"Good To Me "
by LaTonya Mason

Author Testimony

I grew up not knowing where I'd spend the night, when I'd see either of my parents, or what I'd eat, but the one thing I did know was where to find something to write with and something to write on. I would easily be found writing on the back of old cereal boxes, match books, in the margins of books, anything I could get my hands on. To this day, there are times I feel like I could fall apart unless I get my hands on a pen and some paper. Writing was my first saving grace.

Before I knew that writing was a gift, a talent, and a calling, I believed in its' power. It was the note I penned to my neighbor that had me forcibly taken out of a neglectful home. My mother was an alcoholic and I had been sexually abused by one of her long-time boyfriends, and I wrote an account of the last incident. I was ten. A year before that, I wrote a letter to a nearby church and earned my first Christmas gifts. A few years earlier, my second grade teacher published a poem I write in her collection of poems. I still remember that poem:

Me and the wind
Are very good friends
He tells me every little secret.
And when I make him very mad
He blows on me very hard.

Yeah, I know I wasn't blessed with any lyrical skills but if someone had've been paying attention, they would have been able to see I was writing about the man who was sexually abusing me, and exploiting me with gifts. And, at the same time talking about the Wind of the Holy Spirit, Who knows all the secrets and mysteries of God and tirelessly comforted me through those helpless days, nights, and years.

I also penned a letter and sent it along with my college application. It overshadowed my average grades and made room for my acceptance at Appalachian State University, for undergraduate and graduate studies.

I went to ASU with great hopes of becoming a writer. In my first semester, I took a writing course. On the first day of class, the professor professed that there were always two types of students in his classes--stars and BS'ers. I sat in his class anxiously taking notes and listening because I wanted to prove that as the only black student in his class, I was a star. Two weeks later, after our first exam, he returned mine with a red inscription at the top that read, "D+, You're a BS'er." I dropped the course and gave up my dream of becoming a writer.

That is, until the writing bug hit me again. The university's newspaper staff hired me, and put me on their "no more assignments" list after I turned in my first article. For several years, I wrote for ASU's black student newsletter, The Harambee, and earned my own column. But, I didn't recognize this as an accomplishment, I just thought they were desperate to fill some space.

What I wanted to learn in the writing course that I dropped out of, I learned five years later at a faculty development center where I worked during graduate school. While editing and evaluating tenured faculty's grant proposals, and organizing professional workshops where I had to write tantalizing blurbs to get professors to sign up, my writing skills went to another level. But, after graduate school, I didn't write anything except daily entries in my journal.

In 2001, my father sent me a newspaper clipping on Denise Stinson and her company, Walk Worthy Press. He admonished me to write her. I stuck the clipping in a file that can't be found to this day. Two years later, I purchased Victoria Christopher Murray's book, Temptation. The book was so good, I read it in one sitting. The next day, I went back to the bookstore and bought Joy. That's when it dawned on me to look to see who her publisher was. When I saw Walk Worthy Press on the book's spine, I thought I was going to pass out.