- Photo Credit: Rochelle Scott Design and Photography
Victoria Christopher Murray tackles that law in her upcoming heart wrenching novel, Stand Your Ground available June 30th. Readers, please beware that you will need a box of Kleenex to even get through the first chapter. The emotions of a mother and father when two policemen, one black and one white are standing at their front door, having to deliver the news that their son is dead. You can read the first chapter on www.victoriachristophermurray.com.
- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Touchstone (June 30, 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1476792992
- ISBN-13: 978-1476792996
Why did Victoria write Stand Your Ground?
"Not again," were words that
kept reverberating through my mind on February 15, 2014. We were just a few
weeks away from the second anniversary of Trayvon Martin's murder and as I
watched the verdict come down in the first trial of Michael Dunn (the man who
murdered Jordan Davis) I felt like this country was taking giant leaps
backwards.
It
had happened again. While Michael Dunn had been found guilty of attempted
murder, the jury couldn't reach a verdict on the murder charge for Jordan
Davis's death.
Of
course my social media timelines blew up. People were upset and rightfully
so...though, I didn't understand the specific reactions. People attacked the
men and women of the jury, and then, there were those who were once again
calling for America to boycott one of its own states. "Nobody go to
Florida!" became the social media mantra.
That
confused me -- I didn't understand how people could get upset with Americans
who had not only stepped up to fulfill their jury duty, but who were following
the law. And it was even more confusing that people wanted to boycott Florida
when two dozen other states had some version of the same law. So what...were
people going to boycott every state? Were they going to boycott the states
where they lived?
I
couldn't make sense out of what I thought was nonsense. I couldn't understand
why people were attacking juries and attacking states, and not going after the
real culprit. Why not make this a political rallying cry? Why not register
thousands of people to vote? Why not go after the law?
Yes,
people are behind the law, but not the people who would suffer under a boycott.
And not the people who fulfilled their civic duty by serving on the jury.
It
was that night and those reactions that started the seed of this novel to grow
inside of me. I so wanted to get people to understand that the law was the
problem. I wanted people to understand the law better, I wanted people to know
that Stand Your Ground is not a defense in itself, it is part of self
defense. And though I had never been
through anything like this myself personally, I wanted people to really think
about the families in these situations. Maybe all of that would get us to
finally stand our ground...stand up and do something. Do something that
would matter, do something that would count.
And
while this idea began to brew inside of me, one of my friends on FaceBook said,
"Victoria, you should write a book about this." Others agreed, saying
they believed that I could teach something. That was when I knew that I did
have a platform to reach thousands of people about this -- I could do it
through entertainment; I could do it through a book.
It
was my editor who challenged me to add layers to this story and to show both
sides of this tragedy. It was my
publisher who gave me the title.
And
so it was on and I was ready.
But
then, I wasn't as ready as I thought. When I sat down and thought about these
women in Stand Your Ground -- the mother of the victim and the wife of the
shooter, it became such a difficult book to write. Of course, the emotions that
I had to write for the mother were clear and obvious. What I didn't expect was
to feel for the wife of the shooter. These were two women who were suffering --
in different ways -- but still, they suffered. And as I lived with both of them
in my head for all of those months, I suffered with them.
Another
thing that surprised me a bit about writing this book was the language. I
always believe in being true to my characters, but to this point, profanity
hasn't had any place in my novels. Not that there is much inside of Stand Your
Ground; but I'm sure you can imagine that the N word -- a word I abhor -- comes
up a time or two.
But
if I wanted to write the truth, which I always try to do, if I wanted to speak
to the two opposing sides of Stand Your Ground, I had to speak their language
-- especially the language they would use in this particular situation.
So,
I went with my characters. And I took this journey. Never before can I say that
a book I've written has changed me. But writing this one did. It wasn't writing
this book alone that changed me -- it was that I was half-way through writing
this book when Eric Garner was choked to death in New York, and then Michael
Brown was executed in the streets of Ferguson. I wrote this novel while those
incidents and the aftermath played as background music in my mind.
And
I changed.
I
wrote and I changed. I wrote and I became an Angry Black Woman.
My
prayer, though, is that I will channel that anger in the right way. I was able
to work some of that anger out in the pages of this book. Now, I hope that I'll
be able to work that anger out in a way that will help to change America -- for
the better.
And
that begins with repealing Stand Your Ground.
We
must know the facts. We must never forget....
Now that you've had the chance to read the first chapter...and now that you have a better understanding of why Victoria wrote this novel, I hope you'll head over to Amazon or Barnes and Nobel and pre-order your copy.
No comments:
Post a Comment