It has been said that the mother is a child’s first teacher. This was a great truth for me. Throughout my life, my mother imparted lessons that remain the cornerstones for most of my guiding principles. One such lesson was a word game she played with me, in my youth (which actually often annoyed me). She’d ask me to define a word, telling me that unless I could do so in my own words, I did not fully understand its meaning. Later in life, I realized how critical that game was to my becoming a writer.
In the summer of 1968, while riding with her in our blue Buick Electra 225, she asked me to define “think”. As a second-grader who was doing well in school, I assumed this would be easy. I struggled to respond. After a minute of frustrated silence, she again asked me for a definition. I peevishly replied, “I’m trying.” She then asked, “What are you doing to try?” I was stumped. What was I doing to think? I said, “Well, I’m asking…”. She cut me off. “That’s it. To think means to ask a question. If you’re not asking questions, you’re not thinking. Always ask questions. There’s a why and a why not and a how and a how come to everything in life.”
As an African American woman scarred by Jim Crow dictates, barred by misogynistic mandates, emboldened by the battle for Civil Rights, and empowered by the demand for women’s rights, my mother asked many questions throughout her life. One of these she passed on to me has become a lifelong pursuit to answer a question born of the disparities and inequities she wanted me to overcome: What does it mean to be human?
I came to realize early just how unfair that question is to ask people most denied their humanity. Though growing up African American and having my humanity daily disparaged by the racial caste system of the nation, I came to realize the “human” question to be far more consequential for the entire world, as it related to one group: women.
As a young adult, I had observed, from my assessment of history, that cultures which demonstrated the most denigration and subjugation of women were truly the least enlightened and advanced. Failure to value the full humanity of every person negated the progress of the entire society. I came to realize this in an obvious truth: You can’t achieve a greater than reality with a less than mentality. When less than measures the value of more than half the population, social evolution will always be a resented possibility rather than a respected reality.
I was seven years old when my mother gave me the “think” lesson, which later enabled my full humanity revelation. It’s why I choose to write books for young children. If I could learn such a lesson at seven, then today’s children, the girls and boys of the world, can learn it now. The answer to the “human” question can’t be objectively and purposefully answered without including and confirming the unqualified humanity of all women. As a life lesson, this is an essential understanding for children to realize, if they are to help create a society and a world where the “overcome” in “We shall” really means we, everyone, all of us in the U.S.
When I sit to write for young readers, I am guided by this personal creed: Within the hearts and minds of all children lies the fertile soil of hope, from which all dreams flower. How we, the adults in their lives, think will seed, weed and till their soil. It is my intention, whenever possible, to take the packet of seeds my mother gave me, and sow and water gender equity wherever I go. The world I hope to bloom is the world in which I want to live in.
Always ask questions. To the greatest woman I knew, thanks Mom.