The long-awaited Gordon Parks biography for YA-to-adult readers is here!

Gordon Parks’ early life story—Grit and Grace: Gordon Parks— launched this week. Gordon is famous for his photography (as in Life magazine features about Ella Watson, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, gang leader Red Jackson, and Flavio Da Silva). He published more than twenty books, and ten films, including Shaft. Many books about his professional life exist.
 
I wanted to share Gordon’s life story—his birth, his childhood, the pain of racism, and his ongoing love for humanity in spite of the world’s pushback because of his skin color.

Grit and Grace: Gordon Parks, a novel in verse, is a quick read—304 pages—and paints the picture of how Gordon lived out his mother’s instruction: “Don’t come home with excuses. If a white boy can do it, so can you.” And his own belief that his multiple successes naming him “Renaissance Man” is the result of his being prepared for opportunities. “Then I could recognize luck when it came calling,” he said.

My special luck/opportunity was knowing Gordon personally: personal interviews and phone chats between 2003 and his death in 2006.

NONFICTION AND HISTORICAL FICTION:

I’ve always said that I couldn’t make up anything as fascinating as real life stories, so I’ve decided that I like non-fiction better than other kinds of writing. For a book about dreams, a fourth grader shared an image of a dress made of blueberries. A grandfather told me about roasting a pig in an underground pit for his troop’s dinner during World War II. And when a construction crew couldn’t get the first cable across Niagara Falls to build a suspension bridge, a fifteen-year-old boy flew the cable across with his kite. I cannot make up scenes more interesting than these.

Most of all, I like to write non-fiction to make connections about how and why real people do what they do. Gordon Parks refused to let prejudice beat him down, and Tex Winter became a successful basketball coach at Kansas State University and the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers because he believed in the idea of team. 

No matter what happens or what someone does, I look for the reason. Gordon Parks’s mother gave him a secret weapon to fight racism when she told him that if a white boy could do something, he could, too. Tex Winter’s father had died when Tex was eight, and his family survived only because they pulled together as a team to overcome The Great Depression’s grip. When I look long enough, deep enough, and ask enough questions, I find the reasons. Which is another part of why I like non-fiction. I spend time with people, get to know them in life or through research, uncover their stories, and watch the connection thread together who they are and why they do what they did.

Writing non-fiction becomes a way of looking at the world. Just as I want to make sense of the oddities in Grandma’s attic, I start to organize what people say or do. What comes first, second, last? Who lived in the Kansas cabin and why it is worth renovating now? Were the soldiers out of food when they roasted the pig in the ground? Why would Emma Edmonds call herself Franklin Thompson to serve for the Union side in the Civil War? For me, non-fiction writing is about loving people, being incurably curious about what they have done, and wanting to share my insights so others can enjoy and learn from them, too.

My favorite zoo animal is a giraffe.

I have many grandchildren.

I live in Kansas City.

I drove a wheat truck during Kansas harvests when I was a teenager.

I went to Vermont College to learn more about writing for children and young adults.

I went to Germany last summer with my granddaughter, where we saw the Schwangau Palace, the one Walt Disney liked and used in his films.

I used to be a music teacher.

I make ostkaka, a Swedish cheese cake pudding dessert.

My favorite comic strip is Zits.

My favorite picture book character is Madeline.