Time's Memory

Julius Lester, Novels, social commentary, children's books

photo credit: Milan Sabatini

Author Biography

Since 1968 I have published more than 40 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry for children and adults. In addition I recorded 2 albums of folk and original songs for Vanguard in 1966-67, a compilation of which has recently been released by Ace Records and is available on iTunes.
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Influences

It is difficult to talk about influences because there have been many, but some have been of short duration and others lifelong. So, I will talk about the lifelong. The first name that comes to mind is Aldous Huxley whom I began reading in the late fifties when he had a monthly column in Esquire magazine. Huxley showed me that it was possible to write across genres and to write about almost anything. My most enduring influence has been musical, not literary, and that is J.S. Bach. I listen to music often as I write and the complexity and order in Bach's music encourages me to dare. These are the two who have been with me for almost all my life. If other names come to me, I will add them later.

Favorite Books

Rather than talk about favorite books, it's more accurate for me to mention reading experiences that have stayed with me in the sense that I can still visualize where I was when I read the book. Those experiences were Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea,
Joyce, Ulysses, Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Spinoza, Ethics, Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections.

Favorite Authors

My favorite authors tend to be mystery writers - Henning Mankell, whose books I just finished reading in order; Fred Vargas, a
wonderfully quirky French mystery author, most of whose work has not been translated unfortunately; Archer Mayor, whose
books center on Vermont and New England and who is far more than the regional writer he might appear to be; Cara Black whose mysteries take place in a different arrondisement of Paris. Her descriptions of the various Paris neighborhoods are like guide books in their wonderful detail.

What I'm Reading

Because I'm presently learning French, most of my reading is in French and about the art of translating. At present I am
slowly making my way through a short story by du Maupassant. I also just started the most recent Patricia Cornwell novel, whose title escapes me.

Synopsis:

Amina, a young West African woman stolen from her village, is on a slave ship when she discovers that she is pregnant. She soon realizes that this is no ordinary baby, and after arriving in America, she gives birth to Ekundayo, a young man sent by the creator god Amma, the master of life and death. Amma is worried. His people have always know how to take care of the spirits of the dead - the nyama - so that they don't become destructive forces among the living. But amid the overwhelming chaos of the African slave trade and the persistent brutality of American slavery, too many people are dying and their souls are being ignored. Amma hopes that Ekundayo will find a way to bring peace to the nyama in their new land before it is too late. Amma places Ekundayo on a plantation in Virginia where he is a slave on the eve of the Civil War. Ekundayo can see only sorrow in this new land -- sorrow in the ownership of people, in the slaves who have been separated from their children and spouse, in the restless spirits of the dead, and in his own forbidden relationship with a white woman, the master's daughter. But Ekundayo finds a way to care for the nyama, and the love shared between him and the master's daughter endures for over a century.

Book Excerpt:

I lay within the body of the woman who was called Amina and I listened to the silences between the beats of hearts that beat no more and the wind in breaths that no longer breathed. I saw with eyes that were only sockets in skulls. Though I was no larger than the twinkle of a star, I already knew that lives did not consist only of what happened during one's brief span of years. No. Each person is the sum of the generations that went before, generations of people whose names have been forgotten, whose faces have sunk below where memory can go. Yet those generations live within everyone, pulsating with each heartbeat and each breath. I listened to the blood roaring through her body, and within the cacophony I found the memories of her brief sixteen years, the memories of her mother and father, their mother and father, and their mother and father, and on back to unnumbered time when no one counted the risings and settings of the sun and there were no months or years but only Time as broad and without end as the universe....When Amma, the creator god and master of life and death, had Amina's father place me inside the woman, he told me my name was Ekundayo, Sorrow Becomes Joy. Surrounded by sorrow deeper than any sea and wider than any sky, I thought I had been misnamed.

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