A House Made of Stars
Q: What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
A: One of the best pieces of writing advice I had gotten while in graduate school came from Richard Bausch. He said that if you get stuck while writing, lower your standards and keep going. That helps me if I ever get writer’s block, and I always remind myself that I can go back and revise, because I will (often many, many times).Most helpful, though, is a practice I’ve started of always ending the day’s work in the middle of a scene or a thought. That way, I know what I had planned to write and get started more easily the next day. Too many times, I’ve stopped writing for the day after a chapter or a major scene, because I was tired and eager for a break, but then when I resumed the next writing session, I would struggle, because I had no idea where to go from there. Now, I always end in the middle with some notes on where to go next.
Q: I understand some of the situations in A House Made of Stars are written based on personal experience. How did it feel to put your real life experiences on paper and then in the hands of thousands of readers?
A: It is a frightening experience to write about certain things in your life, and this was one of the reasons I saved this vulnerability for an assignment that would not be workshopped in class, but instead be read only by my teacher. One of my professors assigned a "secret story" as the final project, a story in which one had to try something completely new in a story, whether it be in form or content. So I decided to write about a child. I made myself as vulnerable as possible and shared things that were previously family secrets. When I made this story my dissertation project, I fictionalized small details to make the story less mine and more my narrator's, but the threads of truth are still there. The fictionalization of the narrative was necessary, because I could see the narrator's story more clearly and understand those around her better. When you write your own narrative, you are so close to what happened that everything can seem almost black and white, right and wrong. But when you step back and take a look at these people as human beings and what enabled them to make certain choices, puzzle pieces start to come together. You begin to understand the narrative better and why things happened, and that kind of understanding is necessary to write a book such as this one.
Q: I was very surprised of your knowledge about stars. Is this a personal interest of yours? How did this interest begin?
A: The constellation metaphor actually did not appear in the novel until some of the later drafts. I had included a lot of references to Biblical stories, but I needed more anecdotes of an oppressive patriarchal world and how a woman escaped it. My research led me to the story of Cepheus, a king who chained his daughter to the sea. Interestingly, that same constellation resembles a house tilted over in the sky, so I used this constellation and the story behind it as a symbol for some of the things that happen in A House Made of Stars. A lot of the research was new to me as I had never read about Greek mythology. However, this was one of my favorite parts of writing the novel, because so many of the things I found were relevant to the novel's plot. I hope to continue the constellation theme in the sequel to A House Made of Stars.
Q:Was it difficult to write a novel from the perspective of a child? How did you manage to portray the young girl as she goes through moments of vulnerability, endangerment, and finally strength?
A: I find it easier to write from a child's voice, because I feel that young narrators are more direct than older ones. This directness was necessary in A House Made of Stars, because I wanted to illuminate issues of poverty, abuse, and mental illness with a sense of rawness that can only be experienced through a child's eyes. To achieve that sense of directness, I used the first-person point of view and wrote the scenes how I would have imagined a child experiencing them. The language is simple with very few adjectives and adverbs, and I did this to emphasize the actions more--the actions of those around her and the actions she decides to do herself.
Q:The novel takes place in a relatively short period of time. The narrator only ages about one year throughout. Why did you decide to focus on this time period? Why not later in adolescence or earlier in childhood?
A: I decided to focus on the narrator's life from ten to eleven years of age, because this is usually a turning point in a girl's life. She is becoming her own person and learning how to think for herself. This is also a time of confusion for my narrator as she enters puberty early and struggles in learning how to leave childhood behind. Living with her mother and then her grandmother, she also has wildly different examples in how a woman can choose to live her life. This year is a time of change and growth for her, so I decided to keep the novel centered on this particular time period so that I could better focus on how much of an effect this year had on her.
Q:. Are you surprised by the success of your novel? How has it changed your life?
A: It is always a surprise when people I don't even know buy the book and read it. It has been heartwarming to talk to people after readings and book signings, because we talk not only about writing, but about our own lives. They often tell me about their own struggles with poverty and abuse, and I don't even have to tell them that there are threads of truth that run through my book. They always know.
Publishing A House Made of Stars has opened a lot of doors, and I am so grateful for that. I was fortunate to be invited to speak as part of Notre Dame of Maryland University's 4 Under 40 Series and then asked to be a reader at this year's Meacham Writers' Workshop. I have met so many other writers in the process, and I am humbled and thankful to Burlesque Press for believing in me and helping me publish my first novel.
Q & A with Tawnysha Greene
Q: What book made the biggest impression on you
A:I was a voracious reader growing up, and I loved trips to the library where each of us would come home with an entire stack of books. I especially liked reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and there was a scene in Little House in the Big Woods that stayed with me–a scene in which the girls play with a pig’s bladder their father had made into a ball. I remember thinking how odd of a plaything that was, but then being amazed at its brilliance. Laura and her family didn’t have a lot of money, so they made toys of their own. My family, too, struggled with money while I was growing up, and we lived on food stamps, so I thought this was a great idea. While we didn’t refashion a pig’s bladder, we did make a ball of rubber bands and tie it to a long string and played a game in which one person would swing it around in a circle while the rest of us had to jump over and dodge it. It was a lot of fun, and neighbor kids often joined in, and we would play this game until our parents called us back inside. I think my sister still has that ball of rubber bands somewhere.
Q:What was the genesis of your first novel, A House Made of Stars?
A: One of my professors, Margaret Lazarus Dean, assigned a “secret story” in one of my graduate fiction writing seminars in which I had to write a story where I attempted something completely different than anything I had tried before whether it be in content or style. Before this assignment, I had written about adults who were different than I was and who had no connection to me, but for this “secret story,” I decided to become vulnerable. I wrote about a girl like me.Like my narrator, I was homeschooled and raised in a very religious household. My family often roomed with relatives, because we couldn’t afford to live on our own. I am hard-of-hearing. A House Made of Stars is a narrative different than mine, but the girl carried pieces of me that I had always been hesitant to talk about before. So I wrote about someone who could have these same details in her life. However, I wanted to incorporate the resilience needed to overcome some of these odds, and the girl in my novel became someone stronger, tougher, and braver than I could ever be.
Q: One of the first things I noticed was that all of the characters, even the narrator, remain unnamed. Many of them are referred to based on their relationship to Daddy, such as Daddy's sister. What is the purpose of this? Does this emphasize a patriarchal society? Does it help support the perspective of the narrator as a ten year old child?
A: In keeping the characters unnamed, I hoped to write a narrative in which these characters could be anyone anywhere. It is easy to feel alone when you are growing up with an abusive parent, and I wanted to write a novel that depicts domestic violence but that also shows hope and a way of getting out. I hoped that in doing so, I could instill a small sense of encouragement and show that victims of domestic violence can survive against all odds and emerge to have their voices heard and acknowledged. I do mention most of the characters as their relationship to Daddy, because this is how the narrator understands the world around her. Many of the characters submit to the father and do their best to satiate him. Grandma is the main exception to that rule, and this is significant, because she is the central force that opposes Daddy. I wanted her to stand out as her own person, not identified by her relationship to Daddy, because she also stands out in her actions and her belief that a woman deserves to be known for who she is and who she can be, not to whom she submits and obeys..
Q: Could you talk a little bit about the role of religion in A House Made of Stars? Does it play a role in the mother’s learned helplessness?
A: Growing up in a very religious household, I knew that this part of my upbringing would find its way in the novel, and it did in that the protagonist’s mother holds onto her Christian beliefs very strongly. My own mother has always been very active in the church. She took me to my first abortion protest when I was five years old. We were homeschooled with Christian textbooks. We were taught very traditional gender roles.
Like the mother does in A House Made of Stars, my family did get up in the middle of a church sermon once when the pastor’s wife went up to speak. We were taught that this was wrong, and I remember being so embarrassed as we walked out of the sanctuary. As a child, I did not agree that a woman should be ignored because of her gender, and as an adult, I feel this even more strongly.
Women have a voice just as men do, so when I wrote the novel, I wanted to highlight the importance of being heard. The mother’s character was an opportunity for me to convey how helpless a woman can become when she refuses to speak for herself or her family, even if she believes she is doing the right thing in being obedient to her husband. The narrator refuses to accept this same helplessness for herself, and I wanted to show how much courage a choice like that can require, and how rewarding it can be once she has makes her voice heard.