Jewell Parker Rhodes on Finding Yourself Through Storytelling

[1:19]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Jewel Parker Rhodes is back on the podcast. I haven't spoken to Jewel in a few years, but she's been on several times. She once came on with her daughter as well. She has written well, now she's adapted her book Ghost Boys into a graphic novel, which I read and was practically weeping on an airplane as I read it. It is absolutely beautiful. It won't take you long to read it. You should read it as a grown up. You should give it to a young person in your life to read. It's important, impactful, beautiful, and soul stirring. She also wrote an adult fiction book, Douglas's Women, which is coming out soon. If you want more of a background on her, doctor Jewel Parker Rhodes is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Ghost Boys, which I just mentioned, Black Brother, Black Brother, which I also read and talked to her about, Paradise on Fire, and Treasure Island Runaway Gold. She is the recipient of many distinguished awards and honors, including the Coretta Scott King author honor, the Green Earth Book Award, an NAACP Image Award nomination, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and the Octavia E. Butler Award. She is the founding artistic director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and Virginia C. G. Piper Endowed Chair at Arizona State University. She also contributed to one of my anthologies back in the day, moms don't have time to have kids. And I did an event with her and her daughter and my mom on Zoom during COVID times, and she's just a doll. Enjoy our conversation. Hi, Zippy. Hi, Jewel. How are you?

[3:42]Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'm doing fine. Thank you. You look so beautiful.

[3:46]Zibby Owens: Oh, so do you. You don't age at all.

[3:50]Jewell Parker Rhodes: I love your book backdrop, but, Oh, it's so nice to see you. I was so moved by your recent essays about getting back into your home and just, you write with such passion and just such heart. And it was like, oh my goodness. I was thinking, oh, that woman needs to write a book. And of course she has.

[4:12]Zibby Owens: You're a terrific writer. Aw. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you taking the time even to read it. I know how busy you are and how much is on your plate. So thank you. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Did you hear the good news about today? Yes. So you got an award for the other book. Tell me all of this.

[4:32]Jewell Parker Rhodes: Will's Race for Home. Yes. I got the Coretta Scott King author award. My That's huge. Yes. Know. I'm so, nervous. I just, you know, the, adrenaline was rushing and it's like, oh my goodness. So I'm, yes. I'm very, very, very, very, very happy. Oh my goodness. Congratulations.

[4:59]Zibby Owens: Have you ever won that before?

[5:01]Jewell Parker Rhodes: I my very first novel for you is Ninth Ward. I was a Coretta Scott King honor book, but it's been, you know, like twelve, fourteen years. My gosh. So this is sort of like so great. And it's also a book that came out of a lot of love and out of a material that I knew about the Tulsa race massacre and how African Americans participated in the Oklahoma land rush. And yet it wasn't documented. And then, of course, about a young boy and the animals, a horse and a mule, that together they become this resilient force to race towards the land claim and and to make it home. So the book's special to me, but it was like one of the most difficult books in a way to write because there were issues with, you know, text, illustrations, cover art. You know, it just seemed as though everything was going all wrong. And this is when it pays to have a wonderful editor. And my editor is Alvina Ling, who when I was unhappy about something, she'd always say, we'll make it work, we'll make it work, we'll make it work. But many, many times I was just like, oh, my poor book is never gonna make it out into the world. But it did. The award. Yay.

[6:19]Zibby Owens: Yay.

[6:22]Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yay. So here's to Hachette, great editors, great book lovers, and especially to children. I was thinking about your kids yesterday. Was thinking, wow, they must be really big now.

[6:40]Zibby Owens: Yes, they are big now. Yeah, they're 18. My twins are 18 and my little guys, quote unquote, are 11 and 12, but they are not little anymore.

[6:51]Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yes. Yes. I remember when you were reading Paradise On Fire to one of your sons and you were like, I might have to skip over this one because it was, there was some tragedy in it, you know? And I thought, Oh, I bet he's ready for it now. Yes. A 100%. A 100%. Oh my gosh. Well, it's a pleasure. And, you know, we just got in some reviews from The Guardian in The UK and the Irish Times

[7:18]Zibby Owens: that they are absolutely loving Ghost Boys, the graphic novel. Can I just say, I read the whole thing in one sitting, I loved it so much? Jewel, I felt like, you know how certain books you just you can feel with your whole body? I felt it with my whole body. It was so such an emotional, visceral read. So beautifully done. Not heavy handed, but just the right everything to make anyone just feel absolutely heartbroken and yet also inspired by the end, inspired to act. Why don't you talk a little bit about ghost boys, both the original and the graphic novel and how the whole thing happened. Well,

