Q: You’ve focused on picture books before, but this is your
first novel—why did you decide to move in another direction with this book?
A: I have always tended to write longer picture books, I
believe in part because I enjoy digging more deeply into the heart and mind of
my characters. Writing a middle grade novel allowed me to do just that
while exploring and researching a topic (The Great Migration) that has
intrigued me for quite some time.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for your character
Langston, and why did you choose to set the novel in Chicago in 1946?
A: Langston was modeled after my son Malcolm, who at 11
years old was an incredibly sensitive, intuitive child who loved going to the
library and reading books together.
After reading Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other
Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, I began to wonder how
a young boy like my son might have fared leaving behind a home he loved in the
South and moving to an unfamiliar city in the North.
Q: Was your writing process very different with this book?
A: It was wonderful to not have to pay close attention to my
word count, as I do when writing picture books, but the greater difference was
the amount of research that went into writing this book.
After reading the Isabel Wilkerson book, I looked at photos
from 1940s Chicago, did research on the library young Langston visited, read
the works of poets Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Arna Bontemps, and
others, watched the movie Raisin in the Sun, researched Alabama to get a sense
of landscape, popular sports figures from the period, kitchenette apartments,
the Chicago Defender newspaper and the Chicago Black Renaissance.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from Langston’s story?
A: I hope readers connect with Langston's ability to find a
sense of belonging, strength and courage by his discovery of a library and
poetry in the midst of a tumultuous period in his life.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on the sequel to Finding Langston
where I explore the life story of Lymon, one of the characters in the book who
becomes Langston's tormentor.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I have two exciting projects due out next year: Not
Playing by the Rules: 20 Trailblazers Female Athletes (Random House) and Counting
the Stars: The Katherine Johnson Story (Simon & Schuster).
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lesa Cline-Ransome.
No comments:
Post a Comment