Q&A with Lynn Stansbury

 

 

 

Lynn Stansbury is the author of the new novel in stories Not All Dead Together. Her other books include Crossing the Divide. She is also a physician.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Not All Dead Together?

 

A: I describe myself as “coming of age” in the Peace Corps in Guatemala in the Vietnam War era. Even as that was happening, part of it was writing stories, however puerile, trying to make sense of what I was seeing and feeling. 

 

As adolescent self-involvement gradually gave way to communal and political awareness, as I witnessed the subsequent decades of war and political turmoil and the personal heroism of people I knew and loved, I began to “get” what I owed them. And I knew that someday, somehow, I had to find a way to honor them in story. 

 

But first, they had to be safe, that what I wrote would not put their lives at any additional risk.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen?

 

A: The Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program, then available at their Washington, D.C. site—my beloved “night school for aspiring writers”—had two rules: only new work and preferably short-story format—a tough gig for an instinctive novelist with eight full-length novels in her own personal slush pile.

 

But over my time at Hopkins, the building blocks of what became a novel-in-stories began to emerge. Not in any order, just assignment to assignment, as form and moment hit me. But I never had any doubt, as I wrote Chepa’s story, eventually titled “Not All Dead Together,” that it would be the keystone.

 

A phrase from Rigoberta Menchu’s (Nobel Peace Prize, 1992) I Rigoberta Menchu, it distills for me the tragedy of Rigoberta’s people, the fictional Chepa and her people, the 1981 La Libertad massacre, and the classic American response, when things get hairy, to walk away.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between your characters Gray and Aleta?

A: They are each the sister the other’s never had. Aleta is the big sister, funny and strong, making sense when no one else does, there for you. And to whom, as time goes on, you know you owe your life. Gray is the adoring little sister, validating the older sister against a hostile world.

 

By mid-novel, they are beginning to balance: Gray will always be the little sister, but their strengths become more mutual as Gray matures.

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: The short answer is no, other than to check a date here and there. The research was internal, trying get around all six sides of that experience through fiction, stories, a stepwise process of trying to understand without frightening myself into trivializing or hiding from things, to figure out what was important, reach out with that to readers, build bridges to their perceptions.

 

Even now, thinking about that question, I have been startled at just how critical a refuge our particular Peace Corps group was for a cohort of otherwise carefully closeted gay men otherwise facing war and legalized oppression at “home.” (Stonewall was underway as I was returning to the US in June of 1969.)

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: Whatever one’s personal feelings about the current Latin American immigration crisis, we are all, Latino and gringo alike, reaping the whirlwind of 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the ongoing US conviction that Latin America is a US fiefdom, the concerns of its people inconsequential. (Two Nobel Laureates: Miguel-Angel Asturias and Mario Vargas Llosa, have said this better than I.)

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Working title Terra Nova, the long-hoped-for third volume of a mystery trilogy begun with The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, exploring Polynesian vs. Eurocentric concepts of justice and social responsibility.

 

Story arcs begun 30 years ago in Hawai’i and Samoa will, like my own now, move on to New Zealand, adding the chili oil issues of post-colonial aging, migration, racism, and acculturation to the pot. (All four of our grandchildren—two born Kiwis and two Fresh-Off-the-Aircraft Yanks—now live on the South Island.)

 

Given that two of the recurring characters are now newly-retired cops, something about New Zealand feral pig hunting must belong in there somewhere.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: For more about the origins and range of my fiction, I do have a website (https://www.lynnstansbury.com/).

 

Thursday evening (PDT) June 12, Not All Dead Together will be featured as an “In Conversation” book event at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company. I am immensely grateful for my interlocutor, Seattle poet (Transfiguration, Spartan Press) and educator Mark Petterson, an aware and thoughtful reader and presenter.

 

I would also like to plug The Baltimore Review (www.baltimorereview.org), for whom I have been a fiction reader/editor for 12 years. Still independent, still self-sustaining, still local, the BR has grown into a haven for submissions from writers all over the world, a supportive collegial community, and an important academic experience for creative writing interns. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb