"Walter Dean Myers, A 'Bad Boy' Makes... Log Out | Topics | Search
Moderators | Register | Edit Profile

Email This Page

  AddThis Social Bookmark Button

AALBC.com's Thumper's Corner Discussion Board » Thumper's Corner - Archive 2008 » "Walter Dean Myers, A 'Bad Boy' Makes Good" « Previous Next »

Author Message
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep

Post Number: 3128
Registered: 01-2005

Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!)

Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 11:32 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Author Walter Dean Myers meets some of his young fans in a classroom at a juvenile detention center in the South Bronx. Though the audience members walk in wearing prison jumpsuits and sit slumped in their chairs, don't be fooled by the attitude: These kids have read some of Myers' dozens of books and are here because they want to meet the author.

Myers' books tell stories that many in the audience are all too familiar with — stories about being insecure for lack of a dad, being scared to walk in your neighborhood, being viewed as a criminal monster.

Growing up, Myers lived with his adopted family in Harlem, not far from this Bronx detention center. He was tall, with a speech impediment that elicited teasing. He got into his share of fights and run-ins with the law. But he was also bookish, and he knew he wanted to be a writer.

The only problem was that all the authors Myers read in school were white and British. Then one day in the 1950s, he met Langston Hughes in Harlem.

"He didn't look to me like a writer because he wasn't white," remembers Myers, now 70 years old.

Myers also discovered Richard Wright, whose memoir, Black Boy, told of a troubled childhood in Natchez, Miss. It's a powerful book that details racism, extreme poverty and brutal violence. Some African-Americans struggled with it:

"James Baldwin and Wright had this clash," Myers says, adding that Baldwin said "that when he read Black Boy he was both pleased with it, because it mirrored some of the things that happened to him, and he was upset with it, because he felt that Wright had glamorized in a negative way some of his earlier upbringing."

Baldwin's charge that Wright had glamorized the negative aspects of his story stayed with Myers. When he wrote his own memoir, Bad Boy, Myers says he wanted to show "a duality of characters more clearly than Wright had."

...Myers understands that there must be a lot weighing on the minds of the kids at that Bronx detention facility. He shows them old photographs depicting various aspects of African-American life, which he uses to help flesh out the characters in his books. Myers started gathering photos while doing a writing workshop in Jersey City. Today, Myers has over 10,000 of them.

"The kids were writing such negative stuff about themselves that I began to collect photographs to show how beautiful they actually were," he says. "I used the photographs in a number of different books."

During his talk the at the detention center, the kids who slouched in the chairs when he first started speaking lean in to listen. One girl tells Myers that she regrets not being as "book smart" as she wants to be.

"One of the things you can do is start writing," he tells her. "What you're saying — other young people want to hear [it]. If you're interested, I am."


Full story and excerpt from "Game" at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93699480
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Vanders
Regular Poster
Username: Vanders

Post Number: 14
Registered: 06-2008

Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!)

Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 03:34 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hey All;     Thanks Yvettep for the update information on Walter Dean Myers. I ran into his name a few year ago when I found at the library the book "Brown Angels." It is an album of pictures of beautiful children in all shades of brown and he writes beautiful poetry describing them all. I've been wanting to read" Monster" for a while now but haven't gotten around to it. I am also inspired by Sharon G. Flake and her books for youth. "The Skin I'm In" is the only one I read thus far, but bought "Money Hungry" and "Begging for Change" for my step-daughter. I also want to read "Project Girl" by Janet McDonald. She died in 2007. Have you read or heard of her? Another writer of children/youth books is Carole Boston Weatherford. She wrote a beautiful book for children on Harriet Tubman and a wonderful book of poems entitled "Remember the Bridge". I love it all, it gives me a mix with the more adult literature I read. Thanks for sharing. Vanders            

Topics | Last Day | Last Week | Tree View | Search | Help/Instructions | Program Credits Administration

Advertise | Chat | Books | Fun Stuff | About AALBC.com | Authors | Getting on the AALBC | Reviews | Writer's Resources | Events | Send us Feedback | Privacy Policy | Sign up for our Email Newsletter | Buy Any Book (advanced book search)

Copyright © 1997-2008 AALBC.com - http://aalbc.com