Cerritos Library Hosts African American Authors Panel

By Larry Caballero

Prominent African American authors discussed their life experiences, ideas and dreams at the Cerritos Library Skyline Room Mar. 13 as part of the Cerritos Library Meet the Author series to more than a hundred guests who asked questions and later purchased books signed by the authors.
Presented by the 50-member Orange County Chapter of Links, Incorporated in collaboration with the National Black MBA Association, Inc., Los Angeles Chapter and the Cerritos Library, authors in attendance included Daniel Armstrong who motivates and empowers people to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others through his program, Find a Tree.
Inspired by his experience in Ghana, West Africa, Armstrong wrote the motivational book How to Live Your Dreams: Find A Tree and Get Started.
While in Ghana, he met young people who wanted to teach, but there was no running water or money to fund the construction of a school. He suggested they find a tree and begin teaching others, and they did. Before long, several groups were started throughout the region.
Armstrong talked about people saying that they have no time for dreams because “they are stuck in the rut of their lives. You need to ask the question—what is my dream and what am I doing about it?”
Author Gary Phillips shared with the attendees that reading was not an option for him since his mother was a librarian. “Being out of work so much of the time made it easier for me to think about writing as a career.” He loved mysteries and by growing up in South Central Los Angeles and teaching incarcerated youth, he knew that he would be writing about the “seedy underbelly of Los Angeles through the jaundiced eyes of the African American investigator Ivan Monk.”
Author Flora Brown knew she would be a writer even before she retired from public teaching. Her passion for encouraging people to make choices that lead to their happiness began when she was a junior high inner city English teacher. Her passion continued to grow deeper as she worked with university students.
“Don’t have someone else steal your joy,” said Brown. “You need to claim it for yourself.” She thought of the title of her first book, Color Your Life Happy: Create the Success, Abundance and Inner Joy You Deserve, after seeing an advertisement for crayons in a magazine.
Author Paul Woodring’s background is in business and technology, so it was only natural for him to write about those fields in his first novel, Inventions. “The hard part about writing the book was to integrate a love story in it that would be believable.”
Panel moderator and author Attica Locke’s experience had been in screenwriting before writing her first widely acclaimed novel, Black Water Rising. She asked each panelist to share why they became writers and what was their motivation to do so.
Brown said, “Every writer has a story to be told, and that is good, but you also need to get your story sold. That can be the hard part.”
Authors Bernard and Shirley Kinsey concluded the event by discussing “What You Didn’t Learn in High School History,” based on the Kinsey Collection Exhibition at the Smithsonian American History Museum