FEED YOUR MIND A STORY OF AUGUST WILSON BY JEN BRYANT ILLUSTRATED BY CANNADAY CHAPMAN
ACT ONE THE HILL DISTRICT PITTSBURGH They call it Little Harlem the city within a city A mile east of downtown it is a mishmash a melting pot of workers and their kin Syrians Africans Poles and Jews Irish Haitians Germans and Italians their row homes apartments and shacks jam-packed between sloping streets On April 27 1945 in a tiny apartment behind Bella’s Market Frederick August Kittel Jr is born Named for his father a white German baker who sometimes visits with bread in his hand but mostly is not around
Now Freddy walks down Wylie Avenue with his mother Daisy Wilson past barbers butcher shops bakeries where people speak Italian Hebrew or Greek their unique voices blending like an orchestra their smells corned beef lamb okra fettuccini making his small mouth water Summer nights in the backyard Daisy plays card games with the neighbors as someone strums a guitar their laughter drifting over children playing dodgeball and stickball loading the bases Freddy plays but he’s an observer too always watching and listening When night falls and the children are called inside he notices how most of them have a mother and a father to tuck them in But not Freddy Instead with just a sixth-grade education and a job cleaning other people’s homes Daisy reads to him at night filling him up with stories words and hope If you can read you can do anything you can be anything
