Sing for Me (42 page)

Getting to the future takes a while. From 1996 to now, I encountered people like Fred Shafer, whose brilliant teaching inspired me within the context of one of the best workshops I’ve ever taken, set in the lovely house of the gracious writer Susan Gilbert McGuire. Fred, you taught me so much—and you continue to do so. I’m grateful.

Sara Crowe said, “There’s good stuff here, but maybe it’s not young adult?” And her insightful, gentle prodding encouraged me to try something new, which turned out to be the thing I’ve been wanting and needing to do all along. Thank you, Sara.

Friend and audiophile (and maker of keep-them-for-a-lifetime wedding mixes) Jeff Arena connected me with the incomparable David Whiteis, a writer, researcher, and investigative journalist living in Chicago, whose emails to me are worth a book in and of themselves. In case that doesn’t happen quickly enough, however, you can read David’s actual books,
Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories
and
Southern Soul-Blues
, or check out any of David’s articles and reviews in the
Chicago Reader
,
Chicago Tribune
, or
DownBeat
and
JazzTimes
magazines, among others, or delve into his liner notes for numerous blues and jazz albums and CDs. David, you rock (to mix genres).

In addition to thanking David for his dense, compelling, and illuminating emails (and his patience with my many questions), I would like to thank these authors for writing the following books that so helped me in my research for
Sing for Me
:

William Howland Kenney,
Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904–1930
; Sandor Demlinger and John Steiner,
Destination Chicago Jazz
; Dempsey J. Travis,
An Autobiography of Black Jazz
; Chad Heap,
Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940
; Anita O’Day with George Eells,
High Times, Hard Times
. It probably goes without saying, but these folks know their stuff, and any factual errors are my own.

My cousin Sharon Wiens McAllister Willett answered my questions and shared family photographs as I wrote my way deeper in. While this fictional story and its people are very different from your memories, Sharon, I am so grateful to have received your generous perspective on the past.

Amy Simpson, Helen Lee, Keri Wyatt Kent, Jennifer Grant, Caryn Dahlstrand Rivadeneira, Tracey Truhlar Bianchi, Anita Lustrea, Arloa Sutter, Melinda Correa Schmidt, Suanne Ashcroft Camfield, Angie Cramer Weszley, Shayne Moore, and Margaret Philbrick: you have cheered and prayed me forward on so many levels, in so many ways. Thank you.

Carmela Martino, you are a writing companion I can’t imagine working without. Thank you for being so present in the words.

Tim, Sherrie, and Temma Lowly, your family has been present with me from before the first word, and inspiring me to the end. I’m so glad we’re friends, making stuff together, in it for the long haul, finding our way.

Thank you, Joni Klein and Jan DeVries, Amy and Geoff
Baker, Candy and Bill Crawford, and Meg Fensholt and Kirk Anderson, for being the village that it takes. I am grateful we share Zip Codes, and meals, and conversations, and memories. I am grateful we share.

Cheryl Hollatz-Wisely, you are the best reader, friend, and all-around life coach a girl could have had since she was a baby girl. Literally. Thank you for whisking me away when the deadline loomed. Thank you for the first (possibly last) facial I ever had. Thank you for hanging in there with me for half a century. I pray for decades to come, linking arms with you.

Randi and Mark Woodworth, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have helped my family and me weather storms. Grace abides in you, and you in grace.

“Tell me another story,” I’d say to my father, as we sat around the table after dinner. And he would. “Tell me about the National Tea,” I’d say, and he’d tell about that. Austin, Chicago, the Stockyards, the farm in Wisconsin—he’d tell me about these places, too, and his escapades in them in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, shared with friends who became as real to me as my own. I am so grateful to you, Dad, for giving me the great gift of your stories. You had such a voice; you still do, I know.

My mother and father raised me in music. They filled our home with it; they filled churches, and classrooms, and cars, and if there was lack, they took me to concerts and recitals where there was more. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me not just to hear but to listen, and listen deeply.

Magdalena and Teo, my dearest ones, thank you for understanding that I am a mom and a writer, too. Truth be told, I’m not sure I would still be a writer if I hadn’t also become a mom to you two. You both inspire me every day to keep the work
alive, to do my best (even when my best is broken). You have taught me that time is fleeting and precious, and love is powerful and expansive. You have brought me out of myself and taught me about sacrifice, and when I’m not with you, then I want to be doing something you’d be proud of. I love you, Magdalena and Teo. Thank you for that fact, most of all.

Greg, you know better than anyone else in the world who I am and what I do and why I do it. You have walked with me through it all. I will never, ever be able to thank you fully for being my husband, comrade, soul mate, watchman, except by learning, every day, how to better walk with you. Thank you, Greg Halvorsen Schreck, for taking my name as your own, and for giving me yours. Now, let’s go play some Ping-Pong.

A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN HALVORSEN SCHRECK

1. Who or what inspired you to write
Sing for Me
?

I was originally inspired by the stories my dad told me about growing up as the child of Danish immigrant parents in Chicago during the early part of the twentieth century. My love for music inspired me, too.

2. You are not only an author but also a teacher of writing and literature. How does this, accompanied with your educational background in English and creative writing, influence your writing and storytelling process?

