I Believe

Guest blogger, Melanie Sumner

Over the summer I asked students in my online creative writing course to post blog entries about “hidden agendas” in their writing. These were graduate students writing fiction and creative nonfiction, and I was surprised at the number of them who claimed they wrote for entertainment and informational purposes only. Aside from a couple of students admitting the intention to share their religious views, most fiction writers swore they weren’t trying to get anything more than a good belly laugh or an honest tear out of the reader.

I would have said the same thing a few weeks earlier, before some New Mexicans took offense at the portrayal of Taos in my new novel, The Ghost of Milagro Creek. The novel had only been out for two weeks and was selling widely across the United States when a local bookstore in Taos announced their refusal to carry it on their shelves when I came to Taos on my book tour. They cited “inaccuracies” as the reason.

Around the state, the opposition gathered to affirm that indeed, Sumner’s fictional barrio outside of Taos, New Mexico, a mixture of Latino, Native American, and Caucasian people struggling with big hearts through a web of poverty, addiction, and violence, was….well, just not right. Oddly, or perhaps not oddly at all, those in opposition to The Ghost of Milagro Creek are gringos like myself. Native Americans and Latinos in New Mexico have praised the book for capturing the essence of a unique culture.

When the hullabaloo over the book arose, I thought, “Oh, for Pete’s sake; it’s just a story. You’re allowed to write whatever you want in fiction.” A turning point came for me on the Leonard Lopate show in NYC. Leonard said that his visits to Taos left him with the impression of a tourist town. As a tourist, he wasn’t familiar with the portrait I had of the area, a rendering that included such heavy issues as suicide, alcoholism, addiction, child abuse by a member of the clergy, parental neglect, and homophobia. “Because that’s what life is like in the barrio?” he asked. I answered that that is what life is like in a lot of places for a lot of people. “I believe,” I said, “It is often a consequence of poverty and what is happening in our culture as family ties weaken and individuals lose their sense of place in a community.”

There, I had said it. “I believe.” I could have gone on to blame television, fundamentalism, patriarchy, capitalism, the lack of socialized health care, standardized testing, and the insidious cult of marketing. Did I ever really think that I could tell a story about people I made up in situations I invented and not expose my viewpoints? Did I believe that I was writing fiction for any reason other than to change the world?

The Ghost of Milagro Creek is my third book and my first step away from autobiographical fiction. I had prided myself on the fact that although I had lived in the area for three years, and still consider it the home of my soul, the story was not true, and I did not appear in the cast of characters. Then friends began to remind me that some of the violent episodes in the novel originally showed up in newspapers or in schools where they had taught. I had not consciously thought of these accounts while I was writing. I thought only of what Abuela was putting in her compost, what Mister Romero might say to his friend Tomas when he realized that they were in love with the same girl. All the same, that information dwelt within me, and it came out in the novel. Although a good writer leaves no fingerprint on the page in terms of telling a story, all of us, consciously or unconsciously, address the prevailing issues in our society. Let the bookstores lock their doors on The Ghost of Milagro Creek; an old Taosensio named D.H. Lawrence would be the first to admit that a little controversy never hurt a novel.

Melanie Sumner is the author of the novels The Ghost of Milagro Creek, The School of Beauty and Charm, and a collection of stories – Polite Society. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Ladies Home Journal, and other magazines and anthologies. She is a recipient of The Whiting Award and a fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University. The book trailer of The Ghost of Milagro Creek can be viewed on You Tube.

www.melanie-sumner.com

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