A Story Teller’s Story , livre ebook

AuthorHouse - Odie Hawkins

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275 pages

English

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Extrait

Description

The book is about a 95-year-old African-American writer.
The closest comparison of this book to another well-known author is Zora Neale Hurston.
“The Story Teller’s Story” details 75 years of an African-American’s jammed up life.
Hawkins offers us the insights and perspectives of a very observant African-American writer, who uses his experiences as a way to reaffirm the values, the fact that all human beings are brothers and sisters. “The Story Teller’s Story” makes that premise a truth.

Sujets

Biographical

African American

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	AuthorHouse
Date de parution	06 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665572385
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A STORY TELLER’S STORY
Odie Hawkins

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 833-262-8899

© 2022 Odie Hawkins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/03/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7239-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7238-5 (e)

Photos by Zola Salena-Hawkins
Author’s Photos and inserts by Zola Salena-Hawkins
www.flickr.com/photos/32886903@N02
and 5 royalties free Shutterstock photos.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1Situations Growing Up
Chapter 2A Hole In The Head, Washington Park
Chapter 3Caves In The City
Chapter 4Brave Sisters
Chapter 5Swimming In The Death Zone
Chapter 6Freakism In #822
Chapter 7Secret Love
Chapter 8Dr. Margaret Burroughs, Savior
Chapter 9Love Letters For Sale
Chapter 10Saint Uncle John
Chapter 11The Lovely Southside
Chapter 12Instructions For Life
Chapter 13Runnin’ With Latosha
Chapter 14Dr. Ron And Dr. Jewel
Chapter 15The First Annual Fried Catfish Reading
Chapter 16One Last Kiss
Chapter 17The Almo Hotel - Jungle
Chapter 18The Post Office, Downtown
Chapter 19My Sister’s Wedding
Chapter 20The Post Office Drug Scene
Chapter 21From The Almo To The Avon
Chapter 22Dexi Times
Chapter 23Womaine
Chapter 24Mo’ Womaine
Chapter 25Cognac, Carmen Mac Rae, The Sutherland
Chapter 26 January 1962
Chapter 27The Evil South
Chapter 28Joy
Chapter 29Fort Gordon, The Confederacy
Chapter 30The Psychologist’s Problem
Chapter 31Sweet Black Augusta, Georgia ’62
Chapter 32The Hotel Paschal #301
Chapter 33The In-Laws (Future)
Chapter 34“I Promise, I Promise”
Chapter 35Odei, The Writer
Chapter 36Odei’s Corner, Essence
Chapter 37“Funny Lovin”
Chapter 38California Dreamin’
Chapter 39Old Forester, Ol’ Boys
Chapter 40The Beverly Hills Post Office
Chapter 41Reunion With Womaine
Chapter 42The Literary Lane
Chapter 43The Empire Begins…
Chapter 44The Pan-African Film Experience
Chapter 45The White Darkness In America
Chapter 46Hope Is Nice, But Vote
Table Of Contents - Photographs
1IT-ness
2Washington Park’s Lagoon – “A Death Zone”
3DuSable High School
4Almo HOTEL
5Post Office, Chicago, Illinois
6DuSable Museum
7Rumpus Room
8The Sutherland
9Climbing to get out of the Ghetto.
10University of Chicago
11Nights in the President’s Lounge
12Womaine’s Parents’ Home
132-1964 – US56352XXXX
14Odei & Womaine – Wine at Home
15Odei & Womaine – Toast Italian
16Odei Driving to California
17California Dreaming
18William E. DuBois Center, Ghana, West Africa
19Armando, Catered the Event

Dedicated to
Queen Zola Salena-Hawkins

Author’s Note
(Instructor, 1989 – Operation Outreach – UCLA)
“Brother in the San Quentin Writing Workshop said,
‘Well, maybe one of the reasons they want to turn your stuff around is
because you be writtin’ like we talk. You know what ahm sayin’?’”

