Learning to Fly- July Recap

Ever since I left the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, I've spent almost every free moment in my studio, because, while at Tin House, I figured out where Unreformed stops and starts.* I owe this revelation in part to my mentor, Jodi Angel, who read and critiqued the whole hot mess of my manuscript, Steve Almond, the leader of our “Gimme Fiction" workshop (a.k.a. The Almond Joys),** as well as the crew of writers with whom I studied.  You all ROCK!

On this past Friday, my last true Friday of the summer, my friend Bart Lemahieu recorded me reading Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot, a piece that has helped me come to grips with accepting loss in my life.  Amazing! Afterwards, as the sun set, we listened to the cicadas.  Audio will be posted when we get it right.

During the past few weeks I also began conversations with Escuela Caribe alumni who came after me- and all I can say is- Crosswinds/ Caribbean Mountain Academy/ Escuela Caribe/ Caribe Vista- despite your denials- I KNOW YOU ARE THE SAME PLACE. You kept the same people on as staff.  You were mentored by former abusers.  Many of the procedures remain the same- the only major change seems to be the name (and we have seen that before!).*** And I will address that matter soon- in another post- but now I am writing, writing, writing...

And to all of you who read and engage and comment here- know that I appreciate you.  And I cherish your assistance in helping me expose the abuses of Caribbean Mountain Academy/ Escuela Caribe. Thank you so for being... <3 <3 <3...

*This is huge- I was meandering way over on both ends.

** Album by the band Spoon. My mental soundtrack in Portland. I write nonfiction, but studied fiction this workshop to learn more about craft. Love learning outside the box.

***Newsflash- Crosswinds/ CMA/ EC- in regards to your blog post: writing is NOT a lucrative career.  Most writers have jobs to support their passion. And understand- I am extremely passionate about ensuring that other kids are not abused. 

Tin House 2013

At Tin House- studying with Steve Almond.  Mentored by Jodi Angel. Both the real deal in a crowd of superstars- check this roster of everyone else- rauow!

The Writers Workshop is at Reed College, described last year by child tween thing as looking "like Hogwarts"- but with a lake and ducks and tall trees and hydrangeas and greenspace galore and eating outside and studying in Eliot Hall... and in Portland... one of my favorite cities ever...Sometime I will write about how the esposo and I just missed moving here...

Loving learning with great fellows- in workshop/ conference wide. Tribe gathers for craft lectures in Vollum, then readings every single night in the amphitheater outdoors...Thursday alone Karen Russell, Matthew Dickman, Luis Alberto Urrea--- Not even going to name check all the other reading rock stars- except to tell you that Jodi blew us all away when she opened the very first night...

Also reunited with the wolf pack*- remnants of Stephen Elliott's 2012 crew. Canada, Westerfield, Ciston- adore you too!

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*All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. (Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood)...

Down the Rabbit Hole- Mississippi Delta Edition

I’ve been prepping for Rabbit Box Storytelling at the Melting Point tomorrow night- I have eight minutes to tell about a rabbit hole I went down.  The decision is difficult- ever since I was a kid I’ve loved to immerse myself in history- I’m still obsessed with the Holocaust.  Forced exercise, Arbeit Macht Frei, Eichmann "only following orders”- so many parallels to Escuela Caribe in my teens.

However, I decided to focus on 2010’s summer obsession- when I began exploring the untold histories of Greenwood, Mississippi, my hometown. I'd begun writing about this amazing teacher, Mrs. C., who taught me in 9th grade- I adored her- because she was one of the few adults who told us the truth about where we lived. How Emmett Till was lynched in our county.  And how (when I was in high school) Medgar Evers’ murderer still walked the streets and bragged, and how when Kennedy was assassinated  people in my town celebrated. Take note: that scene in the Help (which I only saw because it was filmed in my friends’ houses in Greenwood) where all the white people were crying over Kennedy’s murder, was a white wash.

In 2010, I began writing about the Delta, and, because I’m obsessive, discovered so many things I am not going to have time to tell.  How for a brief period, my hometown was a civil rights hotbed- Medgar Evers, Dick Gregory, Bob Moses, Alice Walker, Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, Sam Block and so many others sacrificed so much to make Greenwood a better place.  Dr. King came twice. Stokely Carmichael was provoked into delivering the black Power speech in my town.  There was so much brutality, so many murders- it sickened me- but also beauty- that part in Don’t Look Back where Dylan is playing in the cotton field, it happened right near where I grew up.

