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Ordinary Hazards
In her own voice, author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a memoir in verse.
Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night—and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards—ordinary and extraordinary—of her life.
Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night—and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards—ordinary and extraordinary—of her life.
325 pages, Hardcover
First published October 8, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 742 reviews
November 17, 2019
Read this young adult poetry in motion memoir in between longer books this nonfiction reading year. I read Nikki Grimes’ Bronx Masquerade two years ago, in which she inspires Bronx high school students to enjoy their English curriculum through poetry and other free form genres. The current trend of writers Kwame Alexander, Jacqueline Woodson, and Grimes to use poetry as a vehicle to connect complex themes to young adult readers has lead me to enjoy young adult literature marketed to people of color. Although these writers do not necessarily have me in mind when writing, I have enjoyed the poetic, prose, onomatopoeic writing from these writers, so when I found out that Grimes had come out with a memoir, I knew it was one I had to read before the year was out.
Grimes had her childhood fractured by abusive parents and caregivers, details which must have been painful for her to relive here. Ordinary Hazards pieces back together parts of that lost childhood from 1950-1967 and allows Grimes to reclaim her memories. Grimes and her older sister Carol lived with their mother, an alcoholic and schizophrenic, for the first five years of Nikki’s life until she was unable to care for the girls. She then pawned them off on caregivers, one of whom would lock them in a closet. Their father, a starving artist, claimed to not know how to raise girls and their grandmother did not want to be a parent again. Nikki and Carol were placed in foster care until one or both of their parents could find stability in their lives. Nikki flourished under the care of the Buchanan family and has maintained a lifelong relationship with her foster brother Kendall. Yet, as loved as she felt, Nikki longed to be reunited with her sister and one of her parents. At age nine, she finally rejoined her mother and a stepfather.
Ordinary Hazards was gut wrenching at time. Nikki’s teenaged years coincided with the turbulent 1960s. Her mother was off and on alcohol and in an out of Bellevue Hospital for the rest of her life. By middle school Nikki found she had a gift for writing and her father introduced her to a who’s who of writers of color all over New York City. Nikki kept journals in her apartments and had to gather them each time her mother decided to move, usually in the middle of a school term. Nikki’s stepfather was physically abusive, scarring her for years, and Carol became her lifeline. Finding solace in her journals and arts, it was only under the guidance of a high school English teacher that Nikki began to flourish. While there is no replacement for a parent, Nikki found adults who helped to nurture her into adulthood.
Nikki Grimes has won the Coretta Scott King as well as other awards for her work. Like her other books for young adult readers, Ordinary Hazards combines poetry and prose to make the story accessible to a generation of readers raised on hip hop and other art forms. Although in the end uplifting, Ordinary Hazards is not an easy book to get through. Nikki suffered both physical and emotional trauma as a child so it is a wonder to me that she persevered to become the prolific writer that she is today. Like many other writers I have read about through their memoirs, Nikki found comfort in books and her local library, highlighting A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and later Michaux’s Bookstore in the Bronx. There she was exposed to writers of color and found role models whose work she used as a guideline as she navigated through the pitfalls of life.
As 2019 winds down I have found that I will always take the time to read a memoir. Through these personal memories, I am piecing together the fabric of America and what makes this country unique one person at a time. Nikki Grimes’ Ordinary Hazards shows of the grit and determination of one girl from New York who overcame the lot thrown at her in life to become a prolific writer. She should only continue to create fluid poetry and positive memories.
4 stars
Grimes had her childhood fractured by abusive parents and caregivers, details which must have been painful for her to relive here. Ordinary Hazards pieces back together parts of that lost childhood from 1950-1967 and allows Grimes to reclaim her memories. Grimes and her older sister Carol lived with their mother, an alcoholic and schizophrenic, for the first five years of Nikki’s life until she was unable to care for the girls. She then pawned them off on caregivers, one of whom would lock them in a closet. Their father, a starving artist, claimed to not know how to raise girls and their grandmother did not want to be a parent again. Nikki and Carol were placed in foster care until one or both of their parents could find stability in their lives. Nikki flourished under the care of the Buchanan family and has maintained a lifelong relationship with her foster brother Kendall. Yet, as loved as she felt, Nikki longed to be reunited with her sister and one of her parents. At age nine, she finally rejoined her mother and a stepfather.
Ordinary Hazards was gut wrenching at time. Nikki’s teenaged years coincided with the turbulent 1960s. Her mother was off and on alcohol and in an out of Bellevue Hospital for the rest of her life. By middle school Nikki found she had a gift for writing and her father introduced her to a who’s who of writers of color all over New York City. Nikki kept journals in her apartments and had to gather them each time her mother decided to move, usually in the middle of a school term. Nikki’s stepfather was physically abusive, scarring her for years, and Carol became her lifeline. Finding solace in her journals and arts, it was only under the guidance of a high school English teacher that Nikki began to flourish. While there is no replacement for a parent, Nikki found adults who helped to nurture her into adulthood.
Nikki Grimes has won the Coretta Scott King as well as other awards for her work. Like her other books for young adult readers, Ordinary Hazards combines poetry and prose to make the story accessible to a generation of readers raised on hip hop and other art forms. Although in the end uplifting, Ordinary Hazards is not an easy book to get through. Nikki suffered both physical and emotional trauma as a child so it is a wonder to me that she persevered to become the prolific writer that she is today. Like many other writers I have read about through their memoirs, Nikki found comfort in books and her local library, highlighting A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and later Michaux’s Bookstore in the Bronx. There she was exposed to writers of color and found role models whose work she used as a guideline as she navigated through the pitfalls of life.
As 2019 winds down I have found that I will always take the time to read a memoir. Through these personal memories, I am piecing together the fabric of America and what makes this country unique one person at a time. Nikki Grimes’ Ordinary Hazards shows of the grit and determination of one girl from New York who overcame the lot thrown at her in life to become a prolific writer. She should only continue to create fluid poetry and positive memories.
