June Nutter and Gerald Coleman

00:04 My name is Gerald Coleman. I'm 47. Today is October 13th, 2015. We are at storycorps Atlanta and I'm here with my mom.

00:17 My name is June Nutter. I am 68 today's date is October 13th, 2015.

00:27 And I'm SE storycorps Atlanta location, and I'm here with my son.

00:37 Okay. First question is you grew up in Flatwoods Kentucky Springfield. How in the world did little black girl in Springfield Kentucky find Science Fiction and Fantasy.

00:56 Okay. Well, first of all, we were we were sharecroppers dad was a sharecropper. However, he loved to read Daddy was the reader mom was the Practical. Let's go get it done in person. But Dad was if he had a minute he had a book in his hand and one of the first things he did his job was to teach us to read and he took that on when you started in the first grade you spent every night at the kitchen table after all the chores were done with him teaching you to read and his theory was that once you learn to read you could do all the other things that you needed to do at school and you were expected to do all those other things. So first of all, I saw was reading itself from him and then when I was about nine, we did not have a library with someone Rose School.

01:56 We didn't have a library, but they bookmobile came by about once every two weeks and you could go check out books from the bookmobile. So I started checking out books from the bookmobile. They didn't have a lot.

02:14 They didn't have a lot but

02:18 The ones I had some of them were very tough reading like all the Dickens books and all those things. So what I got into reading cuz it was a new world. It was like, oh, oh, okay. I can escape from a chore or the farm in these books. So that got me into reading but my first real experience with sci-fi or fantasy was that my younger brother was in the Navy and he the guys on the ship that he was on I started passing around the Lord of the Rings. You tell my Uncle Bill my brother and I my younger brother actually and he brought one home with him and said, hey you need to read this because of all the five children he and I

03:11 Are the readers we're the ones that picked up dads reading my older sister read somewhat, but he and I was a real readers. And so I started reading that book. It was like, oh my God, this is a wonderful. I read it and back then there weren't a lot of bookstores who is very difficult to find the other books. He brought me one and I think he actually brought me the two towers. So I was like, okay, there's a book before this. How do I find it? And I finally found a little corner book shop in Lexington Kentucky that had the Lord of the Rings The Two Towers first of the fellowship. Actually. I read The Two Towers first, then I went back and read the fellowship and then read the last one.

04:07 And after I don't know it was probably a year later that I actually found the Hobbit but it was such a fascinating book and I loved it so much. I said okay, are there some more these out there? So then I went on and I found Dune and I read the Dune books. And so it was just on then so I was reading all the fantasy books I can find.

04:32 That's how I found sci-fi. So what and what about science fiction? Was it Star Trek was at your first kind of introduction into real science fiction.

04:42 I know there were a couple of sci-fi books that are read but Star Trek was the first show that came on that we all fell in love with the Star Trek shows and watched every one of them infective watch the mall probably three or four times. But from there it was Star Trek and then of course later on Star Wars came out and that was like, oh a whole new world of of us sci-fi. And so ya sci-fi fantasy back and forth don't care which one I read them all. I've probably read

05:20 I don't know 500 books.

05:24 So wait, this is a very interesting question that thought about in terms of when you were reading that what you were reading and where in terms of what I said when I mean in terms of the time. In which the people who were riding

05:40 Science Fiction and Fantasy were kind of creating this this off shooting in deliver a world that hadn't really existed prior to that. But as you read that stuff, how did you picture did you ever have an opportunity to see yourself in the characters or did you have to kind of work because you know, obviously there weren't very many characters that looked like you in the stuff that you were reading. Did you think about that or did you just kind of

06:14 Just read the story for for entertainment. I read the story for the adventure for because in most cases. Yeah bad things can happen, but there was always hope in the book. So it was a way of getting out of the the world. We live in all of the things that were surrounding us because we grew up surrounded by segregation and trying to maneuver through that world and continue to have hope there had to be something to give you. Hope of course you have turkey have religion, but when reading a book there was also hope in the book, so I didn't worry too much about what about the fact that there weren't any black freezing for black characters in the story that you were reading gratified to find the old they talked about well his

07:14 They said he was from this place and you kind of figured out he was probably or she was probably African or had different color but a lot of the books or I think in some ways not not so much. How do I say steeped in color the characters? They have could be anyone in some cases some of them. Yeah, they very much describe the person to be

07:45 All the light color or whatever but as far as and there were also some books that were written by African-Americans that that I read, you know, James Baldwin books. No, they're not sci-fi, but they were books that were Red by were written by African-Americans about African-American. So there was steeped in the middle of all those sci-fi books that were other books as well that let you know that there were African American Writers out there. No l e modesitt is probably not I think that's the way you pronounce his name not black, but I read most of his books and when they started talking in those books about elves and dwarves and

08:32 Those kind of people you had the feeling that okay, not all there are other types of people in that genre. So it wasn't so much steeped in black versus white but in different types of characters from different types of worlds.

08:52 I want to Circle back to something. You said earlier. Where do you think granddaddy got his love of reading from? You know, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it wasn't his mother because she was a pretty starchy type. You know, I'm going to go cook type of person maybe from granddaddy. Granddaddy was more laid-back a more approachable. You know, when we went to we stop by to see the grandparents. We always knew we could go get a hug from Grandaddy. Grandma was probably going to say hey, how ya hey how you doing? And you're hungry, but granddaddy was always going to be sitting with his pipe at that time. He was he would have probably been too old to really be reading a lot and I never saw him.