[00:00:55] Speaker A: Sat.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: You are listening to KFAI 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected] this is right on Radio, the show where.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: We talk to local, national and international.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Authors about craft, creativity and the ideas behind their writing.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Emma, would you like to introduce your.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Right now in the studio, we have Deborah Snow.
Welcome.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Deborah is here to talk about her book, House on Rondo. The House on Rondo captures the heartbreak, resistance, and resilience that marks a community sacrifice in the name of progress, a progress that has never seemed to favor black families and the neighborhoods that haunts the cities like St. Paul to this day.
As the young girl learns what can be destroyed and what cannot, her story teaches us that joy, community, and love persist even amid a violence and loss.
And, Deborah, welcome to the show.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: All right, we're just gonna start off with some questions, and then afterwards, Deborah's gonna read a beautiful excerpt from her book. But first, I have my favorite question is why this. What came up with this idea originally?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Well, it's been a passion of mine. It's been an obsession.
My grandparents lived on Rondeau Avenue right in the middle of it. And every Sunday, my family would drive from north Minneapolis down University to Victoria street, take a left, and there was Grandma and Grandpa's house, and we would be there all Sunday.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: All Sunday.
Was that mostly for, like, churches, I'm guessing, or. Because, like, that's also a prevalent theme in the book as well. It's like the church community as well.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: We weren't so churchy. Yeah. But we just like to come. And we are very close family, very intergenerational.
And so my mother grew up on Rondo Avenue. The only reason why I didn't is because she married a Northside boy, and that's why I ended up being a Northside girl instead of a Rondo girl.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: How much of this book is autobiographical?
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Well, some of it is.
I like to think that every author uses a little bit of their life in the book.
And I think it's important for black writers to make sure that they relate black culture in their work. And I was steeped in black culture.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Did you reach out to extended family members for input of this book? How did they receive it?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: You know what? Unfortunately, they're all half deceased, except for my father, who was 97 years old, and he helped me fill in a lot of stuff. But I also did quite a bit of research in the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, Hennepin County Central Library, Ramsey County History Minnesota Department of Transportation and also the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
because it was Covid.
I had to do a lot of online research because it just, you know, things were not available.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Well, I want to kind of go back in towards that point about in the book. There are a lot of historical photos that you just mentioned that you would research for. Were there ones that you had to remove, take away, or ones that you were like, I really want this in this book at this point?
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Well, the ones that you see are the ones I really want in the book. I had others, but I didn't want it to be heavy on the illustration part. But I really advocated for the ones that are in. I thought they really served the narrative.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: I thought, like, what I loved about those photos is that it just brought an extra life to the area. I was born in 95 in a completely different part of the country.
So it's like, oh, this kind of brings out a beautiful contextual.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: It does.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: It brings in a life to the book that I really haven't really seen it a lot in like children's literature.
And that's also. I kind of want to talk about that was. Did you intend the audience for this to be children or.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: You know, when I wrote the book, I just wanted to write the story, the narrative, wherever it landed. In the marketing of books, I did not have that in mind.
I had a story to tell and I had a way. I wanted the craft, I wanted to use and I wanted to make a historical fiction.
And if it resonated with young people, that was even better.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I've noticed that a lot of the book deals with girls and like, basically young girlhood. Was there like a specific reason why you would chose girls are then like. Yeah. Can you elaborate on that?
[00:06:33] Speaker A: I think they're, you know. One of my favorite books was Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eyes.
That is also a book about young girls and how they are perceived, the beauty.
And so I really wanted to write a book that focused on young black girls and what their feelings were, how they were going to manage in society, what they thought about their community, their friends.
It was just a natural feeling for me after researching some of the other works of black authors and brown Hispanic authors that we really needed. I really wanted to focus on girls.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Oh, that's so sweet. I. One of the other things, especially with this book that deals with heavy topics, but one of the characters that I personally resonated with was actually Betsy because of her family issues were similar to mine growing up. And what I loved about her and like, what I've noticed in the book was the community care of, like, external. Mostly older black women, mostly taking care of her. And I think I thought that was just a beautiful piece of prose, quite frankly, was Betsy's development and how the community took care of her when her own family wasn't able to, unfortunately.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: The character's name is Betty.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Oh, Betty.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: My bad. And no, that's fine. You know, I just lived with the book for 10 years, so I should know the characters names.
Her mother is an alcoholic. And so, you know, many children have to deal with parents who are substance abusers.
And they have to learn to navigate that and they can't do it alone. And I thought it was important because the black community does rally around children.
And especially the character, the baseball player who. Mrs. Milton, who. I kind of base that on Toni Stone, who was a black baseball player, female, ahead of her time.
