“Norman Rockwell and Me” is an early chapter in a verse memoir about my ‘Fifties/’Sixties youth. I have always been a narrative poet; the narrative poems in the epic trilogy I wrote in my early career, (Iwilla/Soil, Iwilla/Scourge, Iwilla/Rise), took me on a twenty-year journey into the unknown. Along the way I researched the world’s sacred literature, legends and folklore; I studied the visual art inspired by these ancient stories. Out of this meandering exploration came a distillation of metaphors and symbols, people and events, that fit my understanding of the American experience as an indigenous Black woman.

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Memoir is a different genre of story-telling from the epic. Thus far, the writing process of my verse memoir has been entirely different from that of the earlier work.

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First, I already know my main character and the cluster of supporting personalities I have encountered in life. The task is not one of searching or identifying, but rather of digging more deeply, questioning, sometimes ditching completely my established interpretation of a person’s significance.

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Second, I don’t have to travel far (figuratively) beyond my own birthplace for the landscape of the pivotal events I want to memorialize. As a memoirist, I am lucky that I have been able to return to my hometown and live in the last dwelling of my youth. When I walk out my front door, I can see my own past in streets, parks, and buildings. Much has changed (for better and for worse); this dynamics of memory and change is such a life-force!

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Third, not only the landscape, but also personal family items (both trivial and momentous) surround my daily routine. A table lamp (non-functional, in need of rewiring) from my parents’ first apartment can trigger a story as profound as my high school yearbook. Such visual triggers are the primary wellsprings of my memoir.

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Fourth, I have told and retold the events in “Norman Rockwell and Me” for a lifetime. To myself. I have never shared them with anyone else except my own child. Once or twice. Why did I do this? Well, for one thing, I did not want to forget—not the people or the events. I still remember the last name (beginning with a Z) of that White classmate. My family moved away after two years and I never saw that neighborhood or projects or parochial school or anybody there again. Also, I knew that my presence in that predominantly White Catholic school was significant. My mother had told me so at the time. It was the beginning of a lifetime of being “the first” or “the only” or “one of a handful” of Blacks in an academic, residential, religious, or even professional situation. Always without fanfare. Without cameras and reporters. Long before new laws changed policies, perspectives and customs.

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Finally, the artist Norman Rockwell was not unknown to me as a child. Visual art entered my parents’ household mostly as newspaper and magazine illustration. Two major exceptions were the family bible (The Marian Year Bible) with an inset of High Renaissance/Baroque masterpieces in full color and a set of encyclopedias with a section on Western Art that I poured over again and again and again…