But what I am focusing on is how white people behaved in Greenwood, and the segregationist literature, particularly 1957’s Manual for Southerners, which was printed in my hometown.  Because it’s important for people to understand how hate speech programmed generations of Southerners, of Americans, to be racist, and also that the painful history I unearthed was not just from Greenwood, but from Athens, and all over the world. It's important  to explore unwritten histories, no matter how painful- because knowledge is power- it's the only way to create a better world.

More from that Guernica Interview with Julia Scheeres

 I remember it was 1978 and I saw this magazine cover on our dining room table.  And there were bodies lying on the ground and I remember asking my mom what is that? She didn't answer my question, just flipped the cover over, said something about a bad thing happening. And I remember I kept hearing this name on the news "Jonestown" and for a while Jonestown was the news- it was inescapable- and I know I realized lots of people- including children- died- and as a kid, that resonated. I thought about it constantly. So I guess you could say I've been a Jonestown obsessive since I was four. 

I remember I didn't understand how parents could kill their children. I remember I didn't understand how so many people could kill themselves. And until I read Julia's Jonestown book, A Thousand Lives, which we discussed in the Guernica interview, I didn't understand that most people there didn't just "drink the Kool-Aid"- many died after months of being broken down- many were violently coerced.  She talks about it in our Guernica interview, and other things- how Jim Jones staged traumatic events to bond with his congregation, and how having been at Escuela Caribe (our reform school, where her memoir Jesus Land is set) helped her and Jonestown survivors bond. Her take (again in the interview) on how Jim Jones fits in culturally is not to be missed.  As is the witness she bears to racism in America- which resounded differently with her than with most whites- her adopted brother David was black. 

I loved our entire conversation, but obviously the Escuela Caribe parts hit the closest home. Ever since she and I spoke, and then I transcribed it and thought about it, I've felt like I understand so much more about myself, about so many survivors.  Some of my favorite parts are after the jump....Or read the entire interview at Guernica.

Interview With Julia Scheeres in Guernica Magazine

Recently I interviewed Julia Scheeres.  She wrote Jesus Land, a memoir about our reform school, Escuela Caribe, and A Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Jonestown.  

One of my favorite aspects of the Jonestown book is how Scheeres captured the day to day tyranny of life under Jim Jones' rule.   I was intrigued to discuss how living in captivity at Escuela Caribe helped inform her Jonestown work, but I came to understand so much more not only about Jonestown, and racism, and religion, but also about myself.  Like why I shut down emotionally. And why one of my integral values as an adult is living in an open-minded community. But this is just why I'm interested personally.  There's so much more to be gleaned (such as how Jones used deceptions like the King Alfred plan and staged shootings to trick people into following him, his theory of revolutionary suicide, or details of racism in the heartland) in Guernica Magazine. 

2013 Hambidge Residency Recap

Arrived home yesterday from my third residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts.  It's located in the foothills of the Appalachians- the birds would sing and the sun stream green through dense trees and I'd write- hiking the trails or running or reading* whenever I got stuck.

The conversations and work shared by my fellows were hugely impactful.  I devoured the upcoming dystopian adventure, Mira Corpora of playwright, jazz writer and novelist Jeff Jackson- such tight prose!!!  Susannah Felts' This will Go Down on Your Permanent Record inspired me to delve much more deeply about being a music-obsessed teen in the South- and captures the sticky dynamics between teen girls.  I adored visual artist Jessica Caldas' work in progress on connections (which will premiere at an October show in Atlanta- have to go), ditto for the compositions of Charles Zoll. 

My last night we watched Josh Zeman's trailer for Finding 52: the Search for the Loneliest Whale about a whale whose voice can be heard by no other due to frequency- but it’s also about loneliness and lack of connection in this modern world. Part of my heart is still stuck in my throat.  Jeff and Josh also were collaborating on a screenplay about sentient plants turned evil- we three shared an obsession with cults- can't wait to see what they've wrought. Also am very excited about Barbara Blatner's poetry and her upcoming play about race and the South in 1963. We had great discussions- my other project, Delta Drive, taps a similar vein.  Excited to see how Ginger Krebs' performance art is impacted by Hambidge, and can't wait to read the work of Nova Ren Suma, who arrived right before I left. 