4 stars
February 10, 2020
Many of Grimes' painful childhood experiences are relatable, giving her memoir a universal edge. It feels odd to explore such complex issues - abuse, mental illness, drug addiction, abandonment - with so few words, yet Ordinary Hazards is one sucker punch after another, giving testament to Grimes' exceptional talent with language.
WILDLIFE
Home was never a safe place,
as my sister, Carol, tells it.
Forget the Wild West
of inner-city streets,
bullets buzzing by
on the occasional Friday night,
propelled by a deadly combo
of alcohol and apathy.
I'm talking about inside,
any day of the week.
Sis paints the picture:
I'd be tucked into
a dresser drawer,
higher off the floor
than my crib, supposedly
out of reach of the rats
that roamed the rooms
after dark.
I can't quite remember
the hardness of the dresser drawer,
only the softness of my blanket.
I don't recall coming
nose-to-nose with any rat,
but there were mornings
I did see
an empty plastic bag
on the kitchen table
where a loaf of bread
used to be,
and the trail of breadcrumbs
across the linoleum,
a broken line
of evidence.
-
OCTOBER SURPRISE
Birthday celebrations
in foster care
are rare.
Who bothers about
the day you were born?
But when I turned seven,
Mrs. B baked
a chocolate cake
with buttercream icing.
I don't recall
anyone baking me
a birthday cake before.
Maybe that's why
I baptized my first slice
with tears.
October 28, 2019
There's something about memoirs written in verse form that I find particularly appealing. There isn't as much detail and yet so much can be derived from a perfect metaphor, or from the feelings that come through the writer's words.
Nikki Grimes wrote a beautiful and powerful memoir of her childhood. Her mother was paranoid schizophrenic and an alcoholic, her father often not around, and she and her sister spent many years in the foster care system. She describes how she felt being passed around, the loneliness of being without her sister, the confusion of why her parents were the way they were.
Early on she discovered writing as a way to make sense of and cope with her feelings, and she recreates her childhood notebooks in this memoir. It is both painful and hopeful, a testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome.
Nikki Grimes wrote a beautiful and powerful memoir of her childhood. Her mother was paranoid schizophrenic and an alcoholic, her father often not around, and she and her sister spent many years in the foster care system. She describes how she felt being passed around, the loneliness of being without her sister, the confusion of why her parents were the way they were.
Early on she discovered writing as a way to make sense of and cope with her feelings, and she recreates her childhood notebooks in this memoir. It is both painful and hopeful, a testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome.
March 17, 2021
4 stars
Nikki Grimes is a beautiful writer and one of my favorite poets. I’ve read books by her before this one, so I knew to expect and was already familiar with the verse this was written in. Her memoir is one I think many people can empathize or relate to, even though she was born in 1950. A lot of her life experiences reflect the same things and feelings teens today might also be going through. Such a haunting and inciteful book, it’s one that will stay with me for a long time.
Nikki Grimes is a beautiful writer and one of my favorite poets. I’ve read books by her before this one, so I knew to expect and was already familiar with the verse this was written in. Her memoir is one I think many people can empathize or relate to, even though she was born in 1950. A lot of her life experiences reflect the same things and feelings teens today might also be going through. Such a haunting and inciteful book, it’s one that will stay with me for a long time.
June 21, 2021
*Book in verse, memoir
*Written well, no words wasted
*The magic of writing and I'm so glad she shared about these particular moments about her difficult life
*Deals with mental health disorder (paranoid schizophrenia), domestic violence, drug/substance abuse, sexual assault, bullying, self-harm, alcoholism, loss of a family member
*Problematic parents and adults, coming of age
*Child neglect, abandonment
Divided into four main sections, the book deals with different stages of her difficult life she had to live through away from her parents (especially her mother), her sister and living in the midst of strangers shifting from one foster home to another frequently.
It's heartbreaking to read something like this. But also,memoirs like this are making the rest of us see the reality behind the lives of those who have been abandoned and who have lived fighting to survive everyday of their lives coming out strong and inspirational. I just wish more people read this book.
There's hope. And I love her father so much.
To selfish mothers: protect your daughters first.
Recommended.
*Written well, no words wasted
*The magic of writing and I'm so glad she shared about these particular moments about her difficult life
*Deals with mental health disorder (paranoid schizophrenia), domestic violence, drug/substance abuse, sexual assault, bullying, self-harm, alcoholism, loss of a family member
*Problematic parents and adults, coming of age
*Child neglect, abandonment
Divided into four main sections, the book deals with different stages of her difficult life she had to live through away from her parents (especially her mother), her sister and living in the midst of strangers shifting from one foster home to another frequently.
It's heartbreaking to read something like this. But also,memoirs like this are making the rest of us see the reality behind the lives of those who have been abandoned and who have lived fighting to survive everyday of their lives coming out strong and inspirational. I just wish more people read this book.
There's hope. And I love her father so much.
To selfish mothers: protect your daughters first.
Recommended.
July 30, 2020
CW:
A moving and well crafted memoir written in verse. Having read the author's notes I understand the notebook entries were based on her fragmented memory and her imagination, however they were hard to read as they felt quite disjointed. This is undoubtedly intentional but it did ruin the flow that was so beautiful in the verse sections. A wonderful example of the strength of the human spirit and the importance of resilience.
A moving and well crafted memoir written in verse. Having read the author's notes I understand the notebook entries were based on her fragmented memory and her imagination, however they were hard to read as they felt quite disjointed. This is undoubtedly intentional but it did ruin the flow that was so beautiful in the verse sections. A wonderful example of the strength of the human spirit and the importance of resilience.
