A Word on Words; 4034; Taylor Polites

and now from nashville public television's just do a celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades and this is a word on workers with jobs hello i'm john sigg and lola welcome once again the world words my guest today taylor provide huge he's here with his debut novel the rebel wife to winning critical praise for taylor's mastery of suspense and for jackson a darker in american history rubble life takes place in the shifting in and dangerous political atmosphere of reconstruction in our mouth welcome to world words dead you here to talk about the dark period in our country's history through reconstruction this civil war is an inspiration comes former slaves black american citizens their day and suddenly the confederacy

squashes that day and into that environment we are met eli who's on a deathbed or maybe you're naming these oregon away from us and gus his wife yes augusta and she's some characters this word is augusta come from i mean i come from albin and i know you raise an onslaught noel has funds for that's right book where in europe remains as soon as a woman of this character before she gave it all that he said i grew up in huntsville and i i think i was really captivated by the physical landscape the remnants of the antebellum south and the romance that surrounded them and when i was around twelve or thirteen i read gone with the wind for the first time and was completely swept away by the drama and the character of scarlett o'hara and i've

always had a thing i think for female heroines whether it's anna karenina or emma bovary or becky sharp in vanity fair lily bart in the house of mirth so these these strong women are women who are struggling with these challenges so so i think the there's always been a common a fascination for me with the heroin and the southern heroine in particular and the smith of the southern belle and i wanted a augusto to be a i'm of more realistic real representation of a woman and a woman struggles in in that aaron that the nineteenth century when women had such limited rights political and economic and also within this world of violence and fear and one of the ways i got in touch with the women in that period was to reid diaries and

letters and mary chestnut as a diarist you i have really aren't quite connected with white found really compelling this would be ambitious smart woman who it's so visibly constrained by the men around her in the world that she occupies frustrated by it in the way those frustrations come out in different ways so when i was writing i would open up that dire ari and read a few passages just to get that voice and that a feel for who she was well that's the other question you know how those early on mayweather in the twenty first century capture the voice granted a strong woman in a very recent years is they've not finished yeah and how do you go out you will have to go about capturing that voice and interacting it with sleigh voices people who was supposed to be subservient but

sometimes finale of their freedom world they push her son pushes airline yes there are and i think that you know it was important to me too to have rights and verisimilitude in the voice of the dust and so there were a lot of different women who i would turn to take fear and steel was a letter writer in huntsville alabama who are more separated from her husband very often so they would write these very sweet passionate letters rituals of uncover some of things that were going on and i think in these diaries and letters you get it is it's the it's the most intimate you can become with the person arm in a diary or a letter because they won their writing and there they believe this is sort of a private audience there no one else will have access to it and so they're as honest as i think anyone can be on paper is you give it a voice yelled out is really them and

so this is where they were when the voice then with a new color in a track from from the get go yes i mean she's married do you live right group on the lives and deaths the lies and bloody death yes the use of this tragedy but in some ways its liberation for her yet absolutely you know home of the forces are in a that matters she probably wouldn't go on no questions whether she should've been there yeah he he's a guy considered but he and his colleagues and down as traitors because right then and yet the african americans in the community of revere him and appreciate some of the things he did as the leader of the friedman spiro as a political leader in the black community at that

point he armed with a person who i wanted to have a lot of complexity a steep discount wide and now there is a great book schell why does alabama politics of iran bob was really in the late seventies as a doctoral thesis but that really covered that idea of who you know there's the stellwagen myth this trader and yet who were these men these white men who had political prominent political positions in alabama southerners who worked again ultimately with the union army with the republican party in the state every kurds who is because it was ambition you know we don't know nobody lived there are rivers and he on our bureau if you have a lot of complexity to him and maybe he's an opportunist maybe he's idealistic and everyone has their viewpoints and so i wanted to whatever a reader understood about eli first was through the filter of augusto who wasn't the deeply fond of him but then to have life was not his wife is not only the us was not really fond of my

mother had for thirty odd that's right corner and on and she has family who've come in and give their opinion of eli that he was this trader he tried to cause i'm doing things that are you know the justice family this old guard southern secessionist family feud as spam you traitorous and are corrupt money comes and the politically on a visit back the money that's right and he has dealt in a lot of money right now and floated lot of money yes men now he's dead right there is a mill yes on that he owned with some other investors dinner church women judges is usually yell his career he was a black and white person has a real he looked healthy

off the manipulator although he wouldn't i feel like he would everything he was doing he really believed in sincerely as low right jeremy faces is he's in charge and he shot at it since yeah yeah exactly and you've been playing a game yeah for years and surely will assure the world makes her think she's destitute and maybe she is you know part of the mystery and she says it can be annoying write realize i know you i have money and then there is the packet of money so fast on a judge for just a minute because i want to get to simon yes who has another powerful carrier that the judges were a character in his own right i had a feeling from they walk away like in that he knows

