Each day leading up to the 32nd annual Minnesota Book Awards announcement, we’ll be featuring an exclusive interview with one of our 36 finalists.
Interview with Staci Lola Drouillard, author of Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe, part of the Minnesota Nonfiction category
How does it feel to be a Minnesota Book Award finalist?
I have carried around and protected these old stories about Chippewa City for over thirty years. In writing Walking the Old Road, it was my intention to one day set them free, and share the voices of my Nishkwakwansing elders with others, to ensure that they would never be lost or filed away and forgotten. I was in the process of recording Walking the Old Road as an audio book, taking that one last step to guard them for posterity, when I learned that it was named a Minnesota Book Award finalist. I am completely thrilled to be included, but mostly, I feel relieved and happy, knowing that I can finally let the story go out into the world, and watch it grow bigger and bigger.
Tell us something about your finalist book that you want readers to know?
In Walking the Old Road I write about visiting my great-grandmother’s lilac bush that was planted near her house on the eastern edge of Grand Marais. It bloomed every spring and has come to represent her life and tragic death, as well as tenacity and rebirth. In the book I use this old tree as a symbol of spiritual and cultural survival; a tough, old remnant of off-reservation life that refuses to wither.
This past November, MnDOT was working on road clearing for a planned highway expansion, and without warning, the workers cut great-grandma’s lilac down to its roots. I discovered it later that morning, a pile of scratchy branches, exposed roots and one bird’s nest, signs of vibrant life that were carelessly left to freeze and disintegrate. I made a desperate call to a local landscaper, who was able to extract the massive root clump from the nearly frozen ground, and it now lies dormant, covered in a pile of mulch and snow. I don’t know if there is any life left in the old tree, but I remain optimistic. Because to let that lilac go would be like letting great-grandma go, and that’s simply not an option. In a way, this recent setback has caused the tree to become an even more potent symbol of survival, in a world where progress means bigger roads and sidewalks. It’s a strange place when 100-year-old lilacs are not honored, but instead are chopped into bits and considered to be in the way. As soon as the ground is warm, I’m going to bring water to the roots. And hopefully, if and when tender lilac leaves are teased out by the sun, our family will take careful cuttings from the woody stem and spread great-grandma’s lilacs all over the place.
Share something about your writing process and preferences. For instance, where is your favorite place to write?
Where spoken words often fail me, written words, whether in pen on paper, or typed into a computer, are often easy. If I’m trying to get to the heart of something–really unearth the blood and guts of an idea, I have to write it down. I recently started work on a novel while sitting in the sun at one of my favorite campsites on Saganaga Lake. Deep, clear water, ancient rocks and nowhere to go. I can’t wait to do that again sometime soon.
Minnesota has a reputation as a state that values literature and reading. In your experience, what is it about our state that makes it such a welcoming place for writers and book creators?
Simply put, I believe that most Minnesotans value art in all forms and to prove it, we have historically made room for art, reading and writing inside our homes, schools, universities and public institutions. We are, for example, one of only a few states to purposefully create a public arts, culture and history fund that was voted into existence by Minnesota voters and supported by the vast majority of people, regardless of political party. Prioritizing the arts, honoring the creation of books and being proud of the stories we make, is as Minnesotan as a long goodbye.
What is something you are good at that few people know about?
A lot of Walking the Old Road was semi-composed in my head, while I was hunched over a commercial mixer at Lola’s Bakery, the business I ran for nine years. My alter ego, Lola, was known for organic carrot cake and the best chocolate buttercream this side of the 35E/35W split. Often there were entire days of work that toggled between adding sprinkles to cupcakes and wondering where I could track down a specific piece of Chippewa City land history. I don’t mean to boast, but this past Christmas I made the best cheesecake of my life. Tall, fluffy, with just the right amount of sweetness…it was perfect! My great success at cheesecake might be attributed to the fact that I was not trying to write and bake at the same time–another blessing that has come along with the publication of Walking the Old Road.
What do you love about libraries?
Libraries are a place of endless possibility–a breathtaking revelation for a sheltered, yet creative little girl. My mom used to drop me off at the Grand Marais Public Library when I was a kid, where I would spend hours reading or thumbing through books. It was not very big, but it certainly aimed to please. I used to sit on the floor between the rows of children’s books and take my time deciding what stack of mysteries I would bring home that week. Books have always been my salvation and in some cases, served as the perfect escape hatch, catapulting me from small town life and into the mind of a sleuth, a spelunker, or a mouse named Ralph. As a shy kid, I loved libraries best because there was never any reason to talk–in fact, it wasn’t even allowed.
In college I had the good fortune to be assigned a work study job at Wilson Library on the U of MN campus. Those were the days of the Dewey decimal system and every time a book was checked out, a tiny date stamp was made on a delicately-lined paper card and a special, colored tab was clipped to the top, indicating the due date and the terms of the book loan. There were thousands of cards, representing thousands of books. My favorite job was re-filing the carts of returned books to the stacks. The Wilson collection is massive, and it would often take me an entire work shift to locate the home turf of a particular book. And please don’t tell Mary Habstritt, the head librarian back then, but a lot of my paid time was used to do some in-depth explorations inside the covers of old volumes, first edition wonders and leather-bound rare treasures. It was the best job I’ve ever had.
Even now the smell of a book will take me back to the carpeted floors of Grand Marais Public Library or transport me back to the seductive floor-to-ceiling stacks of Wilson Library. My heart flutters, just to think of it.
Staci Lola Drouillard lives and works in her hometown of Grand Marais. A Grand Portage tribal descendant, she began interviewing Chippewa City elders in 1987.