Monday, April 27, 2020

TBR: Wandering Dixie: Dispatches from the Lost Jewish South by Sue Eisenfeld

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!




Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Wandering Dixie is a travel-through-history memoir about Jews, the South, race, the Confederacy, and me—my discovery of some worlds in the United States that I never knew existed. It’s a “Yankee’s journey” through the Deep South. And it’s a journey through the lost Jewish communities of the South, intersecting with some of the less-familiar African-American history of the nation.

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

I write in a genre never-never land—not deep memoir, definitely not serious nonfiction. A travel memoir that isn’t super travely and definitely not service oriented; creative-nonfiction/literary-nonfiction that’s too U.S. history-ish to be considered CNF sometimes, but with chapters that are essay-ish. It’s about Jews of the South, but even more so, it’s about a white girl discovering the depth and value and meaning of the lost, hidden, and denied African American history of the nation. Does this break boundaries? It breaks rules. One review categorized this book under “Religion,” which doesn’t make any sense to me, even as the book uses Jewishness as its fulcrum.

I’m not sure this type of writing takes courage; it’s just what came out of me. Maybe the courage is in letting it be what it is meant to be, regardless of whether it will do well or find a big audience.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Does each hem and haw in revision count as a high and low? Each chapter is like a different child that must be nurtured individually, that has different needs and requirements, lengths and breadths. Making each chapter work is a low and a high every day, over and over again.

I wound up having two presses want the book at the same time, and I agonized over which one to choose. I guess that was a high (but also a low – I am bad with decisions). Both were university presses with a CNF category. Both were well respected. I went with the one where I knew the editor and she knew my writing, and where the press had already received comments from an outside reviewer, so I felt confident that the work had been well vetted, and I knew the direction it was going.

A lower spot was that it took me so long to conduct the travel and write the book, and I feel it might have been better placed in the state of the world if it had come out about a year earlier. But I couldn’t think or write any faster.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

One of my instructors in my graduate program told me that you should plan to spend about five years with your book subject, so it better be something you can live with for that long. When I first heard that, I thought, “There’s nothing I’m so fascinated by that I can attend to it for five years.” But later I realized: Whatever “it” is, is actually a braid of numerous threads—in this case, southern food, music, and culture, as well as religion, traditions, history, people, and politics.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

This was originally going to be a book about traveling through the history of the Civil War. Then I realized that it should really be a journey through the lost Jewish South because no one had done that. But the biggest surprise was that along the way, it became a journey about becoming more woke. It was the African American history that became most interesting to me, that I kept seeking out and writing about. Being on the ground, in the landscape, where key moments in African American history and civil rights history happened allowed me to better understand what “institutional racism” really meant, and how “white privilege” really worked, and what those terms meant for me and my life journey. I did not expect to be writing a book that included African American history, but that’s what happened. And maybe that limit is part of our nation’s problem in the first place.

How did you find the title of your book?

Finding the right title is an art unto itself. Wandering Dixie came about after much research and brainstorming, cutting out pieces of paper with key words on them and moving them around; concept mapping; and a back-and-forth with my editor. We wanted it to indicate travel writing, Jews, and the South all at once, which I think it accomplishes—playing off both “whistling Dixie” and the idea of the “wandering Jew.” For the subtitle, Dispatches from the Lost Jewish South, my editor really wanted to emphasize the Jewish theme of the book. But I love the fact that it echoes Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, which was one of the influences for my book.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

The most divine southern food I ate during my forays to the Deep South over a four-year period was lemon icebox pie, a relative of key lime pie. I had a slice at Fat Mama’s Tamales in Natchez, Mississippi, that changed my life: https://fatmamastamales.com/gourmet_food/lemon-icebox-pie/

This is a recipe I found and made that is pretty close:

A Northerner’s Take on Lemon Icebox Pie
(adapted from a source I can no longer identify but to whom I give my utmost gratitude)

2 cups graham cracker crumbs (14 whole crackers)
¼ cup sugar
8 Tbs unsalted butter, melted

1 ¼ cup fresh lemon juice (roughly the juice of 8 lemons)
Zest of 2 of those lemons
2 14-oz cans sweetened condensed milk
2 egg yolks

1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup powdered sugar

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Combine crumbs, sugar, and butter in a bowl until evenly mixed. Transfer to a 9”deep pie dish, and press into bottom and up sides to create a thick crust; set aside.

Squeeze lemons by slicing them in half (across the equator), sticking a fork in the center and using the fork and squeezing action to press out all the juice into a bowl. Combine juice, milk, and egg yolks; beat on medium-high speed of a mixer for 5 minutes. Pour into prepared crust. Bake until filling is only slightly set—until the center jiggles slightly, like a soft-setting custard, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven, set on cooling rack, and let cool for 90 minutes. Then stick a few toothpicks in it and cover with plastic wrap (toothpicks should hold up the wrap). Freeze at least 6 hours, or overnight.

Take out of freezer 1 to 1.5 hours before serving (no more; it will get too warm) (You want it just barely not frozen). Just before serving, combine cream, vanilla, and powdered sugar in a bowl and whip until stiff peaks form. Serve a large dollop onto each slice of pie.

