A conversation between Wendy Gaudin and Bart Everson on writing and publishing.
Wendy A. Gaudin is a historian and writer whose interdisciplinary work centers southern-descended, mixed-heritage, and mixed-race populations and histories. As a mixed-heritage Louisiana Creole of Color whose elders migrated to California in the first half of the twentieth century, Gaudin is deeply moved, shaped, and inspired by her expansive community’s story. She divides her time between New Orleans and Acadiana, and she teaches history at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Links for this episode:
- Sunset Limited: An Autobiography of Creole (LSU Press)
Transcript:
Bart Everson
So I'm Bart Everson, Creative Generalist at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, and I'm here chatting with Wendy Gaudin, Professor in the History Department here at Xavier University of Louisiana, and I'm holding in my hot little hands a new, freshly autographed edition of Sunset Limited: An Autobiography of Creole, which is Wendy's book. Wendy's first book. So Wendy, thank you. First of all, thank you for the book.
Wendy Gaudin
You're welcome.
BE
And second of all, welcome to the podcast.
WG
Thank you.
BE
And I thought I should mention for anybody who doesn't know what the Sunset Limited is — not only is it the name of your book, but it's also the name of a train, and that train features in the book. And I thought in today's conversation, you know, we'll talk a little bit about the book, but people really should read that to find out about the content. I thought, in keeping with the theme of this podcast, you know, Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else, with our series, that we would focus a little bit more on the process of how you wrote the book, and why, and all these other things. So can you tell us a little bit about the train, and why the book is named after the train, and what that has to do with Creole?
WG
Sure. Well, thank you for having me. The Sunset Limited is a particular route of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and it follows the southern border of the United States. And the Sunset Limited is a route that goes from New Orleans to Los Angeles, and it is a train line that has been talked about in many, many, many people's migration stories. So I guess I would say I first heard about the Sunset Limited train when speaking with family members years ago when I started doing oral histories with my grandparents and a couple of elderly family members, extended family members, and they would say to me, "Oh, we all took the Sunset Limited to California," and it was sort of this romanticized train. But it was indeed the train that brought many people from Los Angeles, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. And so I started hearing about the train years ago, and then at a certain point, my mother shared with me that her father, my maternal grandfather — his name was Augustus Lawrence burns — he was a porter on the train. He worked for the Pullman Company as a porter, and porters were servants on the segregated trains. They served food, they cleaned the sleeping trains. They carried people's dirty laundry to the folks who washed the dirty clothes on the train. They did all kinds of work that porters would do, that servants would do. And so my grandfather worked on the train, and that is a part of my mother's history that she really values and loves. And so when I was writing this book, I grappled with the title, and I came up with a couple of ideas, and the acquisitions editor came up with a couple of ideas, and they all sort of felt a little generic to me. And so at a certain point, I thought, well, why not call it Sunset Limited, because the train — so, because it references, specifically the train, but also this idea of of riding into the sunset, you know. So it sort of has a romantic idea. Moving west is a fraught subject in US history, and for my ancestors and for Creoles of color, it's a different kind of meaning, a different cultural meaning, not necessarily a kind of manifest destiny image, but more of an escape from a racist place that the Deep South was for many people, sort of fleeing a difficult place and going somewhere that's hopeful, that is hopefully free from what plagued people who lived in Louisiana at the time. And so I like the imagery. I liked the train itself. And so many Creoles in Los Angeles will see the title or hear the title and immediately think of their own family's experience. So it has collective meaning as well. And I'll also note that my family moved in the 1930s and the 1940s, so this is prior to the desegregation of interstate train lines that happens after World War II. And so it's an interesting idea that a segregated train carried people from a segregated place to a non-segregated place, a mostly integrated place. So there's some meaning in that as well.
BE
Thank you. It sounds really interesting. I haven't read it yet because I just got my copy, literally just got my copy before we started talking. So I encourage anybody listening to this who finds that interesting — you're just going to have to read it yourself, because certainly we could spend a lot of time talking about the content, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about the process. You know, anytime that I've spoken with people who've written books, a lot of times, they'll say that they felt they had to write a particular book. And you know, it does certainly take a lot of effort to get to this point. I know it's taken you a lot of effort to get to this point. Did you feel like this was something that you had to do, that you had to write this book? Or was it more of an option, like an optional thing that you did just for fun, just for pleasure, if you know what I'm saying. Or is there some kind of blend, and if so, why?
