Jewell Parker Rhodes

Jewell Parker Rhodes: For every child that thinks something is wrong with them, for why the world acts cruelly or hatefully towards them, my book Stike and Black Brother by Brother, is saying be you even if others can't see you. The people who don't see your beauty, see your glory, they have something wrong with their eyes, their soul.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The world can often feel like a place where understanding and acceptance are in short supply, and it often feels like the world is quick to overlook those who don't fit neatly into its narrow definitions. For young readers, that confusion and frustration can feel even sharper. It's why stories that reflect them, celebrate them, and empower them matter so deeply.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I spent 30 years writing for adults, practicing my craft in order to become good enough to write for children. My goal was to write books for youth that would live forever in a classroom, that would be amplified by a teacher, amplified by a librarian, amplified by parents.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jewel has spent decades perfecting her craft, but her goal goes beyond simply writing books that endure the test of time.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'm really fundamentally trying to give children that self esteem and let them know you start by loving yourself so that when somebody is hateful towards you, it doesn't pierce your soul.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jewel Parker Rhodes is an award winning author whose work spans adult and children's fiction. You may know her from 9th Ward, her Coretta Scott King honor winning debut for young readers, or Ghost Boys, a New York Times bestseller that continues to spark critical conversations about racial justice. In all of her work, Jewel explores the themes of self acceptance, empowerment, and resilience, often inspired by her own childhood experiences and the cultural storytelling traditions passed down from her grandmother. In this episode, Jewel opens up about her tumultuous childhood and reflects on her grandmother's wisdom and on the surprising twists and turns of her life. That includes Jewel's amazement at living this long and what she'd tell her students if she ever returns as a ghost.

My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations. Our show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating students to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com and make sure to check us out on Instagram at the reading culture pod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at the reading culture pod dot com forward slash newsletter. Hey, listeners.

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Jordan Lloyd bookey: I wanted to ask about your name, where your name comes from. I love your name.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Actually, my mother once told me that she had a dream that she was gonna have a little girl and she should name me Jewel. It's not a family name or any other connection. Just, you know, I am the only Jewel. I did not have a good relationship with my mother for lots of my life. My mother was not in my life.

So the sweetest memory I have is her telling me that she had a dream to name Rachel.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Can you say a little bit more about that? You you were born in Pittsburgh. Is that where your mom did grow up though, or where your family grew?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yeah. I was born in Pittsburgh. My family, we were quite poor, and my mother disappeared when I was about 8 months old.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Oh, wow.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: So 5 of us cousins were growing up in this sort of, like, 3 story tenement in the north side of Pittsburgh, which is now very much gentrified.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Yeah.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: But when I was growing up, there were, like, vacant lots, rats as big as cats, all kinds of problems. My mother came back when I was in the 3rd grade and there's some sort of discussion about where was she. I do have a sense that she actually might have been in prison.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Oh.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: But anyway, mama came back. I was finishing the 3rd grade, and she decided we should all go to California. My sister and I, my father and her. And so I felt torn from the only mother that I had ever known. I felt torn from my other, quote, sisters and brothers, you know, my cousins because we were being raised together.

Of course. And then as soon as we got to California, my mother, kicked my father out of the house. And I'm living with what I felt was a stranger. I didn't know this lady from, you know, the man in the moon. Mhmm.

And it was hard. My mom, she ended up having 7 husbands. At one point, she was very much into that. That life was about an exchange. So it wasn't about affection.

It was about love per se. It was about what can I earn? What can I get from this? Everything was transactional. And she tried to teach my sister and I all of that.

Wow. It's a lot of, like, class grabbing. You know? Mhmm. And in some ways, I very much understand it because she was a talented, beautiful woman living in a world that did not make it possible for her to be educated.

She was also in a world where, given the paternalism and the patriarchy, beauty was the thing, and she very often traded on her beauty. And she just had so much scope in her soul, but not enough room in society that would allow her to execute on that scope. You know? She could have been a CEO for heaven's sakes. So by the time I was 14, my mother had kicked me out of the house because I had taken some butter for, you know, my bread.

