Blue Hole Back Home: A Novel (27 page)

Looking back, I realize how formative—and maybe fragile—those early years were, in terms of forming some kind of idea of who God is and what God is about, and what a faith community ought to be. Although the church I grew up in was all white, I just naively assumed that when I invited my Sri Lankan friend to church, she’d be warmly welcomed. And she was. There were rumors sometimes about someone or another in the church being known as a racist—this was a small town after all, and people knew things about other people, or thought they did. But my friend seemed to feel genuinely comfortable there. I suspect a number of people went out of their way to be sure she felt cared for and included. It didn’t seem particularly monumental at the time—and shouldn’t have, that a church would welcome anyone wanting to walk through its doors. Wouldn’t that be precisely the point?

I imagine that if my hometown church had in any way rejected this Sri Lankan girl because of her skin color, lots of us my age would’ve rejected anything and everything the church tried to teach us from then on out. Instead, despite what happened there on our Ridge with the Klan, at least this particular Southern church didn’t bolt its doors.

The fictionalized church in the novel, though, I depicted more along the lines of how miserably so many other Southern churches behaved during the Civil Rights era, and years after. And the Baptist preacher of the novel, who is initially passive to the point of cowardice, is decidedly
not
based on my own father, who was our church’s pastor. One reason I probably pictured the good Reverend Riggs as a round, blonde, balding mouse of a man was that he was diametrically opposed to my own tall, dark-haired, slender dad, whom I watched over the years take a lot of heat for his position on any number of issues.

If anything, the character of Reverend Riggs comes from my own fundamental tendencies to value harmony, as in the lack of conflict or turmoil, over just about anything. It can be a very dangerous trait, and one I’m forever learning to battle. By nature, I just want the lion to lie down with the lamb 24-7 and be chummy so I can relax and digest my food.

I was once privileged to eat dinner at the next table over from Archbishop Desmond Tutu—though he wouldn’t know me from the pork tenderloin that was served. He said in his speech that night that taking seriously the teaching of Jesus means becoming not peace
lovers
but peace
makers
. There’s an enormous difference there, a difference that calls for active engagement on our parts, for speaking up. Which is why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” reamed out the “nice” white clergy of the South as being ultimately more harmful than the Klan: Letting things roll along for the sake of not upsetting the social order or disturbing anyone’s day can contribute more to the perpetuation of evil than all the blazing crosses in the world. It’s a word I know I need to hear every day: Are there ways that even today my keeping my mouth shut on an issue—because I am so blasted conflict-averse—actually helped evil along on its way?

How are you like your Shelby? How are you different?

I’m certainly not Shelby, and Shelby is not me. I was never, for example, in love with a Jimbo. Shelby, though, is about the same age I was when my Sri Lankan friend moved to town, and like me at the time, Shelby is skinny and awkward, more comfortable with her brother’s friends than girls her own age. In my own early teen years, my own brother, David, let me run around with his buddies, who accepted me for no good reason other than that, I suppose, they respected my brother. Maybe Shelby partially comes from the more cynical, skeptical side of me, the side of me that screws up and then refuses to feel forgiven. And I suppose I share in common with Shelby that while she is capable of being fiery and feisty, she can also clam up just when she ought to speak out—and she despises that about herself.

What about the Blue Hole itself, where the novel’s teenagers go to swim, and to be together and escape heat and the tensions of the outside world? Is there a real Blue Hole?

The Blue Hole of this novel is loosely based on two swimming holes in my hometown, one actually called the Blue Hole and another reached by a trail that descends sharply at Rainbow Falls near Signal Point. The natural beauty of the mountain is stunning. Now that I live in the Southeast again, I love going to visit.

What do you hope most for your readers to glean from this novel?

I’d like to think that any story of bigotry or blind hatred or deceit reminds us of the ugliness any of us are capable of—not just actively perpetuating it ourselves, necessarily, but sometimes choosing to look the other way and let it continue. I also hope this is a story about the possibilities that always exist for complete and total transformation, against all the odds. The history of racism in the United States is a tragic one, no doubt about it. But I’m always fascinated by the individuals or groups along the way who, despite what they’d been taught to believe, despite how everyone around them behaved, held to an ideal of equality in God’s eyes, and couldn’t be shaken from that.

