TO A YOUNG
READER
Imagine to
be in Brooklyn, imagine to be 9 years old, imagine that you're going to spend
saturday morning with your mum in a community garden, imagine that for
some reason you're sent back in time and find youself in your city but
150 years earlier... do you think this is impossible? Well it's what happened
to Dayshaun in Brooklyn. If you think magic doesn't happen in city
kid's life... well you haven't read Zetta Elliott's Daysahun's Gift, the second of a 6 serie's of city kids books.
It's time to get your own copy!
When Zetta
Elliott sent me Daysahaun's Gift I immediately entered the story and
surprisingly found that I could read it on many levels.
First of
all I too travelled in time, exactly to a small province town in north Eastern
part of Italy called Ferrara where I lived for almost one year where community
gardens are a vivid reality. Within the magnificent Medieval walls that
surrounds the city, community garden is a urban project that promotes
community allowing people to care about the environment. Acknowledging that
this is happening in super modern New York City is quiet amazing and somehow
comforting.
Secondly,
as a parent I always tried to find ways to tell History in a more narrative way
which sometimes is the only way you have to access to wider and more inclusive
perspectives on events that happened in the past since History books tend to be
written just by one point of view. Growing up as a white girl
in a country (South Africa) where racism had a legal status, I didn't
know much about the History I was living from the point of view of the
oppressed. But luckily I had my nanny, Sera. She was a second mother to me, who
didn't just care for my daily needs entertaining me or feeding me, she made
sure that I would know how was the life of black people in the country, she
cared more than my biological mother making her own preoccupation to let me
understand how many injustices people like her were suffering on a dialy basis.
Sera used to tell me stories of her people and how they have been struggling
for centuries because of their skin color (colonialism and nationalism). And
hers were not just folktales, they were true stories of real people. So I
grew up knowing a part of history I was denied to know in details because I
could not find it in books, not history books nor fiction. Somehow I owe
her the debt of being a storyteller myself.
Zetta's
book made me think about my nanny Sera, who made me travel all the way back to
the past of South Africa through stories.
Imagination.
Going back in time is a wonderful excercise of the imagination. Allowing our
kids how to wear wings and fly back in time and space is a great opportunity to
let them grow aware that the world is multiple and that the past is where we
all come from, so better know it also to try and avoid mistakes.
Magic. As a
young reader I never had a particular yearning for magic, maybe because
all the books of magic were set in out of space worlds where you had to meet
weird creatures. But authors like Zetta Elliott made me like magic because her
stories are set in the cities we live, in our exhisting world, encountering
real people, something we can easily relate to and identify with. If you add
that magic is paired with History, I personally find it a perfect match along
with the fact that Daysahaun is a black kid and it's quiet rare to find black
characters in magic stories.
I believe
not only parents but educators too will have a great time sharing this story
with their students thinking at how to talk about history in an appealing way.
What else
should I say? That Dayshaun's Gift is definetly a transcultural book, a special
quality of stories. Through his time travel he touches on many actual subjects:
immigration, racial violence, refugee crisis, solidarity, empathy.
Zetta has
published, among others, three books for young adults: A Wish after Midnight, Ship of Souls, and The Deep and sixteen books for children, three of
which will be released between the end of this year and 2016.
She is a prolific blogger and co founder of the Birthday Party Pledge which encourages people to give books to children as a birthday
gift chosing from a list that provides multicultural titles. It also
inspires parents to help children building their own bookshelf.
KABILIANA - Zetta, why do you feel the urgency to write city books for
children? Do you find a lack of this kind of book in the traditional publishing
industry in the USA?
ZETTA
ELLIOTT - Definitely—I don’t think there’s really anything like the City Kids
series here in the US. I write about the city largely because I live in the
city. I write specifically about Brooklyn because that’s my home, and there’s
so much history and magic to be found in my borough. I also write about the
city because in most fantasy fiction, cities are places to be avoided or
escaped from—you travel through time and land someplace far away. I grew up
loving stories about dragons and castles, which means I was almost always
dreaming about England; the kids in those books never looked like me, their
families weren’t like mine, and I was left feeling like my experience, my world
just wasn’t good enough. I write about the city now so that urban kids—the kids
that I work with—know that magic can happen to anyone, anywhere.
KABILIANA -
Speculative fiction allows, for the wider imagination, to navigate the line of
time and space without limits. What makes it so attractive to young readers?
ZETTA
ELLIOTT - Speculative fiction allows us to ask, “What if?” And when you are
marginalized within society, and when you feel relatively powerless as a child,
spec fic can create a realm where you feel empowered—for once. When a
child travels through time or encounters aliens or befriends a ghost, s/he
feels special—and too many kids of color don’t get to feel that way on a
regular basis. Or they’re told they’re special for but negative reasons
(“special ed”). Every child wants to be the hero, to save the day, to find the
key that opens the magic portal. But kids of color generally have to live
vicariously through the adventures of white children because that’s all they
see in popular culture. In a society where a Black child can be shot dead in a
park just for using his imagination (Tamir Rice was
playing with a toy gun—who knows what adventure he was dreaming up), spec fic
can offer a safe space to test or even shatter the limits imposed on children.
KABILIANA - Magic is also one of the themes that attracts
you, you wrote about magic in many of your YA and children’s books portraying
black characters which is unusual in magic /fantasy genre. Your use of magic
it’s used in a non-magic world. Characters and places are real and the magic
element pops up to shift in time and space. Characters exist equal to others,
they don’t meet super heroes or weird creatures and this makes it easy to
identify with the whole story. Where does this fascination with magic come
from?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - I grew up reading books like Narnia
Chronicles and The Phoenix and the Carpet, and those books left a strong
impression on my imagination. I love the idea of moving between worlds, opening
a portal and stepping into a realm that’s full of wonder. But I am a realist
and I find it challenging to build worlds that are completely different than
the one we live in now. I’m also an immigrant, so it’s easy for me to write
about my own border-crossing experience; I tend to see NYC with “fresh eyes”
even though I’ve been here for over 20 years. Since I love historical fiction,
I prefer to recreate worlds that have already existed—and focusing on NYC
history lets me educate a little while I entertain my young readers. History is
often taught in a way that bores children, but adding a touch of magic can make
the past exciting. I find it easier to attract young readers when they open the
book and see their contemporary world reflected on the pages. Then you can ease
them into a world that’s both foreign and familiar.
KABILIANA - How did Dayshaun popped up in your imagination?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - Dayshaun came to me after I completed my
first residency at the Weeksville Heritage Center in the spring of 2015. I
wrote a picture book for them about the historic 19th-century African American
community in Brooklyn, and I was finishing up The Door at the Crossroads, which
is the sequel to my YA time-travel novel A Wish After Midnight. So I had a book
for 4-6 year olds and I had a book for teens, but I didn’t have anything for
kids in that middle age range. I already had a book for 7-10 year olds, The
Phoenix on Barkley Street, and decided that Dayshaun’s Gift could fit in the
City Kids series. I write about boys quite often because we know that boys of
color start to fall behind in reading around Grade 3, and once they fall behind
it’s very hard to catch up. I see how boys gravitate towards books that are
colorful with cartoon illustrations, so I knew I wanted Dayshaun to be a quirky
kid who’s thoughtful but also into zombies; he’s someone most boys can relate
to, I think. Book #1 in the City Kids series involves a garden so I thought
there’d be continuity with Dayshaun joining his mother at the community garden
at Weeksville.
KABILIANA - I found your work transcultural in many
ways. I imagine an immigrant child of nowadays who comes from difficult
circumstances and finds refuge in a place like Weeksville (like the African
Americans found in Weeksville during the riots in 1860s ).The refugee camp in
Weeksville resembles a refugee camp of nowadays in many countries where people
flee wars and droughts to find a better life. Here Dayshaun learns, through
Susan and her friend Teddy, what is empathy, feeling connected with other human
being who have a different experience. This made me think about the brutality
which black American boys and girls are subjected on a daily basis and how
important is the whole process of identification. How do educators and parents
can discuss with their younger kids about social injustice without being
rhetoric and with raising empathy in them?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - That was a real concern for me. I focused on
racial violence and trauma in my dissertation but at the same time, I was
teaching urban kids on a part-time basis. I wanted to make my research relevant
to them, but I didn’t want to traumatize them further and much of the material
was simply too graphic. I tend to think of Dayshaun’s Gift as a way for me to
bring kids close enough to the fire for them to feel the heat and see the
illumination—but they’re never at risk of getting burned. I didn’t want to put
Dayshaun in the middle of a race riot; I wanted him to feel empowered, and so
Susan and Teddy show him how even kids can support those in need. I don’t have
children but I have nieces and nephews, and I do wonder how their parents talk
to them about Black Lives Matter, or the Syrian refugee crisis, or the Central
American child migrants detained here in the US. I don’t want to make children
depressed or bitter, but I do want to change the understanding of terrorism
here in the US didn’t start on 9/11. Domestic terrorism has been and
continues to be a major factor that shapes the lives of people of color in the
US. We have to say, “Black Lives Matter” today because saying it for 400 years
hasn’t changed the brutality Black people face in a white supremacist country.
I hope the story resonates with kids elsewhere in the world, and I hope the
book can help facilitate a conversation with kids about the conditions that
create refugees and other displaced people.
