Rheta Grimsley Johnson Discusses Change: From Print Journalism to the New Media

by Shana Thornton-Morris, Managing Editor

Working as a columnist and reporter since the 1970s, Rheta Grimsley Johnson has witnessed the reshaping of the newspaper industry. From issues of nepotism, the inclusion of women in the newsroom, to the ultimate dwindling of print journalism in the face of new media giants, Johnson covers many sides of the newsprint in her most recent memoir, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: a memoir (New South Books, 2010). And, in spite of the new virtual media, she remains loyal to the tangible—to the ink on her fingers created by print journalism.

“I’m finished with memoirs,” Johnson says, while laughing. Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming is an unlikely title for a journalist who lives in the self-titled Fishtrap Hollow, but Johnson isn’t interested in presenting you with a glossy magazine image of Barbie and her world of Dream Houses. Johnson has a soft voice but is straightforward, like her writing style. She gazes into your eyes, a direct look.

As she writes in her memoir, “We weren’t ever going to dress, look, or live like Barbie. Our Dream House would come with utility bills…. Ken might take the Dream Car and run off with Midge…. A Country Picnic always had rain and ants. An Enchanted Evening could end in an unwanted pregnancy. (…) There should be a Barbie outfit for that. Disenchanted Evening.”

Given her tongue-in-cheek style, Johnson’s next revelation about promoting her memoir is surprising. Johnson says, “This has all been bizarre… surreal. Women have shown up to readings and signings dressed as Barbie. They’ve obviously not read the book. They think it’s about Barbie dolls. I don’t know what’s going on,” she says bewildered. She goes on to say that she’ll write about it later, and I suspect that she isn’t quite finished with writing memoirs.

Johnson and I have met in a hotel restaurant and are seated at a small round table. She is a guest speaker at the Clarksville Writer’s Conference in Tennessee. I place a small mp3 player in the center of the table and Johnson gives it a sideways stare. I press record, explaining that I’m uncertain of how this one works—it’s new, another type of technology. For back-up, I have a notebook and pen that I also place on the table and we begin discussing what it has been like for Johnson to watch the newspaper industry change rapidly over the course of three decades. She started her writing career on a manual typewriter and says that she was “damn proud” of being labeled a feminist, first while writing for her college newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, and later as a columnist. To be a liberal feminist in the South could be a case of double profanity, depending on the town. Johnson is also a humorist, a third obstacle, and one that she slightly altered and even delineated from. She admits that the rural South was behind the progressive cities and towns of the US, and that’s why her work as a journalist, for many newspapers throughout the South but especially for Memphis’ The Commercial Appeal and Atlanta’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution two of the South’s oldest daily newspapers, is even more intriguing.

In the memoir, she is at once proud of the feminist label and questioning of it, and that duality shows her remarkable honesty. At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Johnson took over a famous column written by Lewis Grizzard, who died in 1994. He was a beloved humorist in Georgia, and Johnson received “hate mail” for her liberal slant. Of course, she toned herself down considerably and was eventually restricted to only news within Georgia.

So, she reached out to Americans living below the poverty line, dusted off their “whatnot” shelves, and became a voice for people who wouldn’t have otherwise told their stories. She’s known for her objectivity and compassion, and was one of three finalists for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. Her curiosity embodies not only the momentum of chasing previously unheard stories, but also the challenge of working hard for ideals that often fail to live up to our expectations.

Johnson searched for journalistic gems before she had even finished college at Auburn. Rheta and her first husband Jimmy Johnson pursued the idyllic dream of starting a weekly newspaper on St. Simons Island. There, she used “antique type-setting equipment, cantankerous machines called Justowriters.” After their relentless pursuit of journalistic ownership fell flat, Rheta and Jimmy settled into full time jobs at The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, AL, where they overlooked the nepotism policy at the time—that spouses could not work together, and often the woman in the pair was asked to resign. Eventually, the couple did face the problem at another newspaper; fortunately, Jimmy created the cartoon strip Arlo and Janis, while Rheta traveled as a reporter and columnist throughout the South and often abroad.

Aside from her journalism career, Rheta’s story has many unexpected turns for the reader—a bewildering divorce, the unexpected tragedy of her friend and lover Barry’s suicide in her driveway, and finally discovering love and companionship with her second husband Don Grierson, a retired journalism professor. She had intended to write a funny book, one that chronicled her Christmas celebrations. However, she had only written three chapters when Grierson died, and the book changed. It continues to carry the initial humor, but took on an unexpectedly serious tone. Finishing the memoir helped Johnson to process some of her grief.

“I was in some kind of zone, I’ll tell you,” she says about writing the memoir. “I was grieving, and it is honest. I had done thirty years of columns and always held back a little, and all of a sudden it seemed like it didn’t matter about being diplomatic or pretending to be something that I wasn’t.”

She is disappointed to see the dwindling of print journalism and calls herself, “an old newspaper hack” and says, “That’s okay. I’ve had a nice run. I’m just not interested in recreating myself for the new media. I know it’s legit. I know it could be done…. I’ll write for newspapers as long as they exist, and then I won’t write.”

“Everyone has to find their place, what they’re good at whether that’s longer novels or short stories,” Johnson says. “I’ve been at it long enough that I know my niche and do it well, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Indeed, not only has the medium of journalism shifted into the virtual realm, but in the memoir, Johnson also reminds us that the subject matter of “news” has altered into an obsession with celebrity culture, in print media as well. She tells a story of having lunch with several new reporters in Atlanta, fresh on the presses graduates, who are discussing celebrities that they’re covering and one particular celebrity becomes the focus of the conversation. At some point during the lunch, Johnson realizes that she’s the only reporter who doesn’t personally know the celebrity.

“On anything that’s been written about me, the bottom line is that I am a newspaper person,” Johnson says. “That’s what I’ve done everyday of my life for 35-years. These books have gotten a lot of attention, but I guess they’re not as defining to me as what I’ve done. Anna Quindlen had that great title, Thinking Out Loud, and that’s important to me. And, people discount that. They think if something’s not between hard covers, then it’s not writing. Well, I beg to differ. If you give it your all and roll out of bed everyday to write… that’s been my life’s work. I enjoy being able to be more expansive, but the 750-word essays that I would do four times a week in Memphis and later in Atlanta, that has defined me and kept me going. It’s still what I do, not four times a week anymore,” she laughs. Before we leave the restaurant, Johnson reminds me to press stop on the mp3 recording of our interview and to save it. I suspect that she’s more technologically curious and adept than she desires.

Johnson has won numerous awards in journalism, from the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award in human interest reporting to an induction into the Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame. Johnson has written three other nonfiction books. Her first memoir is Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana (New South Books, 2008). America’s Faces (St. Luke’s Press, 1987) contains a collection of human-interest stories and articles. Johnson also wrote the authorized biography of Charles Schulz, Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz (Pharos Books, 1989).

Currently, Johnson is a syndicated columnist for King Features of New York and her columns appear in newspapers across the US.

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: a memoir, published by New South Books, is available now.

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Shana Thornton-Morris serves as Managing Editor for Her Circle Ezine’s Books and Literature section. In addition, she writes interviews, features and fiction. She also teaches composition and literature courses, chases her husband and daughter, and runs trails with her dog Mojo.

Grace from Friction: An Interview with Margaret Dilloway

by Hannah Eason

Hawaii-based author Margaret Dilloway’s debut novel, How to Be an American Housewife (Putnam Books 2010), takes on a subject near, dear and a little dreadful to most of us: the mother-daughter relationship. In the simplest of circumstances, it’s a relationship marked by friction: between wills, between intentions, between interpretations of what the other means at any given moment.

In addition to everyday growing pains, Shoko and Sue (mother and daughter in Dilloway’s novel) must work through conflicts of culture. Shoko is a Japanese-born housewife trained in proper etiquette and home management. Sue is her American-born daughter who makes it her task to place Shoko’s behavior – which has always seemed odd from an all-American vantage point – in a context where it makes perfect sense.

From a relationship historically fraught with one uphill battle after another, Dilloway harvests the rewards we mothers and daughters always hope to achieve: understanding, respect, a unique brand of friendship, and grace.

Hannah Eason: The title of your novel comes from a fictional guidebook purchased for the mother in the story, Shoko, by her husband Charlie with the intention of helping her transition from Japanese to American culture. You’ve mentioned that you had a real-life inspiration for this guidebook. Tell us some about The American Way of Housekeeping and what role it played in the formation of your novel.

Margaret Dilloway: My mother had a copy of The American Way of Housekeeping. It’s a book of housekeeping tips, written by a military officers’ wives club, for Japanese housekeepers. The book shows Japanese writing on one side of the page and the English translation on the other. My dad thought it might help my mother out, maybe even help her learn English, but I don’t think she did anything more than glance at it.

I was a bit astounded at how, frankly, backwards the American women seemed to consider their Japanese housekeepers to be. True, there are American recipes and explanations on how to use Western-style appliances, but there are also sections warning the housekeepers to do things like keep children away from wells. I wouldn’t think any culture would let children play by a well.
The book made me realize that perhaps how I viewed my mother was different than how the American occupation would have viewed her in the 1950s. I’d always thought my mother was, if anything, more careful than my friends’ mothers, so it was shocking.

H.E.: Obedience seems to be an important theme in the book, with Shoko claiming her own disobedience and her daughter, Sue, stating up front that she has always been obedient. How would you say their differing dispositions in that regard affect how they understand one another?

M.D.: Shoko knows she’s always been disobedient, and she tries to change her nature, but cannot. She is afraid that her daughter is the same as she is, and it will lead to her daughter’s downfall. Sue has always been obedient, but being so accommodating didn’t turn out well for her, either. She sees her mother as controlling and judgmental, and doesn’t fully comprehend Shoko’s background.

