Episode 64: Pushcart Prize nominee, Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte chats about her novel, Betrayal on the Bayou
Sheryl Bize-Boutte is a multidisciplinary writer whose work, while great storytelling, also gets across deeper meaning about the politics and economics of race.
Betrayal on the Bayou is a novel borne of imagination combined with family lore, set in the 1850s and beyond in a fictional universe of the Tassin Valley, on the bayou in Louisiana.
Sheryl shares her thoughts on building characters with agency, and how her female characters build on hybrids of her heroines in life. Writing wise, she talks about the danger of having your voice stepped on or diluted in editing, and the importance of character motivation in being historically accurate.
Her advice for writers is all about listening to our imagination, not being constrained by form or genre, and not worrying too much about sitting at the cool kid’s table.
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Transcript:
Lainey 0:00
Hi, this is Lainey Cameron and welcome back to the best of women's fiction after our season break. I'm excited because I'm here with a bay area writer, I believe Sheryl Bize Boutte-I got that slightly wrong- is joining me today from where are you, Sheryl?
Sheryl 0:19
I am with you from the southeast hills of Oakland, California, the home of the Ohlone, who had no war.
Lainey 0:32
I've never heard that before. And I used to live in aloni area in the South Bay, there was a big park that had a lot of the history of the Ohlone explained there. And I never knew that.
Sheryl 0:43
Yeah, I am in the hills where they had their homes to look down on the bay, and all of the wonderful trees. And a lot of them hopefully, as I look out my window are still here, the ones that they looked at.
Lainey 0:59
And you actually wrote a book Betrayal on the Bayou, which I had a chance to read during the last week here, which is fabulous historical fiction. You do an amazing job of world building, I really felt like I was there. And I was understanding the racial tensions and the difficulty of being at kind of in different groups and how different groups weren't intermingling. And you just created this entire world that I felt like I was immersed in for the days that I was reading this novel.
Sheryl 1:28
Well, you know, I tried to build a world that first of all comes from my overly fruitful imagination, which I've always had, and has always been my best friend, but also is connected to a little bit of teaching and providing information so that people could see graphically how people are divided. And what happens when people are divided by color and race, and how that impacts the rest of their lives. And and how they live.
Lainey 1:58
I loved for me the explanation of kind of being Creole. And you know, it's something that you read about in terms of how do I explain this, like I love novels, because they put you in a scenario and you get to live the character's life. And you did a fabulous job with this. And for me, even though I have a little bit of a French background, and they know a little bit of the history of krill, what happened to Louisiana, I just never understood it in the way I did reading this novel, you just did a wonderful job of putting me there.
Sheryl 2:25
Thank you so much, that that's where my imagination, combined with family more took me and it just kind of flowed I started with the Napoleon that I that I had been told by family members had a pretty significant role and my family's life in Louisiana, and how it started there from way back in the actually the 1600s, not just to the 1800s where the novel takes place. But along with that, setting the tone for how life was and trying to describe how people lived. I also wanted to make sure people understood that they were human beings who were characters and had their own agency, whether it the agency was good, bad or indifferent. They had and I tried to describe that graphically as well.
Lainey 3:30
So for those who are not familiar with Betrayal on the Bayou, maybe tell us a little bit about the book.
Sheryl 3:35
Well, it's really a story. As I said, That's from my imagination, along with family lore that was built on a young man coming to Louisiana Territory in the 1800s because he has to leave his home in France based on the fact that he has no real future there. He is a womanizer and has a bounties many bounties on his head and his parents decide that he needs to go to Louisiana Territory, to not only save his life, but to build a life for himself and to have a respectable future. But in order for him to do that, he also needs to be married, because that is considered something that gives a person stability and makes them trustworthy. So he not only solicitous of his father solicits a favor from Napoleon the third which is a letter of introduction, for the show man to get him into the Society of Louisiana and to be accepted. He also they also find him a wife and that is basically how this whole scenario All starts. And the wife doesn't quite make it to the shores of Louisiana. But the young man does with his infant daughter in tow.
