By: Joan DiPiero
Chicago is a city of evolving, transforming neighborhoods where residents recollect what they once were.
These local “historians” sit on stoops, catalog memories and legends, and map the lives of those from the block who grew up, moved on and then returned. They point out the Baptist church that had been a synagogue and the corner drug store that served as a doctor’s office. They reminisce about how the area was Jewish, then Irish, then Black.
Tony Bowers gives voice to these residents through the characters who populate his collection of short stories. In his anthology “On the Nine,” the College of DuPage English and creative writing associate professor paints a vibrant portrait of the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood in Chicago with broad strokes of the good, the bad, the broken and the transformed.
Bowers brings a vitality to Chicago history with a historic perspective that can’t be found in textbooks or academic journals. It is with these stories that he and writers before him amplify American history.
“Storytelling preserves cultures and makes a community,” he said. “When you read the works of (Mark) Twain, (Paul Laurence) Dubar and (Phillis) Wheatley, you begin to understand their world and get a sense of who they are. Academic history books can provide dates, places and specific data, but storytelling can give history life.”
In transporting readers, Bowers believes that storytelling helps them understand culture and society that is different from their own backgrounds. His themes are as familiar as the welcome aromas wafting from his grandmother’s kitchen, drawing from youthful dreams, events lived with childhood friends and family lore.
While his characters may be an amalgam of people he knew, Bowers wants them to be real and relatable.
“First, the character must be someone I want to know. Next, the character has to be worthy of knowing,” he said. “Every human story is worth being told and shared. It is important to show the full arch of what it is to be human.”
Bowers' storytelling has been inspired by James Baldwin as well as Ray Bradbury. Although their genres are diverse, he said that both authors develop characters who have a human connection.
“Although Bradbury wrote science fiction, he wanted to display mind and heart and soul. Baldwin wrote about gritty reality and had a transformative impact on a generation of writers and thinkers. Both authors wrote about what it means to be human.”
If history is the study of past events, particularly human affairs, then storytelling is the first chapter of that study, Bowers said.
“Storytelling illustrates what we know, where we came from, and how we became who we are,” he said. “It gives readers insight and understanding into a different life, helping them develop empathy or sympathy. That is why we are in a community, why we live in neighborhoods. It is because we need to connect, and storytelling is a way of connecting people to something different from their own experiences.”