Bookpleasures.comwelcomes as our guest Anne B. Gass author of Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine's Fight for Woman Suffrage. Her recent tome, We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip has just been published.

Good day Anne and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Anne: When I was young, I read and wrote a lot of poetry and other books. But to make a living I concentrated on business writing- federal grants, business plans, case studies and that sort of thing- so I mostly stopped doing any creative writing.

I was inspired to write my first book Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage, which is about my great-grandmother, when I learned that she had been effectively written out of Maine’s suffrage history because she was considered too radical.

In fact, the abundant public record showed she was a leader in Maine’s suffrage movement in the final six years of the campaign, serving as chair of the Maine branch of the National Women’s Party.

I was also shocked by how little I knew – how little most people know - about suffrage and women’s history, so my writing has been aimed at filling that gap. It’s a big gap, so that keeps me going! I also love showcasing some of the unsung heroes of the suffrage movement.

Norm: What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your writing career? 

Anne: For me, having written two books when it was never my goal to write any was a huge accomplishment.

I had to find the time to focus on the research and writing, which was hard to do in the midst of family responsibilities, running a very busy consulting practice, and community activism.

I had to have the faith that all that time and effort was going to result in something people would actually read and enjoy.

That was a big stretch for me! I found that writing my novel, We Demand, was also challenging because it forced me to write more creatively than had been my practice.

Through that process I found that I love this history and am passionate about sharing it with others.

This has led to a number of other opportunities I could never have anticipated. For example, the Maine Historical Society invited me to serve as a co-curator on an exhibit that will open later this month called “Begin Again: Reckoning with intolerance in Maine.”

The exhibit explores Maine's role in the national dialog on race and social justice — through a physical and online exhibition, and public programming events with diverse perspectives of scholars, historians, community leaders.

My co-curators include a Black woman attorney and an Anthropology professor who is a citizen of the Passamaquoddy nation. What a tremendous education that has been for me!

Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was least useful or most destructive? 

Anne: Weirdly, I think grant writing was helpful because required page, word, and even character limits forced me how to write clearly and concisely.

I’ve gotten really good at editing out all the fluffy words and phrases that don’t really convey meaning, because there’s no room for them!

I’ve also come to appreciate how they distract from effective, clear writing. For my first book I read a lot of nonfiction and for my novel I read a lot of historical fiction. I also took a Coursera course on historical fiction that I found quite helpful.

It turns out that I’m a really private writer when working on my own stuff. I use the writing process to help me understand and distill the essence of what I think and want to say.

Some people really benefit from being in writers’ groups, but for me it isn’t helpful to share early drafts with others who may want to dictate what they think should- or shouldn’t- happen. I also find that reading how-to books about writing and publishing makes me crazy, so I didn’t do a lot of that, either.

Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process.  

Anne: I would say a combination of the two. Writing a nonfiction book like Voting Down the Rose means that you have to document the sources for what you write.

More established nonfiction writers seem to be able to get around this, but I was determined to prove the case that my great-grandmother was a suffrage leader, so I footnoted the hell out of that book!

Yet people still tell me they found it to be a page-turner, even those that don’t usually read nonfiction. Clearly, it matters how you tell the story, and that’s where the intuition came in, I guess. I did feel as though I had to do a lot of listening to my inner voice, or my gut, or whatever you might call it.

My writing process is to read a bunch of material, and then when I think I see the shape of the story to sit down and write.

I force myself to write for as long as I can stand it, usually no more than a few hours at a stretch.

I’m a high-energy person so it’s a bit of a struggle to make myself sit in a chair for long periods unless I have a deadline to meet. I also think about the book when I’m hiking, running, skiing, skating or riding a bike, which I do quite a lot of, and that can be especially helpful when I’m uncertain what to write next.

Sometimes the writing process shows me the gaps in what I need to know, which might either require more research or that I come up with a creative way to advance the story.

