A Brutally Frank Tribute to Mama

Posted on Sept. 7, 2022

Mary Hill-Wagner ’06 (PhD) didn’t have a typical childhood.

Her mother, Sarah Gordon, had 11 children by seven different men, was known to carry a gun and sometimes plotted to murder someone within earshot of her children.

She worked hard as a vocational nurse, loved her children fiercely and was the glue holding the family together, but she was also temperamental and at times violent. She wasn’t physically abusive to her children, though she would give them “whuppins” when she felt they deserved it, Hill-Wagner said.

Not surprising, Hill-Wagner’s mother was ultimately unable to guide most of her children past the chaos and poverty of their neighborhood, much less the trauma and mental health problems they endured.

Hill-Wagner chronicles what it was like growing up in South Central L.A. with 10 siblings under the wing of their forceful but loving mother in her memoir, Girlz ’n the Hood. The title is reminiscent of John Singleton’s hit movie, Boyz n the Hood.

She found other memoirs were missing a sense of being inside a child’s mind. “So I had to try to go back half a century,” she says with a laugh. “It was like a time machine.” She ate Froot Loops, watched Bugs Bunny and stayed in her “jammies” until noon. She visited a local park and made multiple trips down the sliding board and, at age 57, struggled on the monkey bars.

She held informal conversations with kids in an attempt to “think like them.” But she couldn’t tell those kids the details of her childhood. For example, the opening line in her book reads, “My mother was plotting murder at the kitchen table. Again.” Not something you share with a child.

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Things could quickly go sideways in Hill-Wagner’s house, as this riveting, often funny and harrowing book depicts in detail.

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Things could quickly go sideways in Hill-Wagner’s stucco, three-bedroom house with one bathroom, as this riveting, often funny and harrowing book depicts in detail. “It’s a profoundly moving story about the challenges Mary’s family faced, told with grace and humor,” says Jaynie Royal, founder of the Raleigh-based Regal House Publishing, whose imprint Pact Press aims to elevate voices traditionally marginalized in publishing.

The memoir is a loving tribute to Hill-Wagner’s mama — “We were all just crazy about her. One of my brothers called it the Cult of Mama” — but also brutally frank about her. “It was tricky,” she said. “I said, ‘Am I going to tell her bad stuff, too?’ I needed to tell those things for the story while also being respectful of her.”

Author and poet John Reed, who mentored Hill-Wagner at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, praised her for “pulling no punches, just reporting out from within that world.” He said her deft touch made material that could be relentlessly grim, compelling and even funny. “She’s an authentic voice,” he said.

Hill-Wagner, who said she spent more of her childhood immersed in books than watching TV, used education as a means of escaping the dysfunction in her home. After graduating as class valedictorian of Compton High School, she enrolled at the University of Southern California. During her years as a journalist, she was often the only Black reporter in the newsrooms in which she worked.

In the book, Hill-Wagner acknowledges clinging to a raft while realizing her efforts to save her siblings would likely pull her under. She worked her way up from small, local papers to a larger one in Las Vegas. When her mother died, a battle with several sisters over their relationship with their mother, money and other family issues ensued. She rejected one brother’s entreaty to return home to try to hold the family together. Today, she’s estranged from almost her entire family.

That lack of closeness made it easier to publicly air the family’s saga. “The fact that they don’t speak to me was freeing,” she said. “What are they going to do, cut me off and never speak to me again?”

Hill-Wagner ascended to work at The Des Moines Register and the Chicago Tribune. She initially dreamt of becoming a foreign correspondent or covering the Department of Defense but shifted her focus after becoming an adjunct journalism professor. “I loved it,” she said. “I decided to teach journalism and help people understand what we do.”

A Drake University dean wrote a letter of recommendation that started Hill-Wagner toward a PhD through UNC’s Roy H. Park Fellowship in journalism. Her dissertation examined how journalists learn ethics when they write stories about ethical lapses. Her time at UNC, however, shaped her future beyond teaching. While working as an assistant for Jan Yopp ’70, now a retired UNC journalism professor, Hill-Wagner realized many instructors had written books. “Just being in that environment made the idea of writing a book appealing to me,” she said.

Hill-Wagner had long been writing about her mother, sending letters to novelist Clancy Sigal, who taught her when she attended USC’s Journalism Study Abroad Program in London. Eventually, knowing that women and girls are rarely the focus in stories and films about South Central Los Angeles, Hill-Wagner sat down to write her memoir.

While she was meticulous in her research and preparation, Hill-Wagner credits Reed, her mentor at the writing conference, with convincing her to let go of her journalistic approach. “He said, ‘You’re not a court reporter, making sure every word is correct. Strive to be accurate but go with how you felt in the moment.’ ”

Many feelings still haunt her. She regrets times when she was not a good daughter and choked up while recording parts of the audiobook version of Girlz ’n the Hood. She became emotional while discussing a visit to one of her sisters in a mental hospital. “There was a lot that made me laugh, but it is partly a tragic story of poverty in the ghetto,” she said. “The violence and mental illness can get you, and it got so many of my siblings, and that makes me sad.”

Now Hill-Wagner is two-thirds finished with her first novel, Grandma’s Hand, which is about three grandmothers raising their grandchildren and becoming friends.

It’s quite a change from journalism. “With fiction, the handcuffs are off,” she said. “At a workshop someone asked if one character was gay, and I said, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ ”

She laughs heartily, savoring the idea. “In fiction, I get to decide.”

— Stuart Miller