Boston-based artist and writer Annie Weatherwax is on a roll. She’s written a vivid, funny, and heartbreaking first novel of a single mother and her daughter searching desperately for a soft place to land. Pulitzer-prize winning author Robert Olen Butler called All We Had “Smart and unflinchingly honest and brilliantly voiced.” Now Entertainment Weekly has announced actress Katie Holmes has optioned the movie rights—will a Hollywood premiere be far behind?
Annie will be appearing at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, this Wednesday, August 6, at 7PM to talk about All We Had. I emailed with Annie to discuss her new novel and the complicated relationship between Rita and her teenage daughter Ruthie.
Brookline Hub: All We Had is a novel about a single mother and her teenage daughter searching for a place to call home. But in many ways it’s also a love story. At times Rita and Ruthie seemed like an old married couple. Why do you think that is?
Annie Weatherwax: If their relationship feels more like a partnership, it’s because, by necessity, it is. Living in poverty, their life has been a constant struggle. They have had to rely on each other to survive. They are fiercely protective of one another and an intimacy has developed between them because of it.
In addition to that, Ruthie seems much older than she is. Never having had the luxury of being a kid, she grew up quickly. She’s street smart. She figures out how to manipulate situations and when the circumstances warrant it, she isn’t above manipulating her mother. And there is a disarming wisdom to the way Ruthie views the world. In many ways, she’s more mature than her mother which often makes her seem like a parent in their relationship.
BH: The mother, Rita, uses her sexuality to survive, at times resorting to something very close to prostituting herself. Why do you think she sees her only escape from poverty in her next relationship with a man, yet she imagines a very different life for her daughter—going to an Ivy League School, becoming President of the United States?
AW: Rita is a complicated character. Born into poverty, moving in and out of foster care, her life has been far from easy. The one thing she was blessed with was beauty and she learned from a very early age how to use it. Women who live in poverty are often forced to compromise themselves in ways that are hard to imagine. “A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do,” she explains to her daughter. But as any mother would, she wants Ruthie to move beyond this paradigm. When she looks at Ruthie she sees someone extraordinary. Although she sometimes doesn’t understand it, she marvels at the way her daughter thinks. She saves her school essays and papers in a binder. And the one thing she makes sure of is that Ruthie is never late for school. Sadly for both of them, Rita has given up on herself but Rita never stops dreaming big for her daughter.
BH: Ruthie is fascinated with the Virgin Mary and Hillary Clinton. She even imagines conversations with them. Why do you think these two very different icons figure so prominently in her imagination?
AW: She is also fascinated with Anne Frank. She reads The Diary of Anne Frank multiple times, struck by how Anne’s spirit and intelligence endures in the face of such grim circumstances. She champions Mother Mary, arguing in her school papers that the fact that Mary didn’t play a bigger role in the bible, ruined the book.
Ruthie is a girl in search of a heroine. Women seem either to be revered their suffering or their servitude. At one point in the novel she dreams that all three of these women—Anne Frank, Mother Mary and Hillary Clinton—are sitting around a conference table. Like writers on a TV show, they are brainstorming Ruthie’s ending. Anne Frank thinks Ruthie should die slowly in a dungeon so that she can later be hailed as a martyr. Mother Mary thinks that’s ridiculous. She believes that Ruthie should be worshiped in perpetuity for her submissiveness before man and God. And Hillary Clinton finally lets out a snort. “Let’s be real. This girl’s story is going to end exactly how it began. In a run-down, rat-infested hovel with her crazy mother. Now snap out of your stupor. Let’s work together and do something about it.”
BH: The 2008 stock market crash and subsequent recession is the backdrop to All We Had. Was this event what initially inspired you to write this novel? Or was there something else that sparked the idea for you?
AW: Events don’t generally spark my ideas. I am much more driven by character. The characters come first. But social justice issues are often laced throughout my work, delivering a quiet commentary in the background.
Economic inequality has become the social issue of our time. And it’s of particular concern to me. It’s increasingly difficult for people like my characters to rise above the circumstances into which they were born. The recent recession and the subprime mortgage crisis only made this worse.
Rita and Ruthie teeter on the edge of poverty and this reality is deeply imbedded in the story of their lives. But it’s their relationship—their fierce, flawed love for one another that drives this novel.
BH: Your characters are all flawed in some way and yet they have a lot of heart. What is your process for getting into the heads of each of your characters in order to flesh them out and make them so believable and three-dimensional?
AW: I have had no formal training as a writer. My training is as a visual artist and I am also dyslexic. Oddly enough, I credit these facts with my ability to flesh out character.
One known advantage of dyslexia is the ability to see in 3-D. When I write, I always start with a picture. A rich and vivid image of my character becomes crystal clear inside my mind. When they walk I see their gate from all angles—the way they swing their arms or walk on their heels. Hidden inside those visual details I find the story of their lives. The craft of writing for me has less to do with the study of literature, or even with writing proficiency, and much more to do with this disciplined skill of seeing. It is by seeing my characters move through space and time, observing their body language, their facial expressions as the circumstances of the novel changes that I truly get to know them.
BH: Do you think Rita is a good mother?
AW: This is a central question in the novel. Rita’s own life has been broken from the start. Does Rita do the best she can despite it? Does she do the right thing in the end? We expect a lot from our mothers and are often less willing to forgive them. Every reader will bring their own history to this novel, and the answer to that question may depend on what that history is. Is Rita a good mother? I do have my own answer to this question but, I think for now I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusions.
BH: All We Had is your first novel. You’re also a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, a sculptor and painter. What was the transition like going from visual art to writing fiction? Which do you find more challenging?
AW: There really was no transition. Instead of painting a picture with canvas and paint, I’m painting a picture with words.
I still, above all, consider myself to be a visual artist because to me, writing is just another form of visual art. The process is amazingly similar and I use the same techniques across genres. For example, as an artist, I was trained to capture the nature of my subject by amplifying the qualities that make that subject distinct or noteworthy. As a fiction writer, I do the same thing.
BH: Who are some of your favorite fiction writers? What are you reading now?
AW: Flannery O’Connor, George Saunders and Lorrie Moore are some of my favorite writers. I am currently reading non-fiction—The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison.
BH: What do you have planned for the Brookline Booksmith event?
AW: I am really looking forward to introducing my book to readers. I’ll be reading selected passages from All We Had and answering any questions afterwards.
—Jennifer Campaniolo
