A conversation with author Joanne Greenberg

Monday was a special day for me and other friends in the Guffey Library Book Club. We had a special guest, writer Joanne Greenberg and her husband Albert. Traveling from their home in Golden, they have been coming to Guffey every year for several years now. Last year’s plans fell through, though, so we were all anticipating this year’s visit. It was special for another reason: Joanne and Albert were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and we wanted to join the celebration. Here they are before we cut the cake, icing to an excellent potluck lunch and lots of talk about books and reading.

I first heard of Joanne's writing under her own name in the mid-80s when In This Sign was published in paperback. That novel explored the dynamics of a deaf couple and their hearing daughter, a story told from multiple viewpoints. Despite my having a deaf cousin, it was my first real entry into deaf culture and I learned a lot from it. A check of reviews on Goodreads shows it’s still being read and sometimes assigned in sign language classes.

Joanne, now 83, continued to write—both short stories and novels. One Publishers Weekly reviewer called her “a shrewd observer of human nature and societal differences”. That can be seen clearly in No Reck’Ning (1993), set in post-World War II Colorado. It’s the story of Clara, a young woman from an abusive home who pursued her dream to be a teacher, succeeds, and then encounters conflict with a powerful, wealthy parent. A very positive Library School Journal review, said “Young adults will be intimately involved with Clara’s struggle to succeed”.  However, Joanne told us matter-of-factly, “It sank without a trace” in sales, and “my publisher has rejected me ever since.”

Nevertheless, Joanne continues to write, and to me, her ability to be a “shrewd observer” of human behavior and cultures is still up front and center. At our gathering Monday, we talked about some unpublished works she had sent us. She read two of them aloud.  "Geography" concerns the loss experienced by a long-time rural woman who no longer knows the local geography because she no longer knows people on once-familiar roads. "Diversity" uses the loss of an expensive ring as the focus on class differences between a working class narrator and a rich neighbor.

Is she working on something now? Yes. She teaches Biblical Judaism classes and is writing an article about the dynamics of conversion. “Judaism is a strange religion,” she explained. “It makes no promises about the future. Things that Christians look for are not religious issues for us.” She’s also working on a book about “what happens when people are cut off by an avalanche.”

Joanne’s interest in what I think of as “elemental things”, as well as in psychology and cross-cultural encounters is evident in her book recommendations. One long-time favorite of hers is Devil in the White City (2003) by Erik Larson. It juxtaposes the history of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with an account of a serial killer. Excellent book, but one that still haunts me, as I have a low tolerance for psychological terror. Given that predisposition, I will probably not add Kitty Genovese: the Murder, the Bystanders, and the Crime that Changed America (2015). But I can trust that Joanne knows a good story when she sees it. I’ll look up the reviews for the author’s take on bystander behavior, which I’m curious about, and read about what really happened on the night of this 1964 murder that really did shock America.

Two other recommendations, both dealing with wolves in some way, interest me:

1. Wolf Totem (2008) by Jiang Rong. This bestseller in China is based on the author’s experience of going to the Mongolian Steppes as a young boy and living with the nomadic Mongols during the Cultural Revolution. As one Goodreads reviewer noted, “What matters most to (the) story are the depictions of the untamed steppe,” which “does not passively give what human life needs, but everything must be taken from it.” The story details how the Red Guards tried to “push back the last of the wolf hordes, threatening to destroy this way of life forever.”

2.  Ordinary Wolves (2005) by Seth Kantner. Again, a reviewer who gave it 5 stars puts it succinctly: “This book is a stunningly honest and unsentimental look at contemporary life in Alaska. The book touches on big issues (racism, loss of wilderness, alcoholism), but it is fundamentally a coming of age story (semi-autobiographical, I think) about a white boy whose father drops out of the mainstream to raise his three children in a sod igloo in a remote part of Alaska. It is beautifully written, and will stay with you for a long time.”

She had other recommendations too—The Jew in the Lotus and Reading Lolita in Tehran, for example. She would have had more had she not forgotten to bring her notebook of copious notes on everything she’s read this year. (She’s promised to send them to us.)

Shifting to talk about our favorite reads, Joanne was not shy about expressing her dislikes as well as likes. The author Sue Monk Kidd came up. She wrote the modern classic, Secret Life of Bees, which I loved, thinking it should be on every high school reading list. Joanne’s reaction? “I nearly died of sugar poisoning.” The discussion moved on to Jane Eyre and the 19th century. Joanne: “The gothic novels (pause). The men had the IQs of grapes.”  Wuthering Heights: “It was the best book when I read it at 15, but later… “These people needed jobs.”

The afternoon progressed. It was past 3. We cut the cake, wishing Joanne and Albert more years of happy marriage. Book club friends packed up their potluck leftovers, perhaps, like me, content--but wanting to go home and read something before dinner.