Featured Interview With Ivan Von Baublitz
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Imagine living in the roof of a bustling train station as a blizzard pounds the streets above your head. The hot water pipes snugged between your feet to offer some warmth from the dropping temperature. Imagine discovering your best friends face severed from a 44 caliber bullet at close range while children contemplate taking his sneakers from his body. Imagine meeting your mother for the first time and her pimp offers you some pancakes. Well that’s a taste of my past and there’s a whole bunch of flavors to taste after those. I have lived a life that I don’t regret, I have lived a life that I couldn’t forget, and I wanted to share it with others that face the feeling of helplessness in hopes to inspire the,
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I wrote to survive isolation and books offered me a way to discover the world. Living in poverty my whole life books made me rich and talented. I could be a treasure hunter, a hero, a soldier, or I could find books that made me feel as if the grits and beans I was eating was Thanksgiving dinner compared to what others around the world had. Without books I would have withered away like a sea turtle stuck upside down on it’s shell in the baking Galapagos sun.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Richard Wright hands down is my favorite author because his books Black Boy and Native Son changed my life. They opened my eyes that my suffering was nothing compared to the black community and to embrace my white privilege because that’s all I had. The fear and desperation of his main character Bigger in Black Boy brought me to terms with my fear of poverty and reinforced many of my values with the racism I was witnessing in Chicago. I was a white kid who witnessed the crimes of the police and the system against many young black men. Black Boy made me realize that this isn’t new and it isn’t going away. There is something inherently American that assures it won’t in order to keep the classes apart.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The one and only I have written is 40 years of memories that I had to wash out of me. My autobiogrpahy and I’m still writing it because some how I wasn’t killed at least not yet.
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