I talk to a lot of history professors on this show, of course, but I’m always excited when I get a chance to talk to someone who is writing great history but working outside of a university setting. And my guest today didn’t even start out as a historian, she found her way to narrative history after writing in other genres and venues first. Dr. Tracy Slater joins me in this episode to talk about her path as a writer and the challenges and freedoms of writing outside the academy while also balancing the work of a caregiver. Tracy has a PhD in English and American literature. You’ll hear more about her career path shortly, which includes some adjunct teaching, a freelance writing career, and founding a literary series called Four Stories that took place in both Boston and Japan, where Tracy is now based with her family, although she was temporarily living in Toronto when I spoke with her this summer. Her first book was a memoir about her marriage, her struggle to start a family, and establishing a life in Japan called The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World. Her newest book is a work of narrative history called Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp. It’s a history that is both intimate and expansive and, unfortunately, continues to have increasingly relevant connections to our present-day experiences.
If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend about it!
Mentioned in this episode:
- Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp
- The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World
- Slater, "Teaching Gender Issues to Inmates," The Chronicle Review
- Slater, "Why I Won't Adopt," The New York Times online
- Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara
- Pitch Club
- Densho
- Becky Aikman, Spitfires
- Gary Bass, Judgment at Tokyo
- James Tejani on Drafting the Past, Episode 58
[NOTE: Book links above are affiliate links to bookshop.org. If you purchase a book through these links, Drafting the Past receives a small commission that helps to keep the show going.]
Transcript:
Kate Carpenter 0:01
This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. And I am Kate Carpenter. I talk to a lot of history professors on the show, of course, but I'm always excited when I get a chance to talk to someone who is writing great history but working outside of a university setting. And my guest today actually didn't even start out as a historian. She found her way to narrative history after writing in other genres and venues first. Dr. Tracy Slater joins me in this episode to talk about her path as a writer and the challenges and freedoms of writing outside the academy, while also balancing the work of a caregiver.
Tracy Slater 0:35
Thanks for having me. It's a delight to be here with you.
Kate Carpenter 0:38
Tracy has a PhD in English and American literature. You'll hear more about her career path shortly, which includes some adjunct teaching, a freelance writing career and founding a literary series called Four Stories that took place in both Boston and Japan, where Tracy is now based with her family. Her first book was a memoir about her marriage, her struggle to start a family and establishing a life in Japan called the Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self and Home on the Far Side of the World. Her newest book is a work of narrative history called Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp. It's a history that's both intimate and expansive, and unfortunately continues to have increasingly relevant connections to our present day experiences. Enjoy my conversation with Dr Tracy Slater.
Tracy Slater 1:25
I did a PhD in English and American literature and finished my dissertation sort of after the big conference where people go and, you know, have interviews for academic jobs. So I took a year and worked as a freelance writer. This was in the, just around the year 20- 1999, 2000 and I was doing web writing and business writing, and I didn't love it, but I could make so much more money than I would have made, sort of as a as a, certainly as an adjunct but even with a tenure track job, so I realized pretty quickly that I could build the kind of career that was satisfying to me--it wouldn't have been satisfying to some people--but that was satisfying to me with just sort of lots of little pieces. So the next academic year, I started adjuncting on a, I was in Boston, so there are a million universities in Boston, so I started adjuncting, and I also started teaching in a prison college behind bars program, in a like college prison program. And I really loved that. Neither of those paid that well. So I continued to do the freelance writing. And I also eventually started teaching business writing. Again, didn't love it, paid so much more than the other, the kind of teach, the two other teaching gigs that I had that I really loved. So I did that for a while, and then I became, I had zero interest, actually, in in writing narrative outside of sort of, you know, literary criticism, but I was really fascinated by the experience of teaching, I taught gender studies and writing and literature, and I was teaching that in men's and women's prisons around Massachusetts. And I became really interested in what it was like to be a woman teaching gender studies in a men's prison. And so I wrote a piece about it, and I realized, wow, I really do like writing, you know, narrative nonfiction. It just sort of, I just kept doing it. And then I met my husband, his company sent him from Japan to do an executive MBA in Boston, and I met him and fell madly in love with him, and all of my plans of building a life in Boston and staying there for the rest of my life went out the window, and I moved to Japan to be with him. When he went back, his program was only for a year, and I transitioned to full time freelance writing, and then eventually I wrote, I was still doing business writing, but I was doing kind of one off narrative pieces. And at one point in, an editor from an imprint of Penguin Random House contacted me. She'd read something I'd written, a small piece in The New York Times online, and she contacted me and said, Would you be interested in submitting a memoir proposal? So I did, and I got a book deal and wrote the first book, and then 10 years later, and one child later, I have the second book. So that's my long and convoluted process to being a narrative nonfiction and narrative history writer.
