Phillip Shabazz -- Poet, Writer, Author -- The Book

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When The Grass Was Blue is a story told through the eyes of Kathoor, son of a working class family in

Louisville, Kentucky, who relates the trials and hardships of growing up in the South during the Civil Rights era of the 1960's. On the surface, it looks like he's sheltered in a stable home. It's a happy time in his life. He's the youngest child in a family of four: a working father, a faithful mother, and a cool big brother. But as dysfunction in his family grows evident, Kathoor begins to see their familiar closeness slip away. He worries about his mother, he misses his brother, and he learns the hard way about his father's drinking abuses. Worse, he starts to feel like he's losing the most important people in his life. Kathoor must adjust to the crisis in his family by finding strength in his own heart. When The Grass Was Blue interweaves the personal and sweeping social changes that tear at the lives of Kathoor's family — and the deeply felt injustices of a community that takes refuge in his Grandfather's church — with important events from the campaigns of the Freedom Riders to the last days of President Kennedy. It is a novel (in free verse) about courage, hope, and love wrought from brutal despair. Readers of young adult fiction will enjoy Kathoor's story, and relate to his experiences, struggles, and insights.

A Raindrop
Before I was a child, I was a raindrop.
My home was surrounded by thunder and lightning.
There were flashes of fire
and lots of booming noise all around.
Like other raindrops,
I had the freedom to fall to Earth. But one afternoon,
the storm's wind blew so fast and hard
that I lost my shape as I fell.

I fell down through a tree, hit a leaf,
and finally crashed into a muddy puddle.
Very dark was that puddle. I could hardly see.
I began to search for my shape and myself.
I swam my way to the top of the puddle.
There I saw other raindrops on leaves,
on daffodils, and on the blades of blue grass.
But the raindrops in the muddy puddle were stuck like me.
And they were now becoming nothing but mud.

With all my might, I stayed afloat
on top of the puddle until the sun came.
Then I began to rise up and away and into the sky.
I found myself clear and clean and whole again.

I came to see what I've always been-
a raindrop floating in the belly of a storm cloud,
and whenever I fall, I must always seek the sun
to rise again.

Why I Wrote When the Grass Was Blue
In a historically conscious period I might have written a friendship story or simply a fantasy book. I might have shied away from my interest in history. The way it turned out, When the Grass Was Blue grew out of my curiosity about that significant period of American history popularly known as the sixties.

I wanted to draw attention to that time and place because I have an interest in the civil rights struggle and an interest in the idea of freedom, too. I'd read Dr. King, Malcolm X, and other activists from that era. I wanted to get a better understanding of what the black liberation movement was all about.

What really interested me, during that era, is how people were choosing sides about various issues such as racial segregation, poverty, the war in Vietnam, etc., and how all this impacted children (particularly black children), how all this impacted the black family and community. The questions I asked myself were, what was the fallout of all this? How did black people come through the fallout?

I decided to ground When the Grass Was Blue in that period because there were characters that I wanted to bring back to life. The story would focus on a family who endured the turbulent complexities of that moment. That family would experience the struggle of private and personal everyday matters, and at the same time, the public challenges, pressures, and concerns of a racially segregated society.

In my neighborhood, I remember seeing some people march against Jim Crow. I saw the protest signs when I was a child. I remember Dr. King. He was always on TV.

I think it was the spring of 1964 when Dr. King led a march in Frankfort, Ky. Well anyway, a woman, who I called my second mother, had marched with him. Years later, after Dr. King had been assassinated, she told me about her experience. She said thousands of people marched that day. Not only black people, but many white people as well. They marched at the state capitol building. Then, that same day, she went to hear Dr. King speak at Kentucky State University. "I even got to shake his hand," she said. I was really impressed.

So the result of these memories is When the Grass Was Blue. I hope readers find it to be an interesting blend of family, community, and history that's unforgettable.

Praise for When the Grass Was Blue
"Phillip Shabazz is the children's griot...this collection of story poems invite the reader to clap, cheer, sing, dance, mourn, but never forget."
- Jaki Shelton Green, poet, winner of the North Carolina Award for Literature

"In this, his third collection of poems, Phillip Shabazz has created a novel in verse that explores the joys, mysteries, and challenges of childhood ... Shabazz's poems reach us like raindrops on the skin, some warm, some stinging, but all reminders of how we are connected to each other within one big human spirit."
- Joe Cole, professor of ethics and philosophy at Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina, columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer