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Black History Month: Black Authors On Power Of Reading And Writing

I knew I wanted to interview a diverse and celebrated group of African Americans writers because they have been so important to the vitality of American literature.
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I knew I wanted to interview a diverse and celebrated group of African Americans writers because they have been so important to the vitality of American literature. I think the common thread for all of the authors interviewed in the book, including myself, is that reading became a safe and valued place for us as children where we discovered possibilities. Writing became a map we used to find our way and our dreams realized in the world. In many ways the stories the writers share about the power of reading and writing in their lives is a story of how both acts became a bridge that they crossed into a wider world and a broader sense of themselves and what they could do. I hope you will be inspired by their stories as well.

The following quotes are reprinted from the book "THE WORD: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing" Edited by Marita Golden. Copyright © 2011 by Marita Golden. Published by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

Black Authors On Power Of Reading And Writing
Marita Golden(01 of07)
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My marriage has become a prison. I am seriously considering divorce and find myself reading Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert's ode to illusion, fleeting romance, marriage, and adultery. Because I love life much more than the novel's heroine Emma Bovary does, and I have a child to live for, unlike Emma, there will be no suicidal exit from my dilemma. Still, Emma Bovary knows more about me at this moment than any one else. She alone knows the perimeters of the tomb my life has become. In this, my darkest hour, this fictional character is my best friend. (credit:Luca Pioltelli)
Faith Adiele(02 of07)
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Yes, it was books that taught me that Blacks could be powerful princesses and abolitionists and civil rights leaders and scientists. As a child I was obsessed with the Amistad Rebellion and the Haitian Revolution. I wanted to become a warrior, someone who fought for the rights of her people. For me the big breakthrough was reading about Igbo characters, first in Chinua Achebe and then in Buchi Emecheta. But I think I read these characters more as missing family members than as reflections of myself. I don't know that I would have traveled if I hadn't read, would have known there was an entire world outside of the godforsaken small town where I was raised. Or known that I could be a writer. (credit:T. Foley)
Edwidge Danticat (03 of07)
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Reading is important--although we can so easily go into platitudes here--because it expands your mind, your life. It extends your world. It's traveling without a passport. I feel like there are people in my life I will never know as well as the people in the books that I've read. I believe that it's the duty of every truly free citizen to read, especially to read beyond your borders, to read and read extensively. Writing is our footmark in the world. We're still looking at cave writings of centuries ago and are asking, what were they saying? It's one of the most important gifts we leave the world. (credit:Nancy Crampton)
Nathan McCall(04 of07)
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Most of the best books I've read were not introduced to me in school. So I would encourage young people to go out and find literature that speaks to them to supplement what they get in school. That way they will really get a so- called good education. I was fed a lot of Shakespeare in school, that while useful, primarily reinforced White supremacy and did not speak to my experiences as a young Black man. And so that's why one of the reasons that prison becomes a place that so many Black intellectuals discover themselves, is because it is enforced, imposed aloneness. (credit:WA Bridges)
Mat Johnson(05 of07)
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Sometimes I think, if not for books and all that reading I did, I would have ended up as the bitterest person at the customer service office at Philadelphia Energy Company. I was destined for it. That's where I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be answering phones at PECO smoking Newports, and living a life of monotony. The nice thing about books is you get to see the possibility of other realities. And that's really exciting. (credit:Meera Bowman-Johnson)
John Hope Franklin(06 of07)
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We cannot have independent thinking without being able to read freely. Reading is important if you can pick what you want to read. If somebody is selecting the things for you to read, then you're bound by that unless you are able to do your own thinking in connection with that reading. But that's problematic, and I would say that is important if you're able to read freely, read all points of view. I guess some of the highest rates of illiteracy are in countries that are not democratic. (credit:Chris Hildreth/Duke Photography)
Wil Haygood(07 of07)
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Magazines and the newspapers gave me a real sense that I could escape my surroundings someday, and not that my surroundings were out of Charles Dickens. It was just that reading gave me a sense of adventure. The ideas and lives of other people from books helped me move past the fear and anger of my brothers and sister. I read my way into opportunity. The more I read, the more I realized the world was big and I could find a place in it. (credit:Julia Ewan)

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