Caroline McAlister is the author of the new children's picture book A Line Can Go Anywhere: The Brilliant, Resilient Life of Artist Ruth Asawa. McAlister's other books include Finding Narnia. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Q: What inspired you to write a picture book biography of the artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013)?
A: After writing about J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I wanted to write about a woman. I tried writing about Alice Paul, the Quaker suffragette, but it just didn't work. She was not a warm and fuzzy person and she tried to exclude African-American women from her big march.
I cut out Ruth Asawa's obituary from The New York Times and pinned it on my bulletin board. Growing up in Sacramento, California, I had seen her mermaid fountain at Ghirardelli Square.
I also taught units on the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in my writing classes at Guilford College. During the war, Guilford had welcomed Japanese American students released from the camps to attend college on a program sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee so this was history that was near and dear.
I fell in love with Ruth the more I read about her, and I was fascinated by Black Mountain College, which was about two and a half hours away from my house.
Finally, Ruth's story about the origin of her sculptures settled in my imagination; how she sat on the farm leveller and dragged her feet in the dirt making undulating patterns. I knew it would make a beautiful image for the opening of a picture book.
Q: How did you research Ruth Asawa’s life, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: When I began, the excellent biography Everything She Touched, by Marilyn Chase, was not yet published. These picture books come out so long after you have written them that it is hard to remember the process, but I think I began by reading the chapter about Ruth in Leap Before You Look by Helen Molesworth.
I read every interview I could find so I had primary resources and a sense of Ruth's voice. I dug through the archives of her papers at Stanford. I went to the exhibit of her sculptures at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City. I visited the grounds of the now defunct Black Mountain College and attended a "re-happening" there. I read primary and secondary sources about the prison camps.
Q: What do you think Jamie Green’s illustrations add to the book?
A: Jamie Green is of Japanese-American descent so they lend an authentic cultural perspective. They also did a beautiful job carrying out my metaphors with lines in a visual way. I love what they did with framing scenes with lines in the shapes of Ruth's sculptures. I also love the spread where they capture the two worlds Ruth moved between as a child.
Finally, I love the end pages which are a kind of visual pun blending the image of Ruth's wire sculptures and the wire surrounding the prison camps. The blue and brown palette they chose is very beautiful.
Q: The Booklist review of the book says, “This unblinking and timely look at racism is also an inspiring, thought-provoking story.” What do you think of that description?
A: I don't think I set out to write a book about racism or a book that was timely. I was just interested in everything about Ruth and in her creativity. Sometimes a project takes on a life of its own and moves in directions you don't anticipate.
I was moved by Ruth's descriptions of her father and the day he was arrested, how they ironed his shirt and fed him a piece of pie before saying goodbye and the fact that he had to leave his strawberry crop in the fields unpicked. It was just so stark.
I began my research long before Trump began rounding people up in unmarked vans and building a prison in the everglades. But it is my hope that people will feel the similarities between what happened then and what is happening now and will take action by writing or calling their legislators.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on two projects: a book about Quaker artist James Turrell, and a book about Lebanese American artist Etel Adnan. I am also always working on fictional picture books, which I have not been as successful at but enjoy trying to write.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm available for teaching at writing workshops or for talks at schools.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Caroline McAlister.
No comments:
Post a Comment