Budding Freshman Author Aims to Inspire

Noni D. Carter ’13 was 12 years old when a family gathering inspired her to embark on a project that would transform her from a child with a dream to a young woman who urges others to follow theirs.

That evening six years ago, Carter’s great-aunt visited her home in Fayetteville, Ga.

“She gathered me and my sister and my cousins around, and she told the story of my great-great-great-grandmother Rose,” Carter recalls. When Rose was 12 years old, her mother was sold to a different slave owner. The young girl never reunited with her mother.

Upon hearing this painful story from her family’s past, Carter said she ran to her room with tears streaming down her face.

“I have to be able to inspire other people the way her story touched me,” Carter remembers telling herself.

That was the birth of “Good Fortune,” Carter’s first novel, which­—after six years of writing, editing, and some good fortune of her own—was published this January.

A WORK IN PROGRESS

Carter says that she has enjoyed writing for as long as she can remember, and that her family imbued her with a love of history from an early age.

When she began her novel at age 12, Carter says she read slave narratives and made frequent trips to the library to learn about African-American life in the early 1800s.

“I read so much that I was in that time period when I wrote,” she says. “I would lock my door and be in that time.”

At age 15, she completed the first draft of her book, which had grown from a 25-page short story to a 300-page manuscript.

Inspired by her own family history, Carter decided to write about a girl who is kidnapped from her African home and enslaved in Tennessee, where she secretly learns to read despite her plantation’s rules.

The novel chronicles her struggles in slavery and her quest for freedom.

Upon reading his daughter’s work, Carter’s father, Clinton A. Carter ’83, was the first to suggest that she attempt to publish the novel.

Excited by the idea, Carter began to revise her story for publication. “Editing was a lot tougher than the actual writing,” she says.

By May 2008, she felt that the book was ready. Acting on the advice of poet and publisher Kwame Alexander—whom Carter met at a musical retreat—the aspiring author and her father traveled to Los Angeles to attend BookExpo America, the largest annual book trade fair in the United States.

Carter spent two days at the convention center talking to publishers about her book.

“Nobody gets picked up off the floor, but we didn’t know that at the time,” she says. “At the end of the second day, we were really discouraged and ready to go home.”

But Carter decided to try one more publisher.

Without looking at the name of the company, she strode up to the booth.

The person behind the booth, who turned out to be a vice president at Simon & Schuster, “just engulfed Noni with energy” and asked her to return the next day, according to Carter’s father.

“He just stopped in the middle of the discussion and said, ‘Let’s cut to the chase, we want to sign Noni,’” he recalls. “I was trying to be a businessman about this whole situation. Internally, I was exploding, jumping for joy.”

Over the next year and a half, Carter worked with Simon & Schuster to further hone her manuscript and started her freshman year at Harvard in the meantime.

On Jan. 5, her book was released.

“Twelve years old to 18—that’s a key point in your life; you grow so much,” she muses. “There’s definitely my own growth story somewhere in there.”

EARNEST ABOUT EDUCATION

Since the release of her book, Carter has visited schools, bookstores, libraries, and churches to read excerpts from “Good Fortune” and speak to young people about her writing journey.

“That’s where my passion lies, book published or not,” she says of the opportunity to talk to students.

“My whole goal is to inspire young people in my generation to be the best they can be, to go for their goals and dreams like the main character in my book.”

This past Monday, while speaking to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders at Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School in Cambridge, Carter relates the importance of “the three E’s: emancipation, education, and earnestness.”

As she asks the students about their own conceptions of these three values and their knowledge of African-American history, her cheerful refrain of “very good, very good” in response to each child’s contribution reveals her enthusiasm for teaching.

“We would go upstairs, and her sister and the dolls would all be around her, and Noni would have her papers out teaching class,” Carter’s father remembers.

Her mother, Denise M. Bell-Carter, affirms her daughter’s desire to use her book as a platform to promote education.

“She’s following her passion, which is to really educate, motivate, and inspire youth,” Carter’s mother says. “She just lights up when she’s able to do that.”

Around the time she began writing “Good Fortune,” Carter sent a letter to one of her favorite authors, African-American science fiction writer Tananarive Due.

Due responded and has kept in touch with Carter ever since, even penning a laudatory quote for the back of Carter’s novel.

“That’s what I hope to be,” Carter says. “That kind of author who’s always in touch with her fans.”

At the end of her speech at Banneker, Carter mentions that February is Black History Month.

She urges her young listeners to look up a figure from African-American history whom they have never heard of before—and to e-mail her with their findings.

THE NEXT CHAPTER

Over lunch in Annenberg, Carter talks about her involvement in student activities and her Expos class, insisting, “I’m a normal freshman.”

“Noni is inspirational, wonderful, and talented, but most importantly she has her head on her shoulders,” says her friend Rachel V. Byrd ’13.

Benjamin J. Likis ’13, who lives in Carter’s entryway in Canaday, says that Carter is extremely modest about her accomplishments.

“I think other people were more excited for the release of her book than she was,” Likis says.

“She’s not really about that. For her, it’s just about getting the story out there and making sure that people understand the importance of getting an education.”

Just weeks after publishing her first novel, Carter is already contemplating her next literary endeavor.

For the subject of her second book, she says she is “hoping that the widely available resources here at Harvard will allow me to delve into another culture, hopefully in Latin America or the Caribbean.”

After Carter reads a haunting passage from “Good Fortune” about her young protagonist’s theft from Africa by slave traders, the children at Banneker eagerly pepper her with questions.

“Would you consider yourself famous?” one student asks.

“Nah,” Carter replies. A twinkle enters her eye. “I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.”

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.