Tag: Young Adult Fiction

When It Comes to Closing the Racial Divides, Every Voice Matters

Nikki T. Anthony’s debut novel, The Price We Pay, centers around a teenage girl by the name of Zenetta Henchman, but her story is one that almost every age group can relate to and understand. It’s a human story about a person who doesn’t see her own significance in life.

She’s up against a system that’s been there since long before she was born, controlled by people with far greater authority than her own, and she doesn’t see herself as capable of changing things.She doesn’t see herself as powerful. She doesn’t see that there is anything she can personally do to change things because the odds seem stacked against her.

This is where most people these days find themselves. They don’t see themselves as powerful or capable of changing things. They’re up against a system that’s been in place for far longer than they’ve been alive which is controlled by people in positions of far greater authority than their own. They don’t think there is anything they can personally do to change things because the odds seem stacked against them.

As Zenetta will discover during the course of the book, however, her voice has a lot more power than she realizes. Her decision to remain silent in the face of an injustice will have a direct impact on her entire community, and so will her decision to accuse someone of wrongdoing before she has all the facts.

Her ability to influence the opinions, and thus the actions, of others puts her in a position of leadership. Her underestimation of her influence causes her to lead her people into harm’s way instead of out of it.

This is how it is with those who don’t see their own power and don’t recognize their own leadership abilities: they end up leading other people into harm’s way instead of out of it, and their actions can have devastating consequences for entire communities.

At Path To Publishing, we know that every voice matters and that leadership doesn’t begin with an election, a job offer, or a graduation. Leadership begins the moment one person influences the ideas, thoughts, and actions of another. The untrained leader is dangerous because they don’t recognize their own power to make a difference, so they aren’t intentional about how they use the influence they wield. Like Zenetta, their careless actions can cause great harm.

We know that great leaders aren’t born. They’re trained. That’s why, as part of our crowdfunding campaign for the novel, we’re offering our very own Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to contributors. We want them to understand their power to influence others and, through that, to change the way that discussions around race are conducted.

We want to ensure that everyone feels welcomed at the table and no one feels left out. We also want to equip them to wield their power in such a way that it helps to bring healing rather than increasing the amount of harm being done.

To discover more about our crowdfunding campaign and our novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations, visit https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation and support the movement.

Partnering with Nikki T. Anthony to Make a Difference

Author Nikki T. Anthony wrote her debut novel, The Price We Pay, based on her own experiences growing up as a Black girl living in a racially-divided America. Although the story is fiction, the events it describes ring true for many Black adults who have experienced the same things in their own communities.

That’s why Path To Publishing chose to pick up her book for our PTP Press traditional publishing imprint. We saw the book as an opportunity for us to engage in conversations that, while uncomfortable, are necessary to have if America is to bridge the gaps between the races and find a path to unity.

In partnering with this author, we hope to leverage her novel as the first of many endeavors ahead of us to open the doors of communication and change the conversation around race relations.

To discover more about Nikki T. Anthony and Path To Publishing’s novel approach to changing the way race relationships are discussed, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up and #JoinTheConversation.You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.

There’s a Price We Pay for Silence When It Comes to Race Relations

Zenetta Henchman lives in the small rural town of Buzzardville, Alabama, in the early 1990s. Like many small Southern towns, its residents are caught between the old-time ways of segregation and the more modern ways of integration.

When Zenetta experiences firsthand the dark side of the racial conflicts that bubble beneath the surface of her hometown, she chooses to keep silent out of fear for her family. The Price We Pay dives into the steep price her friends, her family, and even her community pay for that silence.

In what is being called a modern-era version of To Kill a Mockingbird told from a Black perspective, Nikki T. Anthony’s novel paints a painfully accurate picture of the challenges faced by many Black Americans today. Going a step further, it challenges all sides to examine the way their own silence contributes to this picture.

The reasons for that silence are many times the same as Zenetta’s: fear. Fear of not being heard. Fear that we’ll cause problems for ourselves or our families if we speak up.

Unfortunately, as in Zenetta’s case, the silence that we thought would protect us and those we love often becomes the instrument through which people are hurt. It can seem easier to stay silent than it is to speak up, but it isn’t safer.

Too often that silence becomes toxic. It leads to bottled-up anger that explodes out onto innocent people. That’s why we are committed to crowdfunding a movement that encourages people to engage in the conversations that can dispel the misunderstandings and equip Americans on all fronts to enter into open and honest conversations around the issues that matter most.

To discover more about Nikki T. Anthony, her book, and Path To Publishing’s novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations, visit our crowdfunding campaign’s page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation.

You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.

Racial Divides Are Hurting Our Children. Here’s What We’re Doing About It.

There’s a price we pay for failing to address the growing divide between races. The highest price is not paid by adults, however, but by children.

That price is often emotional, mental, psychological, physical, and financial as they deal with divisions in their families, incarceration of parents, and growing up years spent bouncing from home to home or foster family to foster family.

Adverse Childhood Events are situations that children face which have been identified as so traumatic that the impact on the child not only lasts a lifetime, but can be passed down to the next generation. The more of these events that take place in a child’s life, the higher the risks are of poor mental and emotional outcomes — such as suicide or being drawn into criminal activity — later in life, and the higher the risk for their own children, as well.

Bullying and discrimination based on race or ethnicity are two of these events. When combined with other adverse events, such as a parent who is jailed, living in an unsafe neighborhood, experiencing food shortages, physical or emotional neglect, parental separation or divorce, it can create a lethal cocktail of mental, emotional, psychological, and physical health problems that leave families in financial ruin and poverty.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can change things. First, though, we have to talk about it. We have to be willing to hold open and honest conversations about the issues surrounding race. The current ways of holding racial conversations, where we talk about each other rather than to each other, aren’t easy. The results won’t be immediate.

Human beings have a tough time changing because they first have to understand what they are doing to contribute to the problem, then see why the change that they’re being asked to make is essential to improving things, and then believe that making those changes is in their best interest. It can take many conversations before a breakthrough is made. Patience is required.

Path To Publishing isn’t content to sit on the sidelines waiting while the next generation of children pay the price for the silence, the divisions, and the failures of current leadership to step up and own responsibility for fixing the problems. We didn’t create the problems but we will take responsibility for doing our part to solve them.

That’s why we’re crowdfunding a movement designed to bridge the gap between the races. The money raised will be used to fund the publication of The Price We Pay,dubbed the To Kill a Mockingbird of the 21st Century but from the Black point of view, the debut novel of a young Black author. It is being published on our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press.

Discover more about our novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations by visiting our crowdfunding campaign page: https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. While you’re there, sign up to #JoinTheConversation and support our efforts to open the doors to honest, thoughtful conversations that can produce conversions of heart and mind.