In fact, I’ve burned or shredded more novels than I care to remember!īut I started writing professionally after I got married and had children. It’s something that happened organically, and I cannot remember a time when I was not writing something: stories, poems, novels. As soon as I learned cursive writing, I began writing stories that were just a few sentences long in a notebook. Quite honestly, I started writing when I was six years old. What prompted you to start writing?Ī: Yes, I did practice law for several years. Q: You were a lawyer and then became a writer. I interviewed her about her book and family story.

Her BA is from the University of Michigan, and she went on to become a lawyer with a degree from the University of Detroit School of Law before becoming a writer. Jean sees how her identity obstructs her achievements in that way and myriad others.Įlster is the author of a children's book series, and How It Happens is the third novel in a trilogy. She learns the true reason, which is racism, and there’s nothing that she can do about it. Yet when Jean excels in her coursework, her teacher fails her on her project. Many of the women in the family become teachers, including Jean. Your father and I saw to it that you girls would have choices.”Įach generation of women confronts struggles, and each generation builds upon the successes of the previous one, though racial and class inequities continue to beset their lives. No colored woman had a choice back then.” May Ford stopped and looked straight ahead. My mother-Grandma Jackson-she didn’t have a choice.

“It’s so hard to explain … so hard to explain.

May Ford describes how it happens to her daughter Jean: The events that happen to the characters illustrate how race and class work against the women of this family in those eras. This topic has a lasting effect on this family when a prominent white man becomes the father of Addie’s daughters. The book begins with a prologue that defines “miscegenation,” meaning the marriage, sexual relation, or other intimate affiliation of a person who is white and someone of another race. It is the fictionalized account of three generations of Elster’s family, starting in Tennessee with maternal grandmother, Addie Jackson, and continuing in Detroit with her daughter, Dorothy May Ford, and granddaughter, Jean. Jean Alicia Elster’s new young adult novel, How It Happens, chronicles the hardships and inequality faced by Black women from the late 1800s through 1950 and beyond.

Cursive writing book for adults