Max Reddick — Writer in Resident
Gifts My Mother Gave Me (By Way of Introduction)
The first gift I remember my mother ever giving me was a book. But I do not remember when I began reading. I do not even recall being taught to read. I can only recall that as far back as my consciousness reaches, books were an important part of my life; books were my best friends, my confidantes, my constant companions.
Books took me to far away places, both real and imagined, places that I could have only dreamed of going at that time. They excited my senses. They stirred my imagination. They awoke within me an insatiable desire to know more.
I found myself shipwrecked on the island along with Robinson Crusoe. I experienced Victorian England through the characters of Dickens. I suffered right along with Uncle Tom on the floor of Simon Legree’s slave quarters. And I was on the raft with Huck Finn and Nigger Jim. Douglas and Baldwin and Ellison and Hughes and Wright all made me aware of the fact that I was black and one day I would be a man, and would be judged by the world as such.
Through books I witnessed all the exquisite beauty the world has to offer as well as its horrifying dark side. Books were my very first teachers.
And before long all the stories and narratives filled my imagination to saturation, until my own made up stories and narratives began to spill out. My mother understood. She knew the place from whence these stories and narratives originated. And when others would not believe my invented stories and narratives, when others thought I was at best a child with an overactive imagination and at worst, a degenerate liar, she gave me a pen and a pad, and she told me to right them down.
And from that day forward, writing has been every bit a part of life as have books, as has drawing breath. If I may pause to quote writer Joan Didion, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Writing makes me feel alive. Writing connects me to the world.
Besides the gift of life, books and writing are perhaps the greatest gifts my mother ever gave me. And it is these gifts I would like to share with you. And in return, I would only ask that if you share the same sentiments as I, if you love books and writing as much as I, you bless this space with your thoughts, your writing about books, about writing, about anything that inspires you to pick up a pen and a pad.
Max Reddick is a Memphis, Tennessee, native now living in Northeast Florida. The former University of Florida McKnight Fellow currently serves as a professor of English and literature in addition to training and mentoring middle school reading, language arts and social studies teachers.
Max blogs at soulbrother v.2 and also actively contributes to a number of other prominent blogs.
