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Interview with Paula Meseroll, co-author of Little Hot Mama: The Flossie Turner Lewis Story

Paula Meseroll is a public relations professional and an award-winning freelance writer/editor/columnist whose work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, including Syracuse University Magazine, UB Today, Central New Yorker Magazine, and All Kids Considered. A summa cum laude graduate of Marywood University with a degree in communication arts/public relations, Meseroll is director of marketing and communications at Syracuse University. She’s here today to talk about Flossie Turner Lewis and her new book, Little Hot Mama.

Q: How did you first find out about Flossie Turner Lewis?

A: I met Flossie at the Laubach Literacy/Literacy Volunteers of America national conference in San Diego in 2002. Flossie had won the National Award of Excellence for Outstanding Student of the Year and as editor of Laubach Literacy’s newsletter, LitScape. she had the opportunity to interview her. As a long-time freelance writer and reporter, I know a good story when I hear one, and Flossie’s has had it all: family strife, show business glamour, one woman’s struggle to make ends meet for herself and her children while is unable to read or write. I also saw her hold a room full of people in awe as she delivered her award acceptance speech, recounting her life in show business and her struggle against illiteracy. She is, in a word, amazing.

Q: For those readers who are not familiar with your name, please tell us who Flossie Turner Lewis is.

A: Flossie Turner Lewis began entertaining audiences with song and dance in 1935, when she was just two years old. Known by her stage name “Little Hot Mama,” she was the daughter of black showbiz stars Hot Papa and Dolly Turner. Flossie, along with her sister LuLu B. and her brother Her Junior, traveled with her parents and performed as the Turner Family Revue. Her own career in show business spanned more than 40 years. She performed on the carnival and chitlin circuits, in speakeasies and minstrel shows, and in Miami’s posh Overtown nightclubs, where the Turner family shared venues with other black entertainment greats of the day. From the Deep South to Miami, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles, Flossie lived her life as an artist, a mother, an eyewitness to racial discrimination and turmoil, and a woman who couldn’t read or write until she decided to learn how to do so in has 65 years. Now almost 78 years old, she earned an honors high school diploma, is the most in-demand speaker for the United Way in Fayetteville, North Carolina, has lobbied Congress and state legislatures on behalf of literacy organizations, and has a lot on demand as a beginning speaker.

Q: How did Little Hot Mama, your book co-written with Flossie Turner Lewis, come about?

A: At the literacy conference, we exchanged business cards and I told Flossie that if she wanted to work together to write her memoirs, I would be happy to. When the conference ended, I returned home to Syracuse and took care of other projects. Several months later, I found her card in a desk drawer and decided to call her. She told me that other writers had offered to work with her to tell her story. She said that she had to pray for me to see if I was the one she should work with and she would let me know. A few days later, she called me back and told me the answer was yes.

Q: Who is your target audience?

A: Flossie’s story is interesting on so many levels that just about anyone would find it a great read. Literacy students, tutors, people interested in African Americans, black entertainment, and women’s history will be especially enthralled.

Q: What would you like readers to take away from the book?

A: Above all, I would like people to be entertained. That is the basis of everything Flossie did in her life in show business: for the Turner family, despite poverty, hunger and his father’s gambling addiction, the show really had to go on. I hope readers are as deeply moved by her story as I am.

Q: What makes this woman’s story so special?

A: Flossie’s story is the inspiring story of one woman’s struggle to make a successful life for herself and her children, despite the obstacles of racism and illiteracy. Her first-person accounts of her life in the minstrel show and the chitlin circuit are a piece of American history that perhaps no other living person can tell.

Flossie is an incredibly strong woman who refused to give in to circumstances. She faced everything her life threw at her and she overcame it all. The book has moments of intense pain and anguish, such as Flossie’s experience of being a poor, black single mother with a brain-damaged child, as well as the night Flossie’s beloved mother died in her arms. But there are also parts where readers will literally laugh out loud: Many of the hilarious shows that made the Turner family famous are described in detail. There are 35 pages of photos of Flossie, her family, and the artists they worked with.

Q: Tell us about the actual writing process for this book. What was it like working with Flossie?

A: Since Flossie lives in North Carolina and I live in New York State, we did all of our interviews over the phone. Some nights we would talk for a few minutes, other times for hours. We laughed and cried together as she drowned out the memories she had hidden for decades; To get the details, I asked her about many things she didn’t want to think about because the memories were too painful. Flossie likes to say that I know more about her than she does. Memories of her are intensely vivid: her family became so real to me that she even dreamed of them at night. I have literally hundreds of hours of recorded interviews that took place over the course of over a year. During that time, we became more than collaborators. We are good friends. Then came the hard part: organizing Flossie’s sometimes chaotic life into a readable manuscript and writing her story.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

A: Flossie and I couldn’t be more different: she’s African-American, I’m white. I’ve been reading since before she started kindergarten, her words were just jumbles to her until she was 60 years old. I graduated from the university with the highest honors; Flossie’s education was virtually non-existent for most of her life. There were times when I had to research what she told me (names, dates, places) because she didn’t know how to spell them. Her life was so different from mine that I literally had to overcome my own personality to write in Flossie’s voice. In that, I think I was successful: more than one person who has read the book has asked me if I am African American because I had the correct words and usage.

Q: Where is the book available?

A: Little Hot Mama: The Flossie Turner Lewis Story is available on Amazon.com as a Kindle eBook. It is also available as an e-book for libraries to purchase and lend without limit to patrons.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with my readers?

A: Flossie and I, our literary agent, Leticia Gomez, and our publisher, Stay Thirsty Media, have teamed up to donate 50 cents from the sale of each digital copy of our book to the Flossie Turner Lewis Literacy Fund at ProLiteracy to support the most worthy cause of adult literacy.

For more information on this book, visit: http://www.staythirstymedia.com

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