Q&A with Rae Cline

  

 

 

Rae Cline is the author of the new novel Precious Ugly. She also has written the story collection The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. She lives in New York City and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Precious Ugly, and how did you create your character Clementine?

 

A: Like Clementine and so many girls, my childhood was an exercise in survival. For many, I think, and certainly for me, surviving dysfunction as a child doesn’t feel like surviving dysfunction. It feels normal. It’s all you know. It takes a lifetime to unpack and process the surviving.

 

I knew things were off, not right, but I hadn’t the language for it and it would take me years to learn the language for it.

 

In those years, I trained as a teacher of literature and writing. I worked with children in public schools and also at-risk youth at Hoffman Homes and other programs where I saw children surviving similar circumstances.

 

Clementine may have begun as an exploration of my survival and finding my voice, but as Clementine continued to form, she took on something bigger. She speaks for the experiences of many girls.  

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Precious Ugly was in final editing with a completely different title and cover when a close friend and mentor, Richard Peabody, suggested Precious Ugly. This was a title I had considered earlier and had workshopped with others and then gone with something else.

 

But when Richard suggested Precious Ugly, something clicked for me and that was it. Precious Ugly. Much gratitude to my publisher and editor, Leland Cheuk, cover artist, Lex Covato, and cover designer, Gigi Little, for the last-minute title and cover changes.

 

The title, Precious Ugly, speaks to a few scenes through the novel in which Clementine views herself in this way, precious ugly, not only within her terrible family circumstances but also peer bullying.

 

And if I’m to be honest, this was how I saw myself growing up, too, an awkward girl surviving bullying at home and school and really having nowhere to turn for help.

 

Q: The writer Jordan Ritter Conn said of the book, “Gorgeous, brutal, and moving, Precious Ugly is a powerful testament to human resilience.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: As terrible as life can be, especially for vulnerable girls, I am astounded at the resilience of survivors.

 

Jordan’s words made me tear up when I first read them. He is a terrific writer. American Men is a must read for everyone. For Jordan to see the beauty in Clementine’s story, in spite of the brutality, and her resiliency in response to it is what I had hoped readers would feel.

 

Life can be a scary, unrelenting place, especially for girls and women, especially now, in this country, a socio-economic and socio-political horror show that the novel explores in a sort of proto-MAGA, Reagan-‘80s-era kind of way.

 

I’m reminded of Mary Shelley and the “sublime” about which she wrote in Frankenstein, a sort of chiaroscuro response to the beautiful and terrifying, like watching an avalanche at Mont Blanc.

 

This moment in our country’s history feels “sublime” to me through a paradoxical lens. I see the work of so many strong female voices and change makers in our country, now—Michelle Obama, Melinda French Gates, Oprah Winfrey, A.O.C—and I see these voices and leaders as forging a new path for women’s and civil  rights, taking back the conversations on domestic violence, reproductive rights, women’s healthcare and research, women’s policies and leadership.

 

We are on the proverbial cliff, it feels at times, a precipice, and the avalanche of change that I am hopeful for, the gender and diversity the current administration so desperately rails against, is poised to fall down upon them. It is both a beautiful and terrifying rush to imagine. And I’m here for it.

 

Jordan’s words, “testament to human resilience,” is how I read Clementine’s story, too. It is the story of those of us who have survived domestic violence and sexual violence. Those who have survived sex trafficking and yearning for that avalanche to finally drop from its precipice and blanket the cliff, once and for all.

 

If Clementine were on Capitol Hill, right now, she would be lobbying for safe reproductive healthcare for all, the full, transparent release of the Epstein files and restoration of DEI funding. And a change in educational leadership. Whoever thought Linda McMahon was a suitable secretary of education was on something.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had no idea how Precious Ugly would end when I started. I didn’t want to know how Precious Ugly would end. For me, the act of writing is a process of discovery. Discovery is an essential  point of the craft. I want to discover the characters and what the story communicates to them and me.

 

In my first writing workshop at Johns Hopkins, I was fortunate to study with Alice McDermott, arguably the master prosaist of our time. Her language is immaculate. She shared so many wisdoms with us on craft in that workshop, one of them being on the process of writing and letting discovery be the lead. “Follow the fun,” she said.

 

I wrote Precious Ugly over 14 years and I tried to follow that advice, follow the fun, which isn’t so easy when the story is so brutal, so I found the fun in the craft of it, the moments when, despite the horror, Clementine found humor and absurdity. This was my fun.

 

And when I could find that fun in the crafting of the story, it helped me not only process Clementine’s story but also my story and also the stories of so many girls I worked with over the years, the stories that still sometimes keep me up at night.

 

While writing Precious Ugly, I learned not only the craft of long form narrative but also what my voice wanted to be in long form narrative.

 

Writing Precious Ugly nearly killed me, more than once. It is the kind of narrative that forces you to reconcile the things you would rather pretend never happened and that for so many years you did pretend did not happen. The silence was easier than the reality.

 

Clementine deserved my absolute best that I could muster and when I first started the novel 14 years ago, I was not worthy of her story. So I worked diligently and studied diligently and read diligently, masterworks like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Beloved, and tried as hard as I could to deliver my best craft for Clementine.

 

Anything less than my best would be a failure for this 13-year-old girl who survived so much. It would be a failure for all the girls out there right now who are still surviving and all the women who are still surviving and the boys and the men and the non-binary still surviving. She speaks for so many and my voice needed to be worthy of them all.

 

Did I know how the novel would end before starting it? No. Have I made it worthy of her? I don’t know. But I know that I gave it my best in trying. In all this, I may not have known how the story would end when I started, but something tells me that Clementine did.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing my second novel about a small town with local lore come to life. It opens with the Heritage Day Parade and a scarecrow contest that turns terribly wrong.

 

I’m a big fan of Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson. Beloved and “The Lottery” are two favorite works. I love exploring small-town communities that so quickly turn themselves inside out, the townsfolk pitted against each other in extraordinary and magical ways that present as so mundane and normal.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am collaborating with the National Domestic Violence Hotline to spread awareness about domestic and sexual violence in the U.S. We’ve added the hotline to the final pages of the book and on the back cover.

 

I found myself in a women’s shelter at one point in my life and know first-hand the essential work that NDVH and women’s and children’s shelters do. If any readers are experiencing domestic violence or know someone who is experiencing domestic violence, call 1-800-799-SAFE or text “START” to 88788.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb