Mika Taylor lives in Willimantic, Connecticut (a.k.a. Romantic Willimantic, a.k.a. Heroin Town USA, a.k.a. Thread City, a.k.a. Vulture Town) with her writer husband, PR Griffis, and Petunia von Scampers, their crime-solving dog. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, Guernica, Hobart, The Kenyon Review Online, Black Warrior Review, and Diagram.
Her story, "Dolls of Our Fathers," appeared in Issue Fifty-Nine of The Collagist.
Here, Mika Taylor speaks with interviewer Thomas Calder about the inaccessible nature of historical figures, life in Willimantic, Connecticut, and knowing when to ignore research.
How did the idea come about for “Dolls of Our Fathers”?
A few years ago NPR had a prompt for one of its three-minute fiction contests. It was something like: “Write about a president.” I remember thinking that there was no way I would or could ever do that. I had no connection to the topic. But I was in the car, half listening to the segment and I kept picking at it, trying to find a way in. I guess I got this picture of Roosevelt in the basement of the White House (do they even have a basement?) using marionettes to act out affairs of state. Once I had that, it got personal and real all of a sudden. I think the problem (for me) with presidents was the inaccessibility of historical and public figures. Once I started to picture them doing odd and intimate things, I could think of them as characters and as men. I didn’t write the story up then, but a few months ago I was walking with my husband and remembered Roosevelt’s marionettes. We started talking about it and he suggested Lincoln carving dolls for his dead sons. By the time we got home, I had come up with dolls for three or four more presidents and just went from there.
What was the research like for the piece?
The research process was a strange balance of gathering as much information as possible and then ignoring most of it. With this piece I wanted to look beyond the things we know about each president and imagine an inner life that wouldn’t come through in textbooks, timelines, or encyclopedia entries. I looked at a lot of the “personal life” sections of different presidents’ Wikipedia pages, which were, for the most part, sparse and incomplete. In a sentence or two they’d summarize the deaths of infants, wives, and lovers. They’d offhandedly mention family illnesses, horrific losses, and personal tragedies that would, for most people, be the central and defining events of their lives. For these men, those huge personal events were secondary to their presidencies. That lack of detail worked really well for this story – it left me room to make up anything I wanted and add weight to different aspects of their lives.
As I got deeper into the research, I started coming across actual proof of presidential interactions with dolls. After making up so much of this piece, I found that a bit disconcerting and had trouble trying to fit in the factual information. Jefferson, for example, spent a lot of time with his grandchildren and grandnieces and nephews after his presidency. Apparently he built a scale model of Monticello that they used for a dollhouse. By the time I found that out, I was already pretty happy with the imagined Jefferson dissecting the buckskin doll, and I couldn’t give it up. On the other hand, when I learned that Ida Saxton McKinley obsessively crocheted slippers after the death of her children, I had to include that.
There’s a great range in your story. In some instances, I found myself quite moved (John Quincy Adams), while in other moments I was laughing out loud (William Howard Taft). What was your own experience in creating these profiles? Who were some of your favorite presidents to write about?
Most of these men’s personal lives seemed pretty sad. There were a lot of dead children and lost loves along the way. At one point, I had to make sure not to get too repetitive (or too depressed/depressing), though it was important to convey the deep loss that comes with giving your life over to history. I guess that’s why I pushed for absurdity where I could find it—to lighten up the story and hit some different notes.
I enjoyed writing Nixon and Millard Fillmore. I feel like both of those pushed a little further into the unbelievable and did so with authority and an overabundance of detail. That was kind of the heart of this voice for me. I was able to incorporate more of the doll research as well, which seemed important for this history. Reagan was also fun to write. My husband suggested the “somewhat older cowboy with a chimp companion,” which turned out to be one of my favorite phrases. It feels very close to my memories of Reagan’s presidency.
You live in Willimantic, Connecticut. I see from your bio that the town has been given quite the variety of names, including Heroin Town, USA. For those unfamiliar with the area, would you mind telling us more about it? How, if at all, does living there lend itself to your writing?
Willimantic is a defunct mill town in northeastern Connecticut. It’s pretty urban compared to the agricultural areas in most of this part of the state. It’s full of huge Victorian houses, converted mill buildings, and a lot of lower income families. When the mills were still open in the early part of the last century, it was known as Thread City. We also have a very healthy population of turkey vultures and black vultures, which can be kind of ominous but also fairly cool. They circle and perch and ride the updrafts all day. My favorite piece of graffiti here is an arrow on a fencepost near the railroad tracks with the words “Turkey Vulture Petting Zoo This Way.” The local artists who run Vulturetown Press coined the name “Vulturetown” which is pretty spot on.
“Heroin Town, USA” is the title of an exposé that aired on 60 Minutes about ten years ago. They investigated the (unfortunately named) Hotel Hooker, which did have some problems with drug use and prostitution. I think that national naming was pretty rough on morale, but it also inspired a backlash of local pride. The town has done a lot since then to combat that image. They’ve shut down the Hooker and there are tons great services here for people in need. Willimantic is resilient and dimensional and profound. It’s not an obvious place to love, but that’s what makes it worthwhile.
My husband and I are both writers and we love it here. For us, one of the keys to an active writing life is affordability. The cheaper things are, the less we have to work, and the more we can write. Willimantic is remote enough that we’re not overwhelmed with outside influence. It gives us time to create.
What’s the latest project you’re working on?
I’ve been interested in psychological experiments from the 50s and 60s lately. Most of them seem to reveal more about the psychology of the doctors and the driving forces of the times than they do about the subjects being studied. I’m currently writing a story based on an experiment done in a Michigan mental institution where three schizophrenic men who all claimed to be Jesus Christ were put together and studied for two years in an attempt to help “cure” them. That one’s been slow going because the research keeps overwhelming the story I thought I would write.
What’s on your summer reading list?
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach
XO Orpheus ed. Kate Bernheimer
American Innovations Rivka Galchen
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth Kevin Wilson
60 Stories Donald Barthelme
Tsim Tsum Sabrina Orah Mark