Next week Michael Datcher is bringing to East St. Louis an unusual novel that he wrote about the city. He will read from his novel “Americus” at venues throughout East St. Louis (and at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville) as a guest of the Eugene B. Redmond Writer’s Club.
“Americus,” which was published last fall, is an historical novel set in East St. Louis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the race riot of 1917. Its narrative patterns are even more deeply historic, based on ancient Egyptian stories and ideas, and many characters bear names drawn from ancient Egypt, rather than East St. Louis.
The main storyline, however, is familiar to anyone who grew up with siblings, as it’s a family drama involving a rift between twins. “It’s about what happens in families when a family has a problem that cannot be solved,” Datcher said.
Datcher visited his friend Eugene B. Redmond in East St. Louis while writing the novel, where Redmond – a native son – took him on various tours and introduced him to “assembled East Boogie experts,” including Dr. Lena Weathers, Darlene Roy, Sherman Fowler, Eugene Haynes, Anne Walker and Reginald Petty. In East Boogie, the author was treated to “rap sessions on everything from flora and fauna to race and politics,” Redmond said.
Datcher said he was drawn to East St. Louis as an emblematic American place, as is reflected in the novel’s title, “Americus,” which is the surname of the family at the center of the story.
“East St. Louis has such an interesting history,” Datcher said. “In many ways it represents the American story in the late 19 century. It was a city of immigrants from Europe working in the meatpacking and railroad industries, with blacks leaving the violence of the deep South to work in the same industries, at times breaking strikes. So much about the history of America is rooted in racial and class conflict.”
“Americus” is also deeply rooted in a record made by a man who grew up in East St. Louis, “Kind of Blue” (1959) by Miles Davis, which Datcher listened to constantly while writing his novel.
“I wanted to capture that feeling,” Datcher told the BBC. “Miles talked about not only playing notes, but knowing the silence between the notes.”
As Datcher told The American, “East St. Louis is a place that produced Miles Davis. It’s such a soulful town. I wanted to write about it, about people who have survived hardship to create beauty and art.”
Datcher previously wrote a much more accessible, indeed best-selling memoir, “Raising Fences: A Black Man’s Love Story” (2001), which narrates his coming of age as a young man without a father in Los Angeles. He also co-edited “Tough Love: the Life and Death of Tupac Shakur” (1997) and writes poetry and scholarly essays. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University and edits “The Truth About Fact: International Journal of Literary Nonfiction.”
He will read and sign books for students and faculty on February 16 and 17 at SIU-E, East St. Louis High School and Southwestern Illinois College ESL Higher Education Center. His public reading will be held 6 p.m. Tuesday, February 17 in Room 2083 of the ESL Higher Education Center, 601 J.R. Thompson Dr. in East St. Louis.