They both know what societal norms are and try to fit in. Shoko’s an outsider with Americans. Sue is an outsider with her mother’s peer group. Neither truly fits in anywhere, and maybe what the book is suggesting is that this is all right. You don’t have to fit in anywhere, you have to be yourself and if your loved ones understand and support you, that’s a bonus.

H.E.: Through what seems to be a delicate, evolving communication barrier between mother and daughter, Sue often interprets Shoko’s words as carrying heavy disapproval when Shoko does not view them this way at all. How much of their struggle derives from having grown up in different cultures, and how much of it is the simple age-old struggle of parent and child?

M.D.: I think much of what Shoko says would be interpreted as harsh in Western culture, but to Shoko it’s simply honesty. Communication is also a fairly universal struggle among mothers and daughters. Some mothers who have read this book have told me they think every mother and daughter should read it. There are always meta-messages behind what mothers and daughters say to each other. Deborah Tannen wrote a great book about how mothers and daughters communicate, called You’re Wearing That explaining the competition, love, and anxiety that goes into mother-daughter communication. Mothers tend to project a lot of their own stuff, both good and bad, onto their daughters.

H.E.: At one point in the novel, Shoko’s husband and Sue’s father, Charlie, is unemployed. Having done everything she can to stretch the family’s resources and encourage her husband, Shoko states, “I wished more than anything that I could go out into the world and conquer it for my family.” How does Shoko deal with the limitations imposed on her by culture, especially when her disposition is to defy limits, to be disobedient?

M.D.: Shoko is first limited by her culture and historical circumstance– post World War II Japan. Then her health becomes an issue, so even if she wanted to could go get a job, she would have had problems with her heart worsening through the years. She deals with it by pretty much pinning all her hopes on her daughter, living through her daughter, though it’s largely unintentional. Shoko also has a lot of internalized conflict.

H.E.: Shoko’s daughter, Sue, is a single mother working long hours for the sake of supporting her family. What is Shoko’s view on her daughter for whom work outside the home is simultaneously a necessity and an option that was never, in America at least, on the table for Shoko herself?

M.D.: Shoko realizes it’s a necessity. But Shoko gets a new expectation that Sue ought to be an executive, since she works full-time and has a college degree. I don’t think Shoko fully understands how corporate America works. And of course Sue feels she is disappointing her mother in this way, too.

H.E.: Shoko had a relationship with a man in Japan which would’ve been very difficult to pursue. She instead chooses Charlie, an American soldier, because a secure future in the United States is made possible through him. While this marriage is founded in the practical rather than emotional, we see ample instances of kindness, even adoration, unfold between them. What can you tell us about the sort of love that Shoko has for Charlie? Also, is this type of love satisfactory to her?

M.D.: It began as a marriage of necessity for Shoko. In many cultures and in historical times, marriage took place not because there was romantic love, but because of necessity. Shoko knows that Charlie is dependable, though imperfect, and he’ll never desert her. In a time when it was not uncommon for Japanese brides of Americans to be deserted, that counted for a lot with Shoko. So I think it’s a satisfactory love in that way. She’s got a pretty nice home in San Diego and, while there are still some hardships, it’s a lot better than what she had as a child and young adult.

H.E.: How do Shoko’s decisions regarding men influence the way that she looks upon her daughter Sue’s love life?

M.D.: There’s no clear answer. Shoko thought her life with Ronin would be too difficult, so she picked what she thought would be an easier life. That life wasn’t so easy, either. Shoko realizes either path has its own pitfalls. Yet romantic young love didn’t seem to work for Sue, so Shoko’s now probably hoping for a steady provider who will allow Sue to work less hard.

H.E.: It’s easy to imagine, from the vigorous approach she brings to her household obligations, that Shoko might have been a powerful CEO in a different life. Could Sue have ever been happy in the capacity of a housewife? What impressions of homemaking did she take away from watching her mother?

M.D.: Sue has both traditionalist and bohemian streaks in her. Of course, she tried not to address her own needs because she was putting the needs of her child first, which necessitated a steady job. Yet I think she could have been happy as a housewife, because she enjoyed the mothering part so well. It would also depend on how supportive her partner was.

Sue saw her mother treating her homemaking as her profession, which is why she did not want other people like Sue helping her. Sue saw that keeping house alone did not fulfill Shoko, nor did it lead to a strong relationship with her children. So I think if Sue was a housewife, she would be less focused on the house and more focused on child-rearing and making the actual atmosphere of the home more comfortable.

H.E.: What would you say is the relationship between these two strong female characters and the concept of feminism?

M.D.: The characters are deliberately at odds with the title. Neither woman fits into the traditional role of housewife. The word has a negative connotation; try telling someone you’re a housewife at a party and see how fast they run away. That’s why people call themselves “stay-at-home moms” now. The word “housewife” subjugates women.

These characters require the re-imagining of “housewife.” In reality, there is no “traditional housewife” role at all. Trying to fit into a pre-conceived role is what causes trouble. Instead, it’s what each woman makes it. I would like to reclaim the word housewife, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a housewife. It’s honorable to want to make a home for your family and keep things running, whether you’re female or male, and no matter what you call it.

H.E.: What are the main characteristics, as mothers, that Shoko and Sue have in common?

M.D.: They both see their daughters as miraculous creatures who should own the world.

H.E.: We have the opportunity in the novel to meet Helena, Sue’s daughter and Shoko’s granddaughter. What traits is she gleaning from these two women as she grows up?

M.D.: Helena is learning to value her own independence and individuality more than either Sue or Shoko ever did. Shoko has a far more relaxed approach with her granddaughter. Helena has this benefit that Sue did not.

H.E.: Going back to Shoko’s childhood and adolescence in Japan, it seems that her father had a somewhat progressive stance in the extent to which he allowed her to assist in decision making. How would you say his actions contribute to Shoko being as willful and determined as she is?

M.D.: Shoko’s father was perhaps not as traditional as others. He did give up his worldly possessions for religion, and he did not always take the same views as others did. Shoko’s father valued her as a human, not just as a compliant daughter-figure. He recognized her true nature and also recognized he could not change what she was. And if he hadn’t appreciated this about Shoko, she wouldn’t have worked and helped the family be better off.

H.E.: The character of Mike, Shoko’s son, is an interesting one. He intermittently lives at home between bouts of employment well into middle age. He’s not overly communicative. But it is noted that he has this strength of character which makes itself known when the pressure is on. What part did his Japanese-style rearing within American culture play in how he has turned out?

M.D.: Mike’s parents, in wanting to make things easier for him than it was for them, perhaps made things too easy for him. I don’t know that this is simply Japanese style parenting. There are a lot of people like Mike who are Americans.

H.E.: You mention that How to Be an American Housewife is, in ways, an imagining of your own mother’s personal life. Did you relate strongly to certain aspects of Sue’s cultural struggles?

M.D.: Yes. Japan was culturally absent for me; I only knew about it through artifacts my parents had. We did not have Japanese friends or any strong cultural connection like that. We did not have family in the area, or go visit family, or have a friend network, so in some ways I grew up very isolated. It’s still odd for me to think that I have dozens of cousins around the country and in Japan I’ve never met.

There were definitely moments I called upon from my own life to integrate with Sue’s.

H.E.: Sue is called upon in the novel to make a trip to Japan on her mother’s behalf in hopes of reconciling with Shoko’s estranged brother. What are her main motivations in saying yes?

M.D.: She is beginning to understand her mother as an adult and imagine what it was like growing up in Japan. With her mother’s trip to see her at work and her mother’s worsening health, Sue finally has a visceral understanding of her mother’s mortality. She wants to make the trip for her mother. She also wants to see Japan for herself and find that missing part of her psyche, of knowing where she came from. On some level, Sue knows this will help her have a better relationship with her mother, even if her mother passes away.

H.E.: I’m curious about what your personal relationship with Japanese culture has been. Have you had an opportunity similar to Sue’s, to experience it first-hand? If so, did Sue’s reactions in some ways mirror your own?

M.D.: I have only been to Japan once, when I was three. I had a fantasy that I would get to go back to Japan and have an experience like Sue’s before I wrote this book, but it was financially impossible. So I sort of carried out my fantasy in the book. It’s like imagining a trip to Mars.

H.E.: Based on the duality of culture you experienced while growing up, were there any authors in particular who were telling stories you related to? Or was part of the inspiration to write that you weren’t necessarily seeing your story in print?

M.D.: I haven’t read many stories about bi-racial children. To me race is an afterthought; it’s more like being bi-cultural. You can have schisms in racially homogeneous societies, as we see in Japan in the novel.

Maybe that’s part of what I was trying to say by including the Japanese untouchables: every culture oppresses some other subset of its culture, whether that’s based on race or wealth or religion. But if you had two Japanese people emigrate to America, and one was from the Eta and one was from a samurai lineage, they’d be treated the same.

H.E.: In future writing, do you think you’ll continue to explore the Japanese-American cultural chasm?

M.D.: I wouldn’t rule it out, but there are many more subjects I’m interested in.

H.E.: How do you incorporate your writing work into your own, probably quite demanding, schedule as an American Housewife?

M.D: It’s gotten a lot easier lately. My youngest child started kindergarten just this week, so I work while the kids are at school.

However, the more I write, the more I forget to do real-world tasks.

So I have to set an alarm if I have to go do errands.

H.E.: Is there anything else you would like to tell readers about your experience in writing How to Be an American Housewife?

M.D: I only hope everyone has at least a few moments of enjoyment out of it, even if they only think the cover will look great on their bookshelf.

H.E.: Thank you, Miss Dilloway.

The cover of the book, by the way, is very eye-catching and would look attractive on anyone’s bookshelf.

