Beyond FICTION: THE BAKER'S DAUGHTER by Sarah McCoy ...and a Call for Compassion

Serendipity came into play today, first with an early-morning bumper sticker sighting that kept the message “Compassion is the best revenge” in the forefront of my mind and again a few hours ago at a Tattered Cover Book Store signing during which author Sarah McCoy discussed her new novel, The Baker’s Daughter.

The Baker’s Daughter explores German as well as Mexican influences in the border city of El Paso, Texas, Sarah’s home while her husband is based at Fort Bliss. But it also explores themes of identity. Not only personal identity but, as Sarah put it, “macro” levels of identity that involve everything from one’s current country of residence to one’s community, neighborhood, and family.

When Sarah also said her story considers the importance of compassion for others when dramas fueled by identity issues play themselves out I immediately realized I’d come full circle within a tidy twelve hours, discovering along the way a potentially important piece to an especially difficult, disturbing puzzle.

The story of Trayvon Martin’s murder has been haunting me as I’ve struggled to understand how an innocent teenager two years younger than my son—who shared with my son current teenage affinities for hoodies and Skittles—came to be shot in the chest and killed while walking in a presumably “safe” Florida neighborhood. My search for answers over the past week has led me to read or recall the works of various contemporary black writers, many of whom regularly provide me with valuable insights into issues of race.

Writers of color have not only lived with subtle and overt forms of discrimination throughout their lives, they’ve analyzed and written volumes about their experiences and understandings, many of which differ and sometimes contradict. So in the past week I’ve returned to recently read scenes of Bernice McFadden’s Gathering of Waters, a work of historical fiction woven around the 1955 Mississippi torture and killing of another innocent black teenager, Emmett Till; read the eloquent NPR essay “The Lingering Memory of Dead Boys” by author Tayari Jones; recalled Tayari’s novel, Leaving Atlanta, about the racially motivated serial killings of black boys in the summer of 1979 as well as No Place Safe, Boulder author Kim Reid’s award-winning memoir of the same events; and read columnist Charles M. Blow’s New York Times piece, “The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin” in which Blow refers to “the burden of black boys in America and the people who love them.”

Black writers across the country continue to voice their opinions of the Trayvon case, the need for Trayvon’s apparent killer to be arrested and charged, and related events such as the Million Hoodie March in their own columns, blog posts, tweets, and Facebook comments, many stating they have a son or nephew who could be killed just as easily if he, too, were to land in the wrong place at the wrong time because he, too, is a young black man like Trayvon. Meanwhile our nation’s chief executive and writer of color, President Obama, weighed in this morning by acknowledging that if he had a son, his son would look like—and potentially be as vulnerable as—Trayvon, too.

But President Obama went a little further as he challenged us to question what needs to be fixed so killings of innocents someday become much less common in our society. And now I have an answer for him thanks to a thought-provoking bumper sticker, an inspiring visiting author, and a singular serendipitous word: compassion.

I’ve signed the online Change.org petition insisting the man who pursued Trayvon, George Zimmerman, be arrested and charged with the crime of killing Trayvon. And I’ve also seen George Zimmerman’s photo; seen him referred to as a “white Hispanic” and as “white” and as “Latino” by the press; and read that he has a history of minor scuffles and not-so-minor domestic abuse issues, that in the past eight years he’s called local police 46 times to report suspicious activity in his community, that he’s now in hiding due to death threats.

And I can’t help but wonder if George Zimmerman might be a very troubled individual in need of significant help. His recorded racist comments and record of aggressive behavior leading up to this attack plus his apparent refusal to back down and put away his damn gun when a scared, unarmed teenager trying to get to safety finally turned to him and asked “What are you following me for?” all indicate this. And I, for one, hope his arrest leads not only to justice, but to his treatment.

But I’m no psychotherapist or criminal investigator. I’m just a writer who reads a lot, tries to learn a lot, and writes to make sense of it all. And while I hope Trayvon’s parents sense the support of every compassionate person who hears about their son’s tragic, senseless death and continue to hope justice is pursued in this case, I’d like to respectfully suggest we consider the possibility a little more compassion toward everyone in our communities might go a long way to prevent similar crimes in the future. Who knows what issues others’ face on a daily basis, what demons drive and threaten to derail them? If George Zimmerman had gotten the help he obviously needed long before he became a 28-year-old apparently fueled by a bitter mix of anger and paranoia might he have driven past Trayvon walking with his head covered against the falling Florida rain on February 26 and simply hoped the poor kid would soon arrive somewhere dry?

Sarah McCoy mentioned this evening that she loves to get “under the skin” of the characters she writes as well as those she meets in the pages of others’ books. “I want to learn how it feels to be this way,” she said, “how it feels to live this experience.” I truly believe if more people strove to understand how it feels to be someone else and opened themselves up to the possibility those with different ways of being—and appearing—pose no threat to anyone or anything we could take steps toward reducing the number of homicides in this country and eventually even create a better, safer world for ourselves and those we know and love…and maybe even for those we don’t know and may not exactly adore for whatever reason. If compassion is the best revenge, would the latter development be such an awful thing to allow?

In the same way organized religions around the world teach some form of the Golden Rule, Americans—whether religious or not—should be encouraged to take the guideline to treat others as you’d like to be treated to heart and act upon it on a regular basis. Make it a habit, even. Is it possible the key to fixing the problem of heartless, thoughtless killings of innocents could be so simple? Let’s start with having more compassion for our neighbors—including teens dressed any way they like and maybe even tragically troubled adults—and see where we go from there. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Beyond FACTS: EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS by Deborah Jiang Stein

Deborah Jiang Stein is a rock star. Just read her new memoir, EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS, and check out her non-profit, The unPrison Project, and you’ll understand what I mean. Born heroin-addicted to an incarcerated mother in the Alderson Federal Prison for Women in West Virginia, Deborah spent her first year of life behind bars. Literally. She shared her mother’s prison cell, even going to “the hole” when her mother was put in solitary confinement.

After a stint in foster care, Deborah was eventually adopted by a Jewish couple in one of the few mixed-race, cross-cultural adoptions that probably occurred in 1960s Seattle. And though Deborah’s adoptive mother was a pioneer in this respect, she was also ill-equipped to help her daughter face growing concerns about her identity, especially after Deborah, at age 12, discovered she’d been born in prison.

“I belong in the…magazines with photographs of people from tropical countries and other continents more than in my white family. The map at school gives me a place where I can imagine myself, even though I can’t say in what country or with what race I might belong, whether with Thai children with my same wide smile and lips or dark-complexion boys from Samoa whose skin color resembles mine. My nose is like those of people from the Philippines. Babies wrapped on their mothers’ backs in China wear my eyebrows. I see my own feet in the photos of South American girls, their bare feet brown like mine.

“Whenever I ask my mother about my caramel-colored skin and button nose, about the hint of almond shape to my eyes, all different from my family, she just says, ‘I love you, Pet,’ her solution to everything, always.

“In truth, there was no love big enough to cover the stigma and shame I felt about my prison roots.”

Deborah struggled with much more than identity issues growing up, and by the time she was a young adult drug use and smuggling had become not only addictions but very likely pathways to her own incarceration. Her story of survival will amaze you.

But also will her determination to do more than simply cope with her prison birth and drug addictions. Through her unique non-profit, The unPrison Project, Deborah travels to women’s prisons across the country to share her story and inspire the women she visits—many of whom are parents in prison because of drugs—to strive to overcome the past not only for their own sakes, but for their children.

I received my copy of EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS just as I finished Mary Karr’s third memoir, LIT. Another story of redemption despite one’s incredibly troubled past, LIT chronicles Mary Karr’s battle to overcome alcoholism while she also comes to term with her relationship with her extremely complex mother. Deborah’s struggle to reconcile her loyalty to her prison-born mother with her difficult relationship with her adoptive mother weaves throughout the greater story of her “white-knuckled” rides to overcome drug addiction. Both writers draw strength from their ties to their original parents but also struggle to free themselves to live their own lives clean of their mothers’ destructive tendencies. The ways Deborah and Mary both reach beyond merely overcoming obstacles that would destroy most people to reaching out to others, bettering their own futures in the process, show the strength inherent in the human spirit, offering hope to those who need it most.

Beyond FICTION: THE LITTLE BRIDE by Anna Solomon

Author Anna Solomon says she was surprised to learn her first work of historical fiction, THE LITTLE BRIDE, would be marketed to women readers and Jewish readers as well as to fans of historical fiction. I was surprised to realize her book’s focus on Jewish pioneer women who came to live and toil in the American West—many as mail-order brides—introduced me to yet another dimension of the discrimination and dogged determination to survive so many Americans have endured during our country’s relatively short history.

