I had a speech impediment and often found myself leading with my fists when teased. I found solace in books. My mother read to me from a very young age. Reading pushed me to discover worlds beyond my landscape, especially during dark times when my uncle was murdered and my family became dysfunctional with alcohol and grief. I wrote well in high school and an English teacher bless her!
I ended up dropping out of high school although now Stuyvesant High claims me as a graduate and joined the army on my 17th birthday. After the army, I was struggling through life—holding on just enough to survive.
A turning point for me was the discovery of a short story by James Baldwin about the black urban experience. To be a Writer. Poem Hunter. Today's Articles People, Locations, Episodes. Thu, Previous Story. Next Story. Reference: Poem Hunter. Academic Writing Memories, Brian Kasoro News Magazine publisher Brian Kasoro talks about people and places that honed his writing style.
We raise de wheat, Dey gib us de corn: We bake de bread, Dey gib us de crust; We sif de meal, De gib us de huss; We peel de meat, Dey gib us de skin; And Myers retreated into books in part because he suffered from a speech impediment.
When other kids made fun of him, he sometimes hit them. One teacher realized he could read aloud in class with little difficulty if he was reading words that he had written himself, and encouraged him to write more.
Another teacher found a speech therapist for Myers, and also channeled the child's bossy nature into a role as the class leader. During his teens Myers became disillusioned over his lot in life. He continued to get into trouble at school, and realized that not many avenues would be open to him once he left high school.
Even though he was a bright student, he knew there were few resources available for blacks. He served three years and returned to New York City to take a series of low-paying jobs. He worked in the post office, as a messenger, and as a factory interviewer for the New York State Bureau of Labor. Myers had been writing since his school days, and had even won awards for his work. He had never thought that his short stories could provide a career for him, but in the s he began to submit his work to magazines.
He also found freelance work for publications like the National Enquirer. In he entered and won a competition sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children for African-American writers.
His winning entry became a picture book, Where Does the Day Go? Its simple, charming plot involves a walk in the park led by a kindly African American dad; he takes along several children from different ethnic backgrounds, and all offer their various ideas about the sun, moon, and passage of time. Monkey Saw the Whole World.
He was hired at the Bobbs-Merrill publishing house, and spent seven years there learning the book business from the editorial side. He went on to earn a college degree from Empire State College. It came about entirely by accident, thanks to a short story he had submitted to his agent, who sent it on to an editor. The editor assumed it was a chapter in a book, and when she ran into Myers at a party she asked how the rest of the project was going. As he recalled in the interview with Smith, "I said, 'It goes like this,' and I made it up on the spot.
She offered me a contract. He and his friends, Clyde and Sam, shoot baskets and try to steer clear of the dangers on the streets. The book became a classic of young adult fiction, praised by readers for its humor, and taught in schools for its message about self-esteem and community. Myers found a steady market for his novels after that, and began publishing one every year. His title The Young Landlords, about a group of teens who are given an apartment building to manage on their own, was the first of his works to win a Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association.
The annual honor is given to the top book for young readers by an African American author. Myers would win the King award several more times for other books. Motown and Didi: A Love Story was the next to earn the honor.
The novel is set in Harlem, where Didi and her boyfriend, Motown, fall in love. He wants to find a good job, while Didi hopes to go to college, but their more immediate goal is to keep her brother out of trouble and away from the local drug kingpin.
Myers called upon his own recollections of military service to write it, but the work was really written in honor of his younger brother, Sonny, who followed in Myers's footsteps and enlisted in the Army in Sonny was sent to Southeast Asia at the height of American involvement in the Vietnam conflict, and was killed in combat on his first day.
Like most of Myers's works, it became a staple on school and public library bookshelves. Years later, he said the best letter he ever received from a reader was from a young man who had wanted to enlist in the military because of the Persian Gulf War in Scorpions, which also appeared in , recounts the story of Jamal, a middle-schooler who unwisely accepts a gun when an older teen asks him to hold onto it for him.
The plot was inspired by a true-life tale: Myers and his sons once played ball in their neighborhood park with another kid, who later disappeared.
They later learned he was involved in a shooting. Somewhere in the Darkness, which won the King award in , is a characteristic Myers tale, both in its challenging fictional premise and in the compelling story the author weaves around it.
This novel involves Jimmy Little, who lives in Harlem with his foster family. His father, Crab, has just been released from prison, and arrives to take Jimmy on a road trip. On their journey down South, Jimmy begins to realize his father is fatally ill and wants to clear his name of the crime that sent him to prison. Myers has written historical fiction as well as his contemporary novels for young adults.
He has also written poetry and compiled photo albums that feature images of African American families over the generations. Myers collects these historical photos from rare book dealers and antiques stores during his book tours across the United States.
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