A novel moment in time
by Joe Johnsto, sanluisobispo.com
April 26th 2011
For Cayucos author Sherry Shahan and her friends, the 1960s left a memorable
legacy.
“If you lived through that time, it was so tumultuous and volatile that it made
an impression,” she said. “Vietnam was the first war that was in our living
rooms. We watched them loading bodies into the helicopters.”
Shahan draws on her memories of that turbulent time in “Purple Daze,” a young
adult novel that takes place against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement
and the Vietnam War.
“I didn’t want to make it history book-y,” she said of “Purple Daze.”
“Ultimately, I wanted it to be a story about teens and their lives.”
A Central Coast resident for more than 30 years, Shahan is a prolific writer
whose articles and photographs have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor,
The Los Angeles Times and Backpacker, Country Living and Westways magazines.
Her books include the adventure novels “Death Mountain” and “Frozen Stiff,”
several nonfiction children’s books and a series of picture books inspired by
Latin American culture. (Paula Barragán, the illustrator of “Spicy Hot Colors,”
“Cool Cats Counting” and “¡Fiesta! A Celebration of Latino Festivals,” lives in
Quito, Ecuador.)
According to Shahan, the inspiration for “Purple Daze” came during her stint as
a graduate student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
“They really encouraged us to push the envelope,” she recalled. “About the only
thing I hadn’t done in my 30-year career is a novel in verse.” Around the same
time, she discovered a shoebox of letters written nearly 50 years ago by a
friend stationed in Vietnam.
“They just blew me away,” she said. “He was just this carefree teen… Slowly you
could watch him turn into this hardened soldier because of the experiences he
had in the war.”
She spent three or four years working on “Purple Daze.” Running Press Teens, an
imprint of Running Press Book Publishers, published the book in March.
Set in 1965 in suburban Los Angeles, “Purple Daze” follows six high-school
friends – Cheryl, Don, Mickey, Nancy, Phil and Ziggy -- as they experience
love, loss and cultural upheaval.
Phil is drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps. Mickey enlists in the Navy. As they
witness very different wars, their friends back home launch peaceful protests
and experiment with sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.
Their shared narrative takes the form of letters, notes, poems and journal
entries, interspersed with factual asides about the assassination of Malcolm X
and Arlo Guthrie’s famous song, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Shahan even includes a
helpful timeline.
It’s only appropriate that “Purple Daze” relies on the characters’ own words to
tell the story, she said.
“We didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have an answering machine at our house,”
she said. “We sat in class and wrote each other letters all the time. That was
our form of texting.”
Much of “Purple Daze” draws from Shahan’s own experiences growing up in
Southern California. She compared the writing process to a “constant flashback.”
“Like Cheryl, I was the one crawling out of my window at night” for an
early-morning joyride past the Watts riots, she said.
She also had friends whose military experiences mirrored those of Phil and
Mickey.
“It was amazing to me that (one friend) was virtually on a cruise through the
entire war,” the author recalled. “He was getting drunk and chasing women at
the same time (another friend) was going through incredible hell.”
To refresh her memories of that time period, Shahan read contemporary
newspapers and books and conducted interviews with several Vietnam War veterans.
“One guy told me that they put condoms over the muzzles of their rifles” to
keep them from rusting, she said. Another shared how soldiers would stuff Kotex
maxi-pads in their helmets for later use as bandages.
Intended for high school students and older teens, “Purple Daze” contains
graphic references to warfare, bloodshed and abortion, as well as adult
language and depictions of drug and alcohol use.
“For me, it’s just telling the truth about what went on at the time,” Shahan
said. “Today’s adolescents and teens still have issues with school, with
parents, with love, with loss.
“Their parents and grandparents were going through the same things that they’re
going through.”
In fact, she said, those older readers might get just as much out of the book
as her target audience.
“Some of the best feedback I’m I’ve had is from people in their 60s,” Shahan
said. “They’re actually upset (the book) is described as a YA novel.”
Original Page:
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2011/05/16/1602900/a-novel-moment-in-time.html
Shared from Read It Later
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
