Intensive English Comp I (110)

l\ fy mother read me bedtime stories until I was six years IVIoH. It was a sneak atack on her paft. As soon as I real- ly got to like the stories, she said, "Here's the book. Now you

read." She didnt know what she was setting us both up for.

-2-

"I think," my mother said to me one day when I was ten, "that everyone has something that they can do better than they can do anything else. It's up to them to find out what that something ir."

'We were in the kitchen by the stove. She was pressing my hair while I sat bent over someone's cast-off notebook, writing. I had decided to write down some of the stories I'd been telling myself over the years.

'\7hen I didnt have stories to read, I learned to make them up. Now I was learning to write them down.

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-3-

I was shy, afraid of most people, most situations. I did- n't stop to ask myself how things could hurt me, or even whether they could hurt me. I was just afraid.

I crept into my first bookstore full of vague fears. I had managed to save about five dollars, mosdy in change. It was 1957. Five dollars was a lot of money for a ten-year-old. The public library had been my second home since I was six, and I owned a number of hand-me-down books. But now I want- ed a new book-one I had chosen, one I could keep.

"Can kids come in here?" I asked the woman at the cash register once I was inside. I meant could Black kids come in. My mother, born in rural Louisiana and raised amid strict racial segregation, had warned me that I might not be wel- come everywhere, even in California.

The cashier glanced at me. "Of course you can come in," she said. Then, as though it were an afterthought, she smiled. I relaxed.

The first book I bought described the characteristics of different breeds of horses. The second described srars and planets, asteroids, moons and comets.

-4-

My aunt and I were in her kitchen, talking. She was cooking something that smelled good, and I was sitting at her

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table, watching. Luxury. At home, my morher would have had

me helping. "I want to be a writer when I grow up," I said. "Do you?" *y aunt asked. "\7e[[, thatt nice, but you'll

have to get a job, too." "'Writing will be my job," I said. "You can write any time. Itt a nice hobby' But you ll

have to earn a living." "As a writer." "Dont be silly." "I mean it." "Honey . . . Negroes cant be writers."

"\Vhy not?" "They just can't." "Yes, they can, too!"

I was most adamant when I didnt know what I was talking out. In all my thirteen years, I had never read a print-

ed word that I knew to have been written by a Black person.

My aunt was a grown woman. She knew more than I did. 'W'hat if she were right?

-5-

Shyness is shit.

It isnt cute or feminine or appealing. Itt torment, and it's shit.

I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence staring at the ground. It's a wonder I didnt become a geologist. I

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whispered. People were always saying, "speak up! 'we can'r hear you."

I memorized required reports and poems for school, then cried my way out of having to recite. some reachers con- demned me for not studying. some forgave me for not being very bright. Only a few saw my shyness.

"Shet so backward," sorne of my relatives said. "She's so nice and quiet," tacrful friends of my mother

said.

I believed I was ugly and stupid, clumsp and socially hopeless. I also thought that everyone would notice these faults if I drew attention to myself, I wanted ro disappear. Instead, I grew to be six feet tal[. Boys in pardcular seemed to assume that I had done this growing deliberately and that I should be ridiculed for it as often as possible.

I hid out in a big pink notebook-one that wourd hold a whole ream of paper. I made myself a universe in it. There I could be a magic horse, a Martian, a telepath. . . . There I could be any,here but here, any time but now, with any people but these.

-6-

My mother did day work. She had a habit of bringing home any books her employers threw our. she h"d been per- mitted only three years of school. Then she had been pur ro work. oldest daughter. She believed passionately in books and education. She wanted me to have what she had been denied.

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She wasnt sure which books I might be able to use, so she brought whatever she found in the trash. I had bools yellow with age, books without covers, books written in, crayoned in, spilled on, cut, torn, even partly burned. I stacked them in wooden crates and second-hand bookcases and read them when I was ready for them. Some were years too advanced for me when I got them, but I grew into them.

-7-

An obsession, according to my old Random House dic- tionar5 is 'the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc." Obsession can be a useful tool if itt positive obsession. Using it is like aiming carefu[ly in archery.

I took archery in high school because it wasn't a team sport. I liked some of the team sports, but in archery you did well or badly according to your own efforts. No one else to blame. I wanted to see what I could do. I learned to aim high. Aim above the target. Aim just there! Relax. Let go. If you aimed right, you hit the bullt-eye. I saw positive obsession as a way of aiming yourselfi your life, at your chosen target. Decide what you want. Aim high. Go for it.

I wanted to sell a story. Before I knew how to rype, I wanted to sell a story.

I pecked my stories out nvo fingered on the Remington portable rypewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten, and she had bought it.

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"You'll spoil that child!" one of her friends told her. "\7hat does she need with a typewriter at her age? It will soon be sitting in the closet with dust on it. All that money wasted!"

I asked my science teacher, Mr. Pfaffi to rype one of my stories for me-rype it the way it was supposed to be with no holes erased into the paper and no strike-overs. He did. He even corrected my terrible spelling and punctuation. To this day I'm amazed and grateful.

-8-

I had no idea how to submit a story for publication. I blundered through unhelpful library books on writing. Then I found a discarded copy of TheV(riten a magazine I had never heard of. That copy sent me back to the library to look for more, and for other writers' magazines to see what I could learn from them. In very little time I d found out how to sub- mit a story and my story was in the mail. A few weeks later I got my first rejection slip.

