Much of the slave narratives were actually based on stories told to me as a child by elderly black people. Some of those stories are mixed with fictional characters and some aren’t. My writing reflects a lot about my life also. I was so badly abused as a child that I found myself studying slavery because I knew they understood what true suffering was, and I had early ancestors who suffered through slavery. Truthfully speaking, my life has been pure hell on earth, and for many years I was totally lost. When I was ten years old, I almost died several times, once from a ruptured appendix. I was raised by an alcoholic mother who was forced by fate into a life of gambling and prostitution. She never even met her father because he disappeared when she was too young to even remember him.
