Storied Charlotte

Fannie Flono: Award-Winning Journalist Turned Historian of the Black Experience in Charlotte

February 08, 2021 by Mark West

Fannie Flono and I both arrived in Charlotte in 1984. She came to pursue a career as a journalist with The Charlotte Observer, and I came to pursue a career as an English professor at UNC Charlotte. In 1993, she became an associate editor, a position she held until her retirement from the paper in 2014. In this capacity, she regularly wrote columns, many of which focused on the African American community in Charlotte. I always read her columns, and I appreciated how she often included historical information and insights in these op-ed pieces. Now that I occasionally write guest columns for the paper, I make an effort to follow Fannie’s example and ground my columns in history.

Fannie’s interest in African American history led her to write Thriving in the Shadows: The Black Experience in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, which the Novello Festival Press published in 2006. For anyone who is interested in the history of Brooklyn and Charlotte’s other Black neighborhoods, Fannie’s book is indispensable. It includes more than 100 archival photographs, and it features excerpts from oral history interviews that Fannie conducted with prominent members of Charlotte’s Black community. Fannie’s book along with Tom Hanchett’s Sorting Out the New South City provide readers with an understanding and appreciation of the story of African Americans in Charlotte.

Since her retirement in 2014, Fannie has remained interested in the history of Black communities in the Charlotte area. She is currently a member of the Board of Trustees for the Charlotte Museum of History (CMH), and she is leading CMH’s campaign to preserve an abandoned schoolhouse where Black children studied during the Jim Crow era. Mary Newsom, a free-lance writer who worked with Fannie for more than 20 years at The Charlotte Observer, serves with Fannie on the CMH Board of Trustees. Mary sent me the following statement about Fannie’s efforts to save this historic schoolhouse:

You couldn’t find a more fitting person than Fannie Flono to spearhead the Charlotte Museum of History’s campaign to rescue an abandoned, century-old rural schoolhouse built during Jim Crow segregation. Fannie has been a trustee at the museum for more than a decade, with a special passion for telling the stories of the past, especially the Black community stories that mainstream history has slighted. One example among many is the Siloam Schoolhouse, built as part of a vast but almost-forgotten initiative called Rosenwald Schools. More than a century ago, Julius Rosenwald, CEO of Sears and son of Jewish immigrants, partnered with Black educator Booker T. Washington to build schools for the descendants of formerly enslaved laborers in the South. North Carolina had more Rosenwald Schools than any other state, and Mecklenburg had 24. Siloam is one, a dilapidated relic of a now-forgotten community in rural northeast Mecklenburg, an area now called University City. The museum intends to raise $1 million to move the school to the museum and restore it to tell the story of community resilience and persistence. Thanks to Fannie’s efforts, with help from many others, the Save Siloam School campaign is more than a third of the way to its goal.

As a journalist with The Charlotte Observer, as the author of Thriving in the Shadows, and as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Charlotte Museum of History, Fannie Flono has contributed in numerous ways to our understanding of the history of African Americans in Storied Charlotte. I think that an excellent way to celebrate Black History Month in Charlotte would be to bring back into print Fannie’s Thriving in the Shadows: The Black Experience in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Tags: Black communities Charlotte African American community

Celebrating the History of Black Studies at UNC Charlotte

February 01, 2021 by Mark West

In keeping with the fact that February is Black History Month, journalist Vanessa Gallman, a Charlotte native and former reporter for The Charlotte Observer, has just brought out a book that deals with the origins of the Black Studies Program at UNC Charlotte in the 1970s. Titled Who Am I? Memoirs of a Transformative Black Studies Program, this book has deep personal connections for Vanessa. She started her undergraduate education at UNC Charlotte in 1972, and she was one of the students who participated in the Black Studies Program during its formative years.

Vanessa eventually transferred to UNC Chapel Hill, where she earned a journalism degree, but she remained in touch with the students and faculty members she met through her participation in UNC Charlotte’s Black Studies Program. In preparation for editing her book, she reached out to them and requested that they send her their recollections about the program’s early days. She then compiled these memories in her book. For more detailed information about the book, please click on the following link: https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/book/index.aspx?bookURL=Who-am-I5

I recently contacted Vanessa and asked her about the origins of her book. Here is what she sent to me:

“Who am I?” was the first question UNC Charlotte’s Black Studies Program led students to explore in order to achieve excellence on campus and in life. Such soul-searching was essential for the first wave of students who desegregated universities during a time of racial turbulence.

Now five decades later, the 50 students who contributed memoirs to this book point to the courses, teachers or just the program’s existence as key influences in their lives. The book is the brainchild of Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddey, the first director of the program that is now called the Department of Africana Studies. She and the other professors were instrumental in my development as a person and as a journalist.

While the project is not an academic exploration, I hope readers would find it intriguing that student protesters worked with receptive administrators, such as the late Bonnie Cone, to create the groundbreaking program. Despite challenges and real fears, students were determined to fulfill the mission of integration. For those of us who participated in this early ethnic studies program, it provided us with the knowledge and tools to navigate the world at large. I am struck that some of the themes of past protest still echo in current student activism.

Who Am I? Memoirs of a Transformative Black Studies Program is a celebration of self-awakening, racial pride and teacher appreciation, as well a glimpse into a pivotal point in UNC Charlotte history.

