Aunty Lily
Page 13
Jennifer has performed her stories at festivals across the nation, most notably at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Utah, at the University of San Diego Adult Storytelling Concert series, at the Connecticut Storytelling Festival, and at the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival in Missouri. She has produced two award winning CDs. The magazine Storytelling World selected the story “Aunty Lily” from Relatives and their Body Parts as a winner in the category of Stories for Adult Listeners. Her CD Beginnings, a collection of touching and hilarious stories about giving birth, was also a winner in the same category.
Q&A with Jennifer Munro
Q. Are you a storyteller or a writer?
A. Yes! I tell the stories I write. In other words, I perform my stories live before an audience. I do not create my stories orally, but write them first. When I rehearse them, I modify them by “rounding out the corners” of the written text so that they “sound” more like natural language. In writing the stories first, I find the richness of the detail; the oral telling reveals the rhythm of the words and the internal rhythm of the story.
Q. How did your family life set you on this path of being a storyteller/story writer?
A. Many of my close relatives were—and continue to be—exceptional rogues, gossipers, and raconteurs. On Sunday afternoons when Aunty Lily and Uncle Harry visited, story and gossip spilled across the creaky kitchen table. We children, making sure we could be seen but not heard, listened in rapt attention, soaking up the images and details of the lives of the saints and sinners who populated our family and neighborhood. These details and fragments formed the raw material of what grew into my stories.
Q. How did your neighborhood impact the stories you create?
A. In every way! It was a scrappy, working class neighborhood and some of the kids were tough. Like most kids of that time, we were left to our own devices. In an era before organized sports—or organized anything—we played our own games: whip and top, marbles, conkers, stilts, kick-the-can, and tin-tin-ta-lurky. We transitioned from one to the other according to an invisible, cyclical rhythm. On dark nights under the light of the green street lamp in the cul-de-sac, which we called “the ring,” we congregated in this magical underworld with its own, unique hierarchical power structure. It was sometimes frightening, occasionally dangerous, but always intoxicating.
Q. What prompted you to begin to create stories?
A. t festivals across the nation, storytellers told personal stories, but I was convinced I had no suitable material from which to craft stories. Instead, I told myths, legends, fairy tales, and three literary stories from a collection of short stories called The Goal Keeper’s Revenge by Bill Naughton, who is best known for writing the play Alfie. Bill’s stories resonated with me because they are about ordinary, working class people. Bill kindly gave me permission to tell three of them. However, as much as I loved and still love these stories, they belong to Bill; they resonate with Bill’s reality, not mine. But the daring question had been planted in my mind—if Bill could write stories about ordinary people, why couldn’t I?
Q. Do you have what might be termed a “signature” story? What makes it quintessentially yours?
A. “Aunty Lily” is that story for me; it was the first story I ever wrote. In contrast to many of my stories, it’s relatively short, but it contains so much. A beautiful woman loses her underwear in public; thus, in a way she becomes exposed and vulnerable. At the climax of the story, she deconstructs herself and in so doing chooses to become exposed and vulnerable. This is her strength and this is what I learned from her as a result. I also happened to learn the more obvious life lessons stated directly in the story: beauty is only skin deep, things are never what they seem, and conscientious tooth care will be rewarded.
Q. How do your stories come into being? How do you transform them from idea to story?
A. I remember snatches, images, moments, or stories from my past. I can “see” all the characters vividly in my mind. I remember so much—much of it first hand and much of it through family stories that provided our identity as a family. From this rich stew of experience, I pull out the details of my stories. At one time, once I had an idea for a story, I would rush immediately to the computer and begin work on it. Now, I wait. I put the ideas, questions, images, characters into the back of my mind and allow them to simmer. Then, when I am doing something quite mindless, images will form in my head—and I quite literally “see” the story unfold like a movie. The writing process becomes so much easier this way.
Q. How did your struggle learning to read help or hinder your ability to create and write stories?
A. Ironically, it was critical to my ability to create and see images. My difficulties were many: I couldn’t separate my left hand from my right. I inverted letters, transposed them, and wrote them upside down or backwards. Every now and then, I still write the number 3 instead of an S. Moreover, as a result of chronic ear infections, I was also significantly deaf. This combination of challenges forced me to pay close attention to the world: to notice the nuances of facial expressions and “read” the subtext of what was going on. Thus, the world was made more vivid. Then, when I did learn to read, it arrived in one shattering bolt from the blue! Suddenly, the unknown revealed itself in vibrant worlds filled with vivid images as tangible as the realities of home and family, school and friends.
Q. How important is humor in your stories?
A. One might as well ask if humor is important to life; without it, bits and pieces of us wither and die. The question: what makes some things funny fascinates me. From Plato and Aristotle to Freud, many have tried to come up with a theory that answers this question, none of them totally successfully. Today, many experts subscribe to some form of incongruity theory: an inconsistency exists between what is expected and what actually happens. For example, no one expects Miss Turner’s bosoms to be anything other than fluid. However, at the climactic moment in the story when they “sat rigidly to attention, as O. Henry would say like ‘two setters at the scent of a quail’” the unexpectedness of this action is humorous. However, expecting that something will happen and having that expectation confirmed can also be deliciously funny. For instance, in the scene when my father, wearing hair rollers, answers the door to the “leader of the conservative, moral right.” We expect Mrs. Whistlebotham to be horrified and we are not disappointed. In this example, the reader enjoys the satisfaction of being right. The general consensus is that comedy is more difficult to write than tragedy. If people do laugh at my stories, it emanates from the recognition of our shared human fallibility.
Q. What are the important craft techniques that you employ to create your stories? How do they help shape the story?
A. I love simile, metaphor—particularly extended metaphor—especially personification when inanimate objects become involved in the action, which can so often lead to humor. It can also deepen the poignancy of the moment. I am also passionate about the rhythm of words—for example, “My aunty Lily bought for me a pair of black patent leather, silver buckled, totally unsuitable—I’ll never be allowed in town with Aunty Lily again—school shoes!” This is not poetry but I like to think that it has a lyrical quality and that is important in writing.
Q. Many of your stories are first person narratives. How closely are these stories inspired by real people and real events?
A. Most events described in my stories are inspired by “real” events I experienced directly or indirectly through shared family folklore. The stories we shared as a family contained moments at which I was present, but which I don’t actually remember because I was too young. However, they are still my stories. Therefore, by extension, all stories about other family members, friends, and relatives become potential grist for my narrative mill. They are “authentic” because they resonate with the truth of my experience.
Q. On a related question, how do you transform your life experiences into a satisfying sto
ry and at the same time maintain the trust of the reader?
A. It is incumbent upon me to shape the raw material of my experience into a story that not only has a satisfying narrative arc but also conveys some meaningful understanding about the human condition. In order to do this, I must, in the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, “exercise some latitude in fashioning the work and the material.” However, latitude is not license. If I take too many liberties, I risk losing the trust of my reader.
Q. Many authors have a fear of the blank page. Have you ever experienced this type of fear?
A. Yes, often! When I have an idea for a story and I have let it simmer for a while, there comes a time when I must begin to write. This is terrifying! It’s a complex fear made up of much insecurity: Will I somehow fail the story? Will the story elude me? Will I fail to measure up? Then, once I have overcome the fear and completed the story, there is also the recurrent fear that I will be unable to create another.
Q. Once you have written a story, does it remain frozen on the page or is it still open to change?
A. Stories are fluid creations. In a live performance the unfolding story is a co-creation between teller and audience. For example, some parts of a story may need more detailed explanation, while other parts require less. The audience’s laughter may prompt improvisation revealing a nuance in the story which did not exist previously—but adds to its richness.
If you have enjoyed Jennifer Munro’s stories, please take some time to visit:
www.jenniemunro2015.wordpress.com
www.parkhurstbrothers.com
www.storynet.org