Author Archive: Dr. Joan Steinau Lester
Dr. Joan Steinau Lester is the author of the recently released novel, Mama’s Child. Follow Lester on Twitter and find her on GoodReads. As a member of a biracial family, Lester’s lifelong passion has been writing about issues of racial identity. Dr. Lester is an award-winning commentator and author of four critically acclaimed books: Eleanor Holmes Norton: Fire In My Soul; The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas; Taking Charge: Every Woman’s Action Guide; and her first novel, Black, White, Other: The Search For Nina Armstrong. She has won the NLGJA Seigenthaler Award in journalism and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist Award. Taking Charge was nominated as a Best Women’s Book by the San Francisco Women’s Heritage Museum and Mama’s Child was a Bellwether Prize finalist. After receiving her doctorate in multicultural education, Dr. Lester served as the Executive Director of the Equity Institute, which pioneered the diversity wave of the ’80s and ’90s, for sixteen years.
Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, Joan Steinau Lester
If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, “I know my life would be a bestseller!” I’d be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. “My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself.” Well, not really. Books do not write […]
A WOMAN WRITER’S MANIFESTO
By Joan Steinau Lester When people ask me what do you do, for the last twenty-five years I’ve answered, “I’m a writer.” Sometimes I add, “An author.” If the questioner still looks blank, I’ll say, with authority, “I’m a professional writer.” I’ve learned to define myself in a powerful tone because so many people have […]
Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White
If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, “I know my life would be a bestseller!” I’d be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. “My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself.” Well, not really. Books do not write […]
Chairs
Chairs I have sat in. They’re usually too big, those conference table chairs at editorial meetings I attend, or seats set in a row for panelists at author events, with a copy of our latest book propped on the long table in front of us. It’s difficult to be one of the “important people” in […]
The Great March of August 28, 1963
I’d bought the car at a police auction for $25. You could do that then in New York City: ride the subway to some out-of-the-way lot full of junked cars, make a bid, and the next day, the car might be yours. My then-husband J and I had done just that, in preparation for our […]
Mother’s Day, Wikipedia, and Politics
Mother’s Day is upon us. We honor our moms for nurturing care, but their contributions in other arenas are, inevitably, marginalized. Wikipedia recently excised most “American Women Novelists” from its “American Novelists” category – segregating them in a female subcategory, thereby rendering American novelists nearly entirely male. When we think of other public categories too, […]
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