Donna Hemans, TEA BY THE SEA
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[0:53]Donna Hemmons, born into makeup, is the author of award-winning novel River Woman,
[0:57]and most recently, Tea by the Sea. Her short fiction has been featured in Caribbean writer,
[1:02]Witness, and other publications and anthologies. She received her undergraduate degree
[1:06]from Fordham University and her MFA from American University. She currently lives in Greenbelt,
[1:11]Maryland. Welcome, Donna. Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:15]Thank you. Thanks for having me. Now it's a pleasure. Can you please tell listeners what
[1:19]Tea by the Sea is about? Well, it's a story about a young mother whose baby was taken from
[1:25]taken from her at birth and her search to find a child. That was very concise.
[1:32]How did you come up with the idea for this book? Well, I initially started writing a story
[1:38]or it's just a short piece about a woman who goes to a church and refuses to leave.
[1:43]And after I wrote that, I had to figure out why she would not want to leave the church,
[1:48]what she was looking for. And so a few weeks after writing that first piece,
[1:54]happened to be in Jamaica. And it was a Sunday evening playing scrapbook with my parents.
[1:59]And there's a program that comes on on the radio at, I think, seven o'clock in the evening on
[2:04]one of the stations. And it's a program called Sunday Contact, where people call in to look for
[2:10]family members or friends who, you know, they just simply can't get in touch with.
[2:14]And a woman called in looking for her son. And what she said was that the father had taken
[2:20]a child and she had no idea where they were, where they had gone, whether they were still in Jamaica,
[2:25]whether they had moved to America or Canada. She just simply had no idea. And I believe the
[2:31]child at that point must have been about seven or eight years old. I don't remember the details.
[2:35]But once I heard that, I said, this is my story. This is what this woman is searching for.
[2:41]This is why she's in that church and is refusing to leave.
[2:44]Wow. It's so funny how novelists think about life events. I feel like I interview
[2:50]often people who are like, I heard this story and I knew I had to write a whole book about it,
[2:53]whereas I feel like I would hear the story and just hear the story.
[2:56]Right. Yeah. I think you you pick up so much from from everyday life. And even without even
[3:03]being aware that that is what you're doing, that something that you hear about something that you
[3:07]know will be the basis for a story or will be even a small piece in a story. And sometimes
[3:13]it's those little things that actually give you the foundation for something bigger.
[3:18]Were you actively on the hunt for a topic having published your first book already?
[3:23]And you've heard about sort of the sophomore slump type of saying or it's hard to figure out how to
[3:28]follow up the success of a first novel and your first novel, which I didn't read. I'm sorry,
[3:31]it's called River Woman, but this novel I read, which is amazing. Yeah. Well, I guess the funny
[3:36]thing about that is that in some ways, I guess you could say I had that sophomore slump,
[3:40]but in some ways I don't know that I did. And I probably went about things a little bit
[3:45]differently from some other writers I've heard about, who people will talk about how many books
[3:50]they wrote before they published their first book. And in my case, it was a little bit different,
[3:54]River Woman was my thesis for my MFA program. And I published that I think about a few years
[4:01]after I finished a program, maybe three years after I finished a program that book was published.
[4:05]And that was the first book I ever wrote. Wow. So I think so between River Woman, we published
[4:11]in 2002 and now 2020 with T by the Sea coming out, it certainly is a long time, but I wrote two
[4:18]other books in between. And those books I have been revising and revising and revising. And I
[4:25]think I finally got to a point now where I will be finished revising at least one of them because
[4:30]I finally figured out what the story was, what I wanted to tell. But with T by the Sea, it was,
[4:36]I guess in some ways a slightly different process, I figured out what I wanted to write, what the
[4:41]story was and I just simply wrote it, which in some ways probably was probably the same thing I
[4:46]did with River Woman. I knew what the story was. I wrote that story without thinking too much about
[4:51]structure and everything else that seems to have been the hang up with the other two in between.
