Michael Magras

FictionLiterary Fiction

Jesmyn Ward

Interview by Michael Magras

“I wanted to tap into that feeling you get when you listen to a piece of music and it feels as if it moves your very soul.”

Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, her first novel since 2012’s National Book Award winner Salvage the Bones, is the story of 13-year-old Jojo, who lives with his black grandparents, his toddler sister and his drug-addicted mother in rural Mississippi, while his white father serves a prison sentence. We spoke with Ward about her lyrical and challenging novel.

Upon reading Sing, Unburied, Sing, I couldn’t help noticing parallels between this work and the books of William Faulkner. But the parallels a reader detects may differ from an author’s intentions. Which books or fellow authors, if any, were your biggest influences in writing this novel?
I was definitely thinking of Faulkner when I wrote this novel. Specifically, I had As I Lay Dying on my mind. There’s so much to admire in As I Lay Dying, but I am in awe of how Faulkner volleys back and forth between multiple first-person POVs and still tells a coherent, moving story. I thought I could try to mimic that in the structure of Sing, Unburied, Sing. I’m also impressed by the way the characters go on a journey through the Mississippi of their time, so I think I was trying to rewrite that journey in a way.

Not surprisingly, music plays a large part in this novel, not only the cadences of your prose but also the role of singing in the narrative. Jojo sings to Kayla; Stag, Pop’s older brother, “walked all over Bois Sauvage every day, singing, swinging a stick”; Jojo says that the songs were the best part of his birthdays. Did you have particular styles of music or certain songs that inspired you as you wrote this book, or that inspire you in general as an artist?
I was thinking about the blues as I wrote this, and when I wasn’t writing, I listened to some old-style blues by artists such as R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford, Junior Kimbrough and Jesse Robinson. I thought it only fitting since Parchman is in the Delta, the birthplace of blues. My editor also gifted me with a CD and book titled Parchman Farm: Photographs and Field Recordings: 1947-1959, so I listened to those as well. The chorus of those singing voices is transcendent; there’s something in those songs that moves me. I wanted to tap into that feeling you get when you listen to a piece of music and it feels as if it moves your very soul. That resonance we feel when we listen to music is a sign of something larger than ourselves, I think, and that's part of what I was exploring in Richie’s experience of the afterworld.

In the middle of the novel, Jojo says, “Pop always told me you can trust an animal to do exactly what it’s born to do. . . . That no matter how domesticated an animal is, Pop say, the wild nature in it will come through.” To what degree do you think Pop’s maxim explains the behavior of your characters?
The characters, Jojo and Pop and Leonie and Mam and Michael and Richie, are all struggling to live through very human quandaries, through illness and hunger and torture and grief. I think this is the parallel Jojo is understanding: that human beings react in very instinctual ways when dealing with very human ordeals.

Matters of race are very much part of the American experience. And they are very much at the center of this novel, especially in the tension between Big Joseph and Leonie and her family. Every author who writes sensitively about race has a message he or she wants to impart about the subject. What messages about the African-American experience do you hope readers, both white and people of color, will take away from this novel?
I would like readers to realize that at the heart, we are all human beings. We all love and grieve and struggle and hunger and yearn, regardless of our race. I think if we are able to recognize the humanity in each other and empathize with each other, we might be able to see past our preconceived notions about each other and realize that everyone deserves to live with dignity and be accorded kindness.

Your two most recent novels are influenced by Greek mythology. In Salvage the Bones, Esch is enamored of Greek myths, and Sing, Unburied, Sing has similarities to The Odyssey. To what extent, if at all, has Greek mythology influenced your outlook on life? Do you think it has also had an effect on your writing?
The Greeks were frank in their assessment of humanity, in their stories about their heroes and heroines: All are flawed. They were equally frank about life: It is fraught with tragedy. If Greek mythology has informed my work and my outlook on life, it has taught me that.

Was your approach to writing Sing, Unburied, Sing different from that of Salvage the Bones? If so, in what way?
It was very different because Sing, Unburied, Sing required research. I knew nothing of the history of Parchman, and I knew little of Mississippi history, which I last studied in seventh grade. So I read several books on Mississippi history and the history of Parchman Prison before I began writing the first draft of Sing, Unburied, Sing. While I wrote the first draft, I continued to research as the story demanded, because I knew little about Voodoo spirituality and herbal medicine. I then had to incorporate the research into the story so that it was organic to the characters and their world. This was a challenge.

What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a novel set in New Orleans during the height of the domestic slave trade (the early 1800s). I’m at the very beginning of the first draft, and I’m still researching: I’ve read several books on the history of slavery in the United States, on the slave markets in New Orleans, and now I’m reading slave narratives by women from the WPA projects. All of this is allowing me to give this world some texture and give the characters authenticity. I’ve found that it’s a hard world and experience to write about: The stress and grief of the characters’ lives feel very present and real. It’s all very heavy, but I guess readers expect that of me by now.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, her first novel since 2012’s National Book Award winner Salvage the Bones, is the story of 13-year-old Jojo, who lives with his black grandparents, his toddler sister and his drug-addicted mother in rural Mississippi, while his white father serves a prison sentence. We spoke with Ward about her lyrical and challenging novel.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Cristina García

Interview by Michael Magras

Cristina García’s Here in Berlin is a hypnotic work that, through the effective use of multiple oral histories, creates a portrait of the former East German city, the effect its past still has upon residents old and young, and the fallout from Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union. We spoke with García about her haunting new novel.

Other authors have used oral histories in their works, although most of them, such as Studs Terkel and Svetlana Alexievich, have written nonfiction. Did you think about the works of these authors as you wrote this novel, and, if so, to what extent have their achievements influenced Here in Berlin and your work in general?
For me, the compelling first-person voice is one of utter persuasion, not just for the listeners, but for the storytellers themselves. Yet narrative, it seems to me, is always in competition with other narratives—official, familial, political, you name it. What interests me is not just what people remember but why, psychologically and emotionally, they need to remember specific events and details in the particular ways they do. How self-aggrandizing (or self-effacing) are the stories? What’s being left out? Who’s being protected, or vilified? It’s the stories not told in the telling that interest me most.

One assumes you decided that the use of oral histories was a good way to explore the themes you wanted to address. What was it about that type of narrative structure that made it seem the best choice for the story you wanted to tell?
The structure dictated itself through the voices that fought their way to inclusion. I wanted every voice to be individually nuanced and tell a story that no one else could tell, at least not in the same way. And yet the voices as a whole had to work in concert with the others, forge an insistent if dissonant chorus.

Continuing on the topic of the book’s themes, one of the obvious concerns of the book is an investigation into, as you put it, “the human fallout from Cuba’s long association with the Soviet bloc.” I imagine you did a lot of research into the subject as you wrote the book. Did you discover facts about that long association that you didn’t know before? How did those facts shape or alter the novel as you had originally conceived it?
My original idea about illuminating the complexities of Cuba’s political allegiances with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was pretty quickly eclipsed by Berlin itself, which had its own tales to tell. My work, as I saw it, then became to listen, listen, listen to the city’s whisperings, to read and wander, eavesdrop and absorb, to get out of my own way and eschew any preordained conclusions about what the novel should be. I became less a journalist/researcher than an observer. It was only when I became passive—not an easy things for me—that the stories began to surface.

Did you travel to Germany to conduct interviews for this book? If so, what did you learn from these interviews?
I lived for three-plus months in Berlin during the spring and summer of 2013. But I spent over three years immersed in the history and literature of the city and World War II. I conducted no formal interviews for the book.

Parts of Here in Berlin are grimly humorous. I’m thinking of people like Horst Galbrech, the minor official in the Ministry of Culture whose superiors asked him to come up with a dance craze that would “give the West a (managed) run for its money.” Was this based on an actual incident? And, in conducting your research, did you learn of other stories that were surprisingly humorous or otherwise unconventionally revelatory?
For me, humor is the ultimate coping mechanism. How else could anyone survive difficult times? In that particular story, I was eager to lift the skirts of East Germany’s notorious grimness and show the ambition, sensuality, desperation, and exultation cohabiting the same terrain.

As a framing device, you used the character of a woman known only as the Visitor, a twice-divorced woman who returns to Germany after an ill-fated job in Frankfurt 31 years earlier. Why did you choose this framing device?
The Visitor became a way to guide readers around Berlin, to introduce them to parts of the city not in the tourist books, and to meet a few of its unlikely citizens. I felt that the Visitor’s initial disorientation then growing familiarity with the city might ultimately mirror the reader’s. That was my hope, anyway.

Several characters in this book are unapologetic about their complicity during World War II. One former Nazi soldier bluntly tells the Visitor, “We were soldiers. We followed orders.” And Anna Wildgrube, a lawyer, defends her job representing war criminals with, “a cog is not the machine.” And yet you also show acts of tenderness, such as the German seamen who were kind to the young night watchman Ernesto Cuadra, whom they had captured onto their submarine. One assumes from past histories of World War II (The Sorrow and the Pity is a notable example) that these stories are rooted in fact. What perspectives on the war, if any, surprised you?
Yes, I wanted to hold the gaze on complicity—something the Germans have done exceedingly well in recent years, if not right after the war—and try to get inside the possibility that we all, under the right circumstances, might become perpetrators. This acknowledgement, I believe, is the beginning of a deeper understanding of the how and why of violence and war. One of the biggest surprises for me was the extent to which German women supported the Nazi war effort, both at home and abroad.

Authors often write about the past to warn about the future. What do you hope readers will take away from the experience of reading your novel?
My hope is the same as it is whenever I pick up a novel: to have a long, engaging conversation with another sensibility that will take me to places that, in retrospect, will seem absolutely necessary to have gone.

What are you working on now?
Presently, I’m working on theater—an exciting new venture for me. My adaptation of King of Cuba, my sixth novel, will be produced at Central Works Theater in Berkeley next summer, starring solo performer Marga Gomez as Fidel Castro. I’m also adapting my first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, for the stage with producer/director Adrian Alea, and we are in conversation with the Public Theater about it.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Here in Berlin.

Author photo by Isabelle Selby

Cristina García’s Here in Berlin is a hypnotic work that, through the effective use of multiple oral histories, creates a portrait of the former East German city, the effect its past still has upon residents old and young, and the fallout from Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union. We spoke with García about her haunting new novel.

FictionPopular Fiction

Joanne Ramos

Interview by Michael Magras

Joanne Ramos’ debut novel, The Farm, has a provocative premise: A posh resort in New York’s Hudson Valley offers fine meals and handsome remuneration to women, most of them financially struggling immigrants, willing to live in seclusion from their families and carry a baby to term for wealthy clients. We spoke with Ramos about her work.

Dystopian fiction is a genre that other authors have used to shine a light on the treatment of women. The Handmaid’s Tale is perhaps the most famous example. Did you have previous books in mind that deal with similar topics as you wrote The Farm? And, in general, who are some of your literary influences?
It’s funny: The Farm has been called dystopian by many reviewers and readers, and yet, I didn’t set out to write dystopian fiction. I’m someone who grew up straddling worlds—as a Filipina immigrant to Wisconsin in the late 1970s, as a financial-aid kid at Princeton University, as a woman in the male-dominated world of high finance and as a mother with conflicted feelings about my generation’s zeal to give our children the “best” of everything. I’ve often felt like an outsider in my life—an uncomfortable place to inhabit, sometimes, but outsider-hood does give one a certain distance and perspective. It was this perspective that I wanted to write about in my book. My obsessions sprung from this perspective.

The world of The Farm is meant to be our world pushed forward just a few inches—far enough so that the reader can get a bit of distance from our current state, but not so far afield that she can dismiss it as “sci-fi” or highly improbable. Is that dystopian? I suppose it depends on your definition of dystopia.

As far as literary influences, some of the books I read while writing The Farm include Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary; Marilynne Robinson’s trilogy Home, Gilead and Lila; Lincoln in the Bardo and the short stories of George Saunders; Arthur Lubow’s biography of Diane Arbus; and the essays of Zadie Smith.

Jane Reyes and her older cousin, Evelyn Arroyo—referred to throughout the book as Ate, a Tagalog term for an older female relative—are beautifully drawn characters. Did you base them on people you know? Or are they more of a composite meant to embody the issues you wanted to address?
The Farm is a work of fiction, and the characters were made up in my head. That said, we are all influenced, consciously or not, by the water we swim in.

I was born in the Philippines, and my family moved to Wisconsin when I was 6. Many weekends of my childhood were spent with my dad’s family in Milwaukee, a city not too far from our town. His family, and we, were part of the tight Filipino community there. Decades later, when I was raising my children in Manhattan, I got to know a number of nannies and housekeepers and baby nurses during the hours I spent on playgrounds and playdates. Many of these women were Filipinas, and some of them became my friends. Ate and Jane, as well as Reagan and Mae, were inspired by memories, stories and observations from my childhood in Wisconsin, from my life in New York and from my own experiences as a mother and a daughter of immigrants.

At one point, Ate says that American children don’t take care of their elderly parents, unlike the good children in the Philippines. Have you found that to be true? More generally, can you speak to cultural differences between children in America and those in the Philippines?
I have returned to the Philippines only once since we emigrated, and that was when I was in my mid-20s for a short stay. So I am not equipped to speak about how the elderly are treated there, nor how Filipino children compare to American ones. That said, I have often heard family friends and relatives talk about how well cared for the elderly are in the Philippines, how they are not stuffed into nursing homes but grow old at home with family. Often, this was attributed to cultural reasons—a purported greater respect for family and the elderly in the Philippines compared with America—but I’d guess the availability of affordable caregivers is also an important factor.