And it was very clear. Butter was for the gentlemen callers, and margarine was for the family. And I had to leave, and I went to live with my father and his new wife for a while. And that was very traumatic too. So by the time I was a year later, 15 going on 16, I had earned enough money, worked in half price bookstores, and I told my father that I was going back to Pittsburgh to be with grandma.

Yeah. So I've been on my own for a very, very long time. And the person that has been the root, the center, the blessing in my life is my grandmother who taught me about love and taught me that the universe always eventually, and says this in my book, 9th Lord. Always eventually shines down with love. So things may be bad today or bad in a year from now, but always eventually, it'll get better.

She also taught me that people were people were people. And so she'd say, Joel Child, you're no better than anyone else, and nobody's better than you. We're all a mixed blood stew. Though I knew about racism and discrimination, but in terms of how I acted in the world, everyone, you know, regardless of their ethnicity and background, my heart and soul, they were part of my community, part of my family. And I think in a ways that made me open to loving the people that I've loved in my life.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Okay. Well, first of all, I wanna just, like, acknowledge what you said about with your mom because that's just, like, very sad and those are such formative years. That's you said 3rd grade until you were 14 Yeah. Which is, like, for a young woman, for a young girl, those are really formative years. To tell you the honest truth,

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I think I went into super survival mode that I was very much lonely. And I was also dealing with I'd always felt that the divorce or the separation or whatever went wrong was somehow my fault. Mhmm. My mother was verbally as well as physically abusive. There were times when she would be gone and there wasn't enough food to eat.

Times when the electricity would be turned off, and I'd have my little flashlight underneath the bed trying to read my book. So what I did is I I read, read, read, read, read, and then I also ate a lot of bread. I was known as a bread freak. So croissants, baguettes. You know?

I love bread, but I was sort of alone. And I think that one of the things I love my sister dearly, but her experience, she remembered a mama. And so she was going back to remembering and being with mama. And throughout their lifetimes, they spent a lot of time together. Mama would move somewhere, and then my sister would move there.

And my take was if she was on one side of the country, I was always on the other side of the country. So one of us was attaching in a way, and I was the one that was detaching.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Mhmm. That sounds really hard to see that alternate reality with your sister. You know? But how incredible that your grandmother could be there for you like that.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: But she took basically became the mother, the head of the household for her 2 children who were single parents.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Mhmm.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: And if she had not made that sacrifice, it would have been terrible. My grandmother was taking care of another generation of teen pregnancies. So she took care of this ongoing sort of pattern of our family. And she died surrounded again by some little kids that she was giving her love and her best to. So it's, like, amazing.

And especially when I think about how I had talked to grandma because I was at Carnegie Mellon, and she would bring me care packages because I didn't have very much money at all. And so she would, like, get dressed up like she was going to church. She had this fake fur coat and fake fur hat because she was coming to the university. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: And Carnegie Mellon, if you've been to Pittsburgh, it's like it is its own Yes. You know? It it feels separated. You know? I mean, it is like and you're like, literally, you have to go up the hill to walk to the you know?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: That's it. Yes. And, actually, the thing that's interesting is I'm now a member of the board of trustees of Carnegie Mellon, which Amazing. Wow. That.

Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Probably your grandmother. But yeah.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Maybe she would bring me the canned goods so I wouldn't starve. You know? But grandma was part minister's wife, part hoodoo lady, And so she taught me a lot about spirituality. But I got to talk to her and say, you know, grandma, I'm gonna write stories, like, for real. I'm gonna try professionally that I had switched my major from drama to English.

And she was just cackling because by then, you know, I wanted to write about, you know, the ancestors and Marie Laveau. I was uncovering my African American history. So I I got to tell her that. And then a week later, when she was walking in Schenley Park with some other little cousins of mine, I forget which degree, she either had a heart attack or a stroke. And there were 2 hospitals, 1 Allegheny General, which probably had all the medical equipment that she needed in the ER, and then a Catholic hospital, which my grandmother said take me there because it was the first hospital to admit black doctors and allow them to practice there.