Kate Carpenter 4:40
Let's deal with the sort of practicalities of writing first. When and where do you like to do your writing?
Tracy Slater 4:44
On an ideal day, in an ideal world? I love to write at a in a cafe, you know, with big windows and lots of light and a really strong cup of coffee and lots of time. But as the parent of a, you know, soon to be middle, middle schooler with a husband who works crazy hours, I don't always have the time or space or freedom to sort of have the ideal writing day. So I, you know, just kind of write when I can. I balance it, I write when I can. I mean when, when our kiddo's in school, then I can, if I have enough time and don't have other things, housework and, you know, child care, child organization, stuff to do, then I'll, I'll have a couple of, you know, good chunk of hours where I could do that. Otherwise I just, you know, write at the kitchen counter whenever I can grab time and space.
Kate Carpenter 5:36
I guess the answer really is no then. But is there a routine you like to follow with writing?
Tracy Slater 5:40
No. I mean, I used to when I was in graduate school, I worked in in the restaurant business in between college and graduate school, and then all through graduate school, I worked at a bar. And so I was a super night owl, maybe partly because I had worked in the restaurant business, but I think that was just also my clock, my internal clock, so I used to like to write ideally at night, but that all went totally out the window once my life changed. So no, I don't have a time of day that I like to write or a sort of procedure that I like to follow.
Kate Carpenter 6:12
How do you organize yourself?
Tracy Slater 6:14
Okay, so I'm very unsophisticated technologically. I use Microsoft Word's, like, folder structure. That's what I did for my first and second book was I just used, well, my first book was, it is a memoir, so it wasn't a lot of research. But for my second book, the book of narrative history, I had all, did, it was based on a lot of research and interviews and archival work. And so I just used a so a folder structure, basically Microsoft Word, but I started using Tropy, which I heard about on your podcast, and I think I've got to use it for my next book. I really like it, but I'm no, I'm no Tropy expert, and I don't know how much of the time I'm just kind of like, interested in how organized you can make yourself seem in Tropy, and how much of the time it's really going to be that different than just the Microsoft folder structure. But so I'm exploring slightly more sophisticated avenues. But still a novice at that.
Kate Carpenter 7:15
I love that. I'm, as you know, a big fan of Tropy, but I don't think that I use it correctly in how I tag it, and probably not as efficiently as I could.
Tracy Slater 7:24
Yeah, I think there's a lot you can do with the tool, but I what I really like about it is you can take a you could probably do this otherwise, but I maybe just realized you could do an interview, but you can take a picture and make a PDF of a source, and then you can just cut and paste into a Word document, so you don't have to, but it's all organized like in a structure. So it's also made note taking a lot easier, because I don't have to, you know, transcribe.
Kate Carpenter 7:50
I realized that this may differ based on whether you're writing memoir or history or another kind of piece, but where in the process do you like to start writing?
Tracy Slater 7:58
So for me, probably for everyone, but for me, the idea of, like, sitting down and working on a book is just overwhelming because it's so huge. So I like to break it up into tiny little pieces. So I think like, oh well, all I have to do now is this, like, small step. So what I did for this again, this is my first book of narrative history, and I think this is the genre I want to stay in, like I really love it. So what I'm also planning to do for this next book project that I just started working on, I'm going through primary sources, and I'm taking or secondary sources, and I'm taking notes basically just in like a Microsoft Word document on the different sort of topics or sections that jump out at me. Sometimes it's clear how it's going to relate to the book, and sometimes I'm not even 100% clear that it's going to relate but there's, it's like I have that sense that this is something that I am gonna maybe want to tie in, and then I have a Word document that is, it can be 40 pages, and there's a different heading. And under each heading for topic, there are different quotes from each different source, and they're all and I always mark, you know, where after any quote, where I got the material, so it's easy for me to cite it, and then I go back and I organize that into an outline, so it's really just like taking chunks and moving them around, so that doesn't feel so overwhelming. And then I start to write from there once it's kind of in an outline.
Kate Carpenter 9:35
And what does the revision process look like for you?
Tracy Slater 9:39
I love revising.
Kate Carpenter 9:40
Do you?
