Sheesh. I haven't thought about this place for a long time. Free lets you do that.
OpenLoopPress.org
There's also a page called Open Loops that links to books, authors, etc. mentioned in the interview. The transcript also has some links.
"...the dialogue is fast and lively, and Sandrine's first-person narrative delivers immediate, searing drama."—Booklist
"[An] aching debut...[with] echoes of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings..." —Publisher's Weekly
"Reading Dedra Johnson's Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, I was fully in the presence of the mind, heart, and soul of a richly rendered, fascinating fictional character. I knew I was also in the presence of the brilliant voice and sensibility of a major new American writer. This is an important novel by a true artist."—Robert Olen Butler
"Dedra Johnson has caught something wonderful in Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow. She writes brilliantly about childhood, New Orleans, the intricacies of a vexed family life. Sandrine is a remarkable debut novel that will catch your heart."—Frederick Barthelme
It's an honor to be read like this.
A child at the crossroads Innocence, awareness intertwine in Dedra Johnson debut
Sandrine's first escape route comes through the books she reads voraciously, among them "Little House on the Prairie," "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Watership Down." She also reads biographies of Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune and Harriet Tubman. She defines herself through the words of writers and the lives of historical icons, and she uses these lessons to find her own voice. In keeping with Tubman's example, Sandrine and her classmate Lydia, also an abuse victim, become an Underground Railroad for one another:
Lydia showed me how to hold keys in my hand with the points sticking out, a sharp fist to scratch, poke or punch with. I told her the back ways we took to school and she said I was smart, that she hadn't thought of it.Johnson lets objects and moments tell their own stories when she shows the reader a blurred Polaroid of a mystery woman on the mantle and a jar of Mamalita's pomegranate jelly. She also writes of Catholic schoolchildren who wear their house keys like rosaries. Johnson skillfully lets these scenes breathe and keeps the reader within the present-tense moment. The effect pays off. There is no adult Sandrine looking back, putting her childhood in perspective. Johnson shows her protagonist in real time, the questions in her life still intact and unanswered.
In one scene, Sandrine and her classmates make papier-maché American flags to celebrate the Bicentennial. Perhaps this image captures the essence of "Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow," the story of a young girl crafting her independence. To that end, Sandrine draws upon lessons learned from the kindnesses and cruelties she has encountered in her young life. In a powerful debut effort, Johnson shows us how these acts affect the lives of children.
Ravi Howard, Mobile Press-Register, March 2, 2008
Friday, Feb. 8, 7 PM
Book Cellar, 4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL
Saturday, Feb. 9, 2 PM
Reading, Q&A and book signing sponsored by the NOLA in Chicago Network and the Organization of Black Students at the University of Chicago
Bartlett Dining Commons Trophy Room, University of Chicago
5640 S. University Avenue, Chicago, ILFor more information about this event, email nolainchicago@yahoo.com. For persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event, please contact ORCSA at (773) 702-8787.
Wednesday, Feb. 13, 7 PM
Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS
Thursday, Feb. 14, 5 PM
Lemuria Books, 202 Banner Hall, 4465 I-55 North, Jackson, MS 39206
Friday, Feb. 15
Jackson, MS, events TBA!
Saturday, February 16, 1 PM
Conversations Book Club, Comfort Inn and Suites Downtown (346 Baronne St.)
Possibly another at the end of February in NO...details soon!
It'll be another few weeks before the distributor has another set of books. UNO's bookstore should have some soon and I've seen 5-6 at Loyola's bookstore and at the Barnes and Noble on the Westbank. Two signed copies will be auctioned off at Aububon Charter School's Spring Gala at the Elms Mansion January 18 (details at the school website).
So far in February, I will be reading in Chicago; Jackson, MS at Lemuria; and Oxford, MS at Square Books. Chicago in February!
I will be one of three authors signing books at the Loyola University Bookstore in the Danna Center Friday, Dec. 14, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The bookstore has multiple copies of Sandrine.
The first print run sold out. TA-DAH!
Copies of the book will be scarce at online outlets like Amazon until the second printing is done in late January. The best place to find the book until then is in local bookstores which have as-yet-unsold copies on the shelf or in storage. Barnes and Noble should have multiple copies but may only have one or 2 on the shelf. If you don't see it, ask.
