A pair of old boots with horseshoe nails embedded in the soles started me on the journey to WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, my novel from Kunati Inc., set in a 19th century ladies’ lunatic asylum. As I stared at the boots in a glass case at the Museum of Southern History, the docent explained that the nails served as cleats. She said Civil War soldiers wore such boots to keep from slipping in the mud, and the surgeons wore them to keep from slipping in the blood. In that moment, Dr. Robert Mallory, a young Civil War surgeon from Louisiana, was born in my mind to fill those cracked leather boots. He wears them first in the bloody battlefield surgery tent and later on the muddy trek to the asylum, where he assumes the post of physician to the inmates.
On his way, Mallory thinks: “Attending to the ills of madwomen would make a change from my duties during what my genteel mother referred to as the ‘late unpleasantness.’ Indeed, it had been unpleasant, amputating limbs of the wounded, dismantling whole cartloads of men.” At Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum, Mallory finds himself treating patients who are missing pieces, not of their bodies, but of their lives. And gradually, he discovers that Dr. Kingston, the director of the asylum who has labeled the women insane, is himself a madman.
Labeling my writing, I choose the term Southern gothic, gathering the elements of my fiction—historical, suspenseful, mysterious, romantic, theatrical, and grotesque—under that dark canopy. When beginning WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I jotted a note to myself, words to write by: “create a growing sense of unease.” Even though I’ve not yet written about the supernatural, my writing is haunted, if not by ghosts, then by shadows of the past—cast by ancient demons, which are still with us: greed, racism, misogyny, cruelty, indifference. These are the demons an uneasy Robert Mallory faces when he confronts Dr. Kingston and struggles to he keep his footing once again in those special boots.
My mother believes the whole world is haunted, and I share writer Gloria Wade-Gayles notion that some places are more haunted than others. Years ago, while attending a Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans, I heard Wade-Gayles tell her audience that spirituality is most palpable where there has been great suffering. No wonder I have found the shades of my characters in the secluded courtyards of the French Quarter and along the streets of New Orleans, a city where human beings were once sold at the slave market; where sorrow followed in the wake of yellow fever, cholera, and malaria; where lives were torn apart by war; where devastation has swept in from the Gulf.
It seems only right that a novel sparked by a pair of boots keeps its protagonist on the move, ever restless. Robert Mallory travels first to Magdalene Asylum, then to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, with an enigmatic young patient, who takes him on an inner journey of her own. Returning to the madhouse, Mallory finds his way through deception, layered like mud and silt on the delta, thick as fog along the bayou. In those cleated boots, through mire and blood, he dares to approach insanity to find his reason.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
RECKLESSLY ROMANTIC IN GRAND CENTRAL STATION
In early December, I traveled from balmy Houston to brisk New York and Connecticut for some book signings. Several times my schedule took me from subways to trains and back again in Grand Central Station, where I joined other travelers bundled in drab black and gray to be dazzled by the glittering wares of holiday vendors and by a kaleidoscopic display of holiday images projected on the soaring walls of the main concourse. Then, one afternoon, I was swept away, not by a train, nor by light and color, but by music. Beneath the archway of a corridor, a violinist played the most achingly tender rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that I have ever heard.
Drawn toward the sound, I watched the musician cradle his violin, dance with it, let it sing to the audience. As he finished with a flourish of his bow, I wiped away my tears and came forward to purchase a compact disk, aptly named “Recklessly Romantic Holidays”. I made no secret of my admiration for this concert hall talent performing in Grand Central, and as the violinist handed me the CD, he also gave me a kiss on the cheek. In the South, we call that little something extra a lagniappe.
I walked away smiling, then returned to give him a copy of my novel, which he then asked me to inscribe. I walked away again, and he came after me, giving me another compact disk and another peck. How could he have known that on this particular CD, “Recklessly Romantic”, he had recorded all my favorite music to write by? “Meditation”, “Dance of the Spirits”, “Moonlight Sonata”, “Canon in D”, “Serenade”, “Largo”, “Romanza”, and more.
