BCC Shines a Light On: Teresa Tumminello Brader
BCC Shines a Light On:
Teresa Tumminello Brader
Name of the piece published by BCC:
When/where was it originally published:
2008, Pequin
What is the background of the piece? What led you to write it? What’s your process?
I started writing with an eye toward publication in 2006, so this is one of my early stories. The C-section experience with the indifferent surgeon belongs to me, something that happened twenty-five years before I wrote the piece. I had the title before the story was written, which is unusual for me. I was thinking about the different meanings of the word and that had a part in the shaping of the story, but even that happened gradually through several drafts. The sensory details—the tree, the neighborhood bar, the weather—all that comes from living in New Orleans. The rest, the story of the couple and their young son, is pure fiction.
I couldn’t begin to count how many times I read through all of my stories before feeling like they’re finished. At some point, not necessarily in a short piece like this, but almost always with the longer ones, I’ll print the story and, with scissors, cut it into sections to rearrange chronologically. I have a tendency to give too much backstory and, by doing this, I can better see what needs to be eliminated, what’s necessary, and what should go where. Once I get to the stage of merely removing a single word only to put it back, of changing a semicolon to a comma only to switch it back, I know I’m done.
How did you feel when it was first published and how have your thoughts or feelings on the piece changed from then to now?
My feelings about James turned almost 180-degrees in the interval, which surprised me. And, until recently, I didn’t realize how much the C-section experience affected the couple’s marriage, and how they don’t realize it at all.
Is there a specific message you’d like readers to take away from reading this piece?
I don’t write toward any specific takeaway message, though I do hope to achieve a shifting empathy that leaves one with no clear sense of who might be in the wrong, and if that so-called wrong can be rectified.
Where can readers find more of your work? (Website/social media, etc)
My website is https://teresabrader.com/ . Links to my online pieces are there, as well as information on my upcoming book Letting in Air and Light from Belle Point Press. I’m @ttbrader on Twitter.
