Sharing toys was serious business for Connie Porter and her eight siblings when they were growing up in a Buffalo housing project. Their parents couldn’t afford much–their home didn’t even have a telephone–so the children devised creative ways to play. When they went roller-skating, one child wore the left skate, and the other the right, Porter recalls: “We held hands on bumpy sidewalks.”
These days Porter, 40, is a best-selling author with her own home in Virginia Beach, Va., but she still focuses on the ways children cope with lean times. Author of two critically praised novels, Porter also writes a series for children about a girl named Addy who escaped slavery in 1864. Addy is the only African-American character in the American Girls Collection, a series of dolls, books and accessories based mainly on six fictional characters who lived in pivotal historic times. Since 1986, the Collection has sold 56 million books, the latest of which are anthologies of short stories featuring the spunky, profitable Girls.
Porter’s novels for adults depict a harsher, more complex world. While Addy’s plight improves dramatically when she comes north with her family, the characters in Porter’s novels find their passage from desperate origins ongoing. But in all her fiction, Porter emphasizes the importance of preserving cultural backgrounds; her characters from both the 1860s and 1990s speak in black English. Dialect, Porter says, though sometimes hard to follow, is emblematic of her purpose as a writer: to intimately acquaint readers with different ways of life.
“Imani All Mine,” her novel published earlier this year, begins with a 15-year-old girl talking about her newborn daughter:
“Mama say I’m grown now because I got Imani. She say Imani all mine. I know she all mine, and I like it just like that, not having to share my baby with no one.”
Porter, who grew up speaking black English, said dialect conveys quite a bit about a character’s world. In Addy’s case, she said, it was particularly important for historical accuracy. “Very often, when we think of dialect, we don’t think there’s intelligence or a consistent grammar,” Porter said. “But you have to respect different voices. They shouldn’t be cleaned up to be more palatable.”
The American Girls series has taken some criticism as well as acclaim.
Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief of The Horn Book, a review of children’s and teen’s literature, calls the books “formulaic,” but says the first Addy volume reflected some grim, believable details that were also somewhat jarring, considering the format.
“I could see (Porter) wanting to put in a truthful element about slavery,” he said. “But the rules of that series were against her.”
Modern-day girls somehow seem to relate to Addy’s plight. On a morning earlier this year at Chicago’s American Girl Place, a set of blond twins showed up dressed as Addy for a breakfast and question-and-answer session with Porter. Wearing checked brown pinafores and blouses, at first the twins seemed a startling contrast to the fictional former slave girl. But as their mother, Kimberly Lynch, explained, her daughters were affected by Porter’s stories, particularly the first book in which Addy escapes from the plantation.
“This guy put worms in her mouth,” said Paige Lynch, 6. “It didn’t taste good.” Her sister Shannon nodded.
The twins’ mother said she’s grateful for the books’ depiction of history. “(The books) get them away from the Spice Girls,” she said. “Maybe if I’d had them (American Girls), I would have liked history.”
A few tables away, another mother treats her daughter’s Addy dolls like grandchildren. “Where are your babies?” she teased her daughter. “Are you an unfit mother?”
The woman was Momma Hawk, founder and lead teacher of Recovering the Gifted Child Institute in Lawndale. Her daughter, Beverly Hawkins, 13, smiled shyly–she had been rushed that morning so she left her two Addy dolls in the car.
“My daughter’s in love with Addy,” Momma Hawk said, and Beverly agreed: “I used to read them every day–I memorized them.”
Momma Hawk said she uses the Addy dolls at school. The students at her Institute formed an Addy book club and even built her a small plywood house. “There’s a school in the top of it with six benches,” Momma Hawk said. “We had to save up for six Addy dolls.”
Priced at $84, the 18-inch-tall Addy dolls (who each come with a copy of a book) require considerable saving, especially for Momma Hawk’s students, who generally come from underprivileged backgrounds. But Momma Hawk says it’s an academic incentive for the children, who can earn credit through jobs at the school.
Porter herself has visited the school, as well as others in the Chicago area. In “Educating Esme,” Esme Raji Codell’s book about her year as a 5th-grade teacher, Codell describes Porter’s visit to her school as a “rip-roaring success.” According to Codell’s diary, the students rolled out a red carpet (remnant) for the author and wore Kente cloth headbands to “honor Addy’s African roots.” During Porter’s reading, Codell said, the students were unusually attentive.
Porter had a similar effect on her audience at the American Girl store and cafe. Girls sat transfixed in the heavily feminine dining room. When it came time for questions, some of the listeners raised their hands and inquired about everything from the origins of Addy’s name (it’s taken from a West-African word for “much-loved”) to writing.
“There’s a process called drafting,” Porter said, “where you write it the first time, then read it over and write it again. And again–it’s a little bit discouraging but there’s a reason for it.” Another girl asked Porter how she knew about the time period, and she said her reading and research took months.
Later, Porter said that her fans are a “pretty sophisticated bunch,” and that she didn’t want them to have illusions about the work involved in writing.
“It’s important for them to know it’s not magic,” she said. “You don’t just sit down at a typewriter.”
Porter wrote her first novel working nights while teaching during the day at an Eastern prep school. A graduate of the State University of New York at Albany and Louisiana State University, where she received a master’s of fine arts in creative writing, she had few illusions about the rigor involved in writing a book. “All-Bright Court,” her first novel (1991), was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of the American Library Association’s Best Books. Set in a Buffalo housing project near steel mills (similar to Porter’s birthplace) during the 1950s, the novel depicts the struggles of a black family who migrates from the South. The Tribune’s review compared the book to Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” and Gloria Naylor’s “The Women of Brewster Place.”
“Imani All Mine,” Porter’s second novel, also features a poor African-American family, but this time the period is contemporary. Tasha Dawson, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old unwed mother who becomes pregnant when she is raped at knife-point. Though she is a conscientious mother, nurturing and vigilant, she cannot protect the baby from the chaos surrounding them.
Porter, who works in a mentoring program at an inner-city elementary school, said she encounters quite a few kids who are being raised by single parents, some of whom are substance abusers. She worries especially about young black women, who she says are statistically at higher risk of developing AIDS.
“My mother says children are more vulnerable as teens than as babies,” she said.
Porter experienced personal tragedy while writing “Imani”–in 1993, her 20-year-old niece, Tia, was killed by a shot fired from an assault rifle that penetrated the wall of her house. Tia left a young child behind. Though the novel is not based on these facts, Porter said that her acute grief influenced it. In writing about disadvantaged characters who might be seen as stereotypes, Porter says that she seeks to upend cultural assumptions.
“Tasha’s general description does fit that of thousands upon thousands of black girls,” she explained in an interview released by the publisher. “I feel there is an assumption that we do know them, know their stories, have heard their voices.”
Similarly, Porter hopes her Addy books will not be the only way young readers learn about slavery.
“It’s just one representation,” she said. “One voice not heard from before.”
