Interview: February 10, 2006
February 10, 2006
Bookreporter.com contributing writer Andi Shechter interviewed Karenna Gore Schiff, author of LIGHTING THE WAY: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America. Schiff explains her criteria for selecting the women profiled in her first book and why it was easier to write about females from the past as opposed to those who are still living. She also discusses what she learned from her subjects that served as personal inspiration to her and reflects on who woman #10 might have been.
Bookreporter.com: How sure are you that the modern women you write about have "changed the world"? What was the risk there?
Karenna Gore Schiff: I am sure that these nine have had an impact for the better on the United States. It was harder to determine how widespread and broad the impact was in the later chapters, but I didn't obsess on exact measurements. I went with my instinct about how important and novel their messages have been, how they have altered political debate, and how they have touched individual lives and institutions. And I have never posited that this was a comprehensive study of all the leaders out there in past and present --- it is a collection of those that resonated with me personally. The risk was that someone would disagree, but that is a risk I am willing to take.
BRC: Was it easier to write about women like Ida Wells-Barnett, knowing she wouldn't be around to see what you wrote? Or was it easier to write about those still living since they were accessible to you, so you might directly ask them things that otherwise you had to filter through biographies or other writings
KGS: It was easier to write about those in the past. For one thing, there is more secondary and primary material available; for another, I didn't have to worry too much about offending their families by describing their shortcomings or personal lives. But I did enjoy the interviews I did for the later chapters, with Virginia Durr's daughters, with Septima Clark's granddaughter and niece, with several members of Helen Rodriguez-Trias's immediate family, and with Dolores Huerta and Gretchen Buchenholz herself. I felt that I was able to break new ground in those chapters, which was exciting but also very challenging.
BRC: Your book shows courageous acts and unpopular stands that were taken, and it must have been heartening to write about them and see the changes these women made in people's lives. Was there a downside? It hasn't been that long since some of these women faced off with the segregationist senators, or the mine-owners with their guards' "death special" cars. Did you wonder, as you were writing, if things had changed enough? (Just before the book was released, for example, there were headline stories about the mine disasters in West Virginia, which is something Mother Jones fought for so hard.) Did you ever feel tired or defeated?
KGS: There was no downside but it certainly made me see current issues like mine safety and warrantless wiretapping from a long view, which made me even more concerned that there may be a rollback of some of the freedoms and reforms that these women fought for. My hope is that spotlighting their stories will help draw attention to how vigilant we must be over those in power. Rather than feel tired or defeated, I felt galvanized, as if we all owe it to generations past to be engaged in civic affairs. What if Septima Clark had felt tired and defeated? After all, she was threatened and jailed for fighting segregation but said "I never let hate enter my heart" and kept building the civil rights movement from the ground up.
BRC: What was the most surprising positive thing YOU learned in writing this book? Did you discover something you didn't know that you were glad to learn
KGS: I was surprised at the venom in the popular press towards most of these women. When she was campaigning for an end to lynching, Wells-Barnett was derided by the New York Times as a "missionary mulatree" out to defame the good people of the South. Frances Perkins was accused of being a Communist, as was Virgnia Durr, when their messages (establishing Social Security, fighting the poll tax) are looked back on as huge moral triumphs.
BRC: What were things you learned from these women that served as personal inspiration to you
KGS: I learned many things from these women. For one thing, every experience of setback or loss can be a source of inner strength and resolve. Mother Jones lost her husband and all four children to yellow fever and it fueled her to go out and help the vulnerable, powerless children who were working long shifts in dangerous factories and coalmines, eventually turning the tide towards abolishing such child labor. I also learned that "you can catch more flies with honey" is more than just a cliche. While Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mother Jones, and to some extent Dolores Huerta did not usually take that approach, the other women all benefited from it. For example, Alice Hamilton used her engaging charm and intellect to convince some industrialists to consider workplace safety and public health just out of their own senses of justice. In the end, she felt legislation was also needed but those early triumphs fueled her more widespread success. Helen Rodriguez-Trias built bridges within the women's movement, making sure that poor and minority women had their views heard while also engaging with white middle and upper class women.
BRC: Who was woman #10, the one you came close to including in LIGHTING THE WAY?
KGS: The tenth woman might well have been Nelly Bly, who was an investigative journalist working in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. She went undercover, first as a sweatshop worker and then as an inmate of an insane asylum and did reporting on the conditions in both places from the inside. She also traveled the world, reporting on poverty and corruption in Mexico and then from behind the front lines in World War I. Others who intrigued me were Lillian Wald, a social reformer particularly interested in health care for the the indigent, and Marjorie Stoneman Douglass, an early environmentalist responsible for protecting the Everglades, which she wrote about in a groundbreaking book called RIVER OF GRASS.
BRC: Have you considered writing a follow-up book with additional women? Any thoughts as to who you might include?
KGS: I have no current plans for a follow-up book on these or similar women but certainly haven't ruled it out, especially because this one was so much fun to write. I am not sure what I will do next but am interested in another book, one that also deals with American history and politics. That seems to be my passion.
