Interview with Jean Hackel
Theresa et al. is a novel about abortion. What led you to write on that contentious topic?
Abortion is on everyone's mind at the moment. It's become a fault line in the moral convulsion we're going through as a country. Freedom versus life: these are basic principles set against each other. People who hold what they think of as firm positions based on bedrock American ideals disagree fundamentally and passionately when debating them. I wanted to explore why these fissures are occurring in such dramatic, often violent ways and what we need to think about as we try to recover shared ground.
Abortion is on everyone's mind at the moment. It's become a fault line in the moral convulsion we're going through as a country. Freedom versus life: these are basic principles set against each other. People who hold what they think of as firm positions based on bedrock American ideals disagree fundamentally and passionately when debating them. I wanted to explore why these fissures are occurring in such dramatic, often violent ways and what we need to think about as we try to recover shared ground.
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What is the meaning of your cover design?
If a mother's warmth and gravitational pull are not enough to keep a family together, the family may fly apart the way a solar system self-destructs when the sun at its center collapses. Planet earth resides in a relatively calm stellar system. In cosmic terms, we're incredibly lucky. It could have been otherwise, in which case our existence in the Milky Way might not have occurred. Chance was on our side. In terms of the metaphor that runs through Theresa et al., a reader can see what a large role chance plays in the world a child inhabits, from the moment of conception to the time when the child is capable of analyzing where he came from and what his life might have been in another place and time, with perhaps a different central figure to influence, love, and guide him---or not to love and guide him, to abandon him either emotionally or in physical fact. |
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How did you choose the settings in your novel?
In addition to the extremely contentious issue of abortion---which tends to define itself along state lines----I wanted to explore differences in geography and culture between the American North and South. Our differences, as well as our similarities, go back to the earliest days of white colonization on what was already an inhabited continent.
From those early days, we've been haunted by the appropriating force we used against indigenous peoples, by the kidnapping and enslavement of vast numbers of Africans, and by slavery's aftermath, the still unhealed wounds of a vicious Civil War that almost destroyed our Union.
Bitterness about those original sins endures today in the sense of otherness that inhabits issues that would seem, on the surface, to have nothing to do with red state versus blue state antagonism, or with the legality of abortion. But both issues have everything to do with otherness.
Each side of the great divisions in our country---whether those divisions are defined by region, race, education, wealth, religion, or any other yardstick---has a tendency to look askance at the other, ignoring the others' attributes. I think we need to get over that.
We need to remember, as an impaired speaker says in the novel, that we are "conicked"----connected. We belong together. We need to find ways to get along with each other so that we stay together, if for no other reason than the moral imperative, as Lincoln reminded us, of our shared resolution that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Now, one might point out, there are other democracies in the world. The survival of democracy itself might not depend on us, since more than half the nations on earth are democracies in some form.
Yet I don't believe the world can do without our democracy in particular. When we falter, the world catches its breath. In my opinion, our failure would be catastrophic.
In addition to the extremely contentious issue of abortion---which tends to define itself along state lines----I wanted to explore differences in geography and culture between the American North and South. Our differences, as well as our similarities, go back to the earliest days of white colonization on what was already an inhabited continent.
From those early days, we've been haunted by the appropriating force we used against indigenous peoples, by the kidnapping and enslavement of vast numbers of Africans, and by slavery's aftermath, the still unhealed wounds of a vicious Civil War that almost destroyed our Union.
Bitterness about those original sins endures today in the sense of otherness that inhabits issues that would seem, on the surface, to have nothing to do with red state versus blue state antagonism, or with the legality of abortion. But both issues have everything to do with otherness.
Each side of the great divisions in our country---whether those divisions are defined by region, race, education, wealth, religion, or any other yardstick---has a tendency to look askance at the other, ignoring the others' attributes. I think we need to get over that.
We need to remember, as an impaired speaker says in the novel, that we are "conicked"----connected. We belong together. We need to find ways to get along with each other so that we stay together, if for no other reason than the moral imperative, as Lincoln reminded us, of our shared resolution that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Now, one might point out, there are other democracies in the world. The survival of democracy itself might not depend on us, since more than half the nations on earth are democracies in some form.
Yet I don't believe the world can do without our democracy in particular. When we falter, the world catches its breath. In my opinion, our failure would be catastrophic.
How does Theresa et al. look at "otherness?"
The novel walks around its plot, putting a reader into various heads so the reader knows where characters are coming from. There's no ambiguity about how they think and feel. They make themselves plain.
But that's not enough. Characters need to communicate with each other for something significant to happen. Only through communication is there a chance for reconciliation, since war and conversation do not mix.
As long as people are talking to each other, honestly, without pretense, there's hope that they can come together. I believe the way we diminish the sense of otherness we feel when not surrounded by our own particular group is to explore the vantage points of the outsider, the stranger in our midst. That's not easy, but it's essential.
The novel walks around its plot, putting a reader into various heads so the reader knows where characters are coming from. There's no ambiguity about how they think and feel. They make themselves plain.
But that's not enough. Characters need to communicate with each other for something significant to happen. Only through communication is there a chance for reconciliation, since war and conversation do not mix.
As long as people are talking to each other, honestly, without pretense, there's hope that they can come together. I believe the way we diminish the sense of otherness we feel when not surrounded by our own particular group is to explore the vantage points of the outsider, the stranger in our midst. That's not easy, but it's essential.
