Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

A Bird by Bird for the African-American market--A top-notch writer's guide filled with practical guidance, essays, and journal exercises for the African-American writer including advice from E.Lynn Harris, Charles Johnson, and Yolanda Joe.

In her introduction, Jewell Parker Rhodes "Never (in four years of college or five years of graduate school) was I assigned an exercise or given a story example that included a person of color...While the educational system and the publishing world have become progressively more welcoming of African-American authors, there is still little attention to educating, supporting, and sustaining the writing process of African-American authors. Free Within Ourselves is a solid first step--it is the book I wished I had when I started out as a writer. It is meant to be a song of encouragement for African-American artisits and visionaries. Free Within Ourselves is a step-by-step introduction to fictional technique, exploring story ideas, and charting one's progress, as well as a resource guide for publishing fiction."

For the legions of people who have a novel stuck in their word processors, help is finally on the way! Free Within Ourselves is an excellent guide to all the elements necessary to crafting character development, point of view, plot, atmosphere, dialogue, diction, sentence variety, and revision. Writing techniques are taught using exercises, journaling, story examples, and analyses of famous writing fragments, as well as several complete stories (including those of James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Edwidge Dandicat, among others). The book is further enhanced by inspirational advice from successful contemporary black writers (such as Bebe Moore Campbell, Rita Dove, Henry Louis Gates, John Edgar Wideman, and others), a bibliography, and a guide to workshops, journals, magazines, contests, and fellowships supportive of black arts.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Self Help

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 1999

About the author

Jewell Parker Rhodes has always loved reading and writing stories. Born and raised in Manchester, a largely African-American neighborhood on the North Side of Pittsburgh, she was a voracious reader as a child. She began college as a dance major, but when she discovered there were novels by African Americans, she knew she wanted to be an author. She wrote six novels for adults, two writing guides, and a memoir, but writing for children remained her dream.

Now she is the author of eleven books for youth including the New York Times bestsellers Will's Race for Home, Ghost Boys and Black Brother, Black Brother. Her other books include Soul Step, Treasure Island: Runaway Gold, Paradise on Fire, Towers Falling, and the Louisiana Girls Trilogy: Ninth Ward, Sugar, and Bayou Magic. She has also published six adult novels, two writing guides, and a memoir.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the American Book Award, the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence, a Coretta Scott King Honor Award, an NAACP Image Award nomination, and the Octavia E. Butler Award.

When she’s not writing, she’s visiting schools to talk about her books with the kids who read them, or teaching writing at Arizona State University, where she is the Piper Endowed Chair and Founding Artistic Director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

Reviews

[Tara Betts]

Really good exercises and a fantastic book list. I just need to start writing more and do what she's saying.

[El Espada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any color can prosper for this reading

[S.R. Toliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m inspired

Such a great resource for aspiring Black writers. I especially love how she embraced the spiritual and the ancestral as major factors in the tradition of Black people’s writing. I plan to use this in the future... possibly for my own work!

[Weckea · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the title of the book is attractive and interesting, the content within is subpar. It was largely a waste of time. I have read and worked my way through far better handbooks.

[Mendi]

I've had this book for a while now. I just need to get to it.

[Vanessa Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resources for new fiction writers. I used this book for a research paper and was surprised to find a wealth of information that will help me in my own writing. Highly recommended.

[Nina]

A few points on the utility of this book:
- On a few occasions, the section on how to keep going has gotten me out of the dangerous situation of being in my own head
- There are plenty of craft exercises (some of which I've used when I felt stuck in the revision process)
- There are 9 short stories reprinted in full. Parker-Rhodes has introduced me to quite a few authors and includes questions to guide a close reading of each story.
- The craft lessons have better equipped me with the technical language to think and talk about craft