RoseMary The Writer Short Interview About Her New Book Swimming Through The Mud

Host BJ taks with Author RoseMary The Writer about her new book Swimming Through The Mud.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hartfeat Saint Louis with AKA Fiji Holidaybringing you the pulse of the city.
As we continue to talk about blackgirls who rock, well, I'll tell
you what. It's one lady that'srocking right now. She wrote a book
and it's called Swimming through the Mud. She's a Saint Louis native and lives

(00:26):
in California right now, but cameback to Saint Louis to visit a family
and she's in the studio with meright now. Have the pleasure of having
missus Rosemary Comington in the building.How you doing. I'm doing just fine.
BJ. Thank you for having me. Good. So the book Swimming
through the Mud, tell me alittle bit about it, Well, it's

(00:47):
about black people. All my writingis about black people, and it's about
black people growing up and living throughthe Annabelle Home South, the Civil War
and reconstruction. Okay, I noticedthat in the book. Is it like
three or four different characters in thebook. There are three main characters in

(01:07):
the book. The book starts outwhen they're teenagers, they're like fifteen,
eighteen and eight, and it followsthem through their mid forties. Now,
one thing that I know is oneof the stories in the book that you
talk about. You talk about afifteen year old slave who came to America.

(01:34):
He can speak English, but Iguess apparently he fell in love with
an Irish woman. You want totalk a little bit about that story.
Sure, No, I'm not goingto say that they fell in love.
Okay, they're fifteen and about fourteen, and I think they may have fallen
into exploration. But yeah, theyoung man Bebo came here from West Africa,

(01:57):
as many of us did, buthe came after importing slaves was against
the law in this country. Sothen that was in the early part of
the nineteenth century. After that itwas mostly domestic slave trade. But so
he was a special order. Theywanted someone who had the body features that

(02:23):
he had, not only for workingon the plantation, but also for breeding
because he was a big guy andthey and very strong. Although he was
very young. They wanted someone withhis body type for breeding. And that's

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why he was brought to this countryas a special purchase. Just for his
attributes, Okay, for all hisattributes. And then why did you why
did you? Why did you actuallywrite the book? Well, I had
wanted to write a book almost allmy life and well as long as I

(03:07):
can remember reading. Quite frankly,I wanted to write, and now I'm
up in age, and after havinga really nice career, I decided if
I didn't get it done, Iwouldn't get it done now. I picked
that topic because black history is somethingthat I'm invested in. You know,

(03:30):
I'm black history, you're black history. My whole family is black history.
So it's something that I'm invested in, and I love history in general,
so it was easy for me topick a subject. I've written a lot
of short stories. This is myfirst novel, and most of my short

(03:53):
stories are historic in some way orthe other. A lot of them,
well, several of them deal withmy growing up or not necessarily me,
but the environment in which I grewup here in Saint Louis in the mid
twentieth century. So you know,I just I love history. I love

(04:16):
writing about it, and I lovewriting about the role we played in history
and our experiences in living through veryvery difficult times, which frankly, I
don't think have gone away. Theymay be better on the surface, but
deep down, as we learn moreevery day, a lot of things really

(04:38):
haven't changed, all right, Sothe book is Swimming through the Mud.
Where can people get the book,Well, you can get it almost any
place where books are sold. Youcan get it on Amazon, you can
get it on Barnes and Noble.If you go to my website www dot
Rosemarycovington dot com and get it throughmy website. So it's it's really easy

(05:03):
to get you know, there's noexcuse for saying I couldn't find it,
but it's right there. And Ihope you do get one, get a
copy and read it. And Itell people all the time, I really
appreciate people who support me. Imean, I just I really do.

(05:24):
I wouldn't be any place without that. But I wrote the book for you
to read. So if you buya copy, please read it. I
think you'll learn a lot. Ithink, like I did when I was
writing the book, you'll want tolearn more. And that was the fun
of writing it. I got toexplore and learn so much more. All

(05:46):
right, Rosemary cover Swimming through theMud, Thank you so much for coming
on the show today. This hasbeen another edition of Heartbeat Saint Louis with
AKA PG Holiday, bringing you thepulse of the city