Vanessa’s new book serves as an excellent reminder that history is not just something that happens somewhere else. As we celebrate Black History Month, we should remember that Charlotte has a rich history and that African Americans figure prominently in this history. Vanessa and the contributors to her book provide us with a timely account of how Storied Charlotte came to be home of one the nation’s first academic programs in Black Studies.

Tags: Black History Black Studies

Paula Martinac’s Testimony

January 25, 2021 by Mark West

For much of her life, novelist Paula Martinac lived in either Pittsburgh or New York City, but she and her wife moved to Charlotte in 2014. Since then, Paula has published three historical novels about lesbian characters who have Southern connections. The first of these novels, The Ada Decades, came out in 2017. Set in Charlotte between 1947 and 2015, this novel traces the evolving relationship between Ada Shook, a school librarian, and Cam Lively, a teacher in the Charlotte public schools. In 2019, Paula published Clio Rising, a novel about a young woman named Livvie Bliss who leaves her home in North Carolina and relocates to New York in 1983 so that she can pursue a career in publishing and because she feels that she can live openly as a lesbian in New York. Paula’s most recent novel, Testimony, came out this month from Bywater Books. It tells the story of Gen Rider, a professor who teaches at a private college for women in rural Virginia in the early 1960s. Gen’s career is threatened when a neighbor reports to the local police that she has seen Gen kissing a woman. Testimony is a powerful story that underscores the destructive nature of LGBTQ discrimination that was commonplace in the South and elsewhere in America during the 1950s and ‘60s.

Although Testimony is a historical novel, I think that it also speaks to contemporary issues and concerns. I recently contacted Paula and asked her for more information about how this novel relates to our current situation. Here is what she sent to me:

A couple of years back, I’d finished writing my novel Clio Rising, and I was toying with ideas for what my next book might be. In my research, I stumbled on an article about Martha Deane, a tenured professor at UCLA in the 1950s who was fired because a neighbor reported her “moral turpitude”—she’d been seen kissing another woman through the window of her own home.

As I looked more closely at the period, I discovered many stories about repression at universities. The infamous Johns Committee in Florida systematically rooted out queer teachers and students through the mid-1960s. The esteemed literature professor and scholar, Newton Arvin, a gay man, lost his position at Smith in 1960 for keeping a private collection of nude photos of men.

My novel Testimony took its inspiration from stories like Deane’s and Arvin’s. Their experiences highlighted the issue of who gets to enjoy privacy, and, at the same time, who gets to be public about their relationships.

It’s no coincidence that I started writing Testimony during a new wave of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and activism. According to a report from Lambda Legal Defense, the Trump administration “ushered in a judicial landscape that is significantly more hostile toward LGBTQ people.” On the positive side, Deane’s story in particular spoke to the power of the support networks queer people and women create. I hope Testimony leaves readers with a sense of the LGBTQ community’s amazing resilience and also the importance of straight allies who speak up.

For readers who would like to learn more about Paula and her publications, please click on the following link: http://paulamartinac.com/ For readers who are interested in taking Paula’s upcoming Charlotte Lit workshop called “Start to Finish: The 10-Minute Play,” please click on the following link: www.charlottelit.org

Like her character Gen, Paula teaches on the college level. She regularly teaches creative writing courses as a part-time faculty member in UNC Charlotte’s English Department. When the publication of Testimony was announced to the members of the English Department last week, Paula was inundated with congratulatory email messages. As a member of the English Department, I share my colleagues’ pride in Paula’s latest publication. In fact, I think everyone associated with Storied Charlotte can take pride in the fact that Paula has established herself as one of Charlotte’s leading novelists.

Tags: anti-LGBTQ lesbian characters novels

The Story of Theatre Charlotte Is Not Over

January 19, 2021 by Mark West

Drama plays an integral role in our literary tradition just as theatre plays an integral role in the history of Storied Charlotte. For over ninety years, Theatre Charlotte has figured prominently in this history. Since its founding in 1927, Theatre Charlotte has survived some difficult years, including the Great Depression years and the World War Two years, but 2020 stands out as an especially trying year for Theatre Charlotte. First the pandemic caused the cancellation of most of its performances, and then a fire broke out on December 28 causing major damage to Theatre Charlotte’s 216-seat auditorium located at 501 Queens Road. Theatre Charlotte’s staff, volunteers, and community supporters are determined to overcome this latest setback.

Theatre Charlotte has started a “Relief Fund” to rebuild their auditorium. As is stated on their website, “Theatre Charlotte’s auditorium was severely damaged in an electrical fire on December 28, 2020. We’ve been hit pretty hard by 2020, but physical damage to our physical home is something we simply could not have expected. We’re still taking inventory of what we lost. But we do know one thing: to find ourselves again, we need your support. Every dollar raised will help Theatre Charlotte survive this crisis.”

I contacted a number of people associated with Theatre Charlotte, and I asked them to send me a statement about what Theatre Charlotte means to them and why they are supporting the efforts to rebuild the fire-damaged auditorium. Their responses are listed below.

