despite his occasional request to you to help voice of it is not going to get better, deal with it, what did you learn over the course of that thing about the terrible tension between hope and reality acceptance when you are close to someone who has a terminal illness? >> that is such a hard question because the fact is they are so you. you are looking at yourself. it is impossible when your brother, sister, and 2 and a half years apart. i couldn't give what he was going through a reality. i couldn't see it for what with it was. it was catastrophic. now that i had my brother, i was desperate not to lose him.

>> you hadn't had him until this. >> we had that cotten batting between us. we had a fierce attachment, when you are that locked together in this kind of angry, very strong bond, underneath that is the bond and the real attachment. so detachment and saying this is about him was impossible. part of that relentless cheer leading was my own failure was to say this is real and this is happening. we always think we can find a solution to everything and we can't. >> did he teach you that? >> yes. that we sometimes things we

can't understand. >> knowing what you know now about how it was all going to play out, would you have done anything differently in the way of ongoing, this will be okay, we'll make this okay, we'll try everything kind of cheer leading? >> i don't think, i would have liked to say i would have been a more buddhist embracing nature. my nature is to be with that younger sister. i think i was trying to mirror what thought he needed. maybe silence is the way to go.

>> this is an odd question, when you said i finally have a brother soon i am going to lose him. why do we love our siblings? >> no one with loves us better. william james often wrote about the core of self. that core of self is hidden from our parents. we hide from our parents but we don't from our siblings, they know every aspect of us. it is why they can drive us crazy, it is why when we have a problem, our impulse is to want our brother or sister right next to us. no one with could be closer.

there is that pull. that pull is so powerful. it was a love story, always. >> do you think you knew that before you started writing this? >> i knew i had to be as close to my brother as i could possibly be. i am sure that pull is part of it. >> you have a daughter and stepson as well? >> i have 1 daughter and 1 stepson who i am close to. >> has this changed how you are around them as well? >> absolutely. my daughter casey has a half brother she is very close to. i say to all of them, you are a

team. you have each other through life. you are a team. you do a lot of things together as the 2 families, very, very close. >> this seems like a good moment to open up any question that is you all may want to ask about the writing process, about siblings, anything else. > is there something you could read to us from the book that you would feel that we wouldn't understand unless you read it? >> you have any ideas? >> it is a real sort of testish. she has put it together like a quilt. i would say the scene that you described where you are arriving and first see him in the apple orchard, do you

remember exactly where that is? >> i'll page through it and see where it is. i might do a short theme where i describe what he looks like and this perfect them. >> if you want to revert to your texas voice. >> the last time i saw my brother, we had an immense fight. it was in his house in san antonio, i am describing, the book opens with this fight. this is sort of a picture of my brother at this exact moment. there are always apples around him, women, too. apple pie, big sheik antique bowls of wooden apples, read

and golden, apples pencils, produce framed on the library wall, texas vegetables from the rio grand empire. i am an american first, then a texan he would say not understanding he sounded like auggi march. the clues are there, i later realized. a man's fate is his character. you always have to show off and tell us what you know, carl said. i'll be in washington next week i say. i have an interview, i have to close of peace. you promised me, you said you would stay away from washington state. you sat right here and said you would not go to the cascades. he yells as loudly as i have

ever heard him. washington, d.c. i shout back. i have the trait as well. [laughter]. >> as you are thinking about that, i would like to ask you to give us one more. there are 2 completely surprising and interesting substories woven through this narrative of your brother, 1, your fabulous aunt character in mexico getting frosty into mexico and running around with frita caller and your discovery of apples? >> this is astonishing, are we talking about the family past apple? >> both and the way thing danagers come together, yeah. >> kind of astonishing, again working on the idea that everything is passed down in

families is it or is it not or is it coincidence. my father had a difficult relationship with his father from mexico. we knew our family had this chain of nurseries from mexico. i never understood because my father would change tg subject when his name came up. our grandfather was an orchardist at the turn of the century. >> which you hadn't even known. >> i didn't know it until i discovered this at the archive when i was trying to page through all of these things. then i discovered an obituary that had been written about our

grandfather when he died when we were much to young to remember him. it was very, very long in the texas at the time. it detailed every, all the rare plants, specimen plants, horticultural, introducing them to texas. i was so excited about all of this. i used to say to my brother, this apple thing, you have gotten from your grandfather who had a reverence. he would say that is ridiculous. when my brother announced he was going to give up his life as a trial lawyer to be an apple orchardist.

my father said i have one thing to say, jews don't farm. but they did. his father clearly did. >> just to wind up, then, what are you working on next? >> i have become fascinated with the personal. this is the most excruciating difficult book. >> so you are going to turn around and do it again. >> i have been spending a great deal of time in india every year my next book is a memoir of going through india and what this has done to transform my own life. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> [applause].

>> patricia leanne caldwell born in tennessee. daughter of robert and irma. at age of 3 moved to missouri and returned when she was 12 years old. patricia grew up with segregation and injustices which she writes about. she spent many countless hours in the nashville public library. it was her family life that was bountiful and flowing with tales told by her story telling grandfather. raised with love of reading and oral tradition. graduated from tennessee state and degree in english in 1964. she married her childhood friend on december 12. they are the parents of

fredrick and twins robert and john. her education continued with a master's degree in early childhood literature, and programming in 1975 from webster university. patricia has a successful career as a teacher and children's book editor. she changed careers to become a full time writer of children and young adult books. her goal is to create books for and about african-americans. i write because there is a need to have books for, by and about the african-american experience and how we helped to develop this country. i present to you patricia makinsik heart of literacy. >> i am from st. louis, missouri. a lot of you think i have said

it in correctly when i said missouri. you think i got it slid into my southern dialect, right? no. i was not born in st. louis. i was born in nashville, tennessee, a little town side of nashville. that is where i grew up, went to high school, met and married my husband. moved back to st. louis where i lived part of my life. i heard people saying missouri and missouri. what is the correct pronunciation of our new home? the best place to go when you want information is where? >> [inaudible]. >> of course, we all know that. i went to the library and the librarian gave me a wonderful

book and began a life long friendship with the librarian. missouri is the native american pronunciation. in their language it is the people of the big boats. one word means all of that. missouri. frenchman who came up the mississippi river. they said that would be a great place to have a trading post. they set up a trading post and called it st. louis. missouri became missouri. now i ask you which is correct? missouri or missouri? >> missouri. okay.

