Review: Children as human beings, not commodities

Review of: Before We Were Yours

Author: Lisa Wingate
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Source: Purchase, Half Price Books
Grade: A 

Congratulations! You are now reading post number 1,000 published on this blog! Not that I keep track (seriously, it seems like a lot more than 1,000!) but Blogger does. And having started with an initial post decrying the ghettoization of women’s literature aka “chick lit” (“No more C-word”) it seems fitting to devote this 1,000 post to a review of a book by a bestselling female author and fellow Texan, Lisa Wingate, with a cast primarily of girls and women, Before We Were Yours. 

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In 1939, 12-year-old Rill Foss couldn’t imagine any life—certainly not any life better—than her family’s annual trek up and down the Mississippi River in the houseboat her father Briny built with his own hands and named Arcadia. Until, that is, the stormy night he set off in search of medical care for his wife, near death from a difficult childbirth, leaving Rill in charge of her four younger siblings.

It would be the Foss children’s last night aboard the Arcadia. And their last night of life as a family. 

Unknown to them, professional child-spotters were on their track after having already snatched their just-born twin siblings and persuaded the parents that the babies had been stillborn. Rill, her three younger sisters and little brother would soon also be imprisoned in a foster home run by a merciless woman who disguised her sale of children as adoptions.

The secrecy and lies that followed would dog Rill and her siblings for the rest of their lives.

In the present day, Avery Stafford is having family problems of her own. She has given up her job in a U.S. attorney’s office to return to South Carolina to take up the political mantle of her father, a prominent senator, now fighting cancer. Almost as worrisome to Avery is the situation of Senator Stafford’s mother, her beloved Grandma Judy, whose increasing dementia has necessitated her move to a nursing home. It’s a home whose cost is far beyond the means of most of the senator’s constituents, a fact his political opponents are eager to exploit.

The last thing the Stafford family needs is a potential scandal underlying her grandmother’s past. Or the strange elderly woman who, during a political photo-op at a nursing home, addresses Avery as “Fern.” And who bears a striking resemblance to Grandma Judy. 

Avery’s gradual unraveling of the secrets of decades—and generations—will lead through a past darker and stranger than she could ever have imagined. It’s a past that could reunite a family. Or tear it apart.

***

I met Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours, at the Dallas Book Festival this past spring. Coming in late from another meeting, I found her discussing the real history behind her fictionalized story of one of the biggest child-abuse scandals of the past 100 years—the kidnapping and selling of babies and children to the highest bidders by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. 

Children ripped from the arms of poor but often-loving families, housed in deplorable conditions by profit-seeking contractors, all with the collusion of high-level government officials. The scenario sounds as if it could have been taken from today’s newsfeed, in a way Wingate could not have anticipated as she wrote. But it was the modus operandi of early 20^th century baby seller Georgia Tann, who benefited to the tune of roughly $10 million in today’s terms from her 30-something years of work with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

Admittedly, Tann’s interest during her tenure from 1920-1951 was in attractive white children (preferably blonds) who could be offered to adoptive parents at often exorbitant fees. At the time, Tann was hailed as a woman who “saved” children from poverty by arranging their adoptions to wealthy families. She died of uterine cancer before she could be subjected to legal action for her crimes against children and their birth and adoptive families and the investigator of her children’s home found himself “stymied by powerful people with secrets, reputations, and, in some cases, adoptions to preserve,” Wingate writes.

“If there is one overarching lesson to be learned. . . it is that babies and children, no matter what corner of the world they hail from, are not commodities, or objects, or blank slates, as Georgia Tann so often represented her wards; they are human beings with histories, and heeds, and hopes, and dreams of their own.”

Mirror, mirror – clichés, tropes, or indispensable aids?

Ever have one of those days when a single thing jumps out at you wherever you turn? It happens, of course, when you’re already attuned to a topic. One day I was writing about a person who walked with a cane – which I’d never thought about before – unleashed armies of people everywhere I turned, all walking with canes! And this wasn’t even in a hospital or nursing home.

I had a similar experience this weekend when, after a marvelous workshop about writerly revision, including the dreaded topic of clichés (hint: avoid them like the plague) I walked into a discussion at the Dallas Book Festival about tropes.