And I was told they had to take her in the elevator, and she died on her way up for the elevator. Now how much exactly this is all truth, I have no idea, but that's part of the mythos of what I was told. But I got to tell her that I was gonna tell stories. And given that she was an oral storyteller and she told me tons of stories, I think she recognized there was this connection then between us, that she was passing storytelling to me. And I was using storytelling to discover me as well as deepen my empathy and understanding of other people and of the world that I lived in.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: That's so sad about your grandma too, though. God. Oh, I know. Yeah. I just hate like, you just those stories when you're, like, oh, if you just had the right kid, it's just, like, the worst.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Why? I encourage people to read porch stories because I was writing porch stories, which is about the things grandma would say to me. I remember, you know, she'd say, Jewel child, wear clean underwear. All of these. And she was telling me to respect myself.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: So it happened like that moment happened for you. I feel like some moms are like, where the

Jewell Parker Rhodes: yeah. Well, it my underwear was clean, but it had holes in it. So I knew she was gonna be happy. You know? Or things like her idea of karma was do good, and it'll fly right back to you.

So all these things that she had shared with me that became so important to my life and signs and mysteries and dreams. And she did teach me a spell about how to call the dead. Believe it or not, yes, she did.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Do you use it? Have you ever tried using it?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: No. No. I've never used it. And whether you believe it or not, I actually went to interview Eartha Kitt because Eartha Kitt had said that she wanted to play. And she spoke back to me the same spell.

So I think it must have come from grandmother's southern Georgia roots or the, you know, the folk culture that there must have been ways to access spirituality, which makes sense for why I would write my first adult novel, my first novel ever about the African diaspora and spirituality because I was trying to put all these pieces together. And Africans did believe that I still believe that the world is alive, that animate and inanimate, you know, have a essence in spiritual life. And so given that, it makes sense that grandma would teach me that the line between the living and the dead is very thin, that they are still accessible to you even though they're dead. And then later, what happens? I end up creating ghost boys.

And I told my editor, I think I can write this book if I use ghosts. And a year after I wrote the book, she said, when you told me that, I I thought you had, like, kinda lost it.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: You're like, I said police brutality. You know? It's like I said, like, my you know, these things. I didn't like, oh, yeah. Ghost.

That's no wrong genre. That's what she's probably thinking.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yeah. That's yeah. Ghost. Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: It definitely worked. You know? I mean, in a sense, you ended up giving a voice to the dead in that book after all. You know? Okay.

Jewel, did you grow up in, like, a book rich environment? Because I have read that you were referred to as the little professor by your family and friends, and I wanna know where that love of books came from and, you know, what were some of the books that you enjoyed. But first, where did that love of books come from?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Primarily, my teachers and librarians that they were, like, just feeding me. And that's why to this very day, it's like, I love to send books to librarians and teachers. And, actually, I write for librarians and teachers because of the way they connected my soul to books. I know that they do that every day in their in their work. You know?

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Can you say more about that? You said you write for them. Like, do you think of them as one of your as your audience in a way?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Absolutely. Absolutely. When I grew up, we were 4. Okay? Several of my adults in my family were either dyslexic or illiterate.

I actually don't know which. And the other videos was working hard in order to put food on the table. So I used to collect pop bottles, and I would get nickels. And then I would buy comic books. So that was pretty much what I could afford.

And my favorite books from my childhood were the comic books, and particularly the illustrated classics. So I remember reading the prince and the pulper. I remember reading about king Arthur, and I remember reading about prince Valiant, that those stories enthralled me. And in fact, when my husband was wooing me when I was, like, maybe 26, 27, we were outside of Dunkin' Donuts eating donuts in the car. And he said, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

And literally, without a moment's hesitation, I said valiant. I wanna be valiant. And it connected to me how Prince Valiant and remember the cartoons in the newspaper? That that valiant that that's, you know, that that's what I wanted to be and that's what I've tried to be. You you should, you know, look up the meaning and meaning of that word.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Hey, Jordan here. Okay. So I looked it up, and the definition of valiant is possessing or showing courage or determination. And from my perspective, it's safe to say that Jewel has achieved her goal.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: But in schools, the teachers kept giving me books. They were all by white authors, all about white stories, but I loved learning about Heidi. I love learning about the little women. I loved I loved the stories because it taught me about our universal humanity. They say the people could fly, say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic, and they would walk up on the air like climbing up on a gate.