[8:04]Jewell Parker Rhodes: well, also, you you just proved once again that you are my perfect reader. Because in your explanation of what I was trying to achieve and what you felt, they were they matched one on one. Yeah. You know? And I think that's the trick about doing historical fiction or dealing with, you know, sort of tragic real subjects like, you know, when I did with towers falling in 09/11, you know, that you you're writing it for a youth audience, And so you want to be real. You don't want to patronize them, but you also want to get them through, feel that catharsis of how art and also their own agency as youth, that they can make the world a better place. So I am proud of Ghost Boys. I wrote the novel at the request of the same wonderful editor, Alvina Ling, and I never write anything that people ask me to write. And then that Alvina said to me, she says, Joel, we were walking in the hallway at Hachette Books. And she said, Joel, do you ever wanna write about the murder of young black boys? And I was like, no. And I told my family no. And they said, no, mama, no, don't don't do it. But to be fair to Alvinas, she had heard me talking about the stop and frisk policy, it was affecting Evan who was at Columbia and and just different issues of having a young man of color, be out into the world. And I thought and thought and thought, and then I thought, you know, one, I've been practicing to write for youth, like all my life, that this is my dream. I like writing about hard subjects, that there's something special about writing a book that's that's so hard that you don't think you can quite do it. But in the striving for it, all of a sudden, you know, you you learn so much. So I decided, if not somebody else, why shouldn't it be me? I'll give it a try. And I had a deal with Alvina that if the book wasn't any good, we simply wouldn't publish it. And, you know, I'd give them back the money. I don't care. You know? But I was going to try. And also I wanted to try because I was a little girl when Emmett Till was murdered. And images of Emmett Till in his casket have haunted me my entire life. And so one of the things I wanted to sort of address was, you know, why was I now a grandmother, not the, you know, the little little girl, you know? I'm a grandmother and there were still young, innocent African American boys being murdered. You know, we had had the Trayvon, the Quam McDonald, Tamiya Rice. And so trying to address that history is what really motivated me to tell the book. But in the novel, trying to figure out how to tell it, that's the real core part. And one of the things that I drew upon was my African American tradition where grandma used to say, Joe Chow, every goodbye ain't gone. And it really means that the spirit lives on. And whether you want to say the spirit goes to heaven or to some other place, you know, it's like an ancestor, an elder, that something so beautiful as a human soul does not ever dissipate. And that in fact, that the space or the line between the living and dead, according to African American culture and other cultures too, can be very, very thin. One day, we'll talk about grandma telling me about how to bring back people from the dead, but we'll save that for later. I mean, I'm interested. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[14:33]Jewell Parker Rhodes: You you hooked me with that. I mean She actually she told told me this bell, and actually, was doing I was a young woman, and I was interviewing Robin Morgan at Ms Magazine. And then I was, from her, I was assigned to interview Eartha Kitt. And Eartha Kitt sat there and told me the same spell that my grandmother in Pittsburgh told me. And it was just really amazing. Eartha Kitt wanted also to play Marie Lavelle, my Voodoo Dreams novel character. So there's some real good hoodoo folklore in my family background. And grandma always said pay attention to the signs and that all things that are valuable in life can't necessarily be seen. It's kind of like Shakespeare that line, where there are more things than dreamt of in your universe or I messed that up, I'm sure. So when I was trying to figure out how to write Ghost Boys, I also wanted to make sure that the characters weren't just victimized again. Sometimes in stories, we have the victim who then is the catalyst for everybody else who's still living to become, you know, empowered, you know, that they get their consciousness raised. And in a way, I didn't wanna make my victim, you know, like that. I wanted my victim to have an arc, you know, a character drive. And so I start the novel off with Jerome being dead. And so that Western narrative tradition, you would read a novel literally thinking, Oh, you know, when's he gonna get shot? When's he gonna have the big action? But by making him dead, it forces people to think, what else is that is going to happen? What else is the story? And the story, of course, is that the ghost of Emmett Till, the ghost of, you know, decades of murdered black children still haunt this world looking for, you know, people who can make life for the living better, you know? So the message is is that their power gets, you know, like translated into real day power. And I often felt that it was Thurgood Marshall's experience with Emmett Till's death and the subsequent trial where actually they thought he was a white man and they allowed him to like be down on the front floor. And then when he figured out he was black, Thurgood Marshall, you know, had to go up in the balcony. But I think about how Emmett helped promote that Supreme Court Justice Wonder Man. And so in this story, Emmett teaches Jerome how to promote among the living justice and equality. And interestingly enough, he finds the person that Jerome needs to speak to is Sarah, the white police officer's daughter. And Sarah's based on a lot of young people that I know who are not scared of difference, who are not frightened or carry stereotypes in their mind or else they've already dissuaded them that they don't necessarily have racial bias and they're not racist, you know, they're just wonderful. So it's sort of like it made sense to me to have, Sarah who can open up the dialogue with her father, the police officer who shot this child, who can actually perhaps one day I see just become a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall, that she's part of that youthful generation that can make indeed the world a better place. So it's kind of complicated. And then there's Carlos. Carlos, who is an Hispanic fellow, and actually he takes Jerome's place among the living with Jerome's sister. And I had just read an article about, there were like 2,000,000 African slaves or Africans and or Africans in Mexico. I never knew that. And so they were talking about how, you know, probably the Africans because of their spiritual traditions, when they heard about day of the dead, you know, or the Catholic, you know, all Saints Day, they just said, Oh yeah, the more the merrier, and that they would have come together, that the dead are still, you know, somehow with us. And so adding Carlos was very important to me, but it also opened up this idea that it didn't necessarily be need to be just an African American that would be murdered. But working through the nineeleven and the oppression of Muslims, Hispanics, you know, that it's just that sometimes, too much of the times people use skin color as this sort of flag for them to think all kinds of stereotypical things about brown and black children. And so I wanted to, you know, make an awareness that this could expand out in all kinds of other ways to all other kinds of ethnic groups. But the Ghost Boys, a graphic novel, I wanted it right away, Zibby. Oh, can I have a graphic novel? And I kept getting, no. No. No. No. You know, you know, publishing. But but finally, they found a way, and it was started during the pandemic.

