Still, I Write
I’ve been to a lot of writing conferences and workshops over the past twelve years. One of my favorite experiences was three years ago with Emma D Dryden on Martha’s Vineyard. We were a small group of writers who wrote, learned, and cooked together. That’s where I met Beverly. I’m grateful she agreed to write a post for VOICES. I look forward to reading her novel.
Introducing Beverly James!
Still, I Write
I raced my younger brother to the sunflower-yellow kitchen table in our tiny Brooklyn apartment and snatched the comics section of the Sunday paper. “Ha! I get to read Brenda Starr first!”
Swiping a hand across his runny nose, my brother slumped down into an olive-green upholstered chair and laid his head on the table. I didn’t care; I had my “shero” in my hands and was eager to follow another one of her adventures in the male-dominated newsroom. And I wanted to be just like her. No, there was not one person in my neighborhood that looked like Brenda Starr, nor did I know anyone—male or female—who was a journalist. But I knew that someday I would be a writer because I had stories to tell. My parents had other ideas.
“No one is going to hire a black, Latina female reporter,” my mother said. “Forget it,” my father chimed in. “Go into the health professions, and you will always have a good job.”
So, I took a detour through a dental hygiene program at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. I hated every second of it. But I was nothing if not dutiful, so I made the best of it for just over two years. Then a childhood friend, sensing my boredom with life, invited me to visit her at Howard University in Washington D.C. I went for a weeklong stay and knew that I had found my home. After speaking to a journalism faculty member, I realized that, yes, someone would hire a black, Latina female reporter—if she was good.
And I made sure I was good. I wrote every chance I had, climbing up the journalism ladder by starting out at a family-owned paper in central Massachusetts, then moving up to a small daily in Ashland, Kentucky, before hitting my stride at a larger paper in Nyack, New York. But my dream had always been to write for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. It had the best editors and a team of rising stars in its newsroom. I wanted in.
I applied, interviewed and was hired to work as a reporter in the Iredell County bureau. I was used to living in the boonies, so that was no big deal. But the competition and the sheer demand to always write your absolute best made the job exhilarating. I thrived and learned to cherish the craft of storytelling. After more than three years, I moved on to other newspapers and continued to hone my skills. Alas, a new baby and husband (yes, in that order), meant I had to give up days and nights chasing crime stories.
I’ve spent the past 19 years working in higher ed communications. I’ve done stints everywhere from the University of Maryland to Emory University School of Law to the University of Florida, my current home. Still, I write—every single day. Now, between writing press releases and strategic communications plans, I write middle-grade and young adult novels that tell my stories. I hope one day, a young girl who wants to do nothing else but write, will look around and see many, many examples to follow. Examples who look just like her.