Tracy Slater 9:41
Yeah, I love it. It's so much more. It's so much less overwhelming, in some ways, than jumping from kind of the source material to original writing. So what I let myself do, because I love revising, is every day when I start work, I let myself go back over what I have written the day before and just do a little bit of tweaking. You know, I try not to, like, let myself get obsessed with trying to polish it too perfectly, because, you know, that could go out the window, you know, in the next revision, but I let myself go through it and edit it a little bit, and then that helps me kind of get in the mind frame of, Okay, I'm ready for the next for the next part. And then I, you know, I will say to myself, so I have two hours to write today. I'm going to try to get, like, halfway through this next chunk of this next topic, and I just, I just write it, write it in.
Kate Carpenter 10:38
As you've talked about the how your career has progressed and elsewhere, you've mentioned that you you describe yourself as a lapsed academic. You and I have talked a little bit about how like that that presents really different challenges than someone maybe who is writing from a position at a university. What kind of challenges do you see?
Tracy Slater 10:54
I find writing as kind of an independent scholar or a lapsed academic or whatever, whatever I call myself, I find it both more challenging and also like a real gift compared to what it was like to write in an academic context. The part that's for me, the most challenging is, you know, you're really kind of out there on your own, and anytime any of us starts on a book project, or even, you know, an article, but anything that's going to take a fair amount of resources, just in terms of time and energy, it's a leap of faith, right? Because you don't know whether it's going to work. I found it kind of easier to take that leap of faith when I was surrounded by a lot of other people who were taking similar leaps of faith, and for whom that was just an expected part of the career. So and you know, there's also, besides just the camaraderie, there's also, you know, you're in a structure where there's people who can help you write grant, you know can help you write recommendations for grant proposals, or who can, you know, give you advice about resources or archives or whatever, like you're just you're in a structure. So all of that is definitely more challenging for me, but I also find, well, first of all, I have to acknowledge that I don't have economic pressure from my writing, because the way that my husband and I have set up our life is that I kind of gave up my career as an academic because his earning potential was higher than mine, and he, I don't have any economic pressure to support our family. He economically supports our family, and I sort of take care of a lot of the other things. And within that kind of balance is, you know, the sort of time and space to to write and to not have to make a living that could support a family from my writing. So I mentioned that because there is a way in which writing as an independent scholar is so much more free for me than than writing in an academic context, because I don't have, first of all, I don't have to teach while I'm doing I don't have to juggle other things other than, you know, my family and my child, which is, which is another kind of challenge. But, you know, I don't have deadlines that are imposed, you know, by the academic calendar or committee meetings or whatever. So it's a mixed bag for me. I mean, for our life, it's really the only way to do it. But there are, I think the benefits outweigh the negatives, but there are times when the negatives feel, feel hard. But I do have to say that things like your podcast, for someone like me really, they're really such a gift, because it's a way in which, first of all, I can sort of feel part of a writing community around me, even though I'm physically not in a writing community. And also, just as a, as a like a caretaker, right? A primary caretaker who has to fit my intellectual and academic, sorry, my intellectual and writing work into the structure of, you know, a family schedule, like I can, you know, be driving to pick up my kiddo from school or from an academic from an after school program. And I can listen to, you know, your podcast. And I can feel like, first of all, I'm connected to intellect, to ideas and history and to also other people's writing process, and that feels super important. And second of all, I've learned so much from hearing how other writers talk about their writing. And so I feel like not only is it kind of an emotional, intellectual boost for me, but it's also career wise, very helpful because it teaches me sort of, how do you, how do other people present their work in a public facing way?
Kate Carpenter 14:51
I know that that you, like me, are a big fan of Brendan O'Meara's Creative Nonfiction Podcast too. I also love listening to it because it's such a helpful reminder that there are lots of writers out there writing great creative nonfiction outside of the academy who maybe never even had a connection. So I find it helpful to hear from all different ways of writing and having a career as a writer.
Tracy Slater 15:13
Yeah, I told Brendan the other day, like, you two, your podcast, you guys got me through my book because you're the two ones I listen to the most consistently. I listen to some other ones too, but I'm all I always am looking forward to a download when I see you know your podcast and his podcast also has been I feel the same way about as you do.
Kate Carpenter 15:34
I'll also, sorry, I'm just turning this into a Creative Nonfiction ad, but I want to put in a pitch too, because I saw you post about this the other day, and I feel the same way, which is that Brendan's now doing something called Pitch Club. He's having writers sort of talk through their their pitches and what worked and what didn't. And it's especially for people who are trying to write for a public audience, who maybe don't have experience with the pitching side of things. It's a tremendous resource.