How to Be an American Housewife, published by Putnam books, is available now. You can visit the author’s website, Margaret Dilloway, American Housewife, at www.margaretdilloway.com for a reader’s guide and Ms. Dilloway’s blog on the writing life.

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In addition to writing UpClose interviews and book reviews for Her Circle Ezine, Hannah Eason writes fiction under the name Jane Eisenhart. Links to her short stories and additional writing can be found on her website: http://hometowngrotesque.squarespace.com/.

Connie May Fowler Confidential: Secrets, Storytelling, and the Oil Disaster

by Shana Thornton-Morris, Contributing Editor

Connie May Fowler understands the impact of secrets, both private and political. In her novels and memoirs, she acutely communicates the interconnectivity of life, including her own.

Fowler is a Southern author and she utilizes that culture and landscape in her novels. Her characters reflect the diversity of the South, while also portraying those subtle moments in all relationships that transcend culture. When asked if her characters relate to her Southern heritage, Fowler says that what other people might consider eccentricities are just a part of everyday life in the South.

“Secrets are a necessary part of being a human,” Fowler says. “If someone tells you something in confidence, you have to keep that held in confidence. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to unburden themselves.”

Fowler has made a career out of storytelling and trying to recapture a missing piece of her childhood. She says, “I had a fractured beginning. I only knew one grandparent who died when I was four. My father died when I was six. My mother died when I had just turned eighteen. Not knowing any of the grandparents, when my father died it blew what was left of the family completely asunder. I so longed to try to understand where I came from. Sometimes, I felt like I was hatched. It really did drive my thirst to be a storyteller just to try to figure out who these people were.”

Fowler’s father was a musician and the focus of her essay, “Affirmation, Etched in Vinyl,” which was published in the June 4, 2010 edition of The New York Times. She describes the revelation of a mystery, hearing her father’s voice for the first time in 45 years. As a six-year-old, Fowler had listened to the sound of her father dying after a heart attack, and those final moments had become her strongest memory of her father’s voice. After receiving a vinyl recording of her father singing with his band Henry May and His Rhythm Ramblers, Fowler could finally stop chasing the ghost of her father’s voice, a sound that she had lost while growing up.

“I had literally searched and searched,” Fowler says, “and it came out of the blue.”

She had suppressed her desire to know her father when in the presence of her mother, who communicated a disdain for him. In this way, Fowler’s secret as a child was to know her father, hear stories about him and listen to his music.

“For me having this disconnect from a familial trail,” Fowler says, “one of the most interesting things is to not only hear my father sing the song but to know that he wrote the song, and that I’m a writer. We are connected. There is a line that you can actually follow.”

While Fowler is comfortable, accessible, and communicates human interactions with fluidity and humor, she admits that she wasn’t always so certain of herself and her talents.

“I used to be extremely shy,” she says. “I had a stutter. I was terrified to go to the convenient store and I think it was because of the way that I was brought up and being beaten and that horrible stuff, so I didn’t know how to be a public person. My editor and agent just kept saying, ‘Be yourself. Be yourself.’ I didn’t know what that self was, and I literally made myself sick.

“I remember the first time I went to New York to meet them,” Fowler says with laughter, “and we were at a little pub and we were talking and I’m trying to pull it off. I just run to the bathroom, and I kept a bottle of Maalox in my purse. Eventually, I just wore myself out. It was almost out of physical necessity that I decided, Well, I am who I am and I can’t adopt airs. I think that writing books which have helped people in their own personal journeys has helped me to learn that it’s okay to be honest about who I am and what I have gone through.”

In Fowler’s seventh novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly (Grand Central Publishing, 2010), the main character struggles with an inability to admit that she is in a loveless and often abusive marriage. Indeed, Fowler says that most secrets drift into the unconscious, so much so that, like Clarissa, we are often unaware of the secrets we keep from ourselves. She points out that Clarissa is isolated and has no meaningful friendships. Though Clarissa is aware of current events in the outside world, she isn’t aware of herself. Fowler also emphasizes the aspect of shame that’s attached to secrets, specifically Clarissa’s embarrassment of her marriage and her writer’s block.

“She’s really abrogated her power to her husband (Iggy),” Fowler says, “and he’s stolen a lot of it and outright taken it.”

In connection with the novel’s release, Fowler created The Clarissa Burden I’ve Got a Secret Postcard Project to inspire others to anonymously unburden their minds. Through the project people are encouraged to anonymously disclose their secrets so as to unburden themselves, while also creating a dialogue about the pressing issues of our time and the subtleties of our relationships. Anyone can e-mail or send a postcard through standard mail. All of the original contributions are deleted and/or destroyed after being copied to Fowler’s website. Names are omitted. Fowler says that she was surprised by the responses and how freely people confessed their secrets.

“It’s been really humbling,” Fowler said. “I don’t think that I expected the level of candor. I wanted to do something in conjunction with the release of the book that made sense. I just thought that at the beginning of this book, Clarissa is paralyzed with secrets, including her many imagined, spousal death scenarios. I hoped the postcard project would create a dialogue. What I’ve realized is that for every person who makes a comment or sends me an e-mail privately, or even some who have posted on my Facebook page comments about the secrets, I know that a lot more people are thinking. It’s not always a public dialogue, but people are thinking and that’s something.”

On Fowler’s website, a person writes, “I worry that I don’t love my children the way other women love theirs. I mean, I do love them. Very much. But sometimes I wonder if I’d be happier if, you know, I’d not had them. Or waited until things were better.”

Another reveals, “I had an abortion in 1955 at the age of 18.”

Fowler admits that she is questing to collect stories, but to have fluid goals and change as she continues to write. In our interview, Fowler does not shy away from the politics of this time and place and immediately she begins expressing her concern for the abnormally large numbers of sea turtles coming to shore close to her Florida home. The BP oil spill has been foremost on her thoughts.

“I’m just completely bereft,” Fowler says, “The turtles are completely lost. They’re coming ashore in record numbers and going back out to shore. For us to have so many turtles so early, they’re obviously not accustomed to coming to this exact spot. We would feel better about it if they were still able to adapt and go ahead and lay their eggs, but evidently they’re going, no this is not my place.”

Fowler wants to tell people what it’s like for the residents of the Gulf Coast. She has been blogging about it and is already working on a new nonfiction book about the current oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I had started a new novel and it wasn’t going anywhere because Clarissa from How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly kept popping back up,” Fowler said. “I would be writing along—the new character’s name was Euphrates—and I would think, wait a minute, I just wrote Clarissa.

“I had an idea for a long time to write what would be a sort of environmental memoir,” Fowler says, “An artist living on the edge of the world, making things grow out of sand and what that life is like, so I decided that I probably needed to turn back to that and give Clarissa a rest. Then, the oil disaster happened. It became much more urgent. My new book will be about what it’s like to live here amid this disaster.” Fowler is a prolific American writer who will wrestle with heartbreak in her next book.

Her current project, The Clarissa Burden I’ve Got a Secret Postcard Project, contains anonymous, heartbreaking confessions and witty annoyances, all secrets nonetheless. Anyone may join the discussion and contribute a secret.

www.conniemayfowler.com

Memory and the Queen: An interview with author Minrose Gwin

by Hannah Eason

Summer can play havoc with the senses.  In North Carolina, early May, on the sunned campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, this matter is brought to the fore.  This is where I’ve come to meet Minrose Gwin, Kenan Eminent Professor of English, Co-Editor of The Southern Literary Journal and author of the new novel from Harper Perennial, The Queen of Palmyra.  By the time I reach her office, my breath has taken on an unaccustomed weight from the massive lawn’s uprising of pollen, and I find myself making starlet-in-panic hand motions, fanning myself rapidly.

Another explanation for the shortness of breath, the story possibly truer to heart here,  is that I am about to meet the author who has been astounding me at the level of chapter, paragraph and word since I read that first sentence:  “I need you to understand how ordinary it all was.”  That line is our introduction to the voice of Florence Forrest, the ten-year-old girl who will share with us a story of race in ‘60’s-era Mississippi and the effect of events therein on the memory of an entire generation, of a whole place.  Not only does Minrose Gwin manage to cover an angle on the race struggles which remains relevant even today, but she does so in a beautiful narrative built on phrases sharp as stings.  This is a book to remind us that language is still a viable denomination of worship.

I need you to understand that talking to her is rather extraordinary.

Gwin is a true Southern Lady:  she excuses the mess (of which there’s very little) and offers me cookies.  We speak for a moment about the affront to easy-breathing that has been this summer and our potential cures.  Her eyes have a bouncing gleam that defies so many allergens. 

In our interview, she talks about one summer with an even greater impact on the senses of those who witnessed it.  She talks about the summer prior to Florence Forrest’s fifth grade year, one that will press heavily upon the characters’ most powerful yet fragile sense:  that of memory. 

Hannah Eason:  The Queen of Palmyra is such an interesting title. What can you tell us about it? 

Minrose Gwin:  Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, lived in the third century and she was queen of a large kingdom in Syria, and she was just the smartest, bravest, most – in some ways – arrogant woman you would ever hear about in history.  She claimed to descend from both the Queen of Sheba and Cleopatra.  She was a warrior queen, and she took on Rome.  And she would ride in the front of her forces as they fought and bare one breast to show her forces – her men – who she was. 

The story you get in the novel is a very different version of that Queen of Palmyra, which goes to show how our stories can mutate.  

There’s a character in the book, Zenie – Zenobia – who is the older black woman who lets Florence hang out with her, for pay, but doesn’t necessarily enjoy Florence (laughs).  She’s named after the queen.  But there are other characters – Eva Green, for example – who might also qualify as the queen. So, one big issue is:  who is the Queen of Palmyra in the book?

H.E.:  I think that as you read, you find yourself asking that.  Well, who will finally have that title?  I had the final impression that Eva was the queen.  They all had some aspects.  And, now that you’ve mentioned it, one other thing that was very interesting was Zenie’s reaction when Florence shares a dream she’s had in which she was Queen of Palmyra.

M.G.:  Zenie gets very upset with Florence at that point, and I think that’s the most tension-filled moment between the two of them.  And the reason that Zenie feels that way is that it’s something of hers, something her mother gave to her, her story.  And you can’t take someone’s story.  This is her heritage, part of her African American heritage.  And here is this white girl coming, trying to snatch her inherited story from her, including her name.  Her name is so important to her.  Very, very angry reaction.

H.E.: It seems that a recurring lesson to Florence is the importance of stories.  What would you say are the implications and the danger to people when they disconnect from their stories?

M.G.:  The book is a lot about stories and competing stories, and Florence has to choose which story she’ll invest in.  Zenie has her story about Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra, which comes from the book’s title and is where Zenie gets her name.  The father, Win, has stories about Bomba, the white boy who gets stuck in the quote-unquote savage jungle with quote-unquote savages.  Florence is just so taken with stories her grandfather tells her about Uncle Wiggily, about his adventure and how brave he was. 

You have all these stories circulating.  Florence’s survival depends on her trying to make her own story.  She gets so swept up in other people’s stories that you hope she becomes more and more connected to what her story is.  I don’t want to give anything away, but this doesn’t happen until very last moments of the book.

Stories can also be deceiving, they can lead you astray; and I think in many ways that, until that very ending, Florence is still in something a false story of her own making, a story she can live with after everything that’s happened to her, a story she can survive in.   But that story just gets exploded in the end.

H.E.:  Speaking of this way she chooses a story she can live with, one that’s affected by her memory, you’ve brought out an interesting aspect of southern literature, in your work, in your thoughts on memory.  And southern literature has seemed to become broader and maybe less defined than it was at one point.  What can you tell us about the cultural ramifications of memory, as it relates to people who grew up in troublesome times, and the lack of memory?

M.G.:  Especially the latter.  I think in terms of Florence herself, there’s a line in the book – and I probably can’t quote it directly – but something about “Stories happen and then you tell them, but what you see depends on what you know.”  With Florence, we’re not sure of what she sees; we’re still not sure by the end of the book what she has seen.   What she originally saw did not correspond in her head to what she knew could be the possible truth.  So her memory rejects that knowing, or that seeing. 

The original title of the book was “What I Didn’t See,” which certainly bit the dust a while ago.  The book is so much about seeing and not seeing, knowing and not knowing; and memory functions that way.  Psychologists tell us that.  If something happens and it’s so unbelievable we can’t imagine it could be true, we reject it.  Post-traumatic Stress Disorder can involve a form of this rejection.

H.E.:  And we see that play out frequently throughout the book.  At several points, as Florence learns more of her father’s activities, we realize how innocent her perspective is, and how he and his friends encourage that innocence.  It seems like we get to experience the development of her vision in this way.

M.G.:  Competing stories, again, that counter her father’s story, become stronger in her mind.  What I was really trying to convey is just like it says in the very first line of the book:  “… how ordinary it all was.”  It was ordinary.  Racism was ordinary.  Racial epithets were ordinary.  The cruel ordinary of all of it is so chiling when we look back from a historical perspective.

H.E.:  The characters in this novel are so strongly developed, never falling into cliché, never even falling into the expected.  It would be so easy  for Win, the father in the story, to fall completely into the category of villain with no human qualities.  But we have the benefit in being able to see him, especially in the beginning, from Florence’s perspective.   He’s just Dad.  He too is ordinary.  We don’t see him as completely inhuman.

M.G.:  And he has a physical handicap.  He has a history that has made the man he became, a very brutal history.  I think the character I really worked on the hardest in terms of depth was Ray, Zenie’s husband, although I guess he is the most minor character of all the major characters.  I felt that I really wanted to get to know him better and what made him tick.  I really tried to give him more depth than I would ordinarily give a minor character, because he interested me so much.

H.E.: One thing Win Forrest, the father in the story, is very concerned about is outside agitators. He names, graphically at one point, all those he considers to fall in that category. Having grown up female in the South during a time when so many aspects of society were changing, what was your experience in regard to your community and the reaction to those perceived as outside agitators?

M.G.: That’s a really good, interesting question. I grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, which is a small town in the northern part of the state not far from Memphis. Our town was much more what I call an Appalachian town than a Deep South town built on agricultural economy. Our town was more built on an industrial kind of economy. For that reason, I think there was a lot more interchange between African Americans and whites in our town. I don’t want to paint too rosy of a picture, because it’s not. It was certainly segregated and deeply divided according to race.

We had a very progressive newspaper editor in our town whose newspaper was in the moderate-to-progressive range, which was very unusual. There were only two or three newspapers that were like that in the state. So, I don’t think I got the full brunt of what theoutside agitator meant.

But, simultaneous to this project, I’ve been starting research on another project which is about NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in the summer 1963 and whose death figures into the novel. A lot of work for the novel came from my research – like the newspaper articles. I didn’t make those up, those are actual stories. What I found out in my research, to make a long story short, is that the term outside agitator was a real buzz word in that time, and anyone who came in from the outside was called an outside agitator. When Medgar Edgars was assassinated, they said outside agitators did it. They were to blame for everything.

H.E.:  You’ve mentioned that your interest in race and gender, among other things, has focused a good deal of your attention on literature from the U.S. South.  While the primary focus of The Queen of Palmyra was on race issues, I thought you also addressed gender in the sense of what it meant to be a wife or a daughter in that period of time.  What can you share with us about how gender impacted the story?

M.G.:  I think that there were issues around gender in the story.  One of the things with abusive people, I think, is that their abuse spreads very wide.  Here, you see kind of a network of the father’s abuse –  it’s racist and it goes into violence in terms of race, but it’s also is violent in terms of the females in his family, his wife and his daughter.  One thing I was interested in was how Martha, the mother in this story, deals with her situation.  Here she is, she has a husband, she has a daughter; she’s trapped.  Their economic situation is rather dire.  The problem with Martha is that the way she handles herself in terms of the situation is not ideal by any means.

I was very interested in the relationships between African American women and white women in the story, as well.  I really tried to bring that out in terms of the grandmother, Mimi, and her relationship with Zenie, her domestic servant, her quote-unquote maid, and how their relationship was so vexed and so full of tension.  Zenie had so much resentment, and rightly so, against the white grandmother.

There’s a scene in the book which I think is very telling between a white woman and an African American woman in which Martha, the mother, tries to go and give something – a fan – to an African American woman, and the woman rejects that gift.  Martha just can’t understand why this woman, whose house is burning up hot, who has just gotten out of the hospital, would reject that out of pride. 

H.E.:  And I thought it was interesting that in that scene, Florence was the one who had to explain to her mother how the woman feels about this and why she feels the needs to reject the fan. And that just shows you that Florence grew up fast and she grew up very intelligent.  Very observant of the racial issues going on around her.

M.G.:  Yes, this ten-year-old, going on eleven-year-old, girl knows more about race relations than her mother or her grandmother do.

H.E.: And I found that from the midpoint of the novel on, it was so hard to remember that this is a young girl, you feel like she must have grown up by years at this point, she must be sixteen or seventeen now. 

M.G.:  My agent, when reading the manuscript early on, asked, “How long can this summer be?”   There is a lot that happens in that period of three months, two-and-a-half months really.

H.E.:  Going back to some of the relationships between female characters in the novel, Florence has a diverse array of female role models.  It would seem, from the surface anyway, that her mother has the least to offer her.  In what we see manifest as Florence grows up, and in the very brief time we have with Florence as an adult, what would you say are some of the gifts that come specifically from her mother?

M.G.:  One of the things that can be said about the mother – and I tried to built characters with good and bad, complicated, nuanced – is that she does try to rebel. She’s so rebellious and in a subversive sort of way.  In the first chapter, she tries to shove the father’s box off the table.  She rips up the Citizen’s Coucil cartoon that he puts on the refrigerator.  She runs to the bootlegger to warn them of the [Klan] activities that will happen that night, which was a pretty brave thing to do.  She’s very rebellious, and I think when the rebelliousness finds its way in Florence, it comes very powerfully.  I think that rebelliousness comes from her mother.

And of course, it’s not that simple.  You have Eva [pronounced Ev-ah],the young African American woman at the center of the story, who has a lot of grittiness and rebelliousness and, unlike the mother, stands up for what she believes in.  She doesn’t cop out.  She’s had an impact on Florence also.  There’s Zenie, who is very subversive and rebellious in her own way, fearful at the same time and more cautious than Eva, her neice.  She also has a big impact.  Hard to say exactly how much comes from the mother.

H.E.:  And rebellion turns out to be very important for Florence, to get her out of her situation, onto something better. 

Through several of your characters, but especially through Florence, you show a very strong southern voice.  In your opinion, who are some of our prominent writers of the southern tone?

M.G.:  As far as some of the earlier writers who influenced me:  William Faulkner, Eudora Welty.  Welty had very strong female protagonists with a strong sense of voice.  If you’ve read the short story “Why I Live at the P.O.” you see that.  Sister is telling her story and she’s so angry at her relatives, going to go live at the post office, she’s so angry.  More contemporary writers have had an impact on me also.  Lee Smith, for instance.  Jill McCorkle is a very strong voice.  Alice Walker – her stories are so powerful.  Randall Kenan is also very important to me.  In terms of younger writers, Tayari Jones.  Her book, Leaving Atlanta, is very powerful in terms of historical events of the 1980s. In Atlanta at that time, about 20 children were murdered, and she writes stories from their perspective.  There are so many, really.