What’s the connection between clichés and tropes? Both are shorthand ways of conveying information without needing to spell out all the details (a definition cribbed from one of my recently-favorite sites, TV Tropes, which I wrote about earlier this year in "How does a writer juggle a cast of multiples."

image: pixabay

As A. Lee Martinez, a writer on the festival’s trope panel put it, “even good writers have techniques to tell the story,” without reinventing language from scratch.   

Whether we call them story structures, or archetypes, or elements, some genres require tropes. Mess with expected tropes too much, and readers will throw down the story in puzzlement, if not outright disgust. The happily ever after (or at least, happily for now) endings that are de rigueur for romances are familiar tropes. 

(Writing a romantic relationship that doesn’t end happily? Call it, as another panelist suggested, “women’s fiction” instead. Different genre, different trope.) 

Clichés only become clichéd when their descriptions are so apt that they become too familiar and lose their freshness. Not to mention become disease-ridden, somewhat in the manner of red-tip photinias in landscape plantings. Their original virtues of striking aptness and novelty contain the seeds of their ruin. (Obviously, this whole topic has infected my writing!)

And although tropes are useful because of their familiarity, as panel moderator Stacey Kuhnz pointed out, “at some point, tropes need to be a little bit different,” or risk becoming clichés themselves.

I nodded sagely, only to fear as I was revising a manuscript later that I had also fallen victim to a particularly dreaded cliché/trope -- the mirror image description.

Decades ago, when omniscient narrators were in style, writers had no qualms about flat-out telling readers what their story characters looked like. In Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell could tell us directly that her heroine Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but she had green eyes and black hair and the fair Irish skin that freckled too easily under a Southern sun. No one giggled at this writerly interpolation. (Besides, we had the fair-skinned, dark-haired Vivien Leigh in the story's movie version to show us exactly how Scarlett looked. And yes, this time she was beautiful.)

When omniscience fell out of fashion, writers found salvation in having their characters, especially female characters, view themselves in mirrors to describe – and often critique – their own appearance. And although I’m now leaning toward other ways to describe a character’s appearance, I miss mirror images.

These, after all, have a long and honorable history – dating to biblical times -- of showing us not only what we look like, but by their subtle, “mirror-image” aspect, of conveying an eerily different aspect not only of our outward appearance but also of our personality. In fact, a shadowy, alter-ego version of ourselves.

What would the fairy tale of Snow White be without the evil stepmother’s magic mirror? Or Harry Potter’s story without the illusory wish-fulfilling Mirror of Erised?

When my heroine looks at herself in the mirror, she doesn’t see the color of her eyes or skin or hair – all too well-known to herself to comment on – but the color and texture of the bruises on her neck from a near-fatal encounter with an ex-lover.

Encountering her action again during manuscript revision, I thought long about it. Isn’t it natural for anyone to examine the impact of such visible blemishes? Is this a cliché only limited to females? And if the blemishes are on a part of the body not visible to the person, is there any option other than using a mirror? Would the mirror use seem less a cliché if the character were examining her back?

None of my critique partners complained, but readers will have the final say. Ultimately, I hope they’ll pardon her – and me – for the mirror image. 

Get hopping: nothing hare-brained about April lit events

I’ve been writing about North Texas spring literary events at this blog since – February! What a sprig it’s been. It’s one of my favorite seasons, and the happenings (hoppenings?) just keep coming. Here’s the latest:

April 1: After the hallelujahs and chocolate bunnies, buckle down and polish your best 500 words for the last chance to enter WRiTE CLUB’s 2018 contest! It’s free, the prizes are great, but perhaps best is the chance to get immediate feedback from real live readers. See the site for details.

April 7: Dallas Book Festival, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., at the Dallas Library’s Central Branch, 1515 Young St., Dallas. It features more than 100 local, regional and national authors, including bestselling Jesse Andrews (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), Hillary Jordan (Mudbound), Lisa Wingate (Before We Were Yours), and lots, lots more. 

Additional events at the festival include writing workshops, children’s activities, and music and dance performances. Free, but of course there will be books for sale! 

The book festival is again being held in conjunction with the Dallas Festival of Ideas. This year’s theme is “The Connected City.” It’s also free, but with limited space, so please register for either morning or afternoon sessions. Can’t make it in person? Tune in to Facebook to watch the main events live.

image: pixabay

April 7: North Texas Book Festival is a chance to hang out with, and sample books by favorite Texas authors, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the Patterson-Appleton Art Center, 400 E. Hickory St., in Denton, Texas. Or stretch the fun with an 8 a.m. chuck wagon breakfast with North Texas children’s book author/illustrator duo Janet Sever Hull and Vicki Killion Guess. See the site for details and registration.

April 15: The deadline for discounted registration for Writers in the Field, a hands-on research experience for writers this coming October 13-14, featuring 13 acres of demonstrations, exhibits and displays in Mansfield, Texas. See the Writers in the Field site for prices and details. Use code “WORDfestBFF” by April 15 and save 10 percent. (You say you’ll be too busy doing income tax to register for this deal? Good news – when Tax Day falls on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday – like this year – you have until the next business day to file!)

April 20-21: North Texas Teen Book Festival, Irving Convention Center, 500 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving, Texas. Wait – did I miswrite that date? Isn’t the convention only a single day? No! The all-day (and free!) blast is April 21. But this year, teens can also opt for lunch with four favorite YA authors on April 20.

The lunch event is $50, which includes meal, Q&A session and book signings. Then hang on for the 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Saturday, April 21, event. As always, books available for sale and signing, lunch concessions on site – or bring your own to eat outside. See the site  for details. 

April 28: The Writers Guild of Texas spring workshop features Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Annie Neugebauer to walk us through using our query pitches to troubleshoot problems in our novels. At the Richardson Civic Center, 411 W. Arapaho Rd., Richardson, Texas.

I blogged last summer about Neugebauer’s query pitch genius at last year’s DFW Writer’s Conference. Here’s another chance to spend a whole morning with her. See the WGT site for registration and additional details. Cost is $25 for members, $35 for nonmembers registering by April 25. The cost goes up $5 for registration at the door – if seating is available.

April 30-May 6: This year, the Houston Writers’ Guild joins Writespace for its Writefest mega literary festival. OK, so Houston isn’t exactly a northerly outpost. But with a week’s worth of writing workshops, agent meet-and-greets (and more than 20 agents and publishers to pitch to), and more – it’s worth the trek south.

Get the full week, including lunch with keynote speaker Justin Cronin (The Passage trilogy) for $525 through April 29 ($595 at the door), a three-day weekend pass for $250 through May 3 ($375 at the door), or single-day Friday or Saturday sessions (May 4-5). Pitch sessions available at all options for additional $50. See the Writefest site for details and registration.

Adam Johnson on the human face of North Korea

It was on a dark and stormy night that novelist Adam Johnson gave the keynote address of the 2018 Highland Park Literary Festival. The audience in Highland Park’s high school auditorium had gathered to hear Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for his novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, a peek inside a country as different as any could imagine from the toney Dallas suburb. But with media outlets awash in Winter Olympic news from the Korean peninsula and rare uncensored peeks at members of North Korea’s ruling dynasty, listeners were avid for any insights Johnson could provide.

Admittedly, The Orphan Master’s Son, the tale of North Korean everyman Pak Jun Do, is a work of fiction. By Johnson’s own admission, “all we know about North Korea comes from satellite phots and defectors.”

He had been allowed to make a brief, carefully “minded” visit to the country during the course of his research, and had read extensively from those memoirs and in some cases been able to interview defectors, although he cautioned his audience that those represent only a small percentage of the 24 million people estimated to inhabit North Korea.

They were, however, enough to enable him to put a human face on the country.

“I’ll tell you a couple of stories. That’s my favorite part.”

image: pixabay

Despite the heavy supervision of his visit  – “my minder had a degree in minding Americans,” he quipped --  because except for the “minders” assigned to visitors, “it’s illegal for a citizen of the DPKR (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to interact with foreigners,”) he managed to emerge with stories.

