Between Two Women – A Conversation With Author Patricia Harrelson, Part II
By Keiti | August 23, 2008
Part 1 of my interview with author Patricia Harrelson.
Can you give us an overview as to what Between Two Women: Conversations About Love & Relationships is about?
As soon as I completed the book, I discovered that I had to be able to give a brief overview to pitch my book to potential publishers. In struggling to find the perfect pitch, I came across the suggestion that one way to get a book idea across to others was to compare it to something that is already well known. That’s when I came up with these two references: Segment 4 of “If These Walls Could Talk 2″ Or the feminization of “Brokeback Mountain” with same passion, confusion, and sorrow minus the tragedy. But you asked for an overview, so let me try to speak more directly to that: Between Two Women: Conversations about Love & Relationships is a combination memoir/oral history that tells the story of two California women: Patricia and Carol. After leaving a 33-year marriage to live with her female lover, Patricia seeks the counsel of Carol, who knew from time she was a child that she was a lesbian. During their conversations, sixty-nine-year-old Carol tells the story of her closeted life in the 40s and 50s, living with and loving women. Their talk is lively with the wit of the elder woman and thoughtfully reflective as Patricia grapples with the consequences of her decision. Spirited and sensitive, their stories illuminate both the difficulties faced by women in same-sexed relationships and the fundamental love in such relationships.
What was your initial purpose for writing Between Two Women? How much did that purpose change from the time you began to the time you finished?
I started the work as long personal essay describing my initial encounter with Carol and an audiotape she gave me to transcribe. She was trying to record her life story. Two things turned the essay into a book length project. First, the initial tape was such an abbreviated account of her life that I wanted to talk with her and delve more fully into the story. The personal essay was likewise a very collapsed account of both my story and hers and some of my writing mentors suggested that it was the outline for a book. After I decided to tape interviews with Carol for the purpose of writing her story, I found that my own story kept getting tangled with hers. I began to realize the degree to which I was trying to make sense of the monumental change in my life by exploring the story of her life. I also found myself writing to explain myself to my children and my friends and even projecting into the distant future a desire for my grandkids to hear my version of this family story. As I worked with my writing group on early drafts, I also discovered that the women in my group shared my curiosity about women loving women, which helped me see that this might be a story others would be interested in reading.
Stay tuned for the second part of the interview to be posted tomorrow.
Topics: books |