What does the novel's title mean?
Theresa et al.---"Theresa and others"----is a legalistic way of saying that Theresa is not alone, is not allowed to be alone in making her decision about whether to have an abortion. The political issue of abortion has to do with whether others---in the form of the state and the legal statutes embedded in our government or, extrajudicially, of people who take the power of the state into their own hands---get to make decisions for an individual when a pregnancy is involved.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, "L'enfer, c'est les autres," which is usually translated, "Hell is other people." Theresa et al. attempts to examine that thesis. What happens, short and long term, when Theresa is surrounded and controlled by other people?
Theresa et al.---"Theresa and others"----is a legalistic way of saying that Theresa is not alone, is not allowed to be alone in making her decision about whether to have an abortion. The political issue of abortion has to do with whether others---in the form of the state and the legal statutes embedded in our government or, extrajudicially, of people who take the power of the state into their own hands---get to make decisions for an individual when a pregnancy is involved.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, "L'enfer, c'est les autres," which is usually translated, "Hell is other people." Theresa et al. attempts to examine that thesis. What happens, short and long term, when Theresa is surrounded and controlled by other people?
How did you choose the particular locales in the novel?
Minnesota is where I live, though I'm originally from Wisconsin. I've lived more of my life in Minnesota than in Wisconsin, but I think you need to be born and bred in Minnesota to really belong.
I compare the situation to the soil in my family's backyard. Under a thin layer, it's bedrock. Rich soil has to be brought in, lots of it, for plants to thrive. So I'm familiar with having to make adjustments based on location and circumstance. Transplanted roots need TLC.
Minnesota is a state with a deep split between its metropolitan areas and rural communities---what we call "outstate." The metropolitan areas are highly educated, mostly liberal, big-hearted, and relatively sophisticated. Outstate communities are closer to the country those of us who grew up in the last century knew---a place young Minnesotans can hardly imagine---the post WWII America that vacillated between leaving or staying on the farm, between prewar tradition and postwar change.
Because Minnesota's metropolitan areas contain the majority of its people, they tend to dominate state politics and attitudes. The liberality of its cities makes Minnesota a remarkably welcoming state, at least to the extent that we open our doors to strangers. Minnesotans take seriously the "Give me your tired, your poor" admonition on the Statue of Liberty. Indeed, the state has been willing, eager even, to continue the tradition of the American melting pot, which I believe is real and wonderful.
The South is a region I don't know in my bones the way I know the Midwest, but it holds a magnetic attraction for me in large part because of its rich oral traditions and its literature and because, I suspect, it's connected in my subconscious to my own vanished youth. I met the South in books when I was young.
That said, I haven't spent as much time in the South as I'd like, except for a brief stint when my husband was in the Army and infrequent vacations. But every time I've encountered the region in person, it's been a positive experience.
My introduction to the South began in college at UW-Oshkosh, where two Southerners made a huge impression on me. One was a history professor from Virginia; the other an English professor from Georgia. Never having set foot in the South at that time, I nevertheless put down roots there too, through not only what, but how these teachers taught. Great teachers are jewels in the crown of education. They remain alive in their students' minds decades after classes end and they themselves have disappeared. My affection for the South dates from their passion for learning and their stories. I make that affection evident in Theresa et al.
Minnesota is where I live, though I'm originally from Wisconsin. I've lived more of my life in Minnesota than in Wisconsin, but I think you need to be born and bred in Minnesota to really belong.
I compare the situation to the soil in my family's backyard. Under a thin layer, it's bedrock. Rich soil has to be brought in, lots of it, for plants to thrive. So I'm familiar with having to make adjustments based on location and circumstance. Transplanted roots need TLC.
Minnesota is a state with a deep split between its metropolitan areas and rural communities---what we call "outstate." The metropolitan areas are highly educated, mostly liberal, big-hearted, and relatively sophisticated. Outstate communities are closer to the country those of us who grew up in the last century knew---a place young Minnesotans can hardly imagine---the post WWII America that vacillated between leaving or staying on the farm, between prewar tradition and postwar change.
Because Minnesota's metropolitan areas contain the majority of its people, they tend to dominate state politics and attitudes. The liberality of its cities makes Minnesota a remarkably welcoming state, at least to the extent that we open our doors to strangers. Minnesotans take seriously the "Give me your tired, your poor" admonition on the Statue of Liberty. Indeed, the state has been willing, eager even, to continue the tradition of the American melting pot, which I believe is real and wonderful.
The South is a region I don't know in my bones the way I know the Midwest, but it holds a magnetic attraction for me in large part because of its rich oral traditions and its literature and because, I suspect, it's connected in my subconscious to my own vanished youth. I met the South in books when I was young.
That said, I haven't spent as much time in the South as I'd like, except for a brief stint when my husband was in the Army and infrequent vacations. But every time I've encountered the region in person, it's been a positive experience.
My introduction to the South began in college at UW-Oshkosh, where two Southerners made a huge impression on me. One was a history professor from Virginia; the other an English professor from Georgia. Never having set foot in the South at that time, I nevertheless put down roots there too, through not only what, but how these teachers taught. Great teachers are jewels in the crown of education. They remain alive in their students' minds decades after classes end and they themselves have disappeared. My affection for the South dates from their passion for learning and their stories. I make that affection evident in Theresa et al.