BOOKS AND AUTHORS. Grades 7 to 12. Talking with. Patricia. McCormick. The
author of Sold and other tough, hard-hitting novels talks about researching her ...
BOOKS AND AUTHORS
Grades 7 to 12
Talking with Patricia McCormick The author of Sold and other tough, hard-hitting novels talks about researching her stories and connecting to her characters. By Rebecca A. Hill
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nher travels to India and Nepal, Patricia McCormick has seen heartbreaking poverty and heard stories of sorrow and loss. She has interviewed experts on psychological issues. She has talked to teen prostitutes and families of U.S. soldiers who died in the Iraq War. And through these many encounters, she has woven these experiences into her books, which explore some of life's most difficult subjects-selfmutilation, child trafficking, war, and drug abuse. Recently, I had a conversation with McCormick about how she integrated these experiences into her books.
BKL: Foryour book Sold, you traveled to remote villages and towns in India and Nepal. How did these experiences shape your characters and story lines? MCCORMICK: In traveling to Nepal and India to do my research, I met two former teen prostitutes who spent time with me while I was visiting. They had been rescued from brothels a year and a half earlier and had since lived in a shelter. I had spent a lot of time with them when they canvassed doorto-door explaining child trafficking to families in the countryside, but neither
"Cut is the closest to my own heart and experience. It gave me a chance to give a voice to my own experiences as a kid-a guilty kid who was keeping everything bottled up."
of them opened up to me. On my last day in the country, I was really down on myself because I did not get that key one-on-one interview. Then, with a knock on my hotel door, there stood the two girls. They had decided that they trusted me and would talk to me as long as I did not use their names. So we spent the entire day together, and parts of them became Lakshmi. Now I think of those girls all the time, even though the likelihood of my seeing them again is pretty remote.
BKL: In interviewing those two girls as well as other girls who had been rescued, how did you find the one voice that best representsLakshmi? MCCORMICK: I took pieces from all my experiences and interviews. To start with, I had to figure out who my
character was as opposed to letting the bigger issue, child slavery, define who she was. I knew that she was smart. She was independent. She had a little bit of a sense of humor. So I found certain things in my interviews and research that would fit her. For instance, one of the girls I interviewed was very girlish looking and spunky, so I used some of her physical attributes to develop Lakshmi. But it took awhile to get to really know her.
BKL: How did your travels contribute to Lakshmi's character? MCCORMICK: In Calcutta, I was baffled and overwhelmed by the city's size and the number of people there. I felt as lost and confused as Lakshmi was when she arrived in the big city. I couldn't speak the language. I couldn't
understand the signs and didn't know the customs. I was .completely at the mercy of my guides. Then coming home, I saw New York City through new eyes. It seemed impeccably clean. Everything seemed like a wonder. So with these experiences, I was able to give Lakshmi a sense of wonder and bewilderment that came from my own travels.
BKL: In what way did writing Cut differ from writing Sold? MCCORMICK: In Cut I didn't know anyone firsthand who had cut. With my background as an investigative journalist, I had done some interviews with experts on cutting, but I ended up putting all that research in a suitcase and giving it to a friend. I told her that even if I rang her doorbell at 2 a.m., she was not to give it back to me. Cut was my first book, and I was a bit of a novice, so I think that the book's main character, Callie, came from a place close to my own heart. As a teen, I can remember being so angry, lonely, and without a voice, so I just pretended I was that girl. I drew from my own imagination rather than the research.
BKL: For Purple Heart you interviewed severalfamilies whose sons had been killed in Iraq. Tell me about that experience. MCCORMICK: When I first started, I imagined a story about a girl whose brother was killed in the war. I interviewed five families who had young men killed in the war. I would set aside two hours for the interview, but generally we ended up spending the entire day together. I looked at baby books, high-school yearbooks, and the sons' bedrooms. I visited their high schools and went to the cemeteries to see their graves. Together, the families and I wept as we went over the most positive and really difficult memories of their sons' deaths. It was very hard for me to leave.
BKL: But you struggled with turning that researchinto a story. Canyou share what happened next?
MCCORMICK: I grew to love those families and wanted to write their stories so their feelings would be heard. But I couldn't make a composite. I also couldn't do what you have to do in fiction, which is to make those very real people flawed. When I thought of these families picking up the book and seeing that it was them, I couldn't do it. People sometimes grieve in ugly ways. They do angry and stupid things when they say goodbye to their kids. I guess that I made them into saints. I couldn't create the tension that the book needed, so I abandoned that book and began another.
BKL: How did you ultimately find the story in Purple Heart? MCCORMICK: I was at a peace rally and saw a pair of shoes that were supposed to represent a boy killed in the war. I got an instant picture of Ali and the opening scene in the first chapter, when Matt sees Ali getting shot. I know that the scene is grisly and upsetting, but I wondered what exactly happens when a GO-pound body takes the impact of a big shot like the one in the book.
BKL: Where did your main character, Matt DuffY, come in? MCCORMICK: I wanted to come up with someone who was, in my view, innocent, decent, and caught up in a conflict where he was in over his head. So I observed ordinary teenagers and watched their behaviors together. This book is really different from my other books. I built these characters from the ground up and then built the book like a mystery, which meant that I had to plot it more heavily, since the starting point was the death of Ali and the end point was revealing what happened.
18 years old. The war has been the backdrop of their lives for a long time. Depending on where you live, you may not know anyone who is fighting in this war, because the same groups of soldiers are going back again and again, so a disconnect exists that wasn't there with Vietnam. I grew up post-Vietnam in a time when it was relatively peaceful. So for this book, I wondered what it was like to have war as a constant in your life as you grow up. Does it make you feel unsafe? Drawn to it? Patriotic? Angry? Or do you develop a muscle where you tune it out? I wondered what the impact of this constant exposure was on kids.
BKL: What are your readers telling you about the war and its impact on their lives? MCCORMICK:They have a huge range of emotions, but the one constant is their awe, respect, and honor for those who are not that much older than they are, who are fighting and making life-and-death decisions. I also hear from boys who tell me that they once thought of war as a romantic notion, but when they read Purple Heart it changed how they thought about it.
BKL: Have these stories and the people you met through them changed you in any way? MCCORMICK: Cut is the closest to my
BKL: How did using the Iraq war as a backdrop for Purple Heart influence the story line?
own heart and experience. It gave me a chance to give a voice to my own experiences as a kid-a guilty kid who was keeping everything bottled up. I am a survivor of incest. I drew on those feelings and put them on the page. I can't tell you how many girls have come up to me and said, "You told my story." So I have been changed in two ways-first, by giving voice to the experiences that I had that I was too ashamed to put out in public, and second, the connectedness to my readers that said, "I understand ... I get it . .. me too."
MCCORMICK: The kids reading my books today were 10 years old when the war started, and now they are maybe
Rebecca A. Hill is a librarian and freelance writer in Zionsville, Indiana.
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