neither one. [laughter]. you can't say the native americans were wrong for saying missouri. you can't say the french were wrong for pronouncing it in their language, just different ways of pronouncing the same word. that is where we have the problem with the word different. different isn't a synonym of the word wrong. we have to be careful how we use it and our children. it answers the question, why do you write that? i write to tell the story. one that has fallen through the cracks, one marginalized by main stream history.

either misrepresented or represented to the way in which it is a stereo typical, write to take those stereotypes, reshape them and give them back to you dressed in a new dress. i mean when i say different is not a synonym for wrong, it means that we should celebrate those things. everyone in this room is different in some way. but you should not feel bad about that. your uniqueness, as my grandson who loves to make up words, that is your wonderment. [laughter]. it answers that question that we get asked most often is why do you write?

you can say pat is write to tell that different story and different is not a synonym for wrong. before i was a writer, however, i was a listener. i grew up listening to stories. listening to language. come with me to nashville, tennessee to an old farmhouse set back off the road, a little house, window here, window here and doorway that looked like a face. the windows, door, and front porch kind of sag so it looked like a smiling face. [laughter]. then there was a long sidewalk that led up to the house. when you turn and started toward it, you felt like you

were going to a warm and happy place. my grandparents loved to in the evening sit on the front porch. there was a radio that set in the window, my grandfather would listen to the ball game. i remember when marion anderson would sing, my grandmother made us be quiet and respectful before greatness. every once in a while a neighbor would come by and would excuse herself and come out with a pitcher of lemonade or ice tea. she had those tea cakes that i loved. most of the time children would say go on and play.

you wouldn't listen to grown up's conversation. at that point we were all welcome. the stories were layered. seniors got something that the young parents and fathers learned, then teenagers and little ones. we all got something out of the story. they were layered. i try to do that in my writing. i try to layer so that the reader who is sharing the story with the young person will get something out of it or see something they can learn from as well. my mother loved to do poetry. i would sit in the hallow of her arm and begin resiting

dunbar poetry. [inaudible] you as dirty as me. look at that mouth. him being so sweet and sticky, goodness. i would say momma, do it again, please. i would beg her to do it again, she would say, no, go to bed, now. i grew up listening to dunbar who wrote in dialect, little brown baby. he wrote beautiful things in standard english. an angel robed in spotless white. the spirit was gone, men saw the blush and called it [inaudible]. i fell in love with that beautiful black angel.

i could visualize it the way my mother would resite it. i know why the cage bird sings, it would be free. it is not a carol of joy or pray upward to heaven he fling. i know why the cage bird sings. mia angelou knew of it. i like dunbar, my grandfather used words the way he described him. good morning mr. james, how are you feeling this morning.

he would say i am stepping, but not high. isn't that wonderful? okay. okay. i go play down by the creek. he would say yes, tkarlg, but be particular. that meant be careful because i love you and don't want anything to happen to you. it was coded in the be protected. he often said be careful now. that meant one thing, be particular, there was stuff down by the creek and he wanted me to be careful and watch because he didn't want anything to happen to me. be particular did it all. when he would say when you go

over there, i want you to walk and hold your head up like you belong to somebody. that meant you were representing your family. i want you to carry yourself in a way that you represent your family well with. he didn't have to go through all of that. hold your head up and act like you belong to somebody. if you didn't, you were growing up like a weed. i love dunbar for that reason. fast forward many years later, i am a teacher of 8th grade english. i want to give my students dunbar. there is nothing for young readers. so i complained. it is a shame they don't have a

book about dunbar in the library. somebody ought to write a book about it. then it hit me, instead of whining and complaining why i haven't gotten something i need, write it yourself. but i had never written a book before, how do you start? well, i went to the library again, found a book, how to write a children's book, not a very imaginative title, but it told me what i needed. wrote a book from cover to cover, researched it. i knew ever detail. even went to his home in dayton, ohio and visited his house, shared it with my students and they said who wrote this? it is awful.

[laughter]. it is so boring. i said mercifully, i did not put my name on it. it was dreadful because i had simply paid attention to detail. i had not bothered to give the young reader a story to hang on. they didn't know dunbar, they new the skeleton, but didn't know him. they didn't know the world he lived in. they didn't know his friends. they didn't know anything about him that he was born in 1872 in dayton, ohio, graduated. so the learned the first lesson every write er must learn,

you'll learn it the hard way or start from the beginning. don't be with afraid, tear it up, start over again. or go in and say i have got to move this, i have got to change this. the formal word gets revision. you'll revise and revise until you figure, i can't revise anymore and send it to the editor, we have lots of revision with this. revising is 90 percent of writing. i wrote that very first book in 1971. it didn't get published until 1982. no i don't have to work on books that long anymore.

but that first one, learn how to rewrite, restructure, move things. i have written many more biographies. i have learned the most important thing, you must tell a good story, character, setting, action, and idea. you have it in fiction as well as non fiction. some where along the line we were taught that non fiction is simply facts. it is not truth. facts wrapped around a story. facts put in a story. let's go back to that porch again, this time my mother in that soft tone of hers. she