That brief, lovely exchange with the violinist reminded me of how grateful I am for the inspiration of the wordless art forms—painting and sculpture, dance, and instrumental music. The patterns and relationships in these forms are revelations, which I attempt to translate into storylines and characters. While musicians have the same range of notes and writers the same store of words with which to create, some artists find ways to move beyond the technically accurate or grammatically correct. James Graseck (http://www.recklesslyromantic.com/) is that sort of artist, who gives something extra and special with each performance. His breathtaking talent is gift to all travelers. And my dearest souvenir from New York is a memory of music and a kiss on the cheek from a master violinist with a generous heart.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
Drawn toward the sound, I watched the musician cradle his violin, dance with it, let it sing to the audience. As he finished with a flourish of his bow, I wiped away my tears and came forward to purchase a compact disk, aptly named “Recklessly Romantic Holidays”. I made no secret of my admiration for this concert hall talent performing in Grand Central, and as the violinist handed me the CD, he also gave me a kiss on the cheek. In the South, we call that little something extra a lagniappe.
I walked away smiling, then returned to give him a copy of my novel, which he then asked me to inscribe. I walked away again, and he came after me, giving me another compact disk and another peck. How could he have known that on this particular CD, “Recklessly Romantic”, he had recorded all my favorite music to write by? “Meditation”, “Dance of the Spirits”, “Moonlight Sonata”, “Canon in D”, “Serenade”, “Largo”, “Romanza”, and more.
That brief, lovely exchange with the violinist reminded me of how grateful I am for the inspiration of the wordless art forms—painting and sculpture, dance, and instrumental music. The patterns and relationships in these forms are revelations, which I attempt to translate into storylines and characters. While musicians have the same range of notes and writers the same store of words with which to create, some artists find ways to move beyond the technically accurate or grammatically correct. James Graseck (http://www.recklesslyromantic.com/) is that sort of artist, who gives something extra and special with each performance. His breathtaking talent is gift to all travelers. And my dearest souvenir from New York is a memory of music and a kiss on the cheek from a master violinist with a generous heart.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
Monday, November 26, 2007
ART & PAIN
When my younger daughter began a college drawing class this fall, the instructor, who is also a brilliant painter, told the students that he believes artists should be discouraged at all costs. Even so, noting my daughter’s passion for art, he began helping her refine her raw talent—before discouragement came to her in a nearly fatal form.
A few weeks ago, on the back of a friend’s motorcycle, my daughter enjoyed flying over a country highway, the wind in her face. Then, she and her friend were struck by a car, and suddenly they were both sailing through the air in quite a different way. Both survived, each with a broken right leg. My daughter, the right-handed artist, also broke her right arm and shoulder. Months of physical and occupational therapy lie ahead. Breaking a sweat while swirling a brush at the easel is a distant goal.
During the weeks I’ve spent with my daughter in the hospital, my motherly self wished to draw her pain away into my own body, to spare her all suffering. But my writer/artist self watched in awe as she moved beyond the agony of her injuries into the early stages of recovery. I know the terror of the accident will outlast the cuts and bruises and the broken bones, and I can’t spare her the awful memories and nightmares. I can only reassure her that her feelings belong to her—they are her material, as real as pencil and paper, paint and canvas. Through the nights she and I have talked of that terror, I’ve glimpsed what she may do with it, make from it. Though aching and discouraged, she is still compelled by art.
Some people say things happen for a reason. Maybe things happen, and we find a reason, create a pattern from chaos. I live in hope of experiencing what this wounded, wonderful young woman will create.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
http://poole-carter.info/
A few weeks ago, on the back of a friend’s motorcycle, my daughter enjoyed flying over a country highway, the wind in her face. Then, she and her friend were struck by a car, and suddenly they were both sailing through the air in quite a different way. Both survived, each with a broken right leg. My daughter, the right-handed artist, also broke her right arm and shoulder. Months of physical and occupational therapy lie ahead. Breaking a sweat while swirling a brush at the easel is a distant goal.
