Dreams of Flight (AFW May/Jun 2024)

This article was published in the May/June 2024 issue of Aviation for Women Magazine.

A sweet Great Dane character named Willa features in what I hope will be my debut novel. Willa is named after Willa Brown, the first woman in the U.S. to hold both pilot’s and aircraft mechanic’s licenses, among many other impressive accomplishments. As important as it was to me to include a nod to her in my own writing, I didn’t know much about her beyond what I could find on Wikipedia. Thanks to acclaimed children’s and young adult authors Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein, I now have a far richer understanding of her role—and the contributions of her cohorts—in our collective history. Willa Brown, Janet Harmon Bragg, Cornelius Coffey, and Johnny Robinson are the subjects of American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky, which recounts a significant aspect of aviation history previously absent in mainstream narratives. 

Through both fiction and non-fiction, Smith and Wein have amassed a combined fourteen books on various topics in aviation history. Wein, a private pilot, has authored books featuring Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) Pilots, a Polish woman pilot who flew for the White Eagles, and the women who flew in combat for Soviet Russia during WWII, just to name a few. They span reading levels from reluctant teen readers to novels that are shelved as young adult but are enjoyed equally by adult audiences.

Working on my Master of Fine Arts in writing, any time I mentioned I was writing books featuring girls who fly, my peers immediately asked if I’d read Wein’s best-selling Code Name Verity. But several years before, I’d found Smith’s novel, Flygirl, which features a fair-skinned Black woman who passes as white to serve as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP). While not a pilot herself, Smith grew up with family, including her father, who were passionate about aviation. Her nineteen published books span a diverse range of topics, but also include Who Were the Tuskegee Airmen and the historical fiction The Blossom and The Firefly about a WWII kamikaze pilot. 

Serendipitously, just as Wein was ready to work on a new project and hoping to explore the history of Chicago’s Black aviators, Smith’s last novel was sent to her for a review, and the two teamed up to bring American Wings to life. In it, we follow our four protagonists, inspired by Bessie Coleman, as they pursue their own dreams of flight, and who pay it forward to other Black dreamers in the 1930’s and ‘40’s with limited access through reluctant white flight instructors. They started a flying club, built an airfield, and opened their own integrated flight school. Their efforts opened the doors to the Tuskegee Airmen who served in WWII, and, ultimately, paved the way to an integrated U.S. military. 

American Wings is a captivating read for both adults and teens, and weaves readers through little-known aspects of history, including the unique relationship between Black Americans and Ethiopia, the only African nation never to be colonized. Notably, Johnny Robinson supported the development of their military aviation program to defend against the Italian Invasion of 1935-1937. In another fascinating twist, we follow the trail from these four American heroes to our first Black female astronaut, Mae Jemison. 

Smith and Wein are a power team in young adult circles. Their credibility means this history will reach libraries and reading lists in schools across the country and will hopefully inspire a new generation of aviators. You can listen to their conversation about the book on the Literary Aviatrix website, YouTube Channel, and podcast. 

Blue Skies, and Happy Reading!