 |
 |
Between the Lines |
 |
|
Interview with Gary Soto |
|
The Afterlife
Gary Soto
You'd think a knife in the ribs would be the end of things, but for Chuy, that's when his life at last gets interesting. He finally sees that people love him, faces the consequences of his actions, finds in himself compassion and bravery . . . and even stumbles on what may be true love.
A funny, touching, and wholly original story by one of the finest authors writing for young readers today.
|
|
Biography |
|
| Gary Soto born and raised in Fresno, California, is the author of ten poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Time Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Ontario Review, and most frequently Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in the Poets in Person Series. Soto’s first book for young readers, Baseball in April and Other Stories, won the California Library Association's Beatty Award and was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. In 1999 he was honored with the Human and Civil Right Award from the American Education Association, the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, and the PEN Center West Book Award for his young-adult short story collection Petty Crimes. Soto also serves as the Young Person’s Ambassador for both the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) and California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). He lives in Berkeley, California.
|
|
Interview |
|
Q: The Afterlife deals with a brutal murder and yet the victim, also the protagonist, views his own murder dispassionately
and introspectively. How do you achieve this effect and how do you feel this affects your story?
A: Indeed, there is a dispassionate voice, and I arrived at it as I understood that death is cold. We could say that love is hot, that envy and jealousy,
the taste of a bitter penny, and anger a cauldron of fire. Death is cold and, thus, there is coolness to the prose. I couldn't have Chuy screaming his head off, “I’m dead!
Oh, God, I’m dead.” His reaction to his fate is coolly introspective.
Q: In your story, Chuy describes his killer only in terms of his yellow shoes, and his onion breath. Do you feel that people focus on and remember small details about life's great events and turning points?
A: Yes, I think writers pick up on details that may haunt them. They turn these over and over because they never seem satisfied and can’t get enough of them. The same here in this novel. I could have been satisfied with Buried Onions, the prequel to The Afterlife, and believed that that story was done. But, I wanted to go back to the earlier novel and re-experience the tragedy of a young’s man death, the kind of death, I believe, that happens daily throughout our country. Young men—and women—are dying for insignificant reasons, a remark or gesture which gives offense to another. Of course, in The Afterlife I view “yellow shoes” as cowardice and “onions” as a vapor that makes someone weep.
Q: The concept of your story is unique in that Chuy actually dies twice once as a boy and once as a ghost. When he disappears in this second death, where does he go?
A: My father died when I was five, and there were reports that he came back as a spirit. I recall my uncle Shorty telling me of when he used to bathe after
work, he would hear gravel crunch in our back yard and become so startled that his body would freeze from fear. It was my father returning from that first journey called death. My brother
has had the same experience as well. In his case, our uncle Frank appeared at the foot of his bed and was smiling and giggling and saying everything was okay where he then dwelled. But
where do Chuy and Crystal go? Into the memories of those family and friends, the survivors.
Q: You have said that you never intended to become a writer and yet you clearly possess that talent. Furthermore, you seem to have found a gift for writing both poetry and fiction two of the more creative writing genres. Do you prefer one to the other?
A: In my youth, I was without ambition. I imagined that I would find a job as a gardener or, worse, as a farm worker with the dullest hoe in the San Joaquin
Valley. I would get by. But discovering literature enhanced my life. It saved me. I was nineteen, a second-year student at Fresno City College, and I began to read contemporary poetry—Edward
Field was my favorite and shortly after him I discovered Pablo Neruda. I was bitten. I wanted to do this thing called writing poetry. In turn, in my early thirties, I discovered prose
as well and wrote a couple of personal essay collections—Living Up the Street and A Summer Life, for example—and
then began to think I could test myself in the area of straight fiction. Of poetry or prose, I prefer poetry as part of my soul. I think like a poet, and behave like a poet. Occasionally
I need to sit in the corner for bad behavior.
Q: In order to write The Afterlife you needed to understand the perspective of a teen boy who's thoughts revolve around love and maturation. How
did you put yourself in Chuy’s place to write from his perspective?
A: When I wrote The Afterlife, I envisioned downtown Fresno. In my imagination I located its dilapidated buildings, its vacant lots, its stores devoid of shoppers, the dust stirring in the gutters. I then built through whatever talent I possess an image of the young man and his afterlife experience.
Q: There is a contrast between the lives that Crystal and Chuy lived—one appears to have succeeded in everything and the other seems to have lived a very
modest life. And yet the successful teenager, Crystal, kills herself, while Chuy, the modest achiever dies accidentally (if murder can be called "accidental"). What is the message
in this character twist?
A: Death gets everyone. In Crystal’s case, she is a well-off young female who is despondent about the greatest of all emotions—love. Because she’s an adolescent, her feelings are probably more raw than say an adult’s. I recall the intensity of being in love with a girl in high school. I would have run my car into a wall for her. But lucky for me, my mode of transportation was my feet. As for Chuy, obviously from a poorer but loving family, he wants to get by. He wants to find himself a girlfriend, and in the beginning of the novel he’s ready. He has even bought a pair of black plastic shoes and placed a stick of Juicy Fruit gum in his front shirt pocket.
Q: Do you feel that the things we do in life matter once we are gone that the condition of the afterlife is dependent on the life we lead?
A: Yes, I think our actions linger after we are gone. If you have children, you live through them, even if what you distill in them is bad behavior. But we must pray that parents bring out the natural good in children. Who wishes to live in an evil world?
Q: Why did you choose this subject for your book? How and why do you think it appeals to teen readers?
A: What’s the appeal of The Afterlife? I’m not sure, but I think it captures some of the universal wonder about death and our own spiritual lives.
|
|
|
|
 |