IT-ness
CHAPTER 1
SITUATIONS GROWING UP
“Two of the things I’ve always admired about myself was my ability to go back to sleep, after being awakened too early. The other thing was my ability to forget about being killed. Let me explain. I have to go back a whole bunch of times when my life was threatened by circumstances I had no control of, and what happened as a consequence, in order to explain what I mean.
Pressing my memory app, I’m going back to the first time I blundered into the Death Zone. Can’t think of a better name for it. How old was I? Five – six years old maybe seven, runnin’ in and out of the streets, over there on the Black section of Oak Street, on the Near Northside, Chicago.
Where else were we supposed to play? No “playgrounds” in our section then, and maybe not even now. Yeahhh, playing – running this crazy game of “catch me,” I ran into the passenger side door of a long black limousine.
Did I die? Maybe. So far as I was concerned, it seemed like I was dead. I fluttered around inside of myself like a very calm butterfly. I was in a deathly High and it felt Beautiful. This Death had a softness, a beauty that I had never experienced before.
(Years later, drunk on cheap beer during a hot, humid Chicago summer day, I tried to equate that experience to being born. It didn’t work. I had no “high” from being born, nothing to equal the euphoria I felt when I was taken into the Death Zone.)
This Death Zone euphoria didn’t last very long. An emergency trip to the White Hospital verified the fact that I had survived a pedestrian encounter with a chauffeur driven limo with no apparent, permanent damage to my small body.
“This boy ran into the passenger side door of our car, causing a large dent, we didn’t run into him.” That’s what I heard the driver say in my butterfly driven fog.
“If he had run out into the street two seconds sooner, we would’ve run over him.” No doubt he was right. None of the details mattered; I was still alive and anxious to get back out there, to continue our fun and games. The doctor advised Momma to keep me in bed for a couple days, give me a few aspirin (I guess that’s what they were, no High there) and bring me back to ER if I started seeing double.
Momma, usually a rebel, obeyed the doctor’s instructions to the letter, for two whole days, quietly quizzing me about the state of my being.
“How you feel, baby?”
What could I say? I felt wonderful, divine, young.
“I’m ok. can I go out to play now?”
“Let’s give it another day.”

On the morning of the third day of my forced lock in, I was planning to sneak out ‘n play, if I was not granted “official permission.” Momma ambushed me at the pass.
“How you feelin’ baby?”
“I’m o.k., can I go out to play now?”
“Uhh huh, yeahhh, you can go out to play – just soon as I get thru whippin’ yo’ ass for dis-obeyin’ me! How many times have I told you not to run out into them streets? How many times?”
I have no idea where this razor strop came from. Maybe she borrowed it from the local barbershop. No matter where it came from, it pursued me around the confines of our cluttered one-room apartment for about forty-six hours, that seemed to be how long she razor stropped on my duckin’ ‘n dodgin’ body.
Finally, with my body sizzling from razor strop blisters, she collapsed on our beaten up, camel humped bed and said, in a very tired, clear voice, “You got to obey me, else I’m gon’ whip yo’ ass. You hear me?”
I nodded yes yes yes yes. What else could I do?
That happened way back in my Dream Times, but I’ve never forgotten it.
I’ve never forgotten how far I was into the Death Zone, by running into a car and by running up against Momma’s rules. To this day, I avoid J-walking. I go to the end of the block if I have to, no matter how far it is, and cross with the light.

My Momma didn’t pay a lot of attention to other people’s rules, but she insisted on me paying strict attention to her rules. It took me a few years to understand why she was so serious about her rules. She had saved my life by being so serious. In some ways she had made me fear her more than I feared Death. Example coming up.
We were living (at the moment) in Uncle Thomas and Aint Mamie’s basement apartment, on 50 th and South Parkway (Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. now), right across the center divider from this huge statue of this guy on a white horse, with him holding a sword straight up. I had no idea who he was and, truth be told, I didn’t give a shit.
It was a really cool place to go sit on, around, when the humid summer monsoons came. That was about all I understood about the George Washington statue, back then. “Daddy of the Country” and the rest of that bullshit surfaced later.
Directly south of where we lived (at that moment) was two of the most important places I would ever come to know in my life. After a few dull years of being shuffled from one dull, dark, rat-infested hole to another, I found myself a hundred yards from a place that was hard to believe. Washington Park is what it was called. I should hope that some thoughtful senators might’ve thought of re-naming this wonderful place – Dr. Margaret B. Burroughs Park.
I know, I’m trippin’. Let me get back to where I was.
I could walk less than a hundred yards and I would be in Washington Park. I counted the steps I had to take many times, just to make sure. After all of the stone ‘n brick basements, the interior linings of so many other basement settings, filled with rats and mold, I could walk up a few steps, make a left turn and walk a hundred yards right smack dab into Heaven. My Momma, Aint Bessie, Aint Mamie, Uncle Thomas, Cousin Martha Ann, and her man Jason granted me “release papers.” Daddy chimed in, whenever.
“Where he at?”
“Boy out there in the park.”
I can’t honestly say how long we lived in Aint Mamie’s and Unca’ Thomas’s Washington Parkside basement, but I can vouch for one year, one year with all of the seasons,
It must’ve been Spring when we socked into Aint Mamie and Unca’ T