September 2, 2019
"It's a long story,/ but I am a poet./I can cut it short." (from the Prologue to ORDINARY HAZARDS)
Full Disclosure: I've been sitting with Nikki Grimes's memoir, ORDINARY HAZARDS, and I have been waiting for months to write a review. The problem now? We are one month away from your sitting with the memoir and experiencing what early readers like Lester Laminack and Ed Spicer and I have been sitting with for most of 2019.
I can tell you with great joy (and pride) that Nikki Grimes is a friend. No. She does not call me. We don't have lunch. I sense we might if we lived closer together. Or we might not. To give one another space to be, to poem, to make, and to garden. We are friends in the way that you know someone in this world sees you and stops by now and then to appreciate an idea. To push on a thought. To identify a random flower that has popped up in a garden. To tell you that you cannot read, early, the body of a speech to come and reminds you that there is a an ask and an answer. And then there might be the ask too much coupled with a need to wait.
ORDINARY HAZARDS is born of a need to wait. To wait for the writer to present his, her, or their story with the sensitivity to self and to others and to tell that truth, even in light of sensitivity and truth, to tell the story completely. Heartedly. In light of hazards most ordinary. Nikki's truth is now here in front of us. What will we do now?
ORDINARY HAZARDS is an important book. Not for what it reveals (yes, it does reveal), but for what it illuminates. Our best novelists for young people today present young people within the gamut of their daily lives, their hopes, their dreams, their concerns, and their obstacles. For her presence within the world of upper elem, middle grade, and young adult literature, it is authors like Nikki Grimes who have placed themselves in the spaces and the shelves. They have fought for the classroom space with their work over a number of years. They realize some successes here and there with this title or that one, but even these celebrate anniversaries and are repackaged which always makes me wonder if the re-packaging of back titles actually serve to remind us how old these books are (even in the presence of trumpeting books from the canon that are celebrating fifty or more years and still have a solid place in the canon).
Nikki Grimes has been illuminating the experience of the young to the young adult and has earned, by way of her deft story telling and rendering in verse ideas that would take prose pages and pages to express. She has a corner of the room sharing space with Walter Dean Myers and Sharon Draper and Rita Williams Garcia and Sharon Flake and Angela Johnson and Jacqueline Woodson and Christopher Paul Curtis. She is an anchor within the community of writers of color who write for readers. And, now, Nikki Grimes works to make room for many more writers in an age calling for (and necessarily so) the need for diverse books and own voices. We desperately need the new voices. And they are ringing true. All the while. . .Nikki is still here doing the work.
With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki steps from the corners of her own experiences, shakes herself free from the lists of "authors you should know" to be seen. And to be known.
With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki stays true to the readers who have followed here to this new place of sharing her truth while she welcomes in new readers with a revealing look at her young and young adult life. And, ORDINARY HAZARDS will find itself in places perhaps Nikki's has not found audience. . .yet. As a adult memoir. As a collection of poetry. With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki positions her personal story alongside titles like Margarita Engle's ENCHANTED AIR. It is my hope that the Lee Bennett Hopkins committee is seeing this new book.
From the first page Nikki centers memoir as a genre that presents itself own sense of irony: to tell one's story in a way that might be of interest to another (when the default of any personal story is that it should be of interest to another person. . .Humanity 101). Nikki presents a definition for memoir: "a work of imperfect memory/in which you meticulously/capture all that you can recall,/and use informed imagination/to fill in what remains."
"Informed imagination." A classroom teacher could have spent years in the classroom poring over the ideas presented by the experts in narrative writing and probably never have come upon, "informed imagination."
"Filling in what remains" is the heart of ORDINARY HAZARDS. It centers the author and her experience and we, the reader, as a "reward" (perhaps) of staying with this author for a number of years to see all of the magic and wonder of her catalog illuminated, glowing now from the revealed truths of a life lived. And brought forward in stories we might share with young readers as a means of providing Rudine Sims Bishop's windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.
In ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki comes to the gazing glass, reflected in the mirror of her past, to slide open the door to a time wherein her experiences are both sadly common and strangely uncommon all at once. And brings it all to us in her gift of verse.
"Informed imagination."
"The Naming" is the first poem from Book I of ORDINARY HAZARDS: "Nikki is/the first invention for which/I accept full responsibility." I am shortening a most powerful stanza here, but from the first words of the book, we see "ladders" to other works wherein the centering of the importance of names and how we get them are a theme. "The Naming" is quite possibly the best, quick, mentor text in exploring one's name that we have seen in some time and I do not doubt that this passage, the first poem within the book, will enter the canon for mentor texts in inviting students to write their narratives of nomenclature.
Book One takes the readers from Nikki's birth in Harlem, 1950 and takes us through the first five years of her life. We meet mother and sister Carol. We also meet the personifications of paranoid schizophrenia and the "drowning" and the "war" to come that that will take its POWs in the persons of Nikki and Carol who will spend days in dark closets (from where we pull the title of the memoir). We learn about the child's belief in prayer and the cultures response to orphaned children.
In my original notes, I wrote: "A Proper Introduction" appears on page 28, 10% which means that ORDINARY HAZARDS presents the urgency of time and place in front of the subject of the book." I wrote this note to remind myself that the sharing of macro, meso, and micro setting can be a powerful approach to knowing how we center the character, the poet. . .the memoirist. In her "proper introduction" what might be seen as self-deprecation is the poet's self-description that brings us closer to a figure we might have missed passing on the street. We won't miss her poring through these pages.
Throughout the book, Nikki guides the reader through italicized vignettes called "Mystery of Memory." Here, Nikki continues to point back to "informed imagination" the way an expository writer might point evidence back to a thesis. In the first of these vignettes, Nikki implores, from her position as author and storyteller, for "order/logical sequences,/and smooth transitions." As I read this vignette, I think of what we ask from memoir for our student writers. Here, an accomplished, award-winning poet begs for a "modicum of skill." She asks, "Where is the chronology of a life/chaotic from the start?" Isn't this the question of memoir? Should it be as we approach the genre with our younger writers. To see Nikki Grimes struggle inside of this genre even as she is presenting it is a model of vulnerability that comes with the exploration and the exposition of a life.