What doesn’t influence my writing and storytelling process? Maybe that’s more the question. I clean my house, for example; I get down on my knees and scrub the floor. Because I do that work, I’m better able to write about Rose’s experience in
Sing for Me
. Washing the floor is a creative act that inspires and contributes to my storytelling process. I honestly believe this. In fact, I’ve made a recent resolution to embrace this more unified way of looking at experience. Increasingly, I want to break down the divisions between work and play, between productivity (of a certain nature) and creativity (of a certain nature). Doing so sure makes washing the floor a happier time.

So back to the original question about my teaching and studying literature and writing: as with cleaning the house, my time in academia has absolutely influenced and contributed to my storytelling process. I’ve spent so much joyful, challenging time reading and reflecting actively and deeply on all kinds of writing. Whether the work is traditionally published or that of my students, I learn an immense amount about writing, story-making,
life
from so much of what I read. Cliché as this may sound, I never stop learning. It’s a
gift really, and like cleaning the floor, teaching and studying writing and literature feeds a single fire.

3. Who is your favorite character? Why?

I’ve heard other writers say this, and I’ll concur: I simply can’t answer this question. If I were to try, it would be a bit like my saying that I favor my daughter over my son, or my son over my daughter. The truth is my children are very different people, and I love them equally. This goes for my characters, too. As I write my way forward in a book, I get to know the people who populate the pages; I enter into their lives, hearts, and minds, and they enter into mine. The more time I spend with them, the more I come to care for them in all their complexity, and this goes for the more “minor” characters, too. In the end, I find myself thinking about each and every character:
Oh, you have such a story to tell, too. I want to write your story! Tell me. I’m listening.

4. A large portion of
Sing for Me
was written during your Metra train commutes to Chicago for work, along with various other nooks and crannies in the city’s centers. Describe your favorite writing location or room.

I read Virginia Woolf’s
A Room of One’s Own
at a formative age. I had wonderful teachers and read wonderful writers who said things like:
A window works best for me at this level in my writing room, and I make a practice of handwriting my first drafts in pencil on lined paper always, and I keep my desk bare except for my paper and pencil and the coffee I made the night before and put into a thermos because I only write in the morning hours, starting before dawn so that I enter the page in a kind of dream state.
I thought that kind of practice was wonderful way back when, when I first read and heard such statements. For years, I tried to emulate them.

Then I had kids.

And then the basement room where I worked in our current house flooded and became unusable as a writing space.

And then I took an extended freelance job that had me commuting regularly.

Luckily, at some point, I also read the amazing poet Lucille Clifton, who said, “The best conditions for me to write poetry are at the kitchen table, one kid’s got the measles, another two kids are smacking each other. You know, life is going on around me.”

I found the essence of Lucille Clifton’s statement both convicting and liberating. Never mind the ideal scenario, I needed to get the work done, and I could and would find a way. Look at Lucille Clifton. She did.

Thus, writing on the train, where every morning and evening (if possible) I’d alight on one of my two favorite perches: an upper seat by the window at the back of the blessed quiet car, or a lower level seat by the window at the back of the blessed quiet car. I loved (and still love) writing on a train, the miles rolling by beneath me. I think it helps me with things like pacing and plot—all that momentum and motion I’m feeling in my body get carried over onto the page.

I also love the Silent Reading Room in the Wheaton Public Library; my kitchen table; my couch, especially if it’s winter and there’s a fire in the fireplace; my son’s bedroom, because the WiFi’s best there; and a particular friend’s third-floor upstairs’ study, where I did a fair portion of solid revision over the course of a week. Cafés, not so much anymore. The music. The noise. I drink too much coffee and then I can’t focus, and then I smell like coffee for far too long after. But most any other place: give me a quiet place and I’ll do my best to get the work done.

By the way, Lucille Clifton also said this: “Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”

Amen.

5. This novel is steeped in historic detail of Depression-era Chicago. What was your research process like?

With his stories, my father gave me an incredible understanding of Depression-era Chicago—an understanding that became so much a part of me at an early age that I almost felt it was my history, too. But in addition, I did research by reading a lot of books—nonfiction and fiction—about Chicago, the Depression, jazz, the African American experience, and the immigrant experience. (In fact, two of my areas of study for my doctoral exams were literature of the immigrant experience and African American women writers.) I interviewed journalists who write about the Chicago jazz and blues scene. I listened to the music that I included in the novel (such a pleasure). Watched movies made during that time or set in that time, and other people’s very old home movies from the 1930s, which, God bless them, they’d posted on YouTube. I also explored historically focused websites and, yes, Facebook groups—you’d be amazed at how much I got out of one particular website that was completely devoted to antique postcards.

6. What would you describe as the main theme(s) in
Sing for Me
?

This is what I believe about theme, and because I can’t say it any better than Flannery O’Connor, I’ll let her say it for me:

I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction. When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.

(Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories,”
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
[New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969], 96.)

7. What do you want readers to experience or take away from this novel?

Hope, in spite of, because of.

8. This story, or at least a version of it, has been on your heart since 1996. Though likely different from Rose’s factors and risks in pursuing her dream, what factors prolonged your completing this novel?

I couldn’t get the words right. Really. I tried many different times and ways to write this book, but I just couldn’t get the words right. Or the characters and plot (especially the plot).

Also, other stories possessed me, and I felt called to tell those stories, too. “Write where the pressure is,” the great writer Larry Woiwode once said to me, and the pressure was with those stories in those seasons.