Patricia Hruby Powell's 'Lift as You Climb' Spotlights Ella Baker

Lots of Illinois authors have new books hitting shelves right now. And while so many important national issues are rightly demanding our attention, it can feel like new picture books or novels serve little purpose. But they do. Now more than ever, it's important that we talk to young readers about American history, about the brave members of society who fought for justice and pushed the national dialogue forward, who challenged the status quo. Patricia Hruby Powell's Lift as You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker (Margaret K. McElderry Books, June 2020), illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, does just that. 

Powell is the author of award-winning picture book biographies, including Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case, illustrated by Shadra Strickland. With Lift as You Climb, she turns her attention to one of the most influential female figures in the Civil Rights movement.

QUESTION: Ella Baker shunned the spotlight and preferred to work behind the scenes. Why did you choose to tell her story and bring her life to young readers' attention?

PATRICIA HRUBY POWELL: Ella Baker was a hero—both as a Black rights and women’s rights advocate. She believed that rather than one strong leader, it’s better to have many local leaders. What a great model for young activists! We need young activists more than ever right now. We need to remake our world. 

Ella Baker’s grandparents were enslaved people, who, once emancipated, worked, then bought the land on which they’d worked while enslaved. They became leaders of their community. The book includes stories of Ella working with Dr. Martin Luther King and a hundred Black preachers, of Ella and the young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members, but one story that is not in the book is this: Ella Baker told Dr. King that she didn’t think that a movement run on one charismatic personality was a healthy movement. She asked him, what did he think would happen once he was gone? She was right, of course. Sadly, the movement pretty much fell apart when Dr. King was assassinated. 

Ella Baker and Dr. King had huge respect for one another but they didn’t always see eye to eye.

While Dr. King was recruiting the “elite” into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP (that’s the lawyers, educators, preachers, doctors), Ella felt it was as important to recruit the “common” people and particularly, women (maids and clerks). At the same time Ms. Baker was showing the powerful Black men, who she worked alongside, to respect her as their equal. The preachers were accustomed to working with women who were subordinate to them—serving women. 

They had a lot to learn about respecting women as leaders. Poised, respectable, wise Ella challenged them and broke ground for women.

Book giveaway! Enter for a chance to win a copy of Lift as You Climb!

Q: What is your creative process like? As a dancer, you've spent a lifetime focused on movement. And even in your writing, movement and energy pulse through each line. How are you able to convey such vitality on the page?

PHP: I identify first and foremost as a dancer. I’ve been a dancer much longer than I’ve been a storyteller or writer. I live inside my dancing body. I am my body, which may sound a little corny. I don’t mean the shell of my body, but my kinesthetic body. My moving body. And I write from who I am, as we all do. 

I cannot sit still for long. I think best when I’m moving—walking, swimming or working out in water, bicycling, skating, dancing. I record notes on my phone or on slips of paper (or if necessary, in my brain;-). Then I return to my computer for the writing. But the thinking happens when I’m on the move. Sometimes I enact my characters, moving as I see them moving on film, and try to discover who they are, physically. I feel that I can “become” them by moving as they do. Try it.

I recommend turning on music, inserting earbuds, going a little ways out into the country where there are fewer eyes upon you and dance. I do this while watching my dog run through fields tracking bunnies and jumping into ponds. So nature helps too. Thoughts rush in. 

Q: “What do you hope to accomplish?” is a refrain throughout the story. What do you as a writer for children hope to accomplish?

PHP: I always want children to love reading. I hope that they’ll be fascinated by my stories and want to read extensively. But nowadays, more than that, I want young readers to become inspired to be social activists. I want them to figure out what they care about, and work for that. There is SO much in our society that needs correction. 

Activism? Maybe you’re excited or concerned about Black Lives Matter, the vote, police reform, gun control, zoning laws, segregated education, the health of the Earth and our environment, sustainable living, renewable resources. The list goes on and on. 

Helping other people gives you a life purpose—especially in this challenging time. We need to remake our world. Everyone will win.

We all need to ask ourselves, What do I hope to accomplish?

Patricia Hruby Powell's Biography 'Josephine' Dazzles

Josephine Baker's fascinating life has been examined in books, films, and documentaries. But perhaps none is so beautifully done as Patricia Hruby Powell's picture book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker (Chronicle Books, January 14, 2014). Illustrated by Christian Robinson, Josephine tells the inspiring story of this boundary-breaking performer and champion for racial equality. A biography written in verse, Josephine is already collecting a jewel box of starred reviews, including one from Kirkus that says it's "celebrated with style and empathy."

Question: You're a former dancer, so it's easy to see the interest you might have for writing about another dancer. But why Josephine Baker? What drew you to her story?