WG
I appreciate that question. So I am a non-tenure track faculty member here at Xavier. There are benefits and there are — whatever the opposite of benefits are — but there are ways in which that frees me up to write books like this and to do other kinds of creative writing. And of course, there are some disadvantages to being non-tenure track. However, I start there because I am not necessarily bound to do scholarly work, to produce scholarly writing. Although non-tenure track faculty write, they do research, they produce artwork. There's just a different kind of expectation, I suppose, so as a non-tenure track faculty member, I have really — once again, I'll use the word grappled. I've really grappled with: What is my role as a scholar? What is my role as an author? What kinds of work can I author? And I feel like my status here at Xavier has made space for me to produce a genre-bending, or an open genre, inclusive book such as this. It is not a dissertation-to-monograph evolution, which is the process that many professors go through. They take their dissertation and revise it into their first book. There are parts of this book that pull from my dissertation, but most of it is original. Some of the interviews from the book were pulled from dissertation era interviews, and so there's a bit of a connection to my dissertation, but it's not a direct connection that you might see in others' work. The book was a request. So, I received a request from the Acquisitions Editor at LSU Press in an introductory email that just said, Hey, Dr Gaudin, we've seen your dissertation referenced in other people's work, and your other writings have also been referenced. And so we're wondering if you'd be interested in writing a book about Creoles. And I was totally surprised, and pleasantly surprised, and so I responded with, I would love to have a conversation about what that entails. And so it turned out to be a positive conversation, and so I wrote a first draft which is nothing like the book that you're holding. It was a very different book. In fact, I feel very strongly that it was not very good. It was a first draft. And first drafts are exploratory. First drafts are an exercise. They could be seen as a practice draft. And so I'm glad I produced it. I learned a lot from it, but it was not the best, or the best thing that I could have done. And the editors realized that, and an anonymous reader said, I know Wendy Gaudin's work, and I think she can do something very different than this, and so I'm so grateful to those people. So I rewrote, I started totally from scratch. Rewrote. That draft was better, still not quite there. And then I rewrote again, and I requested another anonymous reader, so I had two, and they both said, this is where she should be going, in the direction of an auto-ethnography, in the direction of a mixed-genre monograph, because we have so many sort of third person singular histories of Creole people. Wendy has something original to add, and so they really encouraged me in that direction. And then I really knew where I was going with the book. So I did some shifting of chapters. I considered chronologies, I considered adding some material that wasn't anywhere in my dissertation, it wasn't anywhere in my first draft. And then I really felt — it took a little time, but at a certain point, I felt like this book deserves to be written. It deserves to be out in the world. I am saying something original, and I'm adding to other conversations about what it is to be Creole. And so that's when I feel I was compelled to really finish the book and to really write the book that I felt capable of writing, and I felt natural writing, rather than a process to, you know, write a book that I thought maybe this is what LSU wanted me to do, and I was wrong. This is what they really wanted me to produce. So in that way, maybe I felt like, you know, you asked me if I felt like I really had to write the book. I think that I felt compelled when I really knew what I was writing. That's when the energy really lifted and I felt like, yes, this is what I was meant to do.
BE
Fantastic. I appreciate you getting into that and really kind of exploring some of the process and the publishing aspects as well. One of the things, of course, we're sitting here in the conference room of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development here at Xavier. And one thing that we've tried to do in recent years has been to support this Xavier University Writing Group for faculty, which Elizabeth Manley started, and you've participated in that as well, and I believe some of the writing for this book may have taken place during those sessions. Can you explain just a little bit about how that factored in, or what the — because it sounds like, on paper, it sounds like just such a simple concept: we're going to give faculty, you know, a chance to sit and write. Can you explain how that helped you, how you think maybe it helps faculty? Maybe there's, you know, some listeners who might have heard about that on our own campus, or maybe they're at another campus and they're thinking about doing some kind of initiative like that. Can you speak to that a little bit?
WG
I certainly can. The faculty writing group has supported me for years. I've been a member of the faculty writing group. I don't know, I shouldn't say member. I have joined the — I have been a participant in the writing group for many semesters, probably at least five or six years now. And the space and the time —
BE
Just clarify for anybody who doesn't know, this isn't a group where people read each other's texts, or give feedback, necessarily, to each other at all. You just come in and write.
