Poet E.J. Wade interviewed Oregon novelist Karen Spears Zacharias.
E.J.: Karen, you are the author of several books including the bestselling Will Jesus Buy Me a Doublewide, Mother of Rain, Burdy, A Silence of Mockingbirds, After the Flag Has Been Folded, and The Murder Gene. We love your books, dauntless stories about women who navigate a world of patriarchal practices, engage our resourcefulness, and inspire us. And now you gift us with No Perfect Mothers. Can you share a little bit about the book?
The story of Carrie Buck happened ninety-seven years ago. Tell me why you chose this story to write about and why now? Just importantly why do you believe you were the one who should write about her story?
Karen: In 2020, I read a headline article about ICE detainees in Georgia being sterilized without their consent or even knowledge. How was such a thing possible, or even legal? I immediately began to research whether such things were allowable under the law and that led me to Carrie’s story and the 1927 SCOTUS decision granting state lawmakers the right to deny women the right to bear children.
E.J.: As a Humanities teacher, when I regularly ask my students why they choose a particular book that I have not assigned them, 90 percent of my students tell me that they are drawn to a book because of its title and cover. Can you tell me how you arrived at the title and cover of your book?
Karen: The book title comes from a Walt Whitman poem, So Long. Like many of his generation, Whitman was a proponent of eugenics, the belief that a better society is created by better breeding. Girls like Carrie were marked for sterilization primarily because they were poor. Eugenicists believed that the best way to overcome poverty was to let wealthy people bred. (Elon Musk is a good enough argument against eugenics).
When America does what was promis’d,
When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
When through These States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,
Then to me and mine our due fruition
The book’s cover was a collaborative process with Mercer and their designer Burt & Burt. They were terrific to collaborate with, inviting my input and thoughts. The image looks like Appalachia but is actually a path that leads up to Ben Nevis, Scotland’s highest mountain. My husband took the photo during a hike we did there last year.
E.J.: As a teacher I am always looking for literary sources that not only provide historical content for my students but literature that promotes critical thinking, self-reflection, and connection. Can you provide some tips on how I might incorporate No Perfect Mothers into my instructional curriculum?
Karen: The story speaks to the welfare of vulnerable people and how our legal system exploits them. Some curriculum suggestions: Research as a building block of writing; How government policies affect our daily lives; Travel as an educational tool; The part Helpers play in all of our lives (pulling from Campbell’s Hero’s Journey). If I were at the university level, I’d use the book for a Women’s Studies course on how legal decisions are historically punitive towards women.
E.J.: PEN America recently placed this statement on its site: “Books are under profound attack in the United States. They are disappearing from library shelves, being challenged in droves, being decreed off limits by school boards, legislators, and prison authorities. And everywhere, it is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history. PEN America pushes back against the banning of books and the intolerance, exclusion, and censorship that undergird it.” What are your thoughts as it relates to the banning of books?
Karen: For years I’ve had this sticker on the back of my Jeep: “He who controls what you read, controls what you think… or if you think.” That sums it up for me. The point of banning books is to control what the masses think in order to control the masses.
E.J: Are you concerned that the topic of No Perfect Mothers, might place it on the banned list along with so many other books that tell true stories of our country?
Karen: I would consider it a badge of honor and honestly, it would not surprise me. Carrie’s story challenges the misogyny embedded in our legal system. One can’t read Carrie’s story without considering all the ways institutional patriarchy degrades women. But it also speaks to all the ways in which women have managed to extricate themselves out of such systems. That latter part is what patriarchal institutions fear the most – that as women unite, those old systems will crumble.
E.J.: How do you think Carrie might feel about your writing about her?
Karen: I hope she would feel seen, heard, and honored. I sought to restore all that was taken from Carrie – her voice, her humanity, and most of all, her dignity.
E.J.: Did you experience any emotional challenges as you wrote the incident of Carrie’s rape? Can you share with us how you felt?
Karen: I was in my flat in Scotland when I wrote that scene. It was in the wee dark hours when everything is silent, so that the only voices I heard were those of Carrie and Ren. Emotional exhaustion was my primary emotion once I typed that last line. The kind of exhaustion that accompanies grief. I felt an overwhelming sense of grief, not just for Carrie, but for every woman who has ever been sexually assaulted. Something I experienced myself as a young girl.