During the weeks I’ve spent with my daughter in the hospital, my motherly self wished to draw her pain away into my own body, to spare her all suffering. But my writer/artist self watched in awe as she moved beyond the agony of her injuries into the early stages of recovery. I know the terror of the accident will outlast the cuts and bruises and the broken bones, and I can’t spare her the awful memories and nightmares. I can only reassure her that her feelings belong to her—they are her material, as real as pencil and paper, paint and canvas. Through the nights she and I have talked of that terror, I’ve glimpsed what she may do with it, make from it. Though aching and discouraged, she is still compelled by art.
Some people say things happen for a reason. Maybe things happen, and we find a reason, create a pattern from chaos. I live in hope of experiencing what this wounded, wonderful young woman will create.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
http://poole-carter.info/
Friday, November 2, 2007
DIRTY LAUNDRY
“In 19th century United States, Ireland, Scotland, and England, asylums for ‘fallen women’ opened that were named for Mary Magdalene: a saint that many remember as a sinner. Though administrators and clergy proposed to offer reform and rehabilitation, the asylums often became de facto prisons. So too the fictional Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum, as the protagonist of Rosemary Poole-Carter’s Women of Magdalene discovers.”
The paragraph above opens Amiee Houser’s review of my novel for FOREWORD. Although, while writing WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I knew nothing of the Magdalene asylums Houser mentions, I’m grateful to her for drawing the comparison. In such asylums, girls labeled by authority figures as wayward were incarcerated and forced to work in laundries under the harsh supervision of nuns. When I finished writing my novel in late 2001, still ignorant of the asylum laundries, I sent the manuscript to an agent, and started another project to take my mind off the long wait for a response. Then, in 2002, a Houston publicist sent me an invitation to a screening at the Museum of Fine Arts for Peter Mullan’s powerful film, THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, which depicts the sadistic treatment of girls and women in asylum laundries. That publicist had found the connections I’d not known existed between the film she was promoting and my ficitonal world: Mary Magdalene and dirty laundry.
Searching the Internet for Houstonians to invite to Mullan’s film, the publicist must have seen the mention on my website of my ficitonal Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum. My novel was still a long way from publication, but my short play INCONVENIENT WOMEN, which shares the Deep South asylum setting, was already described on the site. While researching WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I found Jeffrey L. Geller & Maxine Harris’s wonderful book entitled WOMEN OF THE ASYLUM: VOICES FROM BEHIND THE WALLS, 1840 – 1945. Inspired and chilled by the first-person accounts of inmates collected in this book, I began my novel, taking a little time out to write the short play, produced in Houston and Albany, in which four women from different times come out of the woodwork to compare notes on who committed them and why. Whether applied to an actual or fictional asylum, Mary Magdalene’s name does, indeed, remind us of the saint labeled a sinner, the woman misjudged by those with the power to make and enforce their rules.
As dramatized in Peter Mullan’s THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, the inmates of historic asylum laundries, laboring like slaves, were forced to take in washing from communities, while their keepers collected the fees. In my novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, a particular patient, Effie Rampling, takes refuge in washing all the dirty laundry she can find. Though, as Lady Macbeth might attest, there are stains of experience that cannot be washed away.
Yes, all that washing becomes a metaphor, certainly for shame and guilt, but also for the duties and obligations and obstacles that keep us from ourselves and our dreams. Perhaps, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE might have been polished and published sooner if I hadn’t been so tangled up with my laundry. Yet, I know the book could not have found a better publishing home than Kunati Inc., where writers and their characters are appreciated for challenging authority, provoking thought, and hanging out the dirty laundry.
Aimee Houser writes: “WOMEN OF MAGDALENE is a brilliant example of the best historical fiction can do: illuminate the past not as it really, truly was, but as we imagine it to be, in order to better understand our own motives, desires, and prejudices.” Reading the reviewer’s words, I thought of the Zen saying “after ecstasy, the laundry” and of a wise young woman’s reminder to her mother: “the phrase could also be after laundry, the ecstasy.”
