Q&A+with+Author+Hillary+Jordan



**Q & A with Author Hillary Jordan**  **By Elizabeth Andrejasich**

Dallas Midwinter kicked off with the ERT/Booklist Author Forum, centered on how authors capture social and family issues in fiction. The forum included Hillary Jordan; whose debut novel, //Mudbound// won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Social Justice Fiction. Jordan’s most recent work, //When She Woke//, is a futuristic dystopia and a reimagining of //The Scarlett Letter//. The book takes place in a near-future America where abortion is illegal and the line between church and state erased. Jordan met with //Women in Libraries// before the forum for a Q & A.


 * //Do you consider your writing to have feminist themes?// **


 * Hillary Jordan:** Absolutely. I am not afraid of the F word. I have written two novels; both deal with women’s struggle for self expression in societies that would deny them that. //Mudbound// takes place in the American south in the 1940s, and my heroine Laura McAllen, is very much a woman of the time; her husband told her what to do. The book is many stories but one is Laura’s search for some kind of self actualization. And in //When She Woke//, I am writing a lot of how fundamentalism really robs women of their rights. I am also writing about the intersection of faith and politics, which in my book leads to abortion being outlawed. There is also a plague that affects birthrates so it all mingles together. I am writing in both books about feminist themes.


 * //What inspired you to write When She Woke?// **


 * HJ:** It was a combination of things; I had this conversation many, many years ago with my Uncle. We were talking about the drug problem in America, and he said, “I think all drugs ought to be legal and provided by the government, but they ought to turn you bright blue, so other people can see you coming and know to stay the hell away from you.” Some years later, I was in grad school, I wrote four pages about this woman waking up in a prison cell having been turned red for killing someone. This idea of being stigmatized, really stuck with me. I had no idea what to do with the book, so I wrote //Mudbound// instead. It wasn’t until six years later, when I was casting about for my second novel, that I came back to //When She Woke//.

My first thought, //red woman, stigmatized women//. Boy, I better reread //The Scarlet Letter//! I was struck by all the parallels between Hawthorne’s puritan America of the late 1600s and our post 9/11 society, where we have really started to see this mudding of the lines between church and state, restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom, all of these fear-based trends.

**//What do you hope readers will take away from this book?//**


 * HJ:** While I was in the process of writing this book, I was trying to look at these very complex polarizing issues from multiple points of view and in the process of doing that I found myself questioning my own entrenched ideas, or at least having some sympathy or understanding of why some people feel very differently. I hope that the book will encourage dialogue, and will encourage people to ask questions of themselves and of our leadership, of our political leadership.

January 27, 2010