As 2023 soon comes to a close, I don’t want to miss the chance to point you to one last book.
In truth, I meant to highlight Leta McCollough Seletzky’s book months ago. Leta is a friend, after all. We’ve partnered together for a couple of events and have cheered one another on through the slog of book-writing.
I guess it’s only natural that in my season of book writing, she sent me a handful of answers and I just plumb forgot to post them. Then I remembered, but I hadn’t read the book yet, so I put it off and then I forgot again …and here we are, nearly four months later, her answers still waiting and ready for public consumption.
Her book, The Kneeling Man,1 isn’t one you’re going to want to miss. From the publisher, this is “the intimate and heartbreaking story of a Black undercover police officer who famously kneeled by the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr—and a daughter’s quest for the truth about her father.” Part history and part memoir, if you gulp down history like water and pant for good storytelling, you’d best add Leta’s book to your list.
Online book club in the New Year, anyone?
Enjoy!
Cara: How are you coloring outside of the lines, all over again, when it comes to your writing and this book in particular?
Leta: I think the book itself is an example of coloring outside the lines, because for me, staying inside the lines meant maintaining a longstanding silence about the story contained in those pages. Staying inside the lines meant running from who my father was and the work he’d done. It also meant running from my own past and the city that shaped me. At bottom, I was afraid of what I’d uncover in delving into these matters, and what I’d have to feel as a result.
But with the birth of my children came the realization that the cost of silence was too great and that I was attempting to outrun ghosts that followed me wherever I went. And so I wrote. With writing and stillness came the courage to break still more silences and color outside more lines, which I’m doing now with my next project (a novel).
Cara: Putting ourselves out there when it comes to storytelling always feels a little scary. How was publishing scary and perhaps even vulnerable for you?
Leta: On some level, I was afraid of what the response to my book would be, particularly from those invested in or persuaded by conspiracy theories about Dr. King’s assassination. And there was no way to tell the story without making myself vulnerable, because I had to lay bare deep layers of my intellectual and emotional processes—how I felt about my father’s story and how it shaped my own. Part of me feared how people would react to all this. After all, “vulnerable” literally means “liable to be wounded.” I didn’t want to get hurt.
I didn’t want anyone else I wrote about to get hurt, either. The story encompasses not only my father but numerous other family members. They didn’t choose to be part of the narrative, and I constantly examined my work to ensure I was discussing them in a responsible, tactful, and ethical manner.
Cara: What is your heart, your intention, the real push behind writing this book?
Leta: My heart and intention, as well as the push behind writing the book, are to add a critical missing puzzle piece to my own family history and American history. The truth of my father’s story (and mine) speak to the arc of Black America's story: the strivings to secure the promises of democracy from within and in conflict with oppressive systems. I hope THE KNEELING MAN prompts readers to examine who they've chosen to be in relationship to the institutions in their communities, and what resistance could look like for them.
Cara: Okay. We talk so much about audience when it comes to book-writing, but what did you learn about yourself along the way?
Leta: I learned that I’m less self-conscious than I thought I was, and more extroverted than I ever would've believed. As scary as it was to expose so much of myself in the book, I enjoyed connection with readers this level of transparency allowed. For the same reasons, I’ve enjoyed speaking at book events and meeting readers.
Cara: Anything else from your ordinary, everyday life you want to share with us?
Leta: I want to encourage all the writers who don’t necessarily have big blocks of time in which to write—those of us who might get only 500 words on the page in a given day. It all matters and it all counts—and it adds up, too. If it didn’t, THE KNEELING MAN and my other work wouldn’t exist.
Find Leta’s book wherever books are sold! Here’s an additional link to Bookshop, where every purchase supports local, independent bookstores.