By Janet Metzger
Most of us have felt like an outsider at one time or another. In Lum, author Libby Ware presents a powerful story of concentric rings of outside-ness. Set in the Appalachian region of West Virginia in 1930, this community of subsistence farmers is already seen by the rest of the country as “other.”
Cast out of this community are the mountaintop dwellers, the Melungeons, a people whose origins are still a mystery today. The title character, Lum, is an outsider to her own family. Now a spinster because she was born hermaphrodite (now called intersex), she is shuffled from one family to another to help raise the little ones. She is arguably the most “outside” of the bunch. I spoke to Libby about the evolution of her debut novel.
In addition to her physical otherness, Lum carries a suitcase hiding a collection of postcards everywhere she goes. How did you come to write about Lum with all her “baggage?”
Characters come first for me. My mom told me a story about a woman like Lum who travelled from place to place to help out. In her case, the woman wasn’t a “hermaphy-dite.” She could have been a spinster aunt. This woman carried around a valise filled with newspaper clippings. I thought that was interesting.
The livelihood of Lum’s extended family and other farm families is increasingly threatened by the Hoover administration’s drive to create the Blue Ridge Parkway. How did this historical event become the background for Lum?
At the time, the government built factory towns for the workers, then moved entire communities off the land into these towns. Cabbagetown in Atlanta is one of these towns where an entire Appalachian community was displaced. In Lum there is the discovery moment by moment of these strange government people coming through the community, and how the mystery builds and how the community is changed by the parkway.
Lum is not the only outsider in your book. A community of Melungeons is routinely set upon in various ways. How did they come to be a part of Lum?
I first heard of the Melungeons in Lee Smith’s The Devil’s Dream. In it a musician wrote a song about a dark skinned man called The Melungeon Man. They are mysterious – no one knows their origin. There are a number of unproven theories – that they are tri-racial, or shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, or from Turkey. It all adds to the mystery.
Without you calling it so, this book is also about bullying, the kind that boys do to girls who are seen not just as different but also strong.
Yes, as if they are saying, “Watch what I can do to you.” Whether a girl is slow to develop or quick, they pick on you. You can’t win. I hated writing the scene with her brothers, but often in fiction you have to put your characters through horrible situations for dramatic tension. You hate it but you have to humiliate them sometimes. Lum can’t forget what happened. When you are stuck in a small town, you must interact with them the rest of your life.
Lum is available wherever books are sold and online. To support your local independent bookstore, try Charis Books and More in Little Five Points, as well as Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur. Janet Metzger is an audiobook narrator, performer and teacher living in Decatur. She also read Lum for the audiobook version.