As soon as I knew what question I wanted to explore, I started researching the 1920s and ’30s. Along the way, I came across materials advocating “practical eugenics” in America. Medical books focused on “social hygiene,” recommending such ideas as “Eugenic Marriage Licenses” and “Sterilization of the Unfit.” Country fairs held “Fitter Family Contests,” selecting winners based on animal breeding principles, and the American Eugenics Society sponsored sermon competitions, encouraging clergymen to promote the movement through scripture. Much of this material inspired a secondary story line in All Waiting Is Long.
—Barbara J. Taylor
Reading Group Guide
1. The title of this novel, All Waiting Is Long, is an old Welsh proverb. What do you think is meant by this adage? In Chapter Four, Stanley recalls Violet using the expression while they are waiting in line to see Queenie the elephant. What other examples of waiting can be found in the book?
2. The chorus of churchwomen who first appeared in Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night turn up again in All Waiting Is Long. The author describes these women as “flawed but well-intended.” Do you agree? Why do you think she includes them in the story? Do the churchwomen transform in any way by the end of the novel? How do the pieces of sex advice from Woman: Her Sex and Love Life relate to each chorus and the chapters that follow?
3. All Waiting Is Long is fraught with misunderstanding. For example, at the end of Chapter Two, Dr. Peters mistakenly assumes that Violet is abandoning her own baby in the cradle at the entrance, causing Violet to distrust the doctor for the remainder of the novel. What other instances of misunderstanding result in long-term consequences? Were these misunderstandings inevitable or preventable?
4. Was Violet obligated to keep Lily’s secret, even at the expense of her own happiness? Would Lily have done the same for Violet had the roles been reversed? Was the Widow right to keep the secret from Stanley, or should she have betrayed Lily for the greater good?
5. Once Violet decides to keep the baby, everything changes for the Morgan sisters. What would have happened if:
Violet had not gone back to the Good Shepherd for Lily’s hat?
Lily had decided to keep the baby?
Michael’s parents had not come back to claim him?
6. Did Stanley have a right to judge Violet at the train station given the time he’d spent in the Alleys in his youth and his more recent encounter with Lorraine Day? Morally speaking, should a woman be held to a higher standard than a man? Would Stanley have reacted differently toward Violet if she’d told him the truth when she’d stepped off the train?
7. What is the significance of Stanley’s artificial hand? Why does he hang on to it when he knows he’ll never use it?
8. How does Ruby end up as a prostitute? Is this a better life for her than the one she had before? Do you think she truly loves Stanley? What do you predict will happen to Ruby once the novel is over?
9. Does Violet end up with the right man? Does Lily? How do these sisters change over the course of the novel? If you had been the author, how would you have ended the story?
10. While we associate the term eugenics with the Nazis, prior to World War II, many corporations—including the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation—funded the eugenics movement in the United States. In All Waiting Is Long, the author shines a light on eugenics, specifically as it relates to women deemed immoral. As a reader, were you surprised to discover the popularity of eugenics in the United States? Why do you think this movement had so many supporters during the time period of the book?
11. During the 1930s, skirmishes broke out between competing anthracite unions, and strikes were called for improved conditions at the mines. Given the hard economic times, should the miners have gone on strike during the Great Depression? Are unions still relevant in today’s world?
12. How does the author explore the themes of truth, sacrifice, and love? What other themes did you discover as you read the novel?
BARBARA J. TAYLOR lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania, home of the second-largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the country. She has an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University and teaches English in the Pocono Mountain School District. She is the author of Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night and All Waiting Is Long.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2016 by Barbara J. Taylor
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61775-471-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61775-443-2
e-ISBN: 978-1-61775-466-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954207
First printing
Kaylie Jones Books
www.kayliejonesbooks.com
Akashic Books
Twitter: @AkashicBooks
Facebook: AkashicBooks
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.akashicbooks.com
ABOUT KAYLIE JONES BOOKS
an Akashic Books imprint
The increasingly commercial nature of mainstream publishing has made it difficult for literary writers to find a home for their more serious, thought-provoking works. Kaylie Jones Books will create a cooperative of dedicated emerging and established writers who will play an integral part in the publishing process, from reading manuscripts, editing, offering advice, to advertising the upcoming publications. The list of brilliant novels unable to find homes within the mainstream is growing every day.
It is our hope to publish books that bravely address serious issues—historical or contemporary—relevant to society today. Just because a book addresses serious topics and may include tragic events does not mean that the narrative cannot be amusing, fast-paced, plot-driven, and lyrical all at once. Our flagship publication, Unmentionables by Laurie Loewenstein, is exactly such a novel. The book takes place in 1917 Illinois, on the verge of US involvement in WWI. While the larger topics are race and women’s suffrage, the characters and their courageous stands against oppression and reactionary bigotry could not be more relevant today.
Kaylie Jones
New York, NY
January 2014
NOW AVAILABLE FROM KAYLIE JONES BOOKS
Unmentionables, by Laurie Loewenstein
"Exceptionally readable and highly recommended."—Library Journal (starred review)
Unmentionables has been selected by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association as a Midwest Connections pick for January 2014!
"Engaging first work from a writer of evident ability." —Kirkus Reviews
"Marian Elliot Adams’ . . . tale is contagiously enthusiastic." —Publishers Weekly
"Unmentionables starts small and expands to touch Chicago and war-torn France as Laurie Loewenstein weaves multiple points of view together to create a narrative of social change and the stubbornness of the human heart." —Black Heart Magazine
"A historical, feminist romance in the positive senses of all three terms: a realistic evocation of small-town America circa 1917, including its racial tensions; a tale about standing up for the equitable treatment of women; and a story about two lonely people who overcome obstacles, including their own character defects, to find love together." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Unmentionables is a sweeping and memorable story of struggle and suffrage, love and redemption . . . Loewenstein has skillfuly woven a story and a cast of characters that will remain in the memory long after the book’s last page has been turned." —New York Journal of Books
Marian Elliot Adams, an outspoken advocate for sensible undergarments for women, sweeps onto the Chautauqua stage under a brown canvas tent on a sweltering August night in 1917, and shocks the gathered town of Emporia with her speech: How can women compete with men in the work place and in life if they are confined by their undergarments? The crowd is further appalled when Marian falls off the
stage and sprains her ankle, and is forced to remain among them for a week. As the week passes, she throws into turmoil the town's unspoken rules governing social order, women, and Negroes. The recently widowed newspaper editor Deuce Garland, his lapels glittering with fraternal pins, has always been a community booster, his desire to conform rooted in a legacy of shame--his great-grandfather married a black woman, and the town will never let Deuce forget it, especially not his father-in-law, the owner of the newspaper and Deuce's boss. Deuce and his father-in-law are already at odds, since the old man refuses to allow Deuce's stepdaughter, Helen, to go to Chicago to fight for women's suffrage.
But Marian's arrival shatters Deuce's notions of what is acceptable, versus what is right, and Deuce falls madly in love with the tall activist from New York. During Marian's stay in Emporia, Marian pushes Deuce to become a greater, braver, and more dynamic man than he ever imagined was possible. He takes a stand against his father-in-law by helping Helen escape to Chicago; and he publishes an article exposing the county's oldest farm family as the source of a recent typhoid outbreak, risking his livelihood and reputation. Marian's journey takes her to the frozen mud of France's Picardy region, just beyond the lines, to help destitute villagers as the Great War rages on. Helen, in Chicago, is hired as a streetcar conductor surrounded by bitter men who resent her taking a man's job. Meanwhile, Deuce struggles to make a living and find his place in Emporia's wider community after losing the newspaper.
Marian is a powerful catalyst that forces nineteenth-century Emporia into the twentieth century; but while she agitates for enlightenment and justice, she has little time to consider her own motives and her extreme loneliness. Marian, in the end, must decide if she has the courage to face small-town life, and be known, or continue to be a stranger always passing through.
LAURIE LOEWENSTEIN grew up in the flatlands of western Ohio and now resides in Rochester, NY, where Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872.
Unmentionables is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
MORE FROM KAYLIE JONES BOOKS
The Love Book, by Nina Solomon
Starve the Vulture, by Jason Carney
Foamers, by Justin Kassab
We Are All Crew, by Bill Landauer
Little Beasts, by Matthew McGevna
Some Go Hungry, by J. Patrick Redmond
Foamers, by Justin Kassab (forthcoming, August 2016)
About Akashic Books
___________________
Thank you for purchasing this Akashic Books e-book.
Sign up to our email list to receive special offers, access to free e-book excerpts, and vendor-wide digital sales information. Follow this link to join our list, or browse online to www.akashicbooks.com. Free e-book excerpts are available for multiple platforms at www.akashicbooks.com/subject/digits-ebooks/
___________________
Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including the Black Sheep for Young Readers, the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, the Akashic Urban Surreal Series, Infamous Books (curated by Albert "Prodigy" Johnson of Mob Deep, Kaylie Jones Books (curated by Kaylie Jones), the Edge of Sports (curated by David Zirin), Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.
Our books are available from our website and at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere.
"As many in publishing struggle to find ways to improve on an increasingly outdated business model, independents such as Akashic—which are more nimble and less risk-averse than major publishing houses—are innovators to watch." —Los Angeles Times
"It's heartening that even as the dinosaurs of publishing are lurching toward extinction, nimble independent publishers like Akashic are producing high-quality, innovative content." —Portland Mercury
"Akashic fits in that very slight category of publishers, growing slimmer every day, whose colophon is a recommendation on its own." —Toronto Star
"Akashic is one of the most impressive of the newer small presses, in part because of editing and production values that rival and perhaps surpass the big houses. We're grateful to them . . ." —Denver Post
"Akashic serves as a prime example of the diversity that marks the small press movement." —Mystery Scene
"What's great about Akashic is its sense of adventure and its smart eclecticism . . . Anything carrying the logo comes with the guarantee that it's worth checking out." —Hartford Courant
"An excellent small press." —In These Times
"[Akashic] fully conveys the charms and possibilities of small press publishing . . . placing a priority on the quality of the books, rather than the possible marketing opportunities they offer."—Poets & Writers
"Akashic is the brainchild of the charismatic Johnny Temple, the bassist of the rock group Girls Against Boys. Temple set up Akashic to give attention to literary works that are ignored, as well as to prove that publishers don't have to exploit their writers." —IUniverse.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.akashicbooks.com
All Waiting Is Long Page 29