Author Debora Dockett tells how it was like to live in Slotpot

Debora Dockett was 8-year-old when her family – which included her mother, stepfather, and elder sister – moved from their relatives’ home in Pine Bluff to Slotpot, some 35 miles from where they came from. Although they had only lived there for eight months, it seemed like a lifetime to Dockett, who wrote about her life in Slotpot in the memoir “Through My 8 Year Old Eyes: Planet Slotpot” (Xlibris, 2016).
 
“Slotpot was located in the heart of the delta which means that it was in the poorest region of the United States,” wrote the author, who lived with her family in a five-room house. They shared the place with her mother’s uncle, a miser who owned three of the rooms. Living in that house was like living in a different planet. Readers can only cringe as the author described the house to the one in Pine Bluff.
 
“Life in Slotpot was like being on ‘Planet Slotpot.’ Life was 1000% different than Pine Bluff,” said the author as she proceeds to contrast both houses in “Through My 8 Year Old Eyes: Planet Slotpot.”
 
Of course, that is not the only thing readers can read about “Planet Slotpot.” The author described how it was to live with a miser of an uncle, the people she met and the experiences she had with them, how it was to be among “the poorest of the poor,” and how poverty shaped her and the townspeople.
 
The author’s narrative gives readers a glimpse into life in the Delta region, home to poor blacks, a hotbed of the Civil Rights Movement, and home to tough people.
 
“In Slotpot where money was low or nonexistent, you did what it would take to make life livable, comfortable, and entertaining,” said the author. “So, for whatever you created, for whatever reason, you worked with it until you got it just how you wanted it to be. Living in Slotpot was like learning to live in the wilderness. You had to learn how to survive by taking nothing and making it into something.
 
“Yes, times were hard, food was slim and money was almost nonexistent, but we did the best we could with (what) we had.”
 
Debora Dockett’s “Through My 8 Year Old Eyes: Planet Slotpot” was last displayed at the National Education Association (NEA) Expo 2018, which took place on June 30-July 1, 2018.
 
The book is available in Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
 
Through My 8 Year Old Eyes: Planet Slotpot
Written by Debora Dockett
Published by Xlibris
Published date: March 24, 2016
Paperback price: $15.99
 
About the Author 
Love of reading and writing is what has been a part of this writer’s life. She gives credit to her mother for introducing her to and her older sister to nightly readings. Debora has begun creating and making up stories and poems even before she was able to put them in writing. As she grew, so did her love for reading and writing. She began to write complete manuscripts at the age of thirteen. By the age of fifteen, she had followers who would make excuses to come and “speak” to her in class so that they could be the first one to get their hands on the manuscripts. As time progressed, she read at weddings, elementary and middle schools, and churches. A student at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she took thirteen different literatures and, to this day, remains one of the best descriptive writers that has passed through the university.

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