In anticipation for Bill Hillmann's event at Boswell Book Company at 7 PM on Saturday, May 10th, Boswellian Mel (and superfan of The Old Neighborhood) had a rap session with the award-winning author and founder of Windy City Story Slam about taking punches, Chicago tough guys, death-by-machete, and the positive impact of physics. If this doesn't pique your interest, then you must have one heck of a story yourself and you should stop by Boswell to share your story with Bill!!
As the
founder of Windy City Story Slam, you know a great story when you hear one. Who
is the best storyteller you've ever heard and what makes them so good?
Actually my wife. Whenever we do a national or international
competition she always wins. She’s lived this incredible life herself. She
joined the Zapatistas and survived a machine-gun attack. Her grandfather killed
a man in a machete fight. She grew up in Mexico City, so her life was nonstop
absurdity in comparison to an average American life. Having great material
isn’t everything, though you have to be able to craft a story. She manages to
do this with great timing and usually comes in well under the time limit and
leaves everyone rolling around laughing. She’s good at storytelling because she
enjoys it and gives herself over to the audience. You need to remember that you
are providing a service as a storyteller and you need to do it with effort and
sensitivity.
You
mention in your acknowledgements that you met your wife the day you started
writing The Old Neighborhood. How did
falling in love influence your writing?
It influenced it a lot. Enid’s love has protected me and
kept me moving forward in my life. She has always fanned my flames and this
book is very much a product of our love.
In your
interview with Jacob S. Knabb, Editor-In-Chief of Curbside Splendor, you talk
about being able to absorb tremendous metaphorical blows. So, how do
you take a punch? What advice do you have for people fighting battles at home and in their neighborhoods?
It’s going to hurt. Life is suffering. Be prepared for that.
Sometimes people think hardship depletes us—they are wrong hardship strengthens
us. The closer you are to being completely broken by something the stronger you
will become when you gather yourself and get up. So embrace it. It might send
you through hell but get up and battle back and you will grow to know more
about yourself and the world and what it is to be alive.
In physical fighting, “don’t get hit” is the best advice. That
might mean run, dodge, hit first, and hit with bad intentions, but if you’re in
that freeze-frame moment when that punch is coming and you can’t get away from
it, move with the punch, i.e. if the punch is coming from your left move your
whole body to your right. That motion will take a lot of power away from the
collision when the punch hits you. Think of it as a car crash. Which would
cause less damage: to hit a car in a head on collision, hit a parked car, or to
rear-end a car that is going slower than you? That’s where the phrase “roll
with the punches” comes from: you roll your head and upper body with the motion
of the punch that’s landing. That is what absorbs the blow. It comes down to physics.
But taking a physical punch spiritually, wow that comes down to heart. You have
to be willing to die and kill if you’re going to win in a bad fist fight. And
being able to go to that place, that all comes down to what you’re fighting
for. So you better believe in what you’re fighting for deeply, otherwise you
should just walk away.
Some of
your lines are incredibly poetic. Do you have a background in music, poetry, or
other study of rhythm? Do you consider boxing to be a study in rhythm?
Yes, I wrote
poetry for a long time and one of my mentors is Marc Smith, the founder of Poetry Slam, though I wasn’t really a slam poet. Rhythm is incredibly important
to me in my life and writing. When I’m focusing on a project I wake up at the
same time, I eat the same things for breakfast. I have this rhythmic ritual
that goes on for weeks and months sometimes. On the page it is also incredibly
important to me: sentences need rhythm if they’re going to move and move
people.
Boxing is completely about rhythm, it’s one of the best ways
to defeat a boxer who is a more gifted athlete than you. If you can upset their
rhythm and get into your own rhythm you can beat anyone. Also figuring out
another fighter’s rhythm allows you to time and counter them. A powerful counter
punch can turn an entire fight around.
Why
does physics matter so much to Joe? Does science have a special place in your heart?
Physics was an obsession of mine starting in my adolescence.
I was originally a physics major in college before I started writing. In the
book it’s central. The dominant metaphor is Joe’s obsession with the origins
and destiny of the universe and its subparts, galaxies, and solar systems. The Old Neighborhood of course is about
origins and destinies of its characters, and of hatred and violence and what
survives hatred and violence, which is love. The super nova referenced in the
final passages is a metaphor for a solar system’s regeneration; it is the end
of a star but the birth of something new. Joe’s life has been forever destroyed
but in that destruction he has survived, protected by the love of his father,
and now will embark on a new life. There’s also the positron electron
annihilation metaphor which mirrors the way Chief and D-Ray seemed destined to
destroy each other as perfect nemeses. There are several other smaller subplots
where physics intersect with the street for Joe—exploring astrophysics and
particle physics is his way of assimilating all the horrifying emotions he is
experiencing throughout the second half of the book.
Joe's
family is fraught with complex gender and racial tension. Does white
guilt figure into Joe's family and neighborhood?
Race is such a complex issue. Almost every day I drive
through two very dangerous neighborhoods: South and North Lawndale. I live in
South Lawndale; it’s a Mexican immigrant neighborhood, very poor, and very
violent. My wife works in North Lawndale, which is black, even poorer, and more
violent. I observe the teenage kids. Most are gang members and drug dealers;
these are kids who are surviving a war.
The biggest difference in the two neighborhoods is the
family structure. Mexican families tend to stay together—there is a mother and
father in the household. Black families tend to not stay together—they tend to
be led by single mothers. The Mexican neighborhood is nearly one hundred
percent blue collar: construction, factory workers, and small business
operators. In the black neighborhood, a lot of them are struggling to find work
at all, there are very few small businesses, and most of the small businesses are
owned by outsiders to the neighborhood.
So what you see are these troubled Mexican kids who dodged
bullets, shot people, dealt drugs, and when they get a little older and have
kids, they get married, follow in their father’s footsteps and become blue
collar workers or work in the family business. They settle down into family
life. The black kids they don’t seem to have that luxury. They don’t have the
ladder to climb out of their warfare lifestyle: they get stuck there in the
street and you see 30 and 40-year-olds still out there gangbanging and dealing
drugs. And I think it all comes down to having that father in the household,
having that father who has a blue collar job or any type of job. It creates an
escape.
Joe is the only kid out of his friends and enemies who has a
father in his life. He is also the only one who escapes. As he’s headed out of
the city over the Skyway Bridge he does feel guilt but I wouldn’t call it
“white guilt.” Joe feels guilty because he has a father who loves him and is
willing to do whatever it takes to protect him. That is one of the most
important themes in this book: the value of a father.
Did you face challenges writing about a real neighborhood in
a fictional work?
It makes it easier for me. But there are challenges, like the
Edgewater of my youth is way different than Edgewater is today. Today it’s a
rich neighborhood a healthy portion of it is Gay and Lesbian. Most of the
people who were there when I was a kid are long gone. So it will make it hard
for new Chicagoans to see what I’m writing about in this new Edgewater. At the
same time I think it will interest them to know what the neighborhood used to
be.
The
Edgewater in your novel is like a Faulknerian town in that it is a
character itself. Have you seen this Edgewater in your travels? What resonates? What's different?
Mexico City reminds me of the wild and intense excitement
that the Edgewater of my childhood had. I was living in this ghetto called La
Mesa and this family that was exactly the same size as mine as a kid sort of
took me in. I was broke and couldn’t afford to eat well and the kids would
trick me into coming over and when I walked in there’s be a plate of food
waiting for me. It was bringing up all these emotions: “my god this family is incredibly
poor but look at how happy and generous they are.”
I was working on the second half of the first draft of
The Old Neighborhood at the time and
it really nourished me in a lot of ways. So yeah Mexico City reminds me of the
Edgewater of my childhood, but the people are just way more generous and happy.
I went back to see that family about a year afterward and tricked them. I wrote
them a long letter thanking each and every one of them for all the fun we had
together and how welcoming they were to me and feeding me and I stuck a couple
hundred bucks in the envelope and made sure they didn’t open it until I was
long gone because otherwise they would have given it back. I would still go to
see them but they moved away we lost touch.
There are
a few different dialects in the novel; they're all written well. What advice do
you have for writing dialect?
