9 minute read
Jeffrey Blunt interviews Susan Zurenda, author of The Girl From the Red Rose Motel
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING AUTHORS
Jeffrey Blunt interviews Susan Zurenda, author of The Girl From the Red Rose Motel
A recently widowed teacher, trying to put her life back together. A teenage girl, living with her family in a dilapidated motel, trying to keep her head above the treacherous waves of poverty. A teenage boy from a prominent, rich family, carrying a complicated past on his shoulders. Susan, your new novel The Girl From the Red Rose Motel, comes richly and beautifully to life at the intersection of these characters’ lives. You craft a story that pays homage to the power, the grace, and the fortitude of the human spirit. For me, this tribute was evident throughout the book, but certainly at the end. How much, if at all, were you thinking about emphasizing the resilience of the human spirit when you started writing the novel? Or did it just organically grow as you wrote?
Thank you for this thoughtful question, Jeffrey. At the beginning of the novel, my protagonist, Hazel Smalls, feels small and insignificant, like her name. Deeply ashamed, she tries to keep her poverty secret. Yet also from the start, Hazel is tough and resilient. I knew she would grow and develop confidence and a stronger sense of self as the novel developed, but I didn’t know exactly how. In fact, I was surprised myself at Hazel’s bold decision at the end of the book.
Maybe it’s my journalism background bleeding into the world of fiction, but I tend to think of writing as a work of activism. I see this novel in the same vein. Would you agree that The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is a work of activism? If so, what are you trying to make us see about ourselves and our world?
The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is, most of all, a story of the human heart. But, yes, I definitely agree the novel is also in some respects a work of activism. One meaning I hope comes through is the need for kindness freely given among all people, no matter their class or circumstance. Kindness, especially from Hazel’s English teacher Angela Wilmore in the novel, helps Hazel persevere when the circumstances of her life go from bad to worse. Also, being an ardent reader and retired English teacher, I have a strong opinion about book censorship that plays out in the novel. Angela Wilmore’s opposition to the parents who want to oversee the literary selections she teaches to their daughter is just one example of harmful consequences that can result from self-righteousness.
Cassandra King is one of my favorite human beings. She’s also a fabulous author and she said, “Writing is more than a calling. Writing is more than a vocation. In so many ways, it is an act of courage.” Tell us why The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is an act of courage.
First, I want to say that Cassandra is also one of my favorite people and authors. Next, until your question, I hadn’t thought of The Girl From the Red Rose Motel as an act of courage. But that’s exactly what it is because each of the three main characters displays tremendous courage, without which, the novel would be, well . . . not the novel I intended it to be. In spite of extremely difficult circumstances—such as living in a rundown motel and coping with an alcoholic father—Hazel takes care of herself, her sister, and her mother. Sterling Lovell has lived a privileged life, but he eschews that social order when he embraces and supports Hazel in numerous circumstances. Angela courageously steps beyond being Hazel’s English teacher to become her foster parent.
You tackle some very controversial subjects that are ripped from today’s headlines. They are part of our present “culture wars.” You went there! Why?
I was a teacher for 33 years in South Carolina, and I would make the same career choice again, but I long for teachers to be given all the respect they deserve, along with a professional wage. I hear of so many young teachers quitting after only a few years because of burnout and administrative mandates. In fact, teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and without good teachers, what are we to do? In my home state of South Carolina, according to State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, at the start of the 2022-2023 school year, there were 1400 unfilled teaching positions. My character Angela Wilmore is fortunate to teach in a fictitious South Carolina high school where she is treated professionally, yet forces from the outside attempt to demean her integrity and expertise. The crisis in public school teaching is but one of the timely topics in the novel. Others that I am passionate about in the novel include book censorship, opinions on abortion, and conditions of inequality among young people.
Would you say that The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is a feminist statement?
I don’t think of The Girl From the Red Rose Motel as a feminist statement, but I come from a long line of strong women on both sides of my family, so perhaps I take for granted that women and men are equal partners. At least those were the models I experienced. What a lucky woman I am.
Many readers are surprised that non-historical, literary fiction often requires research. Some of your characters reside in the world of poverty. There is a lot to know about in order to present these situations to the world correctly. There are issues in your book about medical procedures, privacy and discipline in public schools, religion and others. How much research went into The Girl From the Red Rose Motel?
I had first-hand knowledge of privacy and discipline in public schools, but I conducted a good deal of research about some of the other circumstances you mention, especially regarding people forced to live in substandard motels. For example, I interviewed an amazing guidance counselor at the high school where I taught the last decade of my teaching career who started a nonprofit organization called CAST (Care, Accept, Share, Teach) to assist families living in motels. This guidance counselor invited me to serve a Christmas meal to motel families and later to assist the children with buying new shoes. I learned so much about these families’ needs and our common humanity through this experience.
In your previous novel Bells for Eli and in The Girl From the Red Rose Motel, you create such beautiful characters. As a reader, one is drawn to care for them, even in their more imperfect moments. How do you go about creating such characters? Or what is it about the situations you put them in that makes us feel so much for them?
Oh, wow, what a question. Thank you, Jeffrey. I’m not sure how I create my characters except to say that I have to feel what they feel, and their circumstances have to be true to my understanding of the human condition. When I am writing, I live inside my characters’ heads, observing how they act and react, shrink and grow, according to the choices they make and the unpredictability of fate.
Before becoming an author, you were a schoolteacher. The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is dedicated to all of your former students. Then, in your acknowledgments you recognize them again. Can you describe how your students have influenced your personal life and your writing life?
I taught over 7,000 students during my teaching career, ranging from 7th graders through mid-life folks deciding to go to college. Every age and every semester brought new experiences. Who could ask for more, right? For the bulk of my full-time career, I taught English at my local community college to a heterogeneous population of students. It was challenging but also gratifying to teach headstrong, naïve teenagers in the same American Literature class, for example, as middle-age mothers making big sacrifices to get an education. Teaching diverse populations of students helped me to understand better the breadth of humanity for my writing. Also, I had the privilege of teaching literature for 33 years, a field of study that expresses all there is to know about what it means to be human.
In the future, do you see yourself writing a book without students, families, and school life as the surrounding context?
I loved writing The Girl From the Red Rose Motel and calling on my knowledge of students and teaching. Who knows what the future will bring? I could return to school life, but that’s not what I anticipate. I will go where the muse leads me with the constant likely to be a Southern setting because that’s who I am.
