CSK Award Winners' Speeches
2002
Mildred D. Taylor, author of The Land
Thank you very much for giving the Coretta Scott King Award to The Land. Thank you for recognizing the family history that I have attempted to portray over the many years in all of my books about the Logan family.
Of my books, The Land and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry have affected me the most in my writing, but for different reasons. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was my first major work and it marked a significant phase in my life as I struggled to create the Logan family and its history based on the stories told by my family, and particularly by my father. It took me just over a year to write. The Land, however, took seven years of concentrated writing and rewriting, and in reality it took longer than that, for The Land has always been a work-in-progress. It was a part of me before The Song of the Trees, before Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, before all the books that followed. The seeds for The Land were planted in my earliest years. When my family gathered in our Ohio home or in Mississippi where I was born, the storytelling would always include stories about our beginning on the family land, and that beginning was due to my great-grandfather.
As far back as I can remember, I was fascinated by stories about my great-grandfather. I was fascinated by the fact that he had been born a slave, yet had in part been reared by a white father who taught him not only to read and write, but also shared much of his life with him. I was always thrilled to hear over and over again the story of how my great-grandfather had defied his father by riding a horse his father had forbidden him to ride and how he and his best friend escaped on a train to avoid punishment. I was always angered by the fact that he had cleared land and then that land had been taken from him. But I always rejoiced in the fact that he didn’t give up, that he pursued his dreams and eventually accumulated the land that has given my family stability and a foundation for more than a century.
From the time I first knew I wanted to write all the stories down, this was the story I wanted most to tell. And I tried. Before Song of the Trees, I tried. Before Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the six books since then, I attempted to write my great-grandfather’s story, but never could capture the feelings of time and place and relationships that I knew had to be at the heart of it. Even after I began to devote all of my writing time to The Land, I could not capture it. I was able to put the facts down, but there was no heart to it, no soul. I finished the story and sent it to Phyllis J. Fogelman, my longtime editor and friend, who in her most diplomatic way, said “Good beginning, Mildred, but it can be better.” She sent the story back.
No heart and no soul.
After that, I put the book aside. I didn’t know how to give it heart and soul. That is I didn’t know how until a family gathering at my home. Family had come from across the country for this gathering and we had a fine time in our reunion. On one of the last days of the gathering , as several of us cooked breakfast, my uncles sat down at the breakfast table and began to talk about the past. Younger generations gathered around, questions were asked, and the storytelling began. Through my uncles’ lively storytelling, I began to visualize my great-grandfather’s world. I had heard all these stories many times before, but on that morning as my uncles retold them, my great-grandfather and his world came alive to me and I could see him clearly. From that day on, the words would not stop coming. It was as if my great-grandfather had taken over my mind and was telling his story through me.
When it came time to conclude the book, I was not ready for it to end, for I had lived in my great-grandfather’s world for so long. Still, it had to end, and I reflected on the heritage my great-grandfather had left, as well as the heritage left by my great-grandmother, for I know that I would not be the person I am today if it were not for them. They were the ones who passed on a legacy and values to their children, and their children passed on the legacy and values to their children, one of whom was my father, who of course passed the legacy and values on to me.
Now there are those who criticize The Land because I chose to speak of this passing of heritage in an author’s note. These critics say I marred the book by doing so, that I should not have pointed out specific aspects of The Land that are based on actual family history, that I should not have said how my great-grandparents and many others in my family have inspired me to achieve my goals. Well, what I say to these critics is that not everyone understands about family and not everyone understands how family reaches back over the generations and affects generations to come. There are those who do not understand how the family of yesterday lives on in the family of tomorrow. There are those families who do not pass on their history. Mine has and I feel blessed for that. I always give credit to my family, for my family lives on in me and in whatever I accomplish.
After almost thirty years of writing about the Logan family, there is only one last book to write. As in all my books, I will include the stories passed on by my family. As in all my books, I will include not only the stories of the past, but the language of the past, the truth of the past and the pain of the past. There is, however, one thing that troubles me. Some readers of my books believe that the books are too painful for young readers. They believe that young readers must be protected from our nation’s history and that books like mine should not be read in the schools. But I will not change how I write. Just as the truth in history was passed on to me when I was a child when the true history was not in textbooks, I will pass it on in my writing, since I believe that the children of today and the children of future generations need to know and understand the past. I believe that they must not be sheltered from it and that the past should not be hidden. I believe that only by understanding the past and what millions of families like mine endured will there be an understanding of the freedoms ALL OF US in America have today and why there was a Civil Rights Movement, a movement that changed our nation.
I will in this last book of the Logan saga continue to give credit to my family and the stories told. I will in this last book continue to give praise to my father, the storyteller, for without his words, my words would not have been. I will continue to write about my family.