In Book Two, Nikki walks us through 1955-1960, a life spent with the Buchanan family. Here, our poet explores new family dynamics, checks the locks on doors to assure she will not be sealed up, mute a voice that will eventually help her to become a storyteller, befriends the largely-ignored dog who notices her, discovers lilacs (a connection she will share with a classroom teacher years later), and finds the power of a notebook.
"Journey" is our introduction to Nikki's record keeping, even if incomplete and in need of the "filling in": the blank page/was the only place/I could make sense/of my life/or keep record of/each space/I called home.
"The daily march of words/parading from my pen/kept me moving/forward."
From this point on within ORDINARY HAZARDS we get glimpses of the notebook entries. The first depicting a revelation of the deeper parts of her foster matriarch. Small, short pieces carry a large load from the memoirist and, within the first, a jelly jar of lilacs elicit the response of love earnestly sought by Nikki in her first ten years of life.
In Book Two, we see a world of words begin to come to life for the author. The origins of WORDS WITH WINGS? Perhaps. And what we might hope for having fallen in love with this little book.
Book Three takes us through three years of the author's life. In "Mystery of Memory #2," Nikki begins with "Trauma is a memory hog." We hope, removed from Nikki's experiences, that we might get a glimpse into the author's early school experiences. Perhaps we want Nikki to explore and to expose these moments that we, ourselves, have let slip into the memory loss that eventually becomes warm and fluid, but never solid. What we want from our poets many times is what we could not hold onto for ourselves. We make the writer, the poet, do this work. Nikki apologetically reveals the gaps here and ends this vignette:
"I've bridge the gaps/with suspension cables/forged of steeling gratitude/for having survived my past/at all."
As I revisit my notes from February's early reading of the book, I note that this is where I shared a Facebook message with Nikki and I agreed to slow the reading down considerably. I was walking along a suspension bridge now. Nikki keeps these lines tight so that they will not wiggle the walker too much in moving through the narrative. Nikki's memoir is our path and our safety net.
Book Three brings Nikki home and the presentation of the text becomes a combination of poetry and prose, each giving and taking and adding to the other upon the page as Nikki presents neighborhood struggles, the call to be part of gang politics, the conflict between her innate gift for story keeping and story telling measured against her having to play catch-up at midterm from entering class and coursework later in the year (later, the poet who had to once play catch-up becomes a one who would be awarded full-tuition to schools she would decline and schools she would ultimately enter and within which she would thrive). The library becomes a safe haven. A library card becomes a passport. We can live through. We can learn of. We can breathe. We can bleed. A cigarette burn a reminder of all that can be taken from us in a flash. From the flammable. We can live. We can lose.
Ordinary Hazards.
The un-ordinary hazard. The extraordinary hazard is also revealed in "Broken" from Book Three. This is a particularly painful revelation from the author and it draws from me a sort of wish (another ordinary hazard of the survivor) that all I had in common with this author was a love for lilacs.
As the "books" of ORDINARY HAZARDS advance the narrative, the mystery of memory becomes more "mastery" like as Nikki recalls the reunion and deepening of her awareness of what is happening to and around her. Her exposure to learning and to literature and to life are enveloped now in social unrest in response to assassinations. Anchored in fundamental literature introduced to her by her father that will help to moor the author to the literature she will bring back to readers in the future.
A page turner, readers will be tempted to move quickly through the book. Nikki teases this response out of the reader whose natural curiosity will want to know more. As this reader learns more, he, she, or they are forced to pause, an most ironic inner response to "tell me more."
There is so much to share in a life. Nikki's life shared in ORDINARY HAZARDS make it a natural "ladder" for her other books. For books. For the power of narrative as a means of showcasing situations set to harm, to kill, that become spaces for allowing survival to settle.
Nikki Grimes is a treasure of elementary, middle grade, and young adult literature. She takes her place now in memoir, a place carefully-considered in the presentation of the vulnerable child who becomes the venerable author/poet. She continues to give to us from her craft, her continued explorations of what it means to create and to curate art, and in her encouragement of classroom teachers, like this one, to consider story, in all of its forms. And informing sources.
Grimes's imagination is a revelation. And her revelation is an inspiration.
Inspiration. . .can drive adoption. Of texts. And, subsequently, of stories. As soon as this classroom teacher can make it happen, ORDINARY HAZARDS goes on the classroom reading list for Room 407.
Full Disclosure: I've been sitting with Nikki Grimes's memoir, ORDINARY HAZARDS, and I have been waiting for months to write a review. The problem now? We are one month away from your sitting with the memoir and experiencing what early readers like Lester Laminack and Ed Spicer and I have been sitting with for most of 2019.
I can tell you with great joy (and pride) that Nikki Grimes is a friend. No. She does not call me. We don't have lunch. I sense we might if we lived closer together. Or we might not. To give one another space to be, to poem, to make, and to garden. We are friends in the way that you know someone in this world sees you and stops by now and then to appreciate an idea. To push on a thought. To identify a random flower that has popped up in a garden. To tell you that you cannot read, early, the body of a speech to come and reminds you that there is a an ask and an answer. And then there might be the ask too much coupled with a need to wait.
ORDINARY HAZARDS is born of a need to wait. To wait for the writer to present his, her, or their story with the sensitivity to self and to others and to tell that truth, even in light of sensitivity and truth, to tell the story completely. Heartedly. In light of hazards most ordinary. Nikki's truth is now here in front of us. What will we do now?