WG
Yes, yes. Thank you. We meet once a week, and we sit in a large room together, and sometimes we put our headphones on, and we really disconnect and just sit there. And sometimes, some of us are reading, some of us are hand editing our work. Some of us are actively engaged in fresh, new writing, original writing. Some of us are revising on our laptops. Lunch is provided, and some people join us on Zoom, so they're on the screen as well. And I would say that one of the benefits is the obligation. You know, it's on my schedule every Monday, and knowing that there will be other people in the room who are also engaged in writing, revising, editing — they're all in some part of that process. And it's like a silent support. It's sort of like sitting meditation in a meditation hall. You know, you're all sitting on the cushion facing the wall. We're not talking to each other, but we know everyone is here holding the space, and that we are all engaged in a similar commitment to whatever this practice happens to be. So knowing that you know someone is working on a chemistry article. Someone is revising their first book, like me. Someone is finishing their dissertation, knowing that we're all working on this is a supportive environment. It's really helpful. I have absolutely written parts of this book in writing group. I have written proposals for fellowships, research fellowships in writing group. I have written residency proposals, and I have been awarded some of those residencies in writing group. Every semester, at the beginning of the semester, I am waiting for the invitation to send your proposals in. I might be the first proposal every semester. I'm just waiting to put my my name in there, because I think it is so important, as professors who work at an institution that expects us to teach a four/four load. Some of us are teaching overloads. Some of us are also teaching labs or Art, they're not labs, but studio time. We are also serving on more than one committee, most of us, because we're a small campus, and so there are only so many faculty, and so our time is really stretched thin. So, to have that committed time to write is so important. In fact, I wish that we had a writer in residency kind of program here at Xavier, because I think that would really encourage people to devote their time, and it would encourage the university to see that if you expect a scholarly output, you must support time to produce. That it takes time to sit and think, it takes time to experiment, to fail, to write multiple drafts, to figure out what works, and that doesn't happen in two and a half months over summer break. We need more time to do that. So I will say that the first unpublished draft of this book was written between 2019 and 2020, my publication date was March 2025, so it took between five and six years for me to produce a finished, publishable draft.
BE
And you really got to love the subject matter, I feel like, in order to stick with something that long and not give up.
WG
You know, I like that you said, "love the subject matter." I think that loving the subject matter, being somehow invested in the subject matter, is important, whether that is a subject that you've been researching for 20 years, or if it is a subject that speaks to your experience or your ancestors' or your family's experience, or your community's experience, that's also important. If you are a scientist and you run a lab and you are committed to your lab and the research and writing that comes out of that lab, I think that as scholars, there is maybe an expectation of a certain distance from the work that we do, and as an historian who works so much on family history, which is a scholarly subject — you know, I'm not just writing my family's genealogy, but it is an academic subject under the the discipline of social history — I think that it's also okay for some of us to be invested in the work we do in different kinds of ways, that we are engaged in inquiry, scholarly inquiry, that is sometimes informed by other layers and other levels of commitment to our subject matter. And so for me, I am a California creole. So I'm a product of a migration. I am a product of an ethnic group that engaged in a kind of redefinition based on that migration. And I have a PhD in history. My subject matter is race, racial mixture, the Deep South, the American South, and so many of those things sort of collided in this story. I'm not just writing about myself. I'm writing about a population. I am a member of a population, and all of us are members of populations, and so to write about that population asks me to be invested, but also to be curious and to inquire in ways that reflect my background and in ways that contradict my background.
BE
Well, Wendy, there's something you just said that reminded me of the fact — I know you pretty well. We've been friends for a while, and I know that you are a longtime contemplative practitioner, and I'm wondering how that factored into your your process. If it did, I can only assume that it might have.
