Bill Hillman is the author of the new book White Flight. His other books include The Old Neighborhood. He is a professor of English and Communications at East-West University in Chicago.
Q: What inspired you to write White Flight?
A: White Flight is a fictionalization of my mid-to-late teen years. It's heavily rooted in my experiences and my family, although it takes fictional leaps. It is also based on an incident that happened to me and some of my experiences living in New Orleans.
I basically wanted to take the craziness of those years in my life, exaggerate them here and there and turn them into an unforgettable journey through class, race, family, and the enduring human spirit.
Q: Your website describes The Old Neighborhood as a "Semi-Autobiographical novel written as a fictitious memoir..." Would you describe White Flight the same way, and how do you balance the autobiography with the fiction?
A: I feel like you should write what you know, but as my late-great friend Thom Jones (The Pugilist at Rest) said, If you don't want to fictionalize, "Then write an F-ing memoir!"
Fiction should be rooted in something real but leap off into the imagination, with intention, of course, and usually that intention should be to emphasize the message of the lived experience and not to sensationalize, though it's a fine line you have to balance when writing this type of literary fiction.
Q: The writer Irvine Welsh said of the novel, “A story as big hearted and quick witted as Chicago itself, White Flight is a searing, dynamic and authentic family saga.” What do you think of that description?
A: Irvine is my guru, he knows my writing and my characters better than me sometimes. He's brilliant mind, a true genius, and to have him say anything about me is an earth-shattering honor.
This is a perfect blurb, and the term “family saga” is an exact depiction of my writing and what I am doing with this trilogy of books; the final book will hopefully come out in a couple years.
This is a big, blue-collar family saga set in Chicago and I like to think of it as a second coming of the Studs Lonigan Trilogy almost exactly a century later.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Actually, I wanted to title it The Burbs, but Jerry Brennan at Tortoise Books convinced me to change it to White Flight. The family is experiencing that tail end of white family flight to the suburbs, which happened all over the United States.
Nowadays, it is a negative term for a lot of people, they associate it with redlining and with racists running away from changing neighborhoods in American cities.
But the family in White Flight (and in my own life) is mixed-race, as my two sisters are adopted from the Dominican Republic, and my own family was a big part of the negative forces in the Chicago neighborhood we left, Edgewater, where my brother was a gang leader and was actually in prison at the time we moved.
So this novel undermines and deconstructs the notion of White Flight, and, in essence, the suburbs reject the main character, Joe Walsh, and he ends up in horrific trouble. It is the classic tale of “you can take the kid out of the city but you can't take the city out of the kid.”
And clearly, when the Walshes of Edgewater arrive in LaGrange, Illinois, it is in essence the Beverly Hillbillies TV show, with major culture clashes—especially when the brother is released from prison and moves in with them.
There is also a lot of metaphor rooted in white birds: Joe's grandfather cuts a seagull free who had accidently mistaken Joe's fishing lure as a fish, and that metaphor is strung through both books. Later, a new white bird enters the book in New Orleans and new magic manifests.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm working on the third book, tentatively titled The Annihilation. It is a transgressive psychological thriller with professional boxing at its center as Joe Walsh attempts to win a World Title.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm also a bull runner and a few weeks ago I had an incredible run in a small village in Spain and my wife captured some incredible slow motion footage of it. It's pinned on my Facebook page. Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/bill.hillmann/
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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