[19:56]Zibby Owens: Wow. That is a that is a long wait.

[19:59]Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yes. Basically, you know, almost six years for it to come out. And, you know, I was thinking too about, you know, you have a family of filmmakers, you know, and how, and I hope one day one of my books will be a film, but it's how the collaborative artistry can make something spectacularly new. Mhmm. And that's what I think Seador did Ziggybee game. He's he's from from Africa that he basically was the perfect co partner. He got it. And his work is absolutely stunning. And several outlets have said that they believe Ghost Boys, the graphic novel, is in fact better than the original novel. And I'm gonna tell you something, I agree. It's almost as though this great visual artist matched my intent and yet took it another step further with his very, very best. And between the two of us, you know, in our realms, we created something that is incredible, new and wondrous in a different kind of way. I'm also super excited because there are a lot of kids that like graphic novels, you know, it is just a way of opening up reading, opening my work up to another audience. But did you know when I was learning how to read, I was into graphic novels, except we called them comic books. And so we couldn't afford to buy books. And so I would collect the pop bottles and I would get 5¢ a bottle or something like that. So I would get the illustrated classics, Prince and the Pulper, King Arthur, Prince Valiant, Heidi. And they meant so much to me because I could own them. I could afford to own them. So in some ways it's full circle to see me go from, you know, my comic books to having this graphic novel that's so stellar with my stellar partner, Sador. And it's also so remarkable to me about the Coretta Scott King award that I was a kid who didn't know until I was a junior in college that black people even wrote books. So it's kind of like, woah, I've lived a good life. I'm so blessed, you know, and I'm so lucky in how all the, well, I would say that probably all people like your ancestors too, all the good people in the world who are dedicated to literacy helped grow me. The teachers, the librarians, you know. I've spoke to you once about my mentor, Jan Cohen, who's now long been dead, that she introduced me to the connection between Jewish participation in the civil rights movement. And so Magic City is off a lot about that connection. And I just felt all, and in particularly not just people of different ethnic groups, but women, women who lifted me up. And so now it's my time to well, I try to do lifting for other people too, like you do. I mean, you lift us all up, Zippy. Yes. But, yes, to having it took me a while to get here, but, am I so glad I got here. Oh my gosh. What an amazing story. You are such a spectacular woman and the best heart and the nicest person.

[23:31]Zibby Owens: Couldn't happen to a nicer person. Better

[23:34]Jewell Parker Rhodes: late than never. And you know, they say how creative writing teachers, you know, that they can't do so or, or they teach. Those who can't do, right? Yeah. Those who can't do teach something like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And actually, and I'm gonna give a shout out, and you might know her work to, Tiari Jones, a new book coming out in Kin and Tiari was my student. And in fact, she left a PhD program in Georgia to come study at Arizona State University with me and Ron Carson and many others. And we met at a Tucson Book Festival some years back just after she was picked as an Oprah pick, you know, and I knew she was coming and I just didn't know when, but I was getting ready to go out and catch my plane and she was coming in a limo, you know, and she jumped out of the car and said, Joel, I was just talking about you, you know, and how, you know, you've been a big part of my life. And I was thinking, Oh, well, that's pretty cool. Because not only am I a teacher and look at Tiare who's just awesome and wonderful and I'm still doing that. I was still being invited too. So of I liked the idea that I'm a teacher who also keeps doing what it is that I do. But don't you find Zibby that when you write an awful lot and when you read an awful lot, it's like such a deep yearning. Like if I'm not writing or working on something, then there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with my heart or my psychic balance. Yeah. And sometimes I don't know if your family does this, but sometimes my husband will say to me, Joel, write another book, please.

[25:19]Zibby Owens: No, my husband does not say that to me, but that's

[25:23]Jewell Parker Rhodes: adorable. I love that. Yeah. He said, I get, I get, I get grouched. So it's, it's also nice to know that there's still place in the world for us to follow our dreams, but also in the sense that you, this, you would follow this, whether you were making a living at it or not, you know? True. You would find a way because it so speaks to your soul and who you were meant to be, you know, and who you're becoming. And I just thank my stars that I so easily could have missed that. Do you know what I mean? I so easily could have missed that opportunity where at 19, it was like, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. You know, I was studying acting and dancing because that's what I saw on TV. I mean, you're still doing the dancing here today. So you fit it all in, Joel. Oh, I fit well. And also, you know, how on TV, Black folks could do the sports and they could do, you know, the singing and dancing. That's what those days grandma would be ironing on her ironing board and I'd be watching the 04:00 movie, you know, Bing Crosby, you know, Bob Hope and that kind of stuff, know? But I love it when occasionally there would be a character of color. So I was going to be an actress or a dancer, but it's kind of like, I'm so glad I switched out of that major. Did you know I went to Carnegie Mellon, the great drama school? With Larry Bilden and Ginger and all, yeah, and all those other great stars and the woman who played Angelica Scott, our fabulous, famous school. So also there was something about that call when I saw it in the live, this book in the library, that I had made it to my junior year. And when you get to your junior year in those days at Carnegie Mellon's Drama School, it meant that they weren't gonna kick you out. Our class of fiftieth had gone down to eight, you know, and Ted Danson was a couple of years ahead of me and all these great, you know, stars and yet I made the switch. So it's sort of like, I can't believe as a kid, I must have been like, that was really brave of me. It was. Was still thinking about it. That was really brave of me. It's Oh.

[27:30]Zibby Owens: You know? You you left you left the very predictable career path of being an actor to try something even more even more predictable. Wajuul, you have another book too, Douglas's Women. Tell me about this one. Oh, yes. And actually,

[27:46]Jewell Parker Rhodes: I think Christina sent you the new cover. Douglas's Women is actually, this is the old Is it the old cover? Oh, okay. I I wrote this. Oh my gosh. Well, I was an adult novelist before I became the youth novelist. And the reason is is because I had to teach myself how to write because youth only deserved the very, very best. So I spent thirty years writing for adults. But Douglas's Women actually also won the Black Caucus American Book Award for the adult novel, and it came out in 2002. And it's about the black, illiterate wife of Frederick Douglass and about Adderley Essing, the German Jewish mistress of Frederick Douglass. And at different points, they actually, you know, share the same household because Audley would translate in Rochester, New York, Douglass', you know, words, for the German audience, and she served as a kind of editor for his work there. And then his wife would be basically in the kitchen cooking, taking care of the kids. Very interesting, interesting story. So you have two free women, a black free woman, a German Jewish woman who actually both became enslaved in a way romantically to this ex slave man. The thing about, and I think if I hadn't had Jan Cohen as my, one of my mentors, I might not have been so attached to this subject. You know, that the idea that in this book, the book before with the Jewish tradition and its advocacy for civil rights, you know, my heart was open to it. But in this story, I get to tell the story from the two women's point of view. And at critical times, you know, Adelie had experienced the pogroms in Germany, and she was actually fair skinned and looked like the Aryan ideal. And she had a sister, Ludmilla, who was actually more darker toned and dark haired, who looked, you know, more Jewish, if you wanna say, which I don't really wanna say, but that's how the Germans probably would have seen her in the day. So there were ways in which Adele got privileges her sister didn't get. There were also ways in which, because of the romantic period and her mother and father were so deeply, deeply in love that she also had this idea that I can love and through my love I can redeem the world. So she by choice came to America to find Frederick Douglass and she became his companion for over thirty some years. He he was the love of her life. And Frederick Douglass said, oh, she was the wife of my mind. And when Anna, the black wife, finally died, Adderley went to Europe because she wanted to give the family space, you know? And Frederick Douglass gave a guilt funeral for his black wife. And that was mainly like he had carrions and, you know, the her casket, you know, and a hearse with, you know, bedazzled horses, you know, with just big, big honoring of her, which I think was from his guilt. But then within about, you know, a year, he met a younger white woman, an American white woman, and he married her and didn't tell Audley. And Audley had been waiting for him and it was just really so abusive. There's some discrepancy of how Audley died. So I won't give away the ending. But when she did die, her estate, she left all the money that she had to Frederick Douglass. Oh my gosh. I think, yes, it was so sad, but Anna and Audley meet. And a couple of times I have in my novels are like Ghost Boys where you meet across the racial divide and you find that in looking at one another, seeing one another, that there's this love for common humanity. Jerome sees, why am I looking at this white girl? You know, she reads Peter Pan and that has nothing to do with me, you know? But Adele and Anna, have a really good talk, whereas women, they come to an understanding and that if circumstances had been different, they would have been allies. They would have been the best of friends. And they best they also best, mentored Anna's daughter, Frederick's daughter. And it it's really wonderful. But Anna, though she didn't go to school, though she wasn't educated, she had a kind of common sense where she kind of like by the time when, you know, Frederick's really off, because he didn't just have one mistress, he had many, Adele was the most long termed. She finally comes to the realization that Frederick Douglass missed her. Wealth of her as a woman. And unfortunately, I think oddly because of romanticism and the way in which there was this ideal, she's she doesn't so easily escape the net. So it's also about how culture and traditions and time periods can make the smart, talented woman become enslaved in a way. And somebody who's utterly illiterate, never went to school can have their own kind of wisdom. And so it's sort of like, wouldn't it be great to have both, that altogether and there's ways in which the two of them realize

[33:17]Zibby Owens: that they were great compliments as women to one another. Amazing. I mean, you just don't run out of great ideas. I'm so impressed as always. And, Jewel, I love, love chatting with you. It never feels like enough time. And thank you especially for this Ghost Boys graphic novel, which is just so powerful. Congratulations on your award, your latest adult novel. I mean, it's just amazing. So I'm wishing you all the very best.

[33:47]Jewell Parker Rhodes: Well, thank you so very, very much, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. I think of you often. You too. Yes, I do. You were one of the shining lights in my life. Just few moments. So it's sort of sometimes I need to get better at writing notes, but there are people that I carry in my heart and you're one of them. It's, I don't know, it's part of the magic, I guess, of just what happens when humanity connects, and you feel it. But I did want to say The Douglass's Women is being reissued in February on Frederick Douglass's birthday. So I also kind of liked the idea that from 2002, that they still thought this book was relevant, And my other novel, Magic City about the Tulsa race massacre was published in 1998. And they reissued that on the one hundredth anniversary two years ago of the Tulsa race massacre. So when I look back at my legacy, I think there was ways in which I was ahead of my time. Like people didn't get me, but that I was still, I'm still here. And today's award made me feel, Oh, I am truly now part of my time. And it's just wonderful. Having you of all the days you're gonna call, Zibby, yay. No.

[35:07]Zibby Owens: It's amazing. You're trending. You're Girl,

[35:11]Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'm gonna be 72 years old. That's better late than ever. I decided I'm going live until at least I'm 100, I hope. I thought I was going to die in my fifties because all my relatives, parents, grandparents, they all died basically in their fifties. So when I got to my 50s, it's like, Oh, then I get to my 60s, Oh, and then my 70s. And it's like, Oh, well, girl, I'm just going go on and I'm going to do it. So I hope to see you. I don't want to wait three more decades, but I hope I get to see you soon. I hope so Give you a big hug. Thank you for all you would be lovely. Oh my gosh. Of course. Giving you a big hug from here. Bye bye. Say hello to the family. I will. You too. And let me know if there's ever anything I can I can I can do for you or or, you know, the family or whatever? It's sort of like, yeah, you could call me whenever and I would I would be there. You're the sweetest. And I'm sorry for your mom's loss. I thought exactly where they lived in. Oh yes. So we keep fighting through and making life a joy. I think that that's really the journey, that that's our purpose. Things will always happen or go wrong or tragedies. And I just see you as a light of always powering through trying to make joy for your loved ones and for your community. So thank you. Oh, thank you so much. Bye, guys. You too. Bye. Thank you. Thank

[36:43]Zibby Owens: you for listening to Totally Bucked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.