the ostentatious and really by day sentence male sex is aboard for absolutely an end and yet i was also a person of his period that male patriarchal dominant attitude was very common and he being you know a person of longstanding very great prominence in the community are a political leader for many years are believed it was his birthright to dominate and to control and augusto his you know his his cousin through his first cousin who was investors mother was another part of his family clan and the ambitions of the klan or what mattered in a sense an easily use and that will you know we can get us from unpaid caregivers a second there i thought well now let's bring simon and simon is a

former slave that all slaves trying to get out the victims is right find their freedom yes simon is committed to the love the line weyrich was loyalty lies is loyal to his wife you can tell it never says anything of those obligations as a character as an affection and love the garden he art tends the garden and in the sense of just a you know threw her view has a sense of it's almost as if he's doing it all for her and so there is this fondness in the story you know he's known augustus and she was eighteen years old and so over the prior ten years he's seen her grow he saw her you know he knew we live long before addressed ever did and so he's been able to watch this young woman and the things she's been struggling with so i think that he has this this attachment to her and this area early portable we read

some touches all men drew quite so the woman and they told him don't put your hand on the us and my how that changes your the year absolutely for the course of the story and then there are moments of sexual tension that will absolutely intense oh yes our aunt she is a woman who is an alien lust only rooms it's not known the consummate in my story for a league you let me write a musical wait joy yes he has has also been dried up but i think that they you know that a white woman and a black man and a physical intimate relationship that in eighteen seventy five there is

nothing that could be more inflammatory socially more om surrounded with taboos and violence and so wald there to people who have those who find this trust and connection and reliance mutual reliance on each other that next step is something that neither of them can opt in really preach and i think augusta that's closest to it because she also has calmed some dependence on logging which is an opium sort of an opiate and now so chicago loses herself she uses it with the intent of losing herself and through that that's turning off she comes closest to to connecting with him to reaching out to him in that physical way but he is simon hughes as character who's in total control of himself who's had to be art in as an african american men in this armed oppressive society has had to remain in total control of himself for

many years and he can allow that have that final sort of boundary to be crossed you are just joining us we are commentator politeness about his new novel rebel wife and she is a rubble heap is she was not that i'm a wife along right and at least in my view that obama would only matter ended shortly thereafter i you know the fbi and the judges in some ways move along book though is villainous in the judges on the album yes it's absolute isis and it's also broken person i think he and augustus brother mike have been through the war and seen a lot of killing and kind of wonder to themselves why they are dead as well and have those memories and those

sacrifices in the defeat are that they carry with them and it has worked and it's made them it's changed them as people and now and gas bomb has has become a tool in a sense his father's will absolutely no no home my her brother simon booked for in death alone my guitar is distant from the us you would think son the moment the war right parties did you would've thought he'd been faulted her and protected her in an my friend take care of her a human tribal the contour what judge ultimately prosperity on again and you're not just to protect her but to protect or the state as well none of that right when he comes back the light of just as ordinary life and so he sort

of on the outside in the sense on the dole from eli so he's still in this position a frustrated dependents not doing anything with his life not able to do anything it's all broken allowed out on the other side he's on top it is now the dominant tiger down although judges contesting that is exactly it and that and so eli and judge represent those two ends of the political spectrum you live as this temporary period of republican control in the state and our judge the old guard confederates who ultimately come back and then at seventy four late eighteenth and if or in alabama arm there known as the redeemer is of the burdens their restored to political power and the social and economic power you have a white knight the klan and his peripheral involvement but it's they are nonetheless and as a political it's a political tool as well the violence the terroristic

violence is used as a form of political and social control and that sort of the genesis of the ku klux klan in these other organization the red shirts in mississippi on the beach and seventy five men white men who would wear shirts that are bloodied say that look like they were bloodied you know this the sense of miss the confederate dead come back to haunt all these people blacks were republicans and keep them away from the polls of the democrats could could win in the elections because the turbulent upheaval part of that was the granting of voting rights to african american man and what that meant as far as political power in the state was concerned so that suddenly you know in a state where it's evenly divided between whites and blacks population wise though the ability of black man to vote could win elections every is leighton after north korea already reconstruction which is a nice way for some in white confederate dominance is taking all the a man

land that's right end simon is not unlike a lot of like anybody else yeah let's go let's get out in tanzania there was that my little be free yeah there was that moment mom and i think of people in alabama like james t rapier who is african american man born free who comes back to alabama after the war and stabs himself politically its forms read the newspaper a republican newspaper montgomery farm scott and is threatened with physical violence by the klan and ultimately by the late eating seventies and become someone who believes that african americans in the deep south don't have a future and the only way to find autonomy or freedom for themselves is to go and establish their own communities that western kansas was a particular place caps singleton here in nashville was another organizer who lead groups of african americans to kansas to settle on our farm when they're informed those communities

