On Thursday April 23rd, all the students in grade 9 and 10 met the Lithuanian American author Ruta Sepetys via Zoom. The 9th graders were well prepared and had came up with great questions in advance. During the author talk the Language and Literature teacher and advisor Matt O’Brien was the emcee (see picture below).
Due to the corona crisis all students were staying with their advisors in different classrooms and the 10th graders were participating from home. Further down in this blog post, you are welcome to read some documentation from the talk. It was very interesting to hear Ruta talk about her historical novel Salt to the sea, inspired by her own family history.
Photo: Ellen Cassedy
Ruta wrote the novel Salt to the sea because she wanted to share strength, struggle and hope through history. She wanted to bring other human beings and their stories out of the dark. She also thought it was important to put Lithuania on the map. Because many people she met on tours as a Rock’n Roll manager and during TV shows did not know what being Lithuanian meant.
Salt to the sea takes place during the Second World War. It brings up a part of Ruta’s family history since, for example her dad lived in a refugee camp in nine years. In connection to that her family lost everything, except from its spirit. There was also someone in the family having a ticket to the ship Willhelm Gustloff that sank. When it did, it was a larger maritime disaster than Titanic. Despite that it is very unknown. So when Ruta heard the story she thought how is it possible that nobody has heard about this and she got inspired to write about it. She also thought that when you write your own story and go through both sad and fun moments, you get a deeper sense of yourself and your own identity. When you write about struggles, you also realize the power of love and gain perspective, making you feel that anything is possible.
If Ruta would see herself in any of the characters in the novel, it would be Emilia, because Emilia is courageous and admirable. She is independent and difficult to write about. She is strong and goes her own way. Ruta’s second choice would be Florian, because he has got a lot of wisdom. The characters in Salt to the sea are based on real people that Ruta met while doing research.
When Ruta did research for Between shades of gray, people were afraid of mentioning their real names. For example she put together words describing her interviewees, for example ”the bold man”. When she interviewed people, she could not even record or take notes, because people were afraid of telling their stories. So she had to sit down and just listen to people’s experiences and ”emotional beats”.
Ruta wants to give people ownership of their own story. She wants to change characters from being invisibile to become visible. She asks herself who she is writing about. She also writes about people from different countries and cultures, because there were for example many who immigrated during the Second World War.
She also wants to use different angles and perspectives. That is also why she included Alfred in Salt to the sea. He personifies a study of invisibility, and is inspired by the life of Adolf Hitler. For example both Alfred and Hitler were rejected by their own dads. They were racists and felt a desperate need to be imporant. During the author talk, Ruta was asking the students: What do you think happen when you put such a man in uniform?
Usually Ruta wants to write history as it was. She wants to show a balance, both sides of life, but she thinks that there are always elements of hope.
Ruta’s style consists of short sentences and chapters. One word usually represent four meanings. She uses rhythm, flow, repetitions and even the white space on the page, asking herself: What does the text look like? In general she is very inspired from having worked with songwriting. (Ruta got a background within music, entertainment industry and film composing. What has been important to her during her whole career is especially the power of melody and rhythm. It supports the memory.)
Ruta thinks that having a big ego both helps and hurts when you write a book. It helps because it requires courage and confidence to write a book. It also hurts because you are not really allowed to put yourself in there.
When it comes to the writing process Ruta thinks that the most important thing is to actually write, to do your work, because than you will get practicing and training. Motivation leads to inspiration, Ruta thinks, and the most interesting part with being creative is that you never know what is going to happen when writing.
