Winging it at the Baltimore Book Festival

On Friday September 25, I was in Maryland promoting Garden at the Baltimore Book Festival. We were outside right along the water at the Inner Harbor, where rain was threatened, and gusts of wind were whipping my lecture notes right out of my hand. If you know me well you know I hate speaking without my prepared notes. Nevertheless I went ahead without them, and everything turned out just fine.

We actually sold quite a few books that afternoon, and I had the pleasure of meeting readers and authors from all over the country (I even think John McCain was there one of the days, but I missed him). I especially enjoyed meeting fellow authors Tracey Fagan-Danzey, Kyle S. Taylor, and Dr. Zekeh Gbotokuma of Morgan State University, who, along with his wife, kindly invited me to dinner though I was not able to because of my planned return trip to Toronto. 

During my speech, the discussion became most interesting when I talked about how some events in the book demonstrate a link between corporal punishment and the larger culture of violence in African American communities. A woman in the audience brought up the case of Toya Graham, the Baltimore Mom-of-the-Year, who became famous (or infamous) when she publicly attacked and beat her teenage son during a Freddie Gray protest. When she asked what I thought, my answer was simple and consistent with my beliefs on this issue: if her son was an adult, this incident would have been deemed a criminal assault. But because he was a minor, the attack on him was condoned by society and applauded by the media. Of course, there were opinions on both sides of that, but I enjoyed the exchange.

Before we left the event that evening I had a chance to meet a few members of the Sassy Sisters Book Club of Phoenix, Arizona, who all bought a copy and said they would be arranging a live discussion with me via phone in the near future. Can't wait!!