working title) actually began as a collection of 20 poems that were loosely centered on the theme of my mother’s bipolar disorder and took about 15 years to write. It was largely a cathartic exercise on my part to work through years of angst and unanswered questions of my teen years.

If you remember, you read it and said,  “This needs to be a book.” (Carol grins.)

I teach full time, I am the mother of teenage twin boys, and I fully participate in my husband’s parish ministry.  I’ll get right on it……from 4:00 to 6:00 a.m. weekdays or all that spare time on Saturday after groceries, cleaning, lesson plans and school activities with my boys. 

But the idea felt right, and I was hooked. 

By the summer of 2009 I had a much-edited manuscript I took to the Highlights Foundation Writer’s Workshop in Chautauqua, NY. Patti Gauch, former senior editor of Philomel, was my designated mentor, and she graciously went the extra mile with me.  The biggest thing she did was point out that my YA book had an adult voice, and a mother that dominated the scene.   

My comfort zone collapsed. 

I spent the next year (still teaching) writing a revision based on Patti’s invaluable critiquing.  In addition to her input, I began to step out of the protagonist position, to put necessary distance between the story and myself.

The following summer vacation was a marathon agent query and in October, 2010 I signed with Julia Kenny at Markson Thoma Agency in New York.  She has the patience of Job, both in dealing with all my “nervous Nelly” emails, and the two years it took to land a deal with William B. Eerdmans. 

At this point, we have a tentative release date of August, 2014.  As my pals, the Beatles said, “It’s been a long and winding road” and I can’t wait to see what lies around the bend. 

Carol: Why did you use free verse to write your story?

Linda: My father passed along his love of poetry to me, and I’ve dabbled in it since high school. I have used it to think things through, both the good and the bad.  It has been like a best friend to me all these years, and the most effective way I knew of understanding life experiences.

Carol: What do you hope that your readers will gain from reading your book?

Linda: When the book opens, Laura is a nervous, frightened, and depressed teenager. She is obsessed with hating her artist mother who appears to be mentally disintegrating before her eyes. She worries everyone in her small mill town is aware that her mother is crazy. When her mother has a nervous breakdown, Laura becomes frightened that she will suffer the same consequence if she pursues her own passion for art. 

She sets out to find where she fits in the art world, and ultimately, to get to the bottom of what has caused her mother’s illness.  In the process, she discovers an inner strength that enables her to ask her mother for forgiveness and to begin a new relationship with her. 

This is a story of hope, born out of Laura’s determination to find the truth and to understand and accept it.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, bipolar disorder affects 5.7 million adults 18 and older in the U.S. population annually. Millions of adults with the disorder are in the process of raising children.  I hope that my book may serve as a support, a conversation starter, or perhaps a catalyst leading to medical help for teenage or adult readers affected by this disorder. 

Thank you, Linda, for this insider's look into your book and your path to publication!

When she’s not writing, Linda can be found walking or bicycling the greenways near her home in Charlotte, trying out a new vegan recipe, or settling in for a stretch with her Nook.  In between, she might be found walking, praying, or exchanging writing ideas with her appreciative writing buddy, me.