“Writing is a tough business, and you have to be like a Baptist preacher. You have to be called,” laughs memoirist Rheta Grimsley Johnson as she joins W. Ralph Eubanks and Louis E. Bourgeois at the Writers’ roundtable “You have to really want to do this.” Together, they discuss their writing lives as well as memories of childhood and family, of love and loss, and of dark times and light.
Johnson, an award winning columnist, studied journalism in college and worked for various newspapers. In 1982 when she was the Greenville correspondent for the Memphis Commercial Appeal,“the editorial page editor invited the lowliest of the low, the bureaureporters” to submit sample columns. “I just went back to my office and churned out about four and handed them in. And one ran.” She has been writing columns ever since.
Writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, she headed to Cajun country to cover a story. Here she began her love affair with southern Louisiana which led to her memoir Poor Man’s Provence. She reminisces again in Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, which chronicles her life from growing up Southern Baptist to her memorable journalism career to the unexpected death of her husband.
W. Ralph Eubanks’ first memoir, Ever is a Long Time, began as a narrative history of the Sovereignty Commission, but after finding his parents’ names in their extensive files, it became a personal story. Host Gene Edwards clarifies, “The Sovereignty Commission was a civil rights era organization that was started to keep an eye on activists.” By a 1998 court order, these secret files were made public. “There were the names there and then I had to find out exactly how did they end up there,” he remembers. “There is another story behind it.”
While Ever is a Long Time traces Eubanks’ Mississippi childhood during the turbulent Civil Right Era, Eubanks’ second memoir,The House at The End of The Road, tells the story of his maternal grandparents’ integrated marriage. “I went into this thinking I was going to learn a great deal about my grandparents,” he says, “and I learned how little race had come to mean to me in my life.”
“This is a tale from a working class child,” says Louis E. Bourgeois of The Gar Diaries, and his memoir is a haunting look at his life in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. “I’m a product of that environment,” Bourgeois adds, “and that’s what I’m trying to understand in this book. Who am I inrelation to this environment?” He named the protagonist Lucas, but explains, “Lucas is just a way for me to get some distance from the experiences so they don’t overwhelm me. I am Lucas.”
As for writing personal stories, Eubanks observes, “I think so often in thinking about memoirs as a form that’s very self centered, very much a naval gazing exercise. There is that aspect, but at the same time you’re also trying to reach a reader like any other writer.”
And like other authors, writing is also one of life’s necessities. For Bourgeois, “Reading is something I’ve always done, but for me writing was something that I had to do. There was nothing else I had a desire to do.” Johnson’s experience was similar. Writing after her husband’s death, “I went into some zone I had never been in writing-wise.” She says, “If I was awake, I was writing.”
“Don’t wait too long” is Johnson’s advice. “If you have a story tell it now.” Eubanks adds that “people should know whatever their story is, and write it down whatever way they can so it doesn’t get lost.” “Write your story,” Bourgeois agrees. Then he adds, “You need to do it because it is important.”
W. Ralph Eubanks
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Louis E. Bourgeois
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Information on Johnson
Ms. Johnson takes NPR’s Debbie Elliot on a tour of Cajun Louisiana
Interview with Johnson
Q & A with Johnson
Review of Poor Man’s Provence
Articles on Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Review of Poor Man’s Provence
Article about Poor Man’s Provence
Synopsis and review of Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming
Articles by Johnson
W. Ralph Eubanks
Author’s homepage
Information on Eubanks
Video about The House at the End of the Road
A chat with W. Ralph Eubanks
Eubanks piece at the PEN/Faulkner 21st annual Award for Fiction Gala
Review of The House at the End of the Road
Praise for The House at the End of the Road
Review of Ever is a Long Time
Eubanks talks about Mississippi’s past
Interview with Eubanks on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”
Louis E. Bourgeois
Information on Bourgeois
Reviews of The Gar Diaries
Review of The Animal
Review of Hosanna: Affirmations and Blasphemies
Interview with Louis E. Bourgeois
Interview with Louis E. Bourgeois
Interview with Louis E. Bourgeois
Biography of Bourgeois
Poems by Bourgeois
W. Ralph Eubanks
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Louis E. Bourgeois
W. Ralph Eubanks
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Louis E. Bourgeois
Teaching Resources
Click here for a complete list of teaching resources related to this episode.
William Faulkner
Eudora Welty
Barry Hannah
Raymond Chandler
James M. Cain
Lewis Grizzard
Sovereignty Commission
Henderson, Louisiana
Slidell, Louisiana
LaComb, Louisiana
Prestwick, Alabama
Mount Olive, Mississippi
Oxford, MS
Commercial Appeal
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Cajun Culture
Gar fish
Vox Press
Library of Congress
Producer: Edie Greene
Associate Producer: Kate Robison
Cameras: Earnest Seals
Ryan Bohling
Jeremy Burson
Chris Bufkin
Floor Director: Kate Robison
Production Audio: John Busbice
Taiwo Gaynor
CCU: Adam Chance
Videotape: Clark Lee
Location Videography: Jeremy Burson
Lighting Director: Kenneth Sullivan
Production Supervisor: Paul Miller
Editors: Edie Greene
Kate Robison
On-line Editor: Larry Uelmen
Editing Supervisor: Scott Colwell
Production Assistant: Kate Robison
Art Director: Karen Wing
Makeup: Pamela Bass
Title Animation and Graphics: Frank Cocke
Audio Post Production: Taiwo Gaynor
John Busbice
Closed Captioning: Keri Horn
Scenic Designers: Karen Wing
Jack Thomas
Frank Cocke
Kenneth Sullivan
Scenic Craftsman: Jack Thomas
Ray Green
Production Coordinator: Glenroy Smith
Publicity: Mari Irby
Laura Mann
Webmaster: Thomas Broadus
Host: Gene Edwards
Guests: Louis E. Bourgeois
Ralph Eubanks
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Voice of Rheta Grimsley Johnson: Melanie Smith
Director of Television: Jason Klein
Executive Producer: Rick Klein
Special Thanks to
Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Mississippi
Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Suzanne Marrs
Excerpt from Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming used by permission of New South Books. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from The Gar Diaries used by permission of Community Press. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past used by permission of Basic Book. All rights reserved.
Images of Louis E. Bourgeois used by permission of Louis E. Bourgeois. All rights reserved.
Images of Rheta Grimsley Johnson, Don Grierson, Henderson LA, childhood,Jeanette and Johnelle Latiolais, Helene Boudreaux used by permission of Rheta Grimsley Johnson. All rights reserved.
Images of Ralph Eubanks, childhood, Delaney Eubanks, Prestwick AL, Mount Olive MS used by permission of Ralph Eubanks. All rights reserved.
Created by
Gene Edwards
John Evans
Copyright © MAET 2010
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