I want to thank Connie Brooks of Battenkill Books here in Cambridge for recommending the perfect graduation book for the Bishop Maginn High School seniors.
If you know anyone graduating from anything, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s called “Navigate Your Stars,” by National Book Award Winner Jesmyn Ward, who delivered a stirring speech at Tulane University’s commencement about the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others.
The speech is the inspiration for the book.
I’ve purchased a copy of the book for each of Bishop Maginn’s 37 graduates and I am honored to have been asked to sign each one.
Here is just one excerpt from this inspiring book about empowerment and encouragement:
Many people walk easily into success, she said, “but for many others, this doesn’t happen. For many others, success comes after thousands of hours of work, and lucky breaks, and study and heartbreak, and loss and wandering.
As an adult, I learned this: persist, work hard, face rejection, and weather the setbacks work hard, face rejection, and weather the setbacks until you meet a gatekeeper who will open a door for you.
Sometimes, you are twenty when you stumble upon an open doorway, sometimes you are thirty. Sometimes you are forty, or fifty, or sixty. I remembered this when I felt like giving up when I thought I’d pack all my notebooks and stories into plastic bags and put them away, when I thought I would resign them to the recycling bin.
And I remembered this new lesson I’d learned about persistence and success when I looked again at my parents, my uncles, and aunts, all the people in my small, rural, black community who persisted, even with the promise of less on the horizon. I looked at them and all the old disdain for their lives I’d harbored dissolved, and it turned to understanding. I understood what it meant to do the best you can with what you’ve been given.”
Amen, Jesmyn.
This is the quotation I shared with my step son on his graduation from college 28 years ago:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Calvin Coolidge
Hi, Jon,
I am a long-time reader. You encouraged my dad through his walk with heart disease and the side effects of the drugs that are supposed to be good for you, yet sometimes make you feel like hell. And I thank you for that. And I thank you for blogging daily. It is a slog sometimes, I’m sure. And I like the tough love you have handed to me about writing. I have been in a funk for a long time, but it is a privilege to be able to be in a funk. And you slap me upside the head and make me realize that. And I thank you for your blunt honesty. I’m not sure why you have deleted the “conversation,” if I can call it that, with the reader who disagreed with you inscribing the books you are gifting to the Bishop Maginn graduates? It was an interesting back and forth about how bloggers are misunderstood at times. How it is so easy to misinterpret someone’s motives. And how one word can be misinterpreted and set up a whole scenario that was never truthful. I think the blog commenter perhaps took the word “signed” out of context, thinking you meant you were signing the books in place of Jesmyn Ward, as if you were somehow taking credit for the writing in the books. I think you were signing the books as a comment on the achievement of the students. But your back and forth was instructive on how tough it is to be a blogger these days, when every word is held up for scrutiny. Thank you for writing as you do. I don’t comment often, I agree with you sometimes and not others, but you always make me think. I just want to say, and not in a patronizing way at all, because I am not as brave as you to put my writing “out there,” that the controversy was enlightening and I am sorry it has disappeared.
I see that you removed the comments from the Black woman who thought you should not be signing the book. Wow. A black woman writes her truth, and you sllence her. I have lost all reapect for you. Are you paying any attention to the news?
Charles, I removed those comments because they were profoundly stupid. To accuse an author of racism for buying a fellow author’s book and inscribing it to the students receiving it just too dumb, and I don’t permit nasty or stupid comments on my blog. I’ve written 26 books and other people have signed every one of them and inscribed them when they are gifts. That is done countless thousands of times a day, just walk into a bookstore and ask instead of writing more dumb messages. Your friend can start her own blog and write whatever truth she wants – so can you. A good place to start learning truth is not to lie. She lies.
This is my blog and I apologize for wasting a minute on that idiotic exchange..shame on me. Think with your head, Charles, not your jerking knee.
I also removed the posts because I found it reprehensible to equate the purchase of books for minority students and wishing them luck when they graduate with the horrible racism we saw in Minnesota and elsewhere this week. It is a disgusting analogy, the cheapest use of racism in a way that diminishes it and trivializes it. You should be ashamed of yourself. Racism is not something to lie about or hide behind, that doesn’t work with me.
How exactly, would disrespect these children – I have been working with them for a year or more, and teaching some of them – by sending them books with no good wishes to advance the cause of racial justice? Or make me a bigot?
I have no apologies to make for buying books by the wonderful Jesmyn Ward and giving them to an entire graduating class (African American and refugee children) and signing them..”I am happy to give you all this wonderful book and wish you every success and happiness in life..” If you thank that is racism, I’ll be happy to delete your comments too. That is not the truth, it is just a plain and stupid lie.
