ReadBooksBy.Faith

All about author Faith Phillips

Faith’s Blog

It’s ARRIVED and It’s LIVE

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I’m fresh off a live broadcast with the girls of KUSH AM this morning to promote our new book, “2020 Visions”! This is how it works with book writing. You spend two years of your life writing the book. Then you spend two months of your life promoting it. Rinse. Repeat. I’ve been away from here for a short period of time but you’ll forgive me as I was busy getting this book finalized and in publishable form. Let me tell you, this book is beautiful. As a writer, I always, ALWAYS, feel insecure when I release a book. It never gets any easier, as I’d hoped. I felt the same about this one. Then when the proof came in the mail and I held it in my hands the emotion of it all hit me. I opened it and read through and realized this may be the best book I’ve ever written. This may be my greatest work. I can’t wait for you to get it in your hands.

It is still very early, but we have spectacular reviews rolling in. We want to share a few with you here, just in case you’re still on the fence about ordering your own copy. I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you and the world that proceeds from these books place Chromebooks directly in the hands of every Stilwell High School student. #ChromeDreams coming true! Spread the word!

“I sat down to read – Well, I could NOT put it down! Just finished. Loved reading what the students wrote, loved your commentary, loved the way you put it together! Thanks, Faith for a great read!” ~Wanda E.

“To say I’m impressed is an understatement. I marked some of my favorite quotes throughout the book. I love the way the relationship between you and your kids developed and fostered a genuine love and respect for one another! Thank you for investing in the lives of our children!! They are our greatest resource.” ~Ramona K.

I’m in love with what the Award-winning poet, Bill McCloud, had to say about his 2020 Visions experience: “The students write honestly about their feelings as they chronicle times of heartbreak, relationships with friends and family, and their expectations from life. Much of their writing concerns attempts to deal with self-acceptance, and I’m also amazed at how much tragedy so many of these young people have already experienced in their short time on earth.” ~Bill McCloud, author of The Smell of the Light: Vietnam, 1968-1969 and What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?

  • Chrome Dreams students discussing their research on KUSH AM in February.

Read McCloud’s entire review here:

“Acclaimed Oklahoma writer, Faith Phillips (Now I Lay Me Down, Ezekiel’s Wheels, It’s Not That Hard To…), has just published her hotly-anticipated new non-fiction book, 2020 Visions. Written over the past year with her senior class students at Stilwell High School in rural Adair County, Oklahoma, it tells an amazing story.

Faith finds herself agreeing to teach literature at the high-school she had graduated from just a little over twenty years earlier. The school’s student population is 80% indigenous, primarily Cherokee. The town of Stilwell is known as “The Strawberry Capital of the World,” but is also known in Oklahoma to be found in the poorest area of the state.

The book is anchored by her journal entries that she made on a regular basis, most of them going up at the time on her personal Facebook page. That gives us the benefit of knowing what she’s thinking on a day by day basis instead of a situation where she’s just looking back at the end of the school year. But the heart and soul of the book comes from the regular journal entries from her students that appear on nearly every page. She publishes their writings with their permission, though she keeps their individual identities concealed.

The students write honestly about their feelings as they chronicle times of heartbreak, relationships with friends and family, and their expectations from life. Much of their writing concerns attempts to deal with self-acceptance, and I’m also amazed at how much tragedy so many of these young people have already experienced in their short time on earth.

Noticing the lack of technology available to the students she starts a campaign to get a class-set of Chromebooks to be used by all the seniors. She sets up a GoFundMe page on the internet with the goal of receiving $6,700. She gives the fund-raising project to get laptops in the classroom the title CHROME DREAMS. The total is met within a few days.

Faith often tends to broaden her students’ awareness of literature as they respond to the work of Tupac and Tracy Chapman. She brings in notable songwriters such as Doc John Eddie Fell and Kalyn Fay Barnoski to perform for her students and to talk to them about their craft.

Then the students decide to enter an NPR Podcast contest. And there’s the building of a homecoming float, and the debut of the high-school women’s wrestling program.

And then the virus!

This is a heartwarming story, told in Faith-style. Yeah, I know Faith. I observed this story play out by reading her almost daily posts on Facebook. That’s why I knew when it happened that she was bit by a venomous copperhead snake less than a week before the school year was to start. She had even told me she wanted me to speak to her class about my poetry, but that didn’t happen because the school-year was cut short due to the Covid virus.