And they flew like blackbirds over the fields, black shiny wings flapping against the blue up there. Then many of the people were captured for slavery. The ones that could fly, shed their wings, they couldn't take their wings across the water on the slave ships. Too crowded, don't you know? The folks were full of misery then, got sick with the up and down of the sea, so they forgot about flying when they could no longer breathe the scent of sweet Africa.

Go as you know how to go. He raised his arms, holding them out to her. And more magic words said so quickly. They sounded like whispers in sighs. The woman lifted one foot on the air, then the other.

She flew clumsily at first with a child now held tightly in her arms. Then she felt the magic, the African mystery. Some say she rose just as free as a bird, as light as a feather.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The passage Jewel just read is from The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton, which, by the way, if you recall, is the same book from which Dhonielle Clayton read in her episode and has been referenced by so many of the authors on this show as a foundational book in their lives. If you're unfamiliar, The People Could Fly is a groundbreaking collection of black folktales that preserves and reimagine stories passed down through generations. This particular excerpt captures the pain of enslavement, but also the resilience and magic of a people who refuse to be defined by it. For Jewel, the people could fly is more than just the stories within. It's also about the way those stories are told, the authenticity in the voice.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: One of the things that's very important to me, just as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, when, you know, I was a young woman and they were coming onto the the horizon and making their mark in literature, everyone seemed to recognize there was something different about their writing, that they were writing from a cultural tradition that was not the standard western tradition of storytelling. The people could fly, for me, though it's a, you know, a mythic folktale, it was still a story, yes, meant for adults, but primarily meant for youth that you tell folk tales like Ace of Spables, etcetera, you know, to to children. And if you heard me reading it, you could hear a rhythm. You could hear, to me, my grandma on the porch. You know, she would say some say, some say, you know, she would have this oral storytelling tradition that, you know, is passed down through the generations.

And reading Hamilton, I heard it. And then also the themes of the African mystery, the spirituality, the ancestry, the idea that your parents don't necessarily have to be your parents, but simply be an elder that helps raise you and helps, you know, support you and your respect for them.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: I wanted to ask you about, like, just in thinking about, like, this cultural this storytelling and the way that you really embed, like, a a tradition in your writing versus just the presence of diverse characters and how you view, I guess, maybe from a more academic or writerly lens, that difference in your writing and how you approach making sure that that, like, authenticity is really present?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Well, first off, I really wanna thank you for saying that so well, because that was you described exactly what it is that I'm trying to do. And I think sometimes folks don't get it. You know? Like in an African American tradition and other cultures too, the story begins in the middle, not beginning, middle, and end. So ghost boys, of course, it makes sense that I the kid is dead.

So they can get a chance that as as a ghost, you see the arc of, you know, not him as the victim, but what was lost, you know, in his life, and it's it's different. Also, in terms of the orality that there are passages from all my books that I could still recite to you today because I go back and I get back into the rhythm, which voice rhythm works for which character, and it has become part of my soul, how do they speak it? How do they tell it the way that my grandmother would have told the story, you know. And there's also the sense of fragmented sentences, that fragmented thoughts, and I'm very dialogue heavy, which a lot of writers stay away from because they're not comfortable with it. And I think because I'm always talking about first point of view, because that's what most oral storytelling is about.

Well, I or one, you know, they Yeah, he said. Yeah, but there's some 3rd person with a 6 still like I because it's not just about the story. It's about the person telling the story. That's right. So even he says we it's still the I gotta tell you Joe, you know, it's like, so that that thing, and then, you know, moving on to that there's a lot of dialogue and also storytelling within the storytelling.

All of that is quite intentional. But I will tell you one thing that I have had to fight against in publishing my entire life is that once your book might be edited or actually during the editing, but especially during copy editing, people will change my sentences. Or you'll say that's not correct. That's not standard English. I know it's not standard English.