Tracy Slater 15:57
So yeah, I think so too. I think it's really cool. I'm actually going to, just got clearance from my agent to have him feature the pitch that I used to get her because I cold pitched her like I didn't, when I started this book of narrative history, my first agent, who I worked with in from my memoir said this isn't going to sell, and I can't, like, I can't represent this, like, I can continue working with you if you want to work on a different project. Different project or do another memoir, but, and I just wasn't willing to give it up. So I had to, like, find a new agent. Anyway, so we talked a little bit about the pitch that that I used to get this agent.
Kate Carpenter 16:34
As you just mentioned again, your first book was a memoir. This one is creative nonfiction, sort of a narrative history approach. And you said that this was a genre that you feel like you really kind of found, found your footing in and enjoyed. How was that writing experience different?
Tracy Slater 16:49
In some ways, there were not a lot of direct comparisons, because so much of the narrative history writing process is research. And you know, the memoir was not research, but I did learn a couple of things, actually, from the first book, a couple of things that I didn't want to do again, and that was actually really useful for the first book, I think probably because the timing, you know, it was the think I got the book deal, probably around 2012, 2011-2012. So partly because of the timing, but also because, you know, this editor kind of found me and said, Do you want to submit a memoir proposal? And then I worked with a like, just an online proposal writing class to shape the proposal. And the editor at the at the press, the press was Putnam, and I think because of a number of different people who advised me, and what they saw as kind of appealing about the story that I told in the memoir, there was, I sort of went with their kind of, they were sort of excited about a certain tone, a certain style. And I didn't, I think I didn't think carefully enough about whether that was the voice that I actually wanted to use. And I do feel like my my own voice came through, particularly towards the end of the memoir, when I was I had been sort of working on it, you know, on my own for a while, but I did feel like there were sort of a there was sort of a style and a tone, particularly when I first started writing that I don't think fully fit me, and I didn't know enough to kind of say I can sort of trust my own voice or instinct here. I need to trust my own voice or instinct here, actually, if this is going to be my book. So I learned not to do that in this new book that just came out, the Together in Manzanar book, and that was really helpful. And then the other thing that I think it taught me that I was able to tap into when I was writing Together in Manzanar, is that it just gave me faith that, you know, I could, I knew I could write a book because I had written my dissertation, and that's like, technically a book, but I didn't know that I could write a book that, like, you know, more than the three people on my committee were going to read. So it gave me some it just gave me like, a pattern. I had done it before. I was, it was, I was, it wasn't like completely ridiculous to think I might be able to do it again.
Kate Carpenter 19:18
To take a closer look at how Tracy did do it again for this new book, I asked her to read an excerpt for us to talk about. Here's Tracy Slater reading from Together in Manzanar, chapter three, titled "Committed: December 7, 1941 to March, 31 1942."
Tracy Slater 19:35
“On the morning of March 23, 1942, Elaine’s parents had taken her and both children to see Karl off to camp. At the station, they were surrounded not just by those who’d gathered for the transport, including hundreds of other men and a few women; Elaine also saw Maryknoll clergy, a mass of news reporters—their cameras and microphones thrust forward—and ‘soldiers with guns everywhere,’ she wrote. Karl was also struck by the milling crowd, the journalists questioning the departing men and the armed guards surrounding them all. Clutching a card with instructions on where to board, Karl had embraced Elaine and Tommy, climbed some steps up to a dark entryway, and then was gone. That night, after the train had taken his away, one of the papers ran a picture of Karl’s final moments with them. ‘A Japanese father is shown kissing his son good-bye as he departed for the valley,’ read its caption. ‘About 1000 Japs left today.’ From the train, Karl had watched Elain’s and Tommy’s faces becoming smaller and smaller as the void between them stretched. Seeing them disappear into the distance, feeling the train’s inevitable forward force, he felt a lump grow in his throat. On board, no one uttered a word.”
Kate Carpenter 21:03
I was really struck when I was reading this by what a great job you do of keeping us in the point of view of your historical actors, particularly Karl and Elaine. What kinds of strategies, and what kind of sources for that matter, did it take to be able to do that?
