Diary of a Black Girl

"Diary of a Black Girl" is written along the lines of films like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "the Help". It's a story of two best friends who find their way through life in the South during integration, as a whole new world opens up for people of color. Their friendship faces racism, poverty, and deep heartache. But the two friends also experience faith, happiness, redemption, love, marriage, and children.

Mississippi has just abolished segregation as Catherine enters grade school and discovers her new best friend. Sondra instantly bonds with Catherine and their friendship is unshakable through grade school, and into high school. But as both girls head their separate ways in college, they find it challenging to try to stay emotionally close. Sondra meets a University professor and falls in love, but confesses to Catherine that she is pregnant with an unplanned pregnancy. As the ladies work though the pitfalls in a relationship that is closer than sisters, they have a heated, weighty, cultural argument at a party, that threatens to sever the friendship forever. Catherine has to decide if she will work to overcome some lingering societal bias and personal pride, to keep her relationship with her best friend, even as they both face a seemingly unbeatable foe in cancer.

About the characters: Sondra, a fiercely independent black woman, who has suffered bias and cruelty, sees a new path in a new culture. She teaches Catherine what it means to have traveled a much different road during childhood. Catherine, a white woman of privilege, almost lets resentments of a Southern past pull them apart.

Personal note from Kathleen Mazzanti, the little girl on which the Catherine character is based- "In 1969 I was eight years old in Jackson MS, and I was bused across town to a formerly all black elementary school during integration. I met a girl in my class named Sondra. We instantly had a connection and became best friends. We later lost touch, and I have often wondered what became of her. This story is based on my friendship with her, and with all the women in my life whose friendships uplifted me, challenged me and changed me. If not for Sondra, I’m not sure I would be the woman that I am."

The unquenchable friendship and faith in love in "Diary of a Black Girl" will appeal to a wide audience.

About me: In addition to completing 13 screenplays (with 3 receiving a contract), I have written three novels (one for which I received a contract), and numerous short works (two with a contract).