By THIRSTY
Melissa Scholes Young’s debut
novel, Flood, has been called a story
of “home, hope, and the ties that bind.” From a rural upbringing in Hannibal,
Missouri, to teaching College Writing and Creative Writing at American
University, her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post,
Narrative, Ploughshares, Poets & Writers and other journals. Stay Thirsty
Magazine visited with her in Washington, D.C., for these Five Questions
about her book, Mark Twain and her hometown.
STAY THIRSTY: In your debut novel, Flood, the Mississippi River plays an important role in the lives
of your characters that live in Hannibal, Missouri. Why did you choose to set
your first work of fiction there and what does that river and that town mean to
you?
MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG: I was born and raised in Hannibal
with Mark Twain’s stories and history all around me. It’s familiar territory
and yet because I no longer live there, I’ve wondered how a character like
Laura Brooks may return. While I was researching I also learned that the
Mississippi River ran backwards in 1812 due to a series of earthquakes along
the New Madrid fault. Both Laura and the river must recalibrate to right
themselves.
When you grow up in a flood plain, as
I did in Hannibal, water is your life force and a constant threat. You’re
always looking for a way out. Mark Twain’s pen name refers to safe passage. It’s
riverboat language to measure (mark) two fathoms (twain) of depth. To me, a
place like Hannibal has such literary depth to mine and such rich culture to
explore.
STAY THIRSTY: Returning home after losing a job seems to be a common
part of the millennial experience and your protagonist does just that. What is
it that attracted you to that storyline and how did your own experience play a
factor in the construction of your story?
MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG: Flood is a novel
about identity and how we construct who we are. I’ve found that the stories we
tell ourselves are often not completely true or as Mark Twain claims, we “tell
the truth, mainly.” Laura Brooks thought life would be different. She assumed
those that stay in their hometowns don’t have other choices. What she learns
from her return journey is that many choose to dig in, to invest their futures
in their community, and that there isn’t such a stark or clear answer to
whether you should stay or go. You take a piece of place with you and maybe you
leave some of yourself behind. We are choosing who we are again and again.
There’s freedom to that but also it can be unstable, like the ground beneath us
and a river you can’t control. Laura retraces and explores her own history by
returning and in doing so, she learns more about her family, her town, and
herself.
STAY THIRSTY: Animals have a consistent supporting role in your
book. What is it about animals that make them important to your characters?
MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG: Animals are ever present in rural
culture. I grew up in the country with dogs on every property and chickens in
most backyards. We are proud, self-sufficient people and animals help us
survive. You take care of them and they take care of you by protecting property
and providing food. I don’t ever want to come home without a dog at my door and
I want my characters to have the same.
 |
| Melissa Scholes Young |
It’s also about how we write the
landscape of a scene, I suppose. When I’m layering dialogue with gesture or
scene with sensory details, there is usually an animal barking, clucking, or
mooing in the background. It’s comforting to me and I hope companionship for my
characters.
Also, I trust dogs more than I
trust most people. Mark Twain famously said, “Of all the animals, man is the
only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure
of doing it.” I’ve seen animals defend themselves plenty but I trust the
animals in my scenes to often behave better than the humans.
STAY THIRSTY: Your themes in the book include the need for
adventure, the complicated ties people have with their hometowns and their
parents, a need to breakaway and find one’s own identity and an emotional
yearning for a more fulfilled life. Did the characters in Flood find you and express their own ambitions and failings or did
you create the storyline along the lines of these themes and develop the
characters that would best exemplify them?
MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG: That is such a thoughtful question.
I always begin with characters. Flood started
as the story of a female friendship. I wrote the scenes with Laura and Rose
first. I grew up with these statues of Tom and Huck all around me, but I wanted
to know how their relationship would have been similar or different as girls.
Once I decided that Rose would be a teen mother I knew that her son, Bobby, was
the parallel story to their “then vs. now” and the story map emerged.
“Emerged” makes it sound magical.
It wasn’t. It was work. It took me five years to write. It was a lot of drafts
and revisions to weave so many themes and write the book within a book that
also tells Samuel Clemens’ own exodus story. Tough, but I think worthy work.
STAY THIRSTY: The idea of a flood, not only driven by water, but
also driven by memories, speaks to a chaotic circumstance that breaks the
boundaries of containment. In your own life, how have you dealt with the
journey of a rural upbringing that stretched from Hannibal, Missouri to
teaching College Writing and Creative Writing at American University in
Washington, D.C.? When you look back in time, what memories flood you?
MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG: Memories of family flood me,
mostly. Hannibal was a lovely place to grow up. I have 27 first cousins on my
mother’s side and plenty more on my dad’s. There was always someone to help and
a huge family that took care of each other.
My roots run deep and I’m grateful
for them every day, but I’m rarely settled. I’ve moved dozens of times since I
left Hannibal when I was seventeen years old. I’m more comfortable in motion,
observing, adventuring, and questioning. Becoming a mother split open my
creativity but grounded me for the first time. As an urban dweller now I spend
a lot of time trying to explain rural America to my colleagues and friends.
There are many misconceptions that make the rural urban divide unnecessarily
complicated.
As a first-generation college
student, I’m similarly unmoored, especially in academia where my experience is
so very different than many of my colleagues. First-generation students and
faculty make our campuses more diverse and are great assets in our community. My
journey has made me hungrier for even more. I’m always curious. I think we need
to read more, listen more, and talk to those exactly like us a lot less. We
need to stay in conversations that stretch us rather than retreat to
comfortable containment.
Link: