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Finding light in the darkness
Thomas to be honored by Writers Hall of Fame
Joyce Carol Thomas: "I know that life can be ugly, but it also can be beautiful."
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 10/4/2009 2:20 AM
Last Modified: 10/4/2009 4:12 AM
One thing that made the back-breaking, finger-numbing work of picking cotton worthwhile to Joyce Carol Thomas was the time when the stories would start.
"We didn't have electricity, so everyone would gather on the porch and the elders would start telling stories," the Ponca City native said. "Many times they'd start telling ghost stories. And I remember that, after someone had told a really, REALLY scary tale, my mother would say to me, 'Now, go get a bucket of water.' "
Thomas laughed at the memory. "That meant having to walk a ways in the dark to get that bucket of water," she said. "And remember, we didn't have electricity at that time, so it was DARK."
But now, Thomas said, she realized the reason her mother insisted she take care of this chore was to make her daughter face her fears of whatever might be out there in the dark.
"My mother didn't give the time to let my imagination get carried away with fear," Thomas said. "Years later, whenever I was in a situation where I might be scared, or had to face some challenge well, fear was not a problem."
Although Thomas was about 10 when her family moved from Ponca City to California, she has always considered herself an Oklahoman. And her memories of life in Oklahoma have inspired much of Thomas' award-winning fiction, poetry and plays.
Her first novel, "Marked by Fire," won the National Book Award for Children's Fiction in 1983. Her work has won three Coretta Scott King awards from the American Library Association, the most recent being for her 2008 book of poetry, "The Blacker the Berry."
On Tuesday, Thomas will be inducted in the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame, at a ceremony at the Philbrook Museum of Art. The event will include two tributes: one to noted historian John Hope Franklin; the other to former Tulsa World political cartoonist Doug Marlette. Best-selling novelist Pat Conroy, a long-time friend of Marlette, will be featured in a special video presentation.
Thomas' induction is also part of "Oklahoma Landscapes — A Plains State of Mind," a joint effort by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers, Gilcrease Museum and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust, made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Thomas said she started writing before she really knew what words were.
"I always had stories in my head," she said, during a telephone conversation from her home in Berkeley, Calif. "Our house was on stilts, and I would go under the house and just scratch marks on a piece of paper, pretending that I was writing."
She was still in grade school when she won her first writing prize — a school essay contest — but the local paper would not include her in the winners because, as Thomas said, "they just didn't value what black children did. We simply weren't considered to be in competition with the white youngsters."
Rather than become angry or discouraged, Thomas said she preferred simply to face the situation and move on — much like she had to face walking through the dark after being told a scary story.
She earned degrees in eduction and taught first in secondary schools, then at colleges in California. Most of Thomas' writing is marketed for young readers — a categorization Thomas did not seek, but happily embraces.
"I just write the stories or the poems as they come to me," she said. "And I was pleased that my work is marketed for young people, because I know that people of all ages end up reading them."
Thomas' novels also deal with some dark and troubling material, much of it drawn from the stories she heard growing up in Oklahoma and California. A school mate of hers was so brutally raped that she was rendered almost catatonic, unable to walk or to speak. She also heard of a man who murdered his wife in a brutal, horrific way.
"These were both things that troubled me a great deal, because they were things I simply could not understand — how one person could so mistreat another," Thomas said. "I think one of the reasons why I wrote about them was to try and understand them — to find an answer.
"Of course, there really is no answer. People will do horrible things to other people, and there is no way to explain it away. So I write about these things as a kind of warning, to tell young people there is a darkness in the world."
But Thomas also balances that darkness with messages of hope and redemption. Her stories have a strong religious aspect — another bit of autobiography that appears in her books.
"Church was very important to my mother, and we never missed a service growing up," Thomas said. "I don't go to church now, but I have my Bible and I've structured my life to be kind, and to appreciate it greatly when that kindness is returned.
"I know that life can be ugly, but it also can be beautiful."
Joyce Carol Thomas
Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame
When: Reception, 6:30 p.m. Banquet,
7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Philbrook Museum of Art,
2727 S. Rockford Road
Tickets: Event is sold out. To be on
the waiting list if tickets become
available, call 594-8215.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
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