Inspiring Voices (3)

Lorenzo Garcaterra –

Sleepers, A Safe Place

Sleepers is a story about four boys growing up in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where a juvenile prank goes horribly wrong, and they are sent to reform school. It is here that they are subject to cruel sexual and physical abuse by some of the Warders.

What attracted me to Sleepers in particular was how his fictionalisation of his characters through name changes absolves him of any legal responsibility. For all intents and purposes it appears that the book, although believably a true story, suddenly becomes a work of fiction and can be argued as such. As a result I have altered some of the names in my work also, not only to protect others, but in order to protect myself also.

A Safe Place is the prequel to Sleepers and tells the story of his childhood, growing up with a violent father who he discovers murdered his first wife.

Behind every powerful story is usually an equally powerful back-story. On An Isle Called Rotoroa  is my backstory.  Lorenzo Garcaterra is an accomplished writer, one I would very much like to emulate, in terms of the power of his story-telling.

Carcaterra, L. (1995) Sleepers New York, Ballantine Books

Inspiring voices (2)

A Child Called ‘It’, The Lost Boy, A Man Named Dave Autobiographical trilogy by Dave Pelzer

This trilogy tells the story of a boy who was, at the time, considered one of the top ten of the worst child abuse cases in U.S.A.., the second book detailing his rescue from his abusive mother into foster care, and the third detailing his transition into adulthood.

This is a chilling story. The first time I read it I was blown away by the incredible events of cruelty and abuse that took place in this boy’s life. But as I took a critical overview of the book and the writing itself, it helped me to focus deeper on my own writing, and what I want it to say.

I am not using Pelzer’s trilogy as a model for mine. My research into his writing left me with a feeling more of ‘how not to write mine’. Pelzer tends to overemphasise and can be at times melodramatic (in a story that undoubtedly is incredibly dramatic without the emphasis), can be overly sentimental in the telling of the story at times.

I have discovered over the years, the power of understatement, and the ‘showing’ of the story without having to always ‘tell’ so much, or without commentating too heavily about it. This is how I want to write my books.


Pelzer, D.  (2009)  My Story (trilogy)  London, Orion Publishers

Inspiring voices (1)

My trilogy was inspired by the responses I received to my portfolio in a non-fiction studio four years ago, and is an extension of that work, although far more in depth. In my collection of non-fiction stories I covered issues such as addiction, my sexuality, and the impact mental illness had on me, and my best friend.

I gave a copy to my then-psychiatrist, who was so impressed that he ordered fifteen copies, followed by more orders, for him to distribute to his patients as well as his entire team of mental health workers. Very quickly I began to receive requests from other corners. This was when I realised that my private sales were being spurred on by something more than the sympathetic charity of friends or family, because almost all had been to strangers.

I had a story. A story of trauma, addiction and mental collapse.  A story of all the indicators that he brought me there.  A story, of stories which I had struggled with in my head for many many years. But ultimately a story of recovery.  Confessional memoir writing is an enlightening experience - suddenly I was seeing answers to the many questions in my life, being answered by me on the page.

I began reading more, looking for inspiration from other writers. One writer in particular that made an impact to my approach is Mary Karr, author of The Liar’s Club – A Memoir by Mary Karr

The blurb on the back cover reads:

‘…Mary Karr grew up in a swampy East Texas refinery town at the epicentre of a family full of fierce, volatile attachments. To sort through dark household secrets she looks back through a child’s eyes - and shows us ‘a terrific family of liars and drunks…redeemed by a slow unearthing of truths’ in language reinvented with raw authenticity and brilliant energy…’

This book does not demand sympathy, and slides episodes of sexual abuse into the mix as though it is not the dominant story, just a piece of the puzzle.  It is an honest and inspiring read.




... The Liars’ Club, Karr’s 1995 memoir of her Gothic childhood in a swampy East Texas oil-refining town, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, sold half a million copies, and made its forty-year-old author, who was then an obscure poet, a literary celebrity. (The book takes its title from the motley collection of men with whom her father, an oilman, used to drink and tell tales.) Karr has been credited with, and often blamed for, the onslaught of confessional memoirs published during the late nineties. Though many of them matched The Liars’ Club for grotesque subject matter—the young Karr is raped, molested, and made to witness her mother’s monstrous nervous breakdown—few were as unsentimental, as lyrical, or as mordantly funny....
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5992/the-art-of-memoir-no-1-mary-karr


Karr, M. (1995) The Liars Club New York, Penguin Group

Creative Writing Practices – What kind of work is this book?

On an Isle Called Rotoroa, and indeed the complete trilogy of books that make up The Sound of Broken Voices is first and foremost a memoir.

Definition of memoir

noun     - a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources: in 1924 she published a short memoir of her husband

  - (memoirs) an autobiography or a written account of one’s memory of certain events or people...

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/memoir

 

This work falls under the postmodern banner, as a piece of Gay Literature, although this is due mainly to the fact that the narrator of the story is gay, not because it is a gay story. 

Gay literature has become a powerful voice in very recent years and is making a mark as a distinctive form of cultural expression in the world.  Historically, writers of gay literature have traditionally been shunned, and  rebuked.  They have been arrested, charged and convicted in obscenity trials around the world.  They have been labelled and protested about, as deviants and perverts.  They have been  forced to write in coded fashions.   Gay literature for many years, in many corners of the world, has been censored, banned, burned or destroyed, and punishable by prison, or incarceration in mental hospitals.

     It is theoretically correct to look at gay literature under the wider umbrella of post-colonialism, in the context that homosexuals (and homosexual writers) have for centuries have been disenfranchised members of society, disadvantaged and discriminated against.  In my writing I show the differences in pre-law reform New Zealand and post-law reform.

 My work also falls under that category (Postcolonialism) as it offers a Pakeha (non-Maori) child’s perspective of growing up in Postcolonial New Zealand, in stories that illustrate a context and environment which is at times almost as colonial in its attitudes, as it is post-colonial.   To me perspective is a key feature of memoir writing, and this must always be taken into account by the reader.

The role The Salvation Army play in this work, is also reminiscent of the days of early missionaries in early post-European Aotearoa-New Zealand.