Lori Aurelia Williams

BIO

Though Lori Aurelia Williams adored reading as a child, she never thought she’d be a writer when she grew up. While studying English at the University of Texas at Austin, she departed from the traditional lecture and composition courses and took a creative writing class on whim. Through that class, she learned she loved and had a gift for storytelling. For her fiction, which combines African-American storytelling with street slang, she was awarded a creative writing scholarship and a James A. Michener Fellowship. Born in Houston, Lori Aurelia Williams now lives in Austin.

INTERVIEW

April 21, 2000

Wallpaper Wolves, Memory Beetles, and Lizard People --- all of these vivid and startling images appear in Lori Aurelia Williams debut novel, WHEN KAMBIA ELAINE FLEW IN FROM NEPTUNE. Adults and teens alike will embrace this novel about 12-year-old Shalya Dubois, a girl growing up in a poor Houston neighborhood, who dreams about becoming a writer. Her life changes drastically when she meets her new neighbor, the dreamy and disturbed Kambia. Discover Williams, a new author overflowing with potential, as she discusses her first novel, her love for YA literature --- both reading and writing it --- her next book about Shayla, and much more in this interview.

TBB: Set in a poor neighborhood in Houston, your wonderfully titled first book, WHEN KAMBIA ELAINE FLEW IN FROM NEPTUNE, recently hit bookstores.  Where did the idea for your story about writer Shayla and far-out Kambia Elaine, among others, come from?

LAW: I've had the hardest time answering that question. I've written before that my inspiration for the novel came from all the physically and emotionally beat-up children that I've met throughout my life, that much is true; but to be honest I don't actually know where the story itself came from. About two years ago, I started writing Tia's Story on the back of a grocery list at little coffee house one day after school. At the time I thought that what I was writing was a short story about a young girl in love with a guy that everybody thought was a dunce. I didn't know that I was starting a novel until Kambia wandered on the scene. From the moment she plopped down in the middle of my paper, I knew exactly what the true story had to be about, and that there was no way I could tell it in the twenty pages that I originally thought it would take. Kambia had something to say, and it was going to take quite a while for her to get it out. So to answer your question I guess I would have to say that WHEN KAMBIA ELAINE FLEW IN FROM NEPTUNE came from Kambia herself.

TBB: You’ve written that you wrote the book to give the children in your old neighborhood the voices that were stolen from them by the belief that children should be seen and not heard. In your opinion, what does that kind of thinking do to children?

LAW: That kind of thinking creates turtle children, children who tuck inside themselves. They don't share their feelings with adults because they've been taught that it's not OK to do so unless they've been asked. When they're upset or hurting they simply keep it inside no matter how bad the pain gets.

TBB: Was your voice ‘stolen’ as a child? If so, how did you get it back?

LAW: I do feel as if I had my voice stolen as a child. I grew up in a violent household, made unbearable by my father's sudden rages. My mother was a very beautiful, kind, religious woman, who tried to ease everyone's pain by using only her spiritual beliefs. When I tried to share my hurt feelings with her she would simply give me a passage out of the Bible to read and tell me to say a prayer. I learned that it was OK to take my problems silently to God, but that it was never OK to take them to my mother.

TBB: Shayla lives in a poor, Houston neighborhood and wants to be a writer when she grows up. You also grew up in a poor, Houston neighborhood and did become a writer when you reached adulthood. Is there a little, or a lot, of Lori in Shayla. In other words, is WHEN KAMBIA ELAINE FLEW IN FROM NEPTUNE autobiographical in any way?

LAW: There is a little of Shayla in Lori. Like Shayla, I didn't have many friends growing up. I was a plump little girl who was forced to spend a great deal of time alone. I also adored reading. For me checking a new book out from the library was like getting a fancy Barbie doll. I loved to write and make up stories, but unlike Shayla, I didn't keep a journal. I didn't have any aspirations of being a writer. At 12 Shayla already knows what she wants to be when she grows up. At 12 all I wanted to be was 13.

TBB: Your book is directed at a teen audience, yet adults would also benefit from reading it. What made you decide to write for teens?

LAW: I've always written about teens. My first story was called "No More Hunger." It was about a very poor 15-year-old girl, Tinisha, who ends up going out on a fatal date with a drug dealer just to get something decent to eat and a new dress. I loved writing that story. The girl in it affected me so deeply that when I was finished telling her tale I found it almost impossible not to write about other children like her. I'm not sure that I ever intended to write solely for teens. I just wanted to introduce people to all of the Tinishas in the world. I wanted people to read stories like Tinisha's and identify with them. It just happened to turn out that the people best suited to identify with Tinisha were 18 and under.

TBB: Will you continue writing for teens? If so, what do you enjoy about it?