H.E.:  I’ve recently found out of I was misinformed on a statistic, I thought North Carolina was still second only to New York in terms of having the most living writers.  From recent research, I believe we have been bumped down, but we do have a high number of living, working writers from this state. Do you think there’s something in particular about the land, or our sense of place, in North Carolina – and in the South, more generally – that drives people to chronicle?

M.G.:  Eudora Welty said, “Place is the crossroads of circumstance” and also “the heart’s field.”  I think in a lot of southern writing, experience is marked by place.  And I think attachment to place historically comes from the fact that a lot of people grow up in small towns and communities where they’ve lived and their families and their families before them for a very long time, very grounded and rooted.  You mentioned that southern literature is changing, and it’s true – people are much less place-bound.   There’s a McDonalds in every small town.

H.E.:  It has changed.  What was very refreshing about reading The Queen of Palmyra is that it seems very self-enclosed in the sense that everything about it is southern.  Your metaphors, your connotation, your words – all your word choice – these things don’t lead your reader’s mind away, they all seem to reflect right back into Florence’s place, her home.   It makes for a very solid project, one that so definitely is what it is.  That made it very enjoyable.

M.G.:  Thank you.  Faulkner taught us is that for a book to be universal in the larger sense, it needs to be grounded in the local, there has to be a locality about it.  There’s a lot in southern studies about the global, the impact on the U.S. South and all these other southern places around the world.  I think that one of the things that is a connector is a strong sense of place.  If you read a book like Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night – very powerful – it’s set on an imaginary island in the Caribbean, but it has many of the same themes:   racism, violence, abuse, all these stories very firmly grounded in place. People are starting to think about southern in a very global sense. 

H.E.:  You have written about the global implications of southern literature and events here in the South, suggesting that it is further reaching than we might at first think.  What, would you say, are some of the main lessons the South has for our global, modern circumstances?

M.G.:  That is a big, big question.  For myself, I can say, in terms of writing, I’ve always been very interested in the idea of blindness, how people can look the other way when something terrible happens right under their very noses.  All along, I had in the back of my mind Nazi Germany and the kinds of events that occurred in the 1930s.  How ordinary Germans, who weren’t bad people, just turned away from circumstances that were in front of their very faces – and how is it possible for people to do that?  We always have villains in the world, but the real problem is people who turn away from villainy.  And so that was the implication for me.  I think southern literature is race history, and the painful history of the south is speaks volumes to many different situations in the world.  Ethnic wars in Africa, for example.  The Holocaust.   All these sorts of things, they’re connected.

H.E.:  Any particular books you feel awakened your love of literature, or encouraged it, at least?

M.G.:  (smiles) I must confess, To Kill a Mockingbird was a very important book to me (laughs).  Beautiful book. 

When I was a girl – you’re asking about when I was a girl – I loved the Uncle Wiggily stories.   I loved Nancy Drew mystery stories.   When I was young, I loved mystery.  And then I started reading books like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and all of that.  I’ve always been a sucker for secrets, young protagonists, mystery.

H.E.: Those are very exciting, and great to have in young literature.  It shows children that reading isn’t boring, it isn’t stodgy.   They get to see themselves like Florence did in the place of Nancy Drew, which allows her to see herself in this way she perceived her characters, larger than life.  And I think she addressed this directly at one point.  It goes back to what we’ve talked about with the importance of stories.  They allow you to see yourself in ways that go beyond your own boundaries.

M.G.:  And it’s interesting what happens to identity when that happens.   Because there’s some shifting around in identity when you read, even if you don’t have the experiences in the stories you read except  vicariously.  Something in your identity gets shaped by that story; it’s very mysterious and it’s very subtle, but it happens over and over again.  When I was girl, my grandmother would take me to the library every Saturday, the county library, the Lee County – named after Robert E. Lee – county library.  You could check out seven books a week, and I would check out seven books every week.  I was never happier than when I was coming out library with arms outstretched, stacked up with books because I just felt like I had a treasure.  I would usually read maybe four or five of the seven, and some I just couldn’t read.  But I read a lot.

Drawing our interview to a close, I thank Gwin for her time. When I mention that I received the e-book for review but that I will definitely purchase a copy as well, she gives me a copy from her bookshelf and jots in it the kind of personalized inscription that warrants – to book-nerds and memorabilia hounds everywhere – the placing of favorite items in airtight cases, yelling at anyone within the radius, “Don’t you touch that!” 

Like so many of her characters, Minrose Gwin is a combination of gentility and fierce intelligence.

Lena Vanelslander, co-author of Quills of Fire

by Shana Thornton-Morris

In the summer of 2009, a poetic correspondence occurred between two women over the course of three weeks. The result of their speedy discourse was the poetry collection, Quills of Fire. A continent separated Marilyn Campiz and Lena Vanelslander. They had never met in person and still have not shared a face-to-face meeting. Marilyn Campiz, an American living in South Korea at the time, proposed a thematic poetry correspondence to Lena Vanelslander who lived in Ghent, Belgium. Recently, Vanelslander shared the challenges and accomplishments of writing with speed and purpose as well as the poetic vision behind Quills of Fire.

Campiz and Vanelslander met over the Internet, after Campiz responded to Vanelslander’s blog. They shared similar interests and began writing. Campiz asked Vanelslander to read Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese text written by unknown author(s) and attributed to the enigmatic Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching is a set of poetic perspectives about the themes of life.

“Going from that principle,” Vanelslander said, “of giving your life vision the different themes, she (Marilyn Campiz) came up with the idea of ‘why don’t we put something together for the 21st century, for people who have completely different backgrounds culturally, linguistically…’. One day she offered the theme and the [next] day I did, and so on and so on until we had an opus of poems. From our correspondence, we knew what was important to the other and what wasn’t. I knew that Marilyn had a very different opinion of love than I did, so I would propose the theme of love to see the places where our opinions converged and diverged.”

In some of the pairs of poems, Campiz and Vanelslander obviously express differing opinions about a theme. Often, they create a complimentary pair. Since their vision was clearly established at the beginning of their poetic correspondence, the two women remained intensely focused on the goal that was originally created by Campiz. They chose not to become bogged down by theories concerning creativity and originality.

“Marilyn’s strong vision about poetry is that poetry can bring the belief in something new,” Vanelslander said. “The quote that everything has been said is among writers and poets who clearly voice that opinion as well. There’s also that kind of difference in Post-modernism where everyone has their own truth. [Campiz is concerned with] that sort of philosophical streaming, but she is most concerned with, first, that there are still new things to be described, discovered and talked about. Also, breaking taboos is for her very important. (…) We hope that some of our themes point in that direction.”

Every day, after the theme was named, Campiz and Vanelslander wrote a new poem in the following twenty-four hours. Then, they traded the poems, at the same time, without seeing the other woman’s creation prior to finishing her own.

“Everyday our creativity was stimulated and needed to reach a climax,” Vanelslander said. “We were writing at the same time and did that very consciously. Marilyn and I have different backgrounds. For me, it was my first book. I had always thought that some day I might publish something, but I wasn’t concentrated on it at that moment. Marilyn has published books and poems already. She didn’t only want to do it as an exercise in writing, but said let’s do it as a voice for women. She wanted to offer the perspective of two women in a changing society who have new ideas and visions. (…) I thought in advance that reaching a large amount of poems would take a long time, but it was different. Marilyn has a very clear vision that books can be written fast, so you get the inspiration and you write it down.”

The speed at which they wrote the poems inspired the title, Quills of Fire. While Vanelslander wrote longhand, she said that she didn’t rely on a quill pen to capture her poetic lines. She relied on the symbol of the quill pen to influence her ideas about writing.

“The expressive force symbolizes the force at which we write,” Vanelslander said. “There are a lot of people who still prefer a book to the internet. There’s the ancient method and there’s also the new method that may be more efficient but sometimes there’s a stronger feeling that goes out from the ancient medium.”

Vanelslander did not consider herself a poet until a few years ago. She was a scholar, but others recognized her artistic talents.

“The way I came to poetry was very specific,” Vanelslander said. “I started writing when I was very young, but I thought, ‘Oh, what I have down here is just no good.’ Apart from a few poems that I had written in Dutch, most of what I had written in those years is gone. (…) I studied history at the University and I was earning my doctorate, but still no poetry. My doctorate was interrupted after two years and I was at home for a while, meditating on what to do with the future. That kind of spirit was roaming about in my mind. One day, I opened MySpace.”

From there, she was asked to guide people through a blog group about poetry. The person who had created the blog group asked Vanelslander to take over. She was surprised by the request and thought it would be a challenge to guide people in a blog group about poetry without being a poet herself.

“That’s the way that I started writing poetry again and that’s the way I rediscovered the parts of myself and my creativity that were normally dormant,” Vanelslander said. “I actually am grateful… because not only is poetry functional and has its merits, but the feedback between writer and reader is interactive. Also, for the writer it’s a healing act to write frequently and about the things that go through your mind and pinpoint them and give them a certain direction and then move on.”

The theme of “Sedation” is one of Vanelslander’s favorites from the book. She thought that both Campiz’s poem “Forced Sedation” and her poem “The urge to live” demonstrate the complexities of required drug use for terminal illnesses and the problem of over-medicating unnecessarily.

“A lot of people in society get sent to psychiatrists,” Vanelslander said. “The problem of over-prescribing is prevalent.”

Since Campiz and Vanelslander wanted their poetic collaboration to represent the issues of the 21st century, they began the writing process with the intention of seeking publication for their correspondence. Both writers wanted their work to reach the largest amount of people. PublishAmerica offered to reach a sizeable global audience. The publisher also allowed the authors’ work to remain as they intended without the influence of editors, though Vanelslander said that Campiz did most of the editing. She assures the reader that they did not make drastic changes to the original correspondence.