Pat Heiss has been a part of the Charlotte theater scene for many years. She has performed in numerous Theatre Charlotte productions and has served as the President of the Board for Theater Charlotte. She wrote:

In 1961, I was new to Charlotte and interested in theater. A friend introduced me to the Little Theatre of Charlotte, and there I found a true community theater that welcomed everyone interested in theater, regardless of talent or status. I felt at home. I was a novice, but I learned that to put a production together required hard work and community volunteerism. There was always something to do, and I volunteered for any task that required a body. I had a great time learning the ins-and-outs of the “business” by hands-on experience working on show props, sound, lighting, make-up, and even worked in some stage managing. I had my first stage roll in 1963, and I was “hooked” on theater for good. I love the feel, smell and atmosphere of theater, and the joy and excitement of providing an entertaining show that, for a few hours, takes an audience to new places and experiences. Decades have passed since I started my theatrical adventure, and I have performed at numerous other venues, but I will always consider where I started, Theatre Charlotte, as my “home.” The Theater recently experienced an electrical fire that has shut down all performances, and of course, Covid-19 had put its boot on the entertainment neck of the nation. This hurdle must be overcome before the Theater can reopen its doors, but with the community’s support I’m confident that it will, and when that day comes, as it always has, Theatre Charlotte will lay out the mat that says, “Welcome, please come in!”

Rick Moll is a senior lecturer and the Master Electrician for UNC Charlotte’s College of Arts + Architecture. He is also a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. He wrote:

I was 23 and one year out of college when I did my first show at Theatre Charlotte. Professionally, it gave me production credits very early in my career when my resume (frankly) was pretty threadbare. I did five shows in various capacities over the next year. It allowed me to ply my craft and build a name for myself in the overall community. I met a circle of friends doing that show that was my tribe for the next five years. My 20s, personally and professionally, were rooted in the community I found there. I learned early on it’s not just the work, it’s the people. In 2010, I found my way back and have worked on a dozen productions over the last ten years. As a Lecturer at UNC Charlotte, I have sent students to 501 Queens to build experiences on their resumes (as performers and technicians), hoping they can find in their journey the same things I found along mine. Legacy — that’s the gift Theatre Charlotte gives this community. It was here before us and it will be here after we are gone. ACE, Charlotte Rep, Bare Bones, Charlotte Shakespeare, innovative theatre, Off Tryon, Queen City Theatre, Stage One– these were all fantastic groups from Charlotte’s arts past. CPCC, Actor’s Theatre, Children’s Theatre and Three Bone are the current torchbearers in this town. Through all these groups, there has been Theatre Charlotte- providing rehearsal space, performance space, props, costumes along the way- carrying itself while carrying others. I want to see the Theatre Charlotte Centennial in 2027.

Victoria Perras is the Head of Wardrobe for the Blumenthal Performing Arts/Belk Theater. She is also a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. She wrote:

I have spent a lot of hours in the last couple of days thinking about all my years at Theatre Charlotte and what they meant to me. I first became involved with the theater in the early 1980s when I was invited to join the Ladies Auxiliary. In those days the auxiliary actually worked in the box office, answering the phones, making reservations and pulling the tickets for the show. After a couple of years, Keith Martin, the Executive Director of the theater asked me if I would be interested in working backstage. I explained that I had two kids, about 11 and 12, too young not to have a babysitter but too old to think they needed one. In the true sense of community theater, Keith said “bring them in and we’ll put them to work.”. We had a great time working on the show, building sets, painting, learning everything there was to putting on a show. We all ended up on the show crew. My daughter, Elizabeth was the Asst. Asst. Stage Manager on stage right and Donald on stage left. The show, “Something’s Afoot” had a lot of sight gags and we all had some of them to do. It was a great experience! However, watching my son load smoke pots with black powder and steel wool took a few years off me, I also watched the Technical Director at that time, Vernon Carroll, teach him how to do it with all proper safety guidelines and realized how valuable a community organization like Theatre Charlotte can be and how much they can enrich lives. My kids and I did several shows together over the next couple of years. They went on to “teenagedom” and other interests but I found a life time love for live theater that has never dimmed. We need to anything we can to help this Grand Old Lady.

Gordon Olson is currently a Lecturer in Lighting Design at UNC Charlotte. He has been involved with the lighting of over ninety productions, including many at Theatre Charlotte. He wrote:

Having been a part of numerous productions at Theatre Charlotte, I was horrified and saddened to hear of the recent fire the theatre experienced. I have a deep admiration for the space, and more importantly the extraordinary passion and talent of those who inhabit it. At the very heart of the organization, people like Ron Law, and Chris and Jackie Timmons care so deeply about the idea of providing high quality, accessible theatre to the greater Charlotte community that it’s heartbreaking to consider the idea of the organization having to turn off it’s ghost light forever. I’ve been fortunate enough to work as both a scenic and lighting designer for many productions these last ten years of my life in Charlotte and each production has been a wonderful, soul-nourishing experience of collaborative effort, artistic output, and high-level performative talent on display. Seeing the ongoing commitment of the volunteers that Theatre Charlotte has in its ranks, to keep the theatre functioning, producing, and striving for more never ceases to inspire me when I walk through the doors for a long day of rehearsal, or diving into the chaos that is “tech week” prior to opening night. The staff and talent at TC never shy away from doing challenging work and approach each production with unwavering enthusiasm with the goal of putting up the best possible show. I sincerely hope that Theatre Charlotte is able to weather this storm and come out on the other side better than ever. I look forward to helping in any manner I can to keep the doors open and keeping the stage lights on.

