Author Statement
Why I Wrote about Betty Smith
Valerie Raleigh Yow
When I was twelve, I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Years later, in the 1990s, when I walked around Chapel Hill, I often passed a stately two-story house, set back from the street. It had a long front walk and a stone wall surrounding the yard. I was told this was once Betty Smith’s house. I wondered how Betty Smith, known in town as a feisty northern woman, ever got here.
I reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and then took up her other three novels as well. I trudged over to the university’s manuscript collection in the Wilson Library and began to read her letters and notes to herself and autobiographical writings. I imagined the little girl waiting at the top of the Brooklyn tenement steps for her father, hoping he would not be drunk. My throat tightened when I read in a letter to her second husband, Joe Jones, “Things are never as bad as I imagine they are.” To Betty Smith, growing up working-class meant you might not be able to assume anything would turn out right, but you could be certain that your own grit would see you through. I had to find out everything I could about her: I would write her biography.
