More than any other book I’ve written, Letters from My Sister was inspired by my own family. Most especially, it’s inspired by my maternal grandmother, Icie Wyatt McCranie, and her only sister, Effie Jane Wyatt, for whom my mother is named. The protagonist, Callie Bullock, is named for Callie Mitchell, a teacher and artist who knew her way around livestock. (We weren’t related by blood, but she let me call her “Aunt Callie” anyway.)
My grandmother—we called her “Grandme” because an older cousin tried for “Grandma” and misfired—lived for almost a century. Near the end of her life, my mother asked her if she had any regrets, and she said, “I wish I’d been more like Effie.”
I never knew my great-aunt. She died before I was born. But by all accounts, she was very feminine and refined, a schoolteacher and faithful churchgoer. My grandmother, on the other hand, thought most women were boring! She much preferred talking with local farmers about their crops and the cotton prices. Though a devout Christian, she had a spotty attendance record at our local Baptist church and would defend her absences thusly: “I am not a Baptist. I am a member of the Christian church.”
This book is not the story of Grandme and Aunt Effie. It’s a work of fiction. But the relationships they had with each other and the rest of their family—as well as their closeness to a Black woman named Bama McCoy, who ran the family home—lie at the heart of the book.
Bama not only helped deliver many (if not most) of my grandmother’s eight children but also taught her all the skills she would need to run a household. My grandmother’s respect wasn’t easily won, but she revered Bama.
While the bonds between two Southern families—one White, one Black—at the turn of the twentieth century might seem unusual, I know that they were possible. And I believe our innate humanity, a gift from God, will always have the power to overcome hatred and injustice.
As a writer and a human being, I don’t think we should ever settle for what’s likely. We should always reach for—and celebrate—what’s possible.