•
New York City: Born and raised in New York
City, Saying No to Naked Women author David
R. Yale attended The Little Red Schoolhouse, PS 156,
PS 159, JHS 214, and Franklin K. Lane HS in Brooklyn.
He graduated from the City College of New York with
a B.S. in English in 1966.
After living in Minnesota, Arkansas, and California,
Yale moved back to New York in 1979, where he lives
with his wife and daughter.
Part of Saying No to Naked Women is set in
Brownsville and Cypress Hills in Brooklyn. Locations
include Herzl Street, Skaank Street, the Shit Canal,
the Fulton Street ‘El, the burning underground
garbage dump, and Miss McHugh’s classroom. See
pages 196-202. For a review copy,
click here.
•
Arkansas: Saying No to Naked Women
is one of the few major novels set in the Arkansas
Ozarks.
Author David R. Yale spent the summer and fall of
1974 living in Arkansas, gathering oral history from
people whose memories went back to the 19th Century.
He interviewed the staff of a small-town traveling
circus, the founder of the first variety store in
the area, the operator of a backwoods sawmill, a blacksmith
who came to Arkansas with his family in a covered
wagon in 1893, and the owner of an auction house,
among others.
Yale wove these stories into Saying No to Naked
Women, in the process capturing a part of Arkansas
that is largely gone by now: folks who knew how to
build a wooden wagon wheel and put a steel tire on
it, backwoods sawmills, tiny country stores, small-town
cafés serving real home-cooked meals, and memories
of the dustbowl and the great depression.
Saying No to Naked Women includes a loving
portrayal of a small Arkansas town in the 1970s, complete
with the shortcomings and problems every small town
has, but populated by fascinating, wonderful people
with a conservative, populist outlook. But the novel’s
protagonist, Jack Derritt, is an urban ex-campus radical.
The clash of values changes changes Jack forever –
for the better.
“… a fun read which incorporates interviews
naturally and seamlessly…. [an] absorbing and
delightful story,” says Waddy W. Moore, Professor
Emeritus, University of Central Arkansas.
See especially pages 77-87, 94-100, 124-129, 138-141,
149-152 of Saying No to Naked Women. For
a review copy, click here.
•
Minneapolis: David R. Yale, author of Saying
No to Naked Women received his M.A. in American
Studies from the University of Minnesota CLA in 1970.
A popular instructor in UM’s Communication Program
from 1967 to 1970, at the age of 23, he was the Program’s
youngest staff member.
Later, Yale was the Director of Shingle Creek &
Bohannon Recreation Centers in North Minneapolis from
1972 to 1974. He helped those communities organize
the successful effort to get a modern recreation center
built. The Creekview Recreation Center building was
the result of this campaign.
“We did outrageously wonderful things at