Crystal Rhodes focuses on stories about strong women in her plays and books
For Crystal V. Rhodes, the burnout of her first career was the birth of her second. More than 40 years ago, she departed her hometown of Indianapolis for California, leaving behind her job as a social worker.
She wanted to write for TV, so she took a playwriting class. As she told stories, she looked to her former career.
"All the reality that gave me a headache while I was a social worker, I now can write characters based on people who I actually knew and events that actually happened," said Rhodes, who has since written plays, novels, newspaper stories, museum narration and more.
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Since her time in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, Rhodes has moved back to Indianapolis. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, people can hear her read poetry by her aunt Florabelle Wilson and from M. Nannette Marchand's "Rhymes ‘N Rhythms ‘N Blues" at The Jazz Kitchen, 5377 N. College Ave.
Along with Brandon Douthitt, Adrienne Jackson and Jamichael Kyng Pollard, Rhodes is one of four featured artists for this year's Art & Soul, an annual celebration of Black art across February.
While writing wasn't Rhodes' first career, it was always her passion. As a child in Martindale-Brightwood, she handwrote 300 blue-lined notebook pages about a girl named Rosa. With an audience of friends clamoring to hear new installments Rhodes recited on her porch, she continually created new adventures for her heroine.
Her teachers encouraged her talent, and she wanted to go into journalism after attending Arsenal Tech High School. But Rhodes' family talked her into a more practical career, so she studied social work.
During a playwriting class at Black Repertory Group Theatre in Berkeley, Rhodes' teacher told her to stick to the familiar. That advice led her to write "Stoops," based on her own longtime Indianapolis friendships. The play won several Black Theatre Alliance Awards.
Rhodes says she sees a story in everything, which feeds her ideas for novels. After attending an Oakland church with a beautiful woman minister and pews packed with male congregants, she was inspired to write the first book in her "Sin" series, published in 1999. The heroine is Nedra Davis, a reverend known for her anti-drug stance who ends up falling for a man in the drug trade.
Partnering with friend Lillie Barnett Evans, Rhodes wrote the "Grandmothers, Incorporated" cozy mystery series in which amateur sleuths find themselves in situations with comedy and adventure.
These days, Rhodes, who returned to Indianapolis permanently in the mid-1990s, focuses her books and plays on heroines over 50, showing their endurance, resilience and creativity.
"Particularly mature African American women are overlooked and ignored and not written about, and if so, there's usually some kind of stereotypical writing about them," she said. "So I make sure that my books praise them. They may start at the bottom, but they always rise to the top."
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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Art & Soul: Author Crystal Rhodes focuses on strong women