Tracy Slater 21:18
Yeah, I love this process of doing this, of kind of staying in Karl and Elaine, or trying to stay in Karl and Elaine's point of view, or with their experience, and still creating a broader scene. It sort of felt like, on one hand, it almost felt like a treasure hunt, like I was looking through, you know, their archives. They both have archives. They were prominent labor activists before they were incarcerated. So they had, they appeared in the news a lot. There's a lot of historical newspaper articles about them, particularly before the war. And then they both had diaries. Karl's had been published, Elaine's had not, and they had letters. And I had interviews with with one of their descendants, and there were two biographies of Elaine that had been published. So I I was able to take little pieces from all of those different sources and then combine them with this incredible wealth of information that exists. Much of it is online, not all of it, but much of it about the concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War Two. And I was able to to kind of piece together what their experience was on a certain day, what they were doing, and then what was happening around them that had also been documented. I also used newspapers.com I think that's what's called. Newspapers.com. It was an incredible resource, actually, way more than I thought it was going to be. So I was also able to kind of see exactly what the American public was consuming in real time. Anyway, I loved that, sort of pulling everything together. And as I said, on one hand, it kind of felt like I was sort of out there treasure hunting, and on the other hand, it felt a little bit like I was like chiseling away at all of this stuff to kind of, I was constantly fascinated by this question of what must have felt like, particularly for Elaine to be, you know, this Jewish American woman in a mixed marriage who goes into this, and labor activists and anti-fascist, prominent anti-fascist activist who who goes into an American concentration camp with her Japanese American husband and her three year old son and then is faced with the challenge of fighting to support, you know, the American government and its fight against the fascists from inside an American concentration camp. So I was constantly fascinated by that question, and that really helped motivate me to always kind of want to find out, Oh, is there more information about what was happening on that day? Is there more information about what it looked like, what it felt like, what it might have even smelled like, like, that kind of thing?
Tracy Slater 21:18
Ahead of our conversation, you reminded me that your PhD is not in history, and that you kind of had to learn some of the things as you were working on how to do history. What, what were some of those challenges that you discovered?
Tracy Slater 24:08
I discovered, I don't know that I wasn't aware that this would be a challenge, but I had never confronted it before, which is that, you know, when you're using primary sources that are testimonial or diaries from the people who experienced, you know, certain periods in history. I knew that that there were other people who were there at the same time, who had experienced the same thing but experienced it differently. So one of the challenges was, you know, Elaine and Karl were relatively divisive figures in Manzanar, particularly for their prominent leftist position, and for their sort of burning desire to continue to support the American war effort and to prevent criticizing the American government while being incarcerated in a concentration camp in a mass race-based incarceration. So they were divisive figures, and I knew that there were, you know, there's very explosive experiences that they had in Manzanar, and I knew that they, that I wanted to make sure that I, you know, researched and read and as much as possible, in hindsight, heard from the other actors or the other people who are involved in the same situations, frequently on the sort of other side from Elaine and Karl. So a lot of the conflicting testimony, anything that was conflicting of a fact, I definitely put in the footnotes. Frequently I would put also in the main text. And then there were times when it was sort of, it wasn't a fact, but someone had a much different internal experience. And I put all of that in the footnotes too, if there wasn't a reason to put it in the main text. There were times when it was that, when that's part of the story, that was probably the biggest challenge. And then the other challenge, I guess, was to continue to remind myself that history looks different in hindsight. And I had to continue to remind myself that many of the choices that Elaine and Karl made, well, all the choices that they made in Manzanar, and that everyone made in Manzanar, were made at a particular period of time. Right? The Yonedas were in Manzanar in 1942 when actually it looked like the Axis was going to win. You know, now, looking back in hindsight, it's clear that the Allies were going to win, because they did win, but it's hard to remember that it was a very different expectation or outlook in, particularly in 1942 and in the in the early to mid part of 1942. So that was the other thing, was, I had to remember the importance of if I'm, if I want to know what it felt like to be in the situation that my historical figures were in, and I want to be able to bring other people into that feeling and that experience, I have to remember that I don't know anything that I know now, right?
Kate Carpenter 26:56
It always seems like with biography a big part of the challenge-- So a really great biography does a good job of balancing this individual or small group experience with the larger historical context, right, to sort of tell us something bigger than just one person's life. And sometimes people can either get way too focused on the individual and kind of lose lose sight of the bigger picture, or go the other way, and you get a great big picture history, but the people are sort of just shadows of themselves. I think you do a really nice job of balancing this. How did you achieve that? I mean, did that balance come naturally to you, or is it something you had to kind of work at and revise for?