It’s an uplifting story of the affect Faith Phillips had on students, teachers, and staff at Stilwell High School and, more importantly, the affect each one of them had on her. Faith says what happened to her that fateful, inspiring year was, “Teaching. Teaching is what happened.”

Proceeds from the sale of this book go to help Stilwell High School reach the goal of a Chromebook for every single student! Purchase here …http://readbooksby.faith/

We have a few remarks from teachers here, too. I was a little nervous how they’d react but once again, nothing but praise!

“I am so enjoying the book. It brings back so many memories of when I first began teaching. I’ve laughed as I read and my heart will grow heavy when I would read some of the students writings. It reminds me of why I love teaching so much.  The past 40 years have just passed by so quickly. But my memory is a sharp in remembering as if it was the first week of school all over again.” ~Frances

 I’ll let you get back to your day now but we have much more exciting news on the horizon, including the transformation of three #okienoir books into screenplays. Imagine that, will ya? Okie Noir on the big screen. I can just see it, even now … #2020Visions

See you soon. We are still all in this together and the time is still NOW. Get down with it.

Purchase the books here: Signed copies available through http://readbooksby.faith/ or unsigned on Amazon for a dollar more:

https://www.amazon.com/2020-Visions-Memoir-Faith-Phillips/dp/B08DDGXH3F

Finally, if you’re just sick and tired of the internets and all you want to do is send a check directly to the school, you can do so: Stilwell Public Schools c/o Chrome Dreams 1801 W Locust Stilwell, OK 74960. Make sure you designate your donation to Chrome Dreams and include your shipping address. I will personally ship an autographed book.

2020 Visions: A Blockbuster (But Not Altogether Unpredicatable) Announcement

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From Oklahoma best-selling author Faith Phillips and the Senior class of Stilwell High School comes the groundbreaking book, 2020 Visions. It is the first published account of the Class of 2020 in the time of Covid-19.
Ms. Phillips begins the account of this extraordinary ordeal by sharing personal journal entries about an unlikely decision to teach English IV for one year in Adair County, where the students and school struggle to negotiate a 45% child poverty rate.

The students journal their own doubts as they move through their final year with a dubious, untested new teacher. The class transformation from the beginning of the year to Spring Break 2020 is a remarkable and triumphant story, worthy of a book on its own. The list of accomplishments the students make together in a very short period of time is nothing short of exceptional and historic, from raising funds to get their own set of class Chromebooks, to publishing a podcast selected for national recognition by National Public Radio. Then Covid-19 arrived. With the arrival of unprecedented change and mournful loss the students continue to journal their experience with jaw-dropping honesty and powerful visions of the future.

Visions 2020 is the first comprehensive chronicle to share the struggle, grief and tenacity of the Class of 2020. Full of refreshing honesty, spirituality, advice, and hope, it makes the perfect graduation gift for 2020 graduates and their parents. What’s more, the first $15,000 in book royalties (after recoup of up-front publishing costs including original cover art, editing, printing, etc.) will provide Chromebooks for SHS Junior, Sophomore and Freshman classes. By pursuing this continuation of the initial Senior #Chromedreams project, 2020 Visions will ensure that every student who passes through Stilwell High School has daily access to the same tools students in larger Oklahoma school districts already enjoy.
Reserve your copy now for this historic record of tragedy, joy, and triumph in the year that will forever be remembered as the year of “the chosen ones”: the Class of 2020. Order your hard copy of 2020 Visions at the link below for $25.00. Digital copies will not be made available until Fall 2020.
Please note that reserving your copy now reserves your spot to receive a book from the first hardcopy shipment in July 2020.

Reserve your copy here for $25. https://www.paypal.me/FaithPhillips

An early review of 2020 Visions:

“Two stars up! If you like rolling in red dirt and howling at the moon, this book is for you! A must read for anyone under the age of 95! This is Grapes of Wrath meets Freedom Writers on The Road. Yeehaw!” -Mrs. McGraw (a note in the interest of integrity: Mrs. McGraw is the author’s English Department colleague and receives a favorable portrayal in the book.)