ORDINARY HAZARDS is an important book. Not for what it reveals (yes, it does reveal), but for what it illuminates. Our best novelists for young people today present young people within the gamut of their daily lives, their hopes, their dreams, their concerns, and their obstacles. For her presence within the world of upper elem, middle grade, and young adult literature, it is authors like Nikki Grimes who have placed themselves in the spaces and the shelves. They have fought for the classroom space with their work over a number of years. They realize some successes here and there with this title or that one, but even these celebrate anniversaries and are repackaged which always makes me wonder if the re-packaging of back titles actually serve to remind us how old these books are (even in the presence of trumpeting books from the canon that are celebrating fifty or more years and still have a solid place in the canon).
Nikki Grimes has been illuminating the experience of the young to the young adult and has earned, by way of her deft story telling and rendering in verse ideas that would take prose pages and pages to express. She has a corner of the room sharing space with Walter Dean Myers and Sharon Draper and Rita Williams Garcia and Sharon Flake and Angela Johnson and Jacqueline Woodson and Christopher Paul Curtis. She is an anchor within the community of writers of color who write for readers. And, now, Nikki Grimes works to make room for many more writers in an age calling for (and necessarily so) the need for diverse books and own voices. We desperately need the new voices. And they are ringing true. All the while. . .Nikki is still here doing the work.
With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki steps from the corners of her own experiences, shakes herself free from the lists of "authors you should know" to be seen. And to be known.
With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki stays true to the readers who have followed here to this new place of sharing her truth while she welcomes in new readers with a revealing look at her young and young adult life. And, ORDINARY HAZARDS will find itself in places perhaps Nikki's has not found audience. . .yet. As a adult memoir. As a collection of poetry. With ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki positions her personal story alongside titles like Margarita Engle's ENCHANTED AIR. It is my hope that the Lee Bennett Hopkins committee is seeing this new book.
From the first page Nikki centers memoir as a genre that presents itself own sense of irony: to tell one's story in a way that might be of interest to another (when the default of any personal story is that it should be of interest to another person. . .Humanity 101). Nikki presents a definition for memoir: "a work of imperfect memory/in which you meticulously/capture all that you can recall,/and use informed imagination/to fill in what remains."
"Informed imagination." A classroom teacher could have spent years in the classroom poring over the ideas presented by the experts in narrative writing and probably never have come upon, "informed imagination."
"Filling in what remains" is the heart of ORDINARY HAZARDS. It centers the author and her experience and we, the reader, as a "reward" (perhaps) of staying with this author for a number of years to see all of the magic and wonder of her catalog illuminated, glowing now from the revealed truths of a life lived. And brought forward in stories we might share with young readers as a means of providing Rudine Sims Bishop's windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.
In ORDINARY HAZARDS, Nikki comes to the gazing glass, reflected in the mirror of her past, to slide open the door to a time wherein her experiences are both sadly common and strangely uncommon all at once. And brings it all to us in her gift of verse.
"Informed imagination."
"The Naming" is the first poem from Book I of ORDINARY HAZARDS: "Nikki is/the first invention for which/I accept full responsibility." I am shortening a most powerful stanza here, but from the first words of the book, we see "ladders" to other works wherein the centering of the importance of names and how we get them are a theme. "The Naming" is quite possibly the best, quick, mentor text in exploring one's name that we have seen in some time and I do not doubt that this passage, the first poem within the book, will enter the canon for mentor texts in inviting students to write their narratives of nomenclature.
Book One takes the readers from Nikki's birth in Harlem, 1950 and takes us through the first five years of her life. We meet mother and sister Carol. We also meet the personifications of paranoid schizophrenia and the "drowning" and the "war" to come that that will take its POWs in the persons of Nikki and Carol who will spend days in dark closets (from where we pull the title of the memoir). We learn about the child's belief in prayer and the cultures response to orphaned children.
In my original notes, I wrote: "A Proper Introduction" appears on page 28, 10% which means that ORDINARY HAZARDS presents the urgency of time and place in front of the subject of the book." I wrote this note to remind myself that the sharing of macro, meso, and micro setting can be a powerful approach to knowing how we center the character, the poet. . .the memoirist. In her "proper introduction" what might be seen as self-deprecation is the poet's self-description that brings us closer to a figure we might have missed passing on the street. We won't miss her poring through these pages.
Throughout the book, Nikki guides the reader through italicized vignettes called "Mystery of Memory." Here, Nikki continues to point back to "informed imagination" the way an expository writer might point evidence back to a thesis. In the first of these vignettes, Nikki implores, from her position as author and storyteller, for "order/logical sequences,/and smooth transitions." As I read this vignette, I think of what we ask from memoir for our student writers. Here, an accomplished, award-winning poet begs for a "modicum of skill." She asks, "Where is the chronology of a life/chaotic from the start?" Isn't this the question of memoir? Should it be as we approach the genre with our younger writers. To see Nikki Grimes struggle inside of this genre even as she is presenting it is a model of vulnerability that comes with the exploration and the exposition of a life.
In Book Two, Nikki walks us through 1955-1960, a life spent with the Buchanan family. Here, our poet explores new family dynamics, checks the locks on doors to assure she will not be sealed up, mute a voice that will eventually help her to become a storyteller, befriends the largely-ignored dog who notices her, discovers lilacs (a connection she will share with a classroom teacher years later), and finds the power of a notebook.
"Journey" is our introduction to Nikki's record keeping, even if incomplete and in need of the "filling in": the blank page/was the only place/I could make sense/of my life/or keep record of/each space/I called home.
"The daily march of words/parading from my pen/kept me moving/forward."
From this point on within ORDINARY HAZARDS we get glimpses of the notebook entries. The first depicting a revelation of the deeper parts of her foster matriarch. Small, short pieces carry a large load from the memoirist and, within the first, a jelly jar of lilacs elicit the response of love earnestly sought by Nikki in her first ten years of life.
In Book Two, we see a world of words begin to come to life for the author. The origins of WORDS WITH WINGS? Perhaps. And what we might hope for having fallen in love with this little book.
