INSIDE VOICES Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Piper G. Huguley

INSIDE VOICES

Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Piper G. Huguley

“. . . Not everyone’s life is best suited for the historical fiction treatment, but there are certainly many people who are worthwhile.”

Piper G. Huguley’s biographical historical fiction, By Her Own Design: a novel of Ann Lowe, Fashion Designer to the Social Register (William Morrow Publishing) tells the inspiring story of the Black fashion designer of Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress. By Her Own Design was a Booklist top 100 Editor’s Choice selection for 2022 and was named one of the top 100 books of 2022 in Canada by the Globe and Mail newspaper.

She is also the author of Sweet Tea by Hallmark Publishing and the author of two historical romance series: “Migrations of the Heart”, about the Great Migration and “Home to Milford College”. Her next historical fiction book, American Daughters (2024), is the story of the decades-long interracial friendship between Alice Roosevelt and Portia Washington, the rebel teenage daughters of President Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, respectively. She is a literature professor at Clark-Atlanta University and blogs about the history behind her novels at http://piperhuguley.com. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son.

Jeffrey/Inside Voices: Piper, you began the book and Ann Lowe’s story near the end of her life and pretty quickly show her struggling in a variety of ways. Her human frailties (regret, jealousy, even anger) are as much a source of her pain and struggle as her physical ailments. Why did you begin her story by showing her at this late point?

When I started doing research on Ann Lowe, I knew instantly without looking it up that her death date was the day after that Charles and Diana had gotten engaged. When I found that out, I instantly thought of her in a posture of feeling regret and jealousy that she would not have the opportunity to chase or even get to see this, the biggest commission of them all. If she is struggling, she’s understanding that she will not get this commission and she knows that some designer’s life will change forever. The regret comes in at not having the chance to make her past work right.

Robert/Inside Voices: During our time together on a panel at a literary conference, I recall you sharing that you endeavor to amplify unheard voices in your writing. Talk a little bit about that.

There are so many historical stories that have been kept from the historical record. We have scholars of marginalized identities to thank for shifting the discourse to performing what Sadiya Haartman calls “literary excavation” on those lives to let us come to understand more about who these unsung, unheralded and unheard voices are in history. Historical fiction can do the job in allowing those people to be fleshed out and more fully realized so that they may take a rightful place in history. I would like to help Black women do that.

Jeffrey/Inside Voices: I so enjoyed how you described the clothes. I can still see young Ann walking down the sidewalk wearing her red and black polka dot dress to which she adds panels, flourishes, and ruffles to help it grow long as she grows taller and older. Will you talk about the role of garments in how Ann finds her voice, her strength in a world where she and her kind are rendered powerless?

I fully intended to use this novel to make a case for Ann Lowe, in her work as a fashion designer, was an artist. Therefore, the bespoke dresses that she makes are the way that she sees that woman made the most beautiful in a creation of, literally, her own design. She does that for herself rarely enough, but when she does, it’s still about using the opportunity to show how basic black, which is what she wore most of the time, to showcase her design artistry. Her red and black polka dot dress was the first step on that path to discovering how she could do that for others.

Robert/Inside Voices: Do historical figures come to you first, or is it the era that drives your decision making when choosing a story?

Mostly the figures stand out to me first. I’m a scholar of the time period loosely known as Civil War to Civil Rights, about 1860’s to 1950’s United States. So that is where I know I will be most comfortable with the figures that I have studied there as well as that particular time period which will always be my backdrop because that’s what I know best.

Not everyone’s life is best suited for the historical fiction treatment, but there are certainly many people who are worthwhile. Many more figures, especially marginalized ones who made great contributions in the rise of the United States as a world power, deserve to have their stories told as well.

Jeffrey/Inside Voices: World building is essential to creating a sense of time and place in literature; it’s especially so for historical fiction. How do you do it, especially when the people and locales are real?

World building in history, for me, involves thinking about what people are doing, how they are able to accomplish it, what they are wearing and how they are relating to one another. So, because of my expertise in studying this time period, I’m always aware of how these various elements have shifted and what they mean in the character’s lives. For instance, the development of the use of the automobile allowed for courting to shift to the privacy of an automobile that could go away from prying eyes of cautious family members. For me, that kind of freedom has an impact on what characters will do and say.

Robert/Inside Voices: Your latest novel, American Daughters, was released April 2, 2024. Share a little about the relationship between Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, and why you felt compelled to write it.

One question that has always intrigued me is why people of different races are not friends with one another more frequently. Over the past few years, there have been several studies to confirm this fact. So, while studying the Washington family, I noticed some mentions of Booker T. Washington’s eldest daughter Portia, who had a friendship with the renown daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, Alice. Once I read more about these young women the more it made sense that they had shared commonalities in spite of their racial differences: the eldest daughters of great statesmen, mothers who died when they were babies, stepmothers who resented their presence, and wives of men who were emotionally stunted. It occurred to me that their relationship, as secret as it was, might be something that people could see as a real-life possibility if the story were filled in the way that only historical fiction can.

Jeffrey/Inside Voices: Memoir is often described as telling one’s truth. I think anything we write—poetry, a playscript, and, yes, historical fiction—reveals us to others. So, why do you write what you write, and what have you learned about yourself during your writing career?

Well, my years in the classroom have revealed to me that we are in a historical and reading crisis. I was compelled to reach an audience of people who might connect to others across time because my protagonists are often on the verge of some kind of life discovery. All of the people I write about have allowed me to look more closely at myself as an artist, thinker and increasingly, an activist for telling these stories.

Robert/Inside Voices: And to insinuate myself into Jeffrey’s question, what do you hope that your writing accomplishes for others?

My hope is that whenever we might feel despair about the present, we can look to these past figures as a guide for how to carry on with hope.

Jeffrey/Inside Voices: What’s next for you, Piper?

I hope that market forces permit me to continue telling these stories, but if not, that whatever I will write will allow me to do the same work of bringing back those parts of history that have been purposefully erased or omitted so that we can understand what a full, inclusive history of this country finally looks like.