Maggie Smith
at the Women’s Fiction Writers Association
https://www.womensfictionwriters.org/
interviewed me about my novel, The Winter Loon, on her podcast series:
Click HERE to listen.
Category Archives: 1930s
Author Talk
I’m looking forward to my first author talk in
Ashland, Oregon at
http://bloomsburyashland.com/
My thanks to Chris Molè of http://www.booksavvystudio.com for the book cover and poster.
Stand Up Against Hate
In a scene from THE WINTER LOON Gisela says to Ruth:
“Sticking together, you mean like what’s happening in Europe? No one over here seems to care, but my father lives in Paris and writes that despite street violence in Germany against the SA Storm Troopers, newspapers sympathetic to Nazi influence continue to wage a propaganda campaign blaming Jews for Germany’s economic and social problems. It’s unbelievable how the general public there often turns a blind eye to the SA thugs trying to intimidate customers from entering Jewish shops.”
“It’s so complicated,” Ruth answers.
“And in this country so many folks who can’t find work, living in hobo villages. Why? Where are all the good Christians who claim to be their brother’s keeper? It doesn’t matter what problems we’re talking about. People are too afraid of consequences of losing what they have. Jesus said, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ not ‘Look the other way.'”
The scene is set in Minneapolis in 1932.
In January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. He watched in triumph from the Chancellory balcony while thousands of torch bearing Nazis celebrated his victory. Nineteen months later he achieved absolute power.
A mix of KKK members, Nazi sympathizers and White Nationalists carried torches through the University of Virginia campus last week, menacing people of all races, creed, and religion.
Candidate Trump held the Pride flag upside down, pledging his support for the LGBTQ community and a few months later as president called for a ban of transgender people serving in the military.
We can’t afford to turn a blind eye to what is happening right now in America. We can’t be bystanders. We must stand up against hate and bigotry.
In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.
Marianne Williamson –
PRIDE MONTH
In 1970 Pride was a political movement to voice demands for LGBT equal rights and protections. As Pride is now celebrated worldwide, itis important toremember that June was chosen to commemorate the Stonewall riots which occurred the end of June 1969 in Manhattan. The month of June is a time to celebrate and honor people from the LGBTQ+ community. It is a time to reflect and continue to fight against discrimination that still occurs and threatens the hard-earned right to marry, to live and work where one choses and shop without the risk of prejudice.
It is pure serendipity that my book The Winter Loon debuts during Pride Month. I missed several self-imposed deadlines for publication and finally in mid-June this year my book is on Amazon available for purchase.
THE WINTER LOON is inspired by my mother, who died when I was nine and who had divulged very little information about her life, refusing even to answer any questions about my biological father. Estranged from her family, she moved across the country from the Midwest to California, ending up in a remote area of the Mojave Desert far from the nearest town. From my earliest memories, the two of us lived as a family with her woman companion until shortly before her death. Some of the things she left behind were a few photos, a newspaper clipping of her as a rodeo competitor, and her master’s degree certificate from the 1930s.
When I started writing, my purpose of embarking on a healing journey gradually transformed into this novel about a young woman who struggles to define herself in a world where she does not seem to fit. As I envisioned how my mother’s life might have been if she was able to live her authentic truth, I realized how much, and how little, has changed for the LGBTQ+ community. It is my hope that this story about the healing power of love will positively influence anyone who reads it.
A to Z Challenge Survivor
![survivor-atoz [2016] v2](https://lorihenriksen.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/survivor-atoz-2016-v2.jpg?w=200&h=300)
Yes. I survived my first A to Z Challenge. It has been a great adventure posting and visiting other bloggers taking the Challenge. I’ve learned a lot and made new friends. I had a great time researching and writing my theme, Women in the 1930s.
If you want to find other A to Z Challenges, go to:
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/sign-ups-for-2016-to-z-blogging.html
and check out a theme that interests you.
I’m hopelessly behind in posting and responding to comments. Back soon with new posts and Reflections on the Challenge.
Wake me up for that.
Thanks your stopping by.
Zippity Do Dah
When I chose Zippity Do Dah for my Z post, I thought it was just a song to sing when you are happy. But in reading about the origins and lyrics of the song, I learned it is surrounded by controversy. So much for singing Zippity Do Dah and doing the dance of joy because we have all reached the end of the A to Z Challenge. Some facts I didn’t know:
~ The song is from a Disney movie called Song of the South about Br’er Rabbit and Uncle Remus.
