How My Grandmother's Stories About Our Ancestors Inspired My Novel Junie (Exclusive)

African -American culture revolves around oral narration, the tradition I inherited. My grandmother was always a family storyteller. She grew up in the house of her grandparents, a place filled with her aunts, uncles and relatives from all generations, where stories and imagination were most of their fun. Because besides the kitchen, her bedroom allowed her to eavesdrop an adult through the door, discovering and documenting all family secrets. Through her life, she held a library of the narrative of her ancestors from the last century inside her head, which was fresh through repetition.

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One of them was the story of Jane Cotton, my great-grandparents. She escaped slavery before the Civil War to help establish the African-American community in the rural alabama-none, where most of my family remains today. When my grandmother crossed him again during a spring visit in 2018, the house of my grandparents in Alabama, something clicked in place. Working late under the family blanket that evening, I also enrolled in a outlined, imagining a multigenerational story similar to Isabel Allende House of Spirits set up in our family town. As I stated, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jane, who eventually inspired the titular character in what would become my new novel, Junie.

Young Erin with his grandmother.

Kindness Erin Crosby Eckstine

I spent a year studying the novel by writing, attending the class and a writing group, never dreaming of sharing it with anyone. All this changed in March 2020. Two weeks of teaching from home in New York have become almost two years quarantine in my studio apartment with my cat. Loss, absence and uncertainty surrounded me; Only the loss of thousands in my city, the absence of my family and friends who all escaped in New York, uncertainty when or if I had ever seen my loved ones again. When I faced unimaginable, I turned to the story for life. The project gave a purpose to a difficult, isolation time. I spent my free time telling myself Junie’s story and ending the book before the end of the year.

This writing project served a purpose greater than mine. Despite its racist substrates, my grandmother loved Went with the wind And she always inspired the transformation of Margaret Mitchell in her family stories into a great epic. It has always been my grandmother’s plan to write a book about our family, but life as a military wife, mother and owner of the company has always stood in the way of achieving that dream. I decided to take over the baton of her ambition.

Erin as an adult with his grandmother.

Kindness Erin Crosby Eckstine

Junie is the story of arriving about a girl who faces a decision to change life after awakening the spirit of her sister. Sixteen years and enslaved since she was born, Junie spent her life at Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning with her family, and took care of the daughter of a white master, Violet. Relaxed by the sudden death of older sister Minnie, Junie finds comfort in poetry and fantastic dreams, while secretly exploring the forest at night.

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When the rich guests arrive from New Orleans, a hint of marriage to Violet and raising Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act – the one who scrambled Minnie’s spirit out of the grave, related to this world, unless Junie could free her. She enrolls the help of Caleb, the guest coach, and their friendship soon becomes something more.

Yet, as long truths are falling apart, she realizes that Bellereine hides dark and scary secrets that she can no longer neglect. Given the time, Junie breaks against a sharp current that has controlled all her life. Faced with all the unknown world beyond her control, she wonders: When we choose love and liberation, what do we have to leave behind?

The author with her finished book ‘Junie’.

Kindness Erin Crosby Eckstine

I made a goal for Junie as a realistic and complex representation of a enslaved person; The one who reflected my family’s memories of their ancestors, not the one -dimensional characteristics I met in literature. Portned people usually depict either angelic trope or extreme suffering. But I wanted my book to focus a character who struggles with terrible situations, and yet possessing the whole spectrum of human experience – dreams, love, loss and imperfections.

At the beginning of 2021, the sudden death of my grandparents left my book – which I always wanted to share with them when we reunited – unread. And while I was trying to make the beginning, middle and end from my own tragedy, I understood my grandmother in the way I hadn’t before. Growing up, I thought she told me our family stories so I would know about ancestors I will never meet, but now I see it otherwise. The story of Jane Cotton, a woman she didn’t know, actually held her own grandmother in her life, just as I was trying to do Junie. Her storytelling was not about the listener, but about herself: through her stories, she fulfilled the absence of her own lost storytellers.

My grandmother may never have been able to read this book, but, like Junie’s sister Minnie, I like to think he is watching, always present on the horizon.

‘Junie’ Erin Crosby Eckstine.

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Junie Erin Crosby Eckstine is now available, wherever books are sold.

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Source: HIS Education