A Q&A with the author from Greensboro.
www.lindabeatricebrown.com
A Love For Language
My family has a lot of artistic people in it. I have always had a love for language, storytelling and literature. My mother was a visual artist. My sister was a musician. Another sister is a visual artist, and my brother is an architect. So, there was a lot of inspiration in growing up with people who were creating, and it was kind of natural wanting to be creative.
I was in a home where there were lots and lots of books. I was read to a lot by my father. He would read fairy tales, "Winnie-the-Pooh," children's books. Then when I was older, my sisters were big readers, too, and we used to read books together. We would have all read "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew" or "Wuthering Heights," and then we would talk about it.
During Her Down time
I'm a quilter. I love music. I sing in a choir that specializes in African American spiritual music. I have six grandchildren. I have lots of women friends. I just came back from a trip to Lake Norman with them. I try to get away from the everyday business of work. I love watching British mysteries and "Masterpiece Theater." I love movies, fantasy.
In the Beginning
I knew at 14 that I wanted to be a teacher. I started writing poetry and short stories at 14. My first effort was a short story, and, oh, it was dreadful. It was an idea of a deserted playground with a mysterious hallway and a light bulb at the end. I discovered that maybe I should try poetry. So, from the age of 14 until I was in my early 30s, when I wrote my first novel, I was writing and publishing poetry. I published my first poem in an anthology for African American poets called "Beyond the Blues." After that I thought, "Maybe I can be a writer."
The teaching part came natural. My family was creative, and in addition, they were educators. I had the education modeled for me. It felt very comfortable for me to think of becoming a teacher.
What Surprises Her
I have become successful on a national scale. I still don't quite believe it sometimes that this little girl who started out at 14 writing could publish three novels. It's still kind of a dream, but it's coming true. Writing is solitary, it takes a long time, and there aren't a great many rewards. You don't give up your day job when you are a creative writer. Writing is a long-distance run, and you have to have a lot of faith that somehow it is going to happen. It took me a long, long time to sell "Black Angels." It went through several incarnations. It's surprising to me that I have actually made it publishing with a large company.
A Deeper Understanding of Children and Racism
"Black Angels" is a special read to me, entirely sincere. I want to say things that will help people understand more deeply, first of all, the racial conflict in history in the country, and that will help people have a deeper understanding of how children deal with something like racism. How children come to terms with what to them is senseless. What the adult world has set up does not make any sense to the two boys in the novel, and once they come to a sense of brotherhood they have to get past the programming that has instilled a kind of brainwashing in these children that they overcome.
An Important Resource
I began with an idea, a story that I wanted to tell. In the case of "Black Angels," I wanted to tell a story about the children involved in the Civil War. Children suffer from war, and we hear so much about the cost, property destroyed, but we don't hear enough about the little people. They obviously don't come through something like that without being touched by it.
Even though it's about a conflict that took place in 1864, the setting of the novel, it still has relevance to people today. That is mainly what I want to do -- to make a story that speaks to people in this time.
Children do suffer, and if people can really understand what children being hurt physically and emotionally really means, the trauma of the experience, then maybe that will help people understand that war is not the answer. I have this desire to help people understand that we have to find another way to solve our conflicts. Because, after all, children are our most important and precious resource.
Her Sequel
I was so much in love with these children, I wasn't ready to leave them. I felt this story was so complete, now where do I take these characters? I knew I didn't want to say goodbye. It's not fair to this story to not really think, and I just needed to stop and meditate on the direction. I'm well on my way, and I have a vision of the book becoming a movie.
Contact Erin Rainwater at eringrey718@yahoo.com
