Tag / Silver Sparrow

by Michael

Book Giveaway and Interview with Tayari Jones

I am grateful to have Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow, for an interview.  If you’re interested in getting a free copy of the novel, those instructions are below.  I’ve been following this writing professor’s blog for a few years, learning about the writing life, reading her critical analysis of events, and enjoying how she presents publishing and life as a woman of color.  I’m a student and fan.  I think you should be too, which is why I’m commending Silver Sparrow.

I think you should go buy this novel from the closest bookstore or rent it from you local public library.  I’ve made several recommendations like these in the author’s interviews, suggestions I hope you’re considering.

Here’s the interview:

MW: Congratulations on the multiple-weeks tour promoting Silver Sparrow.  How are you holding up during your book tour?

TJ: I’m holding up, but I have to say that I am tired. 40 cities is a lot of traveling, but I love connecting with readers to actually talk. It’s really inspiring.

MW: You had an interesting and maybe horrifying experience with the title.  Will you mention how you came to it?

TJ: Well, the short version is that my original title, SILVER GIRL, was already in use.  Another book with the very same title was just published. I had about a week to come up with a new title.  Everyone in my life jumped in.  I was just cleaning out emails and found some potential titles from brainstorming sessions.  It’s funny, but it wasn’t funny at the time.  And then a friend mentioned the hymn, “His Eye Is On The Sparrow,” and I knew that I had found my title.  It was a real blessing.  A gift.

MW: Your novels detail girlhood, picture femininity, and in my wife’s words describing Leaving Atlanta, “take me back to my childhood.”  How do you continually offer such real, honest, strong, brilliant characters?  How do you replenish yourself to keep seeing women for who they are rather than what’s often popular and visible if that makes sense?

TJ: First off, thank you to your wife for that compliment because that really was my goal with Leaving Atlanta–to remind people what it was like to grow up in the 1970s, to record our history.  To make a record that we were there.  I think the key to writing solid characters is to be a loving but honest observer.  When I write I think of real people, not people I have seen on TV or in movies–or even other books.  I want to make close replicas of actual human beings.  I don’t want to make a replica of a replica, getting further and further away from real and you can see how looking the way society wants you to look is like having a part-time job. I think we really squander our resources chasing down that ideal–trying to be show ponies.  But at the same time, we deserve the right to enjoy our bodies, our faces, our hair.  I wrestle a lot with keeping balance.

MW: You dedicate the book to your parents.  If this isn’t too personal–and I can’t recall whether you’ve blogged about this–how did your father respond to the story?

TJ: My dad emailed yesterday saying that he loved the book but he thought that James Witherspoon got off too easy.  My dad is my biggest cheerleader.  He is proud of me, not just for the text of the book, but for being brave enough to go my own way.  I feel like I should say, for the record that he’s not a bigamist!

MW: The women in this novel seek love.  They give it and seek it.  The ways the daughters sought their father’s love jumped out to me.  How was it writing two daughters with such competitive experiences?

TJ: Everyone in the novel is seeking love.  This is a book about how far people will go to keep their families in tact.  Even James, the bigamist.  Everyone in this book makes bad decisions for the right reasons.  The key to writing it was not to take sides–to write with as much affection for Laverne, the lawfully wedded wife as for Gwen the mistress “wife.”  The same goes for the daughters.  Everyone wants to be loved.  You can’t blame them for that.

MW: Are there any intersections between your life as writer and as professor?

TJ: I teach creative writing, so I feel like I am helping shape the literature of tomorrow.  I love watching a young writer grow.  It’s really inspiring.

MW: Among the many entertaining things about this story was the use of lies and the movement toward truth.  I imagine writing a story cloaked in deception was fun and challenging.  Any reflections on that?

TJ: There was so much pain in this story and I had to really keep my eyes open as I wrote it.  The stakes were so high for all the characters that none of them could compromise, and as a result, everyone was compromised.  I didn’t take pleasure in watching the lies unravel.  I feel really attached to my characters.  I knew that at least one of the characters would lose everything and everyone they loved.

But I think that the pleasure in this story comes in the pleasure of reading a difficult story on a difficult topic.  There is a sort of joy that comes from facing the truth, and looking it in the face.

MW: If you had to keep one of your characters with you on your book tour, who would it be and why?

TJ: I would chose Dana’s running buddy Ronalda. I like that girl.  She’s funny and she knows how to keep a cool head.

MW: How can readers keep in touch with you, learn about other works in progress when they come, and support the growing reception ofSilver Sparrow?

TJ: I would love for folks to come out and say hello to me when I’m on book tour. You can see my whole schedule here http://www.tayarijones.com/appearances.