Book Three takes us through three years of the author's life. In "Mystery of Memory #2," Nikki begins with "Trauma is a memory hog." We hope, removed from Nikki's experiences, that we might get a glimpse into the author's early school experiences. Perhaps we want Nikki to explore and to expose these moments that we, ourselves, have let slip into the memory loss that eventually becomes warm and fluid, but never solid. What we want from our poets many times is what we could not hold onto for ourselves. We make the writer, the poet, do this work. Nikki apologetically reveals the gaps here and ends this vignette:
"I've bridge the gaps/with suspension cables/forged of steeling gratitude/for having survived my past/at all."
As I revisit my notes from February's early reading of the book, I note that this is where I shared a Facebook message with Nikki and I agreed to slow the reading down considerably. I was walking along a suspension bridge now. Nikki keeps these lines tight so that they will not wiggle the walker too much in moving through the narrative. Nikki's memoir is our path and our safety net.
Book Three brings Nikki home and the presentation of the text becomes a combination of poetry and prose, each giving and taking and adding to the other upon the page as Nikki presents neighborhood struggles, the call to be part of gang politics, the conflict between her innate gift for story keeping and story telling measured against her having to play catch-up at midterm from entering class and coursework later in the year (later, the poet who had to once play catch-up becomes a one who would be awarded full-tuition to schools she would decline and schools she would ultimately enter and within which she would thrive). The library becomes a safe haven. A library card becomes a passport. We can live through. We can learn of. We can breathe. We can bleed. A cigarette burn a reminder of all that can be taken from us in a flash. From the flammable. We can live. We can lose.
Ordinary Hazards.
The un-ordinary hazard. The extraordinary hazard is also revealed in "Broken" from Book Three. This is a particularly painful revelation from the author and it draws from me a sort of wish (another ordinary hazard of the survivor) that all I had in common with this author was a love for lilacs.
As the "books" of ORDINARY HAZARDS advance the narrative, the mystery of memory becomes more "mastery" like as Nikki recalls the reunion and deepening of her awareness of what is happening to and around her. Her exposure to learning and to literature and to life are enveloped now in social unrest in response to assassinations. Anchored in fundamental literature introduced to her by her father that will help to moor the author to the literature she will bring back to readers in the future.
A page turner, readers will be tempted to move quickly through the book. Nikki teases this response out of the reader whose natural curiosity will want to know more. As this reader learns more, he, she, or they are forced to pause, an most ironic inner response to "tell me more."
There is so much to share in a life. Nikki's life shared in ORDINARY HAZARDS make it a natural "ladder" for her other books. For books. For the power of narrative as a means of showcasing situations set to harm, to kill, that become spaces for allowing survival to settle.
Nikki Grimes is a treasure of elementary, middle grade, and young adult literature. She takes her place now in memoir, a place carefully-considered in the presentation of the vulnerable child who becomes the venerable author/poet. She continues to give to us from her craft, her continued explorations of what it means to create and to curate art, and in her encouragement of classroom teachers, like this one, to consider story, in all of its forms. And informing sources.
Grimes's imagination is a revelation. And her revelation is an inspiration.
Inspiration. . .can drive adoption. Of texts. And, subsequently, of stories. As soon as this classroom teacher can make it happen, ORDINARY HAZARDS goes on the classroom reading list for Room 407.
March 20, 2023
Memoir, written in free verse, about the author’s dysfunctional relationship with her mother (who was eventually hospitalized for schizophrenia), abuse at the hands of parental substitutes, and experiences in various foster care situations. It covers roughly 1950 to 1967 and is pieced together from her fractured memories. I will try to separate my empathy for the author from my reaction to the book. Grimes’s pain and suffering comes across clearly, and my heart goes out to her; however, I do not think the memoir worked very well in free verse. It seems choppy, with some segments only one sentence in length. I appreciated learning how she developed her writing skills and admire her strength in overcoming such adversities.
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 29, 2020This verse doesn’t work for me at all:(
____________
Printz Honor 2020
I know only one person who's read it. A very obscure title.
March 19, 2019
Extraordinary writing that touches every part of the heart and soul. Grimes' poetry is exquisite and there isn't a single poem in this book that wasn't like taking a master class in writing. Every emotion and experience becomes a part of the reader.
Even more extraordinary is the story of searing childhood experiences that Grimes managed to surmount, learn from and triumph over. Inspiring is an over-used word but this memoir is inspiring.
Even more extraordinary is the story of searing childhood experiences that Grimes managed to surmount, learn from and triumph over. Inspiring is an over-used word but this memoir is inspiring.
January 9, 2020
Note: Reviewed from an ARC.
If you are to read one book this year, this should be the one you should pick up. Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir is an amazing peek into the formative years of poet Nikki Grimes. Not only does this work detail her faith, resiliency, and strength of will, but it also informs on her creative mind and writing process.
In this free verse memoir, Grimes tells of her childhood – from her birth in Harlem through the time she finally leaves her mother’s chaotic home and finds stability after moving in with her older sister, Carol. She opens up about many of the traumas she experienced while living with an alcoholic mother who struggled with mental illness: rejection, abuse by caregivers, racism, rape, gang violence, and her father’s death. She balances these events with uplifting experiences and people: living with a loving foster care family, a teacher who encourages her to write – expecting no less than Nikki’s best work, going to the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem, singing in the choir at Convent Avenue Baptist Church, discovering Michaux’s (bookstore), making life-long friendships, and the love, support, and encouragement from her sister and father. Through her father, Grimes was exposed to some of the most important authors, musicians and artists in Harlem at the time. It was faith, hope and love that carried her spirit through a difficult childhood.
The book is subdivided into four sections called “Books”. Each covers different time periods of her life, from 1950-55, 1955-60, 1960-63, and 1963-66. Since her mother destroyed the many journals she kept as a child, Grimes had to rely on the memories of her friends, her sister, and her own painful remembrances in order to reconstruct this free verse masterpiece of strength and resilience. She includes some poems named “Notebook” sprinkled throughout, ostensibly to recreate some of her journal entries destroyed by her mother.