E.J.: Do you see any connections between the current Dobbs Decision and Buck v. Bell or even the 1965 Griswold case? And do you have any thoughts about Alabama’s recent Supreme Court ruling on embryos?
Karen: On the surface, these laws would seem disparate. The Buck v. Bell ruling allows states to sterilize women, while the Dobbs Decision forces women to bear children. The thing these decisions share is that it is lawmakers (mostly white men) who determine the reproductive rights of women. In other words, for nearly a century, the Supreme Court has ensured that it is lawmakers who control the reproductive rights of women.
One would think Griswold’s ruling would ensure women privacy regarding their reproductive choices, but we have seen such privacy eroded in Republican-controlled states. Lawmakers politicize reproductive rights. Keeping the masses ginned up over cultural issues does nothing to improve the lives of the masses, but that’s not foremost in the minds of these legislators – power is.
The Alabama ruling that embryos are babies is about as idiotic as they come. Every month there are women who slough off fertilized eggs that fail to implant. If you accept Chief Justice Tom Parker and the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling, thousands of children are being flushed down the toilet.
The thing these rulings all share is that they are designed specifically to subjugate women to the authority of men.
E.J.: If you could have a conversation with Carrie, what would that conversation sound like?
Karen: I have so many questions I want to ask Carrie, but the one I most want to know is Who were the helpers in your life?
There is no archival data that suggest Carrie had friends who came alongside her, who buoyed her during those terrifying and difficult times at the colony. That’s why I created Mora, to give to Carrie one person in her life whom she could repeatedly turn to for help. I have no idea if Carrie had such a friend, but my hope is that she did. Those of us fortunate enough to have benefitted from such unlikely friendships know the value of those friendships, and how bereft our lives would be without them.
E.J: If you could send two copies of No Perfect Mothers to anyone, who would it be and why?
Karen: Whoa. What a question. I’m gonna need a minute. The obvious choice would be Oprah, right? Because if she read it and recommended it that would make it an instant bestseller. But the two people I would choose over the obvious are Ava DuVernay and Alexis McGill Johnson.
I have such respect for DuVernay’s work. She doesn’t shy away from challenging subject matter. If anyone could bring Carrie’s story to the masses and help them make the connection between the Buck v. Bell ruling and the Dobbs Decision, and the threat those decisions pose to women today, Duvernay can do it.
For far too long, Planned Parenthood sought to excuse or ignore Margaret Sanger’s eugenics philosophy. As president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson has made it clear that she has no intention of covering for the founder’s racist legacy. As a black woman, McGill feels no compunction to defend Sanger. Rather, she called out Sanger in an essay for The New York Times: “In the name of political expedience, Sanger chose to engage white supremacists to further her cause. In doing that, she devalued and dehumanized people of color.”
McGill Johnson understands that white nationalism is behind many of the reproduction restrictions taking place in states across this nation today. Like Mora in the book, McGill Johnson is the Helper we all need in this fight now.
E.J.: If you could do a personal reading of No Perfect Mothers who would be gifted that reading?
Karen: Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters, along with Joe and Dr. Biden and their granddaughters. No two elected leaders have been better examples of what it means to honor and respect women in all areas of our lives. And no elected officials have been as willing to promote women to positions of power than Obama and Biden.
E.J.: Do you think reading No Perfect Mothers might influence upcoming elections?
Karen: I have no doubt. This book will make people think about policy and how that policy affects their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Media does not focus on policy. It focuses on personalities, which is a total distraction. Policy is what determines our everyday lives. Carrie’s story will sober up the most apathetic of voters and propel them to the polls.
Voting is the best way to fight back. Carrie Buck didn’t have that right. We do. Vote.
*****
E.J. Wade is a four-time National Endowment of the Humanities Teacher Institute winner. An award-winning poet with two Pushcart nominations, her poems have been published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Women Speak Volume Eight, and New Ohio Review. As Editor for the 2022 Anthology of Appalachian Writers, her poetry and photography garnered multiple awards. A Doctoral Candidate Wade is pursuing a doctorate of Disability and Equity in Education from National Louis University focusing on the silencing, exclusion, and invisibility of African American Women with disabilities.
Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. She holds an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University and an MA in Creative Media Practice from the University of West Scotland. She lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Deschutes County, Oregon, where she volunteers with the League of Women Voters. Zacharias taught First-Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and continues to teach at writing workshops around the country. Learn more about her at www.karenzach.com. Her local bookstores include Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, OR and Roundabout Books in Bend, OR.