If you’d like to enter my contest for a free autographed copy of Silver Sparrow, leave a comment with a book title and the author’s name that you recently enjoyed or one that simply stays with you.  I’d love to know what about the work stuck with or struck you, though that’s not required for the randomly selected winner to be chosen.  Post the comment by midnight, CST, June 13, 2011.

by Michael

Personal Retreats, pt. 3

What do you do during a retreat?  How do you attend to matters of the heart or the mind or the spirit?  I have a couple suggestions, again pulling from my own and from much smarter and more spiritually enriched friends from faith.

  1. Sleep.  This is basic, but it takes on new meaning when you’ve spent a year or more having the normal rhythm of your sleep being turned up and down and shaken violently by a sweet cute child who knows nothing about sleeping habits.  You can’t really hear God or grow in depth and character if you’re not taking care of yourself.  That’s the point.  Sleep is indispensable to good health.  My spiritual director, who I quote when I talk about these types of things, once said to me something like, “If you’re not dreaming, you’re not sleeping well.  In order to dream, you need to rest.”  I left that monthly session back then–and not that this was the only point–knowing that some of my inability to dream, to see, to be inspired is only tied to my need for rest and nothing else.
  2. Read poetry.  G.K. Chesterton said, “The greatest of poems is an inventory” (Orthodoxy).  If you’re spending time with your God and trying to deepen that friendship, poetry is a good way to tap into the real humanness represented in poetry.  Poems say things we can’t.  Writers help connect us to us.  The Bible’s poetical books are a great gift (e.g., Job or Psalms).  I’d include in this suggestion other spiritual readings.  This time, over my weekend, I read a few short stories from Gumbo and Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor.  I also picked up a couple helpful books by Richard Rohr and the latest novel by my friend through the net, Tayari Jones.
  3. Ride a train.  You may think I’m kidding, but a long train route is incredibly centering.  It slows you down.  It allows you to see parts of a town or country that you’d ordinarily pass by.  It’s calming.  Except, of course, when you’re sitting next to a man for 40 hours who knows the intricacies of the Kennedy assassination and has to tell you about it, along with how he is a direct descendant of Moses and other unique parts of his life story.
  4. Sit and do nothing.  Solitude is the practice of doing nothing.  Not thinking or reading or praying or meditating or waiting or studying.  Solitude is contemplation.  It is listening.  It’s hard to do solitude because we all are used to and comfortable with doing.  Henri Nouwen wrote that our lives become absurd, and he said that that word, absurd, was from the Latin and meant deaf.  He said that the discipline, the repetitive act, of solitude is one of the most powerful ways to combat that deafness, which is an absurd life without hearing God.  Try this for a minute and then two and then three.  When you can sit and do nothing other than listen for the voice of God, you’re transforming.
  5. Watch something beautiful.  This could be you watching and listening to a jazz performance.  It might be you listening to a street performer or sitting on a bench across from a tree waving in the wind.  It may be a visit to a garden.  Our days are filled with many things, but I’m sure we all could use more beauty in our schedules.  Use a retreat–again, folks, this could look like a walk around your office building during the lunch hour–to see beauty in the midst of your life.  You’re not avoiding the ugly.  You’re noticing something else.  And that enlarges you inside.
  6. Spend time doing those other things.  Other gestures that you could add into a retreat–or form an entire retreat around for that matter–include reading a single chapter of scripture, praying through a number of ancient prayers from your religious tradition, or fasting from food.
  7. Plan to come back to “someones”.  Retreats are only effective when you plan to return to people.  Even further, they’re effective when you look to return to others in order to live differently, live like you’ve heard something fresh.  And this isn’t just for pastors, folks.  It’s for parents or significant others or students or teachers.  You insert the next one.  Times away are good and useful and enriching not because we focus on ourselves but because we get to incorporate what we get, if we get something, into our relationships, communities, jobs, and lives.
by Michael

Links to Things

Take a look at some of the things I’ve appreciated lately.

  • Penguin has developed an online community called “Book Country” for the purpose of developing community among unpublished authors, providing quality feedback on manuscripts, and moving toward publication, including self-publishing.
  • Tayari Jones mentioned the other day that Rachel Lloyd has published her memoir, Girls Like Us, and I’ve linked to Girls Educational & Mentoring Services which Ms. Lloyd founded.
  • Speaking of Tayari Jones, please watch her website or blog because her third novel, Silver Sparrow, is due next month.
  • Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will be speaking on “African American Lives: Genealogy, Genetics, and Black History” at Rockefeller Chapel today if you’re in the area.