And so was Mrs. Milton. She was ahead of her time. And she was also a person who did foster care and made sure. She made sure that the children were safe. And she knew she had a tough. Mrs. Milton had a tough time herself. And she wanted to make sure that she had a special place in her heart.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: I kind of noticed, like, there was like the theme of baseball, black, Negro Leagues. Cause I ended up having to Google that on my free time. Cause I didn't know much about that. Is there a reason, like, specifically, did you include that intentionally? Were you a big baseball fan or. I'm just kind of curious.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: You know, when I was in Kansas City, that's where the Negro League Museum is, and I was so struck by the number of players that there were. And then in my own family, my grandfather's brother played in the Negro Leagues. Oh, that's so cool. So I had kind of a background about that.
But I also. I was just so taken with the Negro League Museum that I wanted to include it because people need to know. I mean, Capanella came from the Negro League.
Satchel Page came from Willie Mays, I believe came from. So the Negro League was really important because black players were segregated from white baseball. And so after segregation, Jackie Robinson played with Negro League. So after segregation, pretty much after they integrated white baseball, the Negro Leagues died off.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because I'll be honest, I had no idea until I read it in the book.
A couple other questions. This is like a simple one, but I really liked the COVID art quite a bit.
It's so good.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: I do too. It's great.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: It's a beautiful collage. Do you know who the artist for that was?
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yes, I do.
Melvin Smith, who also grew up on Rondeau Avenue.
And I wanted a collage piece that resonated with the vitality and the energy of Rondo Avenue.
My favorite artist is Romare Bearden, who worked in collagen.
And when I saw Melvin's artwork, which had been shown in the Weissman Museum, I was totally on board. I said, I want that.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
For folks that have not seen it, it's a beautiful cover. I was awestruck by it. I think it's a very authentic. One of the very like, very beautiful, authentic book covers. And I'm really grateful to learn that the artist is from the Rondo neighborhood. Y the Rondo community responded to the book. It's been out for about a month now, correct?
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, very positively. I was just at a reading at the Rondo Commemorative Plaza, which is on Fisk and Rondo.
And it was just lovely to see the community come out and listen to their stories and people reminiscence about what they remembered.
So it was really a lovely experience.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: What was like the big takeaway from that experience, like other community members, did you expect to have such a big turnout or a big kind of response to this book or.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Oh, that's so cool.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Especially because everybody talks about what happened with the destruction of Rondo.
But I wanted to focus on pre destruction days when Rondo was very vibrant and had so many positive pieces to it that I wanted to show that history of Rondo, not just the. Not just work on the destruction.
Have people remember the good parts of Rondo.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Were you thinking about anything in current day Rondo when you were writing?
[00:13:17] Speaker A: I did. You know, I did some research about the work of Rondo community members who are interested in the restoration of some of the economic destruction of businesses and how to bring some economic development, as well as housing back and maybe do some redesigning of i94.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Was that like the big takeaway that you're hoping for? This is like kind of a. More of a.
But, yeah, I know exactly how to phrase that. Like reparations or something like redesigning 94.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not sure if that will happen, but I hope people are thinking about that because we can't be in superhighways anymore. First of all, the Eisenhower policy about developing superhighways, really, he was enamored with the. After World War II, with the Autobahn in Germany, and so he wanted to have something like that in the United States.
Well, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: It's interesting because, again, I'm not from Minnesota, but when I first moved here, it was, like, about the redesigning of i94. There was, like, a big MnDOT publishing. And I remember because at that time, I was living closer to south Minneapolis. But I do remember outreach from the Rondo community. And that's actually how I heard about the Rondo community.
And, like, I know similar stories of black neighborhoods, predominantly black neighborhoods come out.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Here's a whole list of black neighborhoods that were destroyed by highway development throughout the United States. I mean, it was. It was, you know, certain parts of Minneapolis, like I35W94, destroyed parts of north Minneapolis.
So there's a continuum of black and brown neighborhoods being destroyed and dismantled because of progress, I guess.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Progress and massive quotations.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Progress for who?
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Cause it's always.
And it's like eminent domain and everything else. And what I was really struck by was just, like, kind of that process that the characters go through. Cause, like, I've always heard of it as kind of a more conceptual, historical. Like, it was blown down, but as the character got the notice, it was like 30 days to evict or leave. I had no idea it was that quick of a turnaround.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Well, I think if you didn't move, if you weren't.
And part of that was the resistance of the neighborhood.
They weren't just gonna immediately just because white people said, oh, you gotta go.
I mean, they were. First of all, there was redlining.
There were covenants. There were only certain neighborhoods that black people could buy houses. And most of the time, they couldn't even get a housing loan.
So it wasn't, like, immediately they had to go.
So that, to me, that was part.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Of the resistance, was trying to keep the community and everything together.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: So can you explain redlining to some of our audiences over the air, for those that might not be familiar?
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Well, redlining is when real estate companies and agents specify certain neighborhoods that black families could live in, and they wouldn't show you any houses in white neighborhoods. That's a simplistic way of.