Why set the novel in the late 1970s, rather than, say, the ’60s, better known for racial turmoil?

For one thing, this was an era I remember well from personal experience, whereas I was a young child in the ’60s. And it was important to me to set this novel in 1979, at a time that was supposed to be safely beyond the horrors of slavery, or of early twentieth-century lynchings, or of mid-twentieth-century legally segregated buses and sidewalks and school systems. The summer of 1979 was beyond that, yes—yet racially motivated ugliness was still far from underground. I hope this story suggests our taking a serious—and maybe intentionally skeptical—look at the not-so-distant past, and our own era.

You are a beautiful writer. Have you always been a writer? What turned you into a writer?

That’s awfully kind of you. I’ve wanted to write ever since I learned to read, I think. And the more I read, the more I wanted to write, and keep reading, and write better.

I remember in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Gross read aloud to the class a poem I’d written about having spotted a buck in the snow. Now, I don’t know that I’d ever seen a buck in the snow before, and it was probably an atrocious poem. But it was a turning point, letting my imagination create this scene, then creating that scene for a group of other people, and having the teacher hang up my poem for everyone to see. I was never the kid who could knock the kickball clear out of the field, so it was a real gift to be noticed that way. For days, I’d pass my poem hanging there on the bulletin board, and just couldn’t believe anyone else had taken notice of it, or that my words had actually connected with other people. In fifth grade, my teacher Mrs. Buckshorn quietly left me an article on my desk one day and whispered, “This is for you to read when you grow up and become a writer.” I don’t know that I’d told anyone about wanting to be a writer, and I’ve always been pathetically insecure, so, again, her insight was an enormous affirmation.

I have times of wishing I didn’t enjoy writing so much, since unlike lots of other professional endeavors, there’s not necessarily a direct correlation between how much time you put in and how far you get in the field. I enjoy teaching on the university level, too, and I often try to convince myself that since I dedicated all those years to gathering the proper credentials, I should simply, and only, teach. But teaching, if you try to do it well, often crowds out time to write, and I become … well, out of balance, off kilter with the universe when I can’t write. I just want to snarl and snap at anything that moves. So it’s probably best for all concerned that I try to write on a regular basis.

And what else have you written, and what intrigues you for future novels?

Blue Hole Back Home
is my fifth book. I’ve written a nonfiction book,
Working Families
, on navigating kids and career; a collection of stories,
Grit & Grace
; a collection of reflections,
Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous
; and an academic book,
Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, that looks at nineteenth-century women novelists’ responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe. That era, nineteenth-century America, continues to fascinate me. I’ve worked off and on for several years on a trilogy of novels set in Charleston, South Carolina, and Boston, Massachusetts, during the Underground Railroad, and I’d like to return to it as my next writing project. Or maybe on a contemporary novel set in Charleston….

Resources

The
lyrics
are from the song “Gotta Get You Into My Life,” written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The
lyrics
are from the song “That’s the Way of the World,” written by Earth, Wind & Fire.

The
poem
is “Amorous Birds of Prey” by John Donne.

The
lyrics
are from the song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” written by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson.

The
poem
is “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne.

The
lyrics
are from the song “Amazing Grace,” written by John Newton.

The
lyrics
are from the song “Stand by Me,” written by Ben E. King.

The
lyrics
are from the song “Ain’t Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Round),” written by Aretha Franklin.

The
lyrics
are from the song “People Get Ready,” written by Curtis Mayfield.

The
lyrics
are from the song “Stand by Me,” written by Ben E. King.

Joy Jordan-Lake
lives in Brentwood, Tennessee with her husband and three children, and teaches at Belmont University. She is also the author of
Grit & Grace: Portraits of a Woman’s Life; Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Working Families;
and
Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous
. In 2009,
Blue Hole Back Home
won the Christy Award for first novel.