I know what standard English is, but this is not the way that these characters speak. And lots of times, I had manuscripts happen to come back that would just have, you know, the red all over them. And one of the things that I finally have been able to do, and I I love little brown for this and Alvina Ling for understanding me. 1, they tell the copy editors don't mess with her rhythm. The idea that people would edit me without even maybe perhaps always understanding how the rhythm that's more important than whether it's a correct standard English.

So that's why I have a lot of fragments sometimes in breaking breaking the rules and that sense of kind of a soft dialect, not a stereotypical dialect, but a saw they say, you know, I was born with a call. That's a definitely African American rhythmic sentence, you know? Right. So now, you know, they just say, leave her words alone. And pretty much they do.

And I appreciate, but it's taken me maybe 35 years of writing to get to that point where I now have the stature that people understand that, no, she's a little bit different. You know?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: For Jewel, writing for adults wasn't the final summit. It was the base camp where she sharpened her tools and honed her creative muscles for what she considers the most challenging literary peak, writing for children.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I spent 30 years writing for adults, practicing my craft in order to become good enough to write for children. And I also have to get the call. So when I got the call of 9th board and Lamisha's voice came inside my head, you know, it was kind of like it was wondrous. You know? But in terms of writing it, I wanted to write it as grandmother spoke story, as Virginia Hamilton spoke story, as Toni Morrison spoke story for adults.

So very consciously, I'm trying to bring that into my youth literature. I think that my life became fulfilled when I got to write my first children's story. It was just absolutely astonishing. I had gone to bed because, you know, the hurricane was coming to New Orleans. I worried about people.

And when I woke up, the first page and a half of that book just came out of me where Lanisha says, they say, I was born with a caul, a skin netting covering my face like a glove, and it goes on. You know? And it was like, woah. And all of a sudden, everything came together, and I was becoming who I knew I wanted to be from all the 40 you know, being childhood and 30 years writing, 40 years before was coming into being when I became a youth author.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: There's so much to unpack here. So definitely around, like, cultural storytelling and how that shows up in children's literature because I think it sounds what you're describing is having experienced it so deeply through these other authors, adult authors, and then seeing it through Virginia Hamilton, like, having that realization that that could be that that is, like, what you wanna do, but then just working for all these years because I I'm gathering that you read it, like, in the beginning of your writing career.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yes. But

Jordan Lloyd bookey: then for all these years to be writing for adults. But I just think that that centering of wanting to, like, bring your own childhood and then this experience you have writing for all these years and, like, bring those together for a generation is really remarkable.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: And also to make sure that no child grows up without seeing a sort of multiethnic world, the mixed blood stew, or to not see themselves mirrored or other you know, the connections between the Vietnamese spirituality and African American spirituality or Dia de los Muertos and African American. I'm always doing that. But I think I'm still writing the same things I wrote about for adults. I've always been writing about social, racial, gender, religious justice Yeah. Environmental justice, and adult novels get pretty complex.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As Jewel sees it, holding on to that complexity is the secret to writing well for kids so long as she can find the words to make it simply complex.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: So what I've done, I think, is taken all that complexity, and the truth is not to simplify or be paternalistic or underwrite, but keep all the complexity. And the trick then is finding the language that a middle grader can understand and finding the arc so that a middle grader won't be devastated by the tragedy, but can move on to that arc of affirmation and that sense of agency. But I can go on and talk say about Will's race for home, my latest youth novel about the Oklahoma land rush. And I was never taught that black people participated in the Oklahoma land rush. It was just white people who went.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: From the movies, the black and white movies.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yeah. And it turns out that the second novel I wrote after Voodoo Dreams was Magic City, which was about the Tulsa race riot, how a town in Tulsa was bombed from the air. And the 100th anniversary was 2 years ago, and they're still uncovering a few of the bodies. And so I knew about that experience. And then I found evidence that in all of Oklahoma, because it's still a territory, that there was a movement of all the newly emancipated blocks, come to Oklahoma.

We're gonna set up a free country. And there were, like, 50 black towns in Oklahoma.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Wow.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: And that some of the people who were the land rush entrepreneurs, like my kid, Will, in my novel, could have grown up to build a Tulsa Deep Greenwood community Yeah. But then 40 years later would be bombed from the air. Mhmm. So that whole idea of the the racial whiplash happening over and over across the generations. The sense of how far would you go to find a home for people who finally as ex slaves built a home only to see it bombed.

