It all started in China. Yes, you read that right. The origins of my book about Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony has everything to do with China.

Let me explain.

In 1988, I was asked to write a few monologues for theater pieces on American History that would be performed in a series of theaters in China. Later, after the scripts were complete, I invited several friends to join me in auditioning for the cast. I had no aspirations to join the cast myself, but my friends, who were all performing artists, certainly did. As for me, I simply thought the audition process would be a lark and I looked forward to spending a fun day with a few friends. And it was fun. And funny. As it turned out, the joke was on me. None of my friends made the final cut for the cast, but I did! As a result, I ended up going to China later that year. But, back to this story.

The historical figures I chose to develop monologues about for the show were Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony.

I was working in library acquisitions at USC at the time and was able to take advantage of the seemingly endless collection of books to be found in the Doheny Library Stacks. I dove into my research with gusto, and was excited to learn that my chosen subjects were contemporaries, and that their lives frequently intersected. I found that bit of information fascinating, and wondered just how deeply interconnected they were. In any event, I had no time to satisfy my curiosity, and so I limited my research to the biographical information I needed to know about each in order to write my short monologues. However, I did have occasion to mull over certain questions that occurred to me: I wondered what it would be like if Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony had a conversation. What would they talk about? What would it sound like?

After a time, I tucked those questions away and, eventually, forgot all about them.

In the intervening years, I wrote a book about aviator Bessie Coleman, the first African American licensed pilot. This is a biography written in verse, and told from multiple perspectives. While the information about Coleman was factual, the format I created to tell her story was a work of fiction. Talkin’ About Bessie has enjoyed considerable success, winning the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration and an Author Honor for the text.

Not surprisingly, the editor began asking me to consider writing another book about a historical figure. I told him thanks, but no thanks. Every year or so, he’d raise the subject again.

Finally, in 2008, he asked if I would consider writing a book about Harriet Tubman. I laughed, thinking to myself that everyone and his mother has written a book about Harriet Tubman. Why would I write yet another? And so, again, I found myself saying thanks, but no thanks.

Two weeks later, however, the idea I’d had way back in 1988 resurfaced. What about creating a conversation between Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony? That would be a new and unique treatment of Harriet’s story. Would my editor be interested in that idea? The answer, of course, was yes. And so, with that, I got busy.

I began gathering research materials in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the most extensive collection of memorabilia from that period. I spent several days hunched over rare suffragette meeting notes by Susan B. Anthony, slave narratives, and other valuable literature relevant to the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and the suffrage movement.

Later, I traveled to Ripley, Ohio, to search out some of the original homes that served as stations of the Underground Railroad, including the John P. Parker House. After a week of research, I headed back to California to begin the long process of poring over thousands of pages of biographies, histories, and other reference work on my subjects, and the historical period against which their stories played out. Bit by bit, the manuscript came together. And now, finally, this story has gone out into the world!

I hope Chasing Freedom brings this time in history alive for my readers, and that they realize we are all part of one another’s story.

Talkin’ About Bessie, my biography of aviator, Elizabeth Coleman, was an exercise in extreme patience and perseverance. If you’ve read Part I of this blog post, you already know how taxing this project was from the start! The entire saga was a bit too long for one blog post, though, so I decided to break it up. Here, then, is Part II.

Signing on E.B. Lewis as the illustrator for Talkin’ About Bessie should have been the end of the long saga of bringing this book to market. It wasn’t.

As mentioned in Part I, after Bessie’s original editor moved on to another publishing house, a round-robin of editors temporarily filled the spot over the course of a few years. With all that coming and going, some important details of book production fell through the cracks. For example, no one was sharing early sketches with me. That was proven to be a huge mistake. When I saw the F&Gs, I realized that one character, who was supposed to be African-American, had instead been portrayed as a white person. More egregious than that, however, was the fact that a female character had been portrayed as a man. This was a biography, after all, and that character represented an actual, not a fictional, person. A change in gender goes far beyond the bounds of poetic license! To say I was aghast when I realized this error is to understate the fact.

Both paintings had to be redone. The good news, I suppose, is that I caught the errors in time!

Whew! That was close. Yes. But that’s not the end of the story.

You’ll never find this painting in Talkin’ About Bessie. Why? It was supposed to be a woman! Her first name was Willie, and that was the confusion! The final book features a portrait of a woman.

As I flipped through the F&Gs a few more times, looking for additional mistakes or omissions, I realized the bibliography was nowhere to be found. But surely I was wrong, I thought. Perhaps it had simply fallen out of this particular copy of the F&G. So, I checked a second copy. Nope. No bibliography there, either. Frantic, I called the editor.

“Where is the bibliography?” I asked.

“Bibliography?” she repeated, as if I were speaking another language. “Was there a bibliography?”

I ground my teeth and did a slow burn.

“Yes. I. Gave. You. A. Bibliography.”

“Oh!” she said. “Wait a minute. I think I do remember seeing one. Let me go back and find it.”

“You do that,” I said.

I won’t tell you what I was thinking in that moment. I try not to use that kind of language.

Eventually, the bibliography was found. However, since space allocation had already been set, the challenge of the art director was to find some space in which to include it. In the end, the bibliography was reduced to the smallest possible font, and the whole was shoe-horned into the book.

While all this was going on, I begged the publisher not to release the F&Gs to reviewers until the bibliography could be added. I was told not to worry. You know where this is going.

The first reviews were released, and critics noted that no bibliography was available. The publisher tried to keep my head from exploding by assuring me that an errata sheet would go out to reviewers to let them know a bibliography was, in fact, in existence. I could not be mollified.

By the time the finished book hit store shelves, I remember thinking, “This damn book better win something, after all this!”

Total time invested? Six years. Payoff? Coretta Scott King Honor for text, Coretta Scott King Award for illustration, and many, many fans. I hope you’ll become one, if you haven’t already.

I’ll close with a favorite poem from the book, “School Teacher.”

When it came to knowledge, Bessie was a miser,
hoarding facts and figures like gold coins she was
saving up to spend on something special. 

I’d watch her sometimes,
poring over her lessons,
lips pursed in concentration.
Often, when the subject turned to math,
she’d glance up at me and, I’d swear,
she’d get a sort of greedy look in her eyes.
But maybe it was just my imagination. 

I did not imagine her persistence, though.
Come rain or shine, if work allowed,
Bessie would attend the hot-in-summer,
cold-in-winter, one-room Colored schoolhouse
where I taught in Waxahachie.
Not even the four-mile walk it took to get there
discouraged her from making her way to class. 

Still, bright as she was, I worried that her fine mind
 would soon be sacrificed to a life spent picking cotton
 or working in the mills, like so many others had before. 

But, after each harvest, she’d return to class,
determined as ever to snatch up and pocket
 every tidbit of knowledge I could offer.
“Teacher,” she’d say, “one day, I’m going
 to amount to something.” 

                        Bless God! I need not have
                        fretted in the least.