Monday, July 31, 2017

READING ON AUGUST 5, 2017

I WILL BE READING ON AUGUST 5, 2017

In collaboration with
Hayward Area Historical Society
and
The
Cannery Café

B Street Writers’ Collective
announces its:
August Reading
Saturday, August 5th, 2017
7 pm
Dinner will be available at 6pm at The Cannery Café (inside the HAHS)
HAHS Museum of History & Culture
22380 Foothill Blvd., Hayward, CA 94541
Admission $7
Tickets can be purchased online from bswc.brownpapertickets.com,
The Cannery Cafe (cash or check only) or at the door.
Featured Poet:
Kevin Killian
Special appearance: Bruce Roberts, Poet Laureate of Hayward
Meet local authors (Hey, this where I come in)
East Bay writers will read from original poems,
memoirs, short stories and novels.
B Street Writers Collective
is an East Bay writing community which meets on and
around B Street in Hayward. For information:
bstreetwriterscollective@yahoo.com
The ticket price supports Hayward Area Historical Society.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Running For The 2:10: Paperback – June 10, 2017






 This book of autobiographical short stories follows Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte’s 2014 publication of “A Dollar Five: Stories From a Baby Boomer’s Ongoing Journey.” In “Running For The 2:10-More Stories From a Baby Boomer’s Ongoing Journey,” the discord of skin tone often seeps in to color the path, playing like an ever present low hum in the background of these coming of age tales. Set in Oakland, California, the road winds from family shopping trips to the local hardware store that activate the writer, to near derailing losses and finding alternative ways back to joy. In these stories, Bize-Boutte deftly describes how heartbreak can give way to hilarity and loss can make room for celebration. Be prepared to laugh, cry and gasp out loud, in no particular order.

Monday, May 8, 2017

OAKLAND BOOK FESTIVAL MAY 21, 2017

On May 21, 2017
I will be at the California Writer's Club-Berkeley Branch 
 booth # 28

at 
3 pm 
 
with books on the table! 

 Oakland City Hall 
1 Frank H.  Ogawa Plaza

Hope to see you there! 


https://www.everfest.com/e/oakland-book-festival-oakland-ca

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

EXCERPT FROM "RUNNING FOR THE 2:10"

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From my second collection of short stories:

Running for the 2:10

to be published Spring 2017


THE WALL

By
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte

Copyright © 2017 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte



Almost every time I roll on Skyline Boulevard in the Oakland hills, I wonder which tree was responsible.  I haven’t checked them up close, but from driving by I can’t detect any visible scars or marks on any of them that would indicate the violent collision that took my friend Dot’s life on prom night 1967. 

The song “Teen Angel” and others like it depicting tragic accidents were a part of our soundtrack. The songs scared us, but the fear did not translate once we were in the car as teenagers.  We like everyone else our age then and since, thought we were invincible. So when it happened to someone at your school or in your town that you may not have known, it made you think about it, if only for a bit. But when it happened to someone you knew and had seen alive only a few weeks before, it changed who you were.

Dot was an only child and doted on by her parents.  They were middle class people who gave her all they could and that it year included a beautiful dress and matching shoes for prom night. By the time that night was over, Dot would be gone and shock and sadness would arrive at their front door. Dot’s father would later tell my mother that Dot was so mangled by the impact that they would not be allowed to see her.  Ever again. For a long time I had nightmares about that.

My mom and Dot’s mom had been friends since they were teenagers.  A few months older than I was, my kinship with Dot began when we were toddlers and her mother was my babysitter.  I was so close to Dot and her mother back then, I would only eat what Dot ate and shunned my mother’s cooking.  Dot’s mother said I was just mad that mom went to work and left me with her, and then she would laugh that rich resonant laugh of hers.

When Dot became a preteen, her parents gave her an entire wall in the garage to use for “self expression.”  At first couldn’t grasp the meaning of that but Dot knew right away that she would use that blank canvas to write the names of every recorded song she and her friends knew.  In our world at the time, music was central to our very being and since no one else we knew was allowed to write on any wall in the house, it soon became a high honor to be invited by Dot to make an entry on that pale green expanse of drywall.

Dot had many friends but I like to think that because I knew her so early in life that made me one of her best.  Although we only saw each other when my parents visited hers, we had a strong bond that became even stronger by the sharing of our new 45’s and her handing me the pen along with the silent sweet permission to write on that wall.  As soon as I would get to her house, she and I would make a beeline for the garage and play the newest tunes on the portable record player that sat on her father’s workbench as we made our latest entries. One of her parents would always back the car out into the driveway to give us room to write, spin, “Temptation Walk” and stand back to see our handiwork in full. I don’t think I ever saw Dot’s bedroom, it was always about the wall.

We did this for several years and soon it became harder to find a space to write. Sometimes I would see handwriting I did not recognize and I must confess, it made me cringe just a bit.  But then I would look at the entire wall and see that most of the handwriting was Dot’s and coming in as a strong second, was mine.

 I don’t know how many song titles others and we wrote on that wall but it was truly the song track of our young lives.  We enshrined musical and American history with “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “Heatwave,” “Uptight,” and “My Girl,” just to name a few of the hundreds of songs that eventually made their way to the wall.

In 1966, I remember clearly writing, “Land of a 1000 Dances,” as my last swirly cursive inscription. I know the song and the year because miraculously I found an empty space to enter it right in the middle of all of those songs.  Dot put on the 45 as I wrote and then we did all of the dances as the life shift took place and then that was that. 

Now full-fledged teenagers, boys and our own personal telephone lines had entered the picture and we saw each other less and less.

It would only be about six months after that last entry that Dot and her prom date would meet their fate with a mean redwood on Skyline Boulevard in the Oakland Hills, probably within walking distance from where I now live.

Years later I would take my husband and my three year old daughter to visit Dot’s parents. The house was exactly the same, but inside the air had shifted and was barely breathable by those of us who understood.  Permanently unmoored, Dot’s parents reached up and grabbed something to make them happy to see us.  And because they knew we were coming and they knew me, the car had already been moved to the driveway.

As I did so many times when I was younger, I hugged them both hard as we exchanged cautious pleasantries.  And then, knowing it was all right, with my daughter in tow, I made a beeline for the garage. 

The space had been freshly painted white, but the pale green wall with all of the songs written on it was untouched. Even the old portable record player was still sitting on the workbench and looked as if it had been freshly dusted.

I told my daughter the story of Dot and me and the wall.  I sang parts of the some of the songs to her as she listened in rapt attention.  I showed her Dot’s entries and I showed her mine.

As we headed back to the living room to join the others, she asked me where Dot was.

For me, the answer was all too clear.

“She’s in the music, baby.  She’s in the music.”