2008.07.22_bruchac [music] Matt Raymond: This is Matt Raymond at the Library of Congress. Each year thousands of book lovers of all ages visit the nation's capital to celebrate the joys of reading and literacy at the National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by first lady Laura Bush. Now in its eighth year, this free event held on the National Mall Saturday, Sept. 27, will spark readers' passion for learning as they interact with the nation's best-selling authors, illustrators and poets. Even if you can't attend in person you can still participate online. These podcasts and other materials will be available through the National Book Festival website at www.loc.gov/bookfest. It's now my privilege to talk with the renowned children and teens’ author Joseph Bruchac. He is best known for his work as a Native American writer and storyteller. He's written more than 120 books including “The First Strawberries,” “March Toward the Thunder” and his autobiography, “Bowman's Store.” He has also penned various anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction; among them are “Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back” and “Returning the Gift.” His work has been featured by more than 500 publications ranging from the “American Poetry Review” to “National Geographic.” His numerous honors include the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Rhode Island Children's Book Award and the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature. Mr. Bruchac, it's a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for joining us. Joseph Bruchac: Well, thank you for having me. Matt Raymond: Tell me a little bit about how you first became interested in writing. Joseph Bruchac: I was a very avid reader when I was a child, and I also was a good listener. I'd listen to people come to my grandparents' general store and tell stories about their experiences, about the past, about working in the woods, and I'd read the books that my grandmother had in her house. Every room in the house had books in it so at a very early age I was being inspired by both hearing and reading stories which led me to want to tell and write stories of my own. Matt Raymond: And, and how has your heritage influenced your writing and played into, into your creative process? Joseph Bruchac: Well, my family on my mother's side is American Indian. We have Abenaki ancestry. But as a child, although I was aware of that ancestry, no one would talk about it. It was one of those times in history when, unfortunately, people in a certain minority, felt threatened by being classified as different so my grandparents' line was always, you know, we don't talk about that. Or my grandfather would say, “I'm French,” because, of course, French Canada is where the two different contemporary reserves of Abenaki people where my great grandparents came from are located. So that created a great curiosity in my mind, and I think that I was more interested in finding out about that Native heritage because I was denied it as a child, and had I been immersed in it and, again, followed the path in that direction. I also found myself fascinated by various Native people I knew as a child growing up, friends of the family, people I would meet who were elders and storytellers often working at tourist attractions in the Adirondack Mountains region. So in a way, the path was being laid out for me, though I didn't realize it was a path until I started following it. Matt Raymond: Do young people today have a realistic view or misconceptions about our nation's Native people and cultures and their contributions? Joseph Bruchac: Well, interestingly enough, certain misconceptions continue to be perpetuated. One of them is that American Indian people, Native Americans are part of the past but not part of the present and that the only way to be a real Indian is to appear in dress and behave as a Plains Indian would in the mid-1800s, and I think that misconception does an injustice to people who are, who are like everyone else, buried in their experiences and in their background and yet their heritage is of great importance to them. Matt Raymond: Let's talk a little bit about your latest book, “March Toward the Thunder.” I understand that it's based on the experiences of your own great grandfather? Joseph Bruchac: Yeah, interestingly enough, talking about a multicultural experience, my great grandfather was a soldier in the American Civil War in the Campaign of 1864 in Virginia. He was Abenaki Indian. He came from Canada and he enlisted and joined the Fighting 69th, the Irish Brigade, so he was an American Indian in a group of soldiers who were largely Irish immigrants. Matt Raymond: Now, where do you get your story ideas from? What inspires you? Joseph Bruchac: I'm inspired by many different things. Often I'm inspired by experiences I’ve had, books I’ve read, people I’ve met, stories I’ve heard. And in the case of “March Toward the Thunder,” from my early childhood on my grandfather would talk about how his father had served in the Civil War and when I was a child we would make trips down to Virginia to visit relatives and walk across those battlefields without my really knowing much about it except the whole general history of the Civil War that we were given in school at the time. But it made me want to know more and to do the research to find out the story in real depth and that particular story turned out to be one that was much more complicated and interesting than I had even thought it was when I started working on it. Matt Raymond: Now, I know that as a professional storyteller you've traveled much of this country and, and much of Europe. What is it like to bring your stories to so many wide-ranging and diverse audiences? Joseph Bruchac: one thing you find is that if you say I'm going to tell a story, wherever you are in the world people prick up their ears and listen, because storytelling to me is the oldest and perhaps the first way we have of sharing our humanity, our common experience and passing on lessons that I think need to be learned in a way that's enjoyable to hear. Matt Raymond: Now, your body of work is itself quite diverse. It includes, as I have said, poetry, fiction, plays and songs. What is your method for creating these and how do you balance or allocate your time? Is there one in particular that you like more than any other? Joseph Bruchac: It's interesting. I think I have really been blessed by the Creator with the ability to express myself in these various creative forms, and in a sense they come to me. I remember, for example, when I was teaching as a volunteer in West Africa about 40 years ago, I met an elderly man who was a writer of songs