Show Way begins when Soonie’s great-grandma was seven, and she was stolen from Virginia and sent to a plantation in South Carolina without her mom or pop.
I knew about my grandmother Soonie, and I knew about her grandmother, although I didn’t know her name. When my grandmother was getting sick, my family would never tell me stories. They would talk to each other, well you remember when Soonie blah, blah, blah, or Soonie was so mean.
I caught snippets all my life, and I knew this family history sort of, but when my grandmother was getting older and had no great-grandchildren and I had been saying I was going to have a baby forever and I hadn’t yet. She was getting older and she didn’t think she would get any great-grandbabies, she said if you ever do have one, make sure you tell her about Soonie and how those blankets were made, and make sure Aunt Lucinda gives you one of the quilts and I had none of this information. I told her that one day when I had a baby I would like to give it one of the names of my family.
Just tell me everybody’s names — she had 12 brothers and sisters. She started telling me the names which were like Birdie and I’m thinking, my child is not going to be named any of these names. But she told me more and more stories.
She died four months before I got pregnant with Toshi. I knew I wanted to tell the story of the maternal line of the family, so I started writing Show Way and I ended up going back to South Carolina to talk to my aunt who died soon after and to talk to my cousins, to piece together the history of the Underground Railroad and what part the Scotts played in it. That’s how I got to the story and I also wanted to write about how I’m not here accidentally, I’m not sitting here and talking about my writing.
