Characters who long to survive and stories that stick in the mind

"All Things Are Labor"
by Katherine Arnoldi
on WSKG Radio's OFF THE PAGE
L I V E  Tuesday, September 4th at 1:00 PM
(Rebroadcast at 7:00 PM)

          My mom used to give me baths in the sinks. Now I lean over and wash my own hair. If they got a faucet you got to hold down, my mom holds it down for me. "If we don't take care of each other, who will?' my mom says.
          She's right. It's me and my mom and the road. I'm afraid my mom's going to get caught and then she'd go away for a long time, and then who would take care of her? Who would take care of me? We don't have any relatives. Alls we got is each other. I don't want my mom to get caught. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. I tell her she's got to stop, that revenge is bad karma. But she's on a mission, which I already told her a million times I don't agree with at all. She gets mad when I call her retro, but that's what she is: retro.
               --from Bonneville Salt Flats in "All Things Are Labor"

          Most of the characters in the Katherine Arnoldi short stories collected in "All Things Are Labor" do have a voice and a sense of purpose. But they are also existing at the margins of American society and as readers we are in the situation of hearing and sharing experiences that we may feel fortunate are not our own. But the stark detail of these twenty-five stories and Arnoldi's direct style make reading them a powerful pleasure.

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          Arnoldi's stories are populated by men and women with low-esteem and shaky status, facing situations they do not understand: eviction by a landlord who has it in for the whole world, an ant farm protected by a mother figure in Greenwich Village, visions of heaven and earth. Action may turn violent (though the violence often turns inward) and many of the characters have no names. Several stories are set around the beliefs and practices of the Mennonite religion. In telling these stories Arnoldi gives the actors a degree of loving protection.
           Her own life story is powerful. Katherine Arnoldi was raped and became a single mother at the age of seventeen. Her youth in Canton, Ohio was not easy. Her mother raised three children by herself; Katherine's need to raise her daughter Stacie on her own was a strain and "one bad thing and then another bad thing over and over." Arnoldi tells of those years in "The Amazing 'True" Story of a Teenage Single Mom", a graphic memoir - essentially a hard-cover comic book - written and drawn by her and published in 1998. Its intent is to share the experience of one teenage mom and her child, marked by episodes of abuse, dead-end jobs and aimless wandering. It would also offer hope, for Katherine (though she is not named in the text) does find some stability, enters college and finds purpose in her life.
           The book ends with practical advice ("hitchhiking is never safe"), a list of institutions that support women facing personal crises and college information on how to apply for college.
           Today Katherine Arnoldi is a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing at Binghamton University. She is also an advocate for the educational rights of single moms and founder of a scholarship fund and the Single Mom College Program. Her fiction, non-fiction and visual art have won numerous prizes including a Newhouse Fiction Award. Entertainment Weekly named "The Amazing 'True' Story of a Teenage Single Mom" one of the ten best books of 1999. "All Things Are Labor" is recipient of this year's Juniper Prize in Fiction. She is also the founder and senior editor of College Mom Magazine.
           Katherine Arnoldi joins Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to share her stories and her work on behalf of single mothers. To join in the discussion call during the live 1:00 PM broadcast to 888/359-9754 or post a comment to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.

NEXT TIME: In golf's pro-am competition the last amateur to beat the pros and win the U.S. Open was Johnny Goodman in 1933. The story of an orphan who rose from caddy to champ - and the burgeoning world of golf during the decades of the 1920s and 30s - is told in "The King of Swings" by Delaware County resident Michael Blaine. He visits OFF THE PAGE on Tuesday, September 18th.

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