People Who Led to my Essays

a writing exercise

I’m 100000% lifting this title from Adrienne Kennedy’s memoir, People Who Led to My Plays. My mentor from grad school assigned the book in a class of hers that I took, and also recommended the book again after our thesis conference three years ago. I’ve just gotten around to reading the memoir this week.

The “writing about Black wealth” genre doesn’t always examine childhood. There are books about the professional clubs, sororities, social clubs, and summer communities. Every so often, Vanity Fair or NYT Style does a photo essay about a Martha’s Vineyard wedding, or TikTok dives into HBCU pageant culture. Black girlhood, I see this theme tackled, as it relates to Black elite circles, in Negroland, People Who Led to my Plays, and the play Welcome to Wandaland.

As I’m writing and revising my project, I’ve noticed that my upbringing in Jack & Jill and Delta, summers at both Sag Harbor and Martha’s Vineyard, and majority Black hometown were the missing glue in many essays. So, I read the book at the right time. In celebration of this puzzle piece revealing itself, I want to use her book as a writing exercise.

People and Places Who Led to My Essays

Preschool

Babysitter

My mom, along with three or four other moms in the area, paid for one babysitter who was from St. Lucia to watch us seven or eight kids for a few weeks each summer while they worked. We swam at Wilson Woods, practiced writing, ate Kraft mac and cheese, and visited the Bronx Zoo on Wednesday. One summer before Kindergarten, I learned that writing with your left hand was a sign of the devil. This might be the reason that I write with my right hand.

Dad

Sis and I visited Dad for six weeks between July and August. Each summer, he might live in a new city. One summer, he asked if we would like to visit him in Virginia next summer. I said no and asked if he could stop moving so much.

Diana Ross

There was a time between 1997 and 2001 when every song at any recital, whether school or dance, involved a Motown song. One spring, my dance instructor choreographed our recital dance to “Baby Love” by the Supremes. I sang Baby Love so much at State Beach in Martha’s Vineyard that my godmother would sing the song whenever she saw me until I was well past my twenties.

Mount Vernon

The Friday after Thanksgiving, my mom would take me to a party hosted either by a neighbor who lived across the street from my dad or another woman whose daughters went to grade school with me. While the parents talked and had pie, we kids ran around the house. She still hosts the party despite how many people have left Mount Vernon. I remember these parties because they felt like the best parts of living in an all-black suburb.

Munia

When my mom worked on weekends, I had to stay over my dad’s mom’s house. Each weekend was an adventure, even though we did the same things: lunch, bank, and chat with her best friend Rite (short for Marguerite). I can still taste the fried whiting fish and tartar sauce on golden wheat sandwich bread, potato wedges, and fried apples we’d order from the fish market before running errands in her 1999 baby blue Honda Civic.

CUNY

My first time in a college lecture hall I was three or four years old. My mom pulled me out of preschool to be a demo for a child development lecture. She taught as an adjunct for years when I was a child. That day, my mom would buy me McDonald’s for lunch.

Grandma

My mom’s mom watched us on Friday nights when my dad’s mom couldn’t, and vice versa. Sometimes they watched me together. My mom’s mom also gave us fried fish but with mashed potatoes and vegetables. I always ate everything my grandma cooked both because I’d get punished if I didn’t and because she told me she added a teaspoon of sugar to help my taste buds adjust to vegetables. I don’t remember the moment when she stopped doing it.