St. Louis native Sheila Banks is coming home to no less impressive a venue than St. Louis City Hall to celebrate the publication of her new novel Bittersweet. Friends, family and fans of the former TV journalist are invited to City Hall for the free official Launch Party 6-8 p.m. Friday, April 6 in the Rotunda of City Hall, 1200 Market St.
The launch of Bittersweet would have been at a movie theater had things gone according to plan.
“I had first written Bittersweetas a movie treatment,” she said. “Two people whom I trust implicitly suggested that I turn the treatment into a book. The master procrastinator that I am, I managed to put that process off for a year.”
This was much more serious than some “dog ate my movie treatment” thing.
“That year was choked with turmoil and heartbreak,” she said.
“Nearly a year after the write-a-book decision, my Mama, who was my everything, lost her battle with a vicious illness. Within the same six- week period, I lost my 15-year-old pet-child who had grown up with my daughter – and my job.”
Those experiences were bitter. The creativity, however, was sweet.
“The sadness was so all-encompassing that sometimes I just wanted to disappear or evaporate,” she said. “But something inside literally pushed me to start Bittersweetthe novel version and somehow finish it.”
Based on real stories shared with Banks by her mother and aunt over the years, Bittersweet chronicles the fiercely self-determined, ahead-of-her-time black heroine Ellie Coursey, set against the backdrop of America’s history of racial hate from 1919 Louisiana through the 1965 Watts riots.
From 1919 when a deeper-hued playmate declares, “My Mama say you ain’t nothin’ but a whole lotta yellow gon’ to waste,” to 1965 when Ellie is brutalized
by her own people in the Watts Riots, Bittersweetexplores the effects of racism from many angles.
“Sheila Banks’ moving Bittersweet skillfully weaves fiction with fact, creating a rich, multi-dimensional story that resonates as powerfully with us today as it did in Ellie’s day,” said Lyah Beth LeFlore, another St. Louis native and bestselling author of Wildflowers and Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.
“Bittersweet is a great American story that is uniquely Ellie’s, but belongs to all of us. Sheila Banks delivers her determined, emotional journey as a bending blues note in a minor key that culminates in a major triumph at the top of the scale!” says actor/activist Alfre Woodard.
“What Alex Haley did for us with Roots almost four decades ago, Sheila Banks does for us today with Bittersweet – a powerful, multi-generational, family epic about discovering your identity and what it means to be fully human in a society suffering from a serious case of color-bias,” says Brian Bird, writer-producer (Not Easily Broken, Touched By An Angel, Bopha!).
Banks sees the story ultimately as inspirational.
“In the story, Ellie is a warrior woman. Whenever she was knocked down, she came back swinging. Most of us are warrior women (and men), I think; even if we don’t know it,” she said.
“The important thing is to know that the good is always there for us. But we have to fight for it – like Ellie did. We human beings are given a choice. We can – one day at a time – choose to believe in ourselves, persevere and try again and again. As many times as it takes to get to the light. No matter who or what is trying to stop you. My motto: Do it anyway and any way.”
For more information, visit www.bittersweetbysheilabanks.com.
