About "A Girl Called Boy" (1982):
"strong, unusual tale of time travel, with a young black girl as
distinctive as Tough Tiffany, into the slavery past she rejects in the
present. Blanche Overton Yancey would rather be called Boy than be
reminded of the ancestors for whom she's named."
(Note the initials.)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/search/books/?q=belinda%20hurmence&sf=t
(four reviews)
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/59287.Belinda_Hurmence
(reader reviews)
What I posted in 2011:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.books.childrens/c/B6XjWX-_8RY/m/ushsrNec2gMJ
Most of it:
In high school, she won an essay contest - and tea with Eleanor
Roosevelt.
Contemporary Authors:
"Although ('Tough Tiffany') was lauded, Hurmence herself was coming
under fire, she related. "Some critics started to say that blacks
should have their own writers writing about them," Hurmence once
commented. 'I agree that blacks should be writers, but I do believe it
is wrong to say that you should only write about your own culture. I
think the important thing is to write a good book. From black children
I get no objection. Where I hear an objection is from black scholars.
They don't object to my nonfiction, that is, my editing of black slave
narratives, but to my fiction. I remember one professor who really
pasted A Girl Called Boy, and it hit me hard.'
"While narrowing in on the topic of her next book, Hurmence made a
discovery. 'The more I read the more I realized that the Underground
Railroad didn't really figure with most slaves in the South. Most
slaves did not escape north but rather to someplace closer to home. So
that's when I came up with the idea for A Girl Called Boy.' In this
book, Blanche Overtha Yancey--Boy for short--despises her family's
slave origins until, in this time travel tale, she finds herself
fleeing from slave patrols in the 1850s. She experiences deprivation
and fear as a runaway, and security, complacency, and self-hatred as a
house slave before returning to the present."
(end)
Five of her books have won awards.
http://images.google.com/images?q=belinda+hurmence&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en
(photo & book covers)
WRITINGS:
Tough Tiffany, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1980.
"Eleven-year-old Tiffany, youngest member of a poor family in rural
North Carolina, takes her first steps toward adulthood.")
A Girl Called Boy, Clarion (New York, NY), 1982.
("Annoyed with her father for constantly bragging about his ancestors,
an 11-year-old black girl learns some interesting truths when she is
transported back to the year 1853.")
Tancy, Clarion (New York, NY), 1984.
("At the end of the Civil War, a young house slave on a small North
Carolina plantation searches for her mother who was mysteriously sold
when Tancy was a baby.")
The Nightwalker, Clarion (New York, NY), 1988.
("Like their Indian and English ancestors before them, the inhabitants
of Breach Island, in North Carolina's remote Outer Banks, hover on the
brink of change, their island traditions threatened by off-island
values and off-island ways. Growing up on Breach, 12-year-old Savannah
is ambivalent toward the changes. She is proud of her ``new-fangled''
family with their indoor plumbing, Mr. Coffee, and TV, but resents the
new bridge linking her home to the mainland and the Park Service
bringing tourists to nearby Shackelford Banks. Compounding the
uneasiness of the situation are the mysterious nighttime burnings of
Shackelford fishing shacks. Savannah's father, descended from
Shackelford's original Indian inhabitants, suggests that the
Nightwalker might be to blame. But just who is this Nightwalker: a
sleepwalking Indian spirit, Savannah's sleepwalking younger brother,
or the ``shadowy'' side in all of us?")
Dixie in the Big Pasture (historical novel), Clarion (New York, NY),
1994.
("In 1908, 13-year-old Dixie and her family move from Chattanooga to
the Oklahoma Territory, called the Big Pasture by the Kiowas. Kiowas
live on three sides of the family's claim, and Dixie's interaction
with her Indian neighbors, especially with the boy John Three, who
owns a pony, teaches her what Kiowa lives are like--hedged in by
poverty, shaped by missionaries. Some of the Kiowas assimilate;
others, like John Three's mother, do not.")
Nice and Ezey in Slavery Time, 2010
("Ezekiel and Nicey, young slaves of the mid-1800s, pursue their
separate dreams at their birthplace on Oak Hill Plantation.
Ezekiel's longing is simple: he wants his father—or better, he wants a
father who wants him. But at Oak Hill, nobody will talk to Ezey about
his absent dad, not his brother or his idol, Uncle Treat—not even his
mother. Despite his nickname, Ezey feels uneasy about searching for a
father people avoid mentioning. "Lady Fraidy," his friend Nicey mocks
him; and Ezey fears she's right.
Nice, on the other hand, fears nothing and nobody. She revels in new
experience, and her aim is for more, no matter the consequence. In a
community kept illiterate by law, she has somehow learned to read. Her
unique gift makes her something of a princess in the Oak Hill slave
quarters; she's confident to the point of arrogance. At a community
baptism, Nice feels entitled to change her mind about going through
the rite—even at the moment of immersion!
Both Nice and Ezey meet frustrations and disappointment at the
gathering. Yet the subtle nurturing power of their slave society
enables these two youngsters to achieve goals that neither had dared
to dream of.")
EDITOR
My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk about Slavery (slave narratives; also
see below), John Blair (Winston-Salem, NC), 1984.
Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories
of Former South Carolina Slaves (slave narratives; also see below),
John Blair (Winston-Salem, NC), 1989.
("Selected from the Federal Writers' Project slave narratives, this
first-hand account of slavery features interviews with 27 former South
Carolina slaves who were at least ten years old when they were
freed.")
Before Freedom: Forty-Eight Oral Histories of Former North & South
Carolina Slaves (combined edition of Before Freedom and My Folks Don't
Want Me to Talk about Slavery), New American Library-Dutton (New York,
NY), 1990.
We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard (Virginia slave narratives),
John Blair (Winston-Salem, NC), 1994.
Slavery Time When I Was Chillun, Putnam (New York, NY), 1997.
("Young readers meet 12 slaves men and women from mansions and
plantations, tobacco and cotton groves and share their memories of
good times and bad.")