Ask the Author: Joanne Dobson
Answered Questions (7)
Joanne Dobson
Abigail, Thank you for this! and for the lovely Goodreads review! I'm especially happy that both the scenes and the emotions came alive with you and have stayed with you.
The emotions I claim as my own, and have found them reflected movingly in the multitude of 19th-century American women's novels and stories I've read both on my own and as a part of my literary scholarship. (My 1997 essay, "Reclaiming Sentimental Literature," can be found in the scholarly journal American Literature, if you are so moved!)
The scenes, ah, the scenes! I had the great privilege of spending four solid weeks in the capacious library of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, reading mid-nineteenth-century newspapers, magazines, books, letters, handling writing paper and straight pens and inkwells and pen-wipers. Then I took that historical immersion in 19th-century New York City right into 21st-century New York City, and walked just about every step that Anna takes, so I could feel the City beneath my feet, and in the air, and in the geography. As for India, I got as close as Sri Lanka, that beautiful island Anna would have known as Ceylon. And missionary wives wrote such beautiful letters about their surroundings in India!
So, you offered me a question mark without a question, and I have given you answers without questions! Fun? Fun!
The emotions I claim as my own, and have found them reflected movingly in the multitude of 19th-century American women's novels and stories I've read both on my own and as a part of my literary scholarship. (My 1997 essay, "Reclaiming Sentimental Literature," can be found in the scholarly journal American Literature, if you are so moved!)
The scenes, ah, the scenes! I had the great privilege of spending four solid weeks in the capacious library of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, reading mid-nineteenth-century newspapers, magazines, books, letters, handling writing paper and straight pens and inkwells and pen-wipers. Then I took that historical immersion in 19th-century New York City right into 21st-century New York City, and walked just about every step that Anna takes, so I could feel the City beneath my feet, and in the air, and in the geography. As for India, I got as close as Sri Lanka, that beautiful island Anna would have known as Ceylon. And missionary wives wrote such beautiful letters about their surroundings in India!
So, you offered me a question mark without a question, and I have given you answers without questions! Fun? Fun!
Joanne Dobson
I sit down and stare at the screen.
Joanne Dobson
Next up is a collection of letters my smart, funny mother wrote beginning in Nursing School. She wrote them over the period of 40 years, and the ones dealing with her nursing career are the best! For instance, she describes in chilling detail the first time a patient died in her arms--and then, hilariously, how that made her late for the appointment to have her graduate-nurse portrait taken!
Joanne Dobson
If you know you're good, keep at it.
Joanne Dobson
"I dwell in Possibility," Emily Dickinson says. That's what I love about being a writer--dwelling in possibility.
Joanne Dobson
It was 1985 when this book first popped into my mind, and I was reading a National Geographic article about, of all things, narrow-gauge 19th-century Indian railroads! Suddenly into my mind popped a scene in which a frightened American missionary's wife was on a train in1857, fleeing her abusive husband, when the train ran smack into the middle of the Great Indian Rebellion. I wrote it down in cursive, then typed it into my Kaypro computer and printed it out. I filed that printout away and didn't look at it again for twenty years. Then it came back to haunt me, and thus was born the beleaguered Anna Wheeler and her story, The KASHMIRI Shawl, published in 2014.
Joanne Dobson
Taking a long walk is the best remedy I've found, or swimming, or doing anything physical except for holding a pen or typing on a keyboard. Anxiety is what blocks me, and I have to turn away from the book and anything related to it in order to get the creative juices flowing again. Good luck!
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Mar 13, 2015 10:54AM
Mar 13, 2015 11:04AM