My friend, David, asked me once if I write about lower class people because it's easier to write "down a class." For one thing, it's not easier to write in simple language, if that language is going to exactly express what you intend. Look at Raymond Carver. Simple, but perfect. And, for another thing, as my sister said, "Down a class? Where does he think you came from?"
I'm writing a new book, tentatively titled Watching Rhonda Honey. Here's the story it's based on: when I was a young teenager in Charleston, SC, my neighbors decided that their daughter needed a sister. They took in a foster child, planning to adopt her, but the other girl didn't fit in. She said the wrong things. She looked funny. She wanted too badly to be liked. They sent her back. I was thinking about that girl one day, and I decided to write a novel from her point of view. She's an adult now. Here is a little excerpt:
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—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————I was a foreigner but I could understand what was being said. They might not know it, but it was true. I was like a spy, but a spy without a country. I was like this and I was like that. I was always feeling around myself, making myself a metaphor. I thought too much about myself. I heard once that if you hang out with the Japanese they don’t talk about themselves at all. I worked with a cook once who told me that. They don’t talk about themselves, but that’s all we do, all I do. My mother and my body and my anger, my childhood, my boyfriend, my, my, my. Some people hate themselves, but I don’t hate myself. What I hate is not myself but something that has been set over me, something imposed on me, or transposed, something laid on top of me that I can freely hate without getting personal.