You know, actually, when I was coming of age, in terms of the academic market, African-American Studies and Women’s Studies were just entering into the canon. So, talking about Zora Neale Hurston and Adrienne Rich, you know, just all these wonderful voices that we were studying that had been suppressed either in past times or contemporary times being moved to the foreground really changed everything.
I don’t think that there was a particular book that really made me feel as though I saw me, but I did get involved in a cookbook, wanting to write a story that was out of my imagination. And I found out about this woman named Marie Leveau and she was a Voodoo Queen in New Orleans. So, from a Junior in college until I was age 30, I was writing this novel. And this novel was about a young woman of color who learns who she is, learns that she has spiritual, intellectual power, and can make miraculous things happen.
And, as I was nearing the end of the book, I made my husband get out of bed because I was getting ready to finish it. So, I said, “You got to come and witness this.” Because it was at that moment that I think I had taken me and my heritage and culture and poured it into a book. And that’s when I grew up from being Jewell to Jewell Parker Rhodes. And it didn’t matter whether that book got published. It did and it’s been very successful. It was more of that effort of having taken that journey and finally writing a story that said, “All women, particularly women of color, can make miracles.”