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| Paulette Mahurin, Author The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap |
Who
among us would want to be prevented from loving? From intimacy, from the one
we love? Then why do so many voices want to enter a discussion that make
it impossible for another, to lay with their beloved in safety, unafraid of
persecution, or worse, imprisonment or death. Who would dare hold to his/her
passion and risk this?
And, yet we read books daily by the millions with
stories of
these loves -- tragic, agonizing, unrequited-- and we fixate on the page, imagining this
fantasy world out there. We point
fingers out there, and yet sit down with a book and in the safety of our imagination
go to places beyond our beliefs.
This is what books do, they allow us to venture out of our collective
boxes and entertain the possible, in the fantasy. We are entertained by our own
human desires, hooked by the chemistry words create that set in motion images
of what it must be like if only…
As a writer, it is not difficult to
understand what entertains, in light of seeing the human condition, and what
has drawn us to stories for centuries.
Around
the world, there are a multitude of things that entertain us as a society, the celebrity,
the infamous, the rich, the utterly destitute, a poignant love story, devastation,
the unbelievable, ad nausea. My story, The
Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, started
from a photo I had seen of two women standing closely together dressed
in turn of the twentieth century garb. They jumped off the page as lesbians,
which seeded the story of a lesbian couple on the frontier, fearful of being
found out.
In
researching that time period, I hit pay dirt when I came across the
imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in Britain in 1895. Now, I have the sensationalism to thread my story,
hold interest, and hopefully entertain.
Here, I will take the liberty of quote from the prologue of
my book:
Telegraphs clacked around the world with the breaking
news of the conviction of Oscar Wilde. Mr. Wilde, noted celebrity and one of
the most successful playwrights, novelists, poets, and short story writers,
suffered a stunning defeat when he was sentenced to two years of hard labor in
prison after being convicted for “gross indecency.” Wilde’s case, one of the
first tried under Britain’s recently passed Criminal Law Amendment Act,
criminalized sexual activity between members of the same sex, thus changing
people’s attitudes about homosexuality from a mood of pity and tolerance to
hatred and abuse.
The unofficial buzz in the tabloids was that Wilde was caught in
the act with another male, Lord Douglas, the son of the Marquis of Queensberry,
and Victorian London would have none of it. The news of trial and conviction
spread fast and furiously to towns large and small around the world, exactly
the kind of news story Red River Pass, a small town in Nevada, relished.
Oscar Wilde was the first celebrity
tried and convicted under Britain’s recently changed law to make sex between
men, indecency, a criminal offense,
with a prison sentence of hard labor for two years. Where telegraphs existed in
the world in 1895, the news of his imprisonment became known. It was this news
that changed views on homosexuality from that of an attitude of observed
conservative tolerance to outward hostility and abuse. There was an article in
the New York Times, April 1895, that went on about the
immorality of Oscar Wilde and homosexuality. Conversations, banned from living
rooms around the world, became front and center, Wilde’s imprisonment, the
vehicle for intolerance and hatred, was a set-back in the history of human
rights.
Oscar Wilde’s importance is not
just as one of the most prolific literary figures of our time but as a lightening-rod scape goat
for unleashed hatred, that the ignorant can not see lives in their own hearts.
I would like to close my wonderful visit here with an excerpt from Oscar
Wilde’s De Profoundis, a letter he wrote to his lover while imprisoned. It is
what inspired my writing The Persecution
of Mildred Dunlap.
More on
Paulette Mahurin
Paulette Mahurin is
a Nurse Practitioner (NP), specializing in Women's Health in a rural
clinic in Ojai, CA., where she lives with her husband Terry (a retired
NASA attorney) and her two dogs Max & Bella (rescued from kill shelters).
She has taught nursing in several college level programs, including
preceptorships for UCLA and USC's NP programs in the emergency room (ER).
She worked as an NP in the second busiest ER in Los Angeles County, with
the highest census in child abuse. Her current novel, The Persecution
of Mildred Dunlap,
draws on her work in the ER to connect the reader with an emotional authenticity about
prejudice, abuse, violation of body and soul, as well as the loving compassion
of friendships and supportive relationships.
When Mahurin isn't
writing, she is an advocate of tolerance, women's rights, and an animal
activist, who spends a great deal of time doing pro bono work for women
in her community along with rescuing dogs. The profits from her novel go
to SPARC, the first no-kill animal shelter in Ventura County, CA.
Links
http://www.amazon.com/Persecution-Mildred-Dunlap-Paulette-Mahurin/dp/097718661X/ref=la_B008MMDUGO_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345057988&sr=1-1
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