Author Interview: Lori Ostlund on After the Parade

What are some of the “teachable” moments in your book that make it work well for a Community/Campus Reads program?

Lori Ostlund, After the ParadeAs I was writing After the Parade, I was thinking about numerous questions, including why it is that some people go out in the world while others do not, whether sometimes the best we can manage is to save ourselves, and what our responsibility is to others.

Aaron’s mother, who becomes increasingly distant after his father dies and ultimately abandons him, tells him, “You can’t make other people happy. It’s silly to try.” My personal belief is that, ultimately, we cannot make other people happy, yet I also believe, strongly, that we should always try to do so, both with friends and strangers.

That is, we should always act with the goal of contributing to the happiness of others, even if that goal is not within our control. After the Parade invites much-needed discussions about compassion and our responsibility to others while looking at the degree to which our actions affect others.


“We should always act with the goal of contributing to the happiness of others, even if that goal is not within our control.”


Along these lines, the book is also about bullying. Aaron is bullied throughout his childhood by his father, his kindergarten teacher, his classmates. He’s a sensitive boy, less enamored of roughhousing and activity than introspection and words. He is polite and discovers that politeness quite often enrages those around him. Throughout his childhood, he is befriended by unlikely allies, misfits who have retreated from the world and see in him a kindred spirit.

Though I was not necessarily considering a message when I wrote the book, I would be pleased to think that the book allowed readers to consider the loneliness all around them, perhaps even encouraged them to listen to a stranger’s story. Aside from food and shelter, I think that what most of us crave is to have our stories listened to by others.

What do you think of the Community Reads structure as a literary event format?

Reading and writing are both solitary activities. But just as a writer writes to communicate, however imperfectly, with a community of readers, readers, I believe, also look up from the page hoping to discuss the thoughts and feelings evoked by the book with others. My wife and I often read the same book back to back so that we can discuss it with each other, and often, if I don’t get to a book quickly enough, she’ll say, “Can you just read X now so we can talk about it?”

The idea that your neighbors are reading the same book as you, are grappling with similar issues and feelings, is powerful. Community Reads leads to a greater understanding of humanity, of difference, of the world, all while elevating the importance of books and literacy within our communities.


The idea that your neighbors are reading the same book as you, are grappling with similar issues and feelings, is powerful.


Would you share some notable experiences you’ve had at speaking events that you’ve participated in?

Several years ago when my story collection came out, I was invited to the University of New Mexico to work with graduate students and give a public reading open to students, faculty, and Albuquerque community members. During the Q&A, a young woman stood up, a graduate student in fiction, and said, “I just want to tell you that, as a young lesbian, when I read your book, I finally felt hopeful that I would be able to write the kind of work that I want to write—literary fiction with gay characters.”

I understood her point, that in the past, writers who were gay most often made a decision: they wrote genre fiction for a gay audience or wrote about straight characters for a literary audience. Eventually, “coming out” stories started to find a place in the literary world, stories in which the process of coming to terms with being gay was the conflict of the book and its primary focus, and now, finally, we are seeing fiction in which characters are gay without that being the only or even primary focus.


Finally, we are seeing fiction in which characters are gay without that being the only or even primary focus.


 

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