Tayari's Blog: Karen Salyer McElmurray Gets Real
Posted by TayariJones on June 1, 2008 12:51 AM
Filed under
Bookshelf
Due to a completely out-of-character bout of insomnia, I am up at 
1:30am surfing the web. I ran across this really interesting interview with Karen Sayler McElmurray. I have read her excellent memoir, Surrendered Child, and I know Karen personally. I was really struck by the honesty of this interview. She doesn't have her game face on. No publicist is over her shoulder reminding her to stick with the script. Karen looks at each of the question and pulls the answers from her gut. She talks about everything from her process to her juggling teaching and writing to the monsters at Kirkus who accused her of "womb gazing" to how it felt when the child she gave up for adoption found her via google. This interview captures what I like best about Karen's work. She is not afraid to open a vein on the page. Or maybe she is afraid, but she does it anyway.
Here is an excerpt:
Q: Edmund Wilson, in The Wound and the Bow, uses the image of "a wound that won't heal" as the reason for why writers write. Do you agree with his assessment?A: I do believe that certain images, certain concerns, appear in an artist’s work—again and again, perhaps until they are understood. Once, at another writing retreat, I met a painter who, in every painting, depicted a man in a black trench coat who she said was her father. The image was small or large or sometimes concealed in other images, but always present. In my own work, I’ve again and again written about what I’ll called “the missing,” or loss. In my novel, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, part of the story is about a woman who, during the Great Depression, runs away to be a dance instructor for a traveling road show sponsored by the WPA. She leaves her daughter behind and thus begins the consequences of several generations affected by loss. That mother who relinquishes a child was the real story of my own life, told “slant” in fiction. My memoir takes on this subject directly by telling firsthand the story of a birthmother. And I’ve now written another novel, tentatively called Black Dog, which is in part about the loss of a son to a Marine Helicopter accident during the time of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence.
Will such images persist in my work? I cannot predict this. But I do know that exploring the unhealed wound, the relinquished child, has meant a great deal of healing for me. When the memoir was first “ready” to enter the public eye, my birth son found me on a website that discussed the book. He contacted me. We talk. We visit. Does this mean healing in the word, or does that wound remain, part of what made me, and thus made the work?
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There are 2 comments on "Karen Salyer McElmurray Gets Real". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by Michael Fischer ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
I had Karen as a teacher in my MFA program; everything about that interview rings true to me, having been in her class. She also likes to open up the veins of her students, which can cause some tension at first, but usually works out in the end. She forced me to write about stuff I didn't want to write about, and for that, I'm grateful.
June 2, 2008 02:00 PM
Comment #2, by Michael Fischer
I had Karen as a teacher in my MFA program; everything about that interview rings true to me, having been in her class. She also likes to open up the veins of her students, which can cause some tension at first, but usually works out in the end. She forced me to write about stuff I didn't want to write about, and for that, I'm grateful.
June 2, 2008 02:02 PM