Although Tonya Bolden is best known as the author of outstanding nonfiction, her latest book, Finding Family(Bloomsbury, Sept., 2010), is a novel about an African-American family in turn-of-the-20th-century Charleston, West Virginia. In this coming-of-age story, 12-year-old Delana Hannibal sets out to learn more of her family's history following the death of Aunt Tilley, one of her caretakers. It's Delana's grandfather, an aloof yet successful businessman, who holds the key to many of the girl's questions. Finding Family is illustrated with antique postcards and photos of men, women, and children representing the places and characters found in the book. Here the author discusses how her years of research inspired and influenced this novel.
How long have you been collecting antique photographs? I believe it began after Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementos of Being Young and Black in America (Abrams, 2002). That book was a turning point for me. Because I had to gather so many images for it, I began saying, "I want to own some of this."
Was there one photo in particular that sparked Finding Family? The photo of Delana. I remember seeing a photo of a young girl, and it was stamped "Charleston, W. Virginia." I had such an attachment to her. I thought, "I want to tell this girl's story." Then the Tonya who loves history started thinking, "I don't have family history in West Virginia—my people are from the Carolinas and from Georgia. What's my anchor in West Virginia?" Carter G. Woodson and Martin Delany are from West Virginia, and that's what started me on the book. The first thing I wrote was Aunt Tilley talking about the "spacious mind."
The Book of Bewares that Aunt Tilley makes Delana keep gives us such insight into the woman. What inspired it? One day I was walking to the fish market, and I knew I had to develop [reasons] why Delana was so timid, and to show how she'd been made to live a locked-up life. I thought, "Aunt Tilley makes her fearful. What is she afraid of?" I imagined that it had to get a bit ridiculous. "No jackleg preachers!/No people who beg for bones" [were people Tilley warns Delana about]. I composed that in my head while I was going to buy fish.
The 1881 lithograph Heroes of the Colored Race from the Library of Congress is the only photograph that you identify. Would that have hung over the mantel in many African-American homes at that time, as it does in Delana's home? After Emancipation, most black homes had images of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglass. A handful of black men made history as senators and representatives. That was huge for black people. They believed that the nation had changed. This was a time when mainstream media showed so many derogatory images of black people—as it did of the Irish and the Chinese, too. That's why the photos I collect are dear; it's why images that say, "This is who I am," were so important. Back then, a way for people to fortify themselves was to have positive images in their homes. The majority of black people nearly worshiped Abraham Lincoln, because in their minds, he brought freedom.
You mention in your author's note that "bits of Booker T. Washington's life went into the making of Grandpa," and also that William Johnson, the well-known, 19th-century barber who lived in Natchez, Mississippi, inspired Grandpa's profession. That generation of people who came up from slavery—not millions of them, but many of them—achieved so much given where they began in life. I had decided that the Hannibals were going to be sort of well off. So I thought, "How would a black man be well off?" I didn't want him to be a minister. There was a time when black men had a lot going on in barbering. Look at what Booker T. Washington achieved! And I know that some people in the past have been critical of him, and in the 1960s they wrote him off as an Uncle Tom. I think we've gotten past that. What we don't acknowledge enough is that very often after slavery they had to do a lot of stooping to conquer, wearing the mask, to survive. I wanted to honor all that that generation had to put up with.
One of my favorite characters is Ambertine, the good friend [and relative] of Delana's mother. Her attitude and the fact that she wore pants made her seem ahead of her time. I really studied the photographs and mulled over them. I didn't want to make everybody righteous. There are rebels in every generation. Susan B. Anthony could go vote before it was legal and get arrested; there have always been women who live on the edge. Sometimes [it's the rebels] who help us most.The whole book is a meditation on how complicated people are, and how complicated life is, and how most things aren't that simple.
Is there a connection between the fact that Delana wrote to members of her family to ask them for memories about her Mama, and Grandpa placed an ad to find his kinfolk? In doing the research for one of my books, I read about two things that many people [who had once been enslaved] did when freedom came: They married in a proper way, and they placed ads for family. That always stuck with me.
For so long, there's been sort of this script of black families being broken up, that we didn't know who we were. People cared about family! Very often those people went looking for each other. In many of my books, when I'm dealing with slavery and Reconstruction, I'm always trying to [point out] that these were human beings who mourned and missed and cared. Grandpa was a loving person. He had withdrawn as we often do as we start to lose people who were dear to us.
When Delana says, "I want to know the Truth," about her parents and Grandpa reveals himself and says, "These are some of my truths," he suggests that we each have to piece together our own truth. Part of what we do, when we get it right in life, is understanding that people are the way they are because of things that have happened to them. We all are operating from our own truth.... We have to try to understand the other point of view.
[Finding Family is also] about mercy. Somehow, along the way, while Grandpa's being successful in business, he forgets about mercy. In a way, as Delana discovers her truth and who she is and comes into her own and has voice, she is Grandpa's redeemer. She forces him to get back to mercy.
Jennifer M. Brown is the children's editor for Shelf Awareness, a daily enewsletter for the publishing trade. She recently launched the website Twenty by Jenny, which recommends titles to help parents build their child's library one book at a time.
This article originally appeared in School Library Journal's enewsletter Curriculum Connections. Subscribe here.
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