In his debut novel, Bellingham poet and activist Robert Lashley paints a searing portrait of his hometown of Tacoma through the eyes of main character Albert.
In “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer,” Albert largely resembles Lashley, a Jack Straw Fellow and Artist Trust Fellow who describes himself as “coming from a people of outcasts, miscreants, people who came together out of the tribes who have thrown them away.”
The book title is based on a song by Stevie Wonder.
“The song inspired me by the visceral beauty and feelings of loss it invokes in the lyrics and melody,” Lashley said. “The concepts of forgiveness, empathy and grace inspired me in how little I have seen of it as a touring poet in the Pacific Northwest.”
Lashley describes how he’s been shunned by literati in the Pacific Northwest and what he describes as “internet literary scenes.”
Carol Guess, a professor of English at Western Washington University, said the novel “is vital to contemporary literature, a poetic history of a rapidly changing place, a celebration of Black lives lived, and a tour de force critique of the exclusionary literary canon that seeks to marginalize art crafted outside white privilege and the ivory tower.”
Set in a Black beauty shop, Lashley, 45, confronts his own misspent youth and his demons, and examines his relationships within his family, while remaining open to risks.
“My poetry is my ode to my family and their complex, interconnected cultures,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of biography in the novel, but the only thing that separated me from Albert was my grandmother, who gave my mother a savvy support system, helped me go to school across town, and shielded me from a lot of the damage that growing up in Hilltop in the ’90s could do to a young person.”
Everybody in his own family died in a several-year period, and not all by natural causes, Lashley said.
Similarly, the character of Albert experiences every manner of death, from violence to overdose, while striving to maintain the right path in Tacoma’s working-class culture.
One of the saving graces for Albert is his love for books and for libraries. In the novel, the character says, “I go to the library to get the past out of my head.”
Lashley said he thinks one of the great Ars Poetica in the history of world literature is the B.B. King song “There is Always One More Time.” Its theme, he explains, is that your life might be painful and you might be going through a lot, “but by learning, growing and creating you can be made new; and the way that you can be made new as a writer is through the library.”
Lashley said his mother, who majored in Latin American literature in 1973 from the University of Washington, was one of the greatest critics he’s ever seen or read. He believes cultural criticism is in his blood.
When asked how a person can escape or forget the past and move on, while still honoring it, Lashley said “by understanding how people have done it before.”
Lashley cites author James Baldwin with one of his favorite quotes: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
In his blog, Mr. Lashley’s Office, he writes, “with years and years of therapy, I choose grace, character, friendship, love and life. And I fight them with my pen; If my brain is in twilight I will radiate in as much art and beauty and standards as I can. The beauty will live on the page.”
That, he said, is why he writes his poems and why he wrote, “I Never Dreamed You Leave in Summer.”
“(I wrote it) to create something that will live long after what was inflicted among us is gone,” he said.
Demersal Publishing released the novel on Aug. 22.
Lashley will talk about his novel and other writings with Carol Guess at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 11 at Village Books. Look for a review of his book by Neil McKay in the Sept. 8 print edition of Cascadia Daily News. To register for the Sept. 11 event, go to villagebooks.com.
