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RE: How I Became a Ghost
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From: Kay kosko <kkosko_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:02:07 -0500
Lee, Thank you for sharing these personal anecdotes. I feel it helps us ... as we share our work with children and families.Karen KoskoCambridge MA
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:38:39 -0700 Subject: [ccbc-net] How I Became a Ghost From: leebyrd_at_cincopuntos.com To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
My name is Lee Byrd. My husband Bobby Byrd and I own Cinco Puntos Press and I have been the principal editor for the books we have published by Tim Tingle. I am probably going to fling myself into this conversation in an inappropriate way because I haven't been following the discussion so much as entered because Tim had wanted me to join in. He was born, by the way, on November 24, 1948 if you want to send him a card, which also means he is younger than me so has had to listen to me over the years. And I have had to listen back. That's what's so exciting about being a publisher: you're always learning.
Bobby Byrd and I first met Tim Tingle at the Texas Library Association some time back. Just to let you know, I am starting here a story of how Tim, in his own particular way, has educated us to a much larger understanding of Native American life and culture and opened our eyes over the years to what we hadn't seen before. Which, I think, is what writers, books, educators and librarians do, is open doors into a reader's understanding.
So Tim, if I remember correctly, gave Bobby a tape of him telling stories. He wanted Bobby to listen to it. People are always giving us things for us to pay attention to and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. But one day, Bobby was riding in the car and slipped in Tim's CD or tape and began to listen. Holy mackerel, he said to himself, this guy is really amazing. I listened too and had the same response. So we began to talk to Tim about doing a collection of his stories, the one called Walking the Choctaw Road, our first book by Tim.
Right from the beginning, Tim and I had to wrangle because there was much I didn't understand. I was born in New Jersey, a middle class anglo. I wouldn't know a shape-shifter if I met one, so as I began to edit Tim's stories, I had to say, Look, Tim, this doesn't make sense to me. Or that doesn't make sense. You have to show people what you're talking about. You have to make clear to people who aren't from a culture what they don't understand.
And, of course, Tim has done just that, opened up doors into culture and imagination by showing how things are without explaining that they are that way. I think of the so many things I learned from Walking the Choctaw Road, from Crossing Bok Chitto and Saltypie, and now House of Purple Cedar.
And now here in How I Became a Ghost, Tim has taken the "Trail of Tears" from Walking the Choctaw Road, and given it yet another shape. He's the shape-shifter!
In the process of working with Tim, we have become very sensitive to our responsibilities as publishers. We get a lot of phone calls, always sincere, from people who are not Native American but maybe lived and taught on a reservation or ran a trading post on a reservation or taught in a school where there were Native American kids and so wanted to tell the stories of these kids and hoped that we would consider them for publication. And there might have been a time when we would have considered these stories. But after working with Tim, and now a storyteller he has mentored, Greg Rodgers, we don't feel free to consider stories by non-Indians about Indians any more. And if a book by a Native American is an illustrated book, we make every attempt to find an illustrator who is Native American and from the same tribe, if possible, as we did in Saltypie and now in Greg Rodger's first book, Chukfi Rabbit and His Big, Bad Bellyache.
Oh, just one more thing! In the book Saltypie, which I think is really an extraordinary book for many reasons, the illustrator Karen Clarkson, a Choctaw, painted a hospital waiting room full of both living people and spirit people, a wonderful way of seeing Choctaw understanding. This is why it's such an extraordinary book. It's like a Trojan horse. The message is hidden deep inside the book. Why, what's the message, people ask. These Indians look just like everyone else.
Bingo!
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Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:02:07 -0500
Lee, Thank you for sharing these personal anecdotes. I feel it helps us ... as we share our work with children and families.Karen KoskoCambridge MA
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:38:39 -0700 Subject: [ccbc-net] How I Became a Ghost From: leebyrd_at_cincopuntos.com To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
My name is Lee Byrd. My husband Bobby Byrd and I own Cinco Puntos Press and I have been the principal editor for the books we have published by Tim Tingle. I am probably going to fling myself into this conversation in an inappropriate way because I haven't been following the discussion so much as entered because Tim had wanted me to join in. He was born, by the way, on November 24, 1948 if you want to send him a card, which also means he is younger than me so has had to listen to me over the years. And I have had to listen back. That's what's so exciting about being a publisher: you're always learning.
Bobby Byrd and I first met Tim Tingle at the Texas Library Association some time back. Just to let you know, I am starting here a story of how Tim, in his own particular way, has educated us to a much larger understanding of Native American life and culture and opened our eyes over the years to what we hadn't seen before. Which, I think, is what writers, books, educators and librarians do, is open doors into a reader's understanding.
So Tim, if I remember correctly, gave Bobby a tape of him telling stories. He wanted Bobby to listen to it. People are always giving us things for us to pay attention to and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. But one day, Bobby was riding in the car and slipped in Tim's CD or tape and began to listen. Holy mackerel, he said to himself, this guy is really amazing. I listened too and had the same response. So we began to talk to Tim about doing a collection of his stories, the one called Walking the Choctaw Road, our first book by Tim.
Right from the beginning, Tim and I had to wrangle because there was much I didn't understand. I was born in New Jersey, a middle class anglo. I wouldn't know a shape-shifter if I met one, so as I began to edit Tim's stories, I had to say, Look, Tim, this doesn't make sense to me. Or that doesn't make sense. You have to show people what you're talking about. You have to make clear to people who aren't from a culture what they don't understand.
And, of course, Tim has done just that, opened up doors into culture and imagination by showing how things are without explaining that they are that way. I think of the so many things I learned from Walking the Choctaw Road, from Crossing Bok Chitto and Saltypie, and now House of Purple Cedar.
And now here in How I Became a Ghost, Tim has taken the "Trail of Tears" from Walking the Choctaw Road, and given it yet another shape. He's the shape-shifter!
In the process of working with Tim, we have become very sensitive to our responsibilities as publishers. We get a lot of phone calls, always sincere, from people who are not Native American but maybe lived and taught on a reservation or ran a trading post on a reservation or taught in a school where there were Native American kids and so wanted to tell the stories of these kids and hoped that we would consider them for publication. And there might have been a time when we would have considered these stories. But after working with Tim, and now a storyteller he has mentored, Greg Rodgers, we don't feel free to consider stories by non-Indians about Indians any more. And if a book by a Native American is an illustrated book, we make every attempt to find an illustrator who is Native American and from the same tribe, if possible, as we did in Saltypie and now in Greg Rodger's first book, Chukfi Rabbit and His Big, Bad Bellyache.
Oh, just one more thing! In the book Saltypie, which I think is really an extraordinary book for many reasons, the illustrator Karen Clarkson, a Choctaw, painted a hospital waiting room full of both living people and spirit people, a wonderful way of seeing Choctaw understanding. This is why it's such an extraordinary book. It's like a Trojan horse. The message is hidden deep inside the book. Why, what's the message, people ask. These Indians look just like everyone else.
Bingo!
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Received on Tue 18 Feb 2014 03:02:28 PM CST
