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Christopher Paul Curtis: As things have changed, as the job market has changed, as the fortunes
of Flint has changed. One time Flint had, for decades Flint had the highest per capita
income for black people in the country, now there very few jobs in Flint. One thing that
doesn't change though, is the need for education and the need to go to school and to take care
of business. I had kind of a typical Flint upbringing for someone that was born in the
mid-50s. I went to school and at the end of my high school, I started working in the factory
and I would go to the U of M-Flint at night. I ended up working in the factory for 13 years,
despised every minute of it. There's nothing wrong with getting a vocation. It's very difficult
to do now. The more practical route is to go through education. The factory jobs aren't
there. There aren't jobs where you can go make $40-50,000 dollars a year unless you're
highly educated. I've written, at this time, 6 books, starting with "The Watsons go to
Birmingham". As they say, lightning strikes some of the time. A one in a million shot
and it came through for me and now I'm a full time writer. Writing's like anything else
that you do. It is like learning a sport. The more you do it, the better you get at
it. And hopefully I can impart that into students and let them know this is something that can
number 1, make a difference in your life, number 2, I find it very enjoyable. I have
a riot when I write. I laugh, I cry, I have a lot of fun. It's a tremendous honor to be
coming back here as a professor. I never imagined anything like this would happen. So it's something
that I'm very proud of. The future is something you have to have your eye on. You have to
be working towards, you have to be moving in that direction, because if not, it's really
easy to make a U-turn and start going back to the past and you don't want to be there.
It's nice to visit but you have to keep moving forward. Yes!