On Sept. 15, Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, spoke at NEIU and gave the invaluable advice “not to prop your ladder against the wrong wall.”
Before she appeared on stage, the atmosphere seemed to promise another boring and pompous event, as five minutes before it started there were only a few genuine fans of Parks. But suddenly a large wave of young people entered the room. It appeared that a group of around 30 students, whose classes had been cancelled, were sent to the Stage Center Theater to make an artificial crowd.
Despite these circumstances, Parks created a wonderful, electrifying atmosphere. The fact that she was reading, or rather acting out with thrilling passion, fragments of her books and talking about her life and work with a casual, yet intelligently crafted, humor provoked laughter in the audience.
Her adventure with writing began in the fourth grade. During those times she was hiding with her dog under the piano creating her first “novels.” As a consequence of being a rather poor speller in high school, she decided, with advice from a counselor, to study chemistry. Dying from boredom in the laboratory while wearing a white uniform, goggles, and rubber gloves, Suzan repeated to herself that she is not supposed to be a writer. A landmark in her life was when she read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Even though she hardly understood the novel, her heart started beating, and after a couple of months she was inspired again.
According to Parks, it is never too late to follow the voice of your heart. You should always be convinced that the life path you chose is the one which gives satisfaction. That is why she decides every single day to be a writer.
James Baldwin, who wielded tremendous influence on her life, first discovered Parks’ talent and helped in uncovering genuine personality.
She admitted that “the whole world was different after the Pulitzer,” but she proved herself to be a wonderful woman who still has passion in her eyes and enjoys talking with fans.
Inspired by the meeting, I went home, dug up my dust-covered paints from the bottom of my closet and painted on some old, forgotten canvas. I followed Parks’ message that you simply have to do what you really love. I also promised myself that my next piece of reading will be one of her plays. If her literature is “much larger and more intelligent” than she is (as she described it), then I would like to experience once again the sense of catharsis I felt that evening in Stage Center Theater.
For more information about Parks, visit: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ vg/ Bios/entries/parks_suzanlori.html.