Louanne Delaney has been part of the Theatre Charlotte family for many years from backstage to front of house. She works at a local law firm by day and Theatre Charlotte on nights and weekends. She wrote:

I can’t believe it’s been 22 years since I first walked in the door to Theatre Charlotte. From backstage crew to stage manager to house manager – and so much in between. I’ve gotten to know many actors, crew, volunteers and patrons over the years, many on a personal level, and many I see on a regular basis. And I know it’s the same for others. When I heard the news about the fire I was heartbroken! I can’t image it not being there. So many memories, so many friends! There are many things that will need to be done, but there are also many people who want to see it happen. Theatre Charlotte means so much to so many people. Theatre Charlotte means so much to me in so many ways. It’s the best thing that has happened to me. It’s my heart’s home.

As the above statements reflect, Theatre Charlotte has contributed a great deal to the culture of Charlotte since it performed its first production in 1928. However, in order for it to continue to be a player in the grand drama that is Storied Charlotte, it needs the support of the community. For those who are interested in helping Theatre Charlotte rebuild its fire-damaged auditorium, please click on the following link: https://theatrecharlotte.salsalabs.org/2020/index.html

Tags: Theatre Charlotte

Providing Charlotte’s Children with Books of Their Own

January 11, 2021 by Mark West

My parents owned thousands of books. The tallest wall in our living room soared sixteen feet high, and the entire wall was covered with packed bookshelves. My father had to stand on the very top rung of a stepladder and then reach as high as he could to take a book off of the top shelf. My parents are no longer with us, but that wall of books still exists. Throughout the rest of the house there were other packed bookshelves. I had access to these books, but I knew that they belonged to my parents.

The books that meant the most to me during my childhood were my own books. I had the opportunity to select and buy books at school book fairs and occasional trips to bookstores, and I treasured these books. In fact, I still own some of them, such as E. B. White’s Stuart Little and A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. I now know that I was a lucky boy. Many children, including thousands of children who live in Charlotte, grow up in homes bereft of books. These children do not have books to call their own. Promising Pages, a nonprofit organization located in Charlotte, is doing something to address this problem.

Founded by Kristina Cruise in 2011, Promising Pages collects new and donated books shares them with children living in Charlotte homes where there are few if any books. Kristina stepped away from Promising Pages at the end of 2018, leaving the organization in the capable hands of experienced nonprofit professionals Eric Law (Executive Director) and Kelly Cates (Deputy Director). I recently contacted Eric and asked him why he took on the role of leading this organization. Here is what he sent to me:

I was born into a multigenerational family of educators and raised in Charlotte. Growing up as the sons of a college professor and a bookstore manager, my brother and I took it for granted that we always had books at home and were introduced to reading early. As I got older, I realized that many of our peers did not have that privilege. I want to ensure that every child in my hometown gets the same advantage that I did. I am driven by the positive impact that book ownership can have on children.

Our mission is to provide ownership of books to underserved children and cultivate a lifelong love of reading through innovative literacy programs and partnerships. We envision a world where all children have adequate reading materials at home, can see themselves reflected in the books they read, and have made reading a joyful habit for a lifetime.

Promising Pages is still a relatively young organization. We are working diligently to strengthen our infrastructure and to increase the impact of our programs and services for the long term. Our overarching priority is to fulfill our mission by sharing even more books with underserved students in our community. Promising Pages has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, sharing more than 190,000 books in each of the last two July-June time periods. Many child-serving and literacy- focused organizations have come to rely on us as their main source for books, but we know the need is much greater.

While we expect that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will continue to be our primary avenue for sharing books with students, we are strategically partnering with organizations focused on housing, food insecurity, and with other area schools and school districts. Through these efforts we will be able to serve more students, help non-literacy focused organizations support the families they serve, and help us broaden our base of community support. As we continue to grow, we expect that Promising Pages will be widely known as the primary go-to source for children’s books in our area, and as an organization that plays a leading role in sustaining and enhancing the attention paid to the issue of children’s literacy.

We are also working intentionally to acquire more diverse and representative books to share with the students we serve, 90% of whom are children of color. Children should not only get to choose the books they read, but should also see themselves mirrored in those books. Representation matters.

As Promising Pages approaches its tenth anniversary in September 2021, we are focused on becoming a more mature, capable, and sustainable organization that will have a steadily growing positive impact on our community for decades to come.

For more information about Promising Pages, please click on the following link: https://promising-pages.org

I commend Eric and the other staff members and volunteers associated with Promising Pages for providing so many Charlotte children with their own books. In so doing, Promising Pages is making an important contribution countless children’s lives and to the continued vitality of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Promising Pages

Kevin Winchester and His Southern Gothic Novel

January 04, 2021 by Mark West

I first became interested in Southern Gothic literature years before I moved to the South. I discovered Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road (1932)and God’s Little Acre (1933) during my undergraduate studies at the now-defunct Franconia College, which was located in northern New Hampshire. Although I was living in the middle of Yankee country, I enjoyed reading Caldwell’s novels about life in the rural South. In many ways, these novels are all about the characters’ emotional connections to the land. Caldwell’s eccentric and flawed characters intrigued me. Since these characters live on the fringes of society, their experiences reveal sides of Southern culture that are often kept out of view. When I originally read these books, I hadn’t yet heard of the term Southern Gothic. However, I later learned that this term has come to be associated with Caldwell’s novels and other stories about eccentric (sometimes grotesque) characters who live in the South and who wrestle with the complexities of Southern culture and traditions.

I thought about Caldwell’s novels and the Southern Gothic tradition when I discovered Kevin Winchester recent debut novel, Sunflower Dog: Dancing the Flathead Shuffle. I see Kevin’s novel as belonging to this same tradition, but I wondered if Kevin would agree with me, so I sent him an email and asked him. In his response, he said, “Absolutely, I think Sunflower Dog is definitely Southern Gothic.”

Like the characters in Caldwell’s novels, the central characters in Sunflower Dog have deep ties to the land. Also, like Caldwell’s characters, Kevin’s eccentric characters exist on the fringes of society. In the case of Sunflower Dog, these characters live on the fringes of Charlotte. Kevin currently lives near Charlotte in the community of Waxhaw, and he earned his MFA in creative writing from Queens University in Charlotte. For more information about Kevin and his publications, please click on the following link: https://www.kevinwinchesterwriter.com

Kevin draws on his familiarity with the Charlotte region in creating his cast of quirky characters. These characters include a small-town entrepreneur, an aspiring reality TV star and her doting but tough-as-nails grandmother, a young couple who are expecting a child, a pair of inept weed growers, a college professor whose career is not going well, and, of course, a dog. These characters all get caught up in a messy real-estate deal that is both funny and poignant. I recently contacted Kevin and asked him for more information about these characters. Here is what he sent to me:

Sunflower Dog was released in April of 2020, but it is set in 2008/9 against the national backdrop of Obama’s election and the Great Recession, and the Charlotte region’s real estate boom and its ensuing population explosion. The characters in Sunflower Dog—all local “natives”—are trying to figure out how to navigate all the changes happening around them.

To anyone from the area, it quickly becomes obvious the book’s fictional Mason County represents Union County. I was born in the county but headed for bigger and brighter as soon as possible. When I first began thinking of moving back to Union County, I told my wife we should drive out to an area I always liked to see if any land or houses might be for sale. A couple of turns later I thought I was lost. The dirt road I wanted, the one I remembered from high school that featured Ghost Bridge, the site of bonfires and beers every Friday and Saturday night, was paved. Housing developments sprouted from pastureland, and when I threw my hand up at passing traffic—a Southern and especially Union County tradition—no one waved back. Charlotte, and all things Charlotte, had spilled across the County line. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

Neither do the characters in Sunflower Dog. Most of the characters are long-time residents. A few are multi-generational—as the saying goes: their tap root ran deep, especially the main character, Salvador Hinson, and one of his cohorts, Ethel, the crusty grandmother of the story. All are trying to redefine who they are and how they are to exist as their familiar world, a world filled with traditions and customs good and bad, connections to the land, a sense of the past—theirs and the regions, careens toward the future. They’re on the fringe, stuck between urban and rural, big city and red-dirt country.

Union County, like most counties surrounding Mecklenburg, or probably any urban area that is experiencing growth, is divided geographically in a way that reflects all of this. For instance, in Union County (and the book’s Mason County), Highway 601 north of Monroe and Highway 200 south of Monroe act as a demographic line of demarcation. West of those two highways, the Mecklenburg county side, is more affluent, crowded with two-story housing developments and traffic, abundant shopping and dining options. East of those two highways, the landscape is open farmland, trailers, mom and pop businesses, and a slower pace in general. What moves toward the center pushes something to the fringes.

There is a natural conflict in those fringes: the ancestral locals pitted against the newcomers. There are plenty of Southern Lit books that feature those conflicts. Sunflower Dog is more interested in the internal conflict this newness creates in those being pushed toward the fringes. Those folks have a choice, or choices, to make. What traditions do they hang on to? Which ones should they discard? Is there really a connection to The Land; a standard trope in Southern fiction? And as the area inevitably becomes more urban…and more urbane…what happens to the traditional, Southern Gothic characters? Not “characters” in the sense of fiction, but characters as people; those quirky, hard-headed, determined, proud, uniquely intelligent, often peculiar folks we Southerners have always celebrated. In short, those fringe characters have long enriched all that is the “Southern experience,” and they are an integral part of all generational Southerners. Those not from the South viewed, still view, those characters as humorous, as jokes even, and not without reason. In Sunflower Dog, I wanted that comical aspect to shine through, but I also believe there is something beautiful and necessary in those fringe characters. If…when…those characters disappear, the collective We will have lost something more than just our Southern-ness. I hoped to preserve some of that in Sunflower Dog.

As the publication of Kevin’s Sunflower Dog demonstrates, the Southern Gothic tradition is alive and well. Contemporary Charlotte, with its gleaming skyscrapers and international airport, might not seem like a conducive setting for a Southern Gothic novel. However, Kevin shows us that you don’t have to travel very far beyond Charlotte’s city limits to find a world that’s perfectly suited for a Southern Gothic story. As I see it, Sunflower Dog is set on the fringes of the city, but it is still part of Storied Charlotte.

Tags: Southern Gothic literature

Rebecca McClanahan Goes to New York City

December 21, 2020 by Mark West

My father grew up in New York City. He spent most of his boyhood living in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, and that experience shaped his taste in movies. He loved movies set in New York, and he especially loved the New York movies written by Neil Simon. He felt a special bond with Simon in part because they shared a birthday. My father was born on July 4, 1928, and Simon was born on July 4, 1927. I remember going with my father to see Simon’s The Out-of-Towners as soon as it came out in 1970, and I have loved the movie ever since. The movie stars Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, and it deals with a middle-aged couple (Gwen and George Kellerman) who leave their home in Ohio and go to New York so that George can interview for a new job. What follows is a series of hilarious mishaps that tests the couple and changes their perspective.

I thought about The Out-of-Towners when I discovered In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays by Charlotte writer Rebecca McClanahan. Published by Red Hen Press in September 2020, this book is Rebecca’s eleventh book and her second memoir. Like Gwen and George Kellerman, Rebecca and her husband, Donald Devet, left the security of their comfortable home and headed off to New York City to explore new possibilities. Rebecca and Donald were about the same age as the Kellermans when they went to New York in 1998, but unlike the Kellermans, they ended up staying in the Big Apple for eleven years. Rebecca and Donald, like the Kellermans, approached New York from the perspective of outsiders, and this perspective helped them notice details that native New Yorkers often ignore as they bustle about their business. Rather than provide a chronological record of her years in New York, Rebecca writes focused essays in which she delves into particular moments and events. I recently contacted Rebecca and asked her for more information about In the Key of New York City. Here is what she sent to me:

When my husband and I moved from Charlotte to New York in 1998, it was a midlife leap into the unknown. We’d talked for decades about living in the city someday and had visited New York whenever we could. Then one day, while we were walking on 8th Avenue celebrating Donald’s 50th birthday, I surprised myself by saying, “If we’re going to make the move, we better make it now.” That was in May, and by August we had put our house on the market, stored the possessions we had not given away, found a furnished sublet, left our jobs, and said goodbye to family and friends—and even to our cat! Neither of us is impulsive by nature, but I guess the urge was strong. We figured that with the sale of the house and our savings, we could make it for two years if we didn’t find jobs there. We ended up staying for eleven.

In the Key of New York Cityis a memoir-in-essays about the first several years of our time there. We were newcomers, outsiders, and, as is the case with most outsiders, our senses were heightened as we struggled to navigate an alien landscape. Despite my training as a military brat who moved often during childhood, I was extremely lonely at the beginning, or maybe homesick is a better word for it. We’d been comfortable in our North Carolina lives and I missed that easy comfort. I missed my home and garden, my friends and family, my students and colleagues in the writing community.

Making a community in New York was a tough learning experience, but little by little we made connections—through our new jobs, mostly, and by reconnecting with New York area friends we’d lost track of over the years. But much of the growing feeling of connection came from the constant interaction with strangers. This was due in part to street activity—with walking rather than driving, encountering diverse faces close-up and personal, hearing the broth of languages on our walks, sharing subway seats or park benches, and learning how to give each person we met their own valuable space. It may sound strange, but I discovered a new form of intimacy in those encounters. I felt part of a world much larger than myself, my neighborhood, or my circle of friends. I hadn’t expected the intensity of this feeling and it surprised and comforted me. So, sprinkled among the longer essays in the book are brief moments that suggest these connections: an encounter on the subway involving two sleeping children, the drunken young man on 8th avenue holding a dying pigeon out to me as if I might save it, the post 9/11 park scene where I see a Muslim woman in a headscarf running toward a child who is in danger. All of these encounters, and more, forced me to imagine what New York—or, indeed, our nation—might look like if we all, horror of horrors, went “back where we came from.”

The book opens and closes with scenes of Central Park. The park bench was such an important part of my experience of New York—not only as my own physical (if temporary) stake on the landscape and a place from which to view the scene, but also as an opportunity for conversations with strangers who were always eager to share their stories and their odd but intriguing wisdom. A park bench is where public and private meet, which echoes my experience of the city. The book moves between the public and the private, the joyous and the sorrowful (9/11, my cancer surgery and recovery, moments of loneliness and regret) and the present and the past.

The title (“In the Key…”) is of course related to music, and music weaves its way throughout the book: in sounds heard through apartment walls, the cacophony of the streets and subways, the music I hear during the 9/11 prayer service, and even in the hospital essay when I hear the dying man’s wife echoing his cries—an opera of shared pain. Music touches the deepest parts of our experience; it transcends language. Which is why music is such an important part of the book.

In another way, though, the “key” to New York could also be seen as an object, something that opens the door into a new experience. That is what I hope the book might do for readers, not only those readers with connections to New York. I hope that the book’s reach extends to anyone who has ever been uprooted or who has felt like a newcomer or outsider, who has longed for connection, and who has been lucky enough to experience a place that changed them in remarkable ways. Maybe that’s reaching too high, but that was my aim in writing the book. I am grateful to each and every reader. Readers make books possible. Thank you, Mark, for the opportunity to talk about my book.