One could use many adjectives to describe her childhood journey – heartbreaking, horrifying, harrowing – but none of these words includes the depth of bravery, gumption, faith, and external support that Grimes leaned on in order to deal with such a relentlessly excruciating childhood. Told as no one else could, Grimes makes readers feel each horrible turn experienced and the joy felt when things went “her way”. A must read for Nikki Grimes fans!
Highly Recommended for grades 9-up.
If you are to read one book this year, this should be the one you should pick up. Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir is an amazing peek into the formative years of poet Nikki Grimes. Not only does this work detail her faith, resiliency, and strength of will, but it also informs on her creative mind and writing process.
In this free verse memoir, Grimes tells of her childhood – from her birth in Harlem through the time she finally leaves her mother’s chaotic home and finds stability after moving in with her older sister, Carol. She opens up about many of the traumas she experienced while living with an alcoholic mother who struggled with mental illness: rejection, abuse by caregivers, racism, rape, gang violence, and her father’s death. She balances these events with uplifting experiences and people: living with a loving foster care family, a teacher who encourages her to write – expecting no less than Nikki’s best work, going to the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem, singing in the choir at Convent Avenue Baptist Church, discovering Michaux’s (bookstore), making life-long friendships, and the love, support, and encouragement from her sister and father. Through her father, Grimes was exposed to some of the most important authors, musicians and artists in Harlem at the time. It was faith, hope and love that carried her spirit through a difficult childhood.
The book is subdivided into four sections called “Books”. Each covers different time periods of her life, from 1950-55, 1955-60, 1960-63, and 1963-66. Since her mother destroyed the many journals she kept as a child, Grimes had to rely on the memories of her friends, her sister, and her own painful remembrances in order to reconstruct this free verse masterpiece of strength and resilience. She includes some poems named “Notebook” sprinkled throughout, ostensibly to recreate some of her journal entries destroyed by her mother.
One could use many adjectives to describe her childhood journey – heartbreaking, horrifying, harrowing – but none of these words includes the depth of bravery, gumption, faith, and external support that Grimes leaned on in order to deal with such a relentlessly excruciating childhood. Told as no one else could, Grimes makes readers feel each horrible turn experienced and the joy felt when things went “her way”. A must read for Nikki Grimes fans!
Highly Recommended for grades 9-up.
April 2, 2020
Nikki Grimes is a genius. She was honest, open, and raw about her challenging childhood and adolescence, and she does it so achingly beautiful. I am so glad that she had her notebook as an oasis. We are lucky, too.
February 15, 2020
Worthy of its many starred reviews and awards and more.
Read
March 5, 2021Heartbreaking, yet so powerful! Didn't quite find it poetic (ah, what do I know of poetry), but still enjoyed the writing. The narration by the author was the best part - a mix of passion and honesty.
TW: Alcoholism, Schizophrenia, Bullying, Sexual Abuse, Death.
Recommended.
TW: Alcoholism, Schizophrenia, Bullying, Sexual Abuse, Death.
Recommended.
December 24, 2019
ORDINARY HAZARDS is a gorgeously written poetic memoir that is at times difficult to read, but also so filled with love and hope.
August 8, 2021
3.5 stars. Moving story of Grimes’ childhood/young adulthood revealing how, despite an unstable home life, she perseveres and follows her personal visions.
I was amazed at how strong Grimes stayed as a girl despite being repeatedly rejected by her biological family, left in the care of abusive babysitters, turned over to various foster families, and finally being sent back to live with her alcoholic/mentally-ill mother and sexually-abusive step-father.
So many children in her position might have fallen through the cracks, been lost, but Grimes kept going, taking control of what she could in order to make her life go the direction she wanted. So admirable! Somehow along the way young Grimes finds the inner power to focus on people who are kind and nurturing to her -- and fortunately, there seem to be a steady stream of those, including her sister, her father and grandmother (who earlier had abandoned her but later come around), a favorite teacher, and some close friends--all of whom help her to feel loved and who encourage her to continue working on her writing/reading that she feels such a strong drive for and that she envisions using in her future.
I love poetry, but the poetry aspect of this particular book did not really work for me. Despite that, I found the stories told in it to be powerful and impactful, but think I would have preferred them as prose. Still, students who enjoy full-length texts told in poetry will probably find this appealing. The short poems that make up the text also make it fast reading, so this book could be appropriate for reluctant readers who have trouble focusing on denser texts but still need an engaging story.
Students will also find a strong role model in Grimes, perhaps especially those who also come from broken or non-traditional homes and those who have had to deal with any of the issues Grimes encounters: racism, sexual assault, neglect, frequent moves and changes in living conditions, gang pressures, etc
I was amazed at how strong Grimes stayed as a girl despite being repeatedly rejected by her biological family, left in the care of abusive babysitters, turned over to various foster families, and finally being sent back to live with her alcoholic/mentally-ill mother and sexually-abusive step-father.
So many children in her position might have fallen through the cracks, been lost, but Grimes kept going, taking control of what she could in order to make her life go the direction she wanted. So admirable! Somehow along the way young Grimes finds the inner power to focus on people who are kind and nurturing to her -- and fortunately, there seem to be a steady stream of those, including her sister, her father and grandmother (who earlier had abandoned her but later come around), a favorite teacher, and some close friends--all of whom help her to feel loved and who encourage her to continue working on her writing/reading that she feels such a strong drive for and that she envisions using in her future.
I love poetry, but the poetry aspect of this particular book did not really work for me. Despite that, I found the stories told in it to be powerful and impactful, but think I would have preferred them as prose. Still, students who enjoy full-length texts told in poetry will probably find this appealing. The short poems that make up the text also make it fast reading, so this book could be appropriate for reluctant readers who have trouble focusing on denser texts but still need an engaging story.
