Mother to Son.  Racism is at the heart of my latest novel, Skunktown.  Set during the turbulent year 1968, my main character and narrator is 12-year-old Lyman.  Lyman, who is white, must unlearn many of the racist attitudes he has been taught growing up, before he can begin to think and feel and see things through a less biased perspective.  His primary tutor in this education is a young Afro-American girl named Maddy. Because Lyman has lost his mother to suicide, she gives him a Langston Hughes poem called “Mother to Son” to read.

A few weeks ago, I happened to catch a mother raccoon and her kit in the backyard trying to climb over our fence.  Intrigued, I began video taping it.  The mother made it over and was waiting on the other side, but her baby, at first fearful, had trouble, and went back and forth trying to figure it out, all the while being coaxed by its mother through the slats in the fence (you could see her fingers and hear her cries).  While doing research for my novel, I had reason to refer to several of Langston Hughes’ wonderful poems; one was the aforementioned “Mother to Son” (below), about a black mother exhorting her son to keep climbing though the journey might be dangerous and difficult.  This poem, of a mother’s necessarily harsh love for her child, must have been on my mind when I witnessed the determination and courage that the baby raccoon had to have to follow his mother’s example.  `

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

 

Click on video below

https://tinyurl.com/38vas86r