Linda Williams Jackson is the author of Midnight Without a Moon, a novel for kids, and its sequel, A Sky Full of Stars. They focus on a girl named Rose Lee Carter who is growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s. Jackson is based in Mississippi.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Midnight
Without a Moon, and for your character Rose Lee Carter?
A: I have always wanted to write a story about a
sharecropping family in the Mississippi Delta because of the stories I heard
about my own sharecropping family from that area.
Rose’s character is inspired by a cousin who was indeed left
in Mississippi to be raised by my grandparents when her mother migrated to
Chicago (the true story is VERY different, by the way).
Of course, children being left behind during this period was
quite common, so Rose could have been any young girl who was raised in the
South while her parents sought job opportunities up north.
Q: The book includes the story of Emmett Till. What did you
see as the right blend of history and fiction as you were writing your novel?
A: I tried to make the story as historically accurate as
possible. So for the tie-in, I fictionalized Rose’s grandfather as an “old
friend” of Emmett Till’s great-uncle Mose Wright. Since Mose Wright was a
tenant farmer in the Mississippi Delta, it is not too far-fetched to blend that
fiction with fact.
What I did not want to do, however, is bring a “living”
Emmett Till into the story and attempt to fictionalize his life in any shape,
form, or fashion. I wanted the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything
that particularly surprised you?
A: Most of my research was done on the Internet. I read tons
of articles, including archived copies of Jet magazine (which was quite fun
actually). I did have to buy a few books, but most of what I needed was on the
World Wide Web. I watched YouTube videos in addition to reading articles.
The thing that surprised me was how little I actually knew
about the history of the Mississippi Delta and about my own African-American
history.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I hope readers will grasp an understanding of what type
of environment Emmett Till stepped into when he got off that train and traveled
to Money, MS.
Emmett Till’s death wasn’t just about a wolf whistle. It was
about Brown versus Board of Education. It was about voting rights. It was about
Jim Crow. It was about the White Citizens’ Council.
All of those things encompass “keeping people in their
proper place,” and that is what the Emmett Till murder was all about—not a wolf
whistle.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Truthfully, I’m not working like I should be. But when I
do, I will find myself telling the rest of Rose’s story, plus telling a story
of about happenings in the Mississippi Delta during the ‘70s.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Hmmm. Nothing that I can think of except, thanks for the
interview!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment