When Maizon returns to Brooklyn from Blue Hill, the boarding school she’s been attending, she’s not sure if she and Margaret will still be best friends.
In the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York
In Bushwick and in Provincetown, Massachusetts
A lot of readers wrote and asked what happened after Maizon got home from boarding school. I decided I’d write a trilogy.
Maizon Singh is one of the few black girls at an all-white boarding school. She doesn’t feel like she belongs there and misses Madison Street and the family and friends she left behind.
In Connecticut in the fictionalized town of Canturbury
In the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn, New York and in San Francisco, California
I wanted to write Maizon’s side of the story and about what happens when she went away to boarding school. It was the first book I wrote that really dealt with racism.
Margaret and Maizon are best friends. When Margaret’s father dies and Maizon gets accepted to a boarding school in Connecticut, Margaret wonders if life on Madison Street will ever be the same again.
In the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York
In the apartment I grew up in on Madison Street in Brooklyn, New York and in Garden City, Long Island.
Growing up, there were very few books about black girls and even fewer about people like the people I knew in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I wanted to write about the people I loved and the neighborhood that had been my home for many years. Last Summer With Maizon was my first novel.
Lonnie C. Motion has had some tough breaks in his life. But this fall, Lonnie’s fifth grade class is learning to write poetry and suddenly, Lonnie is finding the words to tell the world about his family, the fire that took his parents away, his little sister, his world.
In the Bedford Stuyvesant and Park Slope sections of Brooklyn, NY
In Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Lonnie’s voice was in my head. The poems started coming and the rest…the rest is this book, I guess.
“Feathers” takes place in the 1970s and begins when a boy walks into the classroom who is very different from the other kids there. Or maybe he isn’t so different…
I never name the place but was imagining this point between the Brooklyn and Queens border — right near Kennedy Airport.
Here in Brooklyn and over the year while I was on the road.
“Feathers” is a book I wrote because I wanted to write about the many ways people find Hope in the world.
Lonnie and his sister Lili are in foster care after the death of their parents. They live with separate families and this book is Lonnie’s letters to Lili that he writes to stay connected to her and as he says “to be the rememberer” while they are living separately.
In Brooklyn.
In Brooklyn and also parts were written on planes as I traveled.
I wanted Lonnie and Lili to find peace – within themselves and in the bigger world. The book started out being about one kind of peace and then became about the many ways we search for and eventually all kinds of peace.
The first time Tupac is shot, D Foster walks into the lives of Neeka and her best friend. From that point on, no one’s world is ever the same. D Foster lives with her foster mom who lets her ‘roam’ while Neeka and the narrator aren’t even allowed to leave their block. But the three soon realize they have a lot in common – including their love of Tupac – his lyrics, his life, the way he keeps on keeping on and this helps them move through the years between 11 and 13 in search of their Big Purpose even as the narrator’s brother is wrongly accused of a crime and gets sent to jail and D’s absent mom keeps disappointing her.
In Queens, New York.
Mostly here in Brooklyn.
I think Tupac was an amazing activist and I wanted to create a story around his story. The more I wrote, the more there was to say Ð about Tupac and about the girls.