Store leftovers in freezer.
(Do not store cream in freezer; it will freeze solid.)

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.sueeisenfeld.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: www.politics-prose.com/search/site/Eisenfeld




Monday, April 20, 2020

TBR: Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me by Gae Polisner

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 


Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me is the story of a 15-year-old girl who is ready to grow up, but maybe not as ready as she thinks. In addition to being dark and a little sexy, it’s an exploration of the dysfunction of family, the fragility of female friendships, and the hope we are able to find when we learn to take stock in ourselves. 


Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

Once I unlocked who my main character JL was, and realized she was probably closer to young me than any other character I’ve written, she was enjoyable to write -- or actually rewrite. She’s like an ember about to burst aflame, and I really loved trying to capture that sense of both electricity and vulnerability, a person on the very verge.

And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

I think all the characters in this story were a challenge because they’re all flawed and deeply human. Additionally, the mother is suffering from a clinical disorder (if even her therapist hasn’t actually pinned down exactly which one or how to fully help her). I wanted to portray her in a way to make the reader see how she could be there and seemingly “normal” one moment, and lost in her disorder the next. Walking that balance was difficult. Making her feel authentic.


Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Oh, a very rough version of this manuscript had been around for a LONG while before it was finally bought by my current editor. And that’s where the real work began. An early draft was one of my agent’s favorite works in progress of mine . . . but had always been my least favorite. I just couldn’t get JL fully right, nor wrap my head around where the story needed to go to matter. Plus, when we had shown that early version to a prior editor, she had unequivocally turned it down.

Then I wrote MEMORY OF THINGS and IN SIGHT OF STARS and loved both those stories so much. As did my current editor who bought them both, in that order. At some point after she bought STARS, I asked her if she wanted to read the crappy draft of KEROUAC. I remember her saying, “You keep saying you hate it, but you keep bringing it up, too, so there must be something there.” I decided I’d let her take a look and if she didn’t love it, I would put it to bed forever. Instead, she not only read it and loved JL, but knew exactly where the story needed to go -- and how to push me to make it come fully alive.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Hands down, Teddy Roosevelt’s “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I have to remind myself CONSTANTLY. And then my agent has to remind me too.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

The last thirty pages or so (beginning on p. 245 of the Advance Review Copy), that start, “The cold shocks me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is crazy. It’s June. I shouldn’t be shaking like I am.” For me, no matter how many times I reread them, they are breathless and stunning, and I don’t quite know where they came from, but I felt the rhythm of them somewhere deep in my bones while I was writing them. Especially, the scene in the Shawnee motel. As if I had once been in that seedy motel -- metaphorically, if not literally. That may be some of my best writing in all the books and unsold manuscripts I’ve written.

How did you find the title of your book?

I actually woke up with the title in my head one morning years ago, shortly after I sold my debut novel The Pull of Gravity which has a main Of Mice and Men thread running through it so the classics were on my mind. Of course, I wouldn’t normally write a whole novel around a title but for some reason, this one really spoke to me. Of course, I was writing YA and knew that Kerouac would be pretty irrelevant to most teenagers, so I began to ask myself, “Why not my character? Why might my main character – let’s say, a 15 year old girl -- not only know who Kerouac was, but hate him? And the plot for the novel began to come to me, if not quite the heart of the story which, as I mentioned above, came to me only later.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

Hmmm, now I need to think. There’s some cold pizza, and a meal of roast chicken and mashed potatoes. Not exactly a gourmand’s book. LOL.



ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR PILE: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250312235



Monday, April 13, 2020

TBR: Her Sister’s Tattoo by Ellen Meeropol

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 


Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Marching through downtown Detroit to protest the war in Vietnam, Rosa and Esther hear that mounted police are beating protestors a few blocks away and hurry to stop the violence. When an officer is badly injured and the sisters are arrested, deep differences in their responses threaten their close family. Esther has an infant daughter and wants to avoid prison, which means accepting a plea bargain and testifying against her sister. Told from multiple points of view and through the sisters’ never-mailed letters, Her Sister’s Tattoo explores the thorny intersection of family loyalty, betrayal, and clashing political decisions.


Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

The sisters, Rosa and Esther, were both the joy of writing this novel, and the most difficult. Developing their history of a deep connection as sisters and activists and their escalating differences was the major challenge. Their political differences grow stronger as the story proceeds, but I wanted to tease out the nuances of the political choices, and I needed to give them insights into each other’s positions. Their very different experiences of motherhood are central to their political choices and to their reluctant empathy for each other. In addition, the issue of betrayal is large in the story, and trying to understand it from each perspective was both exciting and troublesome.


Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

The major thing about this book’s road to publication is that it took twenty years. I started writing it in 2000; it began as a short story and morphed into the first novel I attempted. I had no idea what I was doing. After several drafts, I gave up and attended an MFA program, working on a new novel. Each time I finished another novel, I returned to this one, writing new drafts and trying to figure out how to best tell this story. Finally, after many years and three other published novels, I got it “right” enough to send to my editor at Red Hen Press. Twenty years. Many many drafts. Finally Esther and Rosa get to tell their story.


