THE LITTLE
PROFESSOR
Interview with Dr . Jewell Parker Rhodes
BY SUE ELLER hrough multidimensional characterdriven stories , barriers break and empathy blossoms .”
These words by Dr . Jewell Parker Rhodes are a window into her heart and can be seen on the landing page at jewellparkerrhodes . com . Her journey to becoming a best-selling author and professor of English and creative writing breaks down barriers of its own .
“ When I was a little girl , books were very important to me ,” Jewell says . Her family was part of the low-income working class , and she was the book lover of the bunch . In fact , they used to call her “ The Little Professor .” None of them realized she would be the first to attend college at Carnegie- Mellon and earn two doctorates .
Raised by her grandmother , who couldn ’ t afford to buy books for her , her teachers and librarians kept feeding her with books . Jewell wrote her first story in third grade and illustrated it too . “ The Last Scream ” was its name , and she still has it to this day . It was a little horror novel , and her teacher had her read it to all the third-grade classes . “ Even though I read and wrote things all the time , no one ever said to me that I could be a writer .”
She was studying theatre at Carnegie- Mellon . When she was a junior , she walked into the library one day and saw a book on the new fiction shelf . “ Corregidora ,” written by Gayl Jones , was the first book written by a black woman she had ever seen . It was a revelation to her . She never no one ever said to me that
I could be a writer .
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