Lainey 5:12
And, you know, the characters that appealed the most to me, were the two women and Louisiana. So he ends up, you know, remarrying. And there, he remarried, but then he falls in love with another woman, and both his wife and you know, if you did the stereotype, the wife and the mistress are involved, but like, both of them were so well portrayed. And those were the two characters of all of your characters in the book that I really related to the most. To me, he, he kinda, and that's why I still consider this woman fiction because he served a purpose to get us to that scenario, but I felt like it was their story to me. But I'm interested in your perception, like, Is it all of their stories? Like,
Sheryl 5:48
How do you see it? It's was written as their story it is it is women's fiction is their story, you know, the man is incidental to the story. And his character, places them where they are in the story. And he rolls out what happens to them in some ways, eventually. But is this the two women as you know, who weave through that story and their relationship with each other, and other female characters as well, that really make the story itself
Lainey 6:24
and build I agree, they're really memorable. They like those characters stuck with me.
Sheryl 6:29
Right? And I have to say that he has a wife, but the other woman is much more than a mistress. I think that, you know, we conventionally use those terms. But I tried to convey that she not only was much more than that to him. In the end, and I won't give it away, she was also much less.
Lainey 6:58
Yeah, well, I mean, he's not the he's definitely a bit self centered. And he's definitely using all the women around him in various ways. But I loved how you portrayed like, like, she was very savvy about knowing what she wasn't, wasn't getting out of the situation, she was going into with her eyes somewhat open. Right. And, and I liked that, because she wasn't portrayed as just, you know, the weak mistress being taken advantage of like she knew what she was getting into. And she saw the pros and cons. And I think that was very relatable in her character.
Sheryl 7:28
Well, once she was able to focus, because she went through some horrid experiences. She also was able to determine what it was she needed. And once she determined what determined what she needed, she went out to get that. And then she was able to turn that into getting the things that she wanted. And that's what gave her agency.
Lainey 7:59
I love that. And you said some of the some of the inspiration came from Napoleon. What about the two women Where did the inspiration for these great characters come from?
Sheryl 8:08
those characters are built on hybrids of a lot of the women in my life who have been my heroes, my aunt's particularly my mother, my female cousins, some of whom are still in this world. Thankfully, who did no live at that point in time, that it wasn't necessary for me to use those existing characters in my life to build those women, those women contain parts of all of the women I have known who have meant something to me.
Lainey 8:50
And what does editing look like on a book like this? I think this is your debut novel, even though you've done a lot of writing. So what is the editing process look like?
Sheryl 8:59
Well, editing, for me was kind of a slog. And I had to go out and get someone to help me edit the book, because I really couldn't do it very well. Now, let me say to you that I don't. I am a self published independent author. And I don't turn my work over to editors, traditional editors, because I don't want my voice stepped off. And I find that a lot of people don't understand what I'm trying to say. And even in the editing process that I used, where I only wanted the person to correct the fact that I didn't know where to put commas in quotation marks because I really didn't care about any of that stuff. When I'm writing I just want to get my essence out. The person still have to say things to me, like, Oh, I can't believe that really happened. Or Who would do such a thing because couldn't relate to the fact that yes, some of those things really did happen. And even though they may sound unreal to you, they will be interesting.
Lainey 10:08
I didn't have any difficulties suspending credibility, like it happens, right? You read a novel and you're like, Oh, it's really hard to suspend your credibility. That's just, you know, you're trying to believe it. But it's too hard. I did not have that experience with this book. And, you know, maybe it's historical fiction. So like, Hey, I did not live in the 1800s. In Louisiana. So I'm obviously gonna believe anything you tell me. In fact, I'm interested. How much of this is based on real events and real life versus I know, the tone is completely fictional, right? You made up the tone and the valley that it's in, but like, talk to us about that, like, how do you draw the line on where you care about adhering to history and where you're like, hey, it's fiction, I can, I can do what I want.
Sheryl 10:45
Um, I have to say that that's a difficult choice sometimes. But I'll put it this way. Some of the things you may think are fictional and just figments of my imagination, may indeed be true. And some of the things you think may be true may be figments of my imagination. And that's as far as I'll go with that,
Lainey 11:11
Oh, I love it. Now I need to reread it like I want, like, I want to start guessing live on air. But
Sheryl 11:16
because that's part of the intrigue of the book, is that you? You know, once once I tell you what is really true in that book, then it becomes something else to you. And it starts to pull that away from the entire fabric of the story. And I need that story for you, the reader to stay intact, because you need to get the full flavor and meaning of everything that happens along the way.