Women of Magalene, ISBN 978-1-60164-014-7
The paragraph above opens Amiee Houser’s review of my novel for FOREWORD. Although, while writing WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I knew nothing of the Magdalene asylums Houser mentions, I’m grateful to her for drawing the comparison. In such asylums, girls labeled by authority figures as wayward were incarcerated and forced to work in laundries under the harsh supervision of nuns. When I finished writing my novel in late 2001, still ignorant of the asylum laundries, I sent the manuscript to an agent, and started another project to take my mind off the long wait for a response. Then, in 2002, a Houston publicist sent me an invitation to a screening at the Museum of Fine Arts for Peter Mullan’s powerful film, THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, which depicts the sadistic treatment of girls and women in asylum laundries. That publicist had found the connections I’d not known existed between the film she was promoting and my ficitonal world: Mary Magdalene and dirty laundry.
Searching the Internet for Houstonians to invite to Mullan’s film, the publicist must have seen the mention on my website of my ficitonal Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum. My novel was still a long way from publication, but my short play INCONVENIENT WOMEN, which shares the Deep South asylum setting, was already described on the site. While researching WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I found Jeffrey L. Geller & Maxine Harris’s wonderful book entitled WOMEN OF THE ASYLUM: VOICES FROM BEHIND THE WALLS, 1840 – 1945. Inspired and chilled by the first-person accounts of inmates collected in this book, I began my novel, taking a little time out to write the short play, produced in Houston and Albany, in which four women from different times come out of the woodwork to compare notes on who committed them and why. Whether applied to an actual or fictional asylum, Mary Magdalene’s name does, indeed, remind us of the saint labeled a sinner, the woman misjudged by those with the power to make and enforce their rules.
As dramatized in Peter Mullan’s THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, the inmates of historic asylum laundries, laboring like slaves, were forced to take in washing from communities, while their keepers collected the fees. In my novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, a particular patient, Effie Rampling, takes refuge in washing all the dirty laundry she can find. Though, as Lady Macbeth might attest, there are stains of experience that cannot be washed away.
Yes, all that washing becomes a metaphor, certainly for shame and guilt, but also for the duties and obligations and obstacles that keep us from ourselves and our dreams. Perhaps, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE might have been polished and published sooner if I hadn’t been so tangled up with my laundry. Yet, I know the book could not have found a better publishing home than Kunati Inc., where writers and their characters are appreciated for challenging authority, provoking thought, and hanging out the dirty laundry.
Aimee Houser writes: “WOMEN OF MAGDALENE is a brilliant example of the best historical fiction can do: illuminate the past not as it really, truly was, but as we imagine it to be, in order to better understand our own motives, desires, and prejudices.” Reading the reviewer’s words, I thought of the Zen saying “after ecstasy, the laundry” and of a wise young woman’s reminder to her mother: “the phrase could also be after laundry, the ecstasy.”
Women of Magalene, ISBN 978-1-60164-014-7
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Louisiana Book Fesitval 2007
On Saturday, November 3, 2007, Louisiana celebrates its 5th annual State Book Festival in Baton Rouge at the Capitol. At this year's event I'm looking forward to presenting my new novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, set in post-Civil War Louisiana, and to visiting with the marvelous state librarians, who organize the festival. I'm hoping to see friends Laura Joh Rowland (author of a thriller series set in feudal Japan) and Barbara Colley (author of the Charlotte LaRue mysteries) and meet writers Barbara Hambly and David Madden and many more.
Five years ago, when my first novel was published, Barbara Colley included me in the panel discussion she moderated at the first-ever Louisiana Book Festival. Since that time, Barbara has created many more adventures for her series character, Charlotte LaRue, who runs a housecleaning business in New Orleans--and cleans up crimes, too. Since that first LBF, Charlotte's been faced with the clean-up after Katrina, as well.