Patricia Hruby Powell: It wasn’t till I hit my more advanced adult years that I took a close look at Josephine and was smitten. Her style, verve, her originality—as seen in the early film footage and the three movies she made—are irresistible. But when I was a serious young dancer—of Graham, Limon, and Cunningham techniques and of ballet, who became a choreographer and concert dancer—I did not take Josephine Baker seriously.

In my more recent capacity as a children’s librarian, surrounded by unfocused preteen African American girls, I thought Josephine could be a wonderful role model. Josephine had phenomenal confidence. Blind confidence, perhaps. That’s what drew me.

Q: Josephine is both beautifully illustrated, immensely informative, and well-written. And it clocks in at a whopping 104 pages! It is not every picture book that gets an editor's green light to reach 100 pages! How did you win over your editor? Did the size of the book begin to worry you at any point?

PHP: Josephine evolved, you might say. I’d written it first as a 1,000 word picture book, received a lot of agent and editorial attention, but ultimate rejection. I then wrote it as a YA verse piece imagining Paul Colin-like black and white illustrations. Never mind that there’s really no such thing as a novella-length verse YA volume, I was writing what I wanted, as we’re always advised to do.

I was monumentally lucky that my eventual agent picked Josephine out of a cover letter description—I mean it’s not what I was submitting to her—and she asked to see it, liked it, and offered representation. That was in December 2009. That 7,500-word Josephine received praise but, again, ultimate rejection. Until…

An inspired editor at Chronicle asked me to cut the word count in half. Which I did. My dream editor acquired Josephine in October 2010, and we added some of those deleted stanzas back in.

My editor intended a long picture book of 48 pages, I think. Then it was 64 pages. When I was told it would be an astounding 104 pages, I panicked. What was this book going to cost? I was told a normal $17.99. I calmed down. All along the way, I was told how much everyone at Chronicle loved the book. So I guess they were taking a chance. Which made me feel terribly responsible. I’ve got to say, I’ve felt panic along the way on numerous occasions.

Q: Could you talk about your creative process? The personal recollections from Josephine Baker are woven into the storyline seamlessly, but this must have taken a lot of writing and revising to pull off. How long did you work on this manuscript, both researching and writing?

PHP: Josephine was a storyteller. She wrote five autobiographies—all in French—which required me to kick-start my school French. But those autobiographies supplied plenty of quotes.

Josephine Baker was overly energetic, which leads to hyperbole. I had to tease out the truth, or what I saw as the truth of her story. There are wonderful English language biographies as well. But some writers believed all her stories. I’d read so much about her, from her, and viewed so much footage and listened to her interviews on obsolete recording technology (thank heavens for the University of Illinois Library) that I felt I knew her extremely well.

Once acquired and Josephine was sent out for scholarly approval, a few of my facts were challenged. For instance, even some scholarly books cite Josephine’s birthplace as East St. Louis. (I think that misconception grew from Josephine’s story that she was in the middle of the East St. Louis race riots of 1917. But really, Josephine saw the battered people once they fled East St. Louis, Illinois, and crossed the bridge into St. Louis, Missouri). Josephine felt things strongly. She was a passionate artist. Her experience of seeing the devastated people from the East St. Louis riots was life-changing. But she was born and raised in St. Louis.

My Josephine had a long path to publication. But I was also working on other manuscripts over those years from 2005 to the 2014.

Q: Razzmatazz, vagabonds, ramshackle, effervesced! Your word choice is rich and full of meaty, mouth-filling words, and choosing to write in verse lends an urgency to the book's tone. It is clear you labored over every word. Can you talk about your decisions for word choices and writing style?

PHP: I love words. I create a word bank for each of my books. When I hear or think of or read a word I might use, I write it down. Bits of paper are scattered throughout my house. And my purse. Yes, I have notebooks and legal pads, too. Hopefully all the words will get gathered and transferred to the computer or a 3-by-5 card.

Josephine is a subject that invites scintillating words. Who knows how razzmatazz got in my brain? Josephine put it there. I tried to become Josephine to see how she felt—so I danced her. She danced me some of those words.

Q: I thought I was familiar with Josephine Baker's life story, but your book delivered some wonderful surprises. Were you already aware of her war service and piloting experience? Were there moments when you were surprised by Josephine's life?

PHP: I knew only the bare facts when I began. I was surprised all along the way. And in immense admiration of her.

Q: What do you hope young readers will take away from your story?

PHP: I hope they will think, I can do anything I set my mind to. I hope they will dream up things no one has ever thought and do those things. I hope they will be instilled with Josephine’s confidence.

Q: What will we see next from you?

PHP: A YA documentary novel in verse (working title: Loving vs Virginia) about the interracial couple Mildred Jeter (black) who married Richard Loving (white) in Virginia, 1958. Interracial marriage was illegal in 24 states in 1958. The Lovings were arrested in bed, banished from their pastoral home to the slums of Washington, D.C. It took nine years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor. It’s a love story.