Power to the People: Rita Williams-Garcia's latest novel,'One Crazy Summer,' is full of heartbreak and hope

Photograph by Matt Peyton.

First of all, I have to disabuse you of a few notions. My mother is actually more Cecile than that character's incarnation in my other books. My mother was a very creative person who was also very frustrated. She could have her moods, and we as children learned to deal with them. On one hand, she was very supportive, because she did things that made us appreciate art and not look at things in the same way all the time.

And on the other hand...

My mother went to work and left us home alone. She did. And she told my sister what time to get the sandwiches to feed us and what time to turn on Sheri Lewis and Lamb Chop. And our mother left us kiddies [my sister Rosalind, my brother Russell, and me] alone so she could go to Big Sur and go to the Monterey Pop Festival to see Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. We were very straightlaced Negro children and my mother was Joan Baez—loving and Billie Holiday—loving and very artistic. But she could also be very destructive.

You lived in the projects in Far Rockaway, NY, 'til you were two, and your family eventually moved to northern California. As a girl, did you realize how turbulent the '60s were?

Oh, sure. I'm wondering if I'd have felt it as much if I didn't read the newspapers or wasn't glued to Harry Reasoner on the news. My father was in Vietnam. We have a cousin, whom I've not met. He was a UCLA student, and he was also involved with the Black Panthers, and he hijacked a plane, a 727.

Was anybody injured?

I don't know. All I know is that everybody was scrambling to find out what happened and where he was. There was so much going on. Even though we lived in a town that was right next to an army base, we still saw a lot of protests and a lot of the paraphernalia of the times: people with peace signs and Black Panther emblems. There was a Black Panther party not far from where we were, so you saw the buttons and the jackets.

The mainstream media often portrayed the Black Panthers as militant thugs, but you describe their caring, nurturing side.

I wrote the story that I saw as an 11-year-old. If I saw anything at all firsthand, it was sickle cell anemia testing, which I got. It was going for the free breakfasts, which we did, and my mother bringing home a bag of free shoes from the Black Panthers. The thing is, we only have a media view of them. We only see the guns. We only see militant action and I'm not going to say they weren't about that, because their initial purpose was to defend people in the community. But they saw themselves primarily as being a service organization for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed. So a lot of their mission had to do with fresh food and problems with housing, heat, lead paint, and jobs.

You tend to write about tough topics, such as sexual assault and bullying. Yet I have a hunch you're essentially a hopeful person.

I am. I think I'm a happy person in general. I say to myself, "If I can take care of my small area, then I'm making my contribution"—and I think my contribution is my stories. I'm always very hopeful about the generation that's coming up and the avenues that are opening up and how people are discovering that they can make an impact. I'm a very happy, hopeful person.