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The
Book Review Cafe
Interview by LISA
Lisa: What inspired ‘Without Wings?’ How would you describe this story?
Carole: I spent two summers as a volunteer instructor at the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh and “Without Wings” is the result of that experience. There were several very talented poets in the prison, some of whom were already receiving national recognition, and during my second year of teaching I made arrangements to write a story about them for The Pittsburgh Press Sunday Magazine.
The full text of this interview may be found at The Book Review Cafe.
One of
the poets I interviewed also did illustrations and at the
last minute the magazine editor decided he wanted to include
them. The only problem was that none of the men I interviewed
for the story were enrolled in my class and I didn’t have
any way of getting in contact with them. In order to get the
illustrations I had to make use of the prison grapevine, allowing
my home address to be passed from inmate to inmate. The surprising
thing was that nothing awful happened. Only one of the men
used my address. He sent me a love letter where he talked
about dreaming of my moon-shaped face staring down at him
from the corner of his cell. The letter’s quirkiness caught
my attention. Of all the sensuous ways a woman can imagine
having her face described, moon-shaped isn’t exactly one of
them.
In real
life I threw the letter away and never received another—that
was simply the end of it. But in the back of my mind I kept
wondering, what if someone in a vulnerable period of her life
received something like that and did respond?
I describe
“Without Wings” as the story of a woman who simply can’t gain
control of her own life, partly through her own inability
to act, partly through the circumstances around her. In the
beginning chapters of the novel I have her perform one truly
spontaneous act, one that keeps coming back to haunt her.
I wanted to use the idea of freedom and confinement that came
across so strongly in all of the stories and poems by prison
writers that I saw and look at parallels in our more everyday
lives, especially in terms of the restrictions we place on
ourselves and that others place on us.
The idea
of flight and its negative—the inability to escape—are key
to the novel. The title is intentionally contradictory suggesting
flight but in a way that shouldn’t be possible, the same reason
why the angels in the book are made of wood and stone.
Lisa:I
love the artwork on the front cover! Who is the artist who
did this beautiful work? Is it done in watercolor?
Carole:
I’m so glad you asked about the cover. The artist is Heather
Powell, President of the Pittsburgh Society of Artists, and
one of my former students. Although her first love is the
visual arts, Heather is also an extremely talented writer.
When I
first contacted her about possibly designing the cover, I
found that she was already working on a sculpture that included
a series of silk panels, all abstract images of flight. The
watercolor she did for the novel was a more realistic variation
of these. When she showed me the completed watercolor, I was
completely overwhelmed. Here was this place that for years
had existed nowhere but in my imagination suddenly right before
my eyes, looking exactly the way I always thought it would.
I’ve been taking the watercolor with me to signings and book
festivals and the response has been tremendous.
Anyone
interested in Heather Powell’s work can contact her at HPowell76@hotmail.com
Lisa:
Being a writing professor, do you find it hard to teach and
read other people’s stories, then try to find your own ideas?
Carole:
The only conflict I’ve ever experienced between teaching and
writing is the struggle to find time to do both. I love looking
at student work because it is fresh and original and completely
untamed. Trying to offer my students help certainly keeps
my own critical skills sharp. Like any writer, I’m influenced
by everything I read, whether its student work or a novel
by a Pulitzer prize author. And I find myself constantly looking
at everything on two levels—reading for enjoyment but also
looking at how stories are put together. But when it comes
to the moment when I actually sit down and do my own work,
I can honestly say I put all of that aside and simply write.
Lisa:
What kind of experience did you have teaching in a correctional
facility? Were these emotions taken and put into Rachel’s
feelings and emotions?
Carole:
Teaching in the prison was a very positive experience
even though there were a lot of underlying tensions there
at the time. It was an overcrowded facility with a guard shortage.
Some of my students told me they were tripled in cells that
were meant for two people, the extra cot taking up so much
space that it was impossible for all three of them to stand
up at one time. I was supposed to have a guard escort me to
my class, but because of the shortage, I had to walk across
the yard alone. It was like walking down a very crowded street
in the worst neighborhood in town.
Occasionally
someone would come up behind me and say something obscene.
Once I made it to the prison school, however, the atmosphere
couldn’t have been more different. The men in my class would
open doors for me and carry my books. It was clear that they
were lonely and wanted me to keep coming. They told me that
the school was the one place in the prison where they could
open up and show any kind of emotion—everywhere else they
had to put on a tough guy act. I was struck not only by how
supportive they were of each other, but how everyday some
of their conversations sounded—they would talk about missing
their families or some problem their kid was having in school.
