The Delta Chinese Mission School

July 1, 2019 / / One comment

The Chinese of the Mississippi Delta had their own schools. Why, you ask? This is the US of A, we have public schools. Ah, but this is Mississippi — a phrase Lydia Chin learns well in PAPER SON. In Mississippi, right up until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 — and, in a complicated way, beyond it — schools were tightly segregated.

In 1927, long before Brown, the Supreme Court heard and decided the case of Lum v. Rice. Lum argued that a young Chinese girl should be allowed in the white schools, having been “incorrectly classified” as “colored” under Mississippi’s Jim Crow laws. A generation later, Brown argued that separate was intrinsically unequal; but Lum didn’t, only that, essentially, Chinese weren’t “colored.” The Supreme Court said Mississippi was entitled to define “colored” any way it saw fit.

So the Chinese of the Delta, seeing the kind of education to which black children were condemned, founded, opened, and ran their own schools.

And the Lums moved to Arkansas, just across the river, where Chinese kids were allowed in white schools.

Chinese school, 1938

photo link: https://bit.ly/2ZVfc4H

 

 

 

Dance with the Devil

June 29, 2019 / / No comments

This monument at Highways 40 and 61 in Clarksdale MS (where PAPER SON is set) marks the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil for the ability to play the blues.

Or maybe it was a different crossroads, a little distance from here.

Or maybe, as some legends say, it was a graveyard.

And speaking of graveyards, when Johnson died of poison, or syphilis, or Marfan syndrome, he was buried in Morgan City MS, or Quito MS, or Greenwood MS. Or a Potter’s Field near the Dockery Plantation, where he died.

In other words, little is known for sure about the guy. Except he could sing and play like the Devil himself.

The Cotton Gin

June 28, 2019 / / 3 comments

Herewith, a cotton gin, near Clarksdale MS (where PAPER SON is largely set) in 1939. What does a cotton gin do? It gins cotton. No, seriously, it separates the seeds out from a boll of cotton. Why is it called a “gin?” I dunno. Can someone help?

But here’s the thing about the cotton gin: its creation invoked, in a big way, the Law of Unintended Consequences. Once it was invented (by a Northerner just solving a mechanical problem, or so he thought), human, meaning slave, labor was not needed for the time-consuming task of seed removal. That allowed cotton to become a profitable crop — more profitable than rice or anything else. In truth very little grown on Southern plantations would have been profitable without an endless supply of free, meaning slave, labor. (An interesting contradiction in terms, that, no?) But cotton was more marginal than most crops, until the gin. Then it became a good deal less marginal. The South rapidly moved to near-monoculture, and slavery became the foundation on which that rested. Any nascent anti-slavery movements were nipped in the boll, until finally the Civil War.

Always, always, follow the money.

 

The Mississippi Delta Chinese

June 27, 2019 / / No comments

If you’re like me and this is the first you’re hearing of the 100-year-old Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta — don’t be a wise guy, the community is 100 years old, not the people — you’re probably scratching your head and saying, “Wha?” When I was told about them that was my reaction. So I researched, and the more I learned, the more fascinated I became. What brought Chinese people to the Mississippi Delta? Not gonna tell, but you’ll find out if you read PAPER SON. (See what I did there?) But I’ll give you a hint. This photo is of a Chinese-owned grocery store in Greenville, MS. Check out the clientele hanging around outside.

 

image credit: https://bit.ly/2WNay6S

The Mississippi Delta — what is that, anyway?

June 25, 2019 / / 3 comments

PAPER SON drops July 2, at which time all those of you who’ve pre-ordered (and I sorta hope that’s lots of you) will find your copies winging your way. To celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime event — well, THIS book will never have a first day again — I’ll be posting historic photos of the Delta, from which I have just returned and in which the book is set. Those will start tomorrow, but I thought I’d offer, first, a little orientation. This is on account of because a friend of mine asked yesterday whether the Delta was the area around the mouth of the Mississippi River, down by New Orleans.

A reasonable assumption. But incorrect.

A river delta is, rightly, where a river breaks into smaller flows at the place where it hits the sea. (Called a “delta” because it’s usually a roughly triangular shape, like the Greek letter.)

The Mississippi Delta, though, is a misnomer. Broadly speaking,  this Delta is the floodplain to the east of the river. Check out the map, below. The Delta’s outlined in green. It’s said to start just below Memphis, TN, and extend to Vicksburg, MS. Most of PAPER SON takes place in and around Clarksdale, MS.

So why do they call it the Delta?

Ya got me. Anyone?

 

Winding up in Mississippi

June 24, 2019 / / One comment

PAPER SON, my sixteenth book and the twelfth in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, will be out July 2. Mississippi, however, got a special dispensation to have books early, because I went down there last week to do a book tour. Cleveland — yes, Cleveland MS — Clarksdale, Greenwood, Jackson, and Oxford. Plus a podcast for the Mississippi Book Festival, where I’ll be on a panel Aug. 17, in case you’re in Mississippi and didn’t get sick of me last week.

For those of you not in Mississippi, I thought you might like a few photos. I posted some others on my Facebook page while I was there, and you can check them out even if you’re not on Facebook.

