I have told the story and am tired of telling it, and the story is not the point. I was sexually assaulted by several young men when I was 12. It is unfathomable to consider how a forced pregnancy would have further altered the trajectory of her life. She is still dealing with the repercussions of that trauma.
It was the early 1970s.Ī pregnancy would have, in Debbie’s words, ruined her life. Her mother took Debbie to a doctor, who said that because of her scar tissue, she was sexually active and must have a boyfriend. Her stepfather often threatened to kill her younger brother and her mother if Debbie told anyone, so when the fear of pregnancy became too consuming, she told her mother she was assaulted at school. She had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn. The abuse went on for years, and as Debbie got older, she was constantly terrified that she was pregnant. “When I’m writing I’m always trying to write these twists and turns that, as you’re reading the book, you get to - it’s called these oh-no-he-didn’t or no-she-didn’t or no-that-didn’t-happen moment where, you know, you want to call your friend and say, are you on page 40? Get to page 40.”Īuthor Eric Jerome Dickey accepts an award at the 5th Anniversary of the African American Literary Award Show at the Harlem Gatehouse on Septemin New York City.My wife’s stepfather began raping her when she was 11 years old.
“I’m always trying to write a good story,” he told NPR in 2007. He developed his narrative skills through creative writing classes at UCLA and through reading favorite authors included Judy Blume.
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He worked as a software engineer in the aerospace industry, but found himself becoming more interested in the arts. He moved to Los Angeles after college and eventually set much of his work there. He was a great storyteller.”ĭickey was a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and a computer technology major at the University of Memphis. “His were some of the first novels I ever read about black people that weren’t about slavery or civil rights.
“I am truly saddened to hear about the passing of Eric Jerome Dickey,” author Roxane Gay tweeted Tuesday. He wrote 29 novels in all, according to his publisher, and has more than 7 million copies in print worldwide. “You’ve got to bring something to it, and what you bring is the understanding of the character you get from doing your homework, from understanding the little stuff like speech patterns and the way the character walks, and from understanding the big stuff - your character’s motivation.” And in theater you learn about character,” he told BookPage in 2000. “In comedy you learn to write with flow - segue, setup, and punch line - but in a way that people won’t see or notice.
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He also worked on the screenplay for the 1998 movie “Cappuccino,” wrote a comic book miniseries for Marvel, and contributed to such anthologies as “Mothers and Sons” and “Black Silk: A Collection of African American Erotica.” It brought him a wide readership through such novels as “Sister, Sister” and “Naughty or Nice” and through his “Gideon” crime fiction series, which included “Sleeping With Strangers” and “Resurrecting Midnight.” She did not immediately provide details beyond listing four daughters among his survivors.ĭickey was an aspiring actor and stand-up comic who began writing fiction in his mid-30s and shaped a witty, conversational and sometimes graphic prose style. NEW YORK (AP) - Eric Jerome Dickey, the bestselling novelist who blended crime, romance and eroticism in “Sister, Sister,” “Waking With Enemies” and dozens of other stories about contemporary Black life, has died at age 59.ĭickey’s publicist at Penguin Random House, Emily Canders, told The Associated Press that the author died Sunday in Los Angeles after a long illness.