Shirley, Long Island is a town with radioactive issues—literally. In her debut novel, a memoir entitled “Welcome to Shirley,” Kelly McMasters, who obtained an MFA in literary non-fiction from Columbia in 2004, tackles the difficult issue of exposing the questionable safety of Shirley’s nuclear laboratory, Brookhaven. While McMasters’ eloquent handling of scientific issues in the book is very compelling, perhaps what is most interesting is the tender, nostalgic way in which she portrays her hometown.
“If you had asked me the year before [I wrote ‘Shirley’] if I was obsessed with my hometown, I would have said, ‘absolutely not,’” McMasters said with a laugh during an interview. “But apparently I was.”
How, then, did she start writing about Shirley? “It was when I was in the MFA program at the Columbia School of the Arts that I first realized that I wanted to write about my hometown,” McMasters recalls. “It actually started as a series of essays. For the first year and a half, every time I would sit down to write, I would write about my hometown. When I was coming close to thesis, a professor told me that I had about six or seven of these essays and they were all sort of going in the same direction. It was really scary, thinking about writing about my hometown, but it made it easier because I had left it.”
After reading “Welcome to Shirley,” it is easy to see why McMasters was reluctant to return to her past. On the surface, Shirley seems like the typical American small town—neighbors know everything about one another, children run around in the streets until their mothers call them home, and there is a certain intimacy that is the product of a close-knit community. But the shadow of the Brookhaven National Laboratory looms over the town in the form of death and disease caused by the careless treatment of the employees, who were frequently exposed to small amounts of chemical radiation.
McMasters’ descriptions of the laboratory and its history are thoroughly researched and well-written. “I had worked in the library in Shirley, and I knew they had local history archives there,” she said when asked about her research process, much of which took place in her hometown. “When I went in, it [the archive] was so rarely used that they were using it as a storage facility for books that needed to be reshelved.”
Though McMasters’ roots are in Shirley, she now teaches at the Columbia Journalism School. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s funny because when I first got to Columbia, I spent most of my time walking the halls waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Oh sorry, we made a mistake. Your application actually was denied. You’re not supposed to be here.’”
The best piece of advice she had to offer as someone who has been on both sides of the lecture podium? “I sort of wish I could somehow have been a professor before I was a student because I would understand so much more about what professors go through. As a student I looked at professors as people who have their lives completely together and know absolutely everything. Later I realized that professors… they’re just human.”
“Welcome to Shirley,” which is currently on its way to becoming a documentary film, should captivate bibliophiles of all types. Though the book’s overt purpose is to address the importance of nuclear safety, especially in such close proximity to a populated area, McMasters integrates historical and scientific fact into prose so beautifully written that the book reads more like fiction than non-fiction.
Comments
We're looking for comments that are interesting and substantial. If your comments are excessively self-promotional or obnoxious you will be banned from commenting. Consult the comment FAQ and legal terms.