What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Writing a novel, especially one like this that takes a long time, requires an almost illogical belief that you have a story worth telling. I like Jane Yolen’s writing mantra: “YIC – Yes, I can. BIC – butt in chair, because that’s where the muse will find you. HOP – Heart on page, because why else would we write?”


My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

There were several surprises writing this book, particularly in the revision process. In early drafts, the action taken by Rosa and Esther to try to stop the cops from beating protestors was sugar in their gas tank, something my early readers simply didn’t believe. When I changed it, I was surprised by how their new actions opened up a whole area of sibling relationship that I hadn’t known before. Major changes in the structure of the manuscript also led to surprises. Who knew that giving a minor character a voice could lead to the sharing of secrets I hadn’t known before?


How did you find the title of your book?

Titles are hard. Over twenty years I went through several of them. The novel started as a short story titled “In Whose Camp,” because the first scenes I wrote took place at the leftwing summer camp where Rosa’s and Esther’s daughters meet. The next title also derived from the camp chapters: Until We All Are Blind, referring to the sisters’ estrangement and lack of forgiveness towards each other. There was a third attempt, A Folding of Cranes, that referred to the image of origami cranes that weaves through the novel. Finally, about eight years ago, I came up with Her Sister’s Tattoo, referring to the matching red stars Rosa and Esther had tattooed on their breasts, to signify their shared activism and to promise that sisters are forever. (Except that they maybe aren’t.) Luckily, my editor liked it and it’s the title forever.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.ellenmeeropol.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR PILE:  

Monday, April 6, 2020

TBR: Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 
  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she’s not about to jump but they don’t believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up—the book is about what happens next.

Which character did you most enjoy creating?

Phoebe—The woman who Mina meets in London and begins to develop feelings for.

Why?

The book fairly closely follows Mina and Oscar’s points of view. They see Phoebe quite differently. To Mina Phoebe is new and shining, artistic, and tempting. To Oscar she is a childhood crush who he is no longer impressed by. Seeing her from both points of view allowed her to be a full person.

And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

Oscar. I always knew the sort of man he was—hardworking, loves his wife, but often trying to shut down or look away from his own emotions. In early drafts, only his strength came through. It was hard to show the fear and vulnerability of a man who was doing so much to try to hide those qualities. In the end, I found the best way to do it was to show his attempts to overcome or to bury those feelings.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

This book was part of a two-book deal in the UK so I knew it would have a home somewhere in the world. But I didn’t realize how hard writing it would be.

In between this book and my first novel, Harmless Like You, I wrote an entirely different novel. And it just wasn’t working. I sent it to friends, I edited it, I moved pieces around. Finally, I realized that it wasn’t ever going to be right. So, I tore it up and began again.

I thought about what questions were most important to me, what pressed on my mind and wouldn’t let go. From this, Starling Days and its questions about how to best to love someone who is sick, how to repair a life, and how to hold onto one another in the hardest times emerged.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Find what interests you. If you find something boring or stale, then so will the reader. Write towards what excites, interests, confuses, or angers you. Write to where your energy is. 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

I was surprised by how much technology became part of the book. I realized that because we can always be connected it makes disconnection a dramatic act in and of itself. Oscar and Mina could theoretically always be in touch and know everything about each other. Towards this goal Oscar makes Mina download a tracking app onto her phone. I’d often been told that phones reduced dramatic tension e.g. Romeo could just have texted Juliet. But I found that by adding a form of communication I was also adding a means of miscommunication—of silences, secrets, and half-truths.

How did you find the title of your book?

The title Starling Days came to me from a particular moment in the book: one when Mina is looking up into the sky and imaging a new future. But it also symbolizes the struggle of both characters.

Ancient Roman augurs (religious officials) looked to the flight of birds as one of the ways to determine what the future might be. Both Mina and Oscar are both desperately trying to understand what their futures might hold. Each, in their own way, is looking for signs. Oscar looks to business plans and to family history. Mina tries to understand moment by moment, day by day what her brain is doing and to understand this she goes to medicine, love, and because she is a classicist, she looks to Greek and Roman legends.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

An incomplete list of things consumed in Starling Days:

Toast with French butter
Coffee
Hot water and lemon
Ginger tea
Pizza
Endive Salad

A recipe:

Almond Milk Matcha Latte

Ingredients
1/3 teaspoon matcha powder
½ teaspoon honey
40ml boiling water (1.35 fl oz)
10ml cold water (0.35 fl oz)
250 ml almond milk (8.5 fl oz)

Tools
Microwave or stovetop
Whisk
Milk frother (helpful but not required)


1.     In a large mug or small bowl combine waters so that they are hot but not boiling.
2.     Add honey and matcha to the water. Whisk until you can no longer see clumps of green.
3.     Heat almond milk until it’s bubbling on the stove or for 40 secs on high in the microwave.
4.     Then froth. I use this milk frother: https://www.bodum.com/gb/en/1446-143b-latteo (You can skip this step for a smoother less fluffy drink.)
5.     Combine.


*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.rowanhisayo.com

  
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR PILE:



Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.