In a recent talk and book signing at the Boulder Jewish Community Center, Anna said one of the reasons she was drawn to the topic of Jewish pioneers was the connection she felt to what she imagined they must have endured. A native of Gloucester, MA, a fishing community comprised “mainly of Irish and Italian Catholics” with a very small Jewish community, Anna says she was one of only two Jewish students in her school and was very self-conscious about the holidays she was missing and her curly hair.

Though she felt “connected to the landscape” via her familiarity with fishing, hunting for mussels in her small motorboat, sailing, and skiing while growing up, she later realized she had a “second-generation complex” as she “wanted to feel something innately New England,” something she “would never achieve as a Jew.”

“Pioneer Jews were farmers where there were few other Jews,” she explains, adding that when she began to learn about them she understood “they’d experienced an exaggerated version of what I’ve gone through” living as a Jew in New England.

Stories Untold

Anna confesses she first learned about Jewish pioneers in the U.S. when she Googled her name (before Google Alerts made this unnecessary, she jokes) and discovered a website called Stories Untold. The site features Jewish pioneer women, one of whom was named, serendipitously enough, Anna Solomon. That discovery led Anna to learn about mail-order brides, especially one named Rachel Calof, also featured prominently on the Stories Untold website. Rachel not only was a mail-order bride, but she wrote a memoir about her time as one living in North Dakota in the 1890s.

Her memoir, discovered by her daughter in the 1980s and translated from Yiddish in the 1990s, was published as RACHEL CALOF’S STORY by Indiana University Press in 2009. This year, the same year in which THE LITTLE BRIDE was published, a one-woman play called RACHEL CALOF: A MEMOIR WITH MUSIC was produced in New York.

History + Fiction = Historical Fiction

Anna notes a wide range of opinions exist on how historical fiction ought to be written, on how much of a historical novel should be made up versus how much its author should stick with historical details. Anna’s own concerns about misrepresenting historical details led her to consult not only online and printed resources but professionals on everything from antique farm equipment to the type of grass settlers in South Dakota might have struggled to keep from taking over their land. “I am concerned with getting details right,” she says.

Another special challenge inherent in writing about Jewish pioneers from the late nineteenth century involved translations from Yiddish. “Many words in Yiddish have multiple definitions or spellings,” Anna explains, adding that ultimately it’s impossible to make everyone happy on that front. Finding documented evidence about mail-order brides was also challenging as so many of the transactions were not publicized. Citing the resemblance of the practice to the Jewish matchmaking tradition, Anna says the process was not as scandalous back then as current readers might think. Still, much of it was conducted via word of mouth and scams that cost many men their money—and led many women into slavery as prostitutes—were widespread.

Any such lack of documented details didn’t deter Anna, who says a historical fiction author “fills in the gap between what is known and what is lived.” The first scene of THE LITTLE BRIDE deals with “The Look,” a humiliating examination Rachel Calof mentioned almost as an aside since it was a common aspect of becoming a mail-order bride. Anna placed her main character, Minna, in a scene that involved such an exam, adding the emotion she imagined countless women like Rachel must have experienced at such low points in their lives.

From there, Anna continued to weave the story of her main character, Minna, an Eastern European teen in the 1880s when she was orphaned and sent to Odessa to work. Minna eventually applies to be a mail-order bride in order to escape escalating violence against Jews in the region. She’s grown up with dueling myths about her mother’s absence, myths that have greatly impacted her childhood. These myths continue to impact her development as a woman and eventual wife and mother when she lands in South Dakota, far from the coastal city she’d imagined she’d live in when she was sent to the U.S. Her husband, a much older Orthodox Jew who’s still learning how to farm with his two sons, is not exactly what she’d expected, either.

The Eternal People

Am Olam, Yiddish for Eternal People, was a name assigned to a theory of sorts among some late nineteenth-century Jewish leaders that asserted discrimination of Jews would lessen if more Jews pursued “productive” lines of work such as farming. Such an effort would result in Jews who were more robust and self-sufficient flourishing on farms far from overcrowded settlements. Am Olam advocates considered The New World a sort of Eden with its promise of free land due to the Homestead Act, and were anxious to try out their experiment there.