At that first festival, I was honored to share, along with the Louisiana State Librarians and many writers and readers, a warm feeling of success. Five years later, I'm still glowing and ready to celebrate again the joy of books. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Five years ago, when my first novel was published, Barbara Colley included me in the panel discussion she moderated at the first-ever Louisiana Book Festival. Since that time, Barbara has created many more adventures for her series character, Charlotte LaRue, who runs a housecleaning business in New Orleans--and cleans up crimes, too. Since that first LBF, Charlotte's been faced with the clean-up after Katrina, as well.
At that first festival, I was honored to share, along with the Louisiana State Librarians and many writers and readers, a warm feeling of success. Five years later, I'm still glowing and ready to celebrate again the joy of books. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Friday, October 26, 2007
PERSON/PERSONA
Novelists learn early in their careers to create characters and reveal aspects of personality through what the characters say, do, think, and feel. Moreover, what characters say about each other reveals as much about speaker as subject. In the creative process, novelists draw on the experiences we all share in getting to know ourselves and others. We play a variety of roles—offspring, sibling, spouse, parent, friend, lover, worker, and so on, highlighting or downplaying aspects of ourselves to fit a variety of circumstances. Each of us is multi-faceted, and when novelists translate the multi-faceted aspect of human nature to fictional characters, they bring those characters to life.
Later on in their writing careers, novelists discover that each has created a character who is not confined in a book or in a body. Beyond a novelist’s person is his or her persona. In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL, Jane Smiley writes that a literary persona “is equally the possession of the author and the reader; both create it and both respond to it, since it is made by the act of reading and remembering novels.” A writer’s persona begins with his or her experiences and choices of material and style; then, like a character in a novel, the persona is further shaped by readers’ expectations and reactions.
Though a person writes a book, often the persona sells it to a readership. Derek Lee Armstrong and Kam Wai Yu tell us in THE PERSONA PRINCIPLE, How to Succeed in Business with Image-Marketing: “Once your persona is born, you must develop, expand, and elaborate, until the persona can function on its own . . . Allow your persona to live independently of its creators . . . Let your personified venture grow equity in its identity that is not dependent on your personal interference.”
How does a writer reconcile person with persona? Recently, I posed that question to Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queen Book Clubs and author of THE PULPWOOD QUEEN’S TIARA-WEARING, BOOK-SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE. Asked if her public persona differs much from her private self, Kathy replies: “My public persona is much different from myself. People perceive me as this outgoing big-haired, tiara wearing girlie girl. First I don't actually have big hair . . . I clip my big hair on and call it my ‘Go to Town’ hair.” Kathy, who owns Beauty and the Book, a hair salon/bookstore, believes “the public expects me to have my hair done and be dressed a certain way in public. At home, it's hair pulled back in a ponytail, ball cap, no makeup, t-shirt and pull on pants. At work I'm a big talker because I have a lot to say about beauty and books. At home I don't talk at all because I'm either writing or I'm reading. Which persona is more me, I think I am both. I love to dress up and I love to dress down. Other times I like to dress in costumes and do theater, or story hours. I believe that we can be more than one thing in life. Some people call that schizophrenia, to me I call it my life in books.”
Truly, Kathy Patrick has found a beautiful balance between what Jane Smiley calls “a reading and writing life, and a lived life.” Kathy hosts the annual Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, a celebration for Pulpwood Queens, readers, and writers. And while promoting literacy, Kathy is also willing to add a little color and curl to her guest authors’ personae.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
Later on in their writing careers, novelists discover that each has created a character who is not confined in a book or in a body. Beyond a novelist’s person is his or her persona. In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL, Jane Smiley writes that a literary persona “is equally the possession of the author and the reader; both create it and both respond to it, since it is made by the act of reading and remembering novels.” A writer’s persona begins with his or her experiences and choices of material and style; then, like a character in a novel, the persona is further shaped by readers’ expectations and reactions.
Though a person writes a book, often the persona sells it to a readership. Derek Lee Armstrong and Kam Wai Yu tell us in THE PERSONA PRINCIPLE, How to Succeed in Business with Image-Marketing: “Once your persona is born, you must develop, expand, and elaborate, until the persona can function on its own . . . Allow your persona to live independently of its creators . . . Let your personified venture grow equity in its identity that is not dependent on your personal interference.”
