What We Ask of Our Readers
By Terah Shelton Harris | January 6, 2023 |
Therese here to introduce you to today’s guest, Terah Shelton Harris. I met Terah on Twitter, where I learned that she is a librarian and freelance writer–with works appearing in Catapult, Women’s Health, Every Day with Rachel Ray, and more–and that she had tackled a very difficult topic for her debut novel, One Summer in Savannah. I’m so pleased that she accepted the invitation to write for WU to share her experience–why she traveled the road she did, how it stretched her as a writer, and how her topic asked her to consider her readers.
“Terah Shelton Harris’s daring debut is nothing short of astonishing. To write a novel that has the capacity to uplift you while it tears your heart to shreds is a balancing act few can achieve, but Harris does with ease and endless empathy. We are brought face-to-face with the most difficult questions––of family, forgiveness, and how to make a way forward––but if we can muster the courage of characters like Sara and Jacob, we will find answers that sustain us for years to come. The best writers are brave writers, and Harris has proven herself among those ranks.” —Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck
You can learn more about Terah and her debut novel, which releases on July 11th, on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Welcome, Terah!
As writers, we invite readers on a journey. We take their hands and escort them to a crime scene to solve a mystery. We take them on a character’s path to self-discovery or inside the ups and downs of a relationship. We invite them to imagine worlds that do not exist. But sometimes the journey isn’t to far-flung destinations. Sometimes that journey isn’t very far at all. Sometimes the journey lies within the reader.
As writers, we need to consider what we ask of readers as we write. For example:
How do YOU define forgiveness? What is it? And what does it mean to you? My debut novel challenges readers to explore the definition of forgiveness and what it truly means to forgive.
Because my own understanding of forgiveness was challenged.
Inspiration for my novel stems from the 2015 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting. After the parishioners fed him and prayed for him, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine of them. Days after that terrible tragedy, before they had even buried their loved ones, some of the survivors and relatives of those killed walked into a South Carolina courtroom and forgave Roof. Everything I thought I knew and understood about forgiveness shattered. At that moment, I realized I knew nothing about forgiveness. I assumed that there were crimes and acts that were unforgivable. I learned the opposite. The loved ones who forgave Roof taught me that forgiveness is not one-size fits all and unknowingly challenged me to look inward to create and test my own definition of forgiveness.
Writing isn’t supposed to be comfortable or easy, and neither is reading. Rather than running from what makes us uncomfortable, we can take risks, challenge ourselves, and take our readers along with us.
While my novel doesn’t involve a situation like Roof’s, it does explore the fallout from an assault on my protagonist, Sara—one that resulted in a child that her attacker’s family wanted to forge a relationship with, if only she would allow it. It was difficult for me to write, and I understand it could be triggering to read. But as writers, we tell stories, and our readers join us of their own freewill. It is our job to guide them through the pages, through unfamiliar circumstances, and encourage them to step outside of themselves, their comfort zones, to experience a situation that may help them to grow as a person.
Frederick Sommer once said, “The only way to understand something is to be confronted by something difficult to understand.” The topic of forgiveness following assault is not one often explored in fiction. However, thousands of brave women are faced with rape-related pregnancies every year, a number that stands to increase with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The choices Sara makes are not easy, and it’s perfectly acceptable that readers may not agree with them. But by exploring such a topic, it is my hope, at the very least, to raise awareness of the plights of Saras around the world and the role forgiveness could play in such situations.
Spoiler alert: There is no right or wrong definition of forgiveness. There’s a line in the book: “forgiveness is like a door. You can open yourself up to it or close yourself off from it at any time.” Forgiveness can be a powerful tool. It can loosen the knots we often tie ourselves. It can bandage up wounds, large and small. It can heal traumas, visible and invisible. But withholding forgiveness can also cause more harm than good. It can tighten its grip on you and keep you bound to the person who hurt you.
As writers, we need to consider what we ask of readers in our stories. As we invite them into our stories, we may challenge their preconceived notions along the way. Maybe, just maybe, our stories will encourage them to put on a new pair of glasses and truly see something novel. We should at least try. We owe them that. And maybe we owe the world that, too.
How does your work stretch you as a person and impact your worldview? How might it do the same for your readers? What conversations do you hope emerge because your novel challenged even one person? The floor is yours.
Terah Shelton Harris is a librarian and freelance writer, who now writes upmarket fiction with bittersweet endings. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in consumer and trade magazines including Catapult, Women’s Health, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Backpacker, Minority Nurse, and more. One Summer in Savannah is her first novel.
