Well, Ghost Boys — well, sometimes I get the call and it just comes out of my soul. But I also have this editor named Alvina Ling at Little Brown who sometimes will drop an idea in my head. So, she thought maybe I should write about young men of color being assaulted because of racism or racial bias. And I immediately said, “No, no way.” She brought it up because she had heard of some of the incidents that happened in my family with me raising a black son.
But by putting that note inside of my soul, it grew and grew and grew and I kept thinking about it. And then finally, one day I said, “Ghosts. I can write it if I can add ghosts.” And it was only years later that Alvina told me she was really worried that I had thought about ghosts.
But all of a sudden, Emmett Till, as well as the contemporary murders of young black men came together as a whole. And it makes sense because when I was a child, that was when Emmett Till was murdered and I remember seeing pictures of his casket. I remember the grownups talking about it in ways that maybe a contemporary parent might not talk about it right now to a young child.
So, my life had been bracketed by Emmet Till and later the assault of Rodney King and the L.A. riots when Evan was two. And then, as he grew older and became a teenager, the world became even more harsh and more set against him. And I started experiencing worry of, “Evan, be safe. Evan, be careful of police. Evan, come home.”
And when I am with fifth graders and sixth graders and seventh graders, I feel as though I’m with the generation that’s going to change everything. I see their love. I see their empathy, their compassion for one another. And I hope my book reminds them don’t judge on externals. Remember what you were like when you were fifth graders. So, by the time they become voting citizens, by the time they move into the world as adults, they are maybe going to help us eradicate that sensibility that just because you’re a person of color, someone feels they need to call the police on you.
