Sayeeda Copeland: single mom writing a great novel

I met Sayeeda Copeland a decade ago when I taught a writing class at the Bronx Academy of Letters. She was already writing in her own strong and honest voice about aspects of life most teenagers would prefer not to mention, let alone write about: her parents’ addictions, illnesses, and deaths; growing up in foster care and being adopted by imperfect people; sex; men; motherhood; education, work, and so on. She’s intimidated by nothing and she’s writing a novel that will knock us out when it’s published (as I have no doubt it will be). This fundraiser is to buy her some time to finish it. Below are her own words. —Rick Whitaker

“My name is Sayeeda Copeland. I was born Shaqwana Williams on March 16, 1992 at Harlem Hospital. My parents were Sharon Williams, a single mother, and John Charles Barrett, an Army sergeant who served in the Vietnam War. I lost my father in 2001, to AIDS. My mother passed in 2011, to her fight against lung cancer. I was placed in foster care, first with my mother’s only sister when I was a year old. I was then placed in various homes until I was adopted by a Jamaican couple at the age of thirteen. After my adoption my name was changed to Sayeeda Copeland. I grew up in the Bronx. I have been writing since the age of six. I have been published in various magazines. In my senior year of high school, my poem “Pregnant With Haiti’s Prayer” won a thousand dollar college scholarship and “Best of the Bronx” by Random House Publishing. In 2015, I gave a speech at the National Council of Teachers of English. I have been recently published in the anthology “Colonize This!” on women of color and their stances on feminisim in America. I am currently writing a novel entitled “Black Cotton”. Today, I am a proud single mother of two beautiful boys, Godfrey and Giannis. I have hopes of becoming a professor of English, while creating my own journal line. I want to spread my love for the craft of writing and I dream of being able to teach in prisons to help inmates use their writing skills and voices to win back their freedom. Writing has been my voice and my sanity. I also am an advocate for children who have been in and adopted out of the foster care system and for those coping with domestic violence issues."