INTRODUCTION Charley Bordelon is a widowed single mother who is just barely scraping by, teaching art to inner city kids and living in a dilapidated rented bungalow in Los Angeles. But when she discovers that her late father has left her an 800-acre sugar cane plantation in rural Louisiana, she suddenly sees a chance to steer her life back on course. No one in the family had any idea that Ernest Bordelon sold everything he had in order to secure a cane farm outside his tiny hometown of Saint Josephine, and certainly no clue as to why. With nothing left to lose, Charley decides to honor her father''s wishes and heads south to start her new life as a sugar cane farmer. So begins Queen Sugar , the debut novel from Natalie Baszile that charts Charley''s successes and struggles as a novice farmer, as a dedicated mother and a grieving daughter, and as an African American woman in the Deep South. Once in Louisiana, Charley and her eleven-year-old daughter Micah take up residence in the home of Miss Honey, Charley''s grandmother and the matriarch of the extended Bordelon family. Miss Honey is a towering personality, a Bible-quoting dynamo with a quick temper, but also a woman whose generosity and love for her family know no bounds. Miss Honey believes in loyalty above all and soon she has opened her home not only to Charley and Micah, but also to Charley''s half-brother Ralph Angel and his young son, Blue.
Like Charley, Ralph Angel is a single parent surviving the emotional toll of a spouse''s death, but this is where their similarities end; Ralph Angel has a history of drug abuse, violence, and petty crime, and no one but Miss Honey is happy to see him back in town. While Charley balances the needs of family and farm life, Ralph Angel-broke, bitter, and hiding from the law-conspires to claim what he sees as his rightful share of her inheritance. Baszile has created a world rich with local Louisiana detail, and she captures both the tensions and intimacies of small town life. Charley inhabits a complicated position within the white male cane farming community, and Baszile paints a nuanced portrait of how much-and how little-Southern race relations have changed over the generations. When Charley finally discovers the sad truth behind Ernest''s desire to bequeath her the sugar cane property, she understands that her farm''s success will be a vindication for both father and daughter. In Charley, Baszile has given us a heroine who is by turns feisty, ambitious, vulnerable, and compassionate, and whose depth of emotion leaps off the page; her portrayal of Charley''s successes and failures to be a good mother, provider, and role model for her daughter will resonate with readers facing the same daily challenges. Honest, engrossing, and heartwarming, Baszile''s Queen Sugar announces the arrival of an exciting and accomplished new voice in contemporary Southern fiction. ABOUT NATALIE BASZILE Natalie Baszile holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and an MA in Afro American Studies from UCLA.
She lives in San Francisco with her family. This is her first novel. A CONVERSATION WITH NATALIE BASZILE The novel demonstrates a real affection for the people and landscape of Louisiana. Do you have a personal connection with that state? I do have a personal connection. My dad was born in Louisiana, in a little town called Elton; so even though I''m a California native, a suburban kid, I feel that I have the right to claim the place as part of who I am. With one exception, my dad''s siblings and most of their children, my cousins, still live in south Louisiana. They are wonderful people-warm and welcoming-and it doesn''t matter how many months or even years pass between visits, they are always happy to see me. Louisiana, particularly south Louisiana, is so different from what I knew growing up.
It''s a peculiar mix of cultures and ethnicities-black, white, French, Spanish, Italian, and most recently southeast Asian and Latino-and I find the people to be friendly and incredibly generous. A friend here in San Francisco recently said that folks in south Louisiana won''t rest until they''ve fed you and introduced you to someone else they think you''ll like-and it''s true! That''s how I''ve met so many of the people I now consider close friends. As for the landscape, I will confess that south Louisiana is pretty flat, which was jarring to my senses when I first started going down there to do research. I was accustomed to more variation-all the shapes and elevations you see in a city, along the coast, or in the mountains. But I quickly came to appreciate beauty in the gentle curve of a bayou, and the contrast between blue sky and endless acres of green sugarcane. What prompted you to write Queen Sugar? How long did it take? Queen Sugar took almost exactly twelve years to write. I quit my job on June 15, 1999. I remember the exact date because that was the day I left my family business, started writing in earnest, and officially thought of myself as a writer.