Since last summer, both authors have relocated to different countries. Campiz is now in China; Vanelslander has moved to Italy. Vanelslander says that she still has a vast collection of poems that she eventually intends to publish. Quills of Fire was a one-time collaborative project between Campiz and Vanelslander. They felt that overworking the idea would lessen the creative experience and message.

Quills of Fire, 2009
by Marilyn Campiz and Lena Vanelslander
PublishAmerica

Ann Rochon Ford talks with HCE about “The Push to Prescribe: Women and Canadian Drug Policy”

by Shana Thornton-Morris

Contributing Editor

Anne Rochon Ford discusses the collection of essays in the book The Push to Prescribe: Women & Canadian Drug Policy, which is a timely and complete look at a major North American health care crossroads. Editors Anne Rochon Ford and Diane Saibil worked with the Steering Committee of Women and Health Protection in order to present investigative writings with a straightforward message about pharmaceuticals and public health care policy. The Push to Prescribe details the impact of pharmaceuticals on our bodies, social interactions, environments and economics.

While Ford et al focus on the Canadian health care system, they also present a comparison to the U.S. system of approval for drugs from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), policies of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and sometimes standards in Europe—this is not a text that should be overlooked by American women and the international community in general.

“One of the main objectives is to point out the way in which pharmaceuticals specifically have an impact on women differential from that of men,” Ford said. “So that was one issue laced throughout the book. Another is that the commercialization of this aspect of medicine and the very dominant role that the pharmaceutical industry has in influencing not just promotion but regulation is deeply disturbing. We wanted to… outline how this is happening, …point out why this is problematic and …why it’s particularly problematic for women.”

The authors of The Push to Prescribe point out that neomedicalization has led to the consumption of drugs for questionable conditions like restless leg syndrome, overactive bladder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). They also discuss that many women underestimate the impact of drugs like birth control pills, vaccines for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), and statins with their limited benefits and increased impact on the environment. The effects of these drugs and medical treatments as well as Vioxx and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) class of anti-depressants, to name a few, are also analyzed in the book. The authors also discuss the limitations of past and present clinical trials prior to drug approval as well as the reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs). They give the reader an especially close analysis of how these drugs and the policies surrounding the drugs affect women.

“There are a lot of parallels with what’s going on in the States,” Ford said. “In fact, our regulatory programs are not that different. The Canadian system learns from and borrows from ways in which things have been done by the FDA. We consume the same drugs. We see your drug ads. There’s kind of a seamless border when it comes to these issues between Canada and the United States. Obviously, we’re at slightly different places regarding some of these issues. (…) While there are some distinctions between our two countries, I think there are way more similarities. There are many parallels in women’s health generally between the US and Canada.”

One of the distinctions mentioned by Ford is direct-to-consumer advertising. In Canada, direct-to-consumer advertising from drug companies is not exactly legal, though the authors of The Push to Prescribe show the leaks in the system. They discuss the standards of regulation concerning direct-to-consumer advertising in the US and Canada, and show a greater tolerance of US policies in Canada.

“In many cases,” Ford said, “it’s been shown that far too often what it (direct-to-consumer advertising) results in is people thinking that they need a drug when other more helpful solutions might have been the best bet to start with, but because people have been seduced by the messages in direct-to-consumer advertising they can often be quite insistent when they walk into a doctor’s office. Doctors have stated over and over in research… that they often feel like they’re pressured to prescribe now that people know more about drugs and think that they want them or need them. The other thing that’s important to realize is that the drugs that get advertised for the most part are not the drugs for life-threatening situations. They (the drugs in advertisements) are mostly drugs for things for which there are other, more helpful solutions. The other thing that’s happening slowly over time in the clinical setting between doctor and patient is that the patient comes in with this new knowledge because they have learned it from the advertising or they’ve gone onto the internet and the doctor doesn’t have a head start on suggesting changes in a person’s diet and lifestyle.”

At a time when American women are awaiting the votes of Congress to decide how health care will shift, the authors provide research and documents in order to examine pharmaceuticals and Canadian public health policy as they directly affect women and their families. In both Canada and the United States, women specifically are more affected by health care policies. The authors point out that women go to the doctor more frequently than men, women use more medications than men possibly due to living longer lives, and women make more medical decisions about other family members, especially children and seniors.

“One of the messages that needs a lot of attention is the extent to which we need to be educating children about drugs (pharmaceuticals),” Ford said. “Children learn in their homes and in their schools and sometimes they’re mimicking the behavior of their parents who automatically reach for an aspirin if they have a headache or just think that if they’ve been irritated that maybe they need an anti-depressant or sleeping pill or whatever. What’s happening with children is really where we need to be putting a lot more attention, not just in terms of reigning in the appalling degree of over-prescription to children which is finally starting to get some attention. I’m talking about going right down to toddlers being given anti-psychotics. There’s also a huge… need to be educating, to be infusing into our educational system the importance of healthy alternatives to drugs, to convey a very strong message that prescription drugs are not benign. They’re not candy. They’re not vitamins. They are controlled by a gatekeeper who is the physician for a reason. To think that we can continue to take them at the rate that we’re consuming them in our society is only going to lead to more problems. Kids need to hear the real story behind some of the movie stars who’ve overdosed lately and what’s going on there, just how many prescription drugs were those folks taking, whatever it takes to get the message through to kids that these are not benign substances and there are other ways of dealing with our health problems.”

Ford counsels women and parental guardians to step back and look at who is funding campaigns within schools to suggest diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other behavioral issues. She says that the information may look like it’s coming from the Boards of Education, but she says that almost always there is involvement from industry or from physicians and/or retired psychiatrists who have been hired by industry to come in and work with boards to try and complete testing on children. Ford says while some children need drugs, so many others just need to have their energy channeled in another way whether that’s through creative endeavors, sports, diet changes, talk therapy or other healthy, lifestyle changes. Ford suggests that many parents should try other alternatives first, instead of initially relying on prescriptions drugs.

Another concern mentioned by Ford is how many substances might combine to produce a long-term effect. She uses the example of a child taking anti-depressants for decades as well as the toxins present in the environment and the radiation emissions from cell phones and other gadgets. Most studies examine isolated effects of one drug on a person or radiation emissions, not both as well as other environmental substances. Ford calls for more caution in regard to administering drugs due to the uncertainty of the combined interactions of substances; moreover, she suggests the need for more studies on the combined effects of drugs and technology over the long-term.

“In terms of personal choice, look beyond the information that is produced by industry, i.e. information that will be somewhat biased because their main aim is to sell their product,” Ford said. “Look beyond those places for guidance when you’re making a decision about not just whether to take a drug but whether you need treatment for something in the first place. One of the issues that we bring out in two places in the book is the extent to which normal behavior, the everyday sadnesses of life, all kinds of things have become medicalized. I think we owe that to the pharmaceutical industry, so I think we have to be wary of information that is produced by them. Some of it is good… but we have to remember what their bottom line is, which is they want to sell their product and they need to satisfy their shareholders.”

Many women may struggle with knowing how to make this information more accessible to other women and even themselves. With hectic lives, women often lack the time to read such extensive and in depth information; yet it is crucial to women who are in control of their health care and the health care of their families. No doubt women are interested in health care practices and legislation that will affect their future decisions. However, women are more bombarded by advertisements that are sponsored in part or completely by pharmaceutical companies. Whether women see pharmaceutical advertisements on television, a magazine, the back of a bathroom door, announced over the radio or some other medium, they are acquiring information from drug companies. The authors evaluate advertisements and show that drugs like Viagra which are specific to men’s health are often marketed toward women. The authors also point out that even health-related and disease-related non-profit organizations are often sponsored and funded by drug companies.

“On the issue of how the average woman can make a difference, joining up with organizations who are trying to fight this in our respective countries—lending support, solidarity and letters—all of that helps,” Ford said. “We need to reach the people who are in decision-making places to say, ‘there are some real concerns here and there are a lot of us out here who have been harmed by drugs because our regulatory systems are not stringent enough.’ There are others out here who have been needlessly put on medication that is not doing them any good and in fact possibly doing them harm. We’re taking money away from more health-enhancing treatment options in order to put more money into treatment options that may not always be the best solution. That isn’t to say that drugs aren’t sometimes the best solution. Sometimes they are, but… our thinking about this has gotten skewed away from options that are more health promoting.”

Some women want to know how to obtain information produced by health and disease-related non-profit organizations that aren’t funded by corporate entities and pharmaceutical companies, but women often have trouble in locating grassroots organizations. According to the book, some non-profit organizations have developed guidelines for working with a corporate sponsor. Ford offered advice to women who want to support an organization that is not controlled by a pharmaceutical company’s agenda. “You can start by asking, ‘how are you funded?’” Ford said. “And if they are in any way cagey about their response, I would be concerned. Also, the internet allows us so much ability to find out that kind of information. For most websites, if you dig around long enough, you’ll find out who’s sponsoring them. They have an annual report. They have to say in there who funds them.”

Throughout the book, transparency is a concept taken up by the authors of The Push to Prescribe. They have not only called for greater transparency within the Canadian health care system in regard to drug policy, but they have also asked for heightened transparency concerning the overall environmental impact of drugs. The findings in the book question the medical ethics of current and past pharmaceutical practices, especially when the public has been mislead regarding the safety and efficacy of drugs.

“There’s certainly a lot more heat on about this issue around what the environmental impact is of pharmaceuticals in water, soil and so on. There’s a big issue that is getting worse because drug consumption is increasing in that drugs get into our water system first and foremost through how we secrete them through urine. People pour drugs down the toilet. Drugs get into landfills through garbage and leach out into the soil. So there are a number of ways in which pharmaceuticals are getting out there and getting back into us.” Ford calls that only problem number one. Ford says that problem number two concerns the available treatment systems for environmental damage.