Tracy Slater 27:33
Well, I think one way in which it came easily or it was clear that that was a balance that I was going to have to work at, let's put it that way, it was that Elaine and Karl were such divisive figures. And, you know, there was this only a small group of leftists in any of the camps in the United States for Japanese Americans. So I knew that their experience, in some ways, was very different from, well, I knew that their outlook was very different, let me put it that way, and their, the decisions that they made about their incarceration and what to do about it and when to do what was different than a lot of decisions that other people made. So I knew that there was, that there was no way to tell an important historical story, true story, without that being the heart of it, really the conflict between, you know, what individuals experience, and the sort of more complicated, broader context. I mean, that kind of is the story with, with Elaine and Karl it's in very, sort of sharp relief, right? It's, it's very, very obvious, yeah. So I think in that way, it was almost baked into the project. And that, to me, is was a really fascinating part of their story, and also really important part of the story, in that, you know, the lie upon which the entire forced removal and incarceration of the Japanese of the West Coast, Japanese American community was built was the lie that it was built upon, was that this is a homogenous community, that everybody in the community is the same, and then additionally, that everybody in the community is some kind of threat because of their biology. You know that, you know, two thirds of the 120,000 people were incarcerated. None of them was due process, but two thirds of those people were US citizens. So citizenship didn't matter. Age didn't matter, health status didn't matter. All that mattered was if you had, in the word of words of one official, one drop of Japanese blood, and that made you supposedly dangerous. So the very concept of understanding that there were many diverse individual experiences and that those frequently conflicted with the experiences that other people were having, I feel like was is a crucial part of not just the history, but the the memory that we need to have of history and the lesson that we need to take from it in order to hopefully not repeat it, which seems not so hopeful today. But anyway, but that is, you know, one of the main lessons, I think.
Kate Carpenter 30:03
I know that you got to work a little bit with Karl and Elaine's family members as you were working on this book. I'm always interested what it's like to get get to work with family members as you are researching a history. What was your relationship with the Yoneda family like?
Tracy Slater 30:18
That was so awesome. It was like a dream. So I was, I was only in direct contact while I was working on the book with one descendant of Elaine and Karl. And she was awesome. I mean, she was so generous. She sent me stuff that, you know, was not in the archives. She sent me like the most lovely card saying she was so touched by, you know, my interest in her family story and and how much it, it sort of was healing for her to have to remember and talk about, you know, her, her grandparents, Elaine and Karl were her grandparents. But she was totally hands off in terms of what I produced. And that is like gold, I think, to have that, that generosity and faith and trust from a, you know, a source, and from a family member. And she said, you know, truth is the most important thing. So she, you know, she, you know, the last chapter of the book talks about some of the very sort of damaging and painful, particularly mental health, legacies that the that the camp sort of left behind, that Manzanar left behind for the Yoneda family, which I know it, left behind for many, many families of incarcerees. And you know, Yvonne, the granddaughter that I was in touch with, was she was just so generous. She said, You know, what's important is the truth, and you don't have to, there's nothing that I have told you that I don't, that I feel like you can't make public. And I also got the sense that she was, she also didn't hold back anything that was relevant to the story. So I really, I mean, Elaine and Karl, you know, had many, made some decisions that, look, I'm not sure I would have made, although I'm not sure I wouldn't have made them, because I don't know what it was like to be in their shoes. And I know that they always made them with good intentions, with wanting to, you know, make the world a better place for their children and for the future. But there's no doubt in my mind that they both have this incredible spark to them, and so does you know Yvonne, their their granddaughter, and she was just, she was such a gift to have found and to have to have worked with.
Kate Carpenter 32:29
I know we've talked a little bit about writing communities, how it can be a challenge when you're not at an institution, to create a community. Is there a writing community you are a part of these days?
