An Intimate Conversation with Sherry Shahan, author of Purple Daze

Q: Purple Daze is a story about love, friendship, and rock ’n’ roll. It plays out on a stage shared by riots, assassinations, and war. Why did you decide to focus on this particular period?

A: While cleaning out my office closet, I found a tattered shoebox filled with letters written by a friend who was in Vietnam in the 1960s. I spent hours pouring through gut-wrenching accounts of his day-to-day life in that living hell.

It was heartbreaking to watch a close friend turn from a carefree guy who just wanted to hang out with his friends into a hardened soldier. I knew I had to do something with his letters; after all, I’d kept them all this time.

The more I researched the 1960s, the more I realized I needed to narrow the book’s timeline. I chose 1965, in part because of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. By the time it ended, 34 people had been killed, another 1,032 injured, and 3,438 were arrested. Nearly 1,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Q: The characters in your story are faced with difficult issues: abortion, drugs, and war. Did writing the story using an unconventional form help you tackle these issues?

A: After reading my friend’s letters, I started messing around with other writing styles. Journals, notes, poems. I wrote character sketches about my crazy friends in high school. Once I began scribbling, it was a constant flashback. Memories assaulted me twenty-four-seven. Bam, bam, bam.

I knew I wanted to be inside the head of each character to explore his or her innermost thoughts and feelings, not just describe the character from the outside looking in. I could have done this with an omniscient viewpoint—but bouncing in and out of several minds could confuse readers. Instead, I chose journal entries, letters, free verse, and traditional poetry.

Q: What stumbling blocks did you encounter writing a novel in verse?

A: What began as a stream of consciousness had to be shaped into a story with a compelling beginning, middle, and end. Each character demanded his or her own story arc. Yet each story had to be woven seamlessly into the whole. Talk about a challenge!

I became obsessed with metaphor, assonance, startling imagery, rhythm, and cadence. Even white space—meaning the negative space on a page—played a role in shaping my characters’ emotions. Example:

Ziggy

Fat tits + quick wit

does not = stupidity

if that’s what you think.

Phil

Pages of the new testament fill my pillow,

gospels on a recon in search of a soul.

These two poems are short—yet I think they say volumes about the characters, even more than if I’d filled a page with margin-to-margin prose.

To me, verse mirrors the pulse of adolescent life. Condensed metaphoric language on a single page is a good reflection of their tightly packed world. Emotions are where teens live.

Q: How did you go about researching Purple Daze? Was your approach different from your other work?

A: Because Purple Daze is set in a real time and place, I read countless accounts of the 1960s, including The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I talked to dozens of Vietnam vets. One guy told me he put a condom over the muzzle of his rifle to help keep out steel-rusting moisture, yet he could shoot through it. Another guy told me it was common to remove tobacco from packs of cigarettes and replace it with marijuana.

During that same time, one of my friends had enlisted in the Navy. He spent his days cruising the Caribbean, getting drunk, and chasing women. Such vastly different experiences expressed the utter craziness of the times. I knew these details would go in the book too.

Q: Amidst the poetry you have inserted certain—for lack of a better term—news reports about what was going on in the world, e.g., assassinations, riots, etc. With so many events to pick from, how did you select what would go in the book?

A: When I read about Norman Morrison, father of three, who set himself on fire to protest the war, I sat at my computer crying. His piece was included late in the copyedit stage.

Norman Morrison

(December 29, 1933–November 2, 1965)

A devout Quaker and father of three young children pours kerosene over his head and sets himself on fire outside Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office at the Pentagon in an act of self-sacrifice to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

The narrative pieces were chosen because I thought they were fascinating or horrifying or both. I added the story behind Arlo Guthrie’s famed song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” as a light-hearted anecdote. I could have added more history, but I didn’t want Purple Daze to be “textbook-ish.”

Ultimately, it’s a story about six friends and their sometimes humorous, often painful, and ultimately dramatic lives.

Q: You went to high school in Los Angeles in the 1960s, right?

A: Yeah, it was crazy in LA back then. One time, my friends and I snuck out in the middle of the night to check out the underworld of drunks and strip joints on Skid Row. During the Watts Riots, we drove the smoky freeways, looking for a break in the National Guard barrier. We were intent on seeing the fires and destruction up close. We were such adrenaline junkies!

Q: The book feels very intimate. It made me wonder, is the character Cheryl really you in disguise?

A: There are still small holes outside my bedroom door from a hook and eye. That was my mom’s attempt to keep me from sneaking out at night. Like the character Cheryl, I simply crawled out the window.

In one scene, Cheryl and Ziggy are piercing each other’s ears. They’re using frozen potatoes to numb them, sort of like an earlobe sandwich. The Animals are wailing, “We Gotta Get out of This Place.”

And, yep, just like Cheryl, I really did shave between my eyebrows.

Q: Nancy’s behavior toward her boyfriend at the end of the novel was interesting. But you don’t apologize for her or justify her distance from Phil. Can you talk about that a bit?

A: Like most circles of friends, mine was a jumble of diverse personalities. Nancy is based on one of them. She was much more mature than the rest of us. I guess it never occurred to me to try to justify her pulling away. To me, sending Phil a “Dear John” letter showed a thoughtful decision to take her life in a different direction—a direction that was precipitated by his being in Vietnam.

Q: What do you hope your readers will take away from Purple Daze?

A: While I never consciously write with the intent of slapping my readers over the head with a message, the difficulties facing today’s teens aren’t all that different from those teens faced in the sixties, like issues with parents, relationships, love, and loss.

Teenagers are still breaking away from authority and convention, still forging their way into an unknown future. And unfortunately, our country is still engaged in conflicts on foreign soil.

Q: Tell us something no one knows about you.

A: Only if you promise not to tell! Shortly after “Phil” (real name, Bill) came home from Vietnam, we entered a dance contest at a local bar. What a dive! We got together a couple of times beforehand so I could practice turning under his lead. Guess what? We won!

Q: If you were to write a letter to yourself as a teen what would you say?

A: Something like this:

Dear Sheri,

Frizzy hair and freckles. Braces. Flat-chested. Nair slathered on your legs. Your mom wouldn’t let you shave. You shaved between your eyebrows, because she wouldn’t let you pluck. (Trust me, you could have sneaked the tweezers without her knowing.) Did you really put toilet paper in your bra? Uh, let’s not go there. . . .

You always found a way to adapt to challenging situations. Since you could only go out on Friday nights, you crawled out of your bedroom window on Saturday nights. (You have to admit, Mom used a sense of humor when she tied a bell to the shade so she’d know when you came in.)

But . . . driving to downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night to check out Skid Row? Cutting classes and forging your mom’s name on medical excuses? That’s crazy stuff!

Things usually started out innocently enough, like the time you “borrowed” a friend’s car without permission. (He kept his keys in the ashtray, for chrissake!) Plowing into a parked car was an accident. The day went from bad to worse when the police showed up during high school. Grand Theft Auto. Are you kidding me? Reduced to Joy Riding. Okay, that’s better. Still, you were on probation for six months.

You did some pretty stupid stuff during your tumultuous teen years. But that doesn’t mean you were stupid. It’s just that the manual for surviving high school hadn’t been written. It still hasn’t. (When is someone going to write the damn manual?) Seriously, though, I’ve always been one of your biggest fans. I’m proud to have been part of your life.

I’m particularly proud of you for writing to Bill the whole time he was in Vietnam. In fact, you kept writing long after others stopped, including his girlfriend. There were times when your letters were his only connection to a time and place without M16s and Napalm.

Guess what? Bill and your other close friends inspired Purple Daze—a young adult novel you wrote as an adult.

Do you remember this poem? Your scribbled it in ninth grade during a particularly depressing time:

Graveyards and headstones

are merely a lie.

People never live

therefore they can’t die.

It’s in the book too. You only had one boyfriend in high school. Let’s call him Don, because that’s his name. I used his real name in the novel. See? You grew up to be one brave woman!

A few things to remember:

1. People in positions of authority (parents, teachers, employers) aren’t always right. Fire the doctor who said you couldn’t get pregnant.

2. Don’t worry about your frizzy hair. It goes stick straight in your first trimester.

3. It’s okay not to tell your boyfriend all your secrets. But never hide the truth from yourself.

4. A skinned knee will heal.

Love,

Sherry