Listen Here (31 page)

(February 4, 1938–)

Born in West Virginia, children's author Connie Jordan Green moved to the wartime development of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1944. Although Green spent her childhood in the “Atomic City,” her connection to a more traditional Appalachia remained strong.

“On visits to my grandparents' home in the mining area of southeastern Kentucky, I fell asleep to the lullaby of adult voices discussing everything and everybody. I believe it's both the substance of the stories and the sound—the rhythm of the speech, the cadence of the language—that propel my writing.

“In subject matter, both my young adult novels concern families living in Appalachia.
Emmy
used stories from my mother's childhood…and
The War at Home
is about a young girl growing up in Oak Ridge…. I also feel the poetry I write is greatly influenced by my present life on a farm in East Tennessee, by my years growing up in Appalachia, and by my Appalachian ancestors.”

Green received her B.S. in education from Auburn University in 1960, and an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Tennessee in 1987. She has been a teacher for most of her professional life and is currently working as an adjunct instructor in English at the University of Tennessee.

Concerning the writing process, Green says, “I just begin writing and see what happens. Writing helps me think. Not only do I think better with a pen in my hand, I remember more and I perceive more in the world around me. Without writing, I would go blindly through the world.”

The following scene is the opening of
The War at Home
, Green's young adult novel set in the newly created town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II.

Novels:
Emmy
(1992),
The War at Home
(1989).

Reviews of
The War At Home:
Susan M. Harding,
School Library Journal
35 (June 1989), 105.
Horn Book Magazine
65 (1989), 482–83. Denise Wilms,
Booklist
85 (1 June 1989), 1722.

from Chapter 1

“Cat got your tongue, Virgil?” Mattie asked. Then she hated herself for saying the words that made her sound just like Gran.

But Virgil wasn't paying any attention to her. He hunched low in the car seat as the armed guard walked toward them. With World War II raging across the oceans, the guards checked everyone who came in or out of the newly built city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Mattie didn't understand what was so important about the city, but she had learned to live with the fences surrounding it and with the guards at all the exits. Now she couldn't help grinning as she thought how wonderful it would be if Virgil had to have a pass and couldn't get one.

But, of course, that wouldn't happen. Kids came into Oak Ridge with adults and left with them anytime. It was only grown-ups who had to wear the numbered plastic cards with their pictures in order to get in or out of the city.

The man in the crisp khaki-colored shirt and pants, pistol buckled at his waist, flicked his eyes from the badge Daddy held up back to Daddy's face. Then he bent over and stared into the car. He looked at twelve-year-old Virgil in the front seat, at thirteen-year-old Mattie as she tried to appear nonchalant in the corner of the backseat, and at the empty seat beside her.

Mattie thought of how scared she'd been last summer when the family had entered Oak Ridge for the first time. The guard had told Daddy to open the trunk of the car. Then Daddy had taken out their suitcases and opened them, one by one. The guard had looked casually at the piles of neatly folded clothes. Then he let them go.

But even though he hadn't messed with their clothes, Mother still didn't like the search.

“Nosey, isn't he,” she said, as they drove away.

“Now, Lucy, he's just doing his job.”

“I guess his job is to insult innocent people.”

“Most of the time they just look at your badge and wave you on. But they have to check about every ninth or tenth car just to keep everybody honest.” Daddy reached over and patted Mother on the knee. “It wasn't anything personal.”

“Personal or not, I don't like the idea of somebody checking us.”

Mattie had leaned forward, eager to hear how Daddy would reassure Mother. Months had passed from the time he had applied for the job until he had been hired. And the neighbors had all told them they'd been questioned about Daddy by FBI agents. She hadn't given much thought to the questioning; however, the sight of Oak Ridge and its tight security made her wonder.

But Daddy was not very comforting. “All I know,” he said, “is that whatever is going on has something to do with the war effort. None of us know what we're working on, and we're warned not to say a word about our jobs.”

“What was the guard looking for in our suitcases?” Mattie had asked.

Daddy had only shrugged. Ever since, Mattie had wondered what sort of thing she might have innocently brought along that would have caused the guard, to keep them from entering Oak Ridge.

Now, as Daddy drove the car away from the gates, Virgil resumed his talking.

Mattie sighed loudly. Her cousin had talked nonstop during the six-hour drive from the mountains of eastern Kentucky to east Tennessee. The crooked roads were enough to make her feel half sick, and keeping all the windows closed against the damp March air hadn't helped. The sound of Virgil's voice had almost finished the job. After the first hour she'd grown tired of turning her head from Daddy to Virgil and back again in order to follow their conversation. She had tucked her feet up on the seat, leaned her back into the corner, and pretended she was on a bus going to a place she'd never seen. Might as well actually be going, she thought. Daddy and Virgil wouldn't have noticed anyway if she'd vanished into thin air.

And here they were taking up where they'd left off a few minutes earlier. As they drove along the Turnpike, the main street in Oak Ridge, toward the west end of town, Virgil wanted to know what each building was, why the people were standing in line, and why the buses and buildings were all the same drab green.

And, of course, Daddy answered the questions in his usual cheerful voice. To listen to him, you'd think Daddy was glad Virgil was coming to live with them for a while.