Wealthy established Jews in the U.S., many of whom hailed from Germany, had practical reasons to support such efforts. They did much to help newly immigrated Jews from Eastern Europe, whom they considered a blight of sorts on the upscale public image they’d labored for years to establish. A very likeable character, Jacob, states in THE LITTLE BRIDE that the “rich old Jews” who’d helped immigrant families like his at first were very kind, until thousands of immigrants arrived in need of help…and education. Of special concern was how to teach the immigrants to “dress properly, clip their beards to a hygienic length, and walk without their feet flopping and their heads in the sky, and talk without their hands flailing, and tell their women to stop looking, every one, like a widow.”

Some were sent to colonies in places as far-fetched as the Dakotas, the Pacific Northwest, or the wilds of Louisiana, though most did not have the skills they needed to select ideal farm land, or to farm it. So Am Olam proved to be a relatively short-lived experiment, but it did have a widespread impact on the cities that eventually grew in these regions. As Anna puts it, the Jews who’d been sent to these areas and whose descendants stayed brought to these eventual cities a new perspective due to their direct ties to the land. Ultimately, they “challenged beliefs about what Jewish Americans can be.”

Questions of Faith and Identity

THE LITTLE BRIDE also explores the challenges faced by Jewish pioneers whose livelihood might have contradicted the demands of their Orthodox faith, or whose obligations to that faith was challenged by a spouse who held different beliefs. The question of whether Jews in the United States consider themselves Jewish Americans or American Jews continues to be a factor in “how we identify ourselves and live out this identity in a culture that isn’t largely Jewish,” Anna states.

For a young mail-order bride, such issues were jumbled into a heap of questions about identity as she struggled to overcome often brutal conditions, to be a pioneer and wife and mother despite significant language and cultural barriers, to come to terms with the fact she would never see her home again. To become a whole new person and not only survive, but prosper while she was at it.

These are just some of the challenges faced by Minna in THE LITTLE BRIDE. Anna Solomon’s storytelling skills and obvious love for her subject matter bring these challenges—and Minna—to life among a backdrop of fascinating, and widely unknown, details from American history. Mazel Tov on a beautiful book, Anna!

Beyond FLY-BY: Decoding Mary Karr

Poet and best-selling memoirist (THE LIARS’ CLUB, CHERRY, LIT) Mary Karr was recently in Denver for a Lighthouse Writers Workshop Writer’s Studio weekend that included an interview and Q&A, an after-dinner pep talk and fundraising push (“Pony up and ride, y’all”) for Lighthouse, then a Sunday morning seminar. Each event was packed with local writers and Mary Karr fans, some of whom were already familiar with her biting wit, acidic dark humor, self-effacing tendencies, and ferociously blunt Texan take on life.

I wasn’t, but I sure am now:

On family: “We’re all hell-damned via those we love or even with whom we share our DNA.”

The reverse of this hits home when I consider the main character of my novel-in-progress, who’s not only struggling to parent despite her own parents’ shaky examples but fears hurting those she loves through her own mistakes.

On her son: “I was protective of my son when LIT came out but CHERRY was harder because he was in junior high.”

Her son is now a film-maker at Blind Spot Studios.

On writing: “Every great work of art is about trying to love somebody.”

I’m plowing through THE LIARS’ CLUB; this quote brings to mind the portrait Mary Karr’s mother painted of her own mother.

Quoted Lorrie Moore as saying “Life is a field of corn and literature is all that corn distilled into a shot glass.”

“Those things you avoid writing about lead to ‘of course’ moments. And when you discover that, you go back to the beginning and readjust.”

“Create an emotional experience, create characters that readers will want to follow whether they like them or not.”

“Refuse to write a boring book with your name on it.”

Against decorative writing: “Decorative writing leads to absence of emotion in the reader and a lack of clarity.”

“I like poems that reward further study.”

“I love John Ashbery but despise his work.”

“What matters, as the French Symbolist poets of the nineteenth century said, is the aroma of the poem.”

On listening, and not, to the advice of those smarter than you: “In the middle of writing the fifteenth version of LIT I was heartbroken. Don DeLillo sent me a postcard that said ‘Write or Die.’ I sent him a postcard that said ‘Write and Die.’”