Norm: When did the idea for We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip first emerge? As a follow up, how did you decide you were ready to write the book?  

Anne: When I was researching Voting Down the Rose, I came across descriptions of this epic cross-country road trip that took place in 1915.

This upstart young suffrage organization, the Congressional Union, had sent four women from San Francisco to Washington DC to demand an amendment to the US Constitution enfranchising women.

I’d crossed the country a few times myself so I knew that in 1915 that must have been one hell of a trip. I promised myself that if I ever finished Voting Down the Rose, I’d retrace their route and find out more about it. That opportunity came in 2015.

I felt some pressure to get started writing because of the upcoming suffrage centennial in 2020, and because of all the craziness that was happening in the country.

It turned out that 2015-2020 felt a lot like America in the early 20th century in terms of racism, misogyny, anti-labor, and anti-immigrant sentiment, and I found the idea of connecting those dots to the present compelling.

But, in my usual style, I got sidetracked off and on by billable work, self-doubt, and community activism! I ran for state representative in 2018- I lost, but it was a great experience.

Now I’m vice-chair of my town council, and I was also very involved in organizing Maine’s commemoration of the suffrage centennial. As a result, it took me a little longer to finish the book.

Norm: What did you know going in about your theme?

Anne: I knew a lot of suffrage history already, of course, because of Voting Down the Rose. I knew just a little bit about the actual trip.

I ended up retracing the original route in the fall of 2015, almost exactly one hundred years later. I blogged about it at www.suffrageroadtrip.blogspot.com.

Before my trip I flew out to the Huntington Museum and Library in Pasadena CA to look at some letters one of the trip’s members, Sara Bard Field, had written to her lover during the trip.

I also read the correspondence around the organization of the trip which is part of the National Woman’s Party papers at the Library of Congress.

After the trip I did a lot of reading about the history of early 20th century America, including labor, Swedish immigration, spiritualism, early feminism, and women’s roles. I also had to learn more about all of the states they passed through on their trip.

I had originally planned to write another nonfiction book because that’s what I knew how to do.

I ended up writing a novel because the story I needed to tell, about Ingeborg Kindstedt and Maria Kindberg, the middle-aged Swedish immigrants who were pivotal to the trip’s success but who have largely been ignored and “othered” in historical accounts, could only be done as fiction.

I simply wasn’t able to find enough documentary evidence of who they were and what they thought about the trip. I even traveled to Sweden to see what I could learn!

Norm: When writing the novel, did the line between truth and fiction sometimes become blurred for you?

Anne: I didn’t have that problem so much in writing the book, but I started doing talks about the original trip in 2019, accompanied by a slideshow with historical photos.

I found I had to be mindful when doing these presentations about what was fact and what I’d made up. It started to blend a bit. For example, Ingeborg never met with Joe Hill or Ida B. Wells (that I know of) but that feels very real to me now.

Norm: What purpose do you believe your story serves and what matters to you about the story?  

Anne: We Demand is about a journey, on many levels. On one level it’s just the story of this epic cross-country road trip, and the grit and determination of the women who were part of it.

On another level it’s the journey our country is still on to find our way to that more perfect union, in which all men- and women- are created equal. We’re not there now, and we surely weren’t there in 1915.

Finally, even though I’m not in the story myself, We Demand is a refection of my own journey to understand America’s history of racism and misogyny and inequality, a journey I’m sure I’ll be on for the rest of my life.

A TED talk I saw recently by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of “The danger of the single story.” She says “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Until about the last five years or so, the single story that had been told about the suffrage movement was from the perspective of white, middle class women. It was incomplete.

We Demand tells the story from the perspectives of Ingeborg and Maria, working class, middle-aged immigrants who spoke “broken” English, and who were also lesbians (well, I made that part up, but they’d lived together for about 20 years by 1915, so it seemed like a logical conclusion). History is much more interesting - and accurate – when lots of different stories are told. I feel passionate about telling those different stories.

Norm: Can you share some stories about people you met while researching this book?  What are some of the references that you used while researching this book?  

Anne: On my trip in 2015 I met four descendants of Sara Bard Field, who was one of the envoys. They were Sara’s step great-granddaughters.

They have all been activists in their own right, and it was really inspiring to meet them.

They also helped me understand the complexities of Sara’s relationship with their great-grandfather, Charles Erskine Scott Wood.

Sara is always held up as this free spirited, bohemian icon, but she was also a home wrecker because Erskine left his first wife for her. It caused a lot of trauma for the family.

That goes back to what I said earlier about the dangers of the single story. It was a good lesson, and it was part of what nudged me toward focusing on Ingeborg and Maria.

On my way across the country I met with women’s rights activists, Leagues of Women Voters, and others as I tried to learn more about what difference having had the vote meant to women in the preceding century.

I called my trip “We Demand: Women, Suffrage and a Century of Change.” I met so many amazing women who helped me understand how hard women had to fight, after suffrage was won, to achieve other rights we now take for granted.

I was amazed by how completely oblivious I’d been to that history, even though some of the milestones were achieved in my lifetime.

A few examples include women’s right to serve on juries, to obtain credit in their own names without a male co-signer, to use birth control (especially outside of marriage), and to not be sexually harassed in the workplace. We’re still working on those last two!

Two women in particular that I really enjoyed meeting were Kaethe Morris Hoffer, Executive Director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), and Anne Ladky, Executive Director of Women Employed (WE). Both of them helped me understand the ways in which the fight for women’s rights is ongoing- has never stopped.

Norm: What was the most difficult part of writing this book and what did you enjoy most about writing this book?  

Anne: The hardest part was learning to write a novel- my nonfiction self kept wanting to footnote everything! I had to let that go.

It was always my goal to pay tribute to the women who made the trip and the suffrage movement that launched them, but I had to give myself permission to use the original trip as my “training wheels,” as it were. I also struggled to decide what to include about early 20th century history- what the backdrop would be, and how to convey that in a way that was engaging as well as instructive.

But I loved learning all this history, and even though it was painful at times I also enjoyed the freedom that came from writing fiction. If I write another novel, I think I won’t need to rely so heavily on “training wheels.”

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip?

Anne: They can find me at my WEBSITE

and on my

Facebook Page

Norm: What is next for Anne B. Gass?

Anne: I have a few projects in mind- a couple are nonfiction and I’m also thinking about another novel. One of my nonfiction projects relates to my family history in Maine.

It was inspired by my work with the Maine Historical Society social justice exhibit. My grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great grandfather were all attorneys.

I want to know how they used their legal training and positions (my great-great grandfather was Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court) to block- or further- the rights of women, people of color, native peoples.

They were all pro-suffrage, so that’s good, but…what else did they believe and what actions did they take? And how did those actions reverberate down through the generations to affect my life, in both positive and negative ways? I’m not sure what will come of that research, but a lot of the fun is the exploration of uncharted territories!

I’m also working with a colleague to research the history of the American Plan in Maine. The American Plan was launched in WWI as an effort to combat rampant venereal disease among the troops.

Essentially, Congress gave public health departments police powers that allowed them to forcibly detain, test, and treat people they “reasonably suspected” of having venereal disease.

Almost all of those they locked up were women- the men just went to outpatient clinics.

Across the country, 32 states participated in the American Plan and tens of thousands of women were detained and treated, with absolutely no legal recourse. Maine was one of those states. We’re curious about how that played out here.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, if you could change one thing about the world what would it be? How would it change you?

Anne: I would love to see a world in which women had full equality with men. In America, we could start by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, which was authored by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and first introduced in Congress in 1923. It’s been almost one hundred years, for heaven’s sake, let’s get it done!

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors.

Follow Here to Read Norm's Review of We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip