Author's Statement:

My second grade teacher was a family friend named "Gwen," although her name was the more generally spelled, "Gwendolyn." In the mid-1980s I visited the city in South Carolina that was the inspiration for my first novel. At my former teacher's home as we spoke I said, "I don't know where I get this idea that I want to write. Gwendolyn Anderson, author of Profiles of Black Folks in Anderson County South Carolina and Coauthor of The Legacy of Black Pioneers said, "You always wanted to write". She remembered what for me had become dormant during decades of immersion in school, family and career. Only at a high school class reunion, when the program for that momentous day was presented, was I reminded that classmates had asked me to write words for our class song-to the music of "Sweet Lelani" In 1975 a Skokie, Illinois neighbor called to say, "I hear you like to write. I'm starting a newspaper and want you to do a column Until 1981 "Smarts and Dums," was a monthly opportunity to comment on observations of everything from family to world events. Opportunity to continue the column accompanied me through another independent newspaper and to North Carolina in the early 1990s. Poetry, stories and continual revisions of Growing Up Nigger Rich, second completed novel and a third in process continued. GUNR, as the novel is known in shorthand, was written, not to "be famous" as a friend exclaimed, but to share perceptions, observations and thoughts from an experience that will, I hope, resonate within readers. Please, ENJOY!