return to the basics. It has been a leap of faith.
The mother of two children, Victoria has married and divorced. She says that the defense of detachment that exemplifies many adults, who were foster children, makes issues of intimacy and lasting relationship challenging. She wholeheartedly endorses psychological help as a means for bridging that gap to healthy relating. She says that her journey in therapy was “relieving—as though a weight had been lifted. It allowed me to be honest about my circumstances, lifted my shame, and acknowledged how strong I was.”
Victoria is adamant in her advice for all women. “The only way to sustain our strength is to honor ourselves with rest. There are so many demands on women today as mothers, wives, workers, and volunteers. We must listen to our minds and bodies. Otherwise, we leave ourselves open to peril and depression. We women are susceptible to compassion fatigue, because we feel the sorrows of the world. So, honor yourself with rest, time, and sisterhood. Understand that the world’s work will never be completed; it will always be there. So, replenish yourself.”
Victoria is the founder of The Rowell Foster Children’s Positive Plan, which provides scholarships in the arts and education to foster youth. She speaks on behalf of foster children and the issues they face while in the foster care system and upon their emancipation. She is a tireless traveler and speaker on behalf of disadvantaged and at-risk youth.
Lastly, Victoria advises women to pray. Though baptized Catholic, she practices no particular religion today. She says that she prays as a spiritual exercise and her vision of God is in the biggest sense and includes all ancestral mothers. “The landscape of Mother Earth is my church,” she says, “So, lean into the bigger message.”
Vickie Stringer
“There are so many doors that we don’t go through. Always be ready, because preparation makes opportunity.”
My friend, Martin Shore, heard about my book-writing project and called me to say that he knew of someone I should interview. He said that this woman was the owner of a publishing house; the largest African American female-owned publishing house in the United States. He made an e-mail introduction for me, but Vickie said she didn’t know Martin. As it turned out, Martin knew someone who worked with Vickie, and so the connection was made.
Vickie was friendly and generous from the beginning. She sent me copies of books she had written and a book about the publishing business that has been helpful.
When I sent her the draft of her interview, it came back to me by return mail with her corrections. She is efficient! And when I arrived at my office the next day, there was a box that had arrived with gifts for me. I received a T-shirt with her logo that says “I Read Triple Crown Books,” which I have done and that I wear to the gym. There was a coffee mug with her logo, which I use daily, and it was filled with candy.
Vickie Stringer is the second to the youngest of seven children born to her parents, who divorced when she was seven. She says that apparently her parents had conflicts, but she wasn’t aware of them and didn’t feel tension at home. “I wouldn’t trade my childhood family life for anything. Everyone looked out for me and so I was spoiled.”
Vickie’s father was an engineer at General Motors in Detroit, and her mother was a schoolteacher. They lived a middle to upper middle-class life. At Cass Tech, the best high school in Detroit, she was quiet and studious and “nothing to write home about.” She had four sisters who were her friends and being home with them was definitely more fun than being at school. As she reflects on this now, Vickie says that though she loved being with her sisters, at the same time she believes that it was limiting, inasmuch as having girlfriends outside her family would have broadened her perspective at that time.
Vickie graduated from high school at sixteen. She wanted to go away to college and chose Western Michigan University, where she pledged a sorority and majored in business administration. She was smart and has been described as charismatic. After her freshman year in college, she transferred to Ohio State University.
Vickie was at a fraternity party when party crashers arrived and one of them caught her attention. She noticed his nice car and his good looks. She claims that it was “love at first sight.” “He seemed like a nice guy,” she says, “but not a good influence.” As she spent more time with him and his friends, “The Triple Crown Posse,” her values began to change. Eventually, she dropped out of school and followed this man into a life of crime, which culminated in her becoming pregnant. At that point, her boyfriend abandoned her and married someone else.
Indulged as a child in her family, Vickie’s life with the father of her son had been one of indulgence, as well. She didn’t really know how to manage money and she was struggling. Since crime was what she had come to know, she continued on this path, starting her own escort service as well as drug trafficking. Vickie says that she developed an addiction to money, which she believes was her downfall. She was arrested for drug trafficking when she was twenty-six years old, and a year later she pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiring to traffic drugs. Prosecutors had agreed to a lighter sentence in exchange for her cooperation against others involved in the case, though she actually never had to testify against anyone. Eventually, Vickie served seven years in federal prison, which she describes as “the most trying time of my life”. She was absent from her son’s life. He was only two when she was arrested. Thankfully, her mother and stepfather raised her son while she was away. During those long years, she only saw him once.
Incarcerated in Texas, far from family and friends, Vickie had a lot of time to reflect and to think about what she really wanted for herself and her life. “I decided to use that time to heal myself,” she says. “I had learned that association brings assimilation, and so I read extensively and wrote in my journal.” Reading works by Donald Goines, who was also an ex-convict, inspired her.
Vickie began writing her own stories. She would go to the prison’s law library and hang a sign saying, “Research in Progress,” on the window to discourage others. There, she would move into the life of her fictional character, Pamela Xavier. She says that she often cried as she wrote, and eventually completed the first drafts of Let That Be the Reason and Imagine This while still imprisoned. She tried out these stories on her fellow inmates and received high marks for them.
In addition, Vickie wrote a powerful letter to God with a list of her goals and desires. In a way, it was a challenge to God. She was essentially saying, “Since you’re God, you can do this!”
“It’s been a blessed experience,” Vickie says emphatically. “God showed me that He is a restorer. He restored me. We often don’t have much faith in restoration and we need to have more.”
Vickie’s list of goals and desires has been met. She has a lovely home, the car she hoped for, clothes, a computer, financial stability and an emotionally fulfilling job. She has blessed her mother; and, she has done good things for her friends and family, just as she desired.
These more tangible goals were fulfilled by persevering through twenty-six rejection letters she received from mainstream publishers whom she approached to publish her manuscripts. She redirected her entrepreneurial abilities and charismatic people skills that had made her a good criminal, and self-published her first novel, Let That Be the Reason. She proved herself a creative marketer, traveling on her own to many cities and selling copies of her novel out of beauty shops and through friends. Vickie’s first printing of 1600 copies sold out in three weeks, thereby negating the concern that her hip-hop audience simply weren’t readers, and wouldn’t buy books. They were and they did!
A small New York City publishing house bought her book in 2002 and gave Vickie a $50,000 advance.
