Interview with Michael Ellis about his novel Dear Oprah

 Michael Ellis' mother 

 Ellis' with his daughter 

Today we have Michael Ellis in Five Questions, talking about his fascinating new novel, Dear Oprah. Michael Ellis was professionally published before he graduated from high school. His dialect poems and Southern Literature were enough to land him in a prestigious University, Puget Sound, where he majored in English. Compared often to Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes, Ellis would publish several books of poetry, a novel and many essays read around the world. So, here we go, Michael.   

Santosh Q 1: At the very outset, let me congratulate you for your riveting, very sensitively written new novel, Dear Oprah. Would just want you to tell us something more about yourself and the making of the book.  So, let us begin by hearing you describe Michael Ellis in three sentences.

Michael Ellis: Michael Ellis is a legacy Poet on a long mission and defined purpose which is to leave his ink on the shores of the world. He composes his poetry in layers, often taking years to complete a poem or story. He speaks the hurt of millions of people through poetry and stories and coins his work “Prosetry’.

Santosh Q 2.  Ah, that is indeed a very intriguing coinage and definitely stokes the curiosity of the reader. I was also fascinated by the fact that the language of the writer, Michael Ellis and that of the protagonist, Correne, are poles apart.
 Was this changing of linguistic gears difficult for you?

Michael Ellis: The voices of people remain in my head as a magnet would attract a metal. The sadder ones remain even longer. At my best, I could imitate thirty different voices when I performed on stage. When people read Dear Oprah, they are feeling more than thirty years of painful memories that I store from people I meet. Correne is a collage of at least five women I met in my life, but created mostly from a single co-worker I knew many years ago.

Santosh Q 3. Tell me something about the writing of this book.  Was writing it cathartic?  In the foreword of the novel, you write, ‘If this novel changes one life for the better, it was worth every minute of those ten years it took to write.”
After its publication have you got any such positive response? Yes, one more thing, how could you, a male writer so convincingly get into the skin of a traumatized woman and vocalize her screams so eloquently?  

Michael Ellis:  In the house and community I grew up in, child molestation was as common as the day Sunday on a calendar. When I was just four, I begin to hear this word on a regular basis and I just added it to my Disney glossary words. Writing Dear Oprah was an extreme challenge because I had to go back into that haunted house more than a thousand times to get this book to stand on its spine. It won two awards even when there was only a single chapter. It earned the interest of agents and I was warned to only give this book to a major publisher. I grew up with seven sisters. Over eighty percent of my family relations were with women. It was clearly a matriarchy and it seemed as if men just were not important, powerless or just did not exist. I was given the heart and lungs of a woman so I could relate to their victimization. Writing would be my weapon as a child to bring them healing. I watched my mother die before she reached fifty, hurt so often by men, and her ghost of justice leaped into me. I was eight and I already had a purpose in life.

 Santosh:  Your mother’s premature death must have been very devastating for an eight year old you, and this anguish must be creeping into whatever you pen.  It is indeed very touching that you have dedicated the book to your mother Evelyn and Sister Diane.

Santosh: Q 4 You know, Michael, the following lines from the foreword that you write about a lady in your place of work, remained etched in my mind.

‘To the world she was hideous in form, and in appearance. But there was also a light inside her, long extinguished, a hope deleted because of her image she let others create.” Could you throw some more light on it? And also, do tell us what is your rosiest dream and your most horrifying nightmare?

Michael Ellis: The media dictates to us what is beautiful, what is desired and charming. Women nearing three-hundred pounds never make these list. Women who are illiterate and not hygienic never get shampoo commercials. Correne had to find her light in flowers in her neighbor’s garden, in poetry and in an amputated veteran. Josh used her broken self-esteem as a weapon against her. There is an insanity within all of us where we defy all reason and do the unexpected.

Santosh: Yes, I really loved the way, Correne found solace in flowers, and the way, Sonja would tell her about flowers, and her heart- warming friendship with Nam, the amputated war veteran.  

Michael Ellis: My rosiest dream is that one day I will start a human love pandemic, kick a domino over and a million people will love each other. I can leave after such a scene, showing others that love is arduous but not impossible. My greatest nightmare is probably the opposite. I have reached more than a million with poetry to utter exhaustion. If I don’t find someone in the next generation to carry on this mission of humanity, I would be fractured. In both scenarios, I think I have thirty years of daylight hours left in this beautiful life before night comes. I fear living a life without a purpose.

Santosh Q 5:  Michael, tell me, what gave you the idea of writing a novel, where the story unfolds through a series of letters which the protagonist writes to Oprah Winfrey, and yes, what I also liked about the book is that there is the added bonus of interwoven rhyme.  

Michael Ellis: After ten years into poetry, I started to feel an emptiness. I wanted to tell stories like Frost using poems. Some of our great contemporaries would brave three or four pages of poetic prose. But what if I went deeper into the woods than Frost and could write a poem for six pages or eight or ten. Could I maintain the rhyme without losing the story?

 Dear Oprah started as a ten page single letter and it went around the world. Women wrote back saying, they saw themselves in Correne.  So I said I could go for twenty pages and that’s it. I added Josh as a second character but by then I was invited to a prestigious University and recognized for literary brilliance for a rhyming novel. I wanted to open a door for poets who would never get the recognition of a novelist, so merging the two genres together seemed like the solution. As a new poet, I wrote Oprah several times. I would never get a personal reply so I told myself, if I am waiting on Oprah to be famous, I could be waiting forever. Thus the parallel of Correne waiting on Oprah to solve her conflict. A Rhyming novel seemed absolutely impossible and so many told me I could never pull it off for two-hundred and sixty-five pages. This novel was my way of not listening to naysayers. If I can reinvent the modern novel, I will add this to my rosy dreams.

Santosh: Yes, it is indeed very innovative, having a unique charm all its own. You know, my heart really went to Nam and his pathetic state really made me cry.

Michael Ellis: I went against the advice of several agents to publish this book. I didn’t want it to be marketed as a book about race, but more as a book about women and domestic violence. A major New York editor almost derailed Oprah by asking me to take it out of rhymes and make it more like the Color Purple. I lost seven years because I was frustrated. The final chapters or resolution actually came to me fifteen years after the first chapters. I really didn’t know how to end this book until the last moment. Few people told me they like the book but that it was just too sad to read, heart breaking. Like Nam, my grandfather was an amputee. Lastly every time I write a line I have to actually hear the sound of the character in my head. I have to literally go there in my mind to create. I did not want this novel called another Color Purple going in. Though Oprah will make that unlikely. I sent this chapter to a contest and earned a residency in Massachusetts. I hope to tour this August.

Santosh:  Hearty congratulations for winning the contest and all the best for your upcoming tour. It was indeed a great pleasure interacting with you. Hope to see more books from you in the near future.