Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(124)

The success of The Kitchen House was due in part to its adoption by book clubs around the country. Why do you think The Kitchen House lends itself so well to group discussion and interpretation?



Though some might expect The Kitchen House to be a story of race, most come to see it as a story of humans, all caught in the trap of slavery. The Kitchen House is a story of complicated characters and nontraditional relationships. Through discussion these are looked at closely and, as is often the case, new insight brings clarity and even compassion.



In Glory over Everything, you revisit many members of the Pyke family that you portrayed in The Kitchen House, but you shift the focus of your narrative to Belle’s son James. Can you compare your experiences in narrating books from both a woman’s and a man’s perspectives?



The gender actually made little difference. In Glory over Everything I heard Jamie’s voice as clearly as I’d heard Lavinia’s and Belle’s from The Kitchen House. The difference was that both Lavinia and Belle were open to me and very forthcoming; whereas Jamie, a man with a secret, was guarded and kept me at a distance when I first met him. For that reason I found Jamie both frustrating and intriguing. Fortunately, other characters, such as Pan, were quite verbal and gave me deeper insight into Jamie until gradually he became less cautious and was ready to reveal himself.



The Kitchen House relates the intimate details of the lives of the slaves of Tall Oaks, as told from the perspective of a young white girl. Glory over Everything examines the lives of black and white characters mainly from the perspective of a biracial male narrator who is passing as white. How challenging is it for you to get yourself inside the heads of the fictional characters you create? Please describe the kinds of research do you before you begin writing.



The best way for me to describe the way this process works is to say that I don’t get into their heads, but they get into mine. They come fully formed and are complete characters. I don’t always see them, but I feel who they are in the deepest sense. Jamie was not particularly likable when I first met him. Eventually I came to understand his deep fear, and as my compassion and understanding for him grew, he opened up to me.



For my research I visit the places I feel my characters inhabited. There I walk and absorb whatever comes to me. There are times when I come upon something, such as a torture device, that I feel such pain and despair that I want to fall to my knees. Often I cry over it after I uncover the details of how it might have been used. When I see something that gets me happily excited—perhaps an artifact at a historical site—I research it with joy. I’ve learned that when I have this type of strong reaction, one of my characters wants me to have the information so they can use it to better tell their story.



How did you decide to set Glory over Everything in Philadelphia? What plot opportunities does an urban setting provide that a more confined or rural setting, such as a plantation, does not?



I don’t decide on the setting. My characters do.



I always saw Jamie in Philadelphia. I’ve been there a number of times and happen to love the city, but curiously, when I began my research, I found the city to be overwhelming, just as it initially was for Jamie. It wasn’t until Jamie left for the rural South that both he and I felt less constraint.



Glory over Everything is narrated by James Pyke, Pan, and Caroline Preston. How did you decide to tell the novel from these three characters’ perspectives?



Actually there is a fourth voice—that of Sukey. In fact, hers, I believe, is the soul of the story.



Interestingly, I don’t choose who will be the characters to speak. They present themselves to me as though in a movie. They arrive fully formed and each speaks in his or her own distinctive voice. I can’t say that I decide on who will speak—instead, as the characters appear, I go with the ones who take center stage.



You have mentioned that the troubling aspects of slavery were extremely challenging for you to write about in The Kitchen House. To what extent was that the case in Glory over Everything?



Writing about slavery, I’m sure, would be challenging for anyone. However, Sukey’s narrative was so painful that I cried my way through her story. Each time she spoke, I dreaded what was to come. Yet I loved her so that I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.



As well, I loved young Pan, and to see his innocence taken away was heartbreaking.



In writing The Kitchen House, many times I considered stopping because of the violence. This time I better understood the process, and realized that, though there were times I was in tears, I needed to write what I saw. I feel that my job is to tell the story so the reader can see and feel what I see and feel.



In many respects, the Great Dismal Swamp seems almost like a character in Glory over Everything. Can you describe your acquaintance with it, and how it became such an essential part of the novel?



Once I knew that some of my characters were headed in the direction of the Great Dismal Swamp I began to visit and research the area. In time I learned about the Maroon societies that had once lived there. These communities were formed by escaped slaves who not only found refuge in this swamp but made a home for themselves in what many consider a hostile land.