Well, Mattie hoped someone was glad. When she was younger, she had liked having Virgil as a playmate. But he had changed during the last year or two. Now he drove her crazy with his talk about how much better boys were at everything than girls. And whenever Daddy was around, Virgil monopolized him.

When Mattie could stand the front-seat conversation no longer, she interrupted.

“I hope Mother has supper ready. I'm starving to death.”

Daddy nodded to her. “I don't doubt she'll have fried chicken and mashed potatoes ready for a celebration.”

“What celebration?”

“Why, us bringing Virgil down to Tennessee.”

Virgil twisted in his seat and grinned at her. Mattie wanted to cross her eyes and stick her tongue out, but she saw Daddy watching her through the rearview mirror. So she turned her face to the window and concentrated on the colorless scene sliding by.

Finally they left the Turnpike, followed Illinois Avenue up a hill, and turned left onto West Outer Drive. Mattie could see the Cumberland Mountains rising to the west. They were gentle mountains, etched in purple against the setting sun or tipped with white against a bright winter sky. They were not like the mountains she'd lived among in Kentucky. There, the valley between the ridges was so narrow there was room only for the dirt road bordering the creek and for the houses with their tiny lawns. Eastern Kentucky mountains were so crowded together that the valleys received direct sunlight only during the midpart of the day.

“Here we are,” Daddy said, as he pulled the gray Ford off the gravel road onto the edge of their lawn.

Mattie looked at her home. The land surrounding the house required a great deal of imagination to be considered a lawn. The yard was rocky red clay with oaks stretching overhead thirty feet before they branched out into limbs and leaves. Like the rest of the recently built city, the yard was muddy in the March rains.

“Gol-ol-lee,” Virgil said, as the three of them stepped from the car. “What a long house you've got, Uncle Omer.”

Daddy laughed. “We'd be in fine shape if we could just live in all of it. Nope, Virgil, this is what the government calls a T.D.U., a Twin Dwelling Unit. Only, everybody who lives in one hopes it's a
Temporary
Dwelling Unit.”

“Yeah, real temporary,” Mattie muttered. At least for you, Virgil, she wanted to add.

(March 12, 1936–February 19, 2002)

Virginia Hamilton was the first African American writer to win the Newbery Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in children's literature. A native of Yellow Springs, Ohio, Hamilton's lifelong interest in African American history grew from the tales told by her maternal grandfather, who was born a slave and managed to escape. “In the background of much of my writing is the dream of freedom tantalizingly out of reach,” Hamilton said.

She attended Antioch College and Ohio State University, but left school and moved to New York to pursue a writing career. In 1960, she married Arnold Adoff, a well-known white anthologist of African American poetry. The couple, who had a son and a daughter, lived in Hamilton's Ohio hometown until her death.

Critics credit Hamilton with having raised the standards of American literature for younger readers; her books are often challenging both in style and theme. “What is transformed from myth, history, and family narrative in my own fictions is not a play-pretty to be held in the hands of children,” says Hamilton. “My fictions for young people derive from the progress of Black adults and their children across the American hopescape. Occasionally, they are light-hearted; often they are speculative, symbolic and dark.”

During the course of her career, Hamilton's work garnered not only critical acclaim but also a long string of awards.

Her best-known novel,
M. C. Higgins the Great
, won the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the
Boston Globe–Horn Book
Award. In 1992, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her contributions to children's literature.

Set in the Appalachian foothills,
M. C. Higgins the Great
depicts the life of an African American teenager (M.C.) who loves his home on Sarah's Mountain, yet lives in fear of the seemingly inevitable day when the strip-mining “spoil” from the mountain above them slides down and buries the family home. M.C.'s place of refuge is a forty-foot-tall steel pole that towers above his house. From the top, M.C. surveys the valley below, a world beyond his own troubles.

In the scene below, M.C. tries to make his father, Jones, realize the danger the family faces from their beloved mountain.

Books for children:
Time Pieces: The Book of Times
(2002),
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
(2001),
Wee Winnie Witch's Skinny: An Original Scare Tale For Halloween
(2001),
The Girl Who Spun Gold
(2000),
Bluish: A Novel
(1999),
Plain City
(1998),
Second Cousins
(1998),
The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl
(1997),
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans From Slavery to Freedom
(1997),
Primos
(1997),
The House of Dies Drear
(1996),
When Birds Could Talk & Bats Could Sing: The Adventures of Bruh Sparrow, Sis Wren, and Their Friends
(1996),
Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales
(1995),
Drylongso
(1992),
Cousins
(1990),
Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave
(1988),
A White Romance
(1987),
On Being a Black Writer in America
(1986),
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales
(1985),
A Little Love
(1984),
Willie Bea and The Time The Martians Landed
(1983),
The Gathering
(1981),
Dustland
(1980),
Justice and Her Brothers
(1978),
M.C. Higgins the Great
(1974),
The Planet of Junior Brown
(1971).

Contemporary Authors
(1977), Vols. 25–28, 299.
Contemporary Authors
, New Revision Series (1999), Vol. 73, 217–21. Martha E. Cook, “Virginia Hamilton,”
American Women Writers
(1980), Vol. 2, ed. Lina Mainiero, 232–34.
Something About the Author
(1989), Vol. 56, 60–70.