A Word on Words; 2316; Nikki Grimes

in a word down works program and delving into the world of books and their other is this week making rhymes talks about portrait of america your host for a word and words mr john singleton the chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university hello on guns or you know once again welcome to word on words i guess today as nikki grind swap i'm nikki ground to word on words you know you have many friends of the family with your children's books but this is not a children's book this book portrait of mary is a is the story of the life of this young woman who gave birth to jesus and thereby became the most common and revered woman i'm there's any history or ice there's a n u there's when i say i dare say a new

diversity i dare say you'd have some courage to take on the voice of the virgin this is a first person account of her life and some would say presumption and some would say just plainly willie she think she says at the end that he responded well i was actually working on the book i was a somewhat overwhelmed by a sense of who i think i am because i didn't think of mary as the verge and i thought of her as the ultimate mother yan the ultimate woman of faith and faith is something i know something about and so is motherhood and my connection with her i have a lot to do with the fact that i had lost a child the errant contemplated the enormity of being a parent

any time in any age and in a culture and so thought a great deal about what it must've been like to be responsible for nurturing and training and raising the one who would be called the savior of the world and the enormity of that after i'd actually done the book i was reading the galleries i had a moment i thought my god where did i get the nerve well i think it's a very valid point is more for you and for and for your readers in because this is not just a story about about larry norton of faith this also is a story in which you own some summa boys or you give your voice to her and all of her

emotions and all of her sensitivity and all over feeling in all of our fears and and on her affections which the passersby been presented to us through the gospels and clearly you live very very heavily on the gospel is one i mean you give us a biblical and background in each chapter as you take or another step in an open in her life but when you started on this on this task you had an option an option of creating what some people would call a historical fiction and to write the third person telling about her that was never an option for me

because i wanted to explore her humanity hands the emotional psychological landscape of her life and the only way to do that was to to attempt to climb into the scam going to see through her eyes and to get in touch with her spirit to you as if as if we were want to find a place where we can meet in the spirit and for me there was only one way to do that and that was in the first person you say in the i can i read a palate introduction to the book that and the promise of the messiah in that culture in that kind of a king of kings for the jewish people was really at the breton each other's assumption then you move

into her life and you begin by giving us a glimpse of her in a moment of rustlers was fifteen year old girl a spot on the desk at some point about her age but you have her resting after a hard day of shorts there has to be if you're gonna tell the story has to be some license taken from the biblical present patient in order to fill in the gaps before the young woman would do during the course of the day when a fifteen year old jewish girl would do that and how did how did you have to decide to not only help in this case but throughout the book and where you would take that license in a packed carefully had to be about and i was extremely careful i did a great deal of

research about life in that time and as much as i cared about young women now women were regarded how enough for there to be a great deal of detail i doubt that bill alive but as much as i was able to find i found and then attempted to create an amber what i felt was a reasonable embellishment of the facts that i had on hand and so it actually took a lot less license and some people imagine and flushing out the basic gospel accounts because there is quite a bit of information to be found in josephus and now the vocal dictionaries announcer think there's not a great deal you do like kind of work that we're not a detective work that's that's exactly what counsel and an annual ig bibliographies by complete she relied on radio as well as the

best for office the cost of the investment jobs let's get into it because he he making grants let's get into it here this was a very delicate situation this was a situation that created great deal of gossip hear she is pregnant can not by joseph patrols and no doubt in your mind that they were patrolled before pregnancy obsolete and then she's got the talent you give us that scene at supper where she's talking about her parents and she looks at joseph's of the strength and the carpenters physique gentleness has done is insensitivity and then we'll talk about that scene for a moment

because again it draws some on the imagination to create that's a killer tsunami coming for you when you get your wedding but how about that hot but go about creating that environment i studied learn what i could about houses and how they were constructed found out about the kinds of foods that groove and so that i can come up with a possible me all that they could share and i had read up on wedding ceremonies and the customs connected with that on the details of how the women dressed there were a lot of details that i came across that i didn't use and i just sort of you know a piece it together and in that

fashion some very little was purely speculation about imagination most of it is the result of very painstaking research in a detail here a little piece there i'm reading about the seasons of the year and going and what grew when in what was harvested when in what the climbers will i can win this summer local winds blew and how that would have affected mazur that all that's when they saw a great deal of detective work and as with the detective work if you do your job well no one notices oh the side was to say accurately nazareth was a last place and really thumping from which the king of kings of going well then there is the same love and it was not much of a saint i mean you'd like he raised many questions when she told our own when she told joseph

aoun you have you have given us a picture of the age of april when announcing to or i use lightly translate the hail mary what you having such an inside tour of some greetings greetings on and one radio is on the lord is with the lord is with you and she tells joseph she's which are and participants ever told anyone high as they have ever held in and how did you go about creating his reaction when i and it's considered

one of the covenant in that time and what the mosaic law allowed i wasn't that was difficult especially because my focus was so much fun and marry her salary now putting yourself in the role of a wounded male who's about to be disgraced and who has the right to sell them and i don't think well he was definitely one that i think it was probably more shocked than anything else and trying to weigh all that he knew of berry and there are no after purity and her faith and family she came from and all of that against this preposterous that information to try to make sense of that and yet at the same time being a person of strong faith and knowing that all things are

possible not quite know what to do with this information and yet caring for not wanting to see her i am a stone it was a difficult question tell the list to be a private matter who are keeping this in the family as much as weekend the us and they're just all of them very very natural spots it's interesting to me how you frame the book you give us the biblical reference one a little box on the first page of each of their soups cereal and then it puts in context your interpretation your translation and of what transpired was that your idea or the party also been an unknown that was absolutely my idea was it and because i want