LAW: I will continue writing teen stories as long as someone wants to read them. What I love about writing for teens is being able to take myself back to that age and help the children in my stories work out problems that I never learned to work out myself.

TBB: Are you working on anything now? If so, can you give us a preview?

LAW: I've just completed the first draft of a second Shayla and Kambia novel. In the new book readers will go on a new adventure with Shayla. They will be introduced to Shayla's brand new baby sister, Gift, meet Lemm, a 13-year-old alcoholic, and learn where Kambia actually flew in from.

TBB: You hold a master of English degree from the University of Texas at Austin and have received both a creative writing scholarship and a James A. Michener Fellowship. How old were you when you started writing? When did you decide to become a writer?

LAW: I don't think I ever actually decided to become a writer. I think I simply stumbled into it awkwardly, the way I did with my womanhood, and so many other things in my life. I can tell you that I decided to take my writing seriously while I was working on my BA at UT. It was my final semester. I didn't have even the slightest idea of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I had become bored with many of my English courses. I wanted a change from the lectures and traditional compositions, so I decided to treat myself to a creative writing course. In that course I learned that I truly enjoyed storytelling and found out that I had a pretty good ear for dialogue. When my writing professor suggested that I apply to grad school for creative writing I jumped at the chance. At the time I didn't know that I was about to embark on a brand new writing career. I just knew that I was going to spend the next few years of my life doing something that I really loved.

TBB: Growing up, who were your favorite authors?

LAW: When I was a little girl my favorite author was Judy Blume. I loved all of her books and identified with her characters, but as I grew up my tastes changed. I became more aware of my surroundings and myself. I needed to know how people like me and the rest of the people in my neighborhood fit into the world. I began reading novels and stories by Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Elison, until I had some small sense of what it meant to be African-American. After that, I moved on to everything that I could get my hands on: Steinbeck, Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, and all types of science fiction.

TBB: What advice would you give to aspiring writers out there?

LAW: A writer professor of mine once said that good writers write about what they know, I strongly believe this. I think that if you want to be a good writer you have to take all the smiles, all the giggles, and all the tears; mix them together, make a paste of your life and use it to glue your stories together. You should let your life experiences create the strongest foundation for your work.

TBB: In addition to wonderful kernels of wisdom, your book abounds with beguiling, yet startling images. Kambia Elaine’s Wallpaper Wolves, Memory Beetles, and Lizard People make the impending horror of what the reader is to discover about her more bearable. That is, if stories about children suffering indignities at the hands of their guardians can be bearable. Where do your wonderful images come from?

LAW: When I was a little girl I often spent hours curled up in my small bunkbed reading absorbing books of fairy tales, folklore, and myths. I loved those tales, where fantasy shook hands with reality, where animals talked, people flew, and evil wizards cast spells on unsuspecting travelers. Creating my own images for Kambia's world was easy. I simply transported myself back to my early grade school years and tried to make Kambia's world look like some of the fun and scary worlds that I used to read about.

TBB: In addition to abuse, you also explore the dangers of ‘judging a book by its cover;’ that is, basing your judgment of someone on how they look, thus, writing them off. On the outside, your character, Donald “Doo-witty” Dwight, may look slow and dumb; but, on the inside, he has an incredible gift. Was his character based on anyone you know personally?

LAW: Doo-witty was based on someone that I knew. In the neighborhood where I grew up there was a young mentally challenged woman, Brenda. Brenda talked and walked funny. Each day she took a small yellow school bus to a special school outside of our neighborhood. All the children in the neighborhood made fun of her. They chased her down the street calling her names and tugging on the old fashioned outfits that her elderly mother dressed her in. For a very brief period in my life I ended up living with Brenda and her mother. I got to know Brenda pretty well. She was slow, very slow, in most things she had the mind of a young child. She was in her thirties. She couldn't cook, clean, or take care of herself in any way, but she could do one thing --- math. She was a genius at it. Her mother ran a small business  
out of her home. Each day when Brenda got off the small yellow school bus she went straight to a desk, sat down and figured out her mother's books. I quickly came to realize how wrong I was about Brenda. I found out that there was a whole lot more to just the strange looking woman than I had seen walking down the street.

TBB: How can we combat our natural inclination to write people off for their perceived differences?

LAW: I think that we just have to remember that all of us are composed of layers, and that what we originally see of most people is just that tiny part of them that seeps through to the surface. We have to really get to know someone to find out what's underneath.

TBB: And finally, if you could sum up the message in WHEN KAMBIA ELAINE FLEW IN FROM NEPTUNE in one sentence, how would it read?

LAW: Children, when you're troubled or hurt, there's always an adult out there somewhere who's willing to listen to you.

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