Author Sherry Lucille Publishes Mabel B. Gaines’ Mabel by Herself Memoir: Fulfilling Sweet Promises
Author Sherry Lucille fulfilled a long cherished dream by Mabel by Herself, her mother’s memoir of life growing up in Louisiana.
By Jonathan Gramling
The great human movements in U.S. history have, after all, been composed of the individual lives and decisions of millions of people or more. And so the life of Author Sherry Lucille’s mother becomes relevant beyond the personal family journey and becomes a microcosm for the lives of many African Americans born under Jim Crow and the neo-slavery system known as Jim Crow.
Lucille’s mother was born in the Old South during the 1920s.
“My mom was born in Tallulah, Louisiana,” Lucille said over coffee. “She was born on a plantation, the Fortune Forth Plantation. Her mom was either a sharecropper or a tenant farmer. Perhaps tenant farmer is more accurate because they would rent their land and then farm it. They pay what they needed to pay the landlord. And in the book, she said if they had a dollar left, they were lucky because hardly anyone had anything left. And then they would have to renew their contract.”
Lucille’s mom, Mabel Gaines, was tied to the South. She lived with her mom on that patch of plantation and then moved to Chicago in 1957 after her mother died and moved to Chicago with her young children to be closer to her Auntie Di.
“My mom raised us by herself with a lot of help from my Auntie who is this aggressive woman,” Lucille said. “She lived in Chicago at the same time my mom lived in Chicago. She was born in Louisiana also, but then moved to Mississippi and then Chicago. When she was a young woman,
she travelled all over the United States by herself, which is interesting. She worked at a beauty shop. She was married and were solidly middle class. She had one child and they had the money. My uncle would help any family member, but she loved my mom. They were like sisters.”
All of that hard living, doing what is right, imparts a lot of wisdom. And you can get through a lot of hard days with beautiful dreams.
“My mother years ago was talking about wanting to write a book and wanting to sit on Oprah’s couch and talk about her book,” Lucille said. “She talked heavily about her life growing up and the lessons that she learned. She had handwritten her life story, which she called it. She finished it in 1981. In 1981, I hadn’t graduated from college and so I just wasn’t thinking about writing. I didn’t look at myself as a writer back then. I was thinking about publishing her work. I sat on it for many years and then one day, I decided to type it all up thinking, ‘One day, we’re going to do something with this.’
Lucille’s mother’s dreams never died. They just lay dormant as Lucille took care of business in her own life. But this past January, a phone call came out of the blue that brought that dream to reality.
“This year, the pastor of my church Alex said, ‘How old would Mrs. Gaines be if she were alive,’” Lucille said. “I just snapped out, ‘100!’ That is interesting for me because I don’t keep track of birthdays and years. I’m always astounded that I get the year and time progressions right in the things that I write because I just don’t keep numbers in my head like that. The fact that I just jumped out with 100 was significant to me. He said, ‘Sherry, you cannot let this year go by without doing something to celebrate Mrs. Gaines’ 100th birthday.’ Immediately when I got off the phone, I said, ‘I’m going to publish her book.’
Since Lucille has published about a half-dozen books, she didn’t have to do very much research to know how to get the job done.
“I got it together and went through all of the channels that I go through when I publish my books,” Lucille said. “Because it was so short and pretty simple, it was pretty easy to do. And then I was just going to let it rest at that, that I had published her book.”
But a book published is not a book read.
“Not too many weeks later, Alex told me about a dream that he had about my mom,” Lucille said. “She was in heaven and had on one of those vests that crossing guards have and she was directing traffic, bringing people in and telling them where to sit. That’s very unlike her. And so I took note of that.”
Mabel Gaines was going to make sure that her book was read.
“Katrina Sparkman has a venue,” Lucille said. “And she said to me, ‘I’m making room for you to do a mini-book launch for your mom’s book.’ I guess that I just wasn’t that interested in it. I kept letting it go. Then Katrina said, ‘Sherry, have you decided? Are you going to do this book launch for your mom’s book? I really think you should.’ Finally I said, ‘Sure, let me just do it.’”
While it was officially a book launch, for Lucille, it was a celebration of ker mom’s 100th birthday.
“It was so joyful to me,” Lucille said. “In the invitation, I put that people could dress like the old school church women with the hat and the gloves. I and two other women did that. People could also dress casually. Fabu wore a hat, more of a casual kind of hat. It was just fun. When I was little, I asked my mom to bake me cookies. She couldn’t make cookies. She was an excellent cook, but she could not make cookies, so she made tea cakes. That’s what she grew up with as a cookie. I don’t think she even knew what I was talking about when I was saying, ‘Make me a homemade cookie.’ So she made me tea cakes. So I had a woman make some old-fashioned Southern tea cakes and then we had lemonade. It was very simple, but very reminiscent of my mom and her era. We played Same Cooke’s ‘Sugar Dumpling’ coming in. My mom used to play that when we were kids. And then she got strict when we got older telling us to stop playing reels. And at the end, I tried to remember a church song she used to sing. We sang, ‘The Blood that Gives Me Strength from Day-to-Day’ by Andre Crouch.”
Lucille went through some of her mother’s other stuff and found notes and pages of other things that her mother wrote. And it again reminds Lucille of the writing traditions that are on her mother’s and father’s sides of the family. Lucille’s mother’s dreams did come true.
Mabel Gaines can now rest. She has been published and read. And the world is a better place for it.
Mabel B. Gaines’ Mabel by Herself Memoirs can be purchased on Amazon or by contacting Sherry Lucille at booklucille@gamil.com. Lucille will send signed copies to anyplace in the United States for a small handling fee.