~ The movie was released in 1946 and criticized by the NAACP: “the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery . . . [the film] unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.”
~ The stars of the movie and others disagreed. Actress Hattie McDaniel who played the character Tempy in Song of the South and sang Sooner or Later said: “If I had for one moment considered any part of the picture degrading or harmful to my people I would not have appeared therein.”
~Hattie McDaniel is better remembered as the first black actress to win an Oscar in 1939 for her role of Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Her roles portraying hard-working black women were often criticized as stereotypes, and she was criticized for not being politically active. She is loosely quoted as saying, “I can play a maid in the movies for $700 a week or work as a maid downtown for $7 a week.”
~ Hattie McDaniel lost her battle with breast cancer in Los Angeles, California, on October 26, 1952. Since her death, McDaniel has been posthumously awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Additionally, in 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. A well-received biography on her life was published in 2005—Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, by Jill Watts.
~ You can watch her Oscar acceptance speech and read 5 more facts about her here:
http://www.biography.com/news/hattie-mcdaniel-oscar-facts
~ James Baskett who sang Zippity Do Dah in the film, Song of the South, agreed with Hattie McDaniel, saying, “I believe that certain groups are doing my race more harm in seeking to create dissension than can ever possibly come out of the Song of the South.”
I end with James Baskett in a You Tube video singing Zippity Do Dah:
Have a beautiful day and thanks for stopping by the A to Z Challenge. You can see other bloggers participating in the Challenge:
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-z-challenge-sign-up-list-2016.html
Yearning
Yearning ~ Longing, craving, hunger, thirst, ache
Maya Angelou experienced and later wrote about oppression of black American women as seen through her child eyes in the 1930s and her own later experience as a woman struggling to survive and raise her child. Through her books and poetry she sheds light on the abuse and brutality of racism. She writes of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and the yearning to be free. She writes about how segregation made people feel and how freedom is taken for granted.
Caged Bird
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
~Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou wrote too many books to list here. Check out her top 10 works at:
http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/top-10-works-of-maya-angelou/
Maya Angelou died May 28, 2014 at the age of 86. Her wisdom lives on:
Xenial
Xenial ~ of, relating to, or constituting hospitality or relations between host and guest and especially among the ancient Greeks between persons of different cities. ~ Miriam-Webster Dictionary
During the A to Z Challenge, each of us participating has opened the door and invited both strangers and friends into our world.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes Xenial as pertaining to the friendly relation between host and guest, relating to hospitality.
One of the most respectful forms of hospitality during the 1930s was welcoming guests and sharing a meal. Women cooked and served food even in the poorest of households. It was a sign of good manners to offer food and drink, no matter how poor the household.
Women were often the breadwinners in families. They sewed clothes, tended gardens, and were responsible to stay within the food budget. Hospitality could be expensive. Enjoying one another’s company at potlucks, where each woman brought a dish to share was one way to extend the generosity of hospitality to friends and family.
Women were creative with the less expensive sources of protein: rice, beans, and cheese. Spam and bologna substituted for beef, pork and lamb. Chickens could be raised in the yard and became a staple Sunday sit-down meal for the after-church crowd.
No matter what a woman’s economic circumstances, she did her best to put food on the table and share a meal:
Thanks for stopping by.
WASPs
This post is inspired by a PBS program honoring the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) ~ We Served Too: The Story of the WASP.
A trailer is available http://www.wstthemovie.com
In 1939, the day after German tanks rolled into Warsaw, Poland, a woman pilot named Jacqueline Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt to suggest the use of experienced women pilots in the Armed Forces. Almost a year later, another pilot, Nancy Harkness Love, made the same suggestion to the Ferrying Division of the Armed Forces.
It wasn’t until September 1942 that the Air Transport Command (ATC) realized the reality of a lack of experienced pilots to ferry newly produced warplanes to air bases across the country. The demand for male combat pilots overseas left the ATC with a dilemma until someone remembered and considered Nancy Love’s letter of 1940.
Love was hired to recruit 25 of the most qualified women pilots in the country to ferry military aircraft. The value of the women pilots got the attention of General Henry Arnold of the Army Air Force. He approved a program to train a large group of women as ferry pilots. Cochran and Love recruited the pilots and engineered the program that became Women Air Force Services (WASP).
~Most of the recruited women had 1,000 hours of flying time prior to entering the training.
~They trained for a few weeks before being assigned a post.
~1,074 eventually women graduated from the program.