and he said, "The songs come to me at night and wake me up." And I know exactly what he was talking about. Sometimes things just come to me literally in the night, and I have to get up and start writing them down without quite knowing what they are or where they're going to take me. Matt Raymond: I think oftentimes an author has maybe a goal or a message in mind in advance or when they're in the middle of their creative process. What is it that you hope your own readers and fans take away from your work and from your stories? Joseph Bruchac: Well, to begin with I want to tell a good story, a story that people will listen to and that they'll think this is true, even if it is a story that might be defined as, as myth or legend or even fanciful. It has to have truth within it. And I also think there are certain goals that we as human beings have to aspire towards. One is hearing each other and understanding each other. And another is the importance of living together in harmony, that idea of peace and balance. It's very, very important to me. Even in my novels that are about war, the idea of peace is always in the background. Matt Raymond: We talked about your great grandfather. Is it typical that you base characters on actual people or relatives of yours? Joseph Bruchac: I think every writer will tell you that their characters are always partially themselves, who I am and what I've experienced. It's always there in part of my characters. And the people that I meet are also the people who turn into my stories. But I think sometimes there are very original characters who show up and I'm not sure where they come from. Sometimes, of course, they're historical figures and I have immersed myself very, very deeply in research and in trying to hear their voice and understand their story and see through their perspective, perhaps even to speak their language. If I'm working, for example, on something that has a person in it who speaks, for example, Slovak in Europe, I would study, as I have been doing, the Slovak language because I have just finished writing a novel that takes place in medieval Slovakia. Matt Raymond: Now, I think one of the more interesting things in your biography is the fact that you directed a college program inside a maximum-security prison. Joseph Bruchac: Yes, for eight years. Matt Raymond: What, what are your goals in doing that? How do you get those students to appreciate literature and writing and were there any success stories that really stood out for you? Joseph Bruchac: Well, it all started when I was a volunteer going into prisons and teaching creative writing workshops. I did that for several years before I was hired by Skidmore College to create this program inside a maximum-security prison. It was a full scale college program and what I found was it was not hard at all to inspire people because most of the people in American prisons -- apart from those who are really, really horrible human beings, and there always are a few of those -- are people who have made a mistake or have not had opportunity in their lives and very few of them have had much education. If they have a high school degree it's through a General Equivocal Diploma not through finishing high school. So there was a real hunger for learning and for personal growth in a way that was not possible anywhere else within the prison environment. These were people who wanted to break the cycle of crime, incarceration and recidivism. They really wanted to make something of their lives, and they got tremendously excited about poetry and literature. More so than the average college class because this meant literally life and death to them in a way that it often doesn't to a person who is just past their teens or in their early 20s and may not fully appreciate the opportunity that college education has offered them. Matt Raymond: And this made a difference for them? Joseph Bruchac: It made a great difference indeed. And I was always inspired by those men and women I worked with in prisons, and I remain inspired by them to this day. Matt Raymond: Now, you're also founder and co director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center. Joseph Bruchac: Uh huh. Matt Raymond: And the Greenfield Review Press. What drives or what drove you, should I say, to take on such a project, and how do you balance the career between author and publisher? Joseph Bruchac: Well, to put it very, very quickly I was, as you know, a volunteer teacher, as I said, in Africa for three years and I was very distant from the American literary scene at that time. So when I came back to the United States, starting a literary magazine was a way to reconnect with that scene. Not to publish myself, that really has never been one of my objectives, but to reconnect with the writers who were out there. And also, because of my experience in another country and my awareness that had grown of the importance of the literature of the world, I wanted to provide a forum for new and established writers from many different backgrounds and from other countries, and so as a publisher we publish books. For example, we published Leslie Silko's first book, a book of poetry; Gary Soto's first book, a book of poetry; a collection of poetry by Kofia Awoonor, one of the contemporary poets of West Africa who is quite well known. And these were people who were not well known at that time to an American audience. In many ways I found myself inspired as a writer by publishing other people. Not that I'm copying what they do but that the energy I feel from their work gives me energy to do my own work and it is indeed a delicate balance. I'm doing less editing and less publishing now than I did 20 years ago because I'm doing more writing and more storytelling now. But I think it's part of my journey as a writer and a storyteller and part of my learning what my craft is to have been part of the publishing of other writers and the sort of presenting of other voices to the larger public. Matt Raymond: Now, you said before that some of the best stories are those that tell people how to act toward the Earth and toward each other. Joseph Bruchac: Uh huh. Matt Raymond: Talk a little bit about the importance of having a message like that in a story as opposed to perhaps maybe just something fictional that's intended to engage the imagination. Joseph Bruchac: I think that you cannot classify any piece of work as just purely written for a purpose. I think the purpose emerges from the work as it goes along, and I certainly do not mean to put down or diminish the importance of work that does not have that kind of aim that I'm describing. This is just my own personal approach. Matt Raymond: Uh huh. Joseph Bruchac: But I do feel that there is something that is found in traditional storytelling; the storytelling helps to strengthen the culture and the individual. And I think that literature can do the same if only by awakening the imagination and making the possibility of seeing other perspectives more real within your life. Matt Raymond: Let me ask about your book “Sacajawea.” And this is a character, a historical figure who is fairly well known who has been written about over the years. What would you say is the perspective that you bring to the table with this book? Joseph Bruchac: I tried in that book to do two things -- one, to present the story from more than one point of view. We have two ears so we can hear two sides of every story. So the chapters in the book, very back and forth between William Clark's voice and Sacajawea's voice. Clark's voice is that of a man who is keeping a journal and writing. Sacajawea's voice is that of a woman who is a storyteller and telling stories to her child as a way of understanding the journey that she was on. So making the book a story told to a child from those two different storytelling perspectives, I think gives it a different depth than just telling a novel approach where there's a single narrator, maybe a third person narrator. The first person and the dual first person approach, I believe, was effective in making someone experience the story in a more rounded fashion. Matt Raymond: And are those perspectives in contrast with each other? Are they in harmony? Do they compliment each other, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask? Joseph Bruchac: I think compliment each other would be the right way because, of course, no two people ever see anything the same way. And there's the European perspective and there's the Native perspective. There's a male perspective and there's the female, mother of a child perspective, which are very different and yet they are definitely telling the same story. And what I tried to do in the novel was to be very true to the primary sources, that is, the journals of Lewis and Clark, to the Native traditions that are reflected in that, including that of the Shoshone people. And I worked with and was advised by Wayland Large, who is the tribal historian of the contemporary Shoshone people, the nation that Sacajawea herself came from. Matt Raymond: When you have the opportunity to interact with your readers and your fans, what do you tell them? Do you offer them advice, in particular, if they're thinking of pursuing a path that's similar to your own? Joseph Bruchac: Do what you love. If you want to be a writer, it's something that has come to you and it's something you enjoy doing and something that means a great deal to you, follow that path. But understand that it's a long journey. Geoffrey Chaucer, many, many years ago said, "The life's so short, the craft is so long to learn." You know, life is short; it takes a long time to learn to be a writer. Matt Raymond: I'll bet he sounded exactly like that. Joseph Bruchac: Oh, I'm sure [laughs]. But indeed, we as human beings have to be patient with ourselves. And that's another thing I tell young readers and young writers, “Don't be impatient.” Recognize that everything you do is done a step at a time and that it's not a weekend seminar. Life is never a weekend seminar and if you're going to climb a mountain, you have to do it one step at a time. Matt Raymond: In talking about Chaucer and things that happened centuries ago, I was just looking again at your bio and it seems that you were a true Renaissance man. I understand you're also in a musical group with some members of your family. Joseph Bruchac: Yes, we have a group called the Dawnland Singers and we both, both my son Jesse and I actually my sister Marge also, we all compose songs and do both traditional songs and original ones, use the Abenaki language and the American the English language, it's called [laughs]. Matt Raymond: Yes. Joseph Bruchac: Interchangeably, and it's a great deal of fun because I think music also touches people in a way that each art form has its own particular ability to touch the heart and the spirit and music is particularly inspiring in that way. Matt Raymond: And do you combine all these different formats in your performances where you have readings in between songs or how do you juggle all that? Joseph Bruchac: Yeah, I usually bring along a drum and a flute and do a welcoming or greeting song to start things off. Do some storytelling, perhaps read a bit from some of my work. And in general, I don't plan ahead that much. I really let the audience and the moment tell me what to do. And I think that kind of approach is often characteristic of elders I watch who don't have everything prepared but they get up and trust that the words will come to them in the right way and they almost always do. Matt Raymond: Well, we're looking forward to getting a little bit of that first hand at the National Book Festival. What will we get to see or hear from you there? Joseph Bruchac: Well, I'll probably be talking a bit about my newest books, “Buffalo Song,” which is about a Native man who helped save the buffalo from extinction, and “March Toward the Thunder, of course, my novel about the Civil War. I'll do some storytelling and some music, and I will just see what people want me to do and try to satisfy their requests. Matt Raymond: And what is coming up next for you? What is on your creative horizon? Joseph Bruchac: Well, I'm working on the text for a graphic novel right now. I have just started working on actually a libretto for an opera that Minnesota Youth Opera wants to do based on some of my traditional stories, and I have got a couple of movie projects underway. I am finishing off a documentary film with a friend of mine about the life of Jim Thorpe, the great American Indian athlete. That will be, we expect, on PBS some time next year. Matt Raymond: It sounds like you have just about every form of cultural expression covered. [music] Joseph Bruchac: Well, I am also working on a new, a new CD of music with my, with my family. Matt Raymond: Well, that's wonderful. Joseph Bruchac, thank you so much for your time today. Joseph Bruchac: Thank you, and may your journeys be good. Matt Raymond: I appreciate that. And once again, we will get to hear more from you at the National Book Festival on Saturday, Sept. 27. That's on the National Mall between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. As always, the event is free and open to the public. If you'd like more details and a complete list of participating authors, you can visit www.loc.gov/bookfest. This is Matt Raymond from the Library of Congress. Thank you for listening. [end of transcript]