Another theme that emerges throughout the book is the desire many people have to gain an edge over others, whether it’s the mothers who want an advantage for their babies by coming to the Farm, or people like Mae, Golden Oaks’ director, who covet power and appear to prize status over other considerations. Was this one of the themes that inspired the book? And what did you hope to say about it?
The Farm is in part a response to our tendency to see through, or even vilify, people who are different from ourselves. I had no interest in populating the book with villains or saints. I tried hard to create characters that reflect the complexity of real people. Real people have myriad, and often conflicting, needs, desires and loyalties. We try to balance them; often we fail; sometimes we betray each other.

Along the same lines, I’m interested in your thoughts about consumerism and America’s—and perhaps the Philippines’—relationship to wealth. Mae clearly likes the finest in life, from cashmere clothing to mother-of-pearl tissue dispensers. She says that most people accept 1 percenters that they can relate to, like Oprah or movie stars. Do you think that’s true? And is that true as much in the Philippines as in America?
Mae Yu, who runs the Farm, is a really polarizing character. I’ve heard from readers who detest her and others who love or admire her. The funny thing is that she’s not the only character in the book who betrays people, but she’s the lightning rod for a lot of criticism.

In many ways, Mae is the embodiment of the American dream. Her dad is an immigrant from China; her mother is Caucasian. She grew up middle class and worked hard to get where she is: the only female Managing Director at the luxury-goods conglomerate that owns the Farm, the primary breadwinner of her family.

Mae is good to the people in her immediate orbit. She helps her assistant, a young African American woman who was once a Host at the Farm, succeed in college; she is generous to her best friend, a public-school teacher in Los Angeles on a limited salary. And yet, she runs a business that manipulates and commodifies women. The story of free trade, of capitalism as a “win-win,” is important to Mae because it justifies her life. And so, to her, the Farm is a “win-win,” too—good for the Clients, who get to become parents, and good for the Hosts, who can earn the kind of money that will change their lives. It’s unsurprising, then, that she thinks the 1 percent deserve to be at the top of the heap.

Surrogacy is very much in the news, with gay couples and single parents (and many others) turning to surrogates to help start their families. Your novel paints a relatively dark portrait of a world in which women feel the need to resort to surrogacy to survive financially or break free from families. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your feelings toward surrogacy.
The book is definitively not a statement or judgment on surrogacy! In fact, I have a number of friends—both gay friends and those who have had difficulties carrying a pregnancy to term—who have used or are contemplating the use of surrogates. The construct of a luxury surrogacy retreat gave me a way into the ideas that I wanted to explore—more intimate questions about motherhood and broader questions about fairness and capitalism.

What messages about the plight of immigrants, specifically women, do you hope readers will take away from your book?
The Farm is a continuation of a conversation I’ve conducted with myself for most of my adult life—about the blurry line between luck and merit, inequality, motherhood, feminism and how we see those who are different from ourselves.

What are you working on next?
I have a notebook where I jot ideas, observations, bits from the books I’m reading. Slowly, these scribbles are starting to cohere. But it’s too early to talk about book two. I’m hoping to surprise myself, and my readers, too.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Farm.

Author photo by John Dolan

Joanne Ramos’ debut novel, The Farm, has a provocative premise: A posh resort in New York’s Hudson Valley offers fine meals and handsome remuneration to women, most of them financially struggling immigrants, willing to live in seclusion from their families and carry a baby to term for wealthy clients. We spoke with Ramos about her work.

FictionShort Stories

The Office of Historical Corrections

Review by Michael Magras

Racism is an insidious beast. It can find its way into any situation, as Danielle Evans shows in the stories and novella in The Office of Historical Corrections. Evans emerged as an important voice in American literature with her 2010 debut short story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, and she once again demonstrates impressive artistry and humor as she chronicles shocking episodes of discriminatory behavior.

In “Happily Ever After,” Lyssa works in the gift shop for a replica of the Titanic, but she never gets to work the museum’s princess parties because, her boss says, of historical accuracy: There were no Black princesses on the Titanic. In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” a white college student poses for pictures in a Confederate-flag bikini and is surprised by the pain it causes Black students. Other stories dig deeper, such as “Anything Could Disappear,” about a Black woman forced to care for a 2-year-old Black child who is deliberately left next to her on a bus by the child’s white caregiver.

Not every story deals with race, as with the funniest story, “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want,” in which a “genius artist” stages public apologies to the women he has wronged. However, most stories do, and the sharpest piece is the title novella, about a government agency that adds emendations to incorrect placards at historical sites, a job that becomes surprisingly dangerous. As a child, the novella’s protagonist consoled a Black friend who had lost a debate tournament, declaring her a better debater than her white competitors. “But it’s never going to be enough,” replied the friend. Evans’ book shows that that painful truth hasn’t disappeared.

Danielle Evans emerged as an important voice in American literature with her 2010 debut short story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, and she once again demonstrates impressive artistry and humor as she chronicles shocking episodes of discriminatory behavior.

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