KABILIANA - Susan is referred to Susan
Smith McKinney Steward, the first African woman to earn a medical
doctorate. Why did you chose Susan Steward? According to you, how many kids in
NY city or in the USA know about her?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - I tried teaching once—I didn’t last a week,
but the middle school where I was placed was the Susan McKinney Middle School
in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. I suspect that the kids who attend that school know
about her, but I doubt that other children in NYC know about this amazing
woman. Writing her into the book created gender balance and allowed me to talk
about the specific challenges faced by Black girls and women. Susan came from a
very accomplished family and her older sister was already principal of a local
school, so she probably didn’t believe there were any limits she couldn’t
overcome. Yet when she earned the highest grades at medical school and was
named valedictorian, the school administrators asked her not to speak at
graduation because of her race. She refused to step down, gave the valedictory
address, and went on to do a lot for her community. Writing historical fantasy
allows me to use magic to uncover buried heroines who deserve to be known and
celebrated.
KABILIANA - We know that often history books are written
only from one point of view and what is needed in this circular moving world is
perspectives, space for the multiplicity of visions, how much fiction can contribute
in filling the many gaps that history books have?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - Unfortunately, school textbooks are still
viewed as the “official” record when it comes to the teaching of history. But
recent controversies have shown just how biased school textbooks can be, and
parents are pushing back (as in the case of enslaved Africans being referred to
as “laborers”). I think multiple perspectives are crucial to destabilizing the
dominant narrative. My novels won’t circulate the way textbooks do, but if a
child reads my novel and questions something taught in class, then that’s
enough for me. Parents can also supplement their child’s education with novels
and films and websites. The main thing is to create critical thinkers who will
challenge every idea placed before them.
KABILIANA - Dayshaun comes back to the present enriched and
with questions he probably wouldn’t have if not for what he experienced going
back to 1860s. When we talk about connecting with the past we rarely imagine it
referred to a city kid living in super modern NY. How much is important for
urban kids to connect with their past? And how much a city like NY
or other cities around the world could be ideal places to set a magic/fantasy
story? How could they use this link in their daily life?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - NYC is FULL of history—it’s everywhere. I
grew up in a city (Toronto) where I felt I couldn’t see any signs of the past,
and I never believed anything magical would happen to me there. Then I came to
Brooklyn and fell in love with the old brownstones and churches and massive oak
trees. I could see and touch history every day! Now, as an adult, I know that
there’s history—and magic—everywhere. If I went back to Toronto now, I could
find what seemed invisible to me as a child. I don’t want the kids in my
community to miss out on the chance to learn from the past—I want them to see
themselves as shapers of and participants in history. I recently went to London
for 4 days and started a new City Kids book—The Ghosts in the Castle. I don’t
live in London but the story sends Zaria (from Book #1) overseas to visit
family; that lets me talk about the diaspora and Caribbean migration.
Everything about England seems strange to Zaria but what she wants most is to
visit a castle like the ones she has read about in fairy tales. So her aunt
takes her to Windsor Castle and there she encounters the ghosts of Sarah Forbes
Bonetta and Prince Alemayehu who were both given as “gifts” to Queen Victoria
in the mid-19th century. Through her encounter with them, Zaria learns
about imperialism and colonization and hybridity. I’d love to write a City Kids
book for every city I visit!
KABILIANA - Mr. Williams, the old man who lives in the camp,
leaves Dayshaun a gift: seeds from Virginia to grow. Seeds in this story have
also a metaphorical meaning. Passing a seed from an older to a younger
generation means also passing the memory of the ancestor’s past. As parents,
educators, writers, readers, how can we allow the past to inhabit the present
of our children in an attractive way?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - I think we have to make the past
present—speak the names of our ancestors, talk about the places and practices
that shaped us when we were young. My parents rarely talked about the past but
my grandparents were avid storytellers. I love talking to elders and we need to
keep seniors at the center of our communities—not on the margins. Kids can do
oral histories on their own or as part of a national project like Story Corps.
Community mapping allows families to look for clues in their
neighborhood—cornerstones that reveal a building’s age, architectural details
from another era. We have to teach our kids to think about legacy—they stand on
a foundation laid by others, and others will benefit from whatever gifts they
bestow upon future generations.
KABILIANA - Imagining a reader from India, South Africa, or
New Zealand, how can Dayshaun’s Gift resonates with him/her?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - I identify as a Commonwealth writer so I
hope my books do resonate with children in other formerly colonized countries.
I think The Ghosts in the Castle will more explicitly deal with imperialism but
Dayshaun’s Gift also addresses issues like divorce and urban farms, the
importance of creating self-sufficient communities.
KABILIANA - What is/are your next book/s about and when will
it/they be released?
ZETTA ELLIOTT - My next book is a Christmas narrative called Let the Faithful
Come, which highlights the desperate yet hopeful journey of so many
migrants in our contemporary world. That will be available by mid-November. Billie’s Blues is
also about migration; a little girl spends time listening to blues music with
her elderly neighbor and learns about the conditions that pushed so many
African Americans out of the rural South and into the big cities of the North.
I hope to have The Ghosts in the Castle finished in time for the winter
holidays!
We hope too Zetta!