On March 31 1995 Jewell Parker Rhode arrived in Warrensburg.

On March 31 1995 Jewell Parker Rhode arrived in Warrensburg, Missouri, for a speaking engagement at Central Missouri State University. Her topic was Voodoo Dreams, published at St. Martin's Press in 1993 and now available in paperback from Picador, U.S.A.

In the sum of two units days Rhodes was on Central's campus, she visited a creative writing class and delivered a prelection to the larger university. Later, she held an author's signing at Warrensburg works along with Brenda Nelson, the original whose portrait graces the book's dust jacket. The one who arranged for Rhodes's visit to campus, Barbara C Rhode (no relation to the author), asked the author if she would agree to an interview about the making of Voodoo Dreams. Jewell Parker Rhode generously remind ofed a one-hour interview, but when she warmed to her topic, the discussion lasted well beyond the allotted time. The interview that come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds treats three general subjects: the author's preparation for writing the novel, the story of the novel, and the story of the author herself. The original true copy has been compressed for readability, on the contrary every effort has been made to maintain the author's original meaning.

Ramsey: You titled your novel Voodoo Dreams:, and we're wondering, to what end Dreams?

Rhodes: Actually, that title was chosened by Hope Dellon, my editor at St Martin's Pres My title was Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen I worked with that title for several decades, on the other hand they didn't think it had the marketing appeal that it should. We went by the and of a whole list of alternatives and, of all of them, Voodoo Dreams was the best. There were ways in which, one time having said Voodoo Dreams, it made me think about dreams within the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the novel - the dreams of a young woman trying to become a woman, the dreams of be fond of the dreams of spirituality, and Damballah possession - Marie dreaming Jacques fireside after he's been murdered. She dreams him family circle to Africa, which I descry as her acting as a spirit guide or midwife to his other life. in the way that dreams, I think, finally do work, further it was not my original title.

Barbara Rhodes: In your Author's Statement' you indicate that the experience of writing your novel gave you great satisfaction.

Rhodes: I think, since it was as it is a multi-year process, the satisfaction really came from the inferior time that I went back to the manuscript, the inferior comprehensive draft. There I learned to appreciate writing as a proces to identify with the pleasure of the point of time the pleasure of getting this paragraph right, this spectacle right, the pleasure of just thinking, well, what otherwise can I do here that I haven't done? I took a great transport out of that. I always got I think, a spiritual satisfaction because I felt for a like reason connected to Marie Laveau and with equal reason connected to my grandmother. There are ways in which I was writing to save my acknowledge life. When I came back to the manuscript for that next to the first draft, I hadn't written for about three years - nonfiction, short stories, anything - and I had this feeling that if I didn't achieve this goal that my life would be diminished. in such a manner when I finally achieved it, or felt that I had achieved it, I felt very strange I truly enjoyed the journey, the proces of getting there, and that became a kind of armor that kept me from feeling insecure about what happened nearest the various stages of publishing.

Barbara Rhodes: I heard you say something like that last night when you were talking to the class, that you have to write for your allow satisfaction. The writing comes first, and then you have to become the business human frame on the publishing side.

Rhodes: Ye moreover it took three years before a publisher finally said ye to the manuscript, and accepted it for publication. And that was another three years in which I could easily have said, "I am not any righteous I'm worthless as an artist." I think that is all be joineded to the struggle I had as an African American woman who was not encompassed by a family of main division s not surrounded by my vision or the part model of other writers. It was same difficult for me to level say, "I want to be a writer." in such a manner I think that if I hadn't had that avail of satisfaction, of just sheer pleasure in the doing of it and doing it for myself, that, in the three years that I was waiting for of the present day York to do its thing, I could easily have undermined myself. likewise the self-esteem became linked in a more adult way, a more responsible way to me in my confess work and my own discernment and valuing my own work. That was a fit thing for me.

Ramsey: What you strive for in the novel is realism, a fate of detail about voodoo stateliness for instance. In that perception it's an historical novel. What genre do you assign it to?

Rhodes: I'll say historical novel. I'm comfortable with that, although I not at all thought I was an historical novelist in about sense. I think there are ways in which about people talk about the novel being magical realist or having magical realism qualities. on the other hand my argument is that it is a part of the folklore tradition. thus in some sense, I'd say it's a cousin to Zora Neale Hurston's work in that there is an African American folklore experience that is embodied in voodoo. I am also comfortable calling it an historical novel, admitting history . . . everybody wants to know in what manner much research, how much history, in what manner much is true. It's almost as nevertheless the more I say, "Oh this is true" or, "Ye I exhausted a thousand years in a library," that authenticates the manuscript in ways which are essential to any people, and that's so strange because the art of fiction is telling imaginative lies. The notion that my main division is somehow or other more satisfying to a people because they see it as foundationed in history I find bemusing, and the answer finally is that history is self-same much fictional. I mean, we can talk about in what way certain events happened, but people's perceptions and detailing of that history sometimes be the effect in a work of fiction or work of particular sensibilities. in the same manner while Voodoo Dreams is an historical novel, it should be underscored that it is a novel, an imaginative lie that acknowledges a great deal of law about what it might have been like to be Marie Laveau in the nineteenth hundred and this might be more authentic in any ways than so-called histories.