Don't Cry For Me Argentina Degreed Folk...

In late spring I received and email from a professor who wanted to know if I would be interested in a write-in-residence position. The appointment would require me to run a creative writing workshop, one night a week for MFA students.

It was a dream gig. One night a week, for one semester. And the pay wasn’t too shabby.

There was a little concern that I had never taught before, but she was passionate that I would have a lot to bring to the table. And I agreed.

I sent her my CV and waited.

Towards the end of the summer she and I met over wine and cheese. We discussed the writing life, our families and our hopes and dreams for the future. We parted with smiles and hugs.

I was encouraged.

As summer moved in to autumn, she kept me up to date on the progress. My CV had to pass across a number of desks for approval, until it finally landed on the desk of the person who would have the final say. That person was the provost of the department.

Yesterday, I received news that I would not be offered the position as I lacked a degree and that made me ineligible.

I have the experience – but not the piece of paper to…validate that experience.

Hey, no prob… I get it!

Some might argue that placing a non-degree holding teacher in the classroom might give the students the wrong idea..like… maybe they don’t need an MFA to continue to grow their craft or secure a publishing deal.

Commerce, right?

Like I said…I get it.

I am a bit disappointed – but far from bitter or upset… because I am encouraged that something bigger and better is waiting for me on the opposite side of this situation.

So today instead of crying the blues for what may seem like a missed opportunity… I choose instead to celebrate the fact that I am an autodidact – and am very happy to share that label with many, many other self-taught folks who have changed the way we view and experience the world.

Here are just a few:

Maya Angelou is completely self educated, and in spite of having no college degree has received honorary degrees and teaching positions from several colleges. In fact she has a lifetime chair at Wake Forest University. She has also taught at the University of Ghana and the University of Kansas. She speaks several languages including French, Spanish, Arabic, Italian and Ghanian Fante.


John Henrik Clarke
A self-taught scholar born of a sharecropping family in Alabama, Clarke became an authority on African history, a lecturer at Hunter College, and an advocate for Black Studies.

William Faulkner
One of America's most distinguished men of letters, William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. A nice accomplishment for a high school drop out who would later attend three semesters of college where he received a D in English.

Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from February to June 1957.[3]

Bill Gates
If he's not the most famous college dropout in American history, he is for sure the wealthiest. Bill Gates as if you didn't know is co-founder of Microsoft and easily the richest man in the world.

OPRAH!!!


Now, let it be known, I’m not knocking higher-education, I’m just saying…higher education shouldn’t knock the autodidact…

Bernice L. McFadden

Change starts long...

......before we recognize that it’s actually happening.

July 2008, my accountant calls to inform me that my retirement account has taken a hit of devastating proportions, leaving me with a third of what I once had.

Days later, the weirdest sensation began to pulse on the side of my head. I would go on to describe it as a baby’s foot, pressing into my brain.

What followed were two days on the couch, and a number of Extra Strength Tylenol Capsules.

What followed that was the news that Random House had decided not to renew my Geneva Holliday contract. And to make matters worse, my historical novel: Glorious – had been rejected by what seemed to be - everyone and anyone in publishing industry.

So you can imagine. I was feeling kind of….sad…insecure…and uncertain about my future.

And what followed ALL OF THAT were the incessant bouts of vertigo.

I went to my doctor who sent me to a neurologist. I had a brain scan, which did not reveal a mass or tumor.

Ok. Then it must be stress from the worry that flanked me day and night.

I had two mortgages, a car note and a child in college – how in the world was I going to juggle all of that with no income and very little savings?

In any case, I forged ahead. I continued to shop Glorious and began putting together proposals for projects that I thought would be snatched up – lickety-split – but nothing happened. It was as if the world that I had been apart of for so many years, had just picked up and moved on.

Christmas arrived, and I made the best of it, with the little that I had. I bought a cheaper, smaller tree. The same went for the Christmas gifts. The holiday meal I prepared couldn’t hold a candle to ones from previous years. But I told myself that those things did not matter as much as the fact that I had my family and friends around me.


January 2009 waltzed in and with it I made the first of many withdrawals from what was left of my retirement account.

The months that followed are a blur. I remember cold, gray days and a lot of writing.

Spring arrived, and with that came the idea to query Akashic Books. By August, the deal was inked and Glorious had finally found a home.

September crept in and I looked up and my birthday was staring me in the face. I had a small party – but I was miserable.

I was barely sleeping. The vertigo and the headaches were so bad – that I admit- sometimes I wished that God would just take me in my sleep. I thought, it would be all for the best, because after all, I was worth more dead than I was alive.

And then October. Autumn was struggling with summer – on the account that summer did not want to bid her adieus. I hopped in my BMW and headed South.

I loved hitting the open road. I savored the alone time with my thoughts. I cherished being able to turn the volume up and sing as loud and as off key as I wanted. I liked the moon roof. Needless to say, I had an undying love affair with my car.

That trip was special; because it would be the last road trip I would take in it. I could no longer afford to keep it and would have to surrender it to new owners.

Now, some of you maybe reading this and thinking that above all the other problems I had – relinquishing my car was kind of superficial. And I get it. But what my car meant to me was freedom. Freedom to travel great distances when I couldn’t afford a plane ticket. Freedom to escape from the four walls…of my mind.

I was angry. Angry as hell. And that anger, combined with the stress I’d been experiencing bubbled over resulting in The breakthrough that came disguised as a breakdown.

It was after that, that I launched Sugar’s 10K Book, 10th Anniversary Campaign.

(I still don’t know if I've met my goal – but that is another story for another post)

Christmas again. A friend of mine gave me a blank check as a gift. I was astonished.

I looked at it an asked: “What is this for?”

He said: “Pay your mortgage.”

This marked another change in my life. I had suddenly become the receiver. I am very uncomfortable in this role… but I am told, if I say no, I will be messing with the blessings of the giver.

January 2010.

I always travel in January. I do not want to be here on the day my father died. I was not a fan of Gold – but I had a few old pieces lying around and so I sold them. And oh, joy I had airline miles and American Express Points. So I flew off to Honduras for a week of sun, sand, sea and reflection.

On my return, I thought: That was a selfish, frivolous and stupid thing to have done. But what’s done is done….

Months come and go. Some are better than others…and then May arrived and with it the official publication of Glorious….and the magic began to swirl…….


Fast forward….


So here I am. Here we all are. October 2010 – 2 years and 3 months after my life began to shift.

Glorious – the little book that so many people refused to take a chance on, is doing quite well.

And me… Well, I am doing better.

I don’t have a car, or the money I once had. But I have a roof over my head and I have my sanity and I have love and support. I have the serenity that comes along with the knowledge that everything truly does happen for a reason.

I have my unshakeable faith.

Bernice L. McFadden

Alfre Woodard Reads: GLORIOUS!!

Click here to hear a sample of Glorious

Bernice L. McFadden

Before..

Microwaves, cell phones, personal home computers, video games, The World Wide Web, GPS systems and all of the other gadgets that supposedly make our lives easier and faster.. before all of that, there was the 70's..

The 70's was for me, in many aspects, the worse time of my life and the best time of my life. Today, I would like to focus on those things that make me long for those easy, breezy days.

Whenever I hear ANYTHING by The Staple Singers, The Jackson Five and Al Green, I am spirited back to the summer days I spent at my grandparents home in South Ozone Park Queens.

I'm talking about a time when Queens was as country and down home as any small Southern town.

I have loving memories of the backyard that, at the time, seemed as large as a small park. The street, was not paved until I was about ten years old. Every other week a truck delivered crates of soda. My grandparents had a freezer stocked with ice cream and large portions of red meat and chicken legs. On the weekend my grandfather made us stacks and stacks of pancakes. Sunday dinner was always Thanksgiving-like...

In the backyard there was grapevine, from which I gorged myself on grapes until my stomach locked into knots. There was the harmless Doberman Pincher named Peppy. I was scared to death of him, but he loved me completley.

My grandmother had a 3rd grad education and the year I was born she married a man who had completed two years of college. He was the only grandfather I have ever known. They made an interesting and humorous couple, as she is fair-skinned with shoulder length hair and stands a mere 4"5. My grandfather was a stocky, ink black man who stood a good six feet. He was butter in her hands.

When they married my grandfather came with the four children he had fathered with his first wife. Three girls and one boy. The two added water and love.. and just like that, we were family.

Music was a staple similar to rice, potatoes and cornbread. We kids would spend our evenings entertaining the adults with our renditions of songs made popular by The Jackson Five, The O'Jays. Gladys Knight and the Pips..and so on.

Do children still do that? I suspect not.

We always ate our meals together as a family. Always...No phone calls were taken during dinner/family time. Now, so many families consume their meals in separate parts of their residence, or in front of the television or with their eyes glued to their cell phones as they negotiate handling their forks and texting their friends.