Go fight the very real racism in the world, as so many people are doing bravely. Don’t hide behind your computer. And don’t cheapen racism in this shallow way. More wasted and valuable time when another unarmed black man is killed by the police. And in the vein of lying, you may not have noticed that I have been writing about the news every day this week on my blog and on Facebook. So don’t pretend you know one thing about me. Another lie. I don’t know you either, but I have absolutely no respect for what you have written, your pal either.
She isn’t my friend–I don’t know people who write to you. I just think you bullied her off of your site by calling her dumb and not listening to what she had to say. Right now, we need to listen to African Americans, and you’re not doing that. Let people decide for themselves whether she’s dumb–I don’t think she was. I think you just don’t want to hear what she is telling you. It’s disrespectful.
You have no idea who I am listening to and if you want to talk with me about it you can e-mail me and set up a conversation. I have no idea what her race was or is until you mentioned it, and it doesn’t really matter. You have not been reading my writings, so don’t tell me what I am thinking or doing or who I am listening to. You have no idea. Her statement calling me a racist was, in fact, especially dishonest cruel, and I do not have to listen to it or enable it.
And she was not bullied off of the site. She wrote what was perhaps the most vicious post I’ve received in years, perhaps forever, and she and I exchanged posts. Then she accused me of lying Jesmyn Ward. That was enough. If she wants to apologize for that and start over, I’ll be happy to consider it. She was deleted not bullied.
I also reject your somewhat bigoted position that I must put up posts are leave them up based on a person’s race. I am not the mayor of New York or seeking political office. I am not obliged to publish offensive or dishonest or wildly inaccurate messages because someone is black, yellow, white, or brown. That would be chaos. I explore issues of race and police brutality on my blog and have written about them extensively. The person you refer to did not mention those issues at all.
I am committed to the truth, I am not committed to cruelty and lying, and I will put up whatever comments I deem appropriate.
I wrote several pieces recently about the racism in people like me and in our country and world. You might read them before you bloviate. She didn’t ask me to talk or try to start a conversation. She just lied about what I was doing.
Nobody gets a pass on lying and cruelty on the site I pay for and work hard to operate.
Accusing people of racism that you don’t know and without a shred of evidence is not social justice, it’s just another kind of bigotry. It’s precisely what Donald Trump does.
Being called a racist is about one of the worst things anybody could call me am not obliged to accept it. I wrote the other day that I see now that we are all racists in this country, we have enabled and permitted awful injustice to African-Americans as well as others. The fact that this is true doesn’t mean it’s something to be done lightly or without any shred of humanity.
If you are, in fact, sincere, I’d be happy to listen to you. E-mail me and we’ll set up a time to talk. Blog posts are not the place to have a real conversation. [email protected]. Put your money where your mouth is.
And please tell me what she was trying to tell me: that giving 37 books to minority children and inscribing them is racist? Sorry, Charles, that is pretty stupid. That is not a conversation, and you have absolutely no idea who I am listening to. She will not be one of them. Be happy to try it with you.
She said in her post that she was African American. If you didn’t know that until I mentioned it, you never read what she had to say. That’s my point. You might not think you are a bully, but you’re the one in power, and you silenced her for daring to speak up and assert her rights. She was brave and you weren’t.
I see, perhaps she should get a fellowship award for her bravery and kindness. I am too angry at this smug self-righteousness to keep doing this and be rational. For the record, Charles, the champion of listening bravely, was not willing to contact me so I would listen further to his views. I had no doubt he would not want to talk. Time to move on.
For the record, here is Connie’s first message to me.
“This is my first time commenting on your blog, but with everything going on in-country, I feel the need to speak up. I am an African American woman, like the author of this book. I am profoundly offended that you, a white make, are going to sign these books. That honor belongs to the author alone. What makes you think you can claim her experience? You mean well, but what you are doing is patronizing and racist. By all means, give the book, but have the decency not to sign it. It isn’t yours.”
She does mention that she was an African-American, as you can see, and I apologize for the error. I should add that it does not in any way change my reaction to it. This is not in my experience an invitation to listen or begin a conversation, but people can make up their own minds.
This conversation turns my stomach, I should know better. What I am hearing is that white male writers should not be permitted to inscribe the books of black authors that they give as gifts to black students. Yikes. Charles, I do bleed for you trying to defend this idea a week after police murdered a young black man. At least your priorities are clear to you.
https://www.bedlamfarm.com/2020/06/04/books-to-bm-graduates-honoring-the-good-and-brave/