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- [00:01]
Zibby Owens
Hey everyone, it's Zivi. I am so excited to tell you about something I've created just for you, the Zip Membership Program. ZIP stands for Zivi's Important People. It's for anyone who loves books, stories and wants a little peek behind the scenes at what I'm up to and what's on my mind. As a Zip member, you'll get exclusive essays, a new podcast called Zivvy's Voice Notes. No interviews, just usually discounts at Zibby's Bookshop, a free ebook, and more perks. I wanted to create a space to connect authentically and deeply, and I'd love for you to be part of it. If that sounds like your kind of thing, become a Zip today. You're already important to me. Now let's make it official. Go to zibioens.com and click subscribe. And if you already subscribe, you can upgrade to the Membership program. And now onto today's episode of Totally Booked with Zibvie. Thanks for listening.
- [00:56]
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- [01:58]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
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- [03:16]
Zibby Owens
Your ideal comfort on either side your Sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now during our President's day sale, take 50% off our limited edition bed Shop now for a limited time only.
- [03:30]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
At a Sleep number store or sleepnumber.com.
- [03:39]
Zibby Owens
Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibbee, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram ibbeowens Jewel Parker Rhodes is back on the podcast. I haven't spoken to Jewel in a few years, but she's been on several times. She once came on with her daughter as well. She has written for she's adapted her book Ghost Boys into a graphic novel which I read and was practically weeping on an airplane as I read it. It is absolutely beautiful. It won't take you long to read it. You should read it as a grown up. You should give it to a young person in your life to read. It's important, impactful, beautiful, and soul stirring. She also wrote an adult fiction book, Douglass Women, which is coming out soon. If you want more of a background on her. Dr. Jewel Parker Rhodes is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Ghost Boys, which I just mentioned, Black Brother, Black Brother, which I also read and talked to her about paradise on Fire and Treasure Runaway Gold. She is the recipient of many distinguished awards and honors, including the Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Green Earth Book Award and NAACP Image Award Nomination, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Octavia E. Butler Award. She is the founding Artistic Director of the Virginia G. Piper center for Creative Writing and Virginia G. Piper Endowed Chair at Arizona State University. She also contributed to one of my anthologies, Back in the Day Moms don't have time to have kids. And I did an event with her and her daughter and my mom on zoom during COVID times, and she's just a doll. Enjoy our conversation.
- [05:58]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Hi, Zubi.
- [05:59]
Zibby Owens
Hi, Jewel. How are you?
- [06:01]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
I'm doing fine, thank you. You look so beautiful.
- [06:06]
Zibby Owens
Oh, so do you. You don't age at all.
- [06:10]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
I love your book backdrop, but, oh, it's so nice to see you. I was so moved by your recent essays about getting back into your home. And just you write with such passion and just such hard. And it was like, oh, my goodness. I was thinking, oh, that woman needs to write a book. And of course, you're a terrific writer. A.
- [06:34]
Zibby Owens
Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you taking the time even to read it. I know how busy you are and how much is on your plate, so thank you.
- [06:41]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Oh, thank you so much, you for having. Having me. Did you hear the good news about today? Yes.
- [06:48]
Zibby Owens
So you got an award for the other book. Tell me all of this.
- [06:52]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Will's Race for Home. Yes, I got the Coretta Scott King Author Award. Oh. For the book. Huge. Yes, I know.
- [07:03]
Zibby Owens
Oh, my gosh.
- [07:05]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
And so nervous. I just, you know, the adrenaline was rushing and it's like, oh, my goodness. So I. Yes, I'm very, very, very, very, very happy.
- [07:16]
Zibby Owens
Oh, my goodness. Congratulations. Have you ever won that before?
- [07:21]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
My very first novel for youth, 9th Ward, was a Coretta Scott King honor book, but it's been, you know, like 12, 14 years ago. So this is sort of, like, so great. And it's also a book that came out of a lot of love and out of material that I knew about the Tulsa race massacre and how African Americans participated in the Oklahoma land rush, and yet it wasn't documented. And then, of course, about a young boy and the animals, a horse and a mule, that together they become this resilient force to race towards the land claim and to make it home. So the book's special to me, but it was, like, one of the most difficult books in a way, to write because there were issues with text, illustrations, cover art. It just seemed as though everything was going all wrong. And this is when it pays to have a wonderful editor. And my editor is Alvina Ling, who, when I was unhappy about something, she'd always say, we'll make it work, we'll make it work, we'll make it work. But many, many times I just like, oh, my poor polka is never going to make it out into the world. But it did the award. Yay. Yay, yay, yay.
