{"id":3529,"date":"2022-11-14T12:34:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T17:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=3529"},"modified":"2022-11-14T13:40:12","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T18:40:12","slug":"alicia-d-williams-and-the-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2022\/11\/14\/alicia-d-williams-and-the-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Alicia D. Williams and The Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Charlotte children\u2019s author Alicia D. Williams has a new picture book that came out this fall.\u00a0 Titled The Talk<\/em>, this powerful and timely book is illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu and published by Simon & Schuster. The Talk<\/em> tells the story of Jay, a young Black boy who is growing up in an American city with his tight-knit family and his regular group of neighborhood friends. He likes pretending to be a superhero, skateboarding with his friends, and listening to his grandfather\u2019s stories.\u00a0 In the beginning of the story, he is brimming with energy and joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, Jay is more or less oblivious to the realities of racial prejudice, but as he matures, his parents and grandparents take him aside and talk to him about how to respond to racial profiling and other forms of prejudice that Black children, especially Black boys, often encounter when they make the transition from childhood to pre-adolescence. The Talk <\/em>is a book about racism, but at its core, it is a celebration of a loving Black family. All of the family members in The Talk<\/em> do everything they can to protect their boy as he grows up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After reading The Talk, <\/em>I wanted to know more about what motivated Alicia to write this book.  I contacted her and asked her for more information about how she came to write The Talk<\/em>.  Here is what she sent to me:<\/p>\n\n\n

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The subject of the talk has been in my mind for several years. Yet, I didn\u2019t think I should write the story because of potential blind spots as a woman. I held no experience living as a Black male nor had I raised one. But I raised a girl and knew my worries were almost the same. I gave my own daughter the talk when shopping, when she got her driver\u2019s license, and when she stayed at Airbnb\u2019s. Still, I tried to give the story away to male peers. Even tried to enlist a male poet to co-write it. Eventually, I let it go figuring the story will ride the wind and land at the hands of the right writer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, I, along with so many others, was deeply impacted by George Floyd\u2019s and Ahmaud Aubrey\u2019s murder, as well as the last words of Elijah McCain. I couldn\u2019t sleep, couldn\u2019t focus. But one night when I did manage to rest, a little chatty voice woke me and wouldn\u2019t let me rest until I grabbed a pen and paper. The boy, the character Jay, introduced me to his friends, family, and everything he was proud of. Then, those same moments of pride came with a warning or a talk. The story literally unfolded that night.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interesting backstory of writing this story is the chatty boy that woke me. I recognized him. He was, in fact, a little boy who attended the independent school that I taught at. He was one of the small percentages of Black boys attending lower school. And from the start of kindergarten, he was always being pulled out into the hallway and given a <\/em>talk for being too wiggly, too chatty, too much. I had noticed that the other kindergarteners were just as wiggly, chatty, and too much. This talk for him had carried on to first, second, and third grade. I realized that the talk given at the school was indeed given so that he could manage himself at a predominantly white institution.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I am no longer teaching, my experiences and all that I\u2019m exposed to direct the stories I tell. For instance, just a few weeks ago, I was shopping at the Arboretum and my car was stopped by security. The security guard prompted me to roll down my window and then began asking if I was lost or knew where I was going. This, no doubt, was racial profiling. I realize that had this been an older \u201cJay,\u201d the outcome might have been different.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Talk <\/em>is Alicia\u2019s fourth children\u2019s book. Alicia burst on the children\u2019s literature scene in 2019 with the publication of her novel Genesis Begins Again<\/em>.  She received both a Newbery Honor Award and the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for this novel. She has quickly followed up her novel with two picture book biographies of prominent African American women: Jump at the Sun:  The True-Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston<\/em> and Shirley Chisholm Dares: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress. <\/em>For more information about Alicia and her books, please click on the following link:  https:\/\/www.aliciadwilliams.com\/<\/a>  In just four years, Alicia has established herself as one of Storied Charlotte\u2019s leading children\u2019s authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte children\u2019s author Alicia D. Williams has a new picture book that came out this fall.\u00a0 Titled The Talk, this powerful and timely book is illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu and published by Simon & Schuster. The Talk tells the story of Jay, a young Black boy who is growing up in an American city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3529"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3535,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions\/3535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}