Something quite wonderful happened yesterday. I was at a birthday party and sat opposite a neighbor I didn’t know. We began talking about school and he shared that he was a truant in high school, though he was in one of the best high schools in the city and scored well on his regents. One neighbor said he would never be truant, and I agreed. Also, I said, in college I was the VP of the black students club, Club Toussaint L’Ouverture in the 60s at Hunter College. We were successful in getting a course in Black history, even though students were threatened with expulsion for protests. I said, I was most nervous that my mother would kill me if I was expelled. That course quickly grew into a department once I was in graduate school. Then he shared this! He was a student at Hunter years later in 2000 and took a required course in the Black and Puerto Rican Studies department, and read books by James Baldwin and Richard Wright and others. He said, “I know that if it wasn’t required I would never have been exposed to these writers.”
It was quite wonderful to feel that something I had a hand in beginning had a positive effect on this stranger, and others.
The back drop of Wildflowers is the 60’s and Kirkus called it “A solid historical novel with engaging characters.”
Congratulations. It’s wonderful to know you’ve made a substantive difference.
Those turbulent times challenged us to stand for something, and I did that as so many others did. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to meet this man and hear from his lips the impact that the fight for black history to be taught in the college had on his life. People have said think about how many majors in Black and Puerto Rican Studies there are at Hunter. That thought gave me goosebumps. Thanks Denise.