“For example,” Ford said, “if they detect that there are high amounts of SSRI anti-depressants and anti-cholesterol drugs in a given water system and they use their standard treatments of treating bacteria in the water, the impact is not what we would like to see. In fact, what’s being created are these bi-products from where those two chemicals meet, so where the drug meets the chlorine or whatever the treatment is. The outcome of that is also problematic. The bi-products are called disinfectant bi-products, so the bi-products are themselves creating health problems. We’ve got a huge mess here and it’s only beginning to see the light of day. What Sharon (Batt) argues at the end of her chapter (9) and how we conclude that section of the book is that if we don’t start looking upstream, (…) our attention is going to be misguided. (…) We would argue that the treatment solutions have to include decreasing drug consumption.”

In Chapter four, “Who Pays the Piper?”, Sharon Batt writes that the purpose of her analysis “is not to demonize the actors but to bring to light underlying conditions that could be modified through improved understanding and policies.” While the authors would like to be heard by their health care system in Canada, they have suggestions for all women who make health care decisions. Batt writes again in chapter four, “No health care system, whether publicly or privately insured, can give every sick person everything he or she wants. A public health care system implies sharing resources, spreading available funds across many services and prioritizing on the basis of need and evidence.” Ford and the other authors of The Push to Prescribe ask for greater transparency, actions as well as discussions, decreased drug consumption and an overall evaluation and modification of pharmaceuticals and their place in health care.

According to Ford, Women and Health Protection has worked with a number of grassroots organizations in the United States. Women and Health Protection has existed for about ten years. Their sister organization The Canadian Women’s Health Network also has worked on a number of joint campaigns with American groups. Some US groups the Canadian organizations have worked with are the National Women’s Health Network and the Boston Health Collective. Ford said that Women and Health Protection has also done some work around drugs used in and associated with breast cancer with the group Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco.

The Push to Prescribe: Women and Canadian Drug Policy
ed. Anne Rochon Ford and Diane Saibil
Women’s Press, 2010

Help Equals Hope

Part II of our spotlight on Karen Harrington, author of Janeology

“There’s a collective denial even when mothers come right and say, “I really shouldn’t be with my kids,” says Nancy Scheper-Hughes, medical anthropologist.

“Prior to a homicide, lots of lay people know these men and women are having difficulty parenting,” says Jill Korbin, child abuse expert.

If these two quotes startle you, you’re not alone.
If they make you weep, you’re not alone.
And if they compel you to action, you join an army of others who are also startled and weeping. But there is hope. A good deal of it, in fact.

One of the most unexpected pathways on my journey with my novel Janeology has been to get involved – if only by gaining an awareness of the issues and deciding what I could do. Now, it seems, being a novelist may be sidelined in favor of being an advocate. I think that’s kind of wonderful. Everyone’s original bliss should somehow lead them to helping others.

So let me tell you about three programs I’m learning about that support not only mothers in distress, but families.

Crisis Nursery Centers

First, crisis nurseries are emerging throughout the U.S. While these nurseries aren’t designed to meet the needs of ‘one’ population, they are available to ANYONE who is at risk of abusing or neglecting their children. And also for anyone who is facing a crisis. The definition of crisis is made by the family, not the crisis center. And they are free of charge. These could aid the mom whose boyfriend just came in and stabbed her while her children watched. She’s in the hospital and has nobody to watch the kids. Or, maybe a woman’s husband just passed away and she has no childcare/help. To utilize these centers, families don’t necessarily need to be in a situation where they will harm their children, but can still get help if the family is facing a huge time of stress and help is needed. The thing about crisis nurseries is there are multiple models offering varying levels of care.

What’s important to note is this: crisis nurseries are not everywhere and they are not federally funding. They were, a little, at one time, but not anymore. They typically run purely off community donations, which is why there are so many models – and sadly, why they open and close down just as quickly. So again, awareness is key right now. You might be able to be involved with one in your community, even in some small way.

Here’s a link to a list of all known centers nationwide. It is not comprehensive as this site is being updated all the time.

The Mothers Act

Next, there is a bill before the U.S. Senate right now, to be voted on this April, that could provide some of the funding for more crisis nurseries – and support new mothers in need.

It’s called the Mom’s Opportunity To Access Help, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression (MOTHERS) Act
Introduced by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Richard Durbin (D-IL)

The MOTHERS Act will “ensure that new moms and their families are educated about postpartum depression, screened for symptoms, and provided with essential services. In addition, it will increase research into the causes, diagnoses and treatments for postpartum depression.”

In fairness to the opposition of this act, several grassroots groups believe the Act is being pushed by drug companies that want to increase revenues via the increased distribution of anti-depressant drugs for new mothers. Having read the text of the Act available on-line, I have seen no mandate about drug prescriptions within it.

The MyStuff Bags Foundation

And last, I’d like to share something I’m personally involved with – The MyStuff Bags Foundation.

A few years ago, I wrote and published a children’s book called There’s a Dog in the Doorway for the MyStuff Bag Foundation. The mission of this foundation is to put a bag in the hands of each of the nearly 300,000 children who need one each year. (That’s more than 30 children per hour.) I heard about this program on the radio one day when I was at lunch. The organizers asked listeners to send 100 or more new items a child would need or want. So I thought, I can write a book. And I did. The story is about my own dog, Abby, who always sleeps in our doorway at night. It’s a very protective gesture on her part. So the children’s story features a dog that helps and protects a child. You can find out more about this project on my website www.karenharringtonbooks.com and at the MyStuff Foundation website: http://www.mystuffbags.org/

Spotlight on Karen Harrington

Part I of a two-part spotlight on author and Her Circle blogger Karen Harrington about her writing passions, motherhood and the universal truths behind this role.

First, what is Janeology about?
A college professor struggles after his wife, Jane, snaps and drowns their toddler son. Soon, he finds himself in a legal battle, defending charges that he failed to protect his son from his fragile wife. His legal team proposes a radical defense: one that focuses away from him and on Jane’s strained childhood and potential inherited predisposition to violence.

What inspired you to write about this subject?
Two things, actually. First, I have a passion for genealogy, mostly because I never knew any of my grandparents. I had their pictures and many of their belongings. All my life, I looked at these objects and thought, “What if these pictures could talk? What was she thinking when this photograph was taken?” So I wanted to write about a character from the perspective of her genealogy to unearth all those traits – gifts, talents, diseases or curses – that can be inherited.

Curiosity about family photos set Harrington on a genealogical exploration. Pictured here, Harrington’s grandfather, circa 1920

Second, as a new mother, I struggled with post-partum depression for a short-time. This made me wonder how mothers of previous generations handled this issue along with the everyday stresses of caretaking. Now I grant that it might be media influence, but as soon as I had my children, my awareness of grim headlines about maternal filicide were springing up to my left and right. I wrote this book, in part, because it seems to me that this is a recurring issue in American society today. In many ways, Janeology is a cautionary tale about one man achieving an understanding about his wife, despite it being too late to reverse her deeds.

You are a new mother. How did the examination of a mother descending into mental illness impact your writing?
Foremost, I don’t think I could have written it as powerfully if I was not a mother. I began writing it right after my mother died and finished it after the birth of my second child – which has all occurred in the last five years. In unexpected ways, her death shed a lot of insight into her as a person, not just a mother. Anyone who has lost a parent knows this experience from going through their parents’ possessions and letters. So I found myself in that life-altering position where you are standing between two generations – wondering how much of you is from your mother and father; how much of you is inside your own child; and just how much does nurture influence an individual. And because all things inform the writer’s life, my questions soon made their way into the fictionalized story of Jane Nelson.

In writing and researching this book, did you learn anything that surprised you?
It’s important to note that Janeology is not based on any one case. Rather, it’s a compilation of things I’ve read, interpreted and then illustrated into a fictional world. What it did bring into focus for me is this: motherhood is not universally natural and all women do not bond to the mothering role in the same way. Here are some startling facts I learned:

• As of 2007, eleven women were on death row in the United States for killing their children
• According to the American Anthropological Association, more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year.
Link to American Anthropological Association : http://www.aaanet.org/press/motherskillingchildren.htm
• Reports indicate that 10-20 percent of new mothers experience some sort of depression.
Link to reports: http://www.postpartum.net/mothers-act3.html
• Three to five children a day are killed by their parents.
• Homicide is the leading cause of death for children under four.

There are many mothers who struggle early on in this fog and then emerge extremely maternal. There are those who do not. Society has to quit the idea that motherhood comes natural to ALL women. This personal revelation has led me to become a passionate advocate for programs designed to support women, children and families in need.

To read an excerpt of Janeology, visit www.karenharringtonbooks.com

Come back on April 15 for Part II of our spotlight with Karen where she will share more information on the programs she is following, including the Mother’s Act for Post-Partum mothers and families now being debated in the U.S. Senate and the emergence of crisis nursery centers as a resource for overwhelmed mothers and women.

Peg Boyers, Author of Honey with Tobacco

by Shannon K. Winston

Peg Boyers’s recent book, Honey with Tobacco, is a refreshing collection of poetry that grapples with what it means to live between multiple cultures, geographical borders, and languages. Unlike her debut publication, Hard Bread, which was narrated through Boyer’s interpretation of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg’s voice, Honey with Tobacco is largely autobiographical. Speaking to us in October, Boyers says that Hard Bread was still a necessary step towards telling a more personal story: “in order for me to reach that personal dimension at that early stage of my writing career I needed a mask, a persona, in whose voice I could comfortably explore many of the themes which I continued to explore in the second book: motherhood, marriage, betrayal, faith.”

