We were selling books at the Georgia Indie Book Fair in Albany, and the Wise Woman, who runs the family business, was talking about a book that is based on her great-great-great-grandmother Easter.
Easter was a Cherokee woman who was driven off her land in Georgia in the 1830s. Relatives ended up on the Trail of Tears, but Easter refused to be driven and survived by blending into a community of African Americans in Tennessee.
It was a choice rooted in defiance, and it shaped a family’s identity. A Home for Easter begins a series of books about defiant women. The torch is passed from mother to daughter. Each generation finds a way to oppose the bigotry and oppression of the day.
At the book fair, three African American women — perhaps representing three generations — were talking to the Wise Woman and asking questions.
The Wise Woman explained that her books are fiction. They refer to historical characters. But so much information about her ancestors has been lost, she has had to reinvent them — or re-enliven then — with stories.
The older women were interested in that idea, but the younger woman acted as if she’d seen the burning bush. She didn’t know that you could do that — that you could reclaim family identity in that way.
To me, that scene was a pretty good argument for independent presses.
I love mainstream publishers — at least I’ve loved them enough to have bought hundreds of books they’ve published.
But they don’t publish everything that’s worthwhile.
The family publishing business is not exactly a Fortune 500 company. The revenues are modest, but the conversations are priceless.
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