Students will also find a strong role model in Grimes, perhaps especially those who also come from broken or non-traditional homes and those who have had to deal with any of the issues Grimes encounters: racism, sexual assault, neglect, frequent moves and changes in living conditions, gang pressures, etc
Read
February 3, 2020A brutal and powerful verse memoir about growing up in an unstable family dealing with schizophrenia, absenteeism, sexual assault, and the foster care system. But through it all, Nikki's solace in writing comes through, as does her commitment to being a survivor. Messy and challenging and moving and ultimately everything a Printz book is. (I'm so curious how the committee talked about this one and SHOUT, since they have many parallels, not just their format, and both are extremely moving).
March 12, 2021
TW: Child molestation/sexual assault and harassment.
Grimes has an uncanny ability to tell her experience in such a way that her depression resonates with others. Her imaginative weaving of what would have been her diary entries and observations into poems is nothing short of brilliant.
Grimes has an uncanny ability to tell her experience in such a way that her depression resonates with others. Her imaginative weaving of what would have been her diary entries and observations into poems is nothing short of brilliant.
September 8, 2021
This was a beautifully-written memoir that was gut-wrenching at times but was ultimately a story about survival, faith, hope, ambition, and forgiveness. Nikki Grimes is truly a master of language, and she had me hooked from the first page to the last.
June 3, 2021
Kind of kicking myself for not reading this sooner. Absolutely heart wrenching and gorgeous. This and Laurie Halse Anderson's Shout are tied for my favorite memoirs in verse. (Jaqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming would be a close second.) Ordinary Hazards is a testament to the healing powers of faith and writing. I also loved the author's notes about trauma and how it robs a person of the ability to remember the past. This will be the next book I add to my classroom library, and my students will get sick of me recommending it.
February 27, 2021
I had heard so many good things about this memoir and the average rating on Goodreads is VERY high, but I didn't love this book. I am not a huge memoir person, but I was intrigued by the premise of this one. And while Nikki Grimes' story is compelling I did not enjoy the writing style. The verse did not speak to me and I found myself to be distanced from her the entire time. Nikki Grimes has a lot of blank patches in her life because of the trauma she experienced growing up and I understand that this makes it more difficult to write a complete story. However, there wasn't a flow in the verse and I didn't feel like it was speaking to me.
That being said, I really enjoyed all of the notebook entries she wrote when she was growing up. I found them to be excellent insight into who she was and is as a person and I really enjoyed her earlier writing as well. I also liked reading about all the different books she read growing up because we read and loved the exact same ones! I wonder if poetry was the best mode to use. There are many novels and memoirs where poetry strengthens the writing, themes, and story, but in this case it didn't do anything (in my opinion). Still worth a read though!
That being said, I really enjoyed all of the notebook entries she wrote when she was growing up. I found them to be excellent insight into who she was and is as a person and I really enjoyed her earlier writing as well. I also liked reading about all the different books she read growing up because we read and loved the exact same ones! I wonder if poetry was the best mode to use. There are many novels and memoirs where poetry strengthens the writing, themes, and story, but in this case it didn't do anything (in my opinion). Still worth a read though!
February 7, 2020
Breathtaking lyric memoir. Extraordinary life, extraordinary writing.
Nikki Grimes wanted to write about the dark moments of her life, but she also wanted to write about the light, which she knew could be harder to find. Told in a variety of poetry styles, Grimes' voice comes through clear and strong. An inspiring work for anyone who uses words to find a way through. I applaud this book. Utterly compelling and well-crafted.
Nikki Grimes wanted to write about the dark moments of her life, but she also wanted to write about the light, which she knew could be harder to find. Told in a variety of poetry styles, Grimes' voice comes through clear and strong. An inspiring work for anyone who uses words to find a way through. I applaud this book. Utterly compelling and well-crafted.
February 18, 2020
Oh, this story. I’m going to have to buy a copy when it comes out in paperback and highlight all of the beautiful lines I want to hold on to and go back to read again and again. Sometimes I had to stop reading and take a break and sometimes I didn’t want to keep reading. One of my favorite lines is from Grimes’ sister, “The world will know the Grimes sisters.” We can only be so lucky this story has been shared.
April 7, 2021
Read for my Library Materials for Young Adults class.
I listened to this on audio because it's in verse, but I'm not sure I have much to say about it which isn't a great sign. Her struggles were upsetting, for sure, but I didn't feel that connected with Grimes, and I'm not sure the verse was all that effective for me. It's hard to make a judgment call on a person's story, but the quality of the book overall was not that high in my opinion.
I listened to this on audio because it's in verse, but I'm not sure I have much to say about it which isn't a great sign. Her struggles were upsetting, for sure, but I didn't feel that connected with Grimes, and I'm not sure the verse was all that effective for me. It's hard to make a judgment call on a person's story, but the quality of the book overall was not that high in my opinion.
July 23, 2020
Grimes's memoir in verse recounts with searing honesty traumatic childhood experiences and her discovery of the healing power of words.
August 22, 2020
This memoir in verse is low on words but huge on impact. Grimes brings to life her childhood filled with mental illness, alcoholism and abandonment.
July 6, 2021
This book is full of beautiful poetry with emotions that leap from the page into your heart. Nikki Grimes is so talented and this memoir into her life is so powerful and heartbreaking.
January 2, 2024
I would have probably never picked up this book myself without my friend recommending it but wow. This was such a beautiful and impactful memoir. It’s written almost completely in verse. It set a beautiful tone for the first book of the year. It’s one of those books I’m grateful to the author for writing because she has a special way to breathe life into words.
December 19, 2021
Stories like Grimes's really show how adversity will either break you or make you stronger. She channeled everything that happened to her, all the darkness and the light, into becoming a wonderful published author. Inadvertently, she also became an inspiration. Throughout this book she did a fantastic job of bridging the gaps due to lost memories. Great read but not for the faint of heart.
September 19, 2022
Wow! Couldn't put it down, beautifully written.
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