Kellams: This is Ozarks at Large. On last Friday's program, we heard from author Maria van Lieshout about her graphic novel, "Song of a Blackbird." She'll be a visitor on the University of Arkansas campus Oct. 1 as the guest of the College of Education and Wellness Clinic for Literacy. She's also going to lead a hands-on workshop for local school teachers while here.
The book, while fiction, is inspired by Maria's grandparents' lives in Amsterdam during World War II. When Maria discussed the book from her home in Alameda, California, earlier this month, she explained the significance of placing a blackbird in the story and in the book's title.
van Lieshout: Well, interestingly enough, the blackbirds, at least here in California, I've never been to Arkansas. I've never been to the Ozarks. So I don't know what the blackbirds are like there. But the blackbirds here in California are very different from the blackbirds in the Netherlands, which are smaller. And they have this beautiful song that is just like nothing you've ever heard.
So when my mom was 5 years old and she was, they were living through the last winter of the Second World War, which was called the Hunger Winter. And it was called the Hunger Winter because it was a miserable winter. It was a very cold winter. All coal and wood had been burnt up, so all the homes were cold. It was just a few months after my mother's childhood home had been bombed. All food was rationed, so people were continuously hungry. There was, people were being deported to concentration camps. It was a very grim and miserable time.
And my mother remembers walking through the streets of Amsterdam and hearing a blackbird sing. And this is something that she'd been telling us throughout her childhood. And she remembers hearing the blackbird and asking her mother, "Does the blackbird realize it is wartime?" To which my grandmother answered, after giving it some thought, "Yes, I believe that blackbird realizes it's wartime, and it sings so beautifully because of it, not despite it."
And I felt that that was such a profound moment. And in that moment, clearly the blackbird gave my mother and my grandmother hope. It inspired hope in them.
So when I was thinking about the narrator for my book, I felt strongly about wanting to book the book to be narrated by inspiration itself. So I wanted an omniscient narrator, but one that could perhaps also influence my characters to some extent. And I believe, I'm a firm believer in inspiration, and I think inspiration shows up in our lives every once in a while, and we either choose to listen to it or we choose to ignore it.
And so I wanted this inspiration, this concept, to be the narrator of my book. And I knew that I wanted its shape to be a blackbird because it had, that blackbird had inspired my grandmother and my mother so many decades earlier during that grim Hunger Winter.
Kellams: Maria van Lieshout's graphic novel is "Song of a Blackbird." She talked from her home in Alameda, California, earlier this month. She'll be visiting the University of Arkansas campus and discuss "Song of a Blackbird" as a guest of the College of Education and Wellness Clinic for Literacy. She'll also lead a hands-on workshop for local school teachers.
A much more thorough conversation with her about the book can be heard here. Just search for last Friday's program. This is Ozarks at Large.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