Like the one about the hotel he stayed in, where every servant was Chinese instead of Korean. And although the hotel had 49 floors, “since nobody wants to visit North Korea, they only had enough visitors to fill the 6^th and 33^rd floors.”

Or like the tale of the 105-floor building that boasted five revolving restaurants, only to be abandoned before completion.

And the Garden of Martyrs cemetery reserved for the bodies of people “who fought against the Japanese, or in the Korean war, or were just very close to the (ruling) Kim family. The ambition of all the elites is to get an ancestor into the cemetery.”

The problem, Johnson said, “there’s only 141 slots. To get your ancestor in there, you have to dig up somebody else’s.”

And demoting an ancestor from the Garden of Martyrs requires the construction of a new narrative, one which smears the reputation of that formerly revered ancestor – and by implication, all of his or her family.

But won’t people remember the former narrative, about how great the now excavated ancestor had been?

Not if they want to avoid associating themselves with the disgraced family. Koreans, Johnson said, “are some of the most resilient people in the world,” but after more than century of having their culture wiped out – from the Japanese colonization of the peninsula beginning in the 19^th century, through World War II and the Korean war – “no Korean has a relative who’s old enough to remember reading a novel. . . In North Korea there is one life event that no other people share – the realization that everything you know is a lie.”

“I personally think the North Koreans are the funniest people on earth (but) it’s hard-won humor, gallows humor. . . They’re people who just happen to have been born in the world’s largest psychology experiment – a giant Skinner box.”

The box has few escape hatches. One of course, is the route of defection. The other is that sought by the country’s elite families – the chance to travel outside the country, to send their children to foreign schools – “just like you do -- Switzerland is the dream” -- and to shop.

Despite Johnson’s background in journalist, he turned to fiction in The Orphan Master’s Son because he was unable to do the extensive fact-checking necessary for journalism. Many details of North Korean life, although reported in the memoirs of defectors, cannot be independently verified due to the country’s opacity.

“What I can’t make up is the truth of being raised in this environment,” Johnson said. “It’s only when North Koreans are free to write their own books that we’ll know the reality.”

***

Johnson’s keynote talk was actually only a small part of the Highland Park Literary Festival. A collaboration of parents and Highland Park High School’s English department, it also provided more than 60 workshops – in photography, journalism, poetry, playwriting, song writing, fiction, nonfiction and more – for students. 

Lest I sigh too much over the abundance showered on HPHS kids, I remembered that the resurgent Dallas Book Festival April 7 in conjunction with the Dallas Festival of Ideas will offer a multitude of resources, including a promise of writing workshops. The Book Festival is still in “save the date” mode, but I’ll update as soon as information is available.

Spring into a new season of Texas lit events

Yes, the groundhog has spoken – six more weeks of winter! But the venerable rodent’s forecast can’t halt the flow of literary events in Texas, pushing through the cold like early spring flowers. Even more than a month before the official start of spring, the landscape is full of possibilities like these:

February 10 – 11: North Texas Comic Book Festival, in the Irving Convention Center, 500 Las Colinas Blvd. W., Irving. Free tickets for kids ages 11 and under. For adults, 1-day tickets $20, 2-day $30. See the site for details.

February 11: Arts & Letters Live continues, with Paul Auster, bestselling author of 1234, in conversation with Will Evans of Deep Vellum Publishing, 7 p.m., at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood in Dallas. Tickets for the public, $40, with discounts for DMA members, Friends of Deep Vellum, Wild Detectives, and the Writer’s Garret, and free for students and educators. The series continues through June 20. See the DMA’s site for details and tickets.

February 12 - ?: WRiTE Club returns! It’s the writing contest that’s also a spectator sport as readers vote for their favorite 500-word entries from authors hiding behind the safety of anonymity. Official unveiling of details on the 12^th, at the site of ringmaster DL Hammons.

February 16-18: ConDFW XVII banishes the late-winter blues with its lineup of science fiction/fantasy panels, author signings and hijinks – including appearances by author guest of honor Charlaine Harris (The Southern Vampire series). Adult 3-day memberships $45, 1-day $30. Children’s memberships $20 and $15, respectively. Discounts available with valid military, educator or student ID. At the Radisson Hotel Fort Worth Fossil Creek. See the site for details.