Rebecca and Donald, like the Kellmans, have returned home. Rebecca is maintaining her connections in Charlotte, including teaching in The Queens MFA program, and Donald is working as a video producer here in Charlotte. Rebecca is having great success in her writing career, the details of which can be found on her website: http://www.rebeccamcclanahanwriter.com

Rebecca still sees herself as a Charlotte writer, but her experinces living in New York have rippled through her writing career in a variety of ways. Her embrace of both Charlotte and New York is reflected in the fact that she is the recipent of fellowships from both the North Carolina Arts Council and the New York Foundation for the Arts. As I see it, Rebecca’s new book adds an appealing New-York-City vibe to Storied Charlotte.

Tags: essays memoir

Allison Hutchcraft, Henry David Thoreau, and the Art of Nature Writing

December 14, 2020 by Mark West

I first read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or Life in the Woods during my high school years in Colorado. There’s a pond on mountainside where I grew up, and I decided to emulate Thoreau and write about the pond, just like Thoreau wrote about Walden Pond. I perched on the bank for about an hour, watching the occasional dragonfly zip through the cluster of cattails near where I sat, and then I got restless. As much as I admired Thoreau’s writing, I realized that I lacked the discipline and powers of perception to be a nature writer. Still, I appreciate writers who are attuned to the rhythms of nature and who can help us understand our place in the natural world. One such writer is Charlotte poet Allison Hutchcraft. For more information about Allison and her poetry, please click on the following link: https://www.allisonhutchcraft.com

I met Allison about six years ago. At the time, she had just had a poem published in the Kenyon Review about a dodo bird. I remember reading the poem and then talking with her about her ability to make readers care about an extinct bird. I have followed her career ever since and have taken pleasure in seeing her poetry gain national attention. I am pleased to report the recent publication of Swale, Allison’s first poetry collection. I contacted Allison and asked her for more information about her collection. Here is what she sent to me:

I’m thrilled to share that my first poetry collection, Swale, was released this November by the good folks at New Issues Poetry & Prose. The book looks outward to the natural world, and also inward to the landscape of the mind. In Swale, water and land meet and mix, and at times become confused. Sailors hallucinate the ocean as a field. Ancient coastal forests, having fallen into the sea from shifting tectonic plates, reappear on a beach, unburied by erosion.

In my work, I often find animals appearing, from bears, horses, and lambs to whales and manatees. In Swale, there are extinct species, too, particularly the dodo and Steller’s sea cow, which went extinct roughly in the 1680s and 1760s, respectively. Human intervention set in motion those extinctions, and I’m interested in thinking about those losses, and the kinds of worldviews that made them possible.

In 2018, I was lucky to be a resident at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast. Sitka is a dream of a residency, and quite remote: perched where the Salmon River estuary spills into the sea, and steps from a national scenic research area. I saw more elk than people. Being in that particular place—walking the woods and coastlines, climbing over boulders, touching rockweed, lichen, and driftwood—was incredibly generative, and brought forth poems that grew incrementally from daily observations. Such writing in the field is crucial to me. At the same time, I love research. Reading about the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, led me to the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller’s study of the sea cow, which in turn led to a poem.

I am particularly interested in the ways in which art and science meet and what questions and conversations such crossings might foster. I often think of Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, in which he advocates for finding ways to bring the disasters of the Anthropocene into our shared consciousness. Nixon writes:

“In an age when the media venerate the spectacular, when public policy is shaped primarily around perceived immediate need, a central question is strategic and representational: how can we convert into image and narrative the disasters that are slow moving and long in the making, disasters that are anonymous and star nobody, disasters that are attritional and of indifferent interest to the sensation-driven technologies of our image-world?”

This, to me, is an urgent call: how can we begin to make visible the precariousness of our world? Poetry, I think, offers one way to do so.

Even though Allison’s Swale is a work of poetry while Thoreau’s Walden is a work of prose, both writers have much in common. For both of them, nature writing is an immersive act. Both are keen observers of the dynamics of the natural world, and both reflect in profound ways on how humans interact with nature. Both have an appreciation of place, and they communicate their appreciation of place through the power of their writing. In many ways, Allison Hutchcraft is Storied Charlotte’s own 21^st-century Thoreau.

Tags: Nature writer poetry

Charlotte Art Books

December 07, 2020 by Mark West

I like coffee, and I like books, and I don’t have anything against tables. However, I don’t especially like the term coffee table book. When I come across this term, it causes me to associate a book with a glorified coaster or a saucer for a coffee cup. I prefer to use the term art book when I am referring to a book that features photographs and reproductions of visual images.

I enjoy perusing art books. I like the way the images and the text work together. I also like the way the images in an art book relate to the other images in the book. I often have sense that the images are speaking to each other in a synergistic way, and I know that this experience is no accident. Like the curator of an art exhibit, the creator of an art book puts a great deal of thought into the arrangement and presentation of the images in the book. I am pleased to report the recent publication of several art books that have associations with Charlotte. For the purposes of this blog post, I will focus on three such books.

