“We can become new in new environments”: An interview with Sandra Hunter, author of Small Change
Camille Bradshaw and Gold Line Press author Sandra Hunter talk about story, setting, and survival in Hunter’s upcoming release Small Change.
CB: I was instantly struck by your pieces, and the way I could relate so closely to these characters that were living such different lives than me, and that were all such a young age. Can you tell us more about the characters and where they came from?
Speaking of the characters, these are all children (or young adults) living in an adult world. They need to survive, make money, and grow up shockingly fast. What did you want adult readers to glean from the grown-up stories of these kids?
SH: The children’s ability to survive is the one element that will save them since the adults around them are indifferent, inept, have a diminished ability to protect, or intentionally hostile and violent. Despite the harsh environments the children create dimensional worlds of possibility and hope for themselves. They make the most beautiful gestures and significant gestures in the most difficult of circumstances.
I once worked at a Children’s Hospital as a volunteer. As you know, among its other services, Children’s Hospital provides healthcare, treatments and support for terminally ill kids. The volunteers wear blue jackets so the kids know we’re not doctors or nurses coming in to administer shots or meds. Our function is to play with the kids, and give the parents some sort of reprieve. Often the parents are with their kids in the hospital rooms 24/7, and are utterly physically and emotionally exhausted. So, when the volunteer arrives, that gives the parent a chance to go outside for a break.
During one visit, I stopped at the door of one room and thought it was empty because all I could see was a structure of tubes on the bed. Two steps in and I saw a small boy inside the tube structure, the tubes coming into and out of him in so many places that he looked like they were extensions of his body. He was sitting upright and obviously had significant movement limitations. But within that structure, he had two small cars, and was pushing them back and forth. I knelt down and pushed another car just outside his tube structure. With some careful tube negotiation, we managed to make our cars meet and play.
What struck me most was that he was making something much bigger than the tubes—and illness—in which he was trapped. And that became one of the seeds from which many of my stories have grown.
I use children’s voices because they are specifically non-political. Their interests go to the immediate: loyalty to and love for one another, and their need to survive. Inevitably, they also direct the reader’s attention to the politically and socially charged situations in which they are caught.
I wanted adult readers to see, as the children themselves can’t, the broader context of what is at stake. So, moments of dramatic irony occur throughout. Sami doesn’t really understand the political and social implications of a tunnel system specifically built to acquire the basics for day-to-day living. Rayan and Nabila are unaware of the beginning of the Arab Spring or the social impact that will have. Lucee, Batoul, Mouna, and Yasmine know nothing of African emigration. They are ignorant of their potential reception in the European countries to which they, among thousands of others, are fleeing. But the adult readers know these things and so tension is created not only for these characters, but for larger social structures that are being impacted beyond the stories.
CB: In “Jewels We Took With Us” you employ an interesting structure where the girls’ story is told from flipping between 2012, and then the past. Why did you use this strategy and how does it help to add layers to the story?
SH: I wanted to play with time and to see if I could make the story circular around a linear story. This is why the past events are told in the present tense and the story itself is told in the past tense. The past events move backwards year by year even as the linear story moves forward over a period of days. The past events, with information about the girls and their relationships, wind back to where Lucee is seven and Yasmine is four—a pivotal beginning moment in their friendship. This corresponds to the point in the linear story where the girls are trying launch their dinghy from the Moroccan shore. Yasmine has decided she must push the boat since the others are pregnant. Lucee places Yasmine’s hand on her stomach and Yasmine feels the baby kick.
The use of the present tense for past events shows the girls’ loyalty and love for one another are constant. This is the single unchanging resource they have in situations that are often brutal. The use of the past tense for the story gives the reader perspective on the danger: whether they stay or leave the chances of dying are similar. The only difference is how.
CB: While the majority of your stories surround the characters and is heavily about the people living these lives, you do add elements of scenery and location that help ground the reader and show them the setting. For instance, in "Jewels We Took With Us,” Yasmine describes her surroundings: "We walked through the markets where the tinsmiths bang-banged, past the antique sellers, past the heaps of painted pigs, embroidered cushion covers, sheepskins, wooden washboards that the tourists so loved, coughed past the perfume makers.” What is your relationship to the diverse settings you describe in Small Change?
SH: Children rarely spend time describing trees, houses, or neighborhoods unless there are elements that are specifically relevant to them. For example, Yasmine notes the swinging tree near their village. However, this attitude changes when they are in new situations. Then they observe keenly, but not for aesthetic purposes: it’s for survival. Most of us have this experience when we travel to different cities or countries: our senses are suddenly more acute. I remember arriving in Kenya for a two-year teaching contract and feeling like someone had emptied a giant paint- box. How could the sky be that blue, the earth smell that red, the trees be that green? That’s when Van Gogh’s “Yellow House” suddenly made perfect sense.
Similarly, the characters in these stories note differences: for Sami, it’s the mirror and the books in the room in Egypt. For Rayan and Nabila it’s the unusually large and boisterous crowd at the post office. In the scene you mention Yasmine is affected by the newness of Tangier, the chaos of colors, sounds, and smells that contrast vividly with her experience in a small village.
We can become new in new environments, initially because of sensory effects. Those effects lead to others—intellectual, emotional, spiritual and so on. If we allow it to happen we can become more culturally dimensional.
CB: Speaking of locations, where do you prefer to write? Does this location help to connect you in some way to your writing?
SH: I prefer to write where there is no phone and no Internet connection! I have to remove those distractions completely. I’m also distracted by dictionaries or the Thesaurus. I’ll begin by looking up one word and that leads to another word, or another entry looks interesting. So I have to be careful about leading myself astray! For research purposes: if there’s something I need to look up, I insert hard brackets with “look up” so I can do that later.
Recently I was in Amsterdam and was struck by the absolute silence in the Rijks Museum library. Silence is such a luxury. These days, we must travel to find it.
CB: What is next for you? Are you working on anything now?
SH: I’m working on my second novel, The Geography of Kitchen Tables, set in post-apartheid South Africa. Again, I have a volatile backdrop and I’ve placed a family against it. Motsumi, Sotho, and Jan, English-Afrikaaner, meet and marry at Wits University in Johannesburg in the post-election rainbow glow of Mandela’s election. They have two children and, despite racist reactions to their mixed marriage and their mixed-race kids, all appears to be going reasonably well until their daughter is bottle-raped by a street gang. The story examines identities and how those are not fixed but malleable and resilient—for some! There’s also a sequel in the works that keeps distracting me when I should be finishing the manuscript!
Camille Bradshaw is an Oregon native who recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in English and Narrative Studies. In her final year, she served a fiction reader with Gold Line Press and Ricochet Editions.
Sandra Hunter’s collection of short fiction Small Change, which won the Gold Line Press 2015 Chapbook Contest, is forthcoming this fall from Gold Line Press. Read more about it here, and find Sandra on the Web at sandrajhunter.com!