in dealing with iran in dealing with the moon condition of freed slaves here some inspiration from john mitchell yes their child moved on it and they won it and they understand the reconstruction over nine years our us out interesting that they've got a sense that is never gonna come yet it was you'd just briefly the glamour glimpse of freedom we held that we voted them in their next thing you know they were caught in a trap again we're back where we were the three ds we're free but you've repaid it's a goal right

for a pittance for hard work and the wrestling news and i find that some world is and this is a time when that sharecropper system is coming into being which in many ways replicates slavery because you're tied to the land get out then the country store that mecca right and so exactly day i think there was a lot of self awareness in the black community in the south at that time i had the pleasure or in charleston last week to talk to a woman who's eighty three and grew up in perry county in outside mary and her father in the nineteen thirties her father had the farm of candidate which her uncle had a farm through acres and they created this insulated community the black community existed as is insulated world on onto itself much like these communities in kansas

became a world unto themselves where a lot of african americans were able to find some autonomy and independence for themselves and so that right that moment of love limitation at the end of reconstruction that led to i think a lot of disengagement for blocks from the border they didn't even have the opportunity to visit in larger of nautical rachel who at one point says to goes and you know what and that sort of that sort of says in one brief sentence the eu but that's a year and that's on the math of promise of freedom liberty right i mean it's all on their lives and yes there was a vote and there is a vote on rescue lives right above the missing for us to do is get out of here i'm off to kansas right now

when you when you when you're in the process of what we are about on this program is how writers write yet another year as he waited in the morning or the afternoon i guess i find myself more productive in the morning although i can write anytime of day and in any sort of situation a bit quieter all i really need an offset and ted olson the couch and i have a little bored but all right on all right as in the medicine says that's right the computer that billy king you know flashing little thing the light from that somehow the kurds the cursor it it serves stalls me and i typed fast and so i think i type faster than i think the city but long hand it's a really nice pace where i can think in time with the new motion my hand in and make i think better decisions language was for us a well but let me just

ask you this though there ever come a moment when you just will come when there is writer's block when that little news is not sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear fox i think so far i feel very lucky in that this augusta i just felt like i knew her i felt so connected to her and as i said i would open up mary chestnut of these letters and i'll just read a little bit to get into the groove but her voice was very clear in my head and so i would is aligned knew where i was going to art i knew what she would have to say about it so i feel that i am i would also write if i were to write om you know five or six pages you know handwritten which is about two riveting page but i would feel like that was a good days work to so i tried to allow another piece of good advice was always leave stop ways still know where you're going don't write to the end of it

because then when you go back to it you're not sure where to pick a back up and i think that helps to and sort of making sure i know i'm going to do this work of fiction is your debut yes i know no less bunning than fifty writers talented people stores until they cannot get published and they're all watching a four room right now look at you and sustain a howl of lasers did you do know it's a dream come true it's a crazy it's hard to you know i have a sense of serve all and gratitude about the whole process because i know there's so many talented people with wonderful folks who can find there the a marketer can find that moment then i have to thank my mentor who's kaylie jones in my mfa program a lot to saddam was a yes so

again such a lot of an amazing experience so wonderful and she helps me for get through this book and she connected me with a great agent and agent worked with me for a year on the book and then we found a great editor at simon schuster and now it all sort of clicked and has been this surreal unheard of that wonderful experience crazy well you don't think you know the price is right yes i do i do have another book and i wanted to spend more time in el beyond alabama and this time i'm looking at the nineteen thirties so the mid depression in the tennessee valley area north alabama when the most impoverished areas of the country at that time and the tv a comes in the new deal programs come in and really changed the landscape dramatically our dams were built this flood control navigation electricity

fertilizer entertainment the mechanized farming for cotton is coming in so the whole sharecropping system that was established in the aftermath of the civil war is breaking down completely and not necessarily to the benefit of sharecroppers so it's this moment of change and yet i think as everything doesn't the south versus backward glance at the civil war and now i'm so i have that sort of backdrop is this mo this hinged like eating seventy five when in our after reconstruction this hinge of nineteen thirty five where things are going in a different direction from where they have been these two women who are survivors of the civil war in this dramatic night in eighteen sixty four are on this sort of lonely river plantation of the trauma by these ghosts of the past of the war so that's the backdrop well felt like another another great but hopefully thank you so much for things huge amount of

time that such a pleasure to be here and they got you for watching forward and words on guns ignore keep reading