How does a writer reconcile person with persona? Recently, I posed that question to Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queen Book Clubs and author of THE PULPWOOD QUEEN’S TIARA-WEARING, BOOK-SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE. Asked if her public persona differs much from her private self, Kathy replies: “My public persona is much different from myself. People perceive me as this outgoing big-haired, tiara wearing girlie girl. First I don't actually have big hair . . . I clip my big hair on and call it my ‘Go to Town’ hair.” Kathy, who owns Beauty and the Book, a hair salon/bookstore, believes “the public expects me to have my hair done and be dressed a certain way in public. At home, it's hair pulled back in a ponytail, ball cap, no makeup, t-shirt and pull on pants. At work I'm a big talker because I have a lot to say about beauty and books. At home I don't talk at all because I'm either writing or I'm reading. Which persona is more me, I think I am both. I love to dress up and I love to dress down. Other times I like to dress in costumes and do theater, or story hours. I believe that we can be more than one thing in life. Some people call that schizophrenia, to me I call it my life in books.”
Truly, Kathy Patrick has found a beautiful balance between what Jane Smiley calls “a reading and writing life, and a lived life.” Kathy hosts the annual Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, a celebration for Pulpwood Queens, readers, and writers. And while promoting literacy, Kathy is also willing to add a little color and curl to her guest authors’ personae.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
Friday, October 19, 2007
LITERACY FOR LIFE
Being part of the reading and writing online community through forums and sites such as Goodreads.com, AuthorsDen, and Amazon Profiles, I find continuing inspiration. Getting to know others who share my passion for literacy, I often find others for whom reading is not only a pastime but also a salvation.
Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.
Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”
I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter
Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.
Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”
I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter
Monday, October 15, 2007
TIMELESS HISTORY
A few years ago, I joined the Historical Novel Society, a community of writers and readers who share enjoyment of the many forms of historical fiction: novels based on the lives of historic personages, novels using history as a backdrop, mysteries, romances, adventures, speculations, and more. While I enjoy reading novels that incorporate history in a variety of ways, in my own writing, I tend to use history as not so much a backdrop as a mask. Versions of the personalities that fascinate me, ideas that move me, issues that anger me today existed in the past and come to life again in historical fiction.
J.P. Hartley opens his novel THE GO-BETWEEN with these words: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Yes, they do—and yet, they don’t. Doing things differently is the mask, but the needs and passions that drive those actions have changed very little over time. As I turn from a history book on the American Civil War and Reconstruction to the morning paper, I find far too many parallels. When I see a soldier missing a limb or talk with a veteran missing friends, present and past blend together—the physical and emotional damages of war have not changed.
Yesterday at a bookstore signing, I asked my friend Wava Everton to perform the Civil War song, "Somebody's Darling", mentioned in my novel. The chorus is this: “Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride, who’ll tell his mother where her boy died.” One of the customers listening to Wava’s glorious voice was a weather-beaten middle-aged man, whose eyes began to fill. After she finished the song, the three of us talked a little about the man's son, whom the man had not seen in years and who had just shipped out for Iraq. The father's sadness and sense of loss was as timeless and moving as Marie Revenal de la Coste's haunting lyric. In a bookstore in the 21st century, three people—all of us parents—wished what parents have always wished: May our children outlive us.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
J.P. Hartley opens his novel THE GO-BETWEEN with these words: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Yes, they do—and yet, they don’t. Doing things differently is the mask, but the needs and passions that drive those actions have changed very little over time. As I turn from a history book on the American Civil War and Reconstruction to the morning paper, I find far too many parallels. When I see a soldier missing a limb or talk with a veteran missing friends, present and past blend together—the physical and emotional damages of war have not changed.