You’ve got to go immerse yourself in it before you can
really get a handle on it. I don’t mean looking up YouTube videos or watching The Wire: you need to be in touch with
it day in and day out before you really start to understand it. Dialect is fun
but you have to know the rules before you can really play with a dialect.
That’s why it’s good to write what you know, otherwise you better be very, very
good and very well researched. Like the word “Finny” or “Finna” or “Fin-to:” I can play
with those words because those words were in my vocabulary when I was 8 years
old. They weren’t spoken at home but my friends used them and I learned them on
the street. I’ve always been drawn to different people and different ways of
being, so my curiosity has given me an advantage when it comes to dialect. So I
guess you should be curious and go talk with people and create friendships with
different people so you’ll have more to draw on when you start to write.
The Texan for "Finny," "Finna," and "Fin-to" is "Fixin' to." There are people
in the novel, like Tank, Ryan, and Joe's Dad, who solve their problems with their fists. When life gives them lemons, they beat the hell out those lemons.
Yet, they are not cold, loathsome, or vilified. What's the secret
to writing the emotions of tough, physical guys?
Just be real. There are no human beings who are completely
bad. Everyone has a heart. Some people just can’t communicate verbally as well
as others. So they communicate physically instead. Some people may say that this
is animalistic—well, we are all animals as well as humans. Joe’s father has trouble
expressing his deepest emotions verbally, so he does it through his brutality.
To be honest, if Joe’s father talked about his feelings, Joe would be weirded
out and his father wouldn’t be a very believable tough dad. The guy’s a
construction worker. At the same time those emotions are very powerful in the
father and he finally does express them verbally at the end and with much more
power than if he’d said them all the time or tried to talk sense into Joe when
he got in trouble.
In the novel, we only ever see
prison from the outside through visitor's eyes or in Pat's letters. Why not show prison from the inside?
Yeah I could have done some third person of Pat’s
experiences but I didn’t feel it needed it. He tells the story of getting his
eye busted and that seemed powerful enough because of the way he told it as if
it were nothing, as if worse had already happened to him. It gave enough of the
feeling that Pat was living in an extremely dangerous place and surviving it
using his own brutality which he took pride in.
Is humiliation gendered? What does it mean to be tough, yet
vulnerable, and what does that look like "on the street?"
I don’t think humiliation is gendered. Humiliation is
individual: no one can humiliate you unless you let them. You can also
humiliate yourself; that is a dark place to be, but deep down your human
dignity remains. There’s a female boxer in Chicago named Maureeca Lambert. She
is this nice 112 lb girl from the suburbs, very friendly and cute—but when she
enters the ring it’s like a young Manny Pacquiao was unleashed on a novice. She
is ferocious and completely transcends gender with her boxing. Lambert is a
great example of someone who is both vulnerable and tough.
Everyone is vulnerable on the street. The toughest guys get
killed all the time and get beat up sometimes too. No matter how hard and cold
that façade is, deep down they get scared, they get hurt, they feel deeply. That’s
what a lot of people don’t want to face, these people killing and dying in
urban centers all over the United States are not animals. They are human
beings: they are suffering and there needs to be more done to stop the
violence.
Musician Pharoahe Monch's new album is called P.T.S.D. He claims the inspiration for it came from his desire to
connect with people from a place of post-traumatic stress disorder and families
grappling with mental health issues. Monch claims PTSD isn't racial—it's
human.
In Demon Camp, after interviewing a veteran
grappling with PTSD, author Jennifer Percy asks how much of our personal trauma
is wrapped up with the trauma of others.
Are urban decay and PTSD are related?
Yes they are definitely related. As soon as a city begins to
fall apart, violent crime skyrockets. So many cities in America—especially
Chicago—are active war zones. Way more Americans have died in the wars raging
in Chicago than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. And remember those are
nations: we’re comparing them to one city.
The thing I’ve heard people say on National Public Radio is that for a kid
growing up in Englewood there is no “P” in what they’re experiencing. For them
it’s just the constant traumatic stress of living in a warzone: that’s their
life. You talk to kids there and they’ve gone to a lot of funerals, many don’t
believe they will live to be adults or definitely not old age. So maybe for a
person who escaped the urban decay you can call it PTSD but for the ones who
live their whole life in a warzone like Englewood or North Lawndale there’s no
end to your traumatic stress. Every week someone you know or are related to is attacked,
shot, or killed. It’s endless.