What about the ones who are just trying to make it across Confederate States, trying to build and find home and find freedom? And then you get the issues of literacy. So and this is an issue, say, that Frederick Douglass also dealt with. You know? That, yes, he became literate.

More power to him because blacks were forbidden to read and write because it was believed that it would spoil them as slaves. But what he learned how to read and write from a western text novel when it brings up literacy, it's really about a black boy who's been taught by his mother who remarkably has learned how to read and gives it to him through their lore of the bible into the African American storytelling. And that just as reading was critical to Frederick Douglass's success. You know, that reading, feed me, he says. Reading frees and saves will at the critical point when white bandits try to steal his land.

So when I'm writing, I think of all those layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers, layers.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: There's definitely a lot of depth to your work.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'm trying to write classics. Whether the world judges my works as a classic piece of literature, there's so much matter. I hope one day it'll happen, but I'll be dead. But a classics in the sense that when I think of, you know, Charlotte's Web or the secret gardens or books that really just ripped open my soul, you know, roll the thunder, hear my cry, you know, the yearly, you know Yeah. Across cultures that ripped out my soul and just made me more alive.

That's what young people deserve.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Yeah.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: And so I'm trying to write the classic that when they go back to read it as adults with their children, they'll go, oh, I didn't notice that. Or as some children do, they'll reread it again because they know that there's more there, that they're interested enough to say, what else did I miss?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: For Jewel, the goal isn't just to write books that are memorable. It's to create stories rich with substance, crafted to be analyzed and taught to kids. That was inspired by her own reading experience with her kid.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I started buying books for my kids before they were born, and I would just go into the, you know, the bookstore because it was the library's teachers and librarians and the library public librarians are wonderful, but to own a book. Oh my god. So I used to just have stacks of books that my kids got. We just go in and just buy 100 of dollars worth of books. But when my daughter went to 5th grade, she had the won an elite book written by a person of color in her entire academic career as k through 12.

And that was Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Great, great book.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: That was it? Even for your daughter, really?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yes. They're in their thirties. When my son came along, all he read was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. And when I was coming along, I didn't read anybody in school. It was a black author.

So I wanted my goal was to write books for youth that would live forever in a classroom, that would be amplified by a teacher, amplified by a librarian, amplified by parents. So I'm always writing to 2 audiences. So I consciously am writing for the legacy of having my books be in schools and school libraries. And there was a moment when I had an opportunity to change publishers. And my Victoria Stapleton, who is the school and library marketing lady at Little Brown, but she understood.

No. I don't wanna just write books and quote sell them. I want them to be in a school and have a teacher teach them.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Yeah. I don't think I've ever spoken with another author who communicated it in that way. I mean, perhaps they are also thinking about that, but I really like that. And I think it makes sense, especially for you as someone who both went through a school system and experienced that. And then as I understand it, we're, like, instrumental in also helping to bring, like, some of these disciplines into academia around, like, African American studies and so on.

So it's like you have that, but then also to raise kids, which is also by itself, like, a whole other podcast and how amazing it is that you, like, broke a cycle and became this, like, very devoted mom who literally, like, created the things that your kids can you know, that their kids will be able to read. You know? So now I'm, like, rethinking your works now in that light and how they really are very interdisciplinary and very, you know, like, meant to be studied in a way. You know?

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Well, thank you.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Kids today are exposed to the world's harsh realities in ways previous generations never were through TV and social media and a constant stream of images that make events like war and tragedy impossible to ignore. Jewel doesn't shy away from these truths in her writing. Instead, she meets her readers where they are, showing them that even in the face of pain, there's a path to healing and growth and hope.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Little Brown recognized, I could put you through the ringer, but I can come out on the other side, that those children are stronger and better. And very often, there'll be a moment where the child teaches the parent, you know, where Daysha says to her dad, dad, tell me what happened at the towers. Tell me why you're so traumatized. And when he tells her, he starts to heal. You know?