Forgiveness played a part in my debut novel and it’s coming up more strongly in my second. I’ve come to realize that forgiveness has less to do with the person you are forgiving– it’s something you do for yourself before the anger, hurt, humiliation eat you up inside. I look forward to reading your book- sounds both timely and timeless.
Hi Maggie! Yes, I’ve also come to learn that forgiveness is what a person does for themselves. But I think, somehow, that’s gotten lost. I also believe that people think that offering forgiveness means that you have to forget what happened to you. It doesn’t. Which is why I want people to define forgiveness for themselves and not what society tells us it is. All the best to you and your books!
“As writers, we tell stories, and our readers join us of their own freewill.”
Frederick Sommer once said, “The only way to understand something is to be confronted by something difficult to understand.”
YES. I love your post and how it gently challenges the idea of things one “shouldn’t” write about, things that might agitate some readers, things that people want to put trigger warnings on, things that might elicit some angry reviews.
Some fiction is written to please and delight and provide escape. But some is written to delve deep into the things we can barely voice to ourselves let alone others. Kudos to you for digging deep.
Thank you so much! There are stories that need to be told. And not all of those stories are easy to tell and we shouldn’t shy away from sharing them with the world.
Hello Terah, and thank you for your thought-provoking post. Before I comment on it, I want to add something about what we ask of our readers. I’m old, and no doubt that has a lot to do with it, but the most important thing I think any writer asks of readers is their time. What’s more important to any of us? To call on people to stop what they’re doing or might do, sit down and convert ink blots on the page into meaning, or electrons on an ereader (or is it pixels?) is a big ask.
About your post. It sounds as though you have taken on a truly worthy and ambitious topic–forgiveness–and approached it with a demanding premise. The idea of rape followed by a pregnancy that leads to the moral struggle your synopsis describes is daunting to say the least. This is especially so in a time when every effort seems to be made to develop sensational material for its own sake. But if your novel succeeds in both uplifting readers and also moving them deeply, they will have given their attention to something well worth their time. Thanks again for your post.
Terah, your post turns on a light…one that we all hope will shine on our words when we sit down to write. Fiction must be honest. Yes, there is fantasy, but when creating a novel concerning characters that live and die in the real world, fill the pages with reality, with grit and joy. They appear in life in equal measure. You wrote: “Writing isn’t supposed to be comfortable or easy, and neither is reading.” Yes! Words of wisdom. As a former English teacher in a high school where the backgrounds and experience of our students were numerous…arguments, questioning, even outright objection to a writer’s point of view worked for me. Why? Because my students were thinking, evaluating. Would they take that questioning into their adult lives? Would it help serve them within their communities? To me, that is the purpose of education. I look forward to reading your novel, to meet your characters who are confronting those hard choices that we all need to make.
Good post! You’ve got me thinking before breakfast. There is no aspect of religion or philosophy more important than learning to forgive. Climbing out of the mud is not for sissies.
I agree! Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Terah, forgiveness for moral ruptures is a tough thing, and it sounds like your work addresses some good trouble. I am reading Jesmyn Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing” right now, and it powerfully deals with some inter-family atrocities and the consequences of anger, guilt and longing, as well as some sharp racial disparities and divides. Forgiveness or its lack (and some of its confusions) are central to the book. Thanks for the post.
All of the stories that shaped me as a reader and a writer have challenged me to dig deep and ponder the message, even one that is extremely uncomfortable. Most of the books by Steinbeck did just that, and now and then I reread a couple of them. I think if we shy away from presenting tough subjects and letting our characters work through them, we do the reader a disservice. If a reader doesn’t want to read something that disturbs them, there are plenty of light, cozy novels that are a delight and are there just to entertain. If we want to grow as a person, my belief is that we need to sometimes step out of that comfortable place and read something that gives us insight and a new perspective. Looking forward to reading your book.
Terah, I’m late to commenting but I didn’t want to let the day end without saying how much I enjoyed your thoughtful post and I look forward to reading your novel. I live in Charleston, SC and the grace with which people forgave Dylan Roof was an example to us all. We were united in prayer. Forgiveness is such a huge theme in my own novel, Bound (it also deals with the aftermath of an unintended pregnancy of a developmentally delayed young woman). I was wrestling with “are you your brother’s keeper?” and to answer it I had to write this story, examining the situation from various angles. And now, I’m thinking about forgiveness again due to a family situation closer to home, so clearly lots more to explore. Thank you.