Amanda Nell Edgar: If you’ve been thinking of writing your memoir because you know it could help others, then this interview is for you. Today I’m talking with Victor James Hill, the author of The Ignorant Man’s Son: A Memoir.
Welcome, Victor. I am so excited to talk with you today about your story and the journey that we got to go on together as you put your story onto the pages of your book. I know people are going to connect with what you have to share. First, will you briefly describe what your book is about?
Victor James Hill: The book is about a young man, me, growing up in Pontiac, Michigan at the Lakeside housing projects. I really was trying to fit in, trying to find my identity. As time went on, I was just receiving every adult that I saw, especially a male figure, and just kind of soaking it all up and learning as I went. As I got older, I went from trying to find a father figure to becoming a father figure.
Amanda: I find that to be a powerful turn within your book. Your book has a compelling story. The message behind it carries an even more powerful meaning than the story itself. Tell us a little bit about that message. What are you hoping people will take away?
Victor: How crucial it is to be there for young people. They’re craving attention, especially from their parents, especially a boy for his father. I found that crime, mental illness, drug addiction, they’re waiting on all the neglected kids. The percentages are very high that they’re going to be misled. Those lessons that the father can teach that child is crucial. I hope that my audience can really see how valuable their time with their kid is.
Amanda: What made you decide that it was time to write this story? Have you thought about it for a while?
Victor: Years ago, I would say over 15, 20 years ago, I got this vision. A lot of things were going on in the community, and all the men of the church had met. While I was up having a meeting, I got this vision, The Ignorant Man’s Son. During that time, I knew that I was supposed to write a book. I even started jotting things down and was going to take the bull by the horns, and then everything just stopped. It’s almost like I just gave up on the idea, but it was still in me.
Almost a year and a half ago, I was in a convenience store, and something said, “Tell your story.”
You know how you can be driving down the road from work and you’ve been going this way all this time, all these years, and then all of a sudden something tells you to go another way?
Amanda: Yes.
Victor: It was like that. I was standing in this line and something said, “Tell your story.” There were some kids in the line with me that I think that may have triggered it. I said, “Okay, how am I going to do this?” [chuckles] That’s when I embarked on writing my story. Here I am today.
Amanda: Oh, I love that. It just hit you.
Victor: I’m a very spiritual person. I pray a lot. I understand what it means to really hear something or something just clicks. I think that those kids in that store brought me back to years ago when I talked about writing a book and then something said, “Tell your story,” and I was in a position to go for it.
Amanda: Tell me a little bit about what that experience was like to work with somebody else to get your story down. What were you expecting? Were there things you didn’t expect?
Victor: Well, to be honest with you, I expected it to be easy. Once I found the writer, I was going to tell the story and do a little bit of detail, and she was going to write the story, then I was going to live happily ever after. Not so. [laughter]
What I mean by not so, is that it was harder than I thought it would ever be. It brought back a lot of emotions, a lot of pain, and I had to wrestle with that.
Then I had to really ask myself, “Okay, why am I writing this book?” I found that transparency as well as vulnerability was going to be something that I would have to get over in order to have the impact I wanted.
Yes, I thought it was going to be easy, but it wasn’t easy at all. Not at all. You know what? I’m glad that it happened that way because it became almost like therapy to me. Once I started telling my story, and once I started coming to grips with old wounds and stuff that I was holding in, I just felt so much better. It was like a weight had just lifted off my shoulders. It was good. It was tough too.
Amanda: I think a lot of people don’t expect that, but how powerful is it to just unload your story, let somebody else kind of take it from there.
Victor: Exactly. I’m speechless to how you made me feel so comfortable. You really showed that you cared about my story, and that helped me out a great deal. I really appreciate you.
Amanda: I am so happy to hear that. Well, you mentioned vulnerability, and we talked a lot about vulnerability during the process. There were a lot of things that we had to really look at and say, “Hard thing to share.” I think a lot of people wonder if they’re going to be ready for that. Why was it important to be vulnerable?
Victor: Well, I wrestled with it. I really wrestled with it. I came to grips with the fact that while the story was about me, it really wasn’t about me. It was about everyone that would be reading the story. I feel like they really needed to know me and feel what I’ve been through because I believe that a lot of people are basically going through some of the same things that I’ve been through.
I said to myself, “Okay, if I’m going to do this, let’s do this.”
I prayed a lot. As the meetings happened, I just opened up. That’s how it all happened for me.
Amanda: Sometimes I would send you a chapter and you would say, “Oh, my gosh, I read this, and I have to share this extra thing.” That made the story so much richer.
Victor: When we contacted each other, there was a bond between us. I’ve called you plenty of times almost crying [chuckles], and you said, “Victor, just calm down.” [laughter]
It was a blessing to me because when you are telling your story, it nudges at you, and you wonder how the other person’s going to receive it. Not only that, how are people going to receive me? Are they going to judge me? I just came to grips with the idea that it just had to be done. It just had to be done.
Amanda: I think one of the really challenging things, but so important about this book, is that you’re telling your story, but you’re also telling a whole community story. I think that is the most powerful type of memoir. As you learned, that also means sometimes you’re revealing things that might make people uncomfortable or might make people mad at you. How did you work through that? What did you do to figure out what to share?
Victor: That was another hard thing to accept. Especially, when it came to family members.
My sister, Shelly, for example. It was my story, but she was in my story. I went to her, and I said, “Shelly, the things that you’ve been through, people are going through. They need to hear your story. There was a reason why you went through this, Shelly. Your story is going to help a lot of people.”
Once I broke it down to her in that way, she accepted it. I gave her another perspective on life and the things that she been through. She accepted it. That was another weight off my shoulders because I thought that I was really going to have to fight with her, but it worked out.
Amanda: I always say that you can go through a lot of stuff if you remember the why.
Victor: Absolutely. That’s the key. I found that the why has to be about helping someone else. We as human beings we like to be patted on our back, we like to take credit for stuff, we like the spotlight to be on us. Once you really understand what life is truly about, and that’s helping someone, this is when you start to prosper. This is when you start to really be appreciated by other people. I had to learn that through the years.
Amanda: Sometimes that means the things you’re going to do are not going to feel that good or not going to be that fun.
Victor: Exactly.
Amanda: I’ll tell you, I think the very first time we talked, you said, “This story is going to help so many people.” I was like, “Well, that’s the person I want to work with. That’s exactly what I like to hear.”
Victor: Absolutely. I’ve always been that way. It’s just in my DNA, it really is. I have a spot on my heart for people in general. Even when the vision came to me years ago in writing a book and the name came to me, I had people in mind.
Amanda: What are you most excited about when this book is out?
Victor: There’s two things that I’m going to be excited about. If someone walks up to me and says, “Victor, your book helped me,” or “If you’ve been through it Victor and made it, I can go through it and make it.”
I want people to really understand that I was brought up in the inner city and the projects, but this ignorance of not being there for your child, for your boys, the father figure, it’s very serious, and it’s universal. I’ve always said that ignorance doesn’t care who it affects. You can be CEO of a big corporation, and you may feel like you going to give your son an affinity, and then you could just go off to work.
Spending that time with him, that quality time, and allowing him to know the mistakes that you made and diverting him around those potholes is crucial. You really have to be consistent with that. It has to be almost as consistent as you go to lunch every day. This is what I hope people get out of it, that they won’t just see that I’m from the projects. This can happen to you too, to your child, to your son. That the father figure is crucial.
It is just amazing that me craving to be a father figure or me craving to have a father figure launched me into being a father figure. That’s really something that I think about all the time.
Amanda: We wrote another book about a man that worked in oil fields, and he’s passed now, but it’s interesting because he said, “What I thought my kids wanted was a better life than I had. I was out working and trying to make money so I could take them on trips and stuff.” When we talked to the kids, they all said, “Oh, well, what we remember about our dad is the time.” That’s in the middle of western Kansas. This is a universal experience.
Victor: It is. I think that my readers will see that. They will see the human aspect of it more than they see the area that I’m in. The area was rough. I had to go through my way, but everybody else has to go through their way. Ignorance doesn’t care.
Amanda: Yes. Do you think 10 or 15 years ago when you first started floating this idea, do you think you would’ve been ready then, or do you think it really needed to sit with you for that long?
Victor: That’s a very good question. No, I wasn’t ready then. The vision came, and it was a seed that was planted.
Now, I’m a very spiritual person. I do read my Bible, and I found that many people in the Bible, like Abraham and Moses got a vision years before they took. I don’t liken myself to Moses or Abraham, don’t get me wrong on that. The principle of it all is that you get your vision and then you have to be prepared to execute that vision. It takes a lot of time. It takes more time than you really would think. I knew that I was going to write a book, but I didn’t know when. Now here we are.
Amanda: That’s right. What was your favorite part of the process of getting from there to here?
Victor: The favorite part of the process was when I was letting go. It’s very sensitive issues that I’ve been through and things that I had been holding on for years. Even when you and I were talking and I got emotional, even crying, it was therapy to me. That part of the process was priceless. If I only sold one book and helped one person. It’s all worth it.
Amanda: I just made a post on LinkedIn the other day that said, how many people would your book have to matter to for it be worth writing? For me too, it’s one person. If their life has changed, it’s all worth it to me.
Victor: It’s a blessing really to write this book. It’s a blessing to know that I will help someone.
Amanda: This book is powerful.
Victor: Amen. I say that I believe God has his hand on it, well, it was everything he told me to do. He better have his hand on it. [laughter] It’s just amazing that I’ve been able to accomplish this. Really, Amanda, you have been a true blessing to me. I couldn’t have done it without you. It’s a divine thing that you and I connected. It really is. People need to know that to get you as a writer, they can’t do any better. They really can’t. I really appreciate you and I thank you, Amanda.
Amanda: Well, it was my honor. This was an amazing project to work on.
Victor: Amen.
Amanda: Well, so we’ve got a lot of folks that are on the fence about working with a writer. What advice would you have for someone who’s thinking about whether they want to bring a writer on to help them with their memoir?
Victor: My advice to them would be ask yourself, why are you doing this? It’s a very precious thing that you are about to embark on. If you want to help people, I will tell you to go for it. It’s not going to be easy in regard to letting people know some very special things that happened to you in your life, but you’re going to find that those are the things that you have to share, or that the things that are so painful to you are the things that people really need to hear.
Amanda: What do you hope that people are going to keep in mind as they’re reading?
Victor: These are real people with real issues. You have real people who are human and make mistakes. A mistake is just a mistake. Ignorance isn’t a word to really cringe at. Ignorance just means you just don’t know. You just don’t know. That’s okay. You educate yourself so you can know some things, and then you just understand that everything’s going to be alright.
Amanda: Well, there you have it. Powerful words. I have loved that title from the very beginning, and I think people are going to get a lot out of this book. Thank you so much.
Victor: Thank you. Appreciate you.
Amanda: If you enjoyed this interview, you are going to love Victor’s book. It is truly one of my favorite projects I have ever worked on. Hop over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or purchase the book online. If you’re in Pontiac, stop by Inscribe Books and get your copy today.
If you’ve been thinking that your story could help other people, if you want to do what Victor is doing with his story, I hope you’ll reach out. We would love to help you get your story onto the page and send it out into the world so that it can do the good work I know it’s meant to do.
Happy writing!
