jonathan odell talks about race, the importance of stories and “the healing”

Every once in a while, a character stays with you long after you’ve finished the book. Polly Shine, in Jonathan Odell’s beautiful historical novel, The Healing, is one of those characters.

A slave bought by a plantation owner for her supposed healing powers, Polly is a force to be reckoned with. Strong-willed and compassionate, she sets off a chain of events that still resonates a generation later. Odell’s story is rich and empowering, and his writing is stunning. The man has definitely got the gift.

I loved everything about The Healing – the story, the characters, the writing. You explain it in A Note to the Reader at the end of the book – which was fascinating – but can you talk a little about what inspired you to write this?

While doing research for my first novel, The View from Delphi, which included interviewing hundreds of older black Mississippians, I kept hearing stories about the old-timey midwife and how crucial she was to the community. People held her memory in great reverence. I had the occasion to interview the first black mayor or Laurel, Mississippi, for a newspaper article. I asked him what in his life was he the proudest of. I expected him to talk about the racism he had overcome, the threats to his life, his struggle to get an education. He thought for a moment and said, “I was one of Miss Kate’s babies.” Meaning, the woman who midwifed his mother and had “caught” him. These women were saints in their communities.

Secondly, while doing research on black midwives, I discovered that my great-grand mother was a midwife, and was responsible for the death of her daughter — my father’s mother — through a botched abortion. My dad did not learn about this until he was in his 70’s. He had been raised by his grandmother midwife, but never knew about the hand she played in his mother’s death. This intrigued me. What was it like for that woman to raise the child of the woman she was responsible for killing?

You were born in Mississippi, where black people were being lynched and the soon-to-be KKK’s Imperial Wizard was working as a respected businessman. This was just how it was. How did you rise above this and when did you realize this was not okay?

I used to sell books door-to-door in college. I did it as a way of overcoming my shyness and a tendency to stutter. The sales company would send students to live on the other side of the country to make money or to starve. One of the publications they gave me to sell was the Ebony Pictorial History of Black America. This was in 1971 and it was the first complete history of African Americans to be mass marketed. That summer, in the face of threats from the local Klan, I asked over 1000 black families to allow me into their homes to give my sales pitch. I want to be clear.  I did this for money, not from a sense of social justice. But something I had not bargained for happened to me.

So there I was, a Mississippi white boy, gathering up the whole family into the living room, showing them this amazing set of books, with stories not just of black athletes and musicians, but of generals and war heroes, scientists and doctors and politicians, inventors and business tycoons. What happened in those moments not only changed their lives, but it changed mine. The kids’ reactions, as well as the parents, was pure awe and wonderment. They had never heard of these people before. At first, I thought, “Well how illiterate! They don’t even know their own history!”

But then it hit me. Their history had been a victim to my history. These stories of heroism couldn’t exist in the same book as my stories of white superiority. I understood that they as well as I had been wounded by a one-sided, white-washed story. I understood to some degree, that the story I believe about myself determines not only the way I see myself, but the way I see others, the way I see the world. Those kids were deprived of their story to keep them invisible, to keep my story safe. In those moments of wonder, I actually “saw” them for the first time, and I remember feeling what now I can only describe as a kind of grief, grieving the cost to our souls for having been sold a false narrative, a false sense of self. I learned that the repression of story can scar the soul. I learned that if you want to destroy a people, destroy their story. If you want to empower a people, give them the undisguised truth of their common story.

I adore Polly Shine, the title character, who is one of the most empowering literary heroines ever. Is she based on a real person? Are any of the other characters based on people you actually knew?

Several characters were based on historical figures who lived in the era in which the book takes place. But the inspiration for Polly Shine was Mrs. Willie Turner, a midwife from Midnight, Mississippi. She was 92 when I interviewed her in 2002.

I can still hear her advice to me. “Jonathan, don’t forget God, ’cause He is the Head of the Heaven. In your work with that book, put God in front and you’ll make it. That’s what I did and I done made it to 90 years old.”