Yesterday at a bookstore signing, I asked my friend Wava Everton to perform the Civil War song, "Somebody's Darling", mentioned in my novel. The chorus is this: “Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride, who’ll tell his mother where her boy died.” One of the customers listening to Wava’s glorious voice was a weather-beaten middle-aged man, whose eyes began to fill. After she finished the song, the three of us talked a little about the man's son, whom the man had not seen in years and who had just shipped out for Iraq. The father's sadness and sense of loss was as timeless and moving as Marie Revenal de la Coste's haunting lyric. In a bookstore in the 21st century, three people—all of us parents—wished what parents have always wished: May our children outlive us.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
Friday, October 5, 2007
Ladies in Waiting or Women in Action
On the radio I heard Susan Faludi discussing her new book, THE TERROR DREAM: FEAR AND FANTASY IN POST-9/11 AMERICA. Among her many provocative points, Faludi described an historic pattern of behavior in times of crisis: following the shock and terror comes the mythmaking in which certain persons are designated heroes and others are the victims to be rescued. Not too surprisingly, hero and victim status is generally assigned along gender lines by both mythmakers and media. Faludi cited the news media’s fixation on the widows of 9/11, although both men and women lost spouses and other family members; the survivors who must carry on in the face of loss were painted as the victims. Then, when some widows rejected the victim role and asked hard questions of the government, the media ostracized them. When the myth in the making is one of specifically male heroism, Faludi commented that it requires bolstering by specifically female weakness and helplessness. She traced this pattern in American history back to the settlement of the nation.
I deeply appreciate the bravery and sacrifice both men and women have made for the good of one another and the good of all. In my comments here, I have no wish to denigrate their contributions to human society. And I recognize that what each individual can contribute to society can very well be determined partly by physical strength, intelligence, talent, willingness, or resourcefulness. Still, Faludi’s radio interview sparked my thinking: though we might welcome rescue and protection, sometimes they come with a price.
I remember my mother’s descriptions of how independent many women were during WWII, managing life on the home front and assisting with the war effort. When the crisis was over, the women were expected by society and often by themselves to go home, to resume their proper domestic roles. So, those who had become women of action for the good of the country in wartime transformed themselves once again in peacetime to ladies in waiting.
For my novels and plays, I often research and write about the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And the course of history often fills me with frustration and outrage. In the first half of the 19th century, women’s rights activists had been busy with their agenda, but they willingly or grudgingly put their issues on the shelf with the outbreak of war. Women’s rights activists were among the most vocal advocates for the emancipation of slaves, but the fight to preserve the Union, which grew to encompass the fight to free blacks from bondage, did not expand to encompass true equality among races or genders. Particularly in the South, the kind of mythmaking Faludi writes about was evident in the new order: white males became white knights, silencing women who might speak for themselves and rescuing the white ladies from attack by men of other races by keeping the women in the bondage of dependency. Sometimes the price of protection is too high.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
I deeply appreciate the bravery and sacrifice both men and women have made for the good of one another and the good of all. In my comments here, I have no wish to denigrate their contributions to human society. And I recognize that what each individual can contribute to society can very well be determined partly by physical strength, intelligence, talent, willingness, or resourcefulness. Still, Faludi’s radio interview sparked my thinking: though we might welcome rescue and protection, sometimes they come with a price.
I remember my mother’s descriptions of how independent many women were during WWII, managing life on the home front and assisting with the war effort. When the crisis was over, the women were expected by society and often by themselves to go home, to resume their proper domestic roles. So, those who had become women of action for the good of the country in wartime transformed themselves once again in peacetime to ladies in waiting.
For my novels and plays, I often research and write about the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And the course of history often fills me with frustration and outrage. In the first half of the 19th century, women’s rights activists had been busy with their agenda, but they willingly or grudgingly put their issues on the shelf with the outbreak of war. Women’s rights activists were among the most vocal advocates for the emancipation of slaves, but the fight to preserve the Union, which grew to encompass the fight to free blacks from bondage, did not expand to encompass true equality among races or genders. Particularly in the South, the kind of mythmaking Faludi writes about was evident in the new order: white males became white knights, silencing women who might speak for themselves and rescuing the white ladies from attack by men of other races by keeping the women in the bondage of dependency. Sometimes the price of protection is too high.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
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