2020 Visions: Leaders & Letters To Ourselves

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Thursday, April 30

“As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading in tot he unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty …

Even from your scant description, I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum life that you are forced to lead. I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depth of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.”

~Into the Wild, Chapter 9

It seems as though people are really searching for leaders, someone to step up and unify the citizenry. 

Journal: Do you see yourself as a leader? How could you work as a leader in the Stilwell community? If you do not consider yourself a leader that’s perfectly fine but you will choose the leaders in the very near future. Explain to me what you are looking for in a leader.

Friday, May 1

“As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry them, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and the mean. We think we can change our clothes only. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. The life in us is like the water in the river…”

~Conclusion, Thoreau

Ten years from now all this will be a faded memory; a story to tell your children. 

Journal: Write a letter to your 28 year-old self explaining what we have been through. What is your 28 year old self doing? Where are you living and what are you doing from day to day? Give yourself some advice. What do you want to remember ten years from now? 

2020 Visions: Virtue, Fantasy & Isolation

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On the radio with the Seniors at KUSH 1500 AM with Molly Payne and Joyce Abrams, “The Voice of Oklahoma”

Monday, April 27

“I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer…

You who governs public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a commen man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”

Thoreau, The Village

We tend to get busy living life and become self-absorbed. But life has a way of making you stop sometimes, right in your tracks, and notice someone. 

Journal: Write an essay on someone in your life (someone you know or even perhaps a stranger you’ve noticed in town, anyone, really) for whom your life is worth pausing for a moment. Who is this person? What makes them so compelling to you? What do they need that you could provide for them?

Tuesday, April 28

“‘For instance,’ Stoppel continues, ‘Carl didn’t want to fly into the bush alone. His big dream, originally, was to go off into the woods with some beautiful woman. He was hot for at least a couple of different girls who worked with us, and he spent a lot of time and energy trying to talk Sue or Barbara or whoever into accompanying him — which in itself was pretty much pure fantasyland. There was no way it was going to happen. I mean, at the pipeline camp where we worked, Pump Station 7, there were probably forty guys for every woman. But Carl was a dreamin kind of dude, and right up until he flew into the Brooks Range, he kept hoping and hoping and hoping that one of these girls would change her mind and decide to go with him. Carl was the sort of guy who would have unrealistic expectations that someone would eventually figure out he was in trouble and cover for him. Even as he was on the verge of starving, he probably still imagined that Big Sue was going to fly in at the last minute with a planeload of food and have this wild romance with him.’”

Into the Wild, Chapter 8

I’ve been in communication with many of you since we have been out of school. Someone suggested that we take a float trip or organize a get-together at the lake after the social isolation restrictions are lifted. 

Journal: Describe the perfect meal you would want to have at our celebration. Tell me everything you want, from the appetizers, to the main courses, to the sides and the dessert. No limits. What do you want? 

Wednesday, April 29

“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If thery were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kuhinoor. They are too pure to have market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmer’s door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! Ye disgrace earth.”

~Thoreau, The Ponds

My grandmother has been in isolation since the pandemic started (I think we are going on six weeks now, but I lose count). She has a sliding glass door to the outside but it is locked by the maintenance crew so we can’t hug her or touch her in any way. We just go outside her glass door and wave and kiss her on the glass and bring her flowers to look at. It is a really, really hard thing to do for us. I can’t even imagine what it is like for her. She is locked in a room and has been for many weeks. 
Journal: Do you have a loved one whom you cannot reach because of this situation? If so, how are you dealing with it? If not, tell me how you would occupy your time if you had to be alone in a room by yourself for several months.

2020 Visions: Out In the Woods & A Detrital Wash

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This is one of my favorite photos. The newspaper came to do a story about the Seniors. I told them to look like they were working. So some of them held their assignments upside down in protest. Mr. Thompson stared off into the cosmos. Multiple policy violations were put on display for the public (NO HATS IN THE BUILDING, GENTLEMEN!), my Teaching Assistant, Mr. Noisey, blatantly stared into the camera.

Thursday, April 23

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, it it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to ‘glorify God and enjoy him forever’” 

~Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For

As human beings, we are each masterpieces. Each of us is worthy of love, dignity, and respect. 

Journal: Write about the characteristics you have that make you a unique masterpiece. Tell me what is good about you. Discuss at least three things about you that make you worthy of love, dignity, and respect. Don’t be shy! Brag on yourself!

Friday, April 24

“Alex used to sit at the bar in the Cabaret and read that belt for hours on end, says Westerberg, “like he was translating hieroglyphics for us. Each picture he’d carved into that leather had a long story behind it.” When McCandless hugged Borah goodbye, she says, “I noticed he was crying. That frightened me. He wasn’t planning on being gone all that long; I figured he wouldn’t have been crying unless he intended to take some big risks and knew he might not be coming back. That’s when I started having a bad feeling that we wouldn’t never see Alex again.”

Into the Wild, Chapter 7

At the beginning of Into the Wild, not long after he begins his journey, Christopher McCandless has his only real possession, his crappy old car, washed away in a flood. From then on he must complete the rest of his journey by foot. 

Journal: If you could wash away some things from your past and just start over again, what would you send away in the flood? What are some things you would hold on to if you could? What do you value enough to carry with you on your journey?

2020 Visions: Show Me Your Life Belt & I’ll Show You Mine. April 20 – 23

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This is my life belt: growing up in the hills of Adair County with family, married in Vegas, my baby Jaxon, law school, divorce, working in Ardmore (oil and gas), Africa, writing books and then teaching books with you, the feather represents my wedding at the creek and the restoration of my heart. The arrow pointing up represents my faith. What does your belt look like?

Monday, April 20

No man ever followed his genius until it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, —that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality … The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. 

~Thoreau, Life In The Woods

Passage highlighted in one of the books found with Chris McCandless’s remains. 

We were supposed to come back to school on March 23rd. We learned on Thursday, March 19th that we would not be coming back. Shortly thereafter, it became clear that we would not be meeting again in 211. We didn’t get a chance to finish up some of the things we started. 

Journal: What did you think on that day when you knew for sure we would not go back? What made you feel that way? Have your feelings changed in the time since? If so, how have they changed today?

Tuesday, April 21

For more than eight months after he said good-bye to McCandless, Franz remained at his campsite, scanning the road for the approach of a young man with a large pack, waiting patiently for Alex to return. During the last week of 1992, the day after Christmas, he picked up two hitchhikers on his way back from Salton City to check his mail. . . ‘I started telling them about my friend, Alex, and the adventure he’d set out to have in Alaska.’ Suddenly, the Indian youth interrupted: “Was his name Alex McCandless?”

‘Yes, that’s right. So, you’ve met him then–’

“I hate to tell you mister, but your friend is dead. Froze to death up on the tundra. Just read about it in Outdoor magazine.”

In shock, Franz interrogated the hitchhiker at length. The details rang true; his story added up. Something had gone horribly wrong. McCandless would never be coming back. 

~Into the Wild, Chapter 6 

The “new normal” is something we hear so often these days. Social isolation is another. American society is slowly and grudgingly adjusting to the “new normal” of people staying home, working from home and quarantining themselves to protect against this disease. 

Journal: Have you found “new normal” to be a challenge? What problems have you encountered? How had your life changed, if at all? Is there anything about it that you enjoy? 

Wednesday, April 22

Into the Wild

Chris McCandless meets an old Christian man out on the road who takes him in, feeds him, gives him shelter and teaches him to hand tool leather. So McCandless (who, by this time, had changed his name to Alexander Supertramp) hand tools a leather belt to display the story of his wanderings. On one end was his new name “Alex”, then his old name’s initials “CJM” which framed a skull and crossbones, a 2 lane blacktop, a No U-Turn sign, a thunderstorm producing a flash flood that engulfs a car, a hitchhiker’s thumb, an eagle, the Sierra Nevada, salmon in the Pacific, the Pacific Coast Highway, the Rockies, wheat fields, a South Dakota rattlesnake, the Colorado River, a canoe, and finally at the end the letter “N”, presumably representing the direction North where he would go on to meet his demise. I can picture this belt in my mind. Like all great art it made me think about my own life. What will matter enough to go on my belt?

Journal: Create a belt of your life. Draw pictures to represent the most memorable moments (both good and bad) that you would want to put on your own hand tooled belt. You can draw this and take a photo of it, send the picture to me via email or text, with an explanation of each symbol.