By G.
Wayne Dowdy
Every person who has
trod the earth is a historical figure whose story deserves to be told. This is
especially true of a place like Memphis, where creativity flows from the many
cracks in its streets. I have devoted my writing career to uncovering these
stories and bringing to literary life those forgotten souls whose life and work
has contributed greatly to the history of our world. .
These views were shaped
by the stories my parents and grandparents told around the Sunday dinner table
along with one of my favorite TV shows, The Waltons. I loved the program
because the life depicted was similar to the stories my family told of life
during the Great Depression and World War II. As a child I identified with the
main character John-Boy because I wanted to grow up and become a writer just as
he did. In one episode written by Colley Cibber an itinerant author shared with
John-Boy a piece of advice that has stayed with me throughout my writing life -
“Don’t waste your life searching for the one big story you were born to write.
Write the little stories. Who knows, the sum total of them might be the big
one.”
As a narrative
non-fiction author I write the small stories that try to provide readers with a
bigger understanding of our collective past. For Memphis, like any other place,
is populated by human beings living their lives in a variety of circumstances.
I collected many of these smaller and more unusual stories in my books On This Day in Memphis History and Hidden History of Memphis where I
wrote about the Memphis gangster who inspired William Faulkner to write the
novel Sanctuary, the angry parishioner who bit off his pastor’s finger,
the brave African American woman who refused to sit in the black section of a
streetcar in 1905 and the day it rained snakes.
I also chronicled the
rise and fall of the Crump political machine and the success of the Memphis
civil rights movement in my books Mayor Crump Don’t Like it and Crusades for freedom. In a Brief History of Memphis I attempted “to cover the
major events in Memphis history, from its early days as a raucous river town
through it emergence as a major Southern metropolis in the final decades of the
twentieth century.” In order to understand the role of youth organizations in
the development of Memphis I wrote my most recent book, Scouting in Memphis:a History of the Chickasaw Council, BSA.
I see each of my books
as a piece of a mosaic; telling a specific story but part of a larger whole.
Taken together it is hoped that when I am done the volumes left behind will be
a kind of grand narrative that touches on all the major themes of Memphis
history. In that way, without sounding like I am too big for my britches, I
will have completed the big story I was born to write.
______________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment