describes as “the most trying time of my life”. She was absent from her son’s life. He was only two when she was arrested. Thankfully, her mother and stepfather raised her son while she was away. During those long years, she only saw him once.
Incarcerated in Texas, far from family and friends, Vickie had a lot of time to reflect and to think about what she really wanted for herself and her life. “I decided to use that time to heal myself,” she says. “I had learned that association brings assimilation, and so I read extensively and wrote in my journal.” Reading works by Donald Goines, who was also an ex-convict, inspired her.
Vickie began writing her own stories. She would go to the prison’s law library and hang a sign saying, “Research in Progress,” on the window to discourage others. There, she would move into the life of her fictional character, Pamela Xavier. She says that she often cried as she wrote, and eventually completed the first drafts of Let That Be the Reason and Imagine This while still imprisoned. She tried out these stories on her fellow inmates and received high marks for them.
In addition, Vickie wrote a powerful letter to God with a list of her goals and desires. In a way, it was a challenge to God. She was essentially saying, “Since you’re God, you can do this!”
“It’s been a blessed experience,” Vickie says emphatically. “God showed me that He is a restorer. He restored me. We often don’t have much faith in restoration and we need to have more.”
Vickie’s list of goals and desires has been met. She has a lovely home, the car she hoped for, clothes, a computer, financial stability and an emotionally fulfilling job. She has blessed her mother; and, she has done good things for her friends and family, just as she desired.
These more tangible goals were fulfilled by persevering through twenty-six rejection letters she received from mainstream publishers whom she approached to publish her manuscripts. She redirected her entrepreneurial abilities and charismatic people skills that had made her a good criminal, and self-published her first novel, Let That Be the Reason. She proved herself a creative marketer, traveling on her own to many cities and selling copies of her novel out of beauty shops and through friends. Vickie’s first printing of 1600 copies sold out in three weeks, thereby negating the concern that her hip-hop audience simply weren’t readers, and wouldn’t buy books. They were and they did!
A small New York City publishing house bought her book in 2002 and gave Vickie a $50,000 advance. She was on her way as an author, but really wanted to be a publisher for other authors with the hip-hop audience in mind. By December of that year, Vickie founded Triple Crown Publishing, revolutionizing the literary industry as a pioneer of the Hip-Hop Literature genre. She has signed thirty other authors to her publishing house, and has published over thirty-six titles, distributing over one million books to bookstores and libraries worldwide.
The intangibles she longed for from her letter to God were to be at peace and be happy, to hear the voice of God, and to have a clear vision for her life. She paraphrases a Bible verse in which God promises, “I can restore unto you that which the locusts have eaten.” And she gratefully acknowledges that God gave her her life back and then some.
“I’m not afraid of challenges that I am faced with today,” Vickie says, “Because things can and do change with what God is able to do.”
Upon being paroled from prison and returning to Columbus, Ohio, Vickie lived in a halfway house, worked twelve hours a day and performed community service to prove her reliability and to pay restitution for her crimes. She was working tirelessly to demonstrate to the authorities that she was able to parent her son. She wanted to regain custody of him. In addition, she wanted a good father for him.
Vickie has been out of prison for over nine years now. She says her family was willing to support her in not breaking the law. She has a new man in her life, and a new baby. She has custody of her older son, Valen, and in 2004 she founded The Valen Foundation, a nonprofit organization named for her son and dedicated to reuniting and restoring bonds between children and their incarcerated parents.
Vickie Stringer and Triple Crown Publications have been featured in such prominent news media as The New York Times, Newsweek, MTV News, Publisher’s Weekly, The Boston Globe, Vibe, Essence, Inc Magazine, The Washington Post and many others. As an inspiration and motivation to aspiring authors and self-publishers, Vickie has published her advice in How to Succeed in the Publishing Game.
Vickie has much to say to other women. “Divine intervention changes lives,” she says. “Have faith that miracles overcome obstacles.”
She goes on to say, “Trust your gut. The Holy Spirit is your intuition. It never will fail you. I am God fearing and happy to be so. I would also tell every woman to Be Ready! There are so many doors that we don’t go through. Always be ready, because preparation makes opportunity. I have a sense of expectancy and I make sure I’m ready. My credit is good; I’ve taken classes in time management, among other things. I got a speech coach to help me to improve my speaking ability. Look good! Fortify who you are!” And finally, “Be Blessed.”
CHAPTER 3
The Inspirers
For every one of us who succeeds, it’s because there’s somebody there to show you the way out. The light doesn’t necessarily have to be in your family; for me, it was teachers and school.
— Oprah Winfrey
African American women have traditionally been inspirational and encouraging to others in their communities. They have been the bedrock of their churches, for example, and have provided spiritual nourishment to their children, grandchildren, and extended families.
Often, in the course of resolving problems or issues within themselves or their own families, they provide inspiration to others to do the same, without even knowing that they are having that kind of influence or that anyone else is observing their process. Helping one another and modeling success is critical to improving the self-esteem and self-confidence of those who are less aware or confident of their own possibilities.
Inspiring women are essential to their communities because they provide hope. They model the attributes of courage, commitment, confidence, and spiritual vitality so essential to successful and meaningful lives.
Inspirers encourage just by their presence. They come from all walks of life, and social and economic strata. They are not necessarily famous, though some are, but they serve as competent coaches and role models, encouraging others to take stock of their own possibilities and to make the most of them.
Inspirers are generous in their praise and acknowledgement of other’s attributes. They encourage lavishly and criticize when they believe the criticism will be helpful in a particular situation. Every woman interviewed for this book spoke of people along the way who had inspired her, with either a personal touch or as a model to emulate.
In the course of writing about inspiring African American women, one of them explained to me the truism that, “Sometimes when I want to be inspirational, I put my backside to the business at hand and push from behind. A tugboat doesn’t always pull, it mostly pushes.” Her statement made me laugh at first, and then I realized that it was a good illustration of the diverse ways in which Inspirers affect others and sometimes effect change.
As I interviewed each of the following women, I was not only personally inspired by their stories, but I could see that they had had broad influence on the people around them because of their ability to be flexible and purposeful, and have courage and integrity. They made others better just by association.
Sonya Lockett
“If you don’t give back, your blessings have been wasted.”
I introduced myself to Sonya Lockett when I was on retreat at Miraval, a wellness resort in Tucson, Arizona. I had watched her and her friend, wearing bathrobes fresh from the spa, visiting over lunch, and asked if she would like to join me for dessert. It took some nerve for me to approach her and