WG
Gosh, okay, so I can say a couple of things about that. One is that my meditation practice supports me in all kinds of ways, and one is that I thrive in quiet. I feel energized by stillness, which sounds a little bit contradictory, but the process of sitting, thinking through a chapter, or thinking through part of the book, it takes time, and taking that time, rather than sort of the frantic energy of, oh, I have to do this, and I have to complete this — that really helped me. It sounds like well, then I could just sort of take my time and leisurely write this book. But there's a middle ground between a sort of frantic productivity for production's sake, and the other side of that is sort of languishing and taking my time writing the book. There's a middle ground that I find myself working in. And I think my meditation practice supports that middle ground. Also, the quiet of writing, whether that is with writing group, whether that's at my dining room table, whether that's with a writing partner or in residency, I have felt really supported by the stillness of the writing practice, and I will also say that my practice reminds me of impermanence, and so anytime I was producing a version of a chapter or a draft of the whole thing, I didn't necessarily feel bound to this version. I knew that this is all a process, and I felt informed by impermanence. So if I produce a chapter, and I feel like, okay, I've produced a chapter, I wasn't feeling like, wedded to this version of this chapter, and so it's finished and it's done, and it's over. No. This is the draft that I produced. Someone else reads it. It might have been you. It might have been my writing partner, Arden Eli Hill, who's a poet. It may have been another friend that I asked to take a look at it. It may have been the editor. So I get it back with all kinds of comments and feedback and corrections and praise or criticism. And instead of being plagued by, oh my gosh, I produced something, and it wasn't good enough, or it's not complete, I see it as part of a process. So now that the book is finished, it's interesting, because it may also make me think, well, this is done, and in some ways it is done, and in other ways it might be edited again. If I'm fortunate, maybe there will be a second edition. Now I'm talking about the book and revisiting the book. That's part of the process as well, and the book has — my feeling is the book has produced questions and other inquiries that I can follow through on in future projects, perhaps my second book. So it's sort of part of a body, a body of literature or a body of writing, that is part of my life. And so I'm not sure if that's making sense, but it feels like it makes sense to me, that that my meditation practice has informed me, that what I do is part of a sort of flowing life, and it changes, it grows, and this book is just sort of part of that.
BE
Yes, those make sense. Makes a lot of sense. Ad you hinted there at something else that I wanted to ask about. You know, this series began with a focus, kind of exclusively on teaching, and we've broadened, as our mission broadened here some years ago at the Center to support faculty in all aspects of their professional and even personal lives, to an extent, including research, including writing and publishing and these things. But in particular, returning to that idea of teaching, I'm curious to know how the process and even the finished product has has interacted with your teaching, or has it?
WG
I would say that teaching race, especially, a couple of classes. One is Race in the Americas. The other one is a new course that I developed called Mixed Race America. Teaching those two classes has helped inform the book, and it has, you know, sparked my curiosity in terms of always learning and always growing, regarding my education about race and mixed race especially. And then I also teach a course called Creole Louisiana. I haven't taught it in maybe three years, something like that, and I'm hoping to teach it again next year, actually, as a broader course, which would be a look at Creole in the Americas, rather than just Louisiana, because Creole is not just a reference to Louisiana. Creole has so many meanings. So my teaching of those subject matters has, I think, connected to the book. Yeah, yeah. I think that's an answer to the question.
BE
It is a very good answer to the question. And there's one thing, though — I think we've neglected perhaps the most important part. What about this amazing photo of the author that's on the back of the dust cover here. Wow, that's really something.
WG
Well, you took the photo.
BE
I remember now. Thank you for jogging my memory.
WG
Under the trees and with the limestone background. It was taken here at Xavier. We were standing behind the convent, the old convent building, and we have this limestone background. And we took several photos, and that's the one that I chose. What did you want me to say about it?
BE
Indiana limestone, so I felt right at home.
WG
Oh, yes, Indiana limestone.
BE
Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. Is there anything that I forgot to ask about that you really was hoping I would or is there anything that we've — any stone that we've left unturned? I'm sure there's so much more to say. I mean, you've written several hundred pages about it.
WG
Well, I would like to say that the cover art — I was so pleased with the the designers at LSU Press. I think they did a beautiful job with an idea that I came to the press with. I asked them to incorporate a couple of things. One is an image of my grandmother. Her name was Marietta Roussell, and there's a photograph of her sitting in front of a house here in New Orleans with an umbrella over her head. It was taken around 1928, 1929, before she left on the train. And I thought that the image was really a beautiful image, so I asked them to use the image. And then I was thinking about the colors of the sunset. And then finally, I asked them to find a way to incorporate a map that traces the Sunset Limited train route from New Orleans on the front cover all the way to California on the back cover. And so if you open the book and look at it flat, you can see the route that folks took, and all of the stops along the way. And I'm really so pleased with the designers. I think they came up with a really beautiful cover.
BE
They certainly did. Well, that's a great way to wrap it up, so to speak. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with Wendy Gaudin. I've known her for well over a decade, two decades, whatever it has been, and I'm only just learning how I've been mispronouncing your last name this entire time.
WG
Well, I will say, growing up in California, I also mispronounced my last name, and when I came to New Orleans, I was corrected by people here. They told me, you're not even pronouncing your last name, right. So I had to learn too.
BE
If you go north, you'll find people that pronounce my last name, Everson. So that's a whole story too. All right. Well, thank you so much, Wendy Gaudin. The book, again, is Sunset Limited. It's LSU Press, 2025.
WG
Thank you.