February 20: Clements Center Evening Lecture Series showcases The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack Davis. Reception 5:30 p.m., lecture and signing 6 p.m., in the Hughes-Trigg Ballroom East, 3140 Dyer St., on the SMU campus. Free. The lecture series concludes April 11. For information and registration, see the site. (Thanks to book club member Julia Carpenter for this tip!)

image: pixabay

February 22: Highland Park Literary Festival welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son) as keynote speaker, 7 p.m., with signing from 8 – 8:45 p.m. At the Highland Park High School, 4220 Emerson, Dallas. Free and open to the public.

March 8: Authors LIVE! presents author Mark Weinberg’s Movie Nights with the Reagans, at 7 p.m. at Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas. Free, or choose a 6 p.m. pre-lecture reception and signing for $30 (includes copy of the book). See the site for details or to register for reception. The Authors LIVE! series is presented in partnership with the Highland Park Library and Friends of SMU Libraries.

March 24: WORDfest, billed as an “all-you-can-meet festival of creative connection” makes its second annual appearance from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. in the Student Union building of Tarrant County College’s Northeast Campus at 828 Harwood Rd. in Hurst. More than 30 North Texas writers’ organizations will be on hand to distribute information about their specialties, including fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, poetry, and indie publishing. Lunch and snacks available for purchase from the student union cafeteria, but otherwise everything is free. However, WORD (Writing Organizations ‘Round Dallas) appreciates an RSVP at its site.

April 7: Save the date for the Dallas Book Festival, Dallas Central Library, 1515 Young St., Dallas. More details to come, but this year’s festival will feature more than 100 local, regional and national authors, with writing workshops, children’s activities, and live performances. Once again, in connection with the Dallas Festival of Ideas. Free.

April 7: Meet still more authors at the North Texas Book Festival in the Patterson-Appleton Art Center, 400 E. Hickory St., in Denton. Free to the public.

April 20-21: North Texas Teen Book Festival in the Irving Convention Center, 500 Las Colinas Blvd. W., Irving. So far, it’s registered dozens of middle-grade and young-adult authors. Panels, book sales, signings, and more. Free. On-site parking available for $8, or take DART to the convention center stop.

April 30- May 6: Writefest is a weeklong, megafestival collaboration of the Houston Writers Guild and Writespace Houston. Included are literary agents, acquisition editors from traditional publishers, panels, workshops, and a keynote address by mega author, Justin Cronin (The Passage trilogy). Tickets are available at the full event pass, 3-day pass, Friday only and Saturday only levels. Early bird pricing starts February 15. For details and locations, check out the site.

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Other good and worthy stuff: Writers In the Field, which hosts a fall weekend of hands-on experience for writers with stuff like herbs, historical artifacts, potions, weapons, and more would love for you to buy a gift ticket for a local writer who might not otherwise be able to attend. Buy a $45 weekend pass at the WITF site using the promo code GIFT, and receive (besides a warm, fuzzy feeling and possible tax deduction) a real-time conversation about your own work in progress from author/instructor Tex Thompson. Give, send 5,000 words of your writing (any genre or format, including outline, synopsis, query or whatever) to tex@thetexfiles.com. See the WITF site for details.

A Texas literary perspective on late, crazy year of 2017

Hallowed writers thronged North Texas venues, a beloved writing haven found its forever home, and book festivals abounded during 2017. To commemorate those brighter points in a wild and crazy year, I’ve compiled excerpts of favorite posts from the first half of this year. Tomorrow -- stay tuned for the second half.

1/20/17: Writing tips from a quartet of Texas greats

Considering how many books, magazine articles, television scripts they’ve written, listeners at the recent Authors LIVE! “Four Great Texas Writers” program featuring Texas writers H.W. Brands, S.C. Gwynne, Stephen Harrigan and Lawrence Wright understandably wondered how the foursome kept track of everything. What ultra-sophisticated program did they use? And by the way, can it help the rest of us as well?

For some, the answer is something as simple as . . . notecards.

