Ellen Feldman
publisher
W.W. Norton & Co
format
Paperback
pages
384
Per Petterson
Mrs. Somebody, Somebody
Tracy Winn
With Violets
Elizabeth Robards
Bill Warrington's Last Stand
James King
"Scottsboro"
(Reviewed by Eleanor Bukowsky APR 21, 2008, MOSTLY FICTION)
"Even after all these years, the injustice still stuns. Innocent boys sentenced to die, not for a crime they did not commit, but for a crime that never occurred. Lives splintered as casually as wood being hacked for kindling. Young manhood ground to ashes."
The history of the Scottsboro boys is well documented. On March 25, 1931, nine black youths were riding the Alabama Great Southern freight train when they got into an altercation with a group of angry white men. When the nine "Negroes," some of whom were in their early teens, got off the train, they were arrested for allegedly raping two white women. In this semi-fictionalized account, Ellen Feldman provides the shocking details of a shameful episode in our nation's history, putting the events into their political, social, and economic context. She demonstrates the noxious effects of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racial prejudice in the Deep South, and incorporates the stories of some of the individuals who played key roles in what would ultimately become a cause célèbre.
There are two first person narrators. One, Alice Whittier, is a product of the author's imagination. Whittier is a tough and ambitious journalist, as well as a feminist with leftist leanings. Her reporter's unerring instincts lead her to believe that her work on the Scottsboro story might further her career. As Clarence Norris, one of the defendants, said, "For lots of folks, us boys was nothing more than rungs on a ladder." He made a good point, since lawyers, judges, "do-gooders," Communist party members, and other hangers-on shamelessly exploited the defendants and their accusers for their own ends, while the victims suffered emotional and physical torment that would continue for years.
The other narrator is Ruby Bates, a pitifully poor seventeen-year-old mill worker who is functionally illiterate. Victoria Price, Ruby's close friend, persuades her to go along with the fabricated accusation. Because of the bigotry that prevailed in the Deep South during those years, all-white male juries willingly ignored the glaring inconsistencies in Ruby's and Veronica's testimony. The first trial and subsequent retrials occurred against the backdrop of the Great Depression, a time of crushing poverty when sixteen million Americans were unemployed and two hundred thousand young people under twenty-one wandered from place to place like hoboes. For the downtrodden Ruby and Victoria, sudden notoriety transformed them into overnight celebrities. Strangers bought them new clothes and showered them with attention. For the first time in their lives, they felt important. Victoria was the more hardened of the two (she "had a mean streak a mile wide") and she never did recant her statements. Ruby, on the other hand, came to regret her lies; she worried that her eternal soul would "go to torment" in the hereafter.
Scottsboro is a beautifully realized portrait of an era when lower class white people were so browbeaten that they vented their frustrations on those who could not fight back. However, this is more than a fictionalized account of a terrible miscarriage of justice. It is also an engrossing tale of a fearless journalist who dares to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular it makes her. There are a few lighter moments when Alice takes time out from her hectic routine to pursue her romantic interests. Feldman adds color to the narrative by vividly describing FDR's ascension to the presidency at a time when Hoovervilles dotted the landscape. The country gained two leaders when FDR took office; his wife, Eleanor, became a driving force for equality and justice in her own right.
Ellen Feldman consistently enlightens and entertains us. In addition, she forces us to take a hard look at who we are. If during a period of intense racial hatred, we had been on a jury judging the Scottsboro boys, would we have had the courage to acquit them? Or would we have yielded to the pressure from our local community and taken the path of least resistance? Feldman's evocative dialogue (written partly in southern dialect), absorbing plot, and touching depiction of the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society make this an unforgettable work of historical fiction.
About the Author
Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published articles on the history of divorce, plastic surgery, Halloween, the Normandie, and many other topics, as well as numerous book reviews. She has also lectured extensively around the country and in Germany and England, and is a sought-after speaker to reading groups both in person and by telephone.
She grew up in northern New Jersey and attended Bryn Mawr College, from which she holds a B.A. and an M.A. in modern history. After further graduate studies in history at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house.
She lives in New York City and East Hampton, New York, with her husband and Cairn terrier named Lucy, and is currently at work on a novel about Margaret Sanger and Aimee Semple McPherson.
*From ellenfeldman.com
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH ELLEN FELDMAN
Q: The story of what happened in Scottsboro was, at the time, a sensational event. What inspired you to write about it now?
