Middle Schoolers Hear from Authors at Women’s History Month Event

Students at a Brooklyn middle school got a rare opportunity to interact with best-selling authors as well as a poet, who visited the school as part of an International Women’s Day celebration.

New York Times best-selling authors Rita Williams-Garcia and Ibi Zoboi, along with poet Mahogany L. Browne, talked about their work and took questions from students at Excellence Girls Middle Academy in Crown Heights, an all-girls school that is part of the high-performing Uncommon Schools network. District 41 Councilwoman Darlene Mealy also joined the panel discussion.

Williams-Garcia, who wrote the popular “One Crazy Summer” that’s required reading in the school, told students that it was her dream to one day address a school assembly of students who read her books.

“When I was your age, I dreamed that this would be me,” she told the students. “I dreamed I’d be standing in front of people reading my books, talking about my book, signing my books and being a famous author.”

Williams-Garcia said she started writing 500 words a day out of desperation. As a young girl, her family was financially struggling and she thought she could write to make some money to help. After doing research, she learned that publishing houses would pay about five cents per word.

“I realized I would have to write a lot of words to make a lot of money, so that's where the 500 words every night came in,” she said. She sent her manuscripts to publishers, but got nothing but rejection.

“My sister and brother would laugh and they read the rejection letters back to me in their funny voices: ‘Dear loser, we smelled your story coming and it stinks’,” Williams recalled. “But eventually I got one letter that said, ‘Dear Rita Williams. We read your story with interest and we would like to publish it’.”

Williams-Garcia has come a long way since then. Her book “P.S. Be Eleven” won the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 2014. Two years later, another of her books, “Gone Crazy in Alabama” won the same award. She said the first award came at a fortuitous time.

“I really needed it because I was going through a hard time – I was facing eviction from my apartment,” Williams-Garcia said. “When I won that award, I knew I was saved. What that award did was help to make the book available to readers all across the country such as yourself.”

Zoboi also won the Coretta Scott King Award multiple times. She won an author honor last year for her book, “Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler” and earlier this year she was named an author winner for “Nigeria Jones.” She had previously won the Coretta Scott King award for her debut picture book, “The People Remember.”

Before her remarks, Zoboi asked students to raise their hands if they were born in another country. Numerous hands in the audience were raised. Then she asked those whose parents were born in another country, then grandparents, and so on, until everyone’s hands were raised.

“I was born in another country and I am a proud immigrant and I want to let you all know at some point you have an ancestor who was new to this country and had big dreams,” said Zoboi, who was born in Haiti and raised in New York City. “Even for those of us who were forced to come to this country, we still had big dreams. My big dream was to be someone who told stories.”

She asked students of immigrant parents what their parents wanted them to be when they grew up. Almost in unison, students shouted doctor, lawyer, engineer.

“Writing was not was not part of my mother's dream for me,” Zoboi confessed. “But writing was my dream. The reality is I would not be the author that I am today in Haiti. So this is part of my American Dream. Whatever dream you have for yourself, hold on to it.”

Browne, an author, educator and the inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center, said she was radicalized through writing.

“I began to see myself clearly and that silenced the noise around me, about me as I figured out who I wanted to be,” Browne told the students. “The obstacles behind me are the reason I am here today.”

She then asked the students to repeat a mantra: “We are enough and we belong here.”

Excellence Girls seventh grader Danyssa Barthelemy said she was inspired by Browne’s uplifting message.

“As black women we’re either constantly victimized or told we can't do it because of our race, our gender or just the person that we are in general,” Danyssa said. “So it just made me feel like I am enough no matter who I am or what I do.”

Seventh grader Ava Pratt said she also felt inspired listening to the guests.

“It made me feel good because they made me feel as if I'm capable of doing this later on in the future,” Ava said. “I have a place in this world and I'm going to make the most of it.”

Karisann Thompson, also a seventh grader, said the program made her feel like she could grow up and be anything she wanted to be. She also said she appreciated the opportunity to meet the authors in person.

“I think it's amazing because it's like meeting a celebrity,” she said. “And then you hear her story and you’re like, I want to be like her when I grow up.”