By Sahar Mustafah
The Doctor’s Wife by Luis Jaramillo won the Dzanc Short Story Collection contest and was published in 2012. Set in Washington State, it follows a quintessential American family over four decades, from the 1950’s to the present. The vignette-style structure and shifting points of view reconstruct the experiences of raising children and growing up post-war, while exposing the triumphs and losses any family endures over subsequent generations.
Each chapter is sometimes no more than a page; this lends a visceral and memory-like quality to Jaramillo’s storytelling. Though the episodes are transient and swift, his themes of heartache, compromise and concession, and the inexorable bonds of family will always remain with the reader.
SM: Your book is compelling on several levels. Let’s begin with its structure. It seems quite natural that the telling of a family history would be presented this way–flashes and well-contained scenes threaded through time. It’s a remarkably seamless story. How did it emerge?
LJ: The first piece I wrote was the bee sting story, The Pacific War. It was based on a family story I’d heard many times. When I sat down to write it I put down everything I knew about the incident. Then I filled in the gaps with details from my grandmother. I did some research about World War II destroyers, about how to perform a tracheotomy, and about fly-fishing. The first drafts of the story were a lot longer than what I eventually ended up with. After writing this first piece I knew I wanted to write more family stories in the same way—taking what I knew, adding to it, and then whittling down the raw material to make something pretty spare.
SM: Was there a challenge organizing them as you were drawing from your memories?
LJ: At first, I didn’t know what order I was going to put the pieces in. One idea I had was to make it possible for the stories to be read in any order. Memories have little to do with chronology, and since the book is at least partly about how memory works, I liked the idea of having the stories be available to a reader in the same way that they were available to me. But, I also think that narrative is a powerful way to communicate meaning, and it’s just more fun to read something that has forward momentum. I shuffled the pieces around until they made the right kind of emotional and tonal sense and then I fiddled with details to make the chronology work. I spent a lot of time adjusting the ages of the kids.
SM: Your book speaks nostalgically–and often painfully–of the post-WW II American family. How did fictionalizing your family’s experiences make you re-see them? What are some challenges there?
LJ: At this distance from the writing it’s tricky to say what I made up. As mentioned before, I based the stories on things I’d heard growing up. But then I did research, talking to family members, looking at old newspapers, digging through archives at the Everett, Washington public library and that sort of thing, to get the right sort of details for the periods of time when I wasn’t alive. I wanted to be as true to the facts of things as I could be, but then I also wanted to really inhabit the moments of the story. All the dialogue in the first half is pure invention, though informed by the family’s verbal tics. When I was writing the scenes I had to forget the family story, and instead feel—through sense details and emotions—what the characters felt. This was one of the challenges—letting go of the idea of the stories to get to something that isn’t told but is experienced. The family stories were always told as if they were funny—it quickly became clear to me that in the moment they were much more complicated—many of them painful, as you say.
SM: Can you discuss your research process? How does it impact your creativity?
LJ: I love doing research. It’s so much easier to do than the actual writing. When I find new things I want to put all of them into the book, story, or essay I’m writing. I’ve always liked to hear people’s stories. One thing I’ve been shocked about when I’ve interviewed strangers is how much they’ve been willing to tell me. With my family it was a bit different. They were cagier, either not remembering details, or claiming not to remember. It took years to pull things out of them. I went to visit my grandmother alone three or four times over the course of a couple of years. I’d go on errands with her—to the post office, to drop off clothes for the Planned Parent rummage sale, to the grocery store—so that I’d be there when a detail shook loose. One thing that was really helpful was when I came into a cache of old newspapers. I looked at them with my grandmother and I had her talk to me about the ads—it’s amazing what a picture of a place you can get from what is being advertised.
SM: Let’s discuss a few characters in your book. The Doctor’s Wife is based on your grandmother. She’s an ostensibly traditional wife and mother and yet she reveals herself as complex and incisive. There are wonderful moments of humorous subversion and acts of minor defiance. Did you have a fairly strong portrait of her before beginning the book, or did she surprise you along the way?
LJ: My grandmother was always surprising me—both as a character and as a person. She had a very distinctive way of speaking, and she had very strong opinions about everything. These real-life qualities translate well to a character in a book. Her main goal in life—at least as I wrote her—is to keep things running in the best way possible for her family and community. But as you way, there are many acts of subversion—the way to do this was not to be meek, and the humor in the book (if there is any) comes from a familial appreciation for the absurd. Death is absurd. Dogs are absurd. Manners are absurd, too, though my grandmother was always adamant about proper behavior, at least in public. But when she was just with us grandkids, she would do things she’d never dream about otherwise. She could burp on command, loudly, and we were always very impressed when she performed for us.
SM: The Doctor’s Wife is the anchor for this book, though the points of view shift throughout so that each character is a truly and craft-fully developed individual to readers. How did you decide when to shift, or in more general terms, did the handling of close points of view pose a challenge? It would seem to determine which moments would be included and which you’d have to omit.
LJ: You’re right–the shifts in point of view did help determine which moments I would include. Early in the process I wasn’t writing in any methodical way, I was just trying to write as many of these short pieces as I could. But when I was started to put them in an order, I had to put them together in such a way that I was telling one main story. There are a few pieces I really liked that I cut out because they just didn’t fit. That sucked.
SM: The three siblings, Ann, Chrissy, and Bob, present very familiar territory for readers. You deliver very clear portraits of each as individuals while deftly weaving them into the larger family tapestry. Can you tell me about the challenges you had navigating between them?
LJ: That’s a tough question. I think I tried to focus on each of the kids more or less equally, giving them the same amount of time and space in the book. But, I’m sure I got the balance wrong. Many readers have responded most strongly to Chrissy. She was more fun to write, maybe because it was so clear to me how she would behave in each situation. The other characters were more complicated, and I think that shows in the sections that focus on them.
SM: Another compelling character is John, the youngest ill child, who appears briefly then (spoiler-alert!) dies. Yet, he perpetually crops up and reminds readers of any family’s devastating loss. His death-presence is never belabored and very strategically injected. How did you decide on the loss of a baby brother?
LJ: I didn’t make up John or his death. His death was always a mystery to me when I was growing up. I knew about him, and I knew he’d died young of an incurable disease, but that was it. Nobody ever talked about him. I was very curious and scared about the idea of his death, but I didn’t even know what questions to ask. When I was writing the book I wanted to preserve the feeling in the family about his death—that it was not going to be allowed to get in the way of anything else. Of course it did, but I hope some of the tension of the book is from the idea that willpower only goes so far.
SM: I love that the Doctor’s Wife, quite fittingly, gets the last word. In her ironic way, she sums up her family’s lot in life. Had you been toying with other endings?
LJ: The last line of the book was a gift—I didn’t make it up at all—I just scribbled it down right after my grandmother said it. For me, it perfectly communicated her view of the world—she saw no point in feeling sorry for herself, whatever happened. When she said the line I knew I had an ending.
SM: The Doctor–based on your grandfather–is also an intriguing character. He embodies the kind of detached father-figure typical of the time period, allowing readers to get close to him at times, yet he is a mostly distant character as events unfold. Did you struggle with putting the Doctor on the page?
LJ: Yes. He was very sick for most of the time I can remember him, so I had very few of my own details to add to what I gathered. I was recently in Lake Stevens to read at a meeting of the historical society. Quite a few long-time residents of the lake came to the reading—many were friends with my grandmother, but there were others who had been patients and friends of my grandfather. One woman, a family friend I hadn’t seen for years, had for a long time been a receptionist in my grandfather’s office. She said—though not unkindly—that he was the most difficult person she’d ever worked for, and that he had a very military bearing. Other people talked about what a gifted doctor he was—a 91-year-old woman credited him with saving her life, and others talked about the house calls he paid, and how attentive he was. These stories were in contrast to what happened when his own kids asked him to look at some injury. “I’ve seen worse,” is what he always said. I wish I’d written more about him.
SM: The Doctor’s Wife won the 2009 Dzanc Short Story Collection Competition. Dzanc is a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting outstanding new writers like yourself while also encouraging community activism. How did you decide to submit your work to that contest? How has the Dzanc award since affected you as a writer? How has it shaped your opinion about the publishing industry?
LJ: I submitted to the contest after giving up hope of the collection being published. Dzanc is great—they really try to publish fresh and different voices. I wouldn’t put myself in that category exactly, but it’s been great to be associated with what’s new in the publishing world. I often organize publishing panels for work at The New School. When we have people from the big houses come they bring news of doom and gloom; the small press people are excited about what’s going on now and what’s next. If you’re only oriented toward the market as a writer you are bound to be disappointed. Being part of a community of writers and being of service to a larger community is a much richer experience. This is something else my grandmother taught me.
SM: Can you share some of your favorite short fiction collections? What continues to influence your own work?
LJ: I hadn’t read Evan Connell until my book was published (thank goodness, or I never would have written The Doctor’s Wife). Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge are brilliant. I love anything by Mavis Gallant, but especially Paris Stories. I love the stories of Joy Williams, Lydia Davis, and George Saunders. I think Nathan Englander’s most recent book is great.
SM: What are you currently working on?
LJ: I’m working on a novel about the other side of my family. I’m at the very messy stage of the writing, my favorite part. I do research and throw it on the page. I imagine a scene, and do the same. This book is not autobiographical in the same way—I’m making a lot more up a lot more in this novel—everything, really—and there is a single narrator telling the story, a person who isn’t me at all really. For now the book is called The Three Sisters of El Paso.
Luis Jaramillo is the author of The Doctor’s Wife, winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest, and Oprah Book of the Week selection, and one of NPR’s Best Books of 2012. Jaramillo’s work has also appeared in Open City, Gamers (Soft Skull Press), Tin House Magazine, H.O.W. Journal, and Red Line Blues. He is the Interim Director of the School of Writing at The New School, where he is also co-editor of the journal The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food. He has led workshops on yoga and writing at The New School Summer Writers Colony, NYU Paris, and the Laughing Lotus Yoga Studios in Manhattan and San Francisco. He received an undergraduate degree from Stanford and and MFA from the The New School.
Photo of Luis Jaramillo by Michele Asselin at Luis Jaramillo
Sahar Mustafah is a writer, editor, and teacher from Chicago. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Hair Trigger 35, Mizna, New Scriptor, Chicago Literati, Ploughshares, Prime Number, and Dinarzad’s Children: an Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Literature. She is the 2012 recipient of the Guild Literary Complex Fiction Award and a 2013 Pushcart Prize nomination, and most recently won 3rd Place in the 2013 Gold Circle Awards from Columbia University Scholastic Press Association for collegiate magazines. A Follett Graduate Scholar at Columbia College Chicago, Sahar is at work on her MFA thesis collection of short stories. She the co-founder and fiction editor of Bird’s Thumb, an online literary journal.