Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of the new middle grade novel Will's Race for Home. It takes place during the Oklahoma Land Rush of the 1880s. Her many other books include Ghost Boys. She is the Virginia G. Piper Endowed Chair of creative writing at Arizona State University.
Q: What inspired you to write Will’s Race for Home?
A: My second novel was about the Tulsa Race Massacre. It got good critical reviews but it didn’t sell well. A lot of people didn’t believe it. I got hate mail. HarperCollins reissued it for the 100th anniversary of the massacre.
I’d always wondered how Black people got to Oklahoma. The land rush people [in the late 1880s] were among the African American people who built towns in Oklahoma. The same people who were young in the land rush were responsible for building Deep Greenwood [in Tulsa]. It shows how race and the attack on civil rights keeps rearing its ugly head.
For some people, the Civil War never ended—that’s where you get [the character] Caesar. People had just finished fighting the Civil War and couldn’t let it go.
When I was a kid I loved Westerns. Then I learned it was a multicultural space. I loved Shane, and have reread the novel. My Caesar is a Shane kind of character. It’s a Black boy, Will, who recognizes that Caesar has to go, and he doesn’t say “Come back” [like the boy in Shane].
Q: How would you describe the relationship between your character Will and his father?
A: For immigrant families, ethnic families, rural poor families, the parents had to figure out how to put food on the table and build something. That’s the American story. Will’s father walked out of slavery with his father, and ended up sharecropping.
“My father is a far-thinking man”—that line came to me. He was thinking ahead—how to get out of sharecropping. He was showing his love for his family the only way he knew how. Will was too young to realize that, and thinks his father doesn’t care about him. I love how they grew closer together.
Because I’m an African American literature professor, I’m aware of how Blacks were not allowed to write. I like how the mother knows how to read, and is teaching her son. Reading was essential for the end of the novel.
They were slaves, they couldn’t own property, they were not allowed to read—if you can overcome that, you can become part of the people who build society. Will probably helped to make Deep Greenwood [as an adult].
Q: Did you come across any surprises as you researched the novel?
A: There were more Black communities in existence than I ever knew.
I could recognize the theft of Native land. I didn’t know that many Oklahoma tribes fought for the Confederates. The U.S. government system of singular ownership and capitalistic drive was the antithesis of the Native concept of community. Writing this book, it hit me how capitalism devastated centuries of tradition, how a community had lived their lives.
I couldn’t quite hold together Native characters in the story—that’s why I wrote the afterword. Someone else has to tell that story. My theme became African Americans, the Civil War, the freedom to find a home, and education became a through line for the book.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A sequel to Treasure Island: Runaway Gold. It’s another contemporary pirate adventure, and it’s set in New Orleans. It’s a place very dear to my heart. The Lafitte tavern still exists, where Jean Lafitte and the others would come and drink and celebrate.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: It’s a dream come true to be a children’s author. Now I’m writing because I hope it will resonate with kids. What a lucky person I am!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Jewell Parker Rhodes.
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