Given these thoughts about PTSD, at one point, Joe thinks
Ryan would make a fine soldier and that enlisting might save him from a
gang-related death. Is enlisting a "way out" of the Neighborhood? Is
it a ticket off the streets? A ticket to healing from PTSD?
Many of these gangbangers in these tough cities are
some of the bravest and fiercest warriors you will ever come across. Their
lives are constant warfare and many would make excellent warriors on modern
battlefields. Others are complete cowards and backstabbing evil-doers but you
see those types of behaviors in the military too sometimes. War breeds a lot of
ugly things in people. A kid like Ryan, yeah he’d make a fine soldier. But with
the way the USA waged the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I wouldn’t advise
anyone to join the military. Who knows if we’ll get another war hawk in office
like Bush and end up in Syria in the next few years. In a perfect world where
we only go to war when we absolutely have to defend our nation or to stop a
holocaust then yes, the military would be a great option for a kid growing up
in a violent neighborhood. Also because the military creates a ladder to a job
when you get out or even just a career in the military is a great thing. But to
be clear I have a great deal of respect for and pride in the young American men
and women who fought those wars. I just don’t agree with decision to fight
them.
Joe feels his shock and numbness at The Old Neighborhood's climax is PTSD. You've
mentioned that you'd like to continue with Joe in a trilogy. So, then: what does suburban
PTSD look like?
Hahaha! A kid that is very dislocated from his surroundings.
A kid who is very angry and violent and can’t communicate with the kids around
him. But be careful about talking about the suburbs like they’re all so nice.
Maywood, which is surrounded by very rich suburbs, has an extremely high murder
rate and is a very dangerous warzone. So Joe will find some surprising things
out in the ‘burbs.
Is it possible to heal PTSD by moving to a new neighborhood?
I think the first step toward healing is escaping the war,
whether that be in Iraq or Chiraq. You can’t heal when you’re still struggling
to survive. You need some peace and security. But it’s not the only thing you
need. You have to actively try to work though those emotions. Writing was a
great way for me to work through all the rage and anxiety and pain that I hung
onto after going through what is basically nothing in comparison to what an
average kid in Englewood experiences in their life. So yeah it’s a process of
healing yourself. But I’m no doctor, I am very concerned with the issue though
and would love to get involved with helping people recovering from tragedies
through the arts.
Is it possible to heal PTSD in a war zone?
Exactly, I don’t think that is possible at all. That is one
of the main problems looming over these violent neighborhoods: there’s no end,
there’s no healing. It’s just war all the time. Not to say there aren’t pockets
of good, that there aren’t good people because there are: there are churches
and activists doing great things in these places trying to overcome the
violence but it’s obviously an uphill battle. I believe escape is the only
hope.
What does it take to begin healing?
You have to actively seek healing. You have to find a way to
express those emotions that are drowning you. Otherwise you’ll continue to
suffer and lash out at the world. Healing is hard work but I healed a lot
through writing this novel. It was a very therapeutic experience.
Are these questions you're planning to explore in the second
and third books in the trilogy?
Yes actually Joe is going to start boxing in the second book
and find plenty of healing in the ring. Boxing is an art. It’s not a sport,
though sports can be good too. But boxing is one of those rare physical arts
where you must conquer yourself before you can succeed. It’s very
individualistic in that way. Learning the art of boxing and training and
disciplining yourself as a boxer can be a very healing thing for a troubled
kid.
Bookseller
Bonus Question: What are you reading right now?
Bill Hillmann is an award-winning writer and storyteller from Chicago. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Newcity,
Salon.com, and has been broadcast on NPR. He’s told stories around the
world with his internationally acclaimed storytelling series the Windy
City Story Slam. Hillmann is a Union Construction Laborer and a
bull-runner in Spain. In the not so distant past, Hillmann was a feared
street brawler, gang affiliate, drug dealer, convict, and Chicago Golden
Glove Champion.
"...Maybe I'm writing to people like me, looking back and maybe
regretting some of the things they did in their pasts and trying to
forgive or at least stop being so angry about what they endured, trying
to come to terms with it all and heal."