Or when Jerome says to Sarah in Ghost Boys, you gotta talk to your dad, Sarah. You can't just be angry at him because he, you know, he shot me. You know? It's like, woah. But I think that that is the gift of how I write, and I think it's connected to why I've lived this long and survived.

That, again, always, eventually, the universe shines down with love. So through my hard times, which were very bitter, through the hard times that we go through in this world, it doesn't remain that way. It will get better.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: You know, I think your readers get so attached to your work and probably because you do give them so much hope or I I don't know, but I suspect you must get some really wonderful letters or messages from them.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'll tell you one letter that really surprised me. A woman had bought Ghost Boys for her grandson, and then she had a stroke, and she lost her ability to read. And she said, I started reading learning how to read again, reading Ghost Boys. And she wanted to thank me because it didn't make her feel dumb. It didn't make her feel stupid.

Not only did it bring up a memory that was important to her, that it had substance that as an adult reader, she could access it and begin to learn with it. Most of my books have a very easy reading level because it's an oral tradition, and that too is intentional. But I was really touched that she took the time to write me. There was also a student named Philip Larkin from Wisconsin who, though he didn't tell me, his teacher wrote me and said that he was, you know, an 8th grader, and this was the first book he had finished. And I said, I'm gonna dedicate black brother, black brother to you.

You know that clearly, sometimes we say the boys especially don't read well enough or don't read enough. And we say it's because they didn't quite like the skill or the ability, and it might be no. They need to have a book that interests them. And so the fact that my book grabbed soul and he finished it to me, I considered that a highest honor. There are some that also right.

They might have heard that my grandmother raised me, and they talk about how their grandmother is raising them and how it was important to see the love of their real parents in a way reflected in the stories. You know? But one of the things that I'll call have well, a lot of things I have with me always, and I will when I'm dying and when I have all that stuff, and I wanna pull it in and come and see. And that actually comes from Azure Neil Hurst since their eyes are watching God. When JD is finally dying, she calls in all her memories to come and see the life.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Yeah.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I'm gonna cry. The life lived. And for me, that's that communication with the children. But I was at an all black boys school in Boston talking about how there had been a need to have a workforce and how it was easier to stereotype based on color and how by demeaning Africans, they were able to then enslave them and how horrible and how that was still existing through the criminal justice system, the school to prison pipeline, the murder of young black boys, etcetera, etcetera, all of those connections over history. Right?

And that was also why I had Emmett in the book. It's this historical pattern. And this young kid came out to me, and he said, you mean this is a pattern? And I said, yes. And he looked at me, and his eyes were white.

And he said, I always thought it was me. So for every child that thinks something is wrong with them for why the world acts cruelly or hatefully towards them, my book, Psych and Black Brother by Brother, is saying, be you even if others can't see you. The people who don't see your beauty, see your glory, they have something wrong with their eyes, their soul. So I'm really fundamentally trying to give children that self esteem and let them know you start by loving yourself so that when somebody is hateful towards you, it doesn't pierce your soul. Let it go.

Don't be victimized twice over.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Oh my god. You're amazing. Amazing. You're amazing.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Know about

Jordan Lloyd bookey: that. You got me crying right now. Just thinking about it.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I do feel deeply. And just to be very, very clear, I do get fearful. I do get insecure. For several of my books, I didn't think I could actually write it. Like, Ghost Boys, I didn't think I could do it.

Towers Falling, I didn't think I could do it, and so on and so forth. And I am at that point that having had the honor of being able to have my books in a child's hands, I do feel responsibility that I wanna do the hard stop. Because what have I been practicing all this time for? You know? And and I often have agreements with my publisher that if this doesn't work, we won't publish it.

I'll give you the money back. You know? I mean, I have probably now there's a failure in my horizon. But if there is, I will not let it go out into the world. I'm only gonna let go out into the world my very best for the youth because that's what they they deserve.

And I wanna do the hard stuff because do they need another a novel that sort of, like, doesn't sort of fully engage them intellectually and spiritually and emotionally?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: For Jewel, writing is a profound act of care, a way to give young readers the very best she has to offer. But it's more than crafting meaningful stories. It's about leaving a legacy that reflects her life, her struggles, and her unwavering commitment to staying open to it all.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: But it is still that sort of raw impetus in me to remind myself and also to tell the world I was here. I am here. And that's, I think, maybe even really the super core of why I do what I do and what's important to me in living my life. So the good life when I go on, I tell students I'm gonna come back as a ghost, especially if they don't vote. I guess, ghost.

That it's like, you know, that to me, it's like it brings me more alive, but my life includes all the trauma. It includes the ups and downs. It includes all the emotional roller coaster. And there used to be a time when I just would try to shut down. And I remember thinking, I'll become a robot.

And I made the conscious choice that I was gonna try to remain emotionally open to everything that had happened to me, the good and the bad, because even when I was hurting, that that was an aspect of my my humanity. So having this chance to talk and also to write, I think, is that's what I'm really expressing. When I finish a book, I say, I'll never write another book again. But after a couple of months, I have to write another book again Mhmm. And go through it all over again and bring all my life's wisdom and understanding and the discovery of other people's times and culture and how they might have made choices based on their, say, gender like Will.

I couldn't imagine doing what Will did, riding, you know, the horse midnight to capture land. It's still it's my life's drama. And, boy, am I so happy. I'm glad of it. But, yeah, it's exhausting.

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Yeah. I think they say that people who have purpose live longer. You know, it's like statistically proven. And I suspect that that might be part of why you seem to be in very good health and, you know, outdo it all of you, the generation before you. You know, you have, like, a really deep purpose, you know, and you can sense that in this conversation.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: You're a sweetie. I do. I just wanted to just say real quick. I did never expect to live this long. And so now I I am definitely going for 90.

If I could get to a 100 or 120

Jordan Lloyd bookey: Like, let's just say a 100, you know, for 90.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's a it's a good number. You know?

So I'm definitely going to it. And I think of Lin Manuel Miranda. She's Hamilton character. I'm running out of time. So for me, it's sort of like the opportunity of sometimes we waste time because we think it's endless, but it's actually also can be a gift that my time is shortened.

So what am I gonna do with it? And what what can I accomplish in this time that is left to me? And I'm I am indeed very, very excited for it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jewell's reading challenge, Comic Trips, celebrates timeless classics alongside the graphic novels of today. It's an opportunity to explore how this unique art form has grown and to challenge the misconception that graphic novels aren't real books.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: I would recommend The Prince and the pauper, you know, King Arthur, the round table, Prince Valiant, and I think it'd be a wonderful exercise to read some of the early graphic novels or read, you know, exercise to read some of the early graphic novels or read you know, if you want Veronica, you know, and Jughead, you know, and compare them to this new graphic novel explosion that we're having. And our tendency for some of us to say, oh, those aren't real books. I think, no. It's just a different kind of art form.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You can find Jewell's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at the reading culture pod dot com. And today's beanstalk featured librarian is once again Kat Gatcombe, my colleague at beanstalk, and the former youth services supervisor at Nashua Public Library in New Hampshire. This week, Kat shares 2 key lessons she wishes that she knew earlier as a librarian.

Kat Gatcomb: I think when it comes to programming, they're so important to look to your community. And I think one thing that I had to learn over time was that it's okay to not know how to do something or not be the person to facilitate something. It's actually probably better to not. So if there is an interest in something in the community is asking for it or there's a need for it, Finding someone else to facilitate can be so much more impactful than stumbling through something that you're not qualified to instruct or passionate about. And I think the other thing that I've seen with so many librarians is you get so passionate about what we're doing or so invested in the work that you forget it is your job.

And so you have to separate yourself from that and really setting boundaries and knowing, like, I can go to work. I can be a really good librarian. I can make a difference, but I also am a person. And at the end of the day, I need to go home and, like, take care of myself. I saw a lot of librarians, including myself, struggling with that.

So I think it's just a good reminder that you're more than just your job.

Jewell Parker Rhodes: This has been

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: the reading culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Jewel Parker Rhodes. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and currently, I'm reading Colored Television by Danzy Senna and School Trip by Jerry Craft. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a 5 star review. It just takes a second, and it really, really helps. This episode was produced by Mel Webb, Jackie Lamport, and Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan.

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