In fact, she made it to 99, and I’m sure God was in front all the way.

Before I left, I asked her what it had meant to her to be a midwife. She looked out of her window, and succinctly gave me the theme for my novel. She said, “I caught 2,063 babies in this county alone and they all call me Mother.” The she said,  “And you know, they everyone still my child.”

What was it about midwives that was so interesting to you?             

I was raised with the myth that “granny” midwives were dirty, ignorant and superstitious. I was shocked, and then later angered, to find out that I was the victim of a campaign orchestrated by state legislatures and the medical establishment beginning in the 1930’s to discredit the midwife. I was dumbfounded when I read in the American Journal of Public Health that the infant mortality rates among the midwives were half that of the white doctors who replaced them. These women were culturally, psychologically and spiritually in tune with the patient and the community, in a way an outsider could never be. Their practices are being resurrected by birthing professionals today.  Many of the herbs are now packaged and sold by pharmaceutical companies. When I discovered this, I knew I needed to investigate this story before it was forgotten. I had hit upon a narrative of heroism that was not dependent upon white initiative, pity or benevolence. It stood on its own.

When I delved into the history of the black Southern midwife, I found a thread that led all the way back to Africa, before the slave trade. And later, the traditions of midwifery sustained the community during the grim days of slavery and Jim Crow. It was also a source of pride and identity through generations of African Americans, before being supplanted by the white medical establishment.             

Kirkus Reviews mistakenly referred to you as an African-American writer, and many friends of mine who have read The Healing were convinced you were female! That says so much about the authenticity of the book. How did you so deeply and respectfully get into the heads of these characters to make readers believe you must be one of them? Empathy? Research? Both?

I’ve tried to create leading characters that were male and white but it just didn’t work. They may be interesting, but there isn’t that spark of life required for a truly memorable hero. They just don’t have the depth to carry the book.

But put me in the head of a woman, and I just can’t shut up.

When I was a child in Mississippi, my relatives ritually got together for reunions and holidays on my grandparents’ farm. As soon as they did their handshaking, hugs and kisses, the group segregated themselves. The men wandered to the front porch while the women went to the kitchen. The kids went to the barnyard to clobber each other in fierce corncob wars.

I was no fool. I hung out with the women.

I had tried sitting with my father amongst the men, but they did little to keep me entertained. They would only grunt a few words about the crops or the weather or their trucks. They didn’t look at each other when they talked nor call each other by name. They could have been talking to the mailbox out there on the road.

I found out soon enough that back in the kitchen was where the action was. The women excitedly pooled their information about the extended family — the births, sicknesses and deaths, triumphs and tragedies, stitching together the history of our people. They spiced it up with what non-relatives and the unchristian were up to. When they were all up to date, they drifted back in time and told their memories of growing up with each other. There were twelve children so everybody had a different slant. These were stories I had heard over and over but they never lost their magic because the affection with which they were told was always fresh and the urgency not to forget was always present. These women laughed until they cried and cried until they laughed. Such voices never die.

Today, when I sit down to write, those are the voices that come to me full force. They are still the company I prefer to keep. They are generous and opinionated and they understand that story is a magical thing, because it is both life-giving and life-preserving. I love these women. It would be impolite not to listen when they speak and disrespectful not to record it.

Writing across race is a little more difficult to explain.

At a point in my life, it became clear to me that I owed African Americans a tremendous debt. I still can’t begin to fathom what their mandatory silence cost them but I am beginning to understand how their invisibility was used to underwrite my sense of entitlement, to embellish my history. Their dignity and humanity was the price extracted so that a Mississippi child could feel superior.

I also became certain that I would never understand my own story, until I discovered theirs. We held the missing pieces to each other’s narrative, and for our stories to be complete, our stories would have to include each other. His story is my story and my story is his story.

When I decided to write a novel, I got some good advice from a black friend. “Don’t you dare write another To Kill a Mockingbird,” he said.

I was taken aback. Every “evolved” white person I know loves that book.

“Exactly,” he said. “Self-respecting black folks hate it. Whites get to feel sorry for the poor, ignorant, and powerless black man. I’d rather your book be about a black scoundrel, just as long as he’s a full-blooded and complex human being. We don’t need anymore victims for you white folks to feel sorry for.”

I went back home to Mississippi. I sought out blacks who could introduce me anew to myself through their stories. I did countless interviews. I read books, listened to oral histories, pored over slave narratives, spent hours in the cellars of county courthouses. I collected all the broken pieces that I could find.

If I had my way every straight man would be required to write a novel in the voice of a gay man. And every white person in the voice of a black. And vice versa. To create a full-blooded character, you will soon exhaust all of your convenient, preconceived ideas. You will end up having to grant a little of your own humanity to fill out the character. Eventually you will be forced to ask, “How would I respond in this situation?”

To me, that is a holy act of communion. You’re never the same when you give yourself over to a character that way.

There have been so many books and movies recently about slavery and civil rights – everything from The Help to Lincoln and even Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Django Unchained. Why do you think that is? Do you think it will help enlighten the shocking number of people who are still so prejudiced? It certainly didn’t do much to help Obama with the white men’s vote.

I’m fascinated with the ways in which my history has been shaped, unconsciously, by a black America, even though their story has been mostly silenced, or made subservient to the white story. That’s what I told African Americans when I asked to interview them. I told them the history that I was given as a white man was bogus, embellished to make me feel good about myself. That I had a strong suspicion that their stories helped make me who I am. I believed that by discovering the texture of their lives and history, I would better understand the gaps in my own. I believe that’s what white artists are attempting to do. We know there is a tear in the fabric of our narrative and it has to do with the physical closeness yet psychological distance we have with black folks in this country. Most of us are very clumsy when we go about trying to knit-up that tear, but we are called to heal that wound nevertheless.

What was the most surprising thing you learned while doing your research? Better yet, what was the most surprising thing you remembered about the reality of the community in which you grew up?

It’s tempting to see the South and its problems in simplistic terms. But when it comes to human relationships, it’s always more complex. I remember interviewing one very old, partially paralyzed white man who still lived in the antebellum plantation house, long after his family had lost the land. He was being spoon-fed by a black woman who must have been as ancient as he. Between sips, he told me that his great-great-great grandfather had cleared the Delta swamps with his own hands. And the great-great-great grandmother of the black woman was his ancestor’s slave, and the first of many generations of plantation cooks. Their relationship was obviously shaped by white supremacy and subjugation AND they obviously cared deeply for each other. Both things have to be true. Some things in the South, especially in regard to race, you just can’t explain.

What is the one message you hope readers will come away with?

I hope people will ask more of the “history” that is presented to them rather than swallowing it whole. When I asked a black man why so much of the heroics of African Americans were not represented in our history books, he said, “Looks to me like when God gave out possessions, he gave the black man the hoe and the white man the pencil.” American history is usually a narrative written with the pencils of white folks. I saw Lincoln and loved it, but I couldn’t help wonder what it would have looked like if Spike Lee had written and directed it. I imagine there would less scenes of “grateful colored folk” and more of heroic African Americans who were busy saving themselves, through business, politics, insurrection and academics – which was true of the black population in the Washington D.C. of that era.

What’s next for you?

I’m about 100 pages into my next novel. I’m spending time with a couple of fascinating characters, two boys this go-round, one a black kid with albinism and the other a white gay kid. They are thrown together through circumstance. It’s the story again of belonging, which, come to think of it, seems to be a prevalent theme in all my writing. In my case I guess it’s true what they say about writers, no matter how many books they write, they keep telling the same story. I suppose that’s the overarching mystery that keeps me going — where does one truly belong? I do know the name of the book. The Last Safe Place. Which again, I suppose, testifies to this search for belonging.

I’m also working on a book of essays with the working title, Growing Up As A Gay, Fundamentalist, Southern Baptist in Mississippi, or God, What Were You Thinking?