When Tonya Fuschetti arrived from Tampa, Fla., to study history at Catawba College, she never imagined finding herself “Rich in Love”in an honors English class.
But there she was, engaged by the sagacity of “Rich in Love”author Josephine Humphreys, whose name she’d never even heard as a Florida student. What she’d been missing was the colorful interpretation of Southern culture that Humphreys and other Southern women novelists the class studies. She had a rare chance to soak up that insight firsthand as Humphreys ate lunch and visited with the Southern Women Writers on Film class recently.
Instructors Drs. Janice Fuller and Jim Epperson invited Humphreys, whose most recently acclaimed book is titled “Nowhere Else on Earth,” to talk with the students of their one-time course designed to investigate how well a “Yankee male”could adapt to film a novel written by a Southern woman and whether or not it would affect the novel’s “Southernness.”
Required texts (turned movies) include “The Member of the Wedding”by Carson McCullers, “The Color Purple”by Alice Walker and Humphreys’ 1987 novel. Students analyzed them, pinpointing “Southern” criteria like the “feminine connection to the land, issues (including racial discrimination) normally addressed on the courthouse steps that are confronted in the kitchen and definitions of southern femininity and the acceptance or resistance of it.”
“It’s such an interesting kind of question to build a class around,”said Humphreys, herself a former English teacher.
She talked about the experience of seeing her book transformed into a movie. It was not easy, she said.
Although her agent warned her that “all Hollywood people are scum,”the Charleston native sold the rights to the book because the profit would help send her two sons to college. But when the production company began filming — in her hometown — she was given no notice. In fact, when she finally did find out about the filming and went to observe, the was told to stay away, that all writers are trouble.
Eventually, though, Humphreys worked her way through the filmmaking “circles” — the outer “circle”being the teamsters, the inner including nurses and busboys, caters, actors and producers — when an actress said she would not be able to film one day because her dog was ill and needed special health food. Humphreys took off in her car to find the food and save them money. She’d finally made it to the inner circle.
“What she really did like about the film,”Fuller remembered, “is that, through cinematography, Charleston came to life in a way it couldn’t in the novel.”Humphreys was amazed at how much filmmakers could do and show on screen that she could not in the book; novelists don’t have that beautiful footage for visual effect.
“It was brought to life for her,”Fuschetti said.
What the film couldn’t provide, though, was the interior monologue of the characters in the book. The film also changed the original story by expanding the father’s role to the level of a primary character, which is secondary in the story.
But more than her work, Humphreys wanted to talk about the progress of the students’ work.
“I remember wanting to be a writer as soon as I could read, and I only wanted to write fiction … I can’t even imagine starting your first novel when in college,”Humphreys said, adding that every writer should expect to reach his or her own respective level of success when the time is right, because writing is “really no different than some athletic thing. You get better at it every day.” Though she’d written “schoolgirl poetry”and short stories, “Once I started on a novel, I knew that this was my home.”
The students shared with her their fancies and frustrations about writing.
“Every writer really is different with different writing styles,”Humphreys said. “Although there are some overlapping experiences writers share, there really is an infinite variety.”
“It is a lot of fun to write even though it is hard and isolating,”Humphreys said. She encouraged the students to write every day if they could. “Because writing is a discipline for thinking and is a lot like dreaming, you can’t just think, ‘I have it in my head, and all I need to do is get it down on paper.’ ”
Fuschetti, who had been losing her interest in becoming an historical novelist until she met Humphreys, asked the author if, when writing, she feels like there is a part of her in each of her characters and whether or not she can distinguish herself.
Humphreys said she couldn’t, because there truly is a part of her in each character. More recently, though, she said it’s been harder for her to write about “villains and bad guys”because she finds herself sympathizing with them.
But it’s not been the least bit difficult to write about her fellow Charlestonians and their “tradition,” including sensitive topics like discrimination on the basis of race or gender. Although she writes fiction exclusively and “has a hard time telling the truth,” she said that linking the past to the present is important to understanding the future.
Her dedication to her characters is evident in her work, Fuschetti said.
“Her book pulls you in,” the freshman explained. “I’ve read a lot of books, but here is one that sucks you in, and you feel and experience what (the character)is feeling and talking about.”
The students could not believe they had met an author whose work they’d studied.
“Everyone was really excited, and we were all in awe,”Fuschetti said. “There was no letdown at all.”
In fact, Fuller described Humphreys as “humble,”“genuine” and “generous.”
“After seeing her and meeting her, I want to read more about her,”Fuschetti said. “I’ve been trying to get some more books about her and trying to start my writing again. With (her) advice, I have a good starting point again to jump off of. She’s someone who’s ‘been there and done that.’ It might be minor to everybody else, but it was a big deal to me.”
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