{image1}One of the most engaging novels ever to be set in Milwaukee is, ironically, not widely available here and was written, believe it or not, in Australia.
But Emily Ballou, author of "Father Lands," which explores how two families in Milwaukee were affected by school desegregation in the 1970s, is a Milwaukee native, currently living in Australia.
Born in Milwaukee in 1968, Ballou is the eldest of three daughters born to an East Side couple: she a nurse and psychologist; he a botanist and university teacher.
She moved to Sydney, Australia in 1991, and she continues to live Down Under and she currently resides in the Blue Mountains. "Father Lands" is her first novel, and while it's been acclaimed by readers and reviewers in Australia, Ballou is still searching for an American publisher.
We caught up with Ballou recently and asked her about her book, her experiences with desegregation in Milwaukee and more.
OMC: Why the move to Australia?
EB: I came to Australia in pursuit of a boy, of course, but really, a large part of me wanted to escape Milwaukee, escape America and just live a totally different life in a place where nobody knew me. And while Australia is just another English-speaking Western country, so much about it struck me as essentially new to my 21-year-old eyes.
I came here for a relationship but I stayed for the landscape, and the way landscape is so well integrated into the city and for the laid-back kindness of the people and the very, very good living you can do here. The food, the small population -- relatively speaking -- the water, the weather; although the eternal sunshine is my least favorite thing; I am a blizzard girl through and through!
OMC: Why write about Milwaukee, then, after the move?
EB: This is the curious thing. What happened when I moved here, at least initially, was a kind of total transformation of self, equal somehow to what one might experience during a religious conversion of sorts. I felt myself to be very separate from the U.S., my life there, even the person I had been there. I inhabited a kind of nowhere land between selves, two consciousnesses, and I mean this to sound in no way esoteric.
It was simply a kind of geographical schizophrenia and in that distance from my homeland in the most basic sense -- because I was already calling Australia my home -- allowed me to see the United States and my experience there as a child in a totally new light. Things that I might not have been able to think previously, were thought, revelations were made.
In a sense, I was simply able to step away and see the place through the eyes of character, not as myself, but simultaneously, to use the self that had lived there and explore it in a way so as to help me understand myself now, if that makes any sense. When I sat down to write the book -- which had been commissioned, but only as a novel whose content would be totally up to me -- I found that my experiences in Milwaukee as a child, at Lloyd Street School, my family history, etc., were compelling me more strongly than any other story I could possibly tell.
OMC: And how did you come to write a novel centered on desegregation in Milwaukee? It's a pretty specific subject.
EB: I wrote about desegregation because that was my experience of schooling in Milwaukee. My parents volunteered me to be bussed across town from the East Side to just over the bridge -- it's really not that far, but such two different worlds -- to Lloyd Street School. This was in 1976, I think, when I was 7 or 8 years old. My youngest sister was bussed in as well. We stayed at Lloyd for three years, then transferred to a small private school for a further three years, and then I went back to the bussing program.
I spent my four years of high school at Rufus King. What I was interested in was how this very personal and memorable experience intersected with what was happening city-wide, historically, in my parents' eyes, and for other children at that time. I went back to Milwaukee, visited Lloyd -- 25 years later -- researched what was happening in terms of the context for this historical move in Milwaukee, etc.
But the story is essentially the story of two families and the desegregation is the story's context -- it's where the two children meet. Really, it's about families and how they hold themselves together or don't. And the shame the main child protagonist feels about black history -- which she is learning at her new school -- just feeds into what is happening at home. I also wanted to write a book that gave voice to the incredibly important experience it was for me as well as some of the more unhealed almost, unsaid facets of shame or grief or ambiguity I feel about race issues.
OMC: So, it's a personal story, as well as a story of desegregation. How did desegregation affect you when you were growing up here?
There was this sense on the playground of being the minority but knowing that in the world, you were in the majority. And then having black teachers for the first time, and these were such strong women, and they were teaching us black history, and we were watching "Roots" for homework and there was a lot of guilt and shame and sadness about the legacy of race in America for me. And I think that has stayed with me. And coincidentally, I've ended up living in a country where there are many, many race issues and some of them were coming up at the time I started writing the book and I think it triggered stuff from my childhood, things I hadn't reconciled yet.
{image2}OMC: Do you get back to Milwaukee much? If so, what's your take on segregation and the state of race relations here now?
EB: I came back a couple of times while researching the book, but I do visit family in other parts of America. Some of the teachers I spoke to at Lloyd when I visited, one in particular had been there since I was, and she said that the cross-town enrolments if you will, have really fallen over the last 10 years as those early, eager, lefty East Side families have recycled through all of their children and people enroll their kids in private schools.
I am no expert by any means on the situation of either race or desegregation in Milwaukee, now or ever. But it seems that the experience I had isn't as widely available today and that I think, is a great shame, as it was one of the most important learning experiences of my life. I didn't thrive at Lloyd academically -- I was one of the worst students, and I needed a lot more personal attention than I could get there, which is why we transferred, but socially and culturally that learning has stayed with me far beyond any geography or math or science that I learned at any time.
A kid needs to have the resources and support they need to thrive academically, but there needs to be other concerns taken into account perhaps, when choosing a school. I think, if I am honest, I was a very outgoing kid made extremely shy and embarrassed almost about being white in a primarily black school, but this was a good thing, because I learned to see the world from another perspective.
I don't mean to suggest that Lloyd was somehow academically inferior or unsupportive, but at the time, it was re-conceptualized, I believe, as a 'magnet school' and in this case, as an I.G.E. (Individually Guided Education) Program, which basically means everybody had to monitor their own academic progress, something I failed miserably at. I did much better in a very small teacher-to-student ratio, which is why we transferred.
OMC: How has reaction been to the book there?
EB: The book has been received here very well, both critically and by readers. It has sold about 7,000 copies, which for a first novel in Australia, is very good, I'm told. But, more importantly, readers seem to love it, and many people remember the bussing debate in America and have been curious to find out more about it. The book also came out at the end of 2002 and Australians -- part of the Coalition of the 'Willing' -- have been most curious about what this country is that allows it to have the power it does around the world. The book explores what it means to be an American girl/boy/man/woman and the nature of the American Dream, its origins, and explores what happens when a person can't manage to keep that dream on their shoulders. When they fail the dream or the dream fails them. So this interested readers as well.
OMC: Is there interest from American publishers?
EB: The book has been read by many American publishers, many of whom claim to 'love it' but for some reason, even though the book is set entirely in America, and is about America, I am seen as an unknown Australian writer, and therefore, too much of a risk. I hear that publishing novels is harder these days, blah blah. I don't really know if this is true or if they just don't like it enough, find it saleable enough, or what.
It hurts that I don't yet have a way of getting the book to the audience it was written for, apart from my own steam, but I have to take into consideration that maybe, the book speaks to Americans differently than it does to the Australians who've read and loved it. But I haven't given up hope yet. I'm working on my second novel, so maybe eventually, "Father Lands" will get there.
OMC: When you tell people you're from Milwaukee, do they say "oh, Laverne and Shirley" -- as they do in the UK, where they don't know "Happy Days" -- or "oh, Fonzie" -- as they do in Italy, where they don't know "Laverne and Shirley" -- or "egads, Jeffrey Dahmer"?
EB: Always, always, the Fonz.
"Father Lands" is available at a number of Milwaukee-area bookshops, including Reader's Choice, Woodland Patter and UWM Bookstore.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
