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We are made up of all we absorb. To many people and to all the writers that I have read, and spent at least a week with in my brain, I feel indebted: to John Henrick Clarke, who arranged my first assignment, GLOWCHILD,
a collection of poetry mostly for young adults; to James L. Hicks who firmly nudged me into writing a weekly column for the New York Amsterdam News; to Ruth gordon, whose almost first words to me over 30 years ago were, “You must write!”; to Kathleen Karter, Lynne Palmer and Kathy
Collins, tenders of mind and soul shops, who repeatedly reassured me that I had a mandate to write; to my children Nora, guy and Hasna, whose wit, inherited from Ossie mostly, and mostly from me, make me admire their good taste so much; to Nora especially, who critiqued and discussed,
and who deleted some of the bawdiness (“We don’t want to get banned anywhere as with GLOWCHILD.”); to dolores Barlett for help with the amens and the typing; to John O. Killens, whose first novel, Youngblood, affected me deeply; to Haki Madhubuti, who ended the “messing around”
and set the deal to print; and to Ossle. |
