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Carol Hood

Carol Hood is a native of Oakland, California and holds a MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her novel in progress, The Misadventures of Tip & J.B. Turner, was nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award for Best Manuscript, and her short story, White Alien, was short-listed as for Glitter Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. She's also writing a graphic novel because she hopes this will appease the gods enough to make her Wonder Woman.

It hasn't happened yet.

Carol can be found on Twitter .

Books

The Misadventures of Tip & J.B. Turner

I don't reckon I can tell you anything 'bout me without talking 'bout Uncle Jimbo. Would I call him a role model? My brother J.B., he probably would. Pop, who knows? Muh wouldn't, she'd call him lawless, someone that her children could not and would not be round, not if she wanted them to survive.

My family from Camden, Texas, and Mr. Carter, he treats us... well, he treats all families right, really. Give us everything we need, just as long as the men go to the sawmill and the women cook dinner and the children mind their business. Pop's an edgerman, J.B. and me would go to the sawmill too, learn how to become edgermen. That's what the Turners are. Edgermen. That's what people say, anyway. They say, 'You wanna be a man, Tip Turner? Be an edgerman, a good one, like your father', and even though I think about being a doctor, everybody in Camden says that nobody would go to a Negro doctor even if one did come by. It just don't make no sense.

But what I learned in 1932, while J.B. and me made drop-offs of White Lightnin' to Uncle Jimbo's clients, while we assembled guns for Bonnie and Clyde, and ran from the law and ran from the klan because the law and the klan might as well been the same, what I learned is that not making no sense don't have a damn thing to do with the truth.

Truth is I don't know if this story makes me a hero. Truth is I don't know if this story makes me a villain. All I know is that this is my story, of how two little Negro boys, brothers, found themselves mixed up in the bootlegging business. This is the story of how I, Tipkins Turner, became me.