But that's basically what it is.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: That's basically the history of one of the bigger histories of segregation in why a Lot of Cities?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: There's a program called Mapping that is run by the University of Minnesota about different neighborhoods that had covenants as well as redlining, where only people of European ancestry could buy houses in certain neighborhoods, and black people were not allowed in those neighborhoods.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah. The other question, it's more about the book. What I really liked about the book was like kind of not so much the time travel, but through different perspectives from like how the parents met. So it wasn't just centered all exclusively on the young girls, but like there was different portions and like why was that decision made?
Or like what was it?
[00:17:40] Speaker A: I wanted to show a complete picture of the community, just not the kids. I mean some middle grade writers only focus on the adventures of young people, but those adventures also include adults. And so I wanted to include a more wide breadth and feeling of what the community was like.
And so I included adults, plus my favorite writers again, Toni Morrison, in the Bluest Eyes. She also had adult perspectives on what was happening in the neighborhood, in the community.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: What I was like, kind of like not just like adult perspectives but like child's perspectives of adult issues where like the book does take this issue very seriously and it doesn't blow off the 13 year olds or the children's concerns. And I always am always awestruck by when middle school, like younger teen maybe targeted marketed books take those issues very seriously. Because when I was a teenager growing up, middle school reader, I probably would have liked something similar like this because then it would take my intellect very seriously as a 13 year old.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. Kids are really smart and they're very perceptive of how the world works and how it functions. So yeah, yeah, I, you know, I definitely believe kids are smarter than what adults think they are and how sophisticated they are.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Especially when it comes to not even just like moving but like addiction issues, things like that, that children do struggle or like they live in those environments as well. But always seems like sometimes books or markets will just like here's like something that's incredibly sanitized I think is a better word.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think Betty's life with her mother is sanitized. I think, I mean it's sad.
I must say I enjoyed writing that.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: It was so beautiful. It was beautifully written and it was just very.
It's sad, but I did love the community care that surrounded it. Especially since, you know, they mentioned like CPS probably won't be involved. They didn't want that involvement because how children, children of color especially are treated in the foster care system. I thought that was very beautiful.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you, thank you.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: But I think trying to think of other.
One of my favorite things about the book though quite frank, was the Rondo neighborhood and development. Do you have any other books coming out featuring the Rondo neighborhood currently on the doc or.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: No, I don't. I do have an anthology that I worked with two other Minnesota writers on elder women artists. We have artists ranging from the ages of 60 up to 90 who are still working artists. And I think that's important to know that, you know, just because you're a certain age, you just don't dry up and die.
You keep on.
So I'm really excited for this book, and it's also going to be published by the University of Minnesota Press. So I'm very excited about that. We have stories from a wide variety of women artists who are still practicing painters, writers, playwrights, poets.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: I'm so excited. And that's coming out in, like, 2026.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: 2026, yes.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: I cannot wait.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: I think it's really cool.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: But other than that, I think. Thank you so much for your time, Deborah. Thank you. Now, Deborah, you're gonna read a little bit of the excerpt, correct?
[00:21:36] Speaker A: I am.
I'm going to read the first piece here. Yep.
Something was amiss in the summer of 1963. White men drew chalk arrows showing where gas, electric and water lines ran. The men were sunburned red, wearing T shirts stained with black dirt and sweat. The water main line broke and water gushed everywhere, cracking the sidewalk and erasing the girls Game of Hopstot.
Interstate 94 was coming through the neighborhood.
Children were sent to bed while adults spoke with hushed voices and filled the air with curse words. Adults talked of having no political clout, of there being no use calling political representatives on the telephone.
They did not have the kind of access to power that others had. Children saw anger and despair.
It was clear no one on Rondo Avenue could stop the change about to happen.
Neighbors organized to resist.
But when Mrs. Ruby Pearl's doors and windows were nailed shut with plywood and marked for destruction, the steel Cyclops with men in wire cages appeared, driving monsters with roaring engines and smashing teeth, splintering the wood frame house and shattering windows.
Dump trucks carried off what remained as the neighbors faced their defeat.
And who is telling this tale?
The shattered bones of the houses on Rondo? Who else cares about the people uprooted again?
We are to be remembered with dreams and hopes and laughter and pain and death that must not be buried in the dusty files of old office basements.
We were the Houses of Rondo, where those denied found sanctuary.
We were the houses of blues and jazz, rock and roll and jitterbug dancing, where families applauded, celebrated, and praised themselves when no one else would. Our families are resilient, stronger than the bulldozers that struck down the houses of Rondo we're still alive in the memory and hearts of those who will continue with their stories and mine.
There are many stories, so forgive me if I dwell on this one family, this one girl with their highs and lows, who lived in this house on Rondo Avenue.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Deborah, for all the folks listening. That was Deborah Stone and her new book, the House on Rondo. That just gave us a beautiful excerpt from it. Thank you again, Deborah, for being on the show. Appreciate it so much.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Thank you, Emma. I appreciate you.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Thank you. All right.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Cool.
Sam.