Before the world began to spin at 100+ miles an hour, what happened at home stayed at home. Now, so-called "Reality Shows," are all the rage. Books are slowly becoming a thing of the past and people give me odd looks when I grin at the scratchy sound of a well worn 45 or 68.

My mother is 67 years old and our relationship has gone through some ups and downs. Now, when we manage to be civil to one another, I find her repeating a phrase that I kinda-sorta agree with: "Why can't things go back to the way they were?"

I know exactly what she means. But I know that there is no going back. We are a society locked in full, speed, ahead..

So as I sit here listening to Let's Do it Again, reminiscing on those sunny, love-filled days in South Ozone Park where my female cousins and I jumped double dutch and snuck sips of Cold Duck from the forgotten plastic cups belonging to our uncles and aunts - I muse on that little girl who watched the boys play Skelly right in the middle of the street, and then later giggled behind open palms as the adults did a slow grind in the backyard - eyes closed, faces plastered with satisfied grins. I have fond memories of large bowls of potato salad, the smokey scent of baby back ribs smoldering away on the grill as multi-colored patio lights, lightening bugs and the stars lit up the night sky.

I remember that I understood happiness, family and gratitude in a way that I would have to relearn when I became an adult and from those memories I am reminded that that little four letter word - LIFE - carries a meaning that is as expansive as the universe.......

I remember that before I was "grown" and concerned with grown-folks things, I was a child who didn't have a quarter of what I have now.....but I was happy..

Bernice L. McFadden

The "I" and "Me" Generation - Are we raising a generation of spoiled brats??

A spoiled child (also called a spoiled brat) is a child that exhibits behavioral problems from overindulgence by his or her parents. Spoiled children may be described as "overindulged", "grandiose", "narcissistic" or "egocentric-regressed".




In just a few short months my sister and her husband will welcome their baby boy, Ethan Torres into the world. 

My sister has a 14 year old daughter from a previous relationship and her husband has a 15 and 13 year old from a previous relationship.

We have lengthy conversations about being parenthood which include the highlights, the dark days and the hopes we have for our children. I also have these discussions with other friends and family who are currently raising or has raised children in this American society.

Naturally, the comment I hear more often than not is:

"Our children have too much."

I concur. Yes, they do have too much. They have too much because we make more than our parents did and so are able to indulge them.

When I was a growing-up, the best gift I could receive for an accomplishment, was that glow of pride on my parents faces, accompanied by the words: "I'm so proud of you!" Anything beyond that was just icing on the cake!

It seems to me (and many others that I have had this conversation with) is that this new generation needs to be rewarded with electronics, trips, jewelry, cars, real estate (<--- I am guilty of this) and so on. Anything less seems to be ...well...unacceptable.

We parents bend over backwards to give and do for our children. And why not? As my my mother, grandmother and scores of previous women in my family before me always said: "They didn't ask to come here!"

And in those six little words, it has come to be understood that we as parents should do everything and anything possible to make their "visit" here a pleasant, fulfilling and enriching one.

And yes, once again, I concur. But what happens when all of the giving and loving is not reciprocated? Or is met with insolence and disrespect? This as if, everything they have and most of who they are came about by the wave of a wand by some random fairy?

Do we parents have to take all of the blame for creating these monsters? Can we place some of it on the growth hormones in the food?

How could they dismiss the fact that although we made it look easy - it wasn't always the case. We went without so they wouldn't have to. Hold a blue light over our hearts and you will see the word Sacrifice glowing there.

From my "experience" and "investigation", this type of behavior among the young people is becoming more and more common and it's heartbreaking...

Sidebar: My sister has a cat named Mikey, who spends most of his time outside chasing mice, badgering squirrels and befriending possums. The joke is that Mikey really doesn't give a shit about the family and is just using them for food and shelter. She has now included her 14 year old daughter as a character in this joke.


In my novel, Camilla's Roses, the matriarch of the family warns her daughters 'Not to love their children too close.' Her belief is that children are bound to break your heart. And loving them at arms length could offer the mother some protection from that.

 What do you all think?

 As we wait out these final months till the new baby arrives, we think about what should and will be done differently with this child. Maybe going old school is the best route to take. A road ladened with more kisses, hugs and I love yous and less Ipods, Iphones and Ipads - which seems to have created a generation of children who can't see beyond their own wants and needs.

Bernice L. McFadden

Wordless Wednesday

Bernice L. McFadden