Sara Schaff writes and teaches in Plattsburgh. Photo: Aimée Baker
Jun 08, 2020 —
Sara Schaff reflects a lot on women facing difficult junctures in their lives. Schaff is a short story writer teaching at SUNY Plattsburgh and she’s out with a new collection called "The Invention of Love" (Split Lip Press).
Schaff is donating all proceeds from June sales of "The Invention of Love" to Black Lives Matter; Split Lip Press is matching that amount.
Thematically, "The Invention of Love" is similar to her previous short story collection, "Say Something Nice About Me" (Augury Books, 2016). Some of the stories in "Invention" were written as she processed major periods of uncertainty in her own life, including becoming the primary breadwinner in her family and the birth of her daughter. At the time, she said it felt like she may never be able to complete another project. Because of that, the form is different. Some pieces are shorter; flash fiction, more poetic.
As a whole, the collection is a sort of "looking back" and "looking forward." It opens with a piece called "Affective Memory" about a bright-eyed young woman graduating from college in the 1990s and feeling like the world is opening up in front of her.
By contrast, the final story, "Everyone Gets It" is darker and more complicated. It takes place at the time of President Trump’s election and involves a 30-year-old woman dealing with a patronizing boss who steals her business ideas. Still, the main character ultimately finds her own sense of agency:
"I was taking the despair I felt at Trump's election and trying to move it into something that looked forward, so this story deals with much more actual struggle than the character in her 20s in 'Affective Memory.' Despair is a debilitating feeling that leads to inaction rather than action; I think the only way to take action is to have a sense of hope," said Schaff.
"That's how I get through my days is to both recognize what's terrible, what's sad, what hasn't been working, but also to figure out 'what can I actually do?' It's not enough that I'm just sitting here thinking about this and feeling sad I about it. I actually have to do something. Part of what I do in my life is teaching and the connection extends beyond my students and to my community."
Taking action has been a major theme in Schaff's own life. Before moving to Clinton County, Schaff spent a few years teaching at St. Lawrence University and organizing political protests around the election of President Trump. Those experiences in ommunity organizing had a big impact on her writing antagonists that are flatter, more two-dimensional:
"I had less patience and tolerance for cruelty. I've always prided myself on creating nuanced characters, even characters who are causing harm, but with some of the stories of this collection, I was less concerned with making the bad people seem nuanced than I was in pointing out the bad things they were doing," said Schaff.
To that point, one story in "Invention" involves an inappropriate older writing professor who has gotten away with bad behavior for a long time and Schaff says, she wasn't concerned with making him seem good in any way.
"Yes, all characters in fiction, you want them to feel human, but there are humans in the world that cause such grave harm and you can write about those people and they will appear real, but also, the harm they caused has to appear real.
"I don't think in my earlier writings I really, truly believed that there were evil people. I just thought there were all these gradations. I don't know; the villians of superhero movies just seem much more realistic right now. There are people in these stories doing things they just don't deserve forgiveness for."
For her, it wasn't hard to realize she feels some actions don't deserve forgiveness. If you want to make good art and make positive change in your community, you have to call out the wrongs against marginalized people, she said.
"You can't couch [bad action] in nuanced, forgiving language. We try to, instead, focus on stories of redemption and triumph and those are sometimes necessary to build up our morale or a sense of American Identity, such as it is, but it's a false one."
These days, Schaff says, she's putting her hope in the possibility of change in children and her own college students. Last week in Plattsburgh, she attended a Black Lives Matter protest in response to police brutality against men and women of color; she was encouraged to see that most of the protesters were young people.
"Until we tell a complete story about the hard work that black Americans, people of color and women have been doing for centuries and also the work that's been pushing back to undo that work, it's not a real story that we're telling ourselves and the possibility of hope doesn't exist except in a fantasy."
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June 09, 2020 at 01:16AM
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In "The Invention of Love," Plattsburgh writer Sara Schaff tries to move from despair to action - North Country Public Radio
"love" - Google News
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