I got a book deal in July 2011. It all started when my grandmother, my father''s mother, died in 1997, and my family and I flew down to Elton for her funeral. My grandmother had been a prominent member of her community, a founding member of her church, and she seemed to know everyone. When she died, everyone in Elton, as well as people from nearby towns, showed up for her funeral. The little church was packed. People stood in the aisles, poked their heads through the windows, spilled out into the churchyard. I''d never seen anything like it. At the time, I''d written a story about a father and son-the characters who eventually became Ralph Angel and Blue-who were living in their car somewhere out West.
As I sat in the family pew, watching all the people approach my grandmother''s casket to pay their respects, it occurred to me that this was where the father and son were from, and that they would eventually make their way back. I suddenly understood that I needed to tell a larger story. It''s funny to think that I created Ralph Angel and Blue before I created Charley and Micah, but that''s the way the characters came to me. The novel is organized by month, charting Charley''s progress toward harvest time. Why did you decide to structure the book this way? I wanted the novel to take place during one season, which, for sugarcane, begins in March when farmers start cultivating their fields, and ends on December 31st when the harvest, called grinding, ends. What better way for readers to truly understand what happens during each period of the growing cycle than to divide the book into months? I also thought it was important, critical even, that the reader feel the pressure of time passing just as Charley does, so organizing the book by month seemed like the natural choice. Finally, I always love books that are divided in some interesting way; it''s like taking a breath, inhaling, and then exhaling. Charley is a nuanced character: tough yet vulnerable, stubborn yet compassionate.
Did she arrive fully formed when you began writing the novel, or did she develop over various drafts? Charley definitely evolved over time. For a long time, she was too well-mannered, too polite. All the other characters were flawed in some way, and that made them human, relatable. But for the longest time, Charley never lost her temper, never fell apart; she never made a mistake. It was a huge problem because readers didn''t understand her; they didn''t understand what motivated her and couldn''t get a firm hold on her character. At one point, one of the women in my writing group got so frustrated, she actually yelled at me: "Charley is ruining the book!" That was a real wake up call and I realized the reason Charley was unknowable was because I, as the writer, was afraid of misbehaving, of making a mistake. I was too well-mannered. I was constantly editing myself-in my life and on the page-and while Charley was not me, she was the most "like" me.
We both needed to loosen up. Because the truth is, perfect characters, just like perfect people, are boring. Once I relaxed and allowed myself to be more vulnerable, less reserved, experience the full range of emotion, I could imagine that for Charley. And once I did that, she came to life. The level of detail you provide about sugar cane farming-equipment, methods, terminology-is impressive. How much research did you need to do before writing this book? I did tons of research; I had to. Many of my closest friends live in south Louisiana, and some, for a time, even farmed sugarcane, so I knew the story had to ring true. That was always my goal, the ultimate test: that whenever my Louisiana friends read the book they would agree that I got the details right.
The farmers I met were incredibly generous. They let me ride on tractors and in combines, and they took me through the sugarcane mills. They even let me plant sugarcane. From 2005 until 2011, I visited Louisiana every quarter so I could experience a different aspect of the growing season and also soak up the culture. There was no way I could sit at my desk and make up those details. The name Ralph Angel is an unusual one, but also ironic considering his behavior. How did you choose this name? I don''t recall where I was the first time I heard the name Ralph Angel, but I do remember what happened when I heard it: I felt a jolt-as though someone had dropped a huge cement block nearby or something exploded underground. The ground sort of shook, and I remember thinking, "What a strange name.
He''s going to be a character in a story one day." I knew right away that whatever else Ralph Angel would be, he would be troubled in some way, and that when the story began, he would be far.