it understood this is not entirely a work of fiction drawn exclusively for my imagination are quite the contrary in fact there is a great deal more scripture in the initial draft and just for purposes of layout in and other considerations might cut back on it but that was very critical for me to have the scripture they're low it was the story of the malaysia and harold's anger being tricked tell you you can find out who's this kicking me to wipe out a whole duration and then joseph johnson has an angel nam

details married we mostly gone now i guess a person my conclusion that during that period of her pregnancy considering the time of the earth that there would be a skeptics gossip scan along a monk who worked over pretty a seriously pretty heavily and i could see him maybe wanting to get her away a book or speech impaired which is a matter of record made it imperative and while cars politicizing that she wear down want to support need the support at that time of her family so i can i can imagine that was kind of an emotional

tug of war going on should really should be stationary know go away for him and get away from this scandalous in wyoming and toss the song but at the same time wanting to stay close to the family because they were very tightly knit group for for that support but that was an initiative have to leave that believe that the va to work for me the two scenes that i looked at the most closely i read it twice and then read again both i was fascinated first of the story you know i go back and see what i thought about the way you've handled these they're very sensitive and delicate scenarios the true that that stand out in my mind

first question is divorcing and second was the atmosphere is re visitation with her you talk a little bit about how both those things that i know you explain in your acknowledgements section just exactly yeah why you dealt with that re visitation as opposed to saints are upper arm ripping moments about it the scene you're talking about in the prado yes i'm all about was easy that there is a absolute magic about the hands bartholomew porn especially if it's a first time but even if it is that those first days those first weeks

are just magical while mother and child bond but then there was the backdrop of although that the prophecies concerning this child that time shore and expressing western areas have especially helpless little baby who was in many ways i can innovate and sometimes question the most beautiful child because your listeners but also i'm in another sense just like any other baby and yet it wasn't destined to get i'm trying to find one of the things i did throughout the book was to try to find the balance between her knowing this man those times when that knowledge receded because i tried to imagine what what it must've been like to to have to change the diapers in and wiped the runny nose of a child that you're constantly aware as a summer about

thankfully she could've done that so i have a sense that they resist moving in and out of consciousness so there's some of that in that city that it comes through most clearly in that scene where she loses of him and finds him in the temple recently he reminds her only why you worry about me after photo you know i am well i think you know i think that the that that having the mother in your ability as you said at the outset to translate her feelings and her emotions in that scene and what it is is that experience must have been helpful to you oh absolutely i was able to invest a great deal emotionally and psychologically in space because of my own experience with with macho us alert the closing chapter it's i've spoken to other people who have lost someone close to them and it's fairly common to have

a vision i'll find a husband or a wife or a child in the first days after they're there and i express that with my daughter after she died and also with some other close members of the family so that seemed very natural to me and i just i could imagine it being an ally ana congratulated because i think it's it's a remarkable work and among other things you tell it with such great sensitivity and gravity it strikes me that we are now undergoing a simon literature which small books and rate a large impact of living ryder jones book that made this test

and keeping it very brief relatively a relatively easy what was a human being in her children's offers so much as being a poet which is why children's books under former attorney and initially these were serious that much shorter scenes of poems which i developed later into this narrative and as a poet i focused i always focus on the economy trying to say the most in the years of your snow what about her humanity of what about other children what about that biblical reference to his brother's what about married life

outside her caring and rearing and living with the reality of unreality around it she did have other children trying to find out more than that it's been very difficult what i discovered in scripture overall is that what we're ever i am the life of an individual ceases to connect with the central personality of jesus they fall out of the narrative and joseph falls out of the narrative balances places where key people suddenly fading in the distance as a focus becomes more and more on the person chooses and down and that's certainly true of every member of the holy family and there's a great deal more about marion and joseph that it's just you know a christian mention of the other children

not much i was able to find an i had no desire to make things up wholesale as a satirist up as close as possible by to the actual tax information crisis ask a little bit about your writing technique since assuming that these beginners these chapters begin at home as poitier able to say to intrigue and captivate entertain and enlighten children i didn't sell that when i sat through a two to that question of how you go about the process of writing them is a daily job for you know where your ideas come from how he formulate it is he may that may come to you and they get moments in two words on paper in a book over a things are writing this extensively

it is for the most part with four children a way of rebels from my memory my own life i am constantly editing my own thoughts i had to turn the process of some time and said okay just be in the moment that can be difficult for me sometime prison thinking something concrete scene you know and so in my mind i had a pad with me at all times and so when i have the odd idea on the freeway or hi out shopping one ever stop in and turn it down and then i keep a folder of ideas in various stages of completion something's germinate more quickly than others some take years to come together generally speaking i'm working on several projects at one time because i find that one feeds another i am one idea will spin off another in a sense

that's that figures that i have to pull back the case and said ok ok no more no idea slips just focus on what we only have your marriage mr about the new earlier when i was a new idea i actually wasn't going to originate with me i was approached about doing our which i thought was interesting i had interviewed his widow years before for isis magazine and he learned some new things about malcolm in the process of tearing out and just have a lot of connections from my own youth where malcolm and his organization and i knew people connected with it and i went a few blocks away from the audubon ballroom at the time of his assassination and i walked by identify how many times before then and i

knew the gentleman that they and the minute said the year the curve the debt overhang and then he was so the funeral was held a couple of doors down from the home my best friend and i remember you know i remember that scene so there seem to be some some connection there for me i was you know sure i was a challenge armed it was a chance to present a young people because it was such a complex life to try to break down human in that format but in a way it it it worked in in and crossing over or even adults making rhymes offer a portrait of mary as that our guest on a word of war heroes then john sigg involved chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center

at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of wbez and a national league team