A prison,
though, is a difficult place to make judgments about people.
When I went in for my orientation, I was warned about being
taken in by them, reminded that these were, after all, professional
con-men. As teachers we were never given information about
why they were there. That’s something I didn’t find out about
any of them until I started doing research for the magazine
story. There was one man in particular, a very talented poet
who had graduated from a prestigious school and had managed
to complete a masters degree while in prison. A local university
used him as a professor to teach credit courses to other inmates.
I kept looking at this intelligent, articulate, sometimes
very funny man wondering why he had to be there.
Then,
while doing background research in the newspaper library for
my story, I found out he had been convicted of killing his
former fiancee with an ax. That’s one of the problems Rachel
encounters both in the prison and in her home life—just who
she can believe in. She knows so little about these men who
start to have such a profound influence on her. And yet when
it comes down to it, she knows almost as little about her
own friends and family, the people she would say are closest
to her.
Despite
the seriousness of some of these issues, I chose to write
the novel from a more humorous approach, focusing on the quirks
and idiosyncrasies of all my characters. There’s a lot of
dark humor in prison writing—that’s one way of dealing with
a difficult situation.
One of
the writers I interviewed wrote a wonderful poem based on
a letter he received from his mother describing a luxury car
his family had just purchased. This thing was absolutely loaded
and had to be special ordered to get all the features they
wanted. The letter was telling her son, who at that point
had served about thirteen years of a life sentence, how unbearable
it was to have to wait six weeks for the new car. One of them
also showed me a poem written by an inmate from a different
prison that described the kinds of tests they have to take
to see if they are eligible for parole. One was a written
test where they actually have to respond true or false to
the statement “Sometimes I don’t tell the truth.”
I wanted
to focus on some of the dark humor when I wrote the magazine
article for the Pittsburgh Press, but the editor there discouraged
it, saying readers might be offended. He didn’t want to give
the impression that the local prison is a fun kind of place.
The novel gave me an opportunity to explore that side and
draw what I see as the most important parallel between prison
life and everyday life—the unexpected quirky side of human
nature.
Lisa:
What do family and friends think about your writing career?
Carole:
My family is sometimes perplexed, wondering why I want to
devote so much time to something that pays so little, but
overall are quite supportive. My husband, Eric, is extremely
encouraging and fortunately approaches my work with a sense
of humor. I write heavily from personal experience—situations
I’ve lived through, people I’ve encountered. And I’m a dreadful
eavesdropper. I love listening to conversations between people
I don’t know picking up some quirky comment they’ve made and
letting my imagination go from there.
I’m glad
Eric is so understanding. My fiction is full of details and
experiences we’ve shared but always in some twisted variation.
For him, especially, it’s full of the familiar presented in
unfamiliar ways. He once said reading my work is like putting
our life together in a food processor, mixing it all up, then
seeing what comes out on the other side.
Lisa:
What have others been saying about your novel ‘Without Wings?”
Carole:
I’ve been surprised how many readers have been able to relate
to Rachel, especially since she isn’t a typical hero. My favorite
description of the book came from another English professor.
He wrote, “Rachel is an intriguing character. In many ways
I, even as a male, was able to identify with her struggle
to be free, to reach the point at which we can look emphatically/mercifully
on those who—perhaps even unwittingly—try to chain us to themselves
or even to our own flaw-filled past and yet rise beyond them
on powerful wings of hope and faith. Rachel makes me think
of all the people I know (including me) who, on the outside,
seem to be functioning as “adults,” doing all the things grown-ups
are supposed to do, playing all the silly relational games
we’re supposed to play, and yet really being adolescents—in
heart and mind—always thinking in terms of ‘what will _____
think?’ or ‘I can’t do it without _________.” In a way, she
finally grows up—becomes a woman—and gets wings when she becomes
like a child. The whole world is spread out before her, just
waiting for her to explore. An in the end she is free to do
so on her own terms, trusting her own eyes, her own wings.”
Rachel
is full of insecurities that many of us feel but don’t really
like to acknowledge. I’ve had a lot of e-mails from people
telling me they know someone like her. Sometimes I wonder
if they are really talking about themselves.
Lisa:
What will you be working on next?
Carole:
I’ve already completed a second novel that I’ve shown to a
few people—it’s in a rest and incubation stage—and I expect
to complete a novella this summer called “The Paradise Ranch.”
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