OK, Brands admitted that after decades of teaching, he knows enough about most of his subjects (presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Reagan and Eisenhower, General Douglas McArthur, et al) to keep many of his notes in an even more low-tech system – his brain.

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2/7/17 Writer’s Garret back and better than ever 

Dallas literary institution, the Writer’s Garret, welcomed a standing-room crowd to its new quarters at Metropolitan Press, 1250 Majesty Dr., with an open house, readings, and discounts on new classes. The Garret’s new space at Metropolitan Press includes office, reception, and supply space, as well as a common room where the open house was help, and other spaces shared with Metropolitan Press’s other tenants. In addition to printing services, Metropolitan Press provides office space for a number of nonprofit organizations, and a rotating gallery of work by local artists. 

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2/21/17 Barnstorming small libraries with Texas Writes 

There were maybe a dozen of us along the sides of the long tables at Lindale’s Lillie Russell Memorial Library, with eager pens and notebooks at the ready. There were two of them on the other side of the tables – Jeramey Kraatz (author of The Cloaked Society trilogy and the upcoming Space Runners series) and Liz Garton Scanlon (author of Caldecott Honor book All the World, as well as Bob, not Bob!, A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes, and more). Make that three, counting Jo Virgil, in Lindale to represent Texas Writes, a program of The Writers’ League of Texas that brings accomplished authors to rural Texas libraries for a series of free presentations and discussions. 

Kraatz writes middle grade fiction and Scanlon writes picture books, but in many ways their discussions have broader implications for all genres. Starting with that impetus for all stories, conflict. Or as Kraatz terms it, “Trouble Talk.” 

No matter how much we try to avoid it in our lives, “trouble is interesting in story,” Kraatz told our audience. Conflict is a way to guide readers through a story. And for writers, it provides a means for working through a project when we’re stuck, and as a key to self-assessing our writing. 

“How do you look at your writing objectively? How do you tell if it’s working?” One way to answer both questions is to ask: “how is the overall conflict of the story being addressed in this particular section.”

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3/7/17 North Texas Teen Book Festival: laughing at what scares us 

It was billed as a middle-grade panel entitled Guys Read: Terrifying Tales. But the crowd packing into the auditorium at Saturday’s North Texas Teen Book Festival boasted plenty of female attendees, and plenty more obviously older than the term “middle-grade reader” (generally, 8-12 year-olds) would indicate.  

Even I, significantly past the age of middle grade readers, recognized the major-name panelist – R.L. Stine, author of the long-running Goosebumps series of kid-version horror that has been sending shivers up the spines of young readers for 25 years. He was joined by fellow horror writer Adam Gidwitz and moderator Jon Scieszka (rhymes with “Fresca). 

Gidwitz’s writings include both a Star Wars book and fractured versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. His latest, The Inquisitor’s Tale, features three kids on a quest, facing enemies such as a dragon whose plentiful farts are not only smelly but deadly, and aided by dog, “recently brought back from the dead,” its jaws clenched around a Newbery Honor award, one of the accolades given by the American Library Association for outstanding children’s literature.  

Stine insisted that he was too shy as a youngster to interact with others, so he dragged a typewriter into his room and spent all his time writing. “My mother stood outside the door and told me to go out and play. Good thing I didn’t listen to her.” 

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5/9/17 Tragedy + Time = Comedy: The essential Stephanie Klein 

How had I lived so long and gone to so many writing conferences without running into blogger/memoirist/TV script writer Stephanie Klein, the petite New Yorker with a head of wild copper-colored curls who was the keynote speaker at the 2017 DFW Writers Conference in Dallas.

The popularity of her original blog, Greek Tragedy, focused on life after her divorce. Its popularity gained her the title “Internet Queen of Manhattan,” and led to the publication of her first book, Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir, about moving on after divorce. 

So, how does a magna cum laude graduate of Barnard College, who married the “mensch-next door” move on after her perfect marriage came to a bitter end? Wildly. Detailed on her blog with the bone-deep honesty that she recommends for memoirists. Well, that and what she called “the observational stuff. . . what the artist notices that makes the good story. Not the expected, not the cliché."