~The WASP flew every type of plane in the Army’s arsenal.
~They served as flight instructors, tow-target pilots for gunnery training—yes with real ammunition, engineering flight test pilots, and flew radio controlled planes.
~The WASP were hired under Civil Service. They paid for their own uniforms, lodging and personal travel to and from home.
~WASPs were deactivated in December 1944 without military benefits and without recognition. The surviving women were moved to seek recognition in the mid-1970s when the Navy announced that for the FIRST time in history women would be permitted to fly military planes.
~In 1977 the WASP gained their belated military benefits and recognition.
~In 2010 the WASP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor by Congress.
Highland Veterans Memorial Park, Wisconsin
Thirty-eight WASP lost their lives in service to their country.
P.S. I just learned that William M. Miller, a former Southern Oregon Historical society Historian and history columnist for the Medford Mail Tribune newspaper has written a book To Live and Die a WASP that is a tribute to the 38 WASP who did not survive. The book is available on Amazon.
Violence
A brief and incomplete history of violence against women:
During the 1800s husbands had the choice of whether or not to beat their wives. It was a right and a privilege condoned by society. All states in the U.S. made “wife beating” illegal by 1920, the same year women won the right to vote. It was presumed, under the umbrella of privacy and sanctity of home, that there was a reluctance to interfere when men beat or raped their wives.
However, a recent 2013 article The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, and changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims of Domestic Violence by Carolyn B. Ramsey
http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=mjgl
suggests that until 1930 offenders were likely to be charged in criminal court and sentenced to a jail term. Wife killers often faced the death penalty and juries tended to acquit women who killed their husbands in self-defense.
It is now thought that changing gender roles, women exercising their right to vote and entering the workforce, led to the premise that women were capable of leaving an abusive relationship. Sympathy for female victims of violence in the home waned. The changing view that women no longer needed to be cared for in paternalistic ways resulted in a period of apathy, leaving women of the 1930s basically unprotected from domestic violence.
In 1945 the State of California passed a law that made corporal injury of a wife, or cruel and inhumane punishment of a child, a felony. But it wasn’t until the late 1960s and early 70s that The Women’s Liberation Movement set the stage for the legal protection of battered women by claiming that what goes on in the privacy of people’s homes is deeply political.
In 1994 Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), part of the federal Crime Victims Act, which funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, and provides training to increase police and court officials’ sensitivity. Its attempt to connect the crime of violence with an assault on civil rights was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court.
The VAWA has been controversial and subsequently improved and expanded in 2000, 2005 and again in 2013 (giving jurisdiction to Native American tribal leaders).
Domestic violence is now a serious crime.
Recognize violence. Don’t sweep it under the rug
Domestic violence — also called intimate partner violence — occurs between people in an intimate relationship. Domestic violence can take many forms, including emotional, sexual and physical abuse and threats of abuse. Men are sometimes abused by partners, but domestic violence is most often directed toward women. Domestic violence can happen in heterosexual or same-sex relationships.
It might not be easy to identify domestic violence at first. While some relationships are clearly abusive from the outset, abuse often starts subtly and gets worse over time. You might be experiencing domestic violence if you’re in a relationship with someone who:
- Calls you names, insults you or puts you down
- Prevents or discourages you from going to work or school
- Prevents or discourages you from seeing family members or friends
- Tries to control how you spend money, where you go, what medicines you take or what you wear
- Acts jealous or possessive or constantly accuses you of being unfaithful
- Gets angry when drinking alcohol or using drugs
- Threatens you with violence or a weapon
- Hits, kicks, shoves, slaps, chokes or otherwise hurts you, your children or your pets
- Forces you to have sex or engage in sexual acts against your will
- Blames you for his or her violent behavior or tells you that you deserve it
If you’re lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you might also be experiencing domestic violence if you’re in a relationship with someone who:
- Threatens to tell friends, family, colleagues or community members your sexual orientation or gender identity
- Tells you that authorities won’t help a lesbian, bisexual or transgender person
- Tells you that leaving the relationship means you’re admitting that lesbian, bisexual or transgender relationships are deviant
- Says women can’t be violent
- Justifies abuse by telling you that you’re not “really” lesbian, bisexual or transgender
From: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/domestic-violence/art-20048397
More information: http://www.domesticviolenceroundtable.org/domestic-violence-cycle.html
U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 TTY 1-800-787-3224
Stop and Report Violence
The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest meaning and significance.
~Pablo Casals
Lori Henriksen 