- [08:42]
Grow Therapy Ad
Yay.
- [08:42]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yay. Yay. So here's to Hachette. Great editors, great book lovers, and especially to children. I was thinking about your kids yesterday. I was thinking, wow, they must be really big now.
- [09:00]
Zibby Owens
Yes, they are big now. Yeah, they're 18. My twins are 18 and my little guys, quote unquote, are 11 and 12. But they are not little anymore. So.
- [09:11]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yes, yes, yes. I remember when you were reading paradise on Fire to one of your sons and you. Oh, I might have to skip over this one because it was. Yes, there was some tragedy in it. You know, I bet he's ready for now.
- [09:25]
Zibby Owens
Yes, 100%. Oh my gosh.
- [09:29]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Well, it's a pleasure. And you know, we just got in some reviews from the, the Guardian in the UK and the Irish Times that they are absolutely loving Ghost Boys, the graphic novel.
- [09:42]
Zibby Owens
Can I just say, I read the whole thing in one sitting and I loved it so much.
- [09:48]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Jewel.
- [09:49]
Zibby Owens
I like, you know how certain books you just, you can feel with your whole body. I felt it with my whole body. It was so, such an emotional, visceral read. So beautifully done, not heavy handed, but just the right everything to make anyone just feel absolutely heartbroken and yet also inspired by the end. Inspired to act. Why don't you talk a little bit about Ghost Boys, both the original and the graphic novel and how the whole thing happened.
- [10:22]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Well, also you just proved once again that you are my perfect reader. Because in your explanation of what I was trying to achieve and what you felt they matched match one. Oh yeah. You know, and I think that's the trick about doing historical fiction or dealing with, you know, sort of tragic real subjects. Like, you know, when I did with towers falling and 9 11. You know that you're writing it for youth audience. And so you want to be real. You don't want to patronize them, but you also want to get them through, feel that catharsis of how art and also their own agency as youth that they can make the world a better place. So I am proud of Ghost Boys. I wrote, wrote the novel at the request of the same wonderful editor, Alvina Ling. And I never write anything that people ask me to write. Alvina said to me, she says, jewel, we were walking in the hallway at Hachette Books and she said, jewel, do you ever want to write about the murder of young black boys? And I was like, no. And I told my family no. And they said, no, Mama, no, don't do it. But to be fair to Alvina, she had heard me talking about the Stop and Frisk policy of how it was affecting Evan, who was at Columbia, and just different issues of having a young man of color be out into the world. And I thought and thought and thought. And then I thought, you know, one, I've been practicing to write for youth, like all my life, that this is my dream. I like writing about hard subjects, that there's something special about writing a book that's, that's so hard that you don't think you can quite do it. But in the striving for it, all of a sudden, you know, you learn so much. So I decided, if not somebody else, why shouldn't it be me? I'll give it a try. And I had a deal with Elvina that if the book wasn't any good, we simply wouldn't publish it. And I'd give them back the money. I don't care. But I was going to try. And also I wanted to try because I was a little girl when Emmett Till was murdered. And images of Emmett Till in his casket have haunted me my entire life. And so one of the things I wanted to sort of address was, you know, why was I now a grandmother? Not the, you know, the little little girl, you know, I'm a grandmother and there are still young, innocent African American boys being murdered. You know, we had had the trayvon, the Quan McDonald Tamir. And so trying to address that history is what really motivated me to tell the book. But in the novel, trying to figure out how to tell it, that's the real core part. And one of the things that I drew upon was my African American tradition where Grandma used to say, Jo Tao, every goodbye ain't gone. And it really means that the spirit lives on. And whether you want to say the spirit goes to heaven or to some other place, you know, it's like an ancestor, an elder, that something so beautiful as a human soul does not ever dissipate. And that in fact that the space or the line between the living and dead according to African American culture and other cultures too, can be very, very thin. So one day we'll talk about Grandma telling me about how to bring back people from the dead. But we'll save that for later.
- [14:00]
Zibby Owens
I mean, I'm interested. Today's episode is sponsored by Wayfair. The new year is here and it is time to get back into an at home routine you love and elevate your space with Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in your house, Wayfair is your one stop shop. I actually have used Wayfair so much because over the holidays I stayed with my mother in Arizona and told her it was definite time to redo the guest room where she has my kids stay because she hasn't touched it in decades and it needed a refresh. And I said, you know what Wayfair? So we got beds, lamps, side tables. We've been doing the whole room. It looks amazing. Everything came within a few days in perfect shape. It has been so fun. Wayfair has everything like the most enormous selection of home decor items and exactly what we wanted for the space we had. And it's still a work in progress. And I will share some pictures on Instagram. We're obsessed so you should get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year as well. For way less head to Wayfarer.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [15:24]
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- [16:26]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Packages by Expedia, you were made to occasionally take the hard route to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We were made to easily bundle your trip Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.
- [16:44]
Zibby Owens
You hooked me with that.
- [16:46]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Actually she told me the spell and actually I was doing I was a young woman and I was interviewing Robin Morgan at Ms. Magazine. And then I was from her I was assigned to to interview Eartha Kitt, right? And Eartha Kitt sat there and told me the same spell that my grandmother in Pittsburgh told me and it was just really amazing. And Eartha Kitt wanted also to play Marie Laville, my Bo Voodoo Dreams novel character. So there's some real good hoodoo folklore in my family background. And Grandma Always said, pay attention to the signs and that all things that are valuable in life can't necessarily be seen. You know, it's kind of like, you know, Shakespeare, that line, you know, where there are more things than dreamt of in your universe. Or I messed that up, I'm sure. But. So when I was trying to figure out how to write Ghost Boys, I also wanted to make sure that the characters weren't just victimized again. Sometimes in stories, we have the victim who then is the catalyst for everybody else who's still living to become more empowered, that they get their consciousness raised. And in a way, I didn't want to make my victim, you know, like that. I wanted my victim to have an arc, you know, a character drive. And so I start the novel off with Jerome being dead. And so that Western narrative tradition, you would read a novel linearly thinking, oh, you know, when's he going to get shot? When are you going to have the big action? But by making him dead, it forces people to think, what else then is going to happen? What else is the story? And the story, of course, is that the ghost of Emmett Till, the gh of, you know, decades of murdered black children, still haunt this world, looking for, you know, people who can make life for the living better. You know, so the message is, is that their power gets, you know, like, translated into real day power. And I often felt that it was Thurgood Marshall's experience with Emmett Till's, you know, death and the subsequent trial where actually they thought he was a white man, and they allowed him to, like, be down on the front floor when he figured out he was black. Thurgood Marshall had to go up in the balcony. But I think about how Emmett helped promote that Supreme Court justice wonder man. And so in this story, Emmett teaches Jerome how to promote among the living justice and equality. And interestingly enough, he finds the person that Jerome needs to speak to is Sarah, the white police officer's daughter. And Sarah's based on a lot of young people that I know who are not scared of difference, who are not frightened or carry stereotypes in their mind, or else they've already dissuaded them that they don't necessarily have racial bias and they're not racist, you know, they're just wonderful. So it's sort of like it made sense to me to have Sarah, who can open up the dialogue with her father, the police officer who shot this child, who can actually perhaps one day, I suggest, become a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall, that she's part of that Youthful generation that can make indeed the world a better place. So it's kind of complicated. And then there's Carlos. Carlos, who is an Hispanic fellow, and actually he takes Jerome's place among the living with Jerome's sister. And I had just read an article, there were like 2 million African slaves, or Africans and. Or Africans in Mexico. I never knew that. And so they were talking about how, you know, probably the Africans because of their spiritual traditions, when they heard about Day of the Dead, you know, or the Catholic, you know, all Saints Day, they just said, oh yeah, the more the merrier. And that they would have come together, that the dead are still, you know, somehow with us. And so adding Carlos was very important to me. But it also opened up this idea that it didn't necessarily need to be just an African American that would be murdered. But working through the 911 and the oppression of Muslims, Hispanics, it's just that sometimes too much of the times, people use skin color as this sort of flag for them to think all kinds of stereotypical things about brown and black children. And so I wanted to, you know, make an awareness that this could expand out in all kinds of other ways to all other kinds of ethnic groups. But the Ghost Boys, a graphic novel, I wanted it right away. Zibby, oh, can I have a graphic novel? And I kept getting no, no, no, no, no, you know, you know, publishing. But finally they found. Started during the pandemic.
- [22:06]
Zibby Owens
Wow, that is. That is a long wait.
- [22:09]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yes, a lot. Basically, you know, almost six years for it to come out. And, you know, I was thinking too about, you know, you have a family of filmmakers, you know, and how. And I hope one day one of my books will be a film. But it's how the collaborative artistry can make something spectacularly new. And that's what I think. Seed horror. He had Ziggy, he's from Africa, that he basically was the perfect co partner. He got it. And his work is absolutely stunning. And several outlets have said that they believe Ghost Boys, the graphic novel, is in fact better than the original novel. And I'm going to tell you something. I agree. It's almost as though this great visual artist matched my intent and yet took it another step further with his very, very best. And between the two of us, you know, in our realms, we created something that is incredible, new and wondrous in a different kind of way. I'm also super excited because there are a lot of kids that like graphic novels, you know, and it's just a way of opening up reading, opening My work up to another audience. But did you know when I was learning how to read, I was into graphic novels, except we called them comic books. We couldn't afford to buy books. And so I would collect the pop bottles and for. I would get 5 cents a bottle or something like that. And so I would get the illustrated classics, the Prince and the Pauper, you know, King Arthur, Prince Valiant, you know, Heidi. And that they meant so much to me because I could own them. You know, I could afford to own them. So in some ways, it's full circle to see me go from you know, my comic books to having this graphic novel that's so stellar with my stellar partner, Cedar. And it's also so remarkable to me about the. The Coretta Scott King Award that I was a kid who didn't know until I was a junior in college that black people even wrote books. So it's kind of like, whoa, I've lived a good life. I'm so blessed and I'm so lucky in how all the. Well, I would say that probably all people like your ancestors, too, all the good people in the world who are dedicated to literacy help grow me, the teachers, the librarians. You know, I spoke to you once about my mentor, Jan Cohen, who's now long been dead, that she introduced me to the connection between Jewish participation in the civil rights movement and so Magic City is a lot about that connection. And I just felt all. And particularly not just people of different ethnic groups, but women. Women who lifted me up, you know. And so now it's my turn to do. Well, I try to do lifting for other people, too, like you do. I mean, you lift us all up, Zibby, but yes, but yes. It took me a while to get here, but boy, am I so glad I got here.
- [25:33]
Zibby Owens
Oh, my gosh, what an amazing story. You are such a spectacular woman and the best heart and the nicest person. It couldn't happen to a nicer person.
- [25:43]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
I better late than never. And you know, they say how creative writing teachers, you know, that they can't do so. Or they can. Yes.
- [25:53]
Zibby Owens
Those who can't do writing. Yeah, those who can't do teach. Something like that.
- [25:56]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yes, yes, yes. And actually, and I'm going to give a shout out and you might know her work to Tiari Jones, new book coming out, Kin. And Tiari was my student. And in fact, she left a PhD program in Georgia to come study at Arizona State University with me and Ron Carson and many others. And we met at a Tucson book festival some years back just after she was picked as an Oprah pick, you know, and I knew she was coming. I just didn't know when. But I was getting ready to go out and catch my plane, and she was coming in in a limo, you know, and she jumped out of the car and says, joel, I was just talking about you, you know, and how, you know, you've been a big part of my life. And I was thinking, oh, well, that's pretty cool, because not only am I a teacher, and look at Teari, who's just awesome and wonderful, and I'm still doing that. I was still being invited, too. So I kind of like the idea that I'm a teacher who also keeps doing what it is that I do. But don't you find, Zibby, that when you write an awful lot and when you read an awful lot, it's like such a deep yearning, like, if I'm not writing or working on something, then there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with my heart or my. My psychic balance. Yeah. And sometimes, I don't know if your family does this, but sometimes my husband will say to me, joel, write another book, please.
- [27:29]
Zibby Owens
No, my husband does not say that to me. But that's adorable. I love that.
- [27:34]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yeah. He said, because I get. I get. I get grouched. So it's. So. It's also nice to know that there's still place in the world for us to follow our dreams, but also in the sense that you would follow this whether you were making a living at it or not, you would find a way because it so speaks to your soul and who you were meant to be and who you're becoming. And I just thank my stars that I so easily could have missed that. Do you know what I mean? I so easily could have missed that opportunity were at 19, it was like, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. You know, I was studying acting and dancing because that's what I saw on tv.
- [28:18]
Zibby Owens
I mean, you're. You're still doing the dancing here today, so you. You fit it all in, Joel.
- [28:23]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
And also, you know how on TV, black folks could do the sports and they could do, you know, the. The singing and dancing. That's what those days, grandma would be ironing on her ironing board, and I'd be watching the 4 o' clock movie, you know, Bing Crosby, you know, Bob Hope and that kind of stuff, you know. But I would. I love it when occasionally there would be a character of color, you know. But. So I was going to be an Actress, you know, a dancer. But it's kind of like, I'm so glad I switched. I switched out of that major. Did you know I went to Carnegie Mellon, the great drama school with junior and all. Yeah, and all those other great stars. And the woman who played Angelica Schuyler, a fabulous famous school. So also, there was something about that call when I saw it in the live this book in the library that I had made it to my junior year. And when you get to your junior year in those days at Carnegie Mellon's drama school, it meant that they weren't going to kick you out. Our class of 50 had gone down to eight, you know, and Ted Danson was a couple of years ahead of me and all these great stars, and yet I made the switch. So it's sort of like, I can't believe as a kid I must have been like, that was really brave of me. It was thinking about it. That was really brave of me.
- [29:42]
Zibby Owens
You left the very predictable career path of being an actor to try something even more predictable.
- [29:49]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
And.
- [29:50]
Zibby Owens
Wait, Jewel, you have another book too, Douglas. Women. Tell me about this one.
- [29:54]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Oh, yes, and actually, I think Christina sent you the new cover, Douglas. Yes, it's actually this is the old cover.
- [30:04]
Zibby Owens
Okay.
- [30:04]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
I wrote this. Oh, my gosh. Well, I was an adult novelist before I became youth novelist. And the reason is, is because I had to teach myself how to write because youth only deserved the very, very best. So I spent 30 years writing for adults. But Douglass's Women actually also won the Black Caucus American Book Award for the adult novel and it out in 2002. And it's about the black illiterate wife of Frederick Douglass and about Ottilie Essing, the German Jewish mistress of Frederick Douglass. And at different points, they actually, you know, shared the same household because Ottilie would translate in Rochester, New York, Douglass's, you know, words for the German audience, you know, and she served as a kind of editor for his work there. And then his wife would be basically in the kitchen cooking, taking care of the kids. Very interesting, interesting story. So you have two free women, a black free woman, a German Jewish woman, who actually both became enslaved in a way, romantically to this ex slave man. The thing about. And I think if I hadn't had Jan Cohen as my, one of my mentors, I might not have been. Been so attached to this subject, you know, that the idea that in this book, in the book before, with the Jewish tradition and its advocacy for civil rights, you know, my heart was open to it. But in this story I get to tell the story from the two women's point of view and at critical times. You know, Ottilie had experienced the pogroms in Germany, and she was actually fair skinned and looked like the Aryan ideal. And she had a sister, Lyudmila, who was actually more darker tone and dark haired, who looked, you know, more Jewish, if you want to say, which I don't really want to say, but that's how the Germans probably would have seen her in the day. So there were ways in which Ottilie got privileges her sister didn't get. There were also ways in which, because of the romantic period, and her mother and father were so deeply, deeply in love that she also had this idea that I can love, and through my love I can redeem the world. So she by choice came to America to find Frederick Douglass and she became, you know, his companion for over 30 some years. He. He was the love of her life. And Frederick Douglass said, oh, she was the wife of my mind. And when Anna, the black wife, finally died, Ottilie went to Europe because she wanted to give the family space, you know, And Frederick Douglass gave a guilt funeral for his black wife. And that was mainly like he had carrions and, you know, the, her casket, you know, in a hearse with, you know, bedazzled horses, you know, with just big, big honoring of her, which I think was from his, his guilt. But then within about you know, a year, he met a younger white woman, an American white woman, and he married her and didn't tell Ottilie. And Ottilie had been waiting for him and it was just really so abusive. And there's some discrepancy of how Ottilie died. So I won't give away the ending, but when she did die, her estate, she left all the money that she had to Frederick Douglass.
- [33:40]
Zibby Owens
Oh my gosh.
- [33:41]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
I think, yes, it was so sad. But Ana and Ottilie meet, and couple times I have in my novels are like Ghost Boys where you meet across the racial divide and you find that in looking at one another, seeing one another, that there's this love for common humanity. You know, Jerome sees, why am I looking at this white girl? You know, she reads Peter Pan. And that has nothing to do with me, you know, but Ottilie and Anna have a really good talk. Whereas women, they come to an understanding and that if circumstances had been different, they would have been allies, they would have been the best of friends. And they also best mentored Anna's daughter, Frederick's daughter. And it's really wonderful. But Ana, though she didn't go to school, though she wasn't educated, she had a kind of common sense where she kind of like by the time when Frederick's really off, because he didn't just have one mistress, he had many. Ottilie was the most long termed. She finally comes to the realization that Frederick Douglass missed her wealth of her as a woman. And unfortunately, I think Ottilie, because of romanticism and the way in which there was this ideal, she doesn't so easily escape the net. So it's also about how culture and traditions and time periods can make the smart, talented woman become enslaved in a way. And somebody who's utterly illiterate, never went to school, can have their own kind of wisdom. And so it's sort of like, wouldn't it be great to have both, you know, that all together? And there's ways in which the two of them realized that they were great compliments as women to one another.
- [35:31]
Zibby Owens
Amazing. I mean, you just don't run out of great ideas. I'm so impressed, as always. And Jewel, I love, love chatting with you. It never feels like enough time. And thank you especially for this Ghost Boys graphic novel, which is just so powerful. Congratulations on your award. Your latest adult novel, I mean, it's just amazing. So I'm wishing you all the very best.
- [35:57]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Well, thank you so very, very much. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. I think of you often.
- [36:03]
Zibby Owens
You too.
- [36:04]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Yes, I do. You are one of the shining lights in my life. Just moments. Yeah. So it's sort of. Sometimes I. I need to get better at writing notes, but there are people that I carry in my heart. And you're, You're. You're one of, you know, one of them. It's. It's. I don't know, it's part of the magic, I guess, of just what happens when humanity connects, you know, and you feel it. But I did want to say the Douglas's Women is being reissued in February on Frederick Douglass's birthday. So I also kind of like the idea that from 2002, that they still thought this book was relevant, you know, and my other novel, Magic City about the Tulsa race massacre, was published in 1998, and they reissued that on the 100th anniversary two years ago of the Tulsa race massacre. So when I look back at my legacy, I think there was ways in which I was ahead of my time, like people didn't get me, but that I was still. I'm still here. And today's award made me feel, oh, I am truly now part of my time, and it's just wonderful and having you. Of all the days you get a call. Zibby. Yeah.
- [37:17]
Zibby Owens
No, it's amazing. You're trending.
- [37:21]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Girl. I'm going to be 72 years old. It's like better late than never, you know, I decided I'm going to live until at least I'm 100. I hope. I thought I was going to die in my life, 50s, because all my relatives, like parents, grandparents, they've all. They all died basically in their 50s, you know, so when I got to my 50s, like, oh, then I got to my 60s, oh, and then my 70s, and it's like, oh, well, girl, I'm just going and I'm gonna do it. So I hope to see you. I don't. I don't want to wait three more decades, but I hope I get to see you soon.
- [37:55]
Zibby Owens
I hope so, too.
- [37:56]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Big hug. Thank you for all you do.
- [37:58]
Zibby Owens
It would be lovely. Oh, my gosh. Of course. Giving you a big hug from here.
- [38:03]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Bye. Bye. Say hello to the family. I will.
- [38:06]
Zibby Owens
You too.
- [38:07]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
And let me know if there's ever anything I can, I can, I can do for you or, or, you know, the family or whatever. It's sort of like, yeah, you could call me whenever and I would, I would be there and.
- [38:19]
Zibby Owens
You're the sweetest.
- [38:20]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
And I'm sorry for your mom's loss. I thought I knew exactly where they lived and all. Yeah. Yes. So we keep fighting through and making life a joy. I think that that's really the journey, that that's our purpose. Things will always happen and go wrong or tragedies. And I just see you as a light of always powering through, trying to make joy for your loved ones and for your community. So thank you.
- [38:46]
Zibby Owens
Oh, thank you so much. You too. Bye. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram Iby Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.
- [39:14]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
Packages by Expedia. You were made to occasionally take the hard route to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We were made to easily bundle your trip Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are atoll protected acast powers. The world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. The Real Housewives is a guilty pleasure for most.
- [39:41]
Zibby Owens
But if you're looking to not feel guilty about that pleasure, tune in to everything iconic with me, Danny Pellegrino, where I break down all the messy moments and behind the scenes antics of Bravo's popular franchise and Everything Iconic. I also interview celebrity guests like Kelly Ripa, Keke Palmer, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and more about their guilty pleasures, their past work, and so much more.
- [40:02]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
So if you're pop culture obsessed and.
- [40:04]
Zibby Owens
Find yourself watching way too much reality TV like me, tune in to Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino. Wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [40:13]
Jewel Parker Rhodes
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.