Yvonne Battle-Felton is the author of Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 longlisted Remembered (Dialogue Books). The novel begins in 1910 and Philadelphia is burning. For Spring, there is nothing worse than sitting up half the night with the ghost of her dead sister and her dying son, finally breaking her silence and reliving a past she would rather not remember. Spring’s story goes all the way back to 1843, when Ella, a free girl, is stolen by a white man to be a slave on his farm in Maryland. Told in a simple and powerful style all her own, Battle-Felton reveals the importance of telling stories about slavery.
I was lucky enough to meet Yvonne for coffee recently and she kindly agreed to answer even more of my questions over email.
Molly Aitken Remembered is a novel about storytelling and the power of story. It’s a multigenerational tale, but also features different types of storytelling including reporting through radio and newspapers. Most of what I’m about to tell you ain’t in no history book, no newspaper article, no encyclopedia. There’s a whole heap of stories don’t ever get told. Why was it important to you to tell the personal and first hand accounts of slavery and it’s inheritance?
Yvonne Battle-Felton History does an interesting job of telling stories about slavery without exploring the internal and external lives of the enslaved. Stories seem to centre on a few powerful narratives or slide to the other side of the spectrum and focus on generalised versions where enslaved people are numbers and not names, personalities, needs and pains. I wanted to tell a story that centred on the enslaved and explored their inner lives, a story where they were free to want, hope, question, imagine, think, and have room for anger. There are slave narratives and interviews of emancipated slaves. I wanted to explore the stories an emancipated slave might tell if she were free to tell them her way in her own time. I also needed these stories though. I wanted and needed to read how mothers might have reconnected with their children and how those families healed after the traumas of slavery.
MA Why did you decide to set the novel in the North of the US? And is the setting important?
YBF I was born in Philadelphia and I lived in Maryland for 20 years before coming to the UK. The setting is important both personally: I wanted to explore both places through fiction and also historically. The North is often overlooked when it comes to slavery. There was slavery in the North as well as in the South. The differences may have been around what year slavery was abolished where. The North is often remembered as a place of freedom and acceptance; that wasn’t everyone’s experience. Growing up, I remember my grandmother telling us about an uncle who used to visit her as a kid. According to her, he used to run away to come visit his family and then, I guess be dragged back. My grandmother was born in 1919. She was born in Alabama and grew up in Pennsylvania so I don’t know where this would have been. Still, I remember thinking she had to have been mistaken since slavery was abolished decades before. But was she mistaken? What if he was legally free but still enslaved?
MA You’ve just record the audiobook of Remembered. What was it like bringing your voice as a live storyteller to the character of Spring? And what do you feel is the difference between written and spoken story?
YBF It’s funny, I write out loud. It’s how I think. Before I type a scene I have to hear it. I like listening for the tensions and rhythms, the silences. So I’ve heard Remembered many times. I’ve also read it at readings, talks, and events. I’ve read it in front of audiences quite a few times. Recording the audiobook was an entirely different experience. I was reading/performing it for an audience I could not see. I couldn’t see their reactions and they couldn’t see mine so my facial expressions, hand gestures, etc...wouldn’t help set the scene. My voice had to do that. The audiobook is for the US publisher. I was really fortunate that the publisher, Blackstone Publishing, provided an amazing voice acting coach. She helped me to get past myself and reach for Spring’s voice; to give Spring and all of the characters the freedom to tell their own story in their own way.
I was in the studio with an amazing engineer, my lovely, patient youngest was often there in another room, and I was alone in this darkened booth with my words and these characters, and when I was reading this southern voice came out and I was like, who is that? It was Spring. I am hoping when people listen to the audiobook, they feel as if it’s the characters telling their stories, unburdening their souls.
I love written stories and then I also love spoken ones. For me, it depends on what I need at the time. I get to know people through their stories. I can connect with stories on the page and really empathise. On the page, I see what I need or want to see, sometimes that’s what the writer wants me to see and sometimes, it isn’t. Spoken stories have another layer of intimacy. I can connect in the pauses and breaths, in the hushed tones and whispers. Written stories are the ones I tell myself, spoken ones are the ones the teller tells.
MA Ghosts and hauntings play a central role in Remembered. What did they allow you to do with the storytelling?
YBF Ghosts gave me the freedom to explore what might have happened beyond Spring’s knowing. One of the reasons Tempe became a ghost is because early on I knew she wasn’t going to survive. Her story wasn’t finished yet but I knew she wouldn’t be alive to tell it. Ghosts allowed me to explore motherhood and family in ways that I needed to. We are haunted by the past whether some choose to acknowledge it or not. In a way, Tempe haunts the book in a recognisable sense. There are other ghosts though. Slavery also haunts the book. It’s ghost is in the racism that allows Edward to be beaten for a crime before anyone knows whether he committed it or not, it haunts the conversations Spring is forced to have with people who only want to hear her tell them what they already think they know, in the voice of the angry mob turning on the black community and forcing collective responsibility. Ghosts also allowed me to explore mothering and motherhood from beyond the grave. I think it gives me hope.
MA The women in the story use natural medicines and herbs to try to control their fates. Many of the characters also believe in curses. Can you speak about what this added to the story?
YBF It was important to me that the women exercise some sort of agency in any way they could. If they didn’t have this sort of agency in life, where could they have it? They could imagine and pray but if I couldn’t give them the World, I could give them the earth. It seemed natural that these characters would turn to something that was around them and readily available. Someone would have been counting the crops but who was paying attention to the weeds? If the enslaved were only given scraps, maybe they could claim that and turn it into some sort of empowerment. They could learn about them and use them as needed. The medicines might be used to heal, ward off, hurt, kill; it was up to them to use as they saw fit.
Not only did it give them agency, but the use of natural medicines and the decision on how to use them, added to their complexity as characters. How might they use this power? Does power always corrupt? It let me explore the questions of how far a mother would go to protect her child directly. In general terms, I feel like people say they would kill for their children and that there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for their kids. That’s great and all, but if the mother is enslaved, she might have to do something we don’t like or understand.
MA When you’re not writing you teach creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University. What has working with students given your personal writing?
YBF This question made me smile. When I’m not writing, I’m momming (though I also mom while I write), teaching, creating and delivering literary events, reading, relaxing, trying to learn new programs, planning one thing or another, and plotting next steps.
Working with students reminds me to allow myself freedom when drafting. Drafts are the places where a character can rise from the dead, a grave can spill its secrets, and words can spring to life all without reason or explanation. If it is to come, the logic can come in the second, third, fourth, or how manyth drafts. The first draft is a place for possibilities.
MA What’s next for your writing?
YBF I’m writing a few things right now. I’m writing another historical fiction. It’s set between 1907-1919. I want to write about the Red Summer in the US. It’s a violent period of racial violence and terrorism. I thought I was going to write about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Massacre; I thought that was an isolated incident. It turns out, it wasn’t. The hope is by writing about the ugly sides of history, we can avoid reliving them. I’m also writing a children’s adventure because all children deserve to see themselves fighting dragons and saving the world. In between momming, teaching, projects, and other writing, I’m writing a play. I really want to see women like me living, laughing, and loving on the stage and screen. It’s a simple request but it’s just not something I see a lot of.
MA What books influenced and inspired your writing of Remembered?
YBF I’ve been influenced by all the books I’ve read before and inspired by writers like Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Tananarive Due, J. California Cooper, Alex Hayley, and more. While researching Remembered, I read and re-read many of these writers and each time I did, their works offered something I needed in terms of space, questions and access.
The paperback edition of Yvonne Battle-Felton’s Remembered is available in the UK from 2 January 2020, published by Dialogue Books.