Anne Neilson’s Angels came out last month, and it features 40 full-color reproductions of Neilson’s well-known angel paintings. Often described as “ethereal,” these oil paintings reflect Neilson’s skill in playing with light, color and texture. The wings on her angels are usually created by the thick application of oil paints, and this technique gives these angel wings a three-dimensional quality. The book also includes “inspirational devotions” in keeping with Neilson’s Christian religious beliefs. Neilson is a Charlotte-based artist and owner of Anne Neilson Fine Art, an art gallery located in Charlotte.

Charlotte: The Signs of the Times reflects photographer Christopher Lawing’s passion for Charlotte’s iconic signs. He first took an interest in photographing these signs while still a student at Myers Park High School, and for the next seven years he continued to photograph and research the history of Charlotte’s historic signs. In this lavishly illustrated book, Lawing brings together photographs of over 100 distinctive Charlotte signs, many of which are associated with important Charlotte landmarks, including Ratcliffe’s Flowers, the World Famous Open Kitchen, and Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream. For each of the photographed signs, Lawing provides information about the sign’s location, the history of the business associated with the sign, and a note about the sign’s current status. Sadly, some of the physical signs no longer exists, but they live on in Lawing’s book.

Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries is by Brian D. Gallagher, the Curator of Decorative Arts at the Mint Museum. This book functions as a catalog for the Mint Museum’s current “Classic Black” exhibit, which can be seen at the museum’s Randolph Road location. However, the book also functions as a stand-alone celebration of black basalt sculptures and ornamental wares. Classic Black includes 254 color illustrations of busts, statues, vases, cameos, and other works created out of black basalt. In the words of a reviewer from the Wall Street Journal, this is “a handsomely illustrated catalog written by Mr. Gallagher, with contributions by several eminent colleagues in the field.”

For readers who are interested in checking out other art books that are tied to Charlotte, I suggest that they visit the gift shops at the area art museums. In some cases, Charlotte’s art museums still have the catalogs for temporary exhibits, such as the Mint Museum’s 2011 ground-breaking exhibit titled “Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections.” These museum catalogs, along with the various art books created by Charlotte painters and photographers, add a rich visual dimension to the ever-expanding library of books that make up Storied Charlotte.

Tags: art books coffee table books

Visiting the American West Via Charlotte

November 30, 2020 by Mark West

I have lived in Charlotte for most of my adult years, but I grew up in the American West. My parents bought the side of a mountain in Colorado’s Front Range back in the early 1950s, and that mountain served as my backyard until I headed off to college at the age of seventeen. Given my Colorado connections, I have long had a particular fondness for books set in the West. I am not the only resident of Charlotte who is drawn to the American West as a setting for stories. Two of my creative writing colleagues in the English Department at UNC Charlotte—Aaron Gwyn and Bryn Chancellor—set much of their fiction in the American West.

Aaron Gwyn grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma, and his familiarity with the American Southwest is reflected in many of his stories, including his new novel, All God’s Children: A Novel of the American West. Set largely in Texas between 1827 and 1847, All God’s Children braids together the stories of three characters: Duncan Lammons, an adventurer from Kentucky who is riddled with a sense of guilt because of his homosexual desires; Cecelia, an African American woman who grew up as a slave in Virginia; and Sam Fisk, a frontiersman from Arkansas. These three characters come together on the Texas frontier, where they form a complex relationship. Their lives are shaped by the transformation of Texas from a province of Mexico to an independent republic to becoming the 28^th state in 1845.

All God’s Children just came out in October, but reviewers are already praising it for its portrayal of the American West. The reviewer for the New York Times Book Review celebrates the novel for its “powerful depiction of the rough realities of frontier life.” The reviewer for Lone Star Literary Life writes, “Gwyn possesses a distinctive voice that is, nevertheless, a recognizably Western rhythm,” and the reviewer for Publishers Weekly calls the book “a masterpiece of Western fiction.”

Bryn Chancellor spent many of her formative years in Arizona. She often sets her stories Arizona, including her debut novel, Sycamore, which came out in 2017. The title is the name of the small town in Arizona where the novel takes place. Told from the points of view of multiple residents of the town, this novel focuses on a young woman who mysteriously disappeared from the town in 1991. Sycamore garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Library Journal and many other influential periodicals at the time of its publication. Bryn is now writing two more books set in Arizona. I recently contacted her and asked for more information about these new works. Here is what she sent to me:

I am working on two books both set in the American Southwest, where I lived for thirty-five years and where my family still resides. The first is People of Earth, twelve linked short stories (sometimes called a story cycle or composite novel) set in the same downtown Phoenix neighborhood. The second is Soon, Mercy, an epistolary novel set in Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona, Arizona. Both projects align with my longstanding storytelling interests: working- and middle-class characters who sometimes go unnoticed in the world and in literature, along with the unexplored corners and unusual geologic landscapes of small-town and urban Arizona, from the heat-baked low-lying Sonoran Desert to a dormant volcano above the treeline at 11,000 feet. As Joan Didion did with California or Kent Haruf with Colorado, I hope to bring my Arizona into focus as more than myth or stereotype, to show the complexities of the place and its people.

I am proud that both Aaron and Bryn teach in UNC Charlotte’s English Department. As creative writing professors, they contribute to the educations of countless students. As fiction writers, they contribute tales of the American West to the ever-expanding library of books that make up Storied Charlotte.

Tags: American West books set in the West fiction

Contact Me

Links

Archives