Award-winning journalist Krystal Zook tells her own story at Theodore's Books

For more than 20 years, Krystal Zook has reported on social issues such as health, education, culture, politics, race, gender, and the environment. She’s since become an award-winning journalist, having worked at publications like The Washington Post, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Vibe, Essence and National Public Radio. After decades of telling other people’s stories, the award-winning journalist, and professor of journalism at Hofstra University, has given herself the opportunity to reflect on her life about growing up biracial in America with her new book, “The Girl in the Yellow Poncho.”

In her memoir, Zook reflects on her multi-layered journey as a bi-racial black child searching for love while coping with being abandoned by her white father, and also enduring economic insecurity and substance abuse issues on the black and white sides of her family. That little girl was always desperately searching for her fairytale ending, Zook said.

The book not only retells her painful life story of growing up biracial through economic hardship, but it also highlights a cultural shift in the multiracial population, which has seen a 278 percent increase over the past 10 years.

“The girl in the yellow poncho had in her mind this idea of a family, that seems perfect,” Zook said. “I don’t know if it was from watching too much “Brady Bunch” or too much T.V.”

The 62-year-old was born in Los Angeles, California, to an all-female household that included her mother, Beverly Guenin, grandmother, Christine Brent, and cousin Lisa Brent. Kristal’s father, Phillip Zook, a white man, was absent for most of her life.

Her mother and grandmother were forced onto welfare, but they motivated Zook to become the ambitious woman she became. After high school, she was accepted to the University of California at Santa Barbara where she studied African American women writers and race theory. In 1987, she attended University of California Santa Cruz to study the History of Consciousness. There, she earned her doctoral degree.

Zook began her career by spending the majority of the 90s examining how Black-American experiences reflected through cable television interviewing black actors, network executives and directors. Later in her career, she examined the lives of black women, telling their stories, which didn’t fit the mainstream’s vision of black women’s lives as victims, criminals, sex objects or comedians.

Zook wrote four books. Her recent book, “The Girl in the Yellow Poncho,” was also intended to be published as a work of journalism, but along the way, grew into her memoir.

Zook took her book to a publishing house that was initially interested in the first iteration of the story. Her few personal elements to the book’s story were well received by her agent and publisher, but she said no one outright told her to write a memoir. While simultaneously working on her book, she questioned the whereabouts of her father. Although she had minimal contact with him as a child, there was a 14-year gap with him in her life. Zook had a 1-year-old daughter while writing her book, which she said motivated her to reconnect with her own parent.

As a writer, she needed to follow the inner voice advising her to change her book’s story, even though she already had the book’s proposal circulating within the publishing house. She realized on a personal level she didn’t have a choice other than to write her book as a memoir.

The process, she said, was painful and difficult, but she knew those feelings reflected that she was working on her book the right way.

“It’s not a fairytale ending,” Zook said. “But it’s a happy ending, and it’s definitely been healing for me. It’s been healing for my family.”

Zook is holding a book talk about her new book at Theodore’s Books, 17 Audrey Ave., in Oyster Bay on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.