Growing up in the 1990s on the border of Naperville and Aurora, James Stewart III experienced plenty of conflicting emotions in his childhood.
Inside his interracial working class home in the ’90s, he felt nothing but support and love from a Black father and white mother, as well as two older white stepbrothers and two younger siblings.
But when he stepped outside their cramped two-bedroom apartment, Stewart recalls life “not being so great.” The family not only dealt with racism but were “living paycheck to paycheck” in a community made up of professionals who could afford “more than Payless gym shoes” for their kids.
“It was us against the world,” Stewart told me in a phone interview from his home in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. “I knew our family was different and I continued to be reminded of it.”
Stewart, a 2003 graduate of Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, also never forgot it after he moved out of the ‘burbs and into adulthood. In fact, he relied on those memories to write his debut novel that has received widespread acclaim since its release last year.
Published by Acre Books, “Defiant Acts” was named one of Chicago Magazine’s “Required Reading” selections, was a finalist for the 2025 Foreword INDIES Award and is a recipient of a 2025 Literature Award from the Friends of American Writers, which honors emerging Midwestern authors, according to a press release about the book.
And at 1 p.m. on May 16 at Yellow Bird Books in downtown Aurora, the author will be discussing “Defiant Acts,” including how suburban communities “stamp themselves on you as a writer and a thinker” in ways “you don’t realize” until later.
Stewart, who attended Mill Street Elementary in Naperville and McCarty Elementary and Granger Middle schools in Aurora, described himself as a good student at Waubonsie Valley High School who was mostly interested in basketball, football and girls but was “always reading,” thanks in large part to the books his parents “had around the house.”
Stewart received degrees from the School of the Art Institute, North Central College and Columbia College Chicago. But it was while taking classes at the College of DuPage after high school that he discovered “a community of writers” who provided the “early encouragement” that gave him confidence to pursue his talents.
Now a grant writer for Life Span – a nonprofit focusing on helping survivors of domestic and sexual violence – the author wears plenty of other hats, including co-founder of Exhibit B, a reading series and artist collective dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices; teacher at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; and husband and dad to a 5-year-old daughter.
Still, Stewart found time each morning, beginning a decade ago, to write “Defiant Acts,” which is a series of vignettes told from the perspectives of each household member, and that relies so heavily on his memories the characters are named after his own family.
They include father Jim, an Osco manager and “the only Black man in the neighborhood;” mother Connie who was disowned by her parents when she married and also dealt with “the microaggressions” as a “white woman raising Black children;” and the adolescent sons who were misfits in this affluent community because they not only had a biracial family but were also into punk.
Then there’s Jimmy, the first-grader Stewart once was, who had to decide whether to wear the Black Power Ranger costume his mother made him for Halloween only to pivot to another outfit “we pieced together from odds and ends” after he realized these superheroes had fallen out of favor with his peers.
“I wore that in great shame,” he said of the second costume, “knowing I let my mom down despite her never saying I did.”
Stewart points out there is no “big spoiler” or “bow to tie at the end” of this book, which was “very hard” to get published because it did not have a typical narrative arc, nor was the subject matter an easy commercial sell.
It’s success has been both surprising and surreal to the first-time novelist.
“When you are writing something for so long in complete isolation and then it becomes public, it feels weird,” said Stewart, who has already started his second novel, which picks up with his “fictional” family a decade later.
Stewart made his Naperville homecoming last August at Anderson’s Bookshop and he’s equally excited about the upcoming book-signing and reading in Aurora that will mark the one-year anniversary of the release of “Defiant Acts.”
“I certainly do have conflicted feelings about coming back,” he said, but also noted that without the experiences he had outside his loving home he would not be the man he is today.
Perhaps there will be young writers in the audience who discover that drawing from personal experience can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself as well as the places that shaped them, Stewart added.
“I hope they can see themselves in my story – and how I’ve lived it and written it.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
