We see through August’s eyes what life was like for a young black girl in 1970s Brooklyn. When dad finally replants August and her little brother in the county of Kings, his home town, a new life sprouts for them. She persisted in talking to her lost, beloved sibling as if he were still present. In Tennessee, when she was eight, her mother, was unable to cope with news of her brother’s death in Viet Nam. At 35, August, a worldly anthropologist, back in New York City to bury her father, recalls her growing up years. Each week, I began with the words I was waiting for my mother…A forest grows in Bushwick. Many moments passed before I opened my mouth to speak.

Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing’s coming to me, I remember my fifth grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said “This is really good.” The way, I - the skinny girl in the back of the classroom who was always getting into trouble for talking or missed homework assignments - sat up a little straighter, folded my hands on the desks, smiled and began to believe in me.Įach week, sister Sonja said, Start at the beginning, her dark fingers bending around a small black notebook, pen poised. Lots and lots of books later, I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book’s binder. A lie on the page meant lots of independent time to create your stories and the freedom to sit hunched over the pages of your notebook without people thinking you were strange. So by the time the story rolled around and the words “This is really good” came out of the otherwise down-turned lips of my fifth grade teacher, I was well on my way to understanding that a lie on the page was a whole different animal - one that won you prizes and got surly teachers to smile. After lots of brouhaha, it was believed finally that I had indeed penned the poem which went on to win me a Scrabble game and local acclaim. That year, I wrote a story and my teacher said “This is really good.” Before that I had written a poem about Martin Luther King that was, I guess, so good no one believed I wrote it. Of course I got in trouble for lying but I didn’t stop until fifth grade. I loved lying and getting away with it! There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends’ eyes grow wide with wonder. Not “Once upon a time” stories but basically, outright lies. I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories. I chalked stories across sidewalks and penciled tiny tales in notebook margins. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I remember my uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. I used to say I’d be a teacher or a lawyer or a hairdresser when I grew up but even as I said these things, I knew what made me happiest was writing.

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