Rita Williams-Garcia Quotes

(What advice do you have for aspiring writers?) Write a little bit every day. I began by writing 500 words a day, but I think 25-100 words a day, every day will help a beginning writer gain confidence and a flow of thoughts and writing. Read widely! Be adventurous with your reading. Nothing helps writing like having the sound of good writing in your mind’s ear. Try new things. New foods. Visit new places. Then write about your experiences. (FAQ)

One of the things I remember about the late 1960s was not only the emergence of the Black Panther Party, but the fact that there were kids who were involved. There were kids being served breakfasts, kids who were shown on the news holding signs, kids who attended rallies, and so on. This awareness of kids my age being a part of those things is what inspired my approach to One Crazy Summer.

(What have you seen change positively and negatively since that time especially in Af Am [African American] children’s literature?) RWG: The biggest change is being able to find African American lit for children and young people in libraries and bookstores. We’re here. We’re out on the shelves with our diverse stories. Characters don’t bear the weight of having to represent all African-Americans, or of meeting publishers’ black quota for the year. We have a presence, yet there’s still a need for even more stories and more writers to explore different genres. If you would have asked me twenty years ago about negativity in African American literature for young people, my lips would still be flapping. I would have begun with them not letting us tell our stories as we know them, and how they let people outside the race and culture write whatever they wanted and call it an African American story. That was one of my main gripes. “Why can’t I tell a story I know to be true, but ‘she’ can write this fake mess?” Ahem. I’ve calmed down over the years. My view has broadened as writing from the other side has gotten better. Truer. More and more I see that we are not a people unto our selves. We make up a good deal of the American experience, culture and expression. I feel both loss and gain. This is the way of forward movement. (2008)

"Enough people in the world trying to silence us. Girl, you better speak up.” (p238)

(What do you like to tell students when you talk to them?) RWG: I think what I enjoy most about going to schools is showing kids who I am. I’m still just kind of a big, silly kid, and I can’t hide it. I want children to see that they don’t have to let go of who they are, and I want them to understand that it’s okay to be goofy, to let go of the cool stuff. The main thing is that they be themselves and celebrate themselves, and let people know them as they truly are. (2015)

writing is an art but it’s work. If you don’t value your work, who will? (2021)

That was how I knew Sister Mukumbo was a real teacher, aside from her welcoming smile and her blackboard penmanship. She asked a teacher's type of question. The kind that says: Join in. (p71)

(In a note included with advance editions of the book, referring to slavery and its legacies, you wrote, “At no other time in our nation’s history have readers sought out more this examination and conversation.” Why do you think now is a particularly important moment for this reflection?) RWG: I’ve revised this answer 10 times. I have been watching the trial of the police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd. I have become that boy who asked, “Why do they hate us?” And then I have my answer and I get angry. I’m a person in my 60s who sees the present as a cycle. We fight for rights because we experience inequities and brutalities, we get rights, we move forward, and then we repeat the cycle. What is happening—the murder of and violence against people of color, the suppression of rights, the unequal access to health care—is not new. It’s part of the cycle. We need to talk openly about what is happening to people because of their race, ethnicity and gender, because the cycle continues. We see it happening before our eyes daily. Each and every one of us has to become the conscience of this country by what we say and do. People are being killed or brutalized on the basis of simply existing. We are not too far from our enslaved ancestors. We have to speak up and act up when the unconscionable is normalized. But we have to talk before there can be any reparations. We have to be unafraid to have uncomfortable conversations with an emphasis on listening. (2021)

I enjoyed the sound of our voices following one another. Sounded like a favorite song from the radio they no longer play, so when you hear it, you remember how things were. (p144)

(How do you tackle writer’s block?) I box, knit, write, and read. Physicality helps to jar me out of my mental state. It shakes things free. (2017)

Ultimately, it’s the reader’s book. It’s about what they receive and how they interpret it. (2008)

My intention is that the more humanity we see, the better we can judge, acknowledge, understand and even indict. There is the horror, and there is also the hope. I wouldn’t be here if not for the people who endured but also loved. I want to pass that on to the reader. (2021)

It was a strange, wonderful feeling. To discover eyes upon you when you expected no one to notice you at all. (p214)

(Do you consider yourself a pioneer?) RWG: Our pioneers are Kristen Hunter, Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, Joyce Hansen, Mildred Taylor, Joyce Carol Thomas, Brenda Wilkinson, [[Virginia Hamilton, Julius Lester, and Walter Dean Myers. Manchild in the Promised Land is our Catcher in the Rye. These are our pioneers, while those still with us remain quite a force in young adult literature after thirty and forty years of publishing. (2008)

"If you knew what I knew, seen what I've seen, you wouldn't be so quick to pull the plow." (p110)