Maple Street Book Shop:
7523 Maple St.
Garden District Book Shop:
2727 Prytania St. (Washington Av. and Prytania in The Rink)
Octavia Books:
513 Octavia St. (near Laurel)
Borders:
3131 Veterans Memorial Blvd, Metairie
Barnes and Noble:
Centre at Westbank, 1601B West Bank Expressway, Harvey
and
3721 Veterans Boulevard, Metairie, LA
I'll be reading from Sandrine and talking with Crystal K. Friday morning about the book, growing up girl in the 70s and more on WTUL 91.5 FM, 8-8:30 on the W.I.N.G.S. (Women's International Newsgathering Service) broadcast. Just in time for carpool!
You can't call in but you can listen.
I didn't know People did book reviews. Why is my book labeled "Novel" while Grafton's book is labeled "Fiction." Dare I ask?
page 59:
(3 out of 4 stars) Innocence, it seems, can be hard to crush: Nine-year-old Sandrine Miller--the straight-A student in 1970s New Orleans who narrates Johnson's heartbreaking debut--is beaten by her mother, abandoned by her loving but restless father and sexually abused by two family friends. Yet she's too young to realize the horror of it all; astonishingly, she remains unshakeably [sic] loyal to the grown-ups who let her down. Until the day she cracks: "I heard what sounded like a thick old voice but slowly recognized it as mine, full of tears, hoarse, broken by hiccup sobs." The only thing this affecting story lacks is a bigger picture, wondering how the wounded Sandrine will fare as an adult, readers may be left wishing Tomorrow could write back.
Only a Day Away by Susan Larsen:
Johnson perfectly captures the voice of a young girl, searching for acceptance and friendship. In Sister Paul and the nuns at her New Orleans school, Sandrine finds mentors and models for kindness; in the women who work at her father's clinic, she finds solace. In a new life with her father, she allows herself to feel "small and safe," confident that she has come home at last. After such a bleak existence, she is allowed that ray of hope, that most basic right of childhood.
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow
Johnson, Dedra (Author)
Nov. 2007. 212 p. Ig, paperback, $14.95. (9780978843120).
Growing up in New Orleans in the 1970s, Sandrine is proud to be black, but because she is light-skinned and very smart, the black kids think she is stuck-up, and the white kids won’t speak to her because, to them, she is black. At home, her single-parent mother beats her, makes her scrub the house constantly, and blames her for being a slut when she is sexually abused. For a brief time, Sandrine has one white friend at school, but Lydia also has dark secrets, and she shows Sandrine that the vicious prejudice they encounter is not only about race and class, but also about gender, and that many believe educating a girl is a waste. This debut novel is more a short story with one repeated theme played out in family, Catholic school, and neighborhood. But the obsession never gets boring or messagey, the dialogue is fast and lively, and Sandrine’s first-person narrative delivers immediate, searing drama, showing her pride, passion, and courage as she breaks stereotypes.
— Hazel Rochman
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow This aching debut explores a girl's coming-of-age in poverty-drenched mid-1970s New Orleans. Eight-year-old Sandrine Miller lives like a servant to her mother, Shirleen, a low-wage typist, and her mean-spirited grandmother, Mother Dear, both of whom keep Sandrine overloaded with chores despite her homework and eagerness to keep up good grades at school. Sandrine's main escape is visiting her father and his mother, Mamalita, in the country for the summer, but her dream of moving there is crushed when Mamalita dies, and her busy country doctor dad leaves Sandrine in the noncare of his girlfriend, Philipa, whose dotty daughter, Yolanda, is, to Sandrine's bookish disgust, more interested in boys than her education. Indeed, Sandrine feels wronged, especially by her mother, who holds Sandrine's light skin against her. As she grows, Sandrine finds empowerment in knowledge of her body (taught to her by an older classmate, Lydia, whose step-dad molests her) and the recognition that learning is her only escape from the defeating cycle of early pregnancy, poverty and general futility. There are echoes of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Sandrine, with her fierce price [sic], is an instantly likable underdog. (Nov.)
Dedra Johnson. Ig (Consortium, dist.), $14.95 paper (212p) ISBN 978-0-9788431-2-0
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow
Book Description
Set in 1970s-era New Orleans, Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is the disturbingly powerful and uplifting story of a young African American girl named Sandrine, whose only refuge against a world of poverty, racial discrimination, and parental abuse are the letters she writes to her dead grandmother. In the tradition of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is a brilliant debut from an important new voice in African American fiction.
A professor of English at Dillard University, Dedra Johnson received her MFA from the University of Florida, where she was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award. Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow was a finalist for the 2006 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Award.
