Miracles

When I was young, my grandmother's first question in the morning was, "Did you say your prayers this morning?" If my lie didn't come quick enough, she sent me back to bed, where, with the biggest pout on that side of Brooklyn, I reluctantly thanked the forces for giving me another day. My grandmother thought it was bad home-training to not be grateful. What I've come to realize is this—I am grateful for this moment, for the people who believed in me from the very beginning, teachers and librarians, friends and editors. I am grateful for every person that ever said, "I liked your book" or "You write well" or "Wow" or "Thank you."

But most of all, I am grateful for young people—young people of African descent and children of all colors. I am grateful when I walk down the street and hear a young person laughing or singing or begging their mom for a few more minutes outside. I am grateful for the little kids in the schools I visit who touch my hair and gaze up at me— curious and open and eager to know something and/or someone different. Curious and open and eager… to know.

When I received the Coretta Scott King Honor in 1996, my grandmother was in the audience. For weeks, she had been going back and forth about what she should wear and finally decided on a dress that had been my favorite as a child—a navy blue dress with a matching coat and a straw hat she had decorated with brightly colored flowers. As I gave my two-minute acceptance speech, I looked out to see my grandmother proudly beaming up at me. My publisher had paid for my family and friends' places at the breakfast tables and I had bragged to my grandmother about the expense of it all for no other reason than to give her a sense that this was, indeed, the big time. Later, as she and I stood smiling for various photo opportunities, my grandmother whispered, "Jackie, that food was okay, but I don't think it was worth no $65."

My grandmother passed away five days after I received the phone call telling me I was this year's winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. When I told her I had won, she said, "Didn't you already get that one? Why don't they give you something else now?" And although she didn't say it, I know she was already thinking about what this year's outfit would be.

Many of you who know me know that it was my grandmother who raised me, who stood over the four of us as we often begrudgingly hit our schoolbooks, who had dinner waiting at the end of the day, who called us in just before sundown and just as a good game of kick-the-can was beginning, who on sunny Saturday mornings fussed at me for sitting curled up in a chair with a book rather than being outside getting some air.

And I am here today because of that grandmother who came to New York from Greenville, SC, in the '70s but never completely left Greenville—bringing with her the seeds and saplings for a garden of marigolds and roses and hyacinths and sage and apple trees and pole beans and tomatoes—a garden that grew as we did, in the backyard of a three-story wood-framed building in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. And she brought with her, too, a garden variety of ideas that would plant themselves firmly in my brothers and sister and me. For me, what grew was a belief that I could be a writer of short stories and poems—and maybe even one day whole books!—about that Brooklyn neighborhood with a park a half-block to the left of me and a school two blocks to my right.

If my grandmother had said that one day I'd be standing up here making this speech, I might have believed her. Anyone else, I would have thanked politely for their blind faith and moved on.

My grandmother passed away after a long battle with diabetes. Like hypertension, diabetes is too common in the African-American community. A history of poor diets, lack of access to adequate foods and nutritional information, lack of access to health care, poverty... the list goes on as to why these diseases have historically wreaked havoc on our community. Add to the list in my grandmother's case, stubbornness. A stubbornness friends will tell you I inherited. I believe in what I believe in. I believe all voices have a right to be heard. I believe the Coretta Scott King Committee has made it possible for so many of these voices to get into the world and I am so incredibly proud to be a part of this history.

There are pictures of my grandparents on the altar in my study, on the mantel in my living room, boxes of pictures that I pull out when I'm writing about remembering. As we left the CSK Breakfast that morning in 1996, my grandmother said to me, "Well, now that you got this award, maybe someone will give you a job." Now I smile remembering that conversation. At her funeral, every friend of hers I met said, "You're the one that writes, ain't you?" No one was ever allowed to borrow any of my books from her and her copies remain to this day neatly displayed in the living room, their bindings unbroken. Once she said, "Your writing makes me too sad." And I always promised her I'd write a happy ending—or at least I'd put the happiness somewhere in the book. She always hoped I'd teach, and I do teach sometimes in front of a classroom, but mostly I hope readers learn about people other than themselves through literature—mine and the literature of others—just as I once learned from writers like Virginia Hamilton and James Baldwin, Mildred Taylor and Rosa Guy—writers who didn't know they were giving a young black girl from Brooklyn the message that she, too, could do this. They were teaching me the most important lesson—that even the grandest of things start from a dream.

As this award did. And here it is more than 30 years later. The Coretta Scott King Award is the real miracle here. Like black people, it has survived and flourished and gained honor and recognition and status. John Carroll and Glyndon Greer and Mabel McKissack, who first envisioned this award in 1969, are miracles. This committee that keeps it going is a miracle. Black people are miracles. That I am here today is a miracle. Not because I don't believe I'm a decent writer. I work hard and write for long hours. Some days I love writing and some days I hate it. Once I threw a pile of pages across the room. I could have thrown them out the window but that would have meant going all the way downstairs to retrieve them. Across the room released the rage without adding a whole lot of work to the process of getting the papers together and back on my desk again.

No, I believe in the power of the written word and I know my writing comes from a place of deep passion. The miracle is that I am black and I am a woman and I am here. And if the Coretta Scott King Award did not exist, this speech wouldn't, this moment wouldn't, the many books published for young people written by black people wouldn't. Because one of the many purposes of this award is to counteract the inability of publishers, judges, and readers to recognize the universality of a black protagonist. The black experience as seen through the eyes of black people has historically only been considered palatable and praiseworthy when presented via the songs and stories and dances of whites.

Last month I read a heartbreakingly shortsighted article attacking the validity of the Coretta Scott King Award and other awards that have come into existence not only to acknowledge the writings by people of color but also to ensure that these works get into the hands of young people. Anyone interested in removing the need for awards recognizing the excellence of literature written by people of color should focus their efforts on democratizing the book awards that don't do this and on ensuring the presence of the works by people of color in the literary canon, thereby making these works available to all people.

All of my life, as a black girl, then as a black woman, I've been hearing the tired old argument that something that acknowledges the work of people who are nonwhite is often not as worthy. Here is where the miracle comes in—that we as a people can hear this and go on to be amazing in the world, that, like birches, we bend without breaking, create our own pies when the mainstream's not sharing.

Like Lafayette and Ty'ree and Charlie, I know that each of us is a miracle, has traveled emotional and physical distances to be in this world and in this room. I know that my grandmother planted the first seed that would become this literary garden that is me and that people like Nancy Paulsen and Wendy Lamb, my friends and family, helped it grow—and continue to nurture it. And of course, the Coretta Scott King Committee, who believed not only in me and my book, but in black people and literature that speaks not only to the black experience but to all experiences through the eyes and voices and hands of black people—the universal experience that is a part of the American Dream, that is worthy and valid and brilliant, that is… a miracle.