Vhen I was older, I decided that getting a rejecdon slip was like being told your child was ugly. You got mad and did- nt believe a word of it. Besides, look at all the really ugly lit- erury children out there in the world being published and doing fine!

-9-

I spent my teens and much of my rwenties collecting printed rejections. Early or, my mother lost $61'20-a' ,."dirrg fee charged by a so-called agent to look at one

of my

,rnp.riiirhable stori.r. No one had told us that agents werent

,tripor.d to get any money up front, weren't supposed to be

p"ii r.rrr,il they sold your work' Then they were to take ten

p.r..rr, of whate.,rer the work earned. Ignorance is expensive.

That $6t.ZO was more money back then than my mother paid

for a month's rent.

- l0-

I badgered friends and acquaintances into reading my

work, "rrd

ih.y seemed ro like it. Teachers read it and said

kindly, unhelpful things. But there were no creative writing

classes at my high school, and no useful criticism. At college

(in california at that rime, junior college was almost free), I

took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's

stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy

that I kept handing in, but she finatly asked in exasperadon' "Cant you write anYthing normal?"

POSITIVE OBSESSION

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BLOODCHILD AND OTHER STORIES

A schoolwide contest was held. AII submissions had to be made anonymously. My short story won first prize.I was an eighteen-year-old freshman, and I won in spite of compe- tition from older, more experienced people. Beautiful. The $1r.00 pize was the first money my writing earned me.

-t l-

After college I did office work for a while, then factory and warehouse work. My size and strength were advantages in factories and warehouses. And no one expected me to smile and pretend I was having a good time.

I got up at two or three in the morning and wrote. Then I went to work. I hated it, and I have no gift for sufFering in silence. I muttered and complained and quit jobs and found new ones and collected more re.iecdon slips. One day in disgust

I threw them all away. 'Wrhy keep such useless, painful things?

- I2-

There seems to be an unwritten rule, hurtful and at odds with the realities of American culture. It says you aren't sup- posed to wonder whether as a Black person, a Black woman, you really might be inferior-not quite bright enough, not quite quick enough, nor quite good enough to do the things you want to do. Though, of course, you do wonder. Youte

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supposed to knowyou're as good as anyone' And if you dont

kno*, you aren't suPPosed to admit it' If anyone near you admits it, you're supposed ro reassure them quickly so they'll

shut up. That sort of talk is embarrassing. Act tough and con-

fiderrt arrd dont talk abour your doubts. If you never deal with

them, you may never get rid of them, but no matter' Fake

everyone out. Even Yourself. I couldnt fake myself out. I didnt talk much about my

doubts. I wasn't fishing for hasty reassurances. But I did a lot

of thinking-the same things over and over' \vho was I anyway? vhy should anyone Pay attention

to what I had to say? Did I have anphing to say? I was writ-

ing science fiction and fantasy, for Godt sake. At that time

norly all professional science-fiction writers were white men.

fu much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing?

\rell, whatever ir was, I couldnt stoP. Positive obsession

is about not being able to stop iust because you're afraid and

full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not

being able to stop at all.

_t3_

I was rwenry-three when, finally, I sold my first rwo short stories. I sold both to writer-editors who were teaching at clarion, a science-fiction writers' workshop that I was attending. one story was evenrually pubtished. The other was-

nt. I didnt sell another word for five years. Then, finally, I sold

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my first novel. Thank God no one told me selling would take so long-not that I would have believed it. I ve sold eight nov- els since then. Last Christmas, I paid off the morrgage on my mothert house.

- 14-

So, then, I write science ficdon and fantasy for a living. As far as I know I'm still the only Black woman who does this. When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the ques- tions I heard most often was, "\7hat good is science ficdon to Black people?" I was usually asked this by a Black person. I gave bits and pieces of answers that didnt sadsfy me and that probably didnt satisfy my questioners. I resented the quesdon. Vhy should I have to justify my profession to anyone?

But the answer to that was obvious. There was exacdy one other Black science-fiction writer working successfully when I sold my first novel: Samuel R. Delany, Jr. Now there are four of us. Delany, Steven Barnes, Charles R. Saunders, and me. So few. \XZhy? Lac[< of interest? Lack of confidence? A young Black woman once said to me, "I always wanted to write science fiction, but I didnt think there were any Black women doing it." Doubts show themselves in all sorts of ways. But still I m asked, what good is science fiction to Black people?

\What good is any form of literature to Black people? 'What good is science fiction's thinking about the pre-

sent, the future, and the past? \i7hat good is its tendency to

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warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing?

\[hat good is its examination of the possible effects of sci-

ence and ,..rr".r.gy, or social organization and political

direction? At its b.Ii, science fiction stimulates imagination

andcreativiry.l.gtt'readerandwriteroffthebeatentrack' off the narrow, ,r"-"rro* footpath of

what "everyone" is saying,

doing, thinking-whot"' "everyone" happens to be this

yea.t.

And what good is all this to Black people?

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t- I

,4fterword

Iq;+:!':-{:l':lT:;:;,:|i,i:.*i;:i:Tly#,,i:r:i ;ffi:rlfX

rhe Essence tide. trry titte ** nt*ry, ..positive I've often said that since my rife was fired with reading,writing' and not much erse, it *", ,oo du, to write abour. Istill feel thar way- Im grad r *ro,. rhis piece, uu, iiiant enjoywriting it. I have no doubt at alr thrt the L;-; the rnostinteresting paft of me i, *y il;".

Furor Sc ribendi

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