ABSTRACT
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“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was old enough to understand what writing was. I remember teaching myself to write in my parents’ basement. Our house was full of these wonderful things called books. My mother and father and older brothers were always very excited about books. I was literally tripping over them. I wanted to be able to do this myself—this thing called reading and writing. As a preschooler, I would run my fingers across pages of books. I would draw letters, words, and figures on a green chalkboard. Today, as a scholar of English education, I know that when I scribbled and when I turned pages, I was reading and writing. I was literate. It was the start of a process that has developed me into the writer I am now. I don’t believe there is enough literature for African American children that is written by males, young and old. I hope I can be an inspiration to other men to break into the field. Women are well represented, and there are many great, Black male illustrators. But we have a huge dearth of male writers.”
