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Meet Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn.

Janice Rhoshalle, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My writing career began during my freshman year at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. I was enrolled in the Fashion Merchandising program with dreams of someday occupying a C-suite at Nordstrom, although I found my accounting and business classes unfulfilling.

On a whim, I took a fashion writing class taught by Gwen Jones, then-fashion editor for the now-defunct Herald Examiner. I had been writing stories all my life – in letters and journals – but never considered it as a profession until Gwen suggested I had a flair for the work and helped me garner an internship at Women’s Wear Daily in downtown L.A., not far from campus.

I assisted the West Coast editorial team and was given opportunities to investigate and write my own stories – including a piece that led to the termination of an inattentive Nordstrom employee! The experience changed everything about what I thought I could do – and who I wanted to be. My parents didn’t have a clue about what kind of life I could have as a journalist – I remember my father asking: What is that exactly, and how much will it pay? – by they supported this change in my career trajectory.

With spreadsheets and accounting books now in the garbage, I went on to serve as editor of the Trade Tech campus newspaper – and saved the journalism department from closure that year – and became the first fashion editor of the Loyolan newspaper when I transferred to Loyola Marymount University to complete my undergraduate studies during which time I interned at L.A. Weekly, Motown Records and various other media companies.

Eight years as the assistant editor at RadioScope, a syndicated urban entertainment radio program – where I interviewed everyone from Barack Obama to George Lucas and Oprah Winfrey – fostered my eventual move as a freelance entertainment writer where, for more than 15 years, I wrote cover stories and features for scores of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books USA Today, Vibe, Essence, and TV Guide, and served as TV columnist for BlackVoices.com and The Associated Press. My writing career has taken me on adventures throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Ghana, focusing on media, culture, and women’s issues.

After earning my master’s degree from USC in Los Angeles, I returned to LMU as an adjunct journalism professor and have taught media and writing classes at other institutions. I co-authored the guidebook, “Swirling: How to Date, Mate, and Relate Mixing Race, Culture, and Creed” for Atria/Simon & Schuster and have contributed to the anthology, “Reflections” by Emmy-award winning artist James Gayles for Pachino Press.

Currently, I serve as Associate Director for the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities — where I am also a Fellow of the Institute — on staff at USC, and, this spring, received a certificate for completing coursework in Mindful Self-Compassion through Mindful USC. I am also a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine, my most recent OpEd on “Politicizing Blackness, Multiracial Love and Identity” posted on Oct. 7, 2020, coinciding with the historic debate of Vice-Presidential contender Kamala Harris.

More recently, I have forayed my storytelling into a new medium: filmmaking. The documentary/transmedia project, “…but can she play?”: Blowin’ the Roof Off Women Horn Players in Jazz a documentary/transmedia project explores the gender disparities for women instrumentalists.

My first screenplay, “Those People: A Love Story,” was a finalist in the 2016 DreamAgo Plume y Pellicule international writing atelier in Sierre, Switzerland where I attended the week-long screenwriting workshop. The story explores an interracial, cross-cultural romance between a Black American woman and a Persian Muslim.

When my co-writer, Barrington Smith-Seetachitt, and I were first developing the project, before the 2016 election, we were constantly being told that America was now “post-racial” and that our script was no longer relevant to the changing tide. We, of course, knew differently. And considering the past four years, not only is the story timely, but I have been reimaging the work as a possible series.

In my spare time, I love to read (like my mother, I have become a big fan of reading vintage cookbooks), cook (and discuss menus with my brother, Lonnie, for his vegan comfort food pop up restaurant, Gorilla Grub), travel (which, during the pandemic means long aimless drives in the car to anywhere), and planting things (I’ve been propagating all kinds of seeds during lockdown…and finally got a pineapple top to root!).

Has it been a smooth road?
The road has never been a smooth one. From the beginning, it was challenging having so few peers/mentors from which to learn – although I was grateful to have fostered relationships early in my career with writers such as Lynell George, Erin Aubry Kaplan and Eric Deggans who have become friends and allies over the years.

Still, there was really no map to follow; not straight trajectory in terms of what I should be striving to achieve or what success looked like. A lot of my freelance career was simply learning how to keep my head above water as I moved deeper into unchartered waters – to exhaust a metaphor.

Deciding to return to school as a freelance contractor, and graduating in the midst of an economic recession, proved to be the greatest test of my work and willpower while straining my financial and mental stability for almost a decade. I never stopped working or exploring new avenues, but I was not in a well place.

The past three years, despite their own ups and downs, have been my most fruitful, thanks, in part, to therapy, a growing tribe that includes a team of wellness practitioners and young thought-leaders. I feel reconnected to the work I love and even more grateful these days to be a journalist and community advocate.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Primarily, I’m known for my journalism work, and for experience with and sensitivity to working with people from wide-ranging economic, racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and sexual orientation/reassignment, and particularly noteworthy are my commendations from the City of Los Angeles for community service and leadership, and the Max Drew Longtime Service Award (2019) which I received from APLA Health where I also serve as Board secretary.

Whether developing writing skills with young people or wellness and health initiatives in diverse communities, my aim is to create a better world by empowering underrepresented voices, promoting emotional well-being and encouraging social engagement.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Being a native of Los Angeles, it’s difficult to imagine what it would be like for someone coming to the city now and forging a life as a freelance writer – especially for someone over 50, as I am. That said, as tough as it can be to make connections in this town, it still remains a place of endless possibilities. Support and planning are key.

Speaking of, the city could do more to support for small, independent businesses and provide/open opportunities financially disenfranchised communities. When protestors call for a ‘defunding of the police,’ it is meant as a way to funnel the enormous amount of monies (millions of dollars) from militarized policing that could go to social services to support communities.

In that same vein, housing costs in the Southland are among the highest in the nation, and while city officials continue to build new tenant developments to attract young Silicon Valley types to the city, there needs to be as much consideration for the lower-income burgeoning entrepreneur by making it mandatory that newly constructing multi-tenant buildings are targeted to people of varied income levels, with at least a third designated to low-income residents. It’s a matter of quality home equity for all.

It is a model that has worked well in New York and other major cities and provides the same pride-of-community ownership among the residents, as well as opportunities for diverse people to connect. If we want to keep our best and brightest here, we have to give them more than great weather and beaches to stay.

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Image Credit:
Main photo is taken by Libby Slate

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