A: The word Scottsboro is iconic in American lore. Everyone knows it stands for a terrible racial injustice, but few know the details of the horror, how deeply it convulsed the nation, how widely it reverberated around the world, and how it incited and exacerbated other prejudices in the country. I wanted to remind readers of a heinous chapter in the nation’s recent past, in hope that remembering inoculates against repeating. I also wanted to tell a riveting story, at once heartbreaking and inspiring. And I thought that as we stand on the brink of a new era in race relations, we hope, this was the moment to do it.
Q: In the acknowledgements at the end of Scottsboro you write, “Setting fictional characters loose among the ghosts of history is a dicey business.” How difficult was it to construct such a believable character as Alice Whittier and to slot her so seamlessly into the story?
A: I wrote Scottsboro as fiction because I am interested in exploring the major events of history, but in human terms. How do individuals behave in the crucible of great events, and how do they shape those events in turn? Alice Whittier is a composite of two women journalists who covered Scottsboro, but she is also very much my creation, perhaps even a fantasized much-improved version of myself. I have never risked my life for a cause, but Alice’s beliefs and convictions, passions and prejudices, and especially limitations are mine. Creating Alice was a means of finding my way into the story.
Q: Ruby Bates is, of course, a real person and one of the “victims” in the trial. You give Ruby her voice in the book. How did she “speak” to you?
A: Finding Ruby’s voice was the most difficult aspect of writing Scottsboro. When I started, I was so sure I could not capture Ruby’s voice that I did not even try. The book was in the third person, and Ruby lived at a distance. But through draft after draft, she kept nagging at me to let her speak for herself. I read and reread native southern writers. I studied dictionaries of regional slang and dialect. Little by little, Ruby’s voice became clearer and louder. That is the story of how I discovered Ruby’s voice in my head, but how it got there in the first place is one of the wonders and joys of being a novelist.
Q: How much research was required to complete the novel?
A: A great deal. I started with the secondary sources, then moved on to archives, contemporary accounts – both newspaper and first-person – and of course the transcripts of the trial.
Q: A challenge for books based on actual events is to make sure that, as the author, you provide enough detail in the book while at the same time you avoid turning the book into a work of non-fiction. How did you strike that balance?
A: You put your finger on one of the most difficult problems of writing this kind of fiction. My first several drafts for Scottsboro, as for The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank and the novel before that, Lucy, read too much like history. In the early drafts, I have to get it all down in its historical accuracy. Then, in subsequent drafts, I have to begin to burrow into the hearts and minds of the characters to discover the motives and emotions behind their actions.
Q: What are The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank and Lucy about?
A: I wrote The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank after a guide at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam told me, mistakenly, that we had no proof of whether Peter, the boy in hiding with her, had lived or died. In the book, I posit that he lived, came to this country, and hid his past, as many did at the time. It’s a drama about the power of the past and what happens when we try to deny it. It’s also about the life Anne Frank’s diary took on in this country after her death.
Lucy is about the love affair that almost derailed twentieth century history. Lucy Mercer was the great love of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s life. Had he left his wife Eleanor for her, as he contemplated doing, he would never have been elected president, and the history of the last century would have been very different indeed. But I tell the story in personal terms. Here are three people, FDR, the great Eleanor, and her social secretary Lucy, caught in a heartbreaking triangle, yet in the end all behaved with honor and dignity. It is also a curious story because it could not happen today. In our own era, public figures are not permitted private lives. That was one of the reasons I found the story so timely and moving.
Q: Why historical fiction? What is it about this genre that pulls at you?
A: I am interested in the monumental events of history, but in human terms. By writing fiction, I can explore how individuals influence history and how history shapes personal lives. I also try to illuminate our own era.
Q: If you weren't a writer, what do you think you would be doing?
A: The question is too terrifying to contemplate. Writing is all I ever wanted to do. If I go too long without writing, I become extremely difficult to live with.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently at work on a novel about Margaret Sanger, the mother of birth control, and Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelical faith healer. Though Margaret Sanger is still a household name, Aimee Semple McPherson has been largely forgotten. But the two women were perhaps the most famous and powerful of the first half of the twentieth century. They were pioneer women in a man’s world. They also represented the opposing forces of reason and faith.
Beyond the book
Shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for fiction.
Chosen by the Richmond Times Dispatch as one of the five best novels of the year.
Click here to read Ellen's essay, "75 Years After Scottsboro," on the Huffington Post.
Hear Ellen and other Orange Prize finalists read and discuss.
Hear Ellen discuss Scottsboro at the New York Society Library.