At one point I even gave back the contract advance for the final book, feeling the pressure was too much.

I have felt such an obligation to finish the story it has pressed on me. MDT: I had planned from the very beginning to tell Cassie’s family story, although I didn’t have any idea how long it would take. How does it feel drawing the Logan family saga to a close? After Song of the Trees was published in 1975, did you have any idea that you would continue to share parts of Cassie’s family story for the next forty years? Also, you’re putting the finishing touches on the final installment which you’ve titled All the Days Past, All the Days to Come. JW: First, thank you for agreeing to this interview. It has been lightly edited for posting on this blog. Special thanks to Janell Walden Agyeman of Marie Brown Associates and Regina Hayes of Penguin Random House for helping to arrange this exchange which happened by email in Spring 2019. Both make history dance and command our attention, awakening ancestral memory in a way that cold facts and timelines cannot.

Her stories are to children’s literature what Alex Haley’s Roots is to adult historical fiction. Like the West African griots of long ago who passed down family histories, Taylor has devoted most of her literary career to telling one story: that of the Logans, a proud black family of the Southern United States. Once this access was granted, I could feel and imagine the worlds of my grandparents and their predecessors– comforts and terrors alike. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken in elementary school gave me keys to understanding. Their personal histories were, however, closed doors. Like the elders of many African American families, mine migrated from backwater Southern towns to a more thriving one in the 1930’s.

Cassie mildred d taylor