[4:57]When you started the MFA program, had you written short stories or what made you drawn to
[5:02]enroll in that program to begin with? As an undergrad, I started English and Media Studies and I
[5:07]took some fiction writing workshops and I knew that I liked writing stories. I didn't necessarily
[5:12]know how to go about writing something fuller and bigger. And I started writing this thing, which I
[5:19]thought was a novel. And I had to figure out, well, how on earth do you finish a novel? How do you
[5:26]put it all together? And I knew that what I needed to do was an MFA program. Wow. Very cool.
[5:35]Yeah. Do you feel like you actually got specific skills that helped you write the books or was it
[5:41]more like what is the best thing that came out of the MFA program for you? For me, I think that
[5:47]what I learned from an MFA program is really how to read. And it's not necessarily so much how
[5:53]to write because I think the biggest part about writing really is knowing how to read your own work.
[5:59]And knowing when to edit, when to stop editing, what to take out, and really understanding how
[6:07]a reader reads and understands your story. And I think that's what I got from an MFA program by
[6:14]the numerous workshops that I had to take. I heard what other people were saying about my work,
[6:19]what they were looking for. And after a certain point, I began to anticipate those things myself.
[6:24]So I would look at something that I wrote and ask myself whether somebody else would understand it.
[6:30]What else do I need to say? What, how much more do I need to explain? Am I explaining too much?
[6:36]And that's how I really understood how to pace a story more by learning how to read it as
[6:41]opposed to really being taught how to write. So interesting. Yeah. It is. And I think I remember
[6:47]one professor saying at one point where I think I may have had a note or may have said, well,
[6:53]you know, I knew somebody would ask that question. And I think the response was, well,
[6:57]you're learning how to write because you're beginning to anticipate those things. And I think
[7:02]once you get to that point, you have a better understanding of your own story and what it should be
[7:07]doing. Well, although you have been working for like 20 years on these two other books.
[7:12]Well, no, yeah. I know. I think it's just that I, it's the process.
[7:17]No, I'm, no, I fully understand that. But I think that for me, and I think it's something that
[7:22]I am also beginning to realize that the other two books, once I finished Riverwoman,
[7:27]I think I started thinking too much about how I wanted the books to be structured. And I
[7:32]stepped away from, well, this is a story about experts and really started thinking too much about
[7:39]the structure. So I got hung up on shaping the story as opposed to just simply telling the story,
[7:44]which I guess goes back to what I learned early on. It's, you know, what does your reader want
[7:50]or your reader anticipate? And it's a lesson I think I just need to keep in mind from now on.
[7:57]Well, this was like a heartbreaking, but also inspiring story. The emotions that you have,
[8:04]the idea that you could have your baby just snatched away at childbirth. And the scene that you
[8:10]wrote where she comes back, Paul it, right, Paul? Plumb. Plumb. Oh my gosh, I'm losing my mind.
[8:16]The scene that you wrote where Plumb comes back to the room that she had been in with the woman
[8:22]who she rents the room for. All right. Right. And it was just like apoplectic, like the baby's gone
[8:28]and the two of them were just, I mean, what a scene. What a moment. I mean, the desperation and
[8:34]how she looked everywhere for the baby. And then just when she couldn't find the baby,
[8:38]just one day just said, I'm going to lay down on this wall and hopefully the sun will just
[8:43]basically kill me. I mean, that's like, oh my gosh, how did you have ended that feeling? Like,
[8:49]I thought I started thinking to myself, well, has she had something like this happen? Or how does she
[8:53]this feeling of hopelessness and despair? How did you get to that so well? I don't know.