Honey with Tobacco thus marks a transition in Boyer’s work. The first section centers on her experience growing up in Cuba and her early love of the Italian language, which she learned as an adolescent living in Italy. While each poem stands alone in the collection, they are all united by a desire to probe different spaces: the geographical distances between the States, Cuba, and Italy, but also the white gaps on the page, as well. In much of her poetry, Boyers artfully incorporates Spanish and Italian words and phrases into her poems. There is also a clear polyvocality and dialogic quality to her work. She explained to me that “the use of foreign languages enabled [her] to project a voice which accurately reflects [her] own mixed up background—the melting pot effect I guess you could all it.” Her use of Spanish and Italian, even for readers who do not speak these languages, gives her writing a sensual, polyphonetic quality, which transports them into the liminal places/spaces she describes. Far from confusing readers, her use of language makes her poems more tangible and immediate. Boyers herself explained: “The words are used for their sound as much as for their meaning. There is no more beautiful sound than the sound of an Italian word, even when that word is an obscenity.” In the first part of Honey with Tobacco, Spanish is especially central to the narrative. She explains: “In a way Spanish is one of the subjects of that section for me, the expression of that part of my psyche, of my identity, that will not stay submerged.”

The poem, “Transition: Inheriting Maps,” is one of the clearest examples of the way in which themes of language and geography figure in this collection. The poem’s speaker attempts “to see without glasses,/ measuring memory against grid,/ matching history with place.” Here, as elsewhere in the collection, Boyers uses her own past to map a larger political and social history. This discussion is inextricably tied to language. The speaker continues: “locating the whereness and the whatness/ of the intransitive was—/without object or home,/ united in the grammar of common/longing.” In her poems, Boyers’s speaker never “successfully” locates her identity. In her own words: “the elements have not really blended. They remain distinct and even at times are at war with one another for dominance.” It is precisely this poetic space—one that embraces distinctions and tensions— that ignites and carries this collection.

Peg Boyers teaches creative writing at Skidmore College. She is also the executive editor of Salmagundi.

To purchase Honey with Tobacco, please visit the following website.

Shannon K. Winston grew up between France and the States. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the Comparative Literature Department. She studies 19th – 20th Century Mediterranean Literature (from France, Italy and North Africa.)

Interview: Nahid Rachlin

Persian Girls is the memoir of Iranian-American author Nahid Rachlin. Bestowed upon her widowed and childless aunt as a gift at birth, Nahid enjoyed a simple and loving home free from many of the restrictions that pervade a young Iranian girl’s life. But when her father demands Nahid’s return to his home at age nine, everything changes. Suddenly decisions about her life are being made for her, and Nahid's independence is challenged at every turn. Her only comfort is the bond developed with her older sister, Pari. Persian Girls is the story of that bond, and about the price of personal independence and freedom.

Editor M.K. Ericson spoke with the author about this very personal work. Here is what she had to say.

Q: All of the women we meet in Persian Girls live with personal, familial, and cultural expectations for their future. More often than not, these forces are at odds with each other, resulting in strained relationships and personal sacrifice. The focus of Persian Girls is largely on your relationship with your sister, Pari, and your shared desire for a life of your choosing. Your own pursuit of higher education and writing, and Pari’s love of acting were equally frowned upon by family and society, yet you both persevered. Where do you think your resilience and independence in the face such opposition came from?

A: I think the fact that I had my aunt as a mother when I was a child helped me a great deal. It gave me strength and self-confidence because of all the love and praise she lavished on me. Pari had to share our birth mother with all the siblings.

Q: You and Pari also shared a fascination with all things American. From skipping school in afternoons to see the latest film, to your careful observation of the interactions among American children living nearby, you were consumed. What did America symbolize to a young girl in 1960s Iran?

A: Freedom, variety of opportunities, excitement.

Q: This fascination was deepened when your brothers were allowed to travel to the United States to pursue their education. You worked hard to become first in your class, and your father developed a small sense of pride in your own academic achievement. Yet, despite your hopes that he would also allow you to study in America, his initial response was that you expected too much. How did that make you feel?

A: I always felt it was unfair that my father, as with a majority of fathers, thought education was for their sons only, and that their daughters should settle for a life of domesticity with husbands they chose for them. I struggled to get out of that.

Q: Your father did allow you to study in America following the outbreak of the revolution, but when you arrived things were not as you had hoped. What did this experience teach you about your own expectations? Did you ever start to believe that maybe your father was right?

A: The disappointment I felt in the college I went to, with the narrowness of attitudes among the staff and students, didn’t make me disillusioned with my own dreams of pursuing education and independence. It just made me feel I was in the wrong college, not of my own choice, because that was where my father insisted I should go. He wanted me to be in a women’s college, near one of my brothers who had come here before me, and so I had no choice but that one college near him. I knew America was larger than that college.

Q: Sadly, Pari was not allowed to achieve the same level of personal independence that you did. In the years following her arranged marriage she once told you that it was because you were stronger than she was. Do you think that was a fair assessment on her part, or do you feel it had more to do with the circumstances of her being the first daughter, and thus the first in line for marriage?

A: I think her assessment was probably correct. Because she had never known another mother like I had, she was more ambivalent about totally rejecting our parents’ ideals for us and she wasn’t strong enough to fight as I did.

Q: Throughout the book we see your parents consumed with concerns about your actions bringing shame upon the family. What kind of pressure was there on a family raising a daughter in Iran during this time? Has anything changed?

A: My father was afraid that, with all my struggle for independence, my outspokenness, under the oppressive political situation in Iran, would get him into trouble. The SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, was always on the look out for anyone who might write or read something that was against the censorship. Oddly things are similar now, only the censorship is based on different sensitivities, the “moral police” taking the place of the SAVAK.

Q: The bonds of sisterhood play an important role in this story, where you explore not only the relationship shared by you and Pari, but also that with your other sister, Manijeh, and that of your birth mother, Mohtaram, and her sister, Maryam, who raised you. How would you characterize sisterhood in Iranian society? Are the pressures of accepted public behaviors, and the effect of one sister upon another, often a source of consternation as they were with Manijeh? Can the need to attract a suitable marriage partner breed jealousy? Or are most relationships supportive and nurturing like the one between you and Pari?

A: On the whole sisters are close, as members of the same sex generally are in Iran. Because interaction between girls and boys (unless they are blood related) is forbidden, the members of the same sex grow close. Pari’s and my anger at Manijeh mainly stemmed from the fact that, for some mysterious reasons, our mother favored her over all her children. There was little competition over suitors as we had no choice in the matter. The men’s families selected the girls and the girls’ families decided if the men were suitable.

Q: Censorship also plays an important role in this book. Censorship of family, feeling, and ultimately of the self, all emanating from pressures exerted by customs of time and place. How has your experience of growing up in a female-oppressed society affected your approach to raising your own daughter? Do you feel that she is aware of the freedoms afforded her as a woman in America?

A: Yes, my daughter is quite aware that she has a freedom that I never experienced in Iran. I am happy that she is able to exert her own desires the way I wasn’t. I encourage her to think independently.

Q: During your visits back to Iran you witnessed women demonstrating in the streets. Did you ever think “that could be me?” Was there a moment when you regretted your choice or considered returning?

A: I have never really regretted my choice to come to America, pursue my own goals. But I am always aware of a loss, a price to pay for the independence I have gained. I don’t have easy access and closeness to people I love, because of all the distance between us. I envy people who can just get in the car or airplane and go and see their loved ones. For me going back to Iran has always been problematic, not just because of the geographical distance, but for political reasons too that make traveling back and forth difficult. So I have returned only every few years, and I am always longing for more contact with people I have left there.

Q: You speak often of the biographical foundations of many of your earlier fictional works. Given this, was the experience of writing a non-fictional memoir an easy transition for you? How did the experience differ?

A: It wasn’t an easy transition from fiction to memoir, mainly because I was afraid of the reaction I would receive from my family members who can read English. I was exposing so much about my family and I didn’t know how that would strike them. But luckily those family members who have read it have not been offended.

Q: The loss of your sister, Pari, was obviously a painful and emotional experience. How long did it take you to be able to write about her? Has telling her story and paying tribute to her spirit eased the pain of her untimely death?

A: It took me more than a decade to be able to write about it. Telling her story has eased the pain only to some extent, in that she is more alive for me through the book and for those who read it.

Q: In closing the book, you write that your independence came at a price. In retrospect, was the price you paid too high?

A: It is hard to evaluate how high the price has been. I am certainly always divided inside, wishing I could combine my past and present more easily.

Q: You start and end the book with Maryam’s words on destiny, though you suggest that you don’t believe in predetermination. Why bring such prominence to this idea, then? Does the thought of destiny bring you any comfort?

A: The idea of predestination is always on my mind, not in the religious sense that Maryam believed in but in a different way. Though at some level I believe it was my own strength and determination that enabled me to strike out against traditional roles that trapped my sisters and many of my friends, I also believe that some things are determined for us: for instance how we look, the temperament we are born with, all sorts of coincidences, play parts in our future.

Q: What is the most important thing you would like your readers to take away from reading this memoir?

A: In this political climate, when Iran is the target of attack and Iranians are often portrayed as stereotypes, I hope this book enables readers to see Iran and its people with all their diversity and complexities, make them aware that important human emotions, such as love, sorrow, and loss are universal.

Nahid Rachlin was born and raised in Iran, but attended college in the United States, where she has resided since her graduation. In additon to her memoir, she is the author of four novels, Jumping Over Fire (City Lights), Foreigner (W.W. Norton), Married to a Stranger (E.P. Dutton), and The Heart’s Desire (City Lights) as well as the short story collection City Lights. For further information, you may visit her online at www.nahidrachlin.com.

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