For those of you in Mississippi and not on my mailing list, or not on my mailing list and not in Mississippi, which I do believe covers everyone unless you ARE on my mailing list, you can sign up right here on the left of this page. I promise no more than a couple of newsletters a year, and you’ll get to hear from Lydia’s mom each time.

My buddy Eric’s porch, my Mississippi Delta home.

 

Twilight, Clarksdale.

 

Sunset over the Delta.

 

Greenwood sidewalk and don’t ask me.

 

I guess the message here is, Oxford is Oxford is Oxford.

 

Winding down in Wisconsin

May 24, 2019 / / 2 comments

Here I am at the end of another Novel-in-Progress Bookcamp. This is my sixth year as writer-in-residence here and I love this gig. The writers who come are serious and work hard; my fellow  staff members are a joy to be with; the caffeine flows freely; the food is plentiful; the place is beautiful. And in the evenings there’s beer, wine, and chocolate. What’s not to love?

 

View from my window

 

Lonely bull on the neighboring farm. His cows and calves have been moved to a pasture over the hill. He keeps bellowing for them. They’ll be back next week when the near pasture’s grown in again, but meanwhile he has no one for company but a big flock of geese and some heirloom chickens. (He’s a Belted Galloway, for those of you keeping score.)

 

The front of the property is a retirement home for goats and horses. Right now two aged goats and an old pony are in residence.

 

After this week’s weather more streams than usual are flowing on the 100 acre property. Some of the new ones are in what are usually paths. This one, however, is a real stream.

 

Abortion, choice, and the cold hand of government

May 15, 2019 / / No comments

I’ve said this before and I’m going to keep saying it as long as I have to. The terrifying thing about abortion bans like Alabama’s is not their manifest contempt for women. It’s what this can result in three or four steps down the road.

If a woman doesn’t have the right to decide to end her pregnancy, then she doesn’t have the right to decide to continue it, either.

These laws put that decision in the hands of the state. Right now we’re in an evangelical, life-begins-at-conception phase. No one can have an abortion; that’s what these laws purport to say. But they don’t say that. They say the state, not the woman, gets to decide. And what happens when our attitude shifts, as attitudes do?

Deformed fetuses. Fetuses that’ll grow into disabled adults. Fetuses genetic testing indicates will be diseased. Maybe we should abort them, whatever the woman carrying them thinks, to save everyone the heartbreak — and cost — of their short, unproductive lives.

The sixth pregnancy of an opioid-addicted woman already on welfare. Maybe we should abort it, whatever the woman carrying it thinks, because she clearly can’t look after the kids she’s got.

Muslims.

Blacks.

Jews.

“JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

They sure won’t, if they don’t get born.

China did it for decades. Every woman who already had a child had to, by law, abort any further pregnancies. Can’t happen here?

Why not?

If the state gets to decide then the state gets to decide EITHER WAY. This is not about banning abortion, not about abortion per se at all.

This is about who gets to make the choice.

 

 

 

The Adventures of Bella the Cat

April 26, 2019 / / No comments

After the bustle of Edgar Week, hanging with friends, going to events, watching my buddies win awards (and sometimes lose, boo-hoo) it’s back to normal life, or what passes for it around here. This morning, Bella the Cat had to go to the vet.

Nothing’s wrong; it was just her yearly appointment, which was actually scheduled for two weeks ago. However, that day, my technique must have been unsubtle. She caught on to my attempts to stuff her in the carrier, pulled off a daring escape, and sequestered herself under the bed.

So I waited two weeks, during which the carrier was in the living room with a nice dirty towel and some catnip in it. I used a cat-distraction trick, scooped her up, and slipped her into the thing head-first. I got it zipped before she could turn around.

And what a yowling was heard throughout the land! She screamed her head off from the minute I finished zipping until I picked the thing up and slung it over my shoulder.

Then, suddenly, silence. Silence all the way on the 8-block walk to the vet. She peered intently out the front screen and sniffed. She was a feral kitten, was little Bella, and maybe she was getting memory cues of her youth. I don’t know; all I know is, last time we did this the yowling never stopped until she was face-to-face with the vet.

This time, not another peep, even during the exam. When the vet was done she climbed back into the carrier with no complaints, said nothing the whole way home, and contrary to expectations, she seems to have decided I did nothing today for which I need to be held accountable.

I love New York, and

November 24, 2018 / / No comments

I’m walking behind a young boy, maybe four years old, and his dad. They’re holding hands and talking in Spanish, about the parking place they found and something about Mama that I didn’t get. Then the kid says, “We need ta poo.”

Dad says, switching to English, too, “You just went before we left home.”

Kid: “We need ta poo.”

Dad: “Well, I don’t, so if you don’t, then we don’t.”

Kid: “We need ta poo!”

Dad: “Okay, no problem. We’re almost at the park and they have a potty there.”

Whereupon the kid stops, pulls on his dad’s hand, points to the stuffed bear the little girl ahead on the sidewalk is carrying, and says, slowly and loudly because adults can be so dim-witted, what he’s been saying all along: “WINNIE! THE! POOH!”

I love New York.

I love New York so much I made a 2019 calendar. Get yours now while there’s a discount!

SJ Rozan 2019 Calendar

All the photos except one were taken in New York. Extra points if you spot that one.(Hint: this isn’t it.)

 

 

 

 

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