It was the first reading I have attended and I was pretty excited to have the opportunity to join in on Katherine Vaz’s reading of her fifth publication, Below the Salt. Even as I had planned to arrive about ten minutes early, the room was already packed and there were no empty seats. I didn’t want to sit out on the benches because of the distractions but it was the only alternative other than sitting on the floor.
As the audience finished up on their refreshments, the 29th Harman Writer of Baruch College gave an introduction of herself and her book, which is based on the time of the Civil War. Similarly to one of the books we read by her, Our Lady of the Artichokes, there is a religious point of view that she incorporates in the story. Below the Salt, from what we can tell by the excerpts she chooses to read to us, is about a woman and her child who are exiled because they chose to not convert to Presbyterianism.
Our Lady of the Artichokes by Katherine Vaz – Image found on Google
Vaz decided to write the book in the point of view of John Olves because he grew up in jail with his mother. She is a great believer in “the feel of the place on your skin,” which she finds important and compares it to how “you can’t just read about what the wind feels like when it comes across the prairie”. She spent half a year in Jacksonville so she could put herself in the shoes of the character to feel for herself what it is like, and therefore, get a better idea of how things apply to her characters in terms of who they are.
Vaz’s reading was full of metaphors and descriptions that painted a picture in my mind. My first experience at a reading was great, followed by a question and answer session. In this session, Vaz explained what she went through to write this book, which took eight years, and how much research she had to do, which is phenomenal and very admirable.
Image found on Google