“I was told by [poet] Etheridge [Knight]: ‘You’re not a preacher, you’re a singer. Your dad keeps knocking but you won’t let him in.’ I had to stop trying to make a representation of myself to others.”

On great non-fiction: Mary’s list of top 100 non-fiction titles, written in 2009 for Modern Library.

On lousy non-fiction: Said some memoirists use “gimmicks to impress” and “get confidence and comfort by not dealing with who they are.”

“You can’t run away from who you are.”

“You can’t run fast and loose with the truth.”

On INFINITE JEST: “It’s a big book guys in short black jackets in New York carry around.”

“David Foster Wallace was a great plot master and sense-by-sense master, but I don’t want to reread INFINITE JEST ever.”

On writing a memoir: “You remember through the lens of who you are now.”

“Protect your pages. It’s not about their view of what happened. You probably had strapped onto your head their view your whole damn life.”

“Be suspect of your interpretations. Lies of interpretation happen. I don’t label, I don’t speculate how others felt. I speculate on interpretations.”

“Analyze your opinions of others. Provide details. Ask why. Write what you know, identify speculation. Don’t feel obliged to represent [another’s opinion of what happened] but if it’s directly opposite to yours, feel obliged to note it.”

“Poke at your assumptions to break through. All writers fail when they lie. Give three-dimensional evidence. Put the vision on the page.”

“People read memoirs based on voice. If they like the narrator or are fascinated by the voice they’ll keep reading. [Each of my books] has suspense due to a narrative through-line that was discovered during writing.”

“You have to change within the book.”

“It’s not about how you feel, redeeming yourself, or getting even.”

She suggested if you want to get even you should carry a shotgun. And then she told the story of how Mississippi novelist Richard Ford once used his shotgun to get even when sent a book to review. The book was by an author who’d given one of his books a bad review, so he put it on his front porch, shot a hole in it, and sent it back.

“Just be honest. Tell the reader what you’re doing because you will be busted.”

On discipline: “When writing LIT I did nothing but write Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, no phone, email…I didn’t even answer the door. No social events. My fiancé would go to the opening of an envelope. I had to cut myself off, give myself nowhere to go.”

“Stay inside. You will write something. Some days two sentences. Good days six pages, lucky days seven pages. I had a weekly aggregate and when I reached my goal I could take a hot bath—I love hot baths, baptism every time. Massages. I treat myself well. I treat myself like a mental patient. Good food in the house. Yoga Thursday and Friday or daily mass Thursday and Friday, or I’d go see my shrink.”

On church: “What brings you back is the simple faith of the people. Awe in others, moving reminders that we’re like other people.” Then she added she really thinks of everyone else as “traffic,” usually just in her way.

“The American religion is doubt. Whoever believes the least, wins.”

On inspiration: “I am never interested and inspired. I’m interested and inspired by a seven-figure check. I’m in this for the money.” She then added she wouldn’t be in Denver if she hadn’t been paid to be there, adding she’d rather be home “shopping for a new Thanksgiving table.”

On why she writes: “I told my friend Lorrie Moore: ‘I don’t like writing, reading, touring, speaking, so why am I a writer?’ And she said ‘Because you like having written.’”

On what motivates her: When “I forget to feel my butt in the chair. That thoughtlessness.”

“As an adult, spiritual healing helps me see myself. [Writing is] cathartic but not revelationary. I enjoy that power of resurrection.”

On Lighthouse: “I see writing as necessary, life-saving, essential for a city’s circulation system. Lighthouse—its openness, its support—it’s an amazing thing that’s made out of air. Essentially an affordable university and it’s very impressive. You’re essentially creating a...university that’s branching out to hospitals, the elderly, young people, the disenfranchised, and you’re saving lives.”

“‘Fail better’ as Samuel Beckett said. [Writers need] the presence of a community to support us in that enterprise.”

On poetry: Mentioned Poetry Fix, short talks on specific poems that can be viewed on her YouTube channel.

Quoted “The First Step” by Constantine Cavafy and the haunting “There Was Earth Inside Them” by Paul Celan.

“I write poetry to have that connection to great poets. It’s sustenance for me.”

And I attend Lighthouse Writer’s Studio and Fly-By Writer’s Project weekends to have that connection to great writers like Mary Karr, Alexi Zentner, Robin Black, Colson Whitehead, Tobias Wolff, Lorrie Moore. It’s sustenance for me.