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.50 WALTER DEAN MYERSTo stay active, Myers also played a lot of basketball, oftenat the court on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village knownas the Cage.For a while, he played on a city basketballteam called the Jolly Brown Giants.He also taught himselfthe flute and practiced constantly.Sometimes he wouldplay a song more than 100 times, until he got it right.Because work took up most of his time, Myers was nothappy.Eventually, he was fired from the Post Office.Hethen took a job at the New York State Department of Labor.Myers began drifting away from his responsibilities at homeand socializing with artists in the East Village.Trying tolive the bohemian lifestyle, he played bongos at night clubsand learned the guitar and saxophone.He began drinkingand spent more time hanging out with friends than with hisfamily.His wife demanded that he change his behavior.The apartment was getting too cramped for their family,so they moved to a house in Queens.Even though theyenjoyed the extra space, the house put more financial strainon both of them.Myers and Joyce worked extra jobs to earnmoney.Their marriage felt distant and tense and wouldeventually end in divorce in 1970.Using the G.I.Bill, a military education benefit thatMyers earned because of his service in the army, Myersenrolled in classes at the City College of New York.He didnot feel committed to school, however.He did not do wellin his classes.He passed French, but failed English.Dur-ing this time, he also began working with a therapist for hisspeech impediment.He heard about someone with a stutterwho had finally lost it by speaking in a different accent.Myers tried this, and it worked.He especially liked talkingwith a Southern accent.This technique, plus the speechtherapy, helped Myers to overcome his speech problem.A CHILDREN S STORY 51Myers kept writing at night, the only time he didn t haveto be at work and wasn t busy with his children.He wasnow sending out articles to all kinds of magazines.He evenwrote for the National Enquirer, a tabloid magazine.Hewrote sports articles covering bullfighting and kickboxingthat were published in men s magazines such as Blue Book,Argosy, and Cavalier.He also began writing poems andadult adventure stories.His work appeared in many maga-zines for blacks, including Black World, Black Creation,the Liberator, and Negro Digest.Myers was writing during the height of the Black ArtsMovement, part of the Black Power Movement.The BlackArts Movement was founded in Harlem by the writer andactivist Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones).It encouraged African-American writers to use vernaculardialogue and to emphasize black culture and politics.Itwas an arts movement that went hand in hand with politicalactivism.In 1968, Myers heard about a contest for the Council onInterracial Books for Children.This organization demandedthat the publishing industry publish more material by blackauthors.They were offering an award for black writers ofchildren s books.Myers decided to give it a try.Little didhe know that this contest would change his life.Myers won $500 for Where Does the Day Go? and thestory was published as a picture book by Parents Magazine.Critics praised the book for portraying a positive relation-ship between a black father and his son and for depictingchildren from several different ethnic backgrounds.Thiswas Myers s first published book.When he was 33 yearsold, Myers enrolled in a writing workshop at Columbia Uni-versity taught by the writer-in-residence, African-American52 WALTER DEAN MYERSnovelist John O.Killens.Killens had founded the HarlemWriters Guild, an organization that encouraged and sup-ported many black writers and artists.He was a good influ-ence on Myers.When Killens heard about an editing job atBobbs-Merrill Publishing Company, he encouraged Myersto apply.Myers was doubtful.He had no editing experi-ence and did not even have his high-school diploma.Thepublishing company was impressed by Myers and hiredhim as an acquisitions editor.This meant that Myers helpeddecide which manuscripts the company published.One ofthe first manuscripts that he helped publish was a book ofprose called Gemini, by the African-American poet NikkiGiovanni.Monday through Friday, Myers went to work at theoffice at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.He had neverdreamed that he would be in this position.How did a high-school dropout become an important editor, with a largeoffice and a secretary?Myers worked full-time and spent as much time as hecould with his children.His marriage had ended in 1970.Though Joyce Myers had full custody of the children, Wal-ter Myers made sure he was still a big part of their lives.Myers also continued to write articles and short fiction formagazines and signed a contract with Bobbs-Merrill towrite a nonfiction book.In writing Where Does the Day Go? Myers realized thathe enjoyed writing books for children.His second picturebook, called The Dancers, was published in 1972.TheDancers is about a young African-American boy namedMichael who befriends a white ballerina.Fascinated withballet, Michael invites the ballerina to his house [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]