[8:58]I have an experience that myself. But I think you know, as writers, even though you may not
[9:04]necessarily experience that thing, there are other things that you can pull from. But I can't think of
[9:09]anything that I have experienced at that extent. But I think in some ways though that the book itself
[9:15]is also about it's about the losses about the search. But I think it's also about that long
[9:21]into belong. And I think in a number of ways, I believe that it's the kind of story that I feel like
[9:28]I'm telling over and over and over. I shouldn't say over and over. But it's the story that I'm
[9:32]telling. And I think it's coming from my mother's story in some ways, that what I'm telling is
[9:40]is her story. And my mother basically grew up with her grand aunt and her father. And when she was
[9:48]born, her mother quote-unquote, returned her to her father, so to speak. So my grandmother had
[9:56]three boys as well. But she kept the boys. And so what my mother had said at once.
[10:00]point was, you know, she gave away the daughter but kept the sons and so I think, you know,
[10:05]I keep looking at and thinking about how does that child feel about not having that mother?
[10:11]How does a mother feel about not having that child? So I think in some ways that's the story
[10:16]that I feel like I'm telling that's what I'm reaching back to. That's what I'm trying to understand
[10:20]and a lot of what I write. There is something I'm trying to understand and for me it's that,
[10:24]that loss of a child not having a parent or a parent not having a child.
[10:29]So really you're like plums daughter in the social scenario. I'm kidding. I think I said so much.
[10:33]In some ways. Okay. Do you think it made your mother or plumb parent differently for the
[10:40]children that she ended up? Right. No, it's not. It wouldn't be plumb's daughter. It would be
[10:44]Opal's daughter. Right. Yeah. That would be. Yeah. It would be also. It would be Opal's daughter.
[10:50]It would be you. Yes. Yes. I guess so. Even though that person doesn't exist.
[10:54]That person doesn't exist, but just follow up here. It's kind of done with theoretical.
[10:59]Yes, it would be. But I think it makes not having that parent. I think makes somebody parent
[11:04]differently. And I think in this case, plumb certainly did when she had her twin daughters later on.
[11:11]She never left them, never let them out of her sight because she didn't want the same thing to
[11:16]happen again. And you know, there's the flip side of that, which could be like overparenting,
[11:22]but I think she did a good job. So when plumb first gets back to Brooklyn, so she was in Jamaica,
[11:31]her parents had sent her there. I don't want to give away the whole book, but she was sent there
[11:35]by her parents in a form of abandonment. She felt they thought it was for her own good. And so
[11:40]kind of stranded her there. But then she came back and she had lost her daughter. She was very young,
[11:45]17 and she had her baby. You write, she didn't care about other people's stories or past lives
[11:50]because her mother was trying to make her feel better. But she had her own storied past and
[11:53]present. And now she had a firm conviction that despite her parents claim the fairytale endings,
[11:58]the scripted Hollywood kind weren't really available to her. Hollywood's movies had told her
[12:02]that fairytale endings weren't available to a dark-skinned girl and an immigrant at that.
[12:07]So tell me a little more about that passage. And then she like gives up all her dreams and says
[12:12]she wants to settle for a simple ordinary dream, a job that paid for food and shelter.
[12:17]I think while there are two parts to that, one is that there is for so many of us who are not
[12:23]accustomed to seeing ourselves in, you know, represented whether it's in literature or in,
[12:28]you know, in movies from Hollywood, we have a different viewpoint of the stories that are told.
[12:33]And I'll tell you when one of my nieces was about three or four years old in preschool.
[12:38]One of her friends told her that she couldn't be a princess because princesses don't look like
[12:43]her. And, you know, it's something that children internalize from a very young age. And it was
[12:49]surprising. I don't know that any adult told that child that that was the case, but that was
[12:54]something she earned internalized based on what she saw. So if a child and I think that girl,
[13:00]she was either white or a very light skinned. But if she was internalized in it and she saw herself
[13:06]there, then imagine what it is for a person who is, you know, darker skin who does not see
[13:11]herself at all. So that was one piece of it that I think that Plum had grown accustomed to not
[13:18]seeing that had grown accustomed to seeing stories of, of success for somebody else who didn't look
[13:25]like her. But she also saw her parents working very, very hard. And I think at one point in the book
[13:30]she talks about not being able to go to dance classes because her, her parents were always working
[13:37]or always tired. So for her it's a different reality. And the second piece to that is something
[13:43]somebody told me at one point was that, you know, you didn't have to like a job. You just simply had
[13:48]to do a job in order to get back because that's all that you wanted enough money to be able to
[13:53]to live your life. But I mean, my approach is just completely different because I think I need to
[13:58]enjoy whatever it is that I'm doing. But I think that's the reality for some people where you are
[14:03]an immigrant and that is, that is your, your soul role here is to make enough money to either send
[14:09]back home to take care of your family members or your relatives or to make enough money so that you
[14:15]can then go back home at some point to live your life in your, in your home country. And that was
[14:22]what Plum was seeing around her was living with. So for her, it wasn't about dreaming and trying
[14:29]to be something. It was about just simply trying to exist at that point. So much had had already been
[14:34]taken away from her that she didn't see how she could continue to dream. Interesting. By the way,
[14:42]I never felt like I looked like a Disney princess either. I mean, there are no like five to
[14:47]slightly overweight, short brown hair princesses. Like I never thought like, oh yes, that's so me,
[14:55]yeah. And I think now we're beginning to see so much more that not everybody, everybody who's reflected
[15:02]as the hero in it movies looks the same, which is great. It's, you know, that's what we need to see.
[15:08]It's true. So Lenorth, the man, the dad and the buddy, I felt like at times you were making
[15:13]him almost sympathetic. Like, could we understand perhaps why he did this? And did he really
[15:18]maybe do this for a good reason? There was a train of thought where he was thinking, oh, well,
[15:22]she was young. She should, Mom, should go off and enjoy her life and not be saddled with a baby
[15:27]it's a young agent. Yet he goes on and well, I won't give too much away for what happens with him
[15:33]later. But do you feel like we should have some sympathy towards him or just do we hate him?
[15:38]What did you, what do you think? No, I think you should have some sympathy. I think that everybody,
[15:44]no matter what you do, you have some good in you. There's something and I couldn't make him be
[15:51]all bad. I mean, there just had to be something redeeming about him. And I think he had noble intentions
[15:57]at first what he actually ended up doing was certainly not good. And I mean, there could have been,
[16:02]you know, certainly should have been other ways in which he got to do what he wanted to do. But I
[16:07]think there was he had noble intentions. And for him, a lot of it really came from the fact that
[16:14]he had seen his mother and he had seen his sister their lives in some ways stopped because they
[16:21]one had children or they were depending on a man for support. And he wanted plumb to not become
[16:28]his mother and not become his sister. And that's noble. I mean, I have to admire somebody who
[16:33]thinks like that. But at the same time what he did and how he went about doing it, I think was just
[16:39]ended up being the opposite of what he intended because he wanted to make sure that she
[16:44]plumb could make choices, but he took away her biggest choice. And I mean, I don't know if that's
[16:51]forgivable. I leave that up to readers to decide. Do you have children? No, I don't. This is just like
[16:57]a fairytale fantasy nightmare situation. It is. It is. Yeah. And I don't know anybody personally who
[17:05]has, you know, had a child taken away. But I certainly have seen enough people who have lost,
[17:14]you know, whether it's a, you know, a parent or a person who has lost a child. And you know,
[17:19]I've seen how they respond to that and how they deal with that. So tell me a little more about
[17:23]your writing process when you're sitting down and going over and revising and all of that.
[17:29]Are you in a coffee shop? Are you in your, are you in bed? Like, tell me, give me a visual.
[17:33]How do you write and do you have like papers everywhere? Is it all the structure in your head?
[17:38]Well, all the structures definitely in my head. I don't outline. I usually just start with a
[17:43]character. I have somebody or a place that I am interested in like in this case. Plumb had decided
[17:49]she was not leaving this church. And I, you know, begin from there. And I just keep adding bits and
[17:55]pieces to it until it begins to shape itself into something that looks like a, that feels like
[18:00]a novel that feels like a book. And generally, I think I have a little bit of a sense of where
[18:06]I want the story to end. So very early on in the process, I wrote what I thought would have been
[18:11]the last line of the books. I know where I'm, I'm what I'm going towards. I don't necessarily
[18:16]know what comes in the middle. And it can be dangerous in a, in a lot of ways, but part of the
[18:22]process for me is discovering something. And I think if I already know every single thing that's
[18:27]going to happen in the book, and I'm not discovering anything, then the joy of writing it is just
[18:32]simply gone. And in some ways, that's why I have difficulty writing personal essays for instance,
[18:37]because I know in some ways the outcome. And if I don't have something in the middle to discover
[18:43]then I don't, there's not that joy for me in terms of writing that essay. And also in terms of where
[18:51]I write, I'm usually writing at home. Coffee shops don't work for me. I need quiet. I need peace
[18:57]and quiet. I need to not be distracted. And it's very easy to get distracted. So I, I can't do
[19:02]coffee shops, but I'm usually writing at home at sometimes at four o'clock in the morning or
[19:08]really. Yeah, what team I had to see that's how I got this book done. I, for some reason, kept
[19:12]waking up at four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock. And when I couldn't go back to sleep,
[19:16]I got up and I started writing. And were you working during the day somewhere else?
[19:21]Right. So yeah, I was working full-time and I just simply got up, wrote for an hour, two hours
[19:26]every morning and then got dressed and went to work. And it worked because there was, there was
[19:32]nothing at that point that would have been distracting me. There were no phone calls to make. I,
[19:37]you know, wasn't cooking. I wasn't running off to do something. I wouldn't turn the TV on. I just
[19:42]simply went downstairs sometimes. The only light was the light from my computer screen. Nothing
[19:47]at all. That was distracted me. And I just wrote. And, you know, I think for me, it's just a
[19:52]perfect time to write because there are no distractions or I am not creating the
[19:57]instructions. What is your day job?
[20:00]Is it related to writing at all?
[20:01]Yeah, for the longest while, I started out
[20:03]as a business journalist and then moved into corporate
[20:06]communication so I, you know,
[20:08]brought speeches and did a whole range
[20:11]of corporate communications.
[20:13]Excellent.
[20:14]I'll keep that in the back of my head next time
[20:16]I'm writing speech.
[20:16]I might have to call on you.
[20:18]So what's coming next for you?
[20:20]You're gonna finish these two other books.
[20:21]Yes, I am.
[20:22]Actually, one is pretty close.
[20:24]And I finishing up the last bit of edits I think on that one
[20:27]or what I hope will be the last bit of edits.
[20:30]And then there's the third one or, well,
[20:34]one of the two that I'm finishing up.
[20:36]I don't know what numbers they are anymore.
[20:38]But that one I have a sense know
[20:41]how I'm going to retail that story.
[20:43]I have written bits and pieces of it, but not the full thing.
[20:46]So I am getting there, I hope.
[20:49]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[20:52]Read, read, read.
[20:54]I think that there's so many things that we as writers
[20:57]pick up when we're reading a book.
[20:59]How and how another writer puts a story together,
[21:03]what that the choice is that person makes.
[21:05]And I think that as readers,
[21:07]if we're reading not just to enjoy the story,
[21:10]but reading to see what somebody else does,
[21:13]it helps you as a writer get better.
[21:16]And that's the first thing.
[21:17]And the second thing really is to not give up,
[21:19]to understand that a lot of it is out of your hands
[21:24]and the market will change.
[21:26]But whatever the market is doing
[21:28]is not necessarily something that you should be paying
[21:31]attention to because your story will always be your story.
[21:34]And there is, if it's your story to tell,
[21:37]then you will have a way to tell it
[21:38]and you will find a way to tell it
[21:40]regardless of what the market is looking for,
[21:42]what the market is doing.
[21:44]There's one question I wanted to ask earlier.
[21:46]You did such a great job of creating a sense of place
[21:50]when they go to Jamaica and the house
[21:52]that Lenoir sends up within the beginning
[21:54]and how everything looks there.
[21:57]And then you can trust it so well with the clanging buses,
[22:01]subways, and loud noise of Brooklyn.
[22:03]How do you think you captured those places so well?
[22:05]Because I felt like I was really there
[22:08]when I was reading it.
[22:10]I think it's by being there,
[22:11]by paying attention to it.
[22:13]And I think two is one of those things
[22:17]where there's so much that you pick up
[22:19]when you're just simply walking around
[22:21]without necessarily knowing how you're going to use it
[22:24]later on.
[22:24]And I think it was the same thing with this book
[22:27]that a lot of it, you know, I left Jamaica when I was 16.
[22:32]So, but I still go back and forth.
[22:34]So there are bits and pieces that are in here
[22:36]because there are things that I remember from my childhood.
[22:39]There are things that have, you know, saw as an adult
[22:42]that, you know, will make it in a book.
[22:44]But I think to one of the reasons that I did
[22:46]that it's perspective,
[22:47]Plum has the perspective of Jamaica
[22:50]as somebody who was one just visiting.
[22:53]Jamaica and somebody who lived there.
[22:56]So some of the things that she talks about
[22:58]are things that visitors would be seeing.
[23:00]Your average everyday Jamaican is not looking
[23:02]at the color to see, you know, when you're coming down,
[23:05]you know, you're winding down a mountain.
[23:06]You're more concerned about the road itself
[23:08]and what the other drivers are doing.
[23:09]You're not necessarily looking out to see, you know,
[23:12]how blue the sea is or the skyline.
[23:15]But Plum was able to see that
[23:16]because she is a visitor at some point.
[23:19]And she was also able to see some other things
[23:21]about Jamaica because she lived there.
[23:22]And so she had observations that a visitor wouldn't have.
[23:26]And it's the same thing when she comes back to Brooklyn.
[23:29]She had lived in Brooklyn, had stepped away from Brooklyn.
[23:32]And when she comes back, she's able to see things differently.
[23:35]She experiences Brooklyn then as a visitor
[23:38]when she returns from living in Jamaica.
[23:41]And I think all of us probably experience our lives
[23:44]like that.
[23:45]If you go back to whatever tone you grew up in,
[23:47]you really realize one is either much smaller
[23:51]than you thought it was or it's bigger than you thought it was.
[23:53]And there's just so much else that you begin to see.
[23:56]And I think too for me as a writer that I find
[24:00]that it's easier to write about a place
[24:03]when I'm no longer living there
[24:05]than it is to write about it when I'm there.
[24:07]And maybe for that reason,
[24:09]since I'm not living in Jamaica full-time,
[24:12]I can write about Jamaica in a way
[24:14]that I don't think I would have.
[24:16]I have different observations now
[24:18]than I would have had I, you know,
[24:20]if I were still living there.
[24:22]Well, thank you so much for coming on the show
[24:23]and for sharing your story and for this beautiful novel.
[24:26]It makes me wanna hold my kids really close
[24:29]and it was really, really beautiful.
[24:31]So thank you. Thank you.
[24:32]And thank you for having me.
[24:33]Of course, my pleasure.
[24:34]Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[24:36]Moms don't have time to read books.
[24:38]If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
[24:41]at Zippy Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books
[24:45]and sign up for my mailing list
[24:47]at Zippy Owens.com.
[24:48]So you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to.
[24:51]Thanks a lot.
[24:51]Thanks to Blueland Cleaning, our sponsor for today's
[24:54]episode, Blueland Cleaning Get Your Single Use.
[24:57]Pat Plastic packaging make that a thing in the past
[25:00]with this eco-friendly cleaning products company.
[25:02]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[25:05]for the sound editing.
[25:06]And thank you to Morningmoon Productions
[25:08]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[25:11]Thanks for listening.
[25:12]You can always email me at ZippyAtZippy Owens.com.