Lainey 11:45
Well, another thing from my perspective, you did really well in this book, and I'd encourage folks to pick it up and read it. I have shared in previous interviews, I got some flack for this, actually. But I'm not hugely into historical fiction. And I think I was doing an interview with Kim Taylor Blackmore, and we talked about it. And she was she actually kind of started asking me questions Why? And I said, Well, I feel like I've been explained that sometimes when I'm reading historical fiction, instead of being in the story, and I feel like the person stops and says, Let me tell you about this dress and what that dress looks like. And I'm like, No, but something's happening. Don't stop. And so I didn't have any of that with this book, this book, I didn't feel like you were explaining at me, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I was just there, I was immersed in the story. And I wanted to see what happens to the characters. And it happened to be in the past. And it was credibly in the past, if that makes any sense. And that's, and that's exactly what I wanted to do. And I had to be very careful about making sure I didn't say things, or create scenes that didn't fit. In the time period that I was in, I had to be really
Sheryl 12:47
disciplined and making sure that I had backdrops that fit the scenes that I was making, creating. And even to the point of what people were thinking and saying at that time, what of what would have been important to them. That's the key of historical fiction is making sure that you do your research to the extent that you can create those backdrops and, and characters in full.
Lainey 13:15
Interesting. So you're saying that character motivation is going to be very different in a historical novel, because they're driven by the like, woman, for example, had very fewer options and different options at that point in time. So their character motivation needs to be driven by that set of circumstances. I've never thought about it that way.
Sheryl 13:31
Right? I mean, you your character, motivation, and 1800 as a woman, who is looking at you remember the part about the sewing machine, who's looking at the sewing machine, and thinking, you know, what am I supposed to do with this, but being motivated by a decision someone else made because of the timeframe they are in? And the world that they are living in? would be very different than you going on Instagram and seeing an influencer, tell you what lipstick you need to wear because of your hair color, and how much better you would look if you use that certain lipstick. It's just two different worlds. And so you can't mix them. If you're going to write historical fiction. You're getting me thinking things I've never considered. I mean, what would my characters think of care about their hair color and their lipstick when they had so many other issues? I'm not saying that they didn't like lipstick or hair color. But it wasn't their priorities like it is for some people today.
Lainey 14:41
So what about writing advice because you are a multi disciplinary writer, I believe you you're a poet, right? You've written poetry, written short pieces. Tell us a little bit about that breadth of everything you write. And then I'd love any advice that you have for other folks who would love to take this this path that
Sheryl 14:58
you're on Well, you know, if you listen to your imagination and your impulses, and you want to write something, it doesn't always have to be in the form of a book or a novel, sometimes what's in you is a poem, sometimes what's in you is commentary. And you should just let it flow in whatever form in whatever genre it takes. And don't feel that you if you write a 40 word, Paul, a 40 line poem, that that's not sufficient for the idea that you had, and don't feel constrained by john genre, and people telling you that things have to line up a certain way. I think that people don't really need to be taught writing, I think people have to be taught the freedom to express themselves.
Lainey 15:54
Wow, that's really powerful. And I'm gonna stick that on a Post-it note and think more about it. Like, why do you think we have such a hard time finding that voice to express ourselves like, because we're told not to, or because we don't believe in ourselves or like, that's interesting.
Unknown Speaker 16:08
I think people are so busy trying to have what other people have to be accepted. You know that some for some people that Junior High wanting to be with the popular girls at the at the popular girls table never goes away. You have to you have to break out of that. If you're going to write you can't be in that you can't be a popular girl stable, you have to be journaling tape.
Lainey 16:29
I love that. Okay, I got to post it notes to go on my wall over that you have to be at your own table. I love that. I love that, especially as I'm writing my second book right now. So I have enjoyed talking with you. And I really enjoyed the book. Thank you for writing that it gave me such a wonderful escape.
Sheryl 16:44
I'm so glad you liked it and that it resonated with you. And I look forward to seeing what you're putting out there.
Lainey 16:52
Thanks. It's so much work, as you know, right from the beginning to actually getting it to the world. When people ask me when it's coming. I'm like oh, sometime whenever I get it done.