"My Grandfather Had One Coat"

Before writer, poet and Bed-Stuy resident Angeli Rasbury published her latest book, “My Grandfather Had One Coat,” she worked as a criminal defense lawyer in downtown Brooklyn. 

“Sitting in courtrooms, waiting for my cases to be heard by judges, I had to write and read to cope with the injustice that I saw day in and day out,” said Rasbury. “I would write pages and pages about what I saw, felt, heard, thought, about what was happening to black people. 

"I wrote on the New York Law Journal, legal pads, napkins. I scribbled in margins. I needed to write to survive those days, and I got a lot of satisfaction out of creating stories with endings other than jail or prison.” 

Rasbury eventually left her day job as an attorney and decided to make creating stories her full-time job.

She began volunteering with non-profit organizations that served youth and fostered their creativity, such as the NY Writers Coalition and the Youth Arts Academy at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. 

Helping young people feel confident to speak their truth was inspiring to Rasbury. Currently, she works at the Brooklyn Pubic Library, where she started a program called Phat Phun Tuesdays, poetry writing workshops for young readers.

The successful workshops were offered every week at two branches of the library. But after funding cuts left her with fewer program sessions, she had to maximize the opportunities she had to push the creative instincts of her young participants.

In one writing exercise, she asked her youth to write a list of what they would do with their grandfather’s coat:

“When I gave them that particular exercise, I actually was feeling kind of awful because I did not think it would go over well,” said Rasbury. “But when I looked up, I saw they were writing furiously.  Then they read the pieces, and I thought the work was incredible.”

“My Grandfather Had One Coat: Poems, writing and art by young Brooklyn writers from Phat Phun Tuesdays Poetry Workshops,” is a 20-page collection of prose and poetry by teens and children as young as six years old.

"I would wear granddaddy's coat to bed because it gave me wonderful dreams and ideas," writes Tema Regist.

"My grandfather only had one coat but he didn't care.... As long as he had something to wear and he was alive and he had God on his side, nothing else mattered," writes Aliah Gilkes. 

While the writing and poems are triumphant in their originality, the book is elevated by the inclusion of color photographs of original art by the young writers.

The pairing of original art and prose offers a glimpse into the writers' voices, lives, and personalities—an opportunity for young people from various Brooklyn neighborhoods to shine through, without polishing or pushing.

“I guess there was something in me that said, ‘I can't keep asking them to dig deep, give me all they have and I don't give to them,’” Rasbury said. “’Gift’ is the only way I can describe this book. It is like a sunset at the most beautiful beach in the world, like the best dark chocolate. That first bike.”

“My Grandfather Had One Coat" is $10. To order a copy, contact Angeli Rasbury at angelirasbury@hotmail.com.

Angeli Rasbury also has published “Yes We Can: Black Love Poems” and has won the Doris Jean Austin Award for African-American Fiction Writers from the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center.