It might sound like all play but I worked hard for ten days - churning out eight chapters, plus drafted notes for three more- under the advisement of my Tin House wolf pack (you know who you are)- it was the last original material I needed for Unreformed. Plan now is to finish the beginning- then ready to excise the entire draft with a scalpel- (see above admiration for tight prose).

*Inheiritance (Chang), Financial Lives of Poets (Walters), Brain on Fire, Center Cannot Hold (Saks), American Dream Machine (Specktor), Dark Side (Mayer), Chain of Command (Hersh), Mira Corpora (Jackson), This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record (Felts)

2013 Hambidge Residency

I'm leaving for a residency at the Hambidge Center for the Arts- one of my favorite places on the planet. Savannah sugar heiress turned bohemian Mary Hambidge established this artists retreat in the foothills of the Appalachians in the 1950's- it's an amazing place.  This will be my third visit.

I completed this interview for Hambidge in July 2012.

·   What are you writing?

I am writing Unreformed, my teenage captivity narrative, which is set in the Dominican Republic at the evangelical Christian reform school, Escuela Caribe, (also the setting of Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres).

·          

·  What inspired you to write your most recent work?

  After my son was born, an event that coincided with the War on Terror and abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, I returned to writing. (They read everything I wrote in reform school- I didn't write anything personal for years). The Iraq War and 9/11 triggered many repressed memories. I had to make sense of not only what happened to my me and my friends at Escuela Caribe, but to understand how and why individuals can be coerced into hurting others.  I also had to face my worst memories in order to be a healthy parent. 

·   

    How did you come up with the title? 

  Writing helped me reform the individual I was before I entered reform school.

·  

    What books or people influenced your writing? 

  The Lucifer Effect by Phillip Zimbardo, Help at Any Cost:  How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids by Maia Szalavitz, Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres, The Ticking Is the Bomb by Nick Flynn, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott, The Road to Whatever by Elliott Currie, To Be Human (essay) by Anouar Benmalek, the poetry of Langston Hughes and T.S. Eliot, the music of Vic Chesnutt, particularly North Star Deserter…and so much more….

·   How did you research your book?  

  I transcribed journals and diaries from the time period about which I am writing, read the above books, and reflected upon them, connecting them to my experiences.  I have interviewed people I went to school with.

·  Did you base any of your characters on real people? 

  Everything I have written is based on actual events and people.

·         

  Do you have any other books planned in the future? 

  I’d love to write a biography of my friend and neighbor Vic Chesnutt. I would like to write about growing up in the Mississippi Delta, where my family lived for seven generations.  

·   Which of your stories or characters are your favorite? Do you dislike any of them? 

  I had a friend I call Crystal.  She wasn’t raised religious.  She constantly challenged my acceptance of dogma.  I am trying to learn to love all my characters, even those who did me harm.

·       

     What advice can you give to young writers who want to publish their books? 

  Even if you have a full-time job, aim to write every day (I’m a school librarian).  Revise. Revise. Revise.  If you are writing memoir, when you begin, focus on scenes/ memories, as opposed to a chronological structure. Everything else will fall into place.(I learned this the hard way).

How did you hear about Hambidge?  

I wanted to attend a residency in the South.  Hambidge’s location, an hour and a half from my front door, is ideal.

·        

  What made you decide to come?  

  Initially I came because of its proximity to Athens.  I returned because it truly is an amazing place.  It’s beautiful, the staff is amazing, the residents are all creating inspirational art.

·         

  How has the experience affected you or your work? 

  Uninterrupted time for reflection cannot be overestimated.  I love roaming the trails in between writing bouts.

·   What do you do when you’re not writing?

  Spending time with my family, taking my dog on runs or dancing to zumba with my girlfriends, reading, rocking out to one of Athens’ 500+ bands.

·  Do you have any pets? 

  A Borador I adopted on my last Hambidge visit, named Mary Hambidge.

·  Is there a specific place in the house (or out of the house) that you like to write?

  My husband restored a ‘58 Mercury teardrop trailer….it’s my backyard studio.

·         

  If you could go anywhere in the whole world, either for a vacation or to live there, where would you go? 

  The Dominican Republic

·         

  What book are you reading right now?

  I just finished Anna Jean Mayhew’s a Dry Grass in August and Erin Tocknell’s Confederate Streets.  Both were written by Hambidge residents---great reads!  I also am reading the Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick, Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, and re-reading (Not That You Asked) by Steve Almond.