Archives are a way for people to learn about an institution’s history, whether good or bad. Sheila O’Connor, former Creative Writing Professor at Hamline University and author of “Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fiction,” did just that, uncovering the history of cottages in Sauk Center that housed “immoral” women back in the early 1900s.
On Oct. 28, O’Connor visited Hamline to speak about her novel, interviewed by English Professor Kris Deffenbaker, and Mubanga Kalimamukwento, author and Criminal Justice Professor at Concordia University. In O’Connor’s novel, she delves into the life of a girl named V and follows her through her journey of becoming a teen mother in the 1930s. The concept of immorality was very subjective back then. Women who got pregnant young and were unmarried were seen as the same as criminals. That is exactly what O’Connor is trying to expose in her book and bring awareness of this awful history that Minnesota possesses.
During her interview, she explains why she wrote her novel as fragmented pieces rather than creating a continuous story out of it. She originally attempted to write this book as a full-length, fictional story, but could never get it to feel properly authentic. O’Connor had to rely on fiction to fill in the gaps between known facts, but also used the white space left in the book as proof that she, and that narrator, did not know more about V.
“It’s almost like putting together a jigsaw or something. Consider its place, consider what comes before it, consider what might come after. So it was really a failure of cohesive narrative for me to find a cohesive narrative that ultimately led to this form of the book,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor’s work has reached many people and is still relevant today. Even though Minnesota does not have these same laws and morals anymore, there are still people who have told her that this was their story.
“Even going to Shakopee Prison and meeting with the women there, and they read it with their little club and they had a lot to say about the ways in which this was their story. These women are in contemporary settings and saying this is exactly my story,” O’Connor said
Her book reached so many that Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) – Twin Cities PBS, is doing a documentary on O’Connor and her book. They were there at this event, recording her interview and her interactions with the audience. At this event, it was also announced that the book will be getting a screenplay adaptation.
Deffenbaker uses this book in her First-Year Writing class as a way for first-year students to see another form of writing to tell a story. It shows the uses of fragmentation through facts and fiction to enhance the way a story is told, but also to help show the amount of research it took for this story to be written.
O’Connor has published five other books and has received multiple writing awards for her work.
For history to be told, there has to be someone brave enough to open up the secrets archives hold. The secret lives of these women who were erased from history because of their choices are being brought back into history through O’Connor’s book, telling the story they cannot.
