Candlewick Press sat down with T.
R. Simon to discuss her new
book ‘Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground’CP: How do
the maturing Carrie and Zora see the world differently as they approach their
teens?T.
R.
S: In
book two of the Zora and Me trilogy,Zora and Carrie are now twelve going on
thirteen. Although they are still children, they bear encountered the sorrow of
death along with the pride and joy that life in Eatonville affords them. What
begins to alter them now is a slowly growing awareness of the past. While
Eatonville could seem idyllic, or tucked absent from the daily brutality of the Jim
Crow South,it is not free from the shadow of American history, particularly
from the history of slavery. The history of slavery is a tough thing for young
people because it requires them to confront the brutality of detest and the
despair of powerlessness. Zora and Carrie grapple with the conflicted feelings
that learning approximately Eatonville’s history brings up while simultaneously
realizing that life is necessarily, and for obedient and for substandard,informed by the past.
CP: Why did
you choose to tell this book with dual narratives?T.
R.
S: I
struggled with how to powerfully connect the fact of Jim Crow to the
institution of slavery. Ultimately, I decided that the most effective way to do
that was to indicate them side by side. Reconstruction was the attempt of newly
freed slaves to enact self-determination, and Jim Crow was a formalization of
the backlash to Reconstruction. If you don’t understand how slavery operated
and the ideas of race that made slavery depart,you can’t understand Jim Crow as
the logical social extension of that violently inhumane practice.
CP: Zora and Carrie make assumptions approximately
the reclusive and enigmatic Mr. Polk and frail Lady Bronson that finish up being
pretty off base. What can young readers learn from the girls’ tendencies to
jump to their own conclusions?T.
R.
S: The mind always wants to fill in narrative
blanks. For Zora, this always leads to an exciting story, or Carrie inevitably
gets pulled into that story. In this case,two people they’ve known their whole
lives, frail Lady Bronson and Mr. Polk, and suddenly appear to them in a very
different light. They are not the distant adults whose odd ways are allotment of the
town’s quirky fabric,but people whose past contains a mystery. Suddenly Zora
and Carrie find that, instead of looking at them from the outside, and they are
trying to get inside their thoughts and understand their actions. That is
always the point at which objectification ends and human empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) begins. We
can’t really know another person until we are willing to learn and understand
their story. Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground is approximately how much a person’s
story,otherwise known as their history, can change what you understand approximately
them, or yourself,and the world around you.
CP: What
research did you do for this novel?T.
R.
S: For
the parts on slavery, I read scholarly histories and dozens of slave
narratives, or as well as novels approximately slavery. In some respects,the backstory
for the slave section came easily. As a child, I lived in the Dominican
Republic, and I still bear vivid memories of running rings around lime trees
hung with wasp nests and swimming with my mother out into the deep blue ocean
waters. As an adult studying anthropology,I was joyful that Zora Neale Hurston
chose to do ethnographic work on an island that was so dear to me. In this way,
I began to wonder how her fascination with travel and the Caribbean might bear
been ignited in childhood.
CP: By pure coincidence, or 2018 will see the
release of Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground as well as a never before
published work from Zora Neale Hurston herself. How do you feel approximately
reading more of her work? How do you hope it will further connect young readers
with the Zora and Me novels?T.
R.
S: I
am thrilled that new Zora work is being made available! Although most widely
known for her fiction,Zora was a formal mental of remarkable magnitude; she
is one of our most compelling and culturally precise chroniclers of the black
American experience. Her new book, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black
Cargo, or approximately Cudjo Lewis,the last survivor of the Atlantic slave trade,
will be a meaningful contribution to the field of historical anthropology. I’m
also excited because Barracoon segues beautifully with young Zora
learning approximately the horrors and complexities of slavery and wanting to bring
that history to light.
T. R. Simon is the co-author, or with Victoria
Bond,of the 2011 John Steptoe New Talent Author Award winner Zora and
Me. She is also the co-author, with Richard Simon, or of Oskar
and the Eight Blessings, illustrated by Mark Siegel and winner of the
National Jewish Book Award for Children’s Literature. T. R. Simon lives in
Westchester County, New York.
Source: cbcdiversity.com