Tracy Slater 32:40
No, I'm not a part of any writing community these days, other than, as I said, an avid listener of your podcast and a couple of others. When I wrote the book, when I was writing the book, I did have, I had, like a little mini writing group with a, actually a writer, who I met through, through a Patreon membership. Those Patreon memberships are worth it, because, you know, you meet other people who who have similar interests. So and she was, she also, very luckily, worked at Densho, which is the organization of Japanese American history that I used for so much of my research. They're an incredible organization, and their stuff is all available for free online. So I just happened to, we just both happened to be part of this Patreon community. So she and I worked together for the first, I think, two thirds of the time that I was writing, and that was really helpful to just, you know, every couple of months, we would we would send each other stuff and meet online. That was super helpful. And then I have, you know, a very, very close friend from graduate school who's a professor now at BU, her name's Megan Sullivan, and she read a bunch of my stuff for the book and gave me feedback. And I have a friend who's a writer, an American writer in Japan, who's also as a Japanese spouse, and my friend Mark Kaufman, who's this, he's a fantastic creative writer. And so it was really good to have feedback, you know. So I had feedback from Natasha, who was, Natasha Varner, who was like a historian, and I had feedback from from my friend Megan, who's an who's an academic. And I had feedback from my friend Mark, who's a creative writer. He's also an writer. He's also an academic. He teaches writing in Japan, but but creative writer. So I didn't have one cohesive community, but I had little kind of like, I guess, like my career before I got married. It was all these little pieces that I pulled together, and that was, I guess, what my writing community.
Kate Carpenter 34:40
What other writers do you look for, look to for inspiration?
Tracy Slater 34:44
Okay, so I am hugely influenced by whatever book I'm reading at the moment. So right now I'm reading a book of narrative history by a fantastic writer named Becky Aikman. This is the first book of hers I've read. It's called Spitfires: American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War Two. And I'm really learning from this book, because this is a group bio. And the next book project that I think I'm going to work on is going to be more, it's, it's, it's going to be, there's going to be a lot of people who whose history are involved in this. So it's a really fascinating look at how someone, how an author, sort of constructs a group bio into one cohesive narrative. Another example that was really meaningful to me while I was working on Together in Manzanar was something I read. I think I might have read it like a year and a half ago. The book is called Judgment at Tokyo: World War Two on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia, by historian, I think he's Princeton, although don't quote me on that. He's definitely an academic historian. His name is Gary Bass. And I loved this book, and I it was about this the sort of, more colloquially you might think of as, like the Japanese version of the Nuremberg trials. But it was about the World War II trials in Tokyo after the war, and I was really fascinated by the way this historian took this rather dry situation, in many ways, because it was really just the story of what happened in the in a courtroom, and he made it into this really fascinating narrative that really came alive with all these little character details and descriptions. And you got a really, he gave the reader this really vivid sense of a number of the different historical figures, judges and defendants and lawyers, with just these little details about things they said or ways they moved, or even their tone, and you, it just, he was able to give a very vivid sense, very economically with, like one, you know, sort of image or one detail. And I love that. So that also was a big influence. And then just on an ongoing basis, I constantly am amazed by just like streaming TV, like Netflix. Like, how, how are these so captivating? Like, how are these narratives so good? Like, how do they do the narrative arc? I watch a lot of, like the BBC dramas and the BBC the the like, crime dramas, especially, or even a show like Succession, you know, which is more sort of pop culture. And just, I love watching, you know, dramas, and particularly crime dramas. And I, I just am fascinated by, how do people, how do they grab your attention and hold on to it so well? So I think about that a lot. I know writing and you know visual media are different, but there's some overlap.
Kate Carpenter 37:45
What's the most influential writing advice you've ever gotten?
Tracy Slater 37:48
guess I have three different answers to this. One is just general advice that I got from a friend that I apply to writing, which is she once said to me, the reason she was successful as an entrepreneur, was because she never took no for an answer. And when she first said that, I thought that's so weird. What do you mean you never take no for an answer? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I don't necessarily never take no for an answer as, I mean, a writer, if someone rejects something, you know, they reject it. Like, you gotta, you gotta respect that. But what I took from that, in terms of my writing was that never take no for final judgment. Like, just because, you know, someone says this story is not for me or I don't believe in the story, right? That doesn't mean that there, if, if a story or a topic has gotten its claws into you, there's something there, you maybe have to figure out how to tell it differently. So don't take no for final judgment, but whatever information you can get from that no, use it like find out why, you know, I found out why my first agent didn't think that this, this book, was going to sell. And then I was able to really think about that and to say, you know, this is really valuable feedback about what did not appeal to this reader. And also, what did appeal? Like, what was the part that the you know, my first agent said, like, I'm interested in this, but the rest of it's just not, it's not going to work, and it's not going to work in this market, basically. So anyway, don't take no for final judgment. And also, don't necessarily take it as not useful. So that's kind of general writing, a general life advice that I applied to writing. And then the mechanical advice, I think is probably the most useful, is actually something that I got from one of your former guests on your show, something he said. His name is James Tejani. In his discussion with you, he said, you know that the most influential advice he had ever gotten, which I found incredibly useful, was to cut whatever doesn't serve the story. He, the way he he phrased it, was to cut back on the unnecessary detail and characters, or tertiary characters, as his, I think his editor said. But I think about that as also any detail that doesn't further the story. And you know that can be really painful, especially if you love research, which I do. You know, I've gone down rabbit holes for this, for Together in Manzanar, because there was so much documentation, I spent like, you know, multiple times, like, a week researching this one thing that I thought I was going to use for scene, and it was so exciting to found the material. But that doesn't actually mean that it's going to further the narrative. Also, I wanted to add that because I think a lot about at this point in my where I am in my writing, because my book just came out, marketing and publicity advice, I think it's been really useful for me to listen widely and carefully to how other people talk about their books, and to remember that when you're talking to, you know, a reading public about your book, the challenge is not necessarily to be able to summarize the entire book in like an article or a minute or a tagline, which is, you know, as trained as an academic, like to me, if I can summarize like the main point, that's what I need to do, right? But for publicity and marketing, you just need to be able to express what's going to be important or interesting about your work to that particular audience. So that's something I've been thinking about lately that I find useful, and maybe other listeners will find useful.
Kate Carpenter 41:18
Well, you've dropped a couple of hints in the course of this conversation about your next project, but I wonder, would you be willing to share a little bit about what you're working on now?
Tracy Slater 41:27
Sure, so recently, the historical episode that has gotten its claws into me is, so I'm obviously interested in the intersection of Jewish and Japanese history. I'm Jewish American, and my husband is Japanese, not Japanese American, Japenese Japanese, but our kiddo is the first Japanese American and the first Jewish Japanese American in our family. So I'm super interested in the ways that these histories intersect. It's a niche. So I'm not positive it's going to work for a book. I'm really hoping it will. But my next project that I am going to find a way to write about, and I'm really hoping I can make a cohesive narrative into it. I could definitely make a book out of it. The question is, Can I make one narrative out of it? And that's what I really want to do. So it's about the over 2000 refugees from Nazi Europe, who escaped Nazi Europe in the beginning of the first years of World War Two. They escaped it by receiving exit visas to transit, sorry, they received transit visas to transit through Kobe, Japan, which is actually where my husband was born. And when we move back to Japan, we'll be living in that area. That's where we've always lived when we've been in Japan, not in Kobe, but in in the Osaka Kobe area. So this group of 2000 or more refugees, almost all of them survived. None of them died of anything other than natural causes. None of them were harmed. They survived by living in an Axis -aligned country during World War Two among an ostensibly enemy population. And then about half of them got exit visas to a few other countries, to Great Britain, some of them got exit visas to the United States. A couple got visas to Palestine, and the ones who did not get visas out, oh, and Australia, too, and a couple who did not get visas out. About half of them did not get visas out. They were sent to the Shanghai ghetto right before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which was Japanese occupied China at that point. So anyway, a lot has been written about the diplomat who gave them the visas to sort of to save them. Basically, a lot has been written about this Japanese diplomat, and you know, how and why he did this. And a lot has been written about the Shanghai ghetto, where, you know, thousands of European Jews lived and and escaped the Holocaust, not just the ones who went from Kobe, through Kobe, but not much has been written about the refugees' time in Kobe, or about how the Japanese population that lived in Kobe, how they experienced this group of people who their government, you know, was aligned with the government that was saying, These people don't even deserve to live anyway. This, the fact that they lived in Kobe and were basically saved because they lived in Kobe is fascinating to me. And I want to know what was it like to be in Kobe as a refugee, you know, while your family is left behind and almost all murdered. And what was it like to be a Japanese citizen and see the, this group of Jewish people who seem so foreign to them. So that's what I'm going to be working on. What I am working on.
Kate Carpenter 44:48
Well, I cannot wait to read it someday. I'm glad to hear that you are continuing to work on narrative history. I think you have a great many wonderful books ahead of you. Dr. Tracy Slater, thanks so much for joining me on Drafting the Past.
Tracy Slater 45:00
Thank you, Kate. It's been such a treat, such a pleasure.
Kate Carpenter 45:04
Thanks for listening to this episode of Drafting the Past. You can find links to things we talked about at draftingthepast.com. And if you've enjoyed this show, do me a favor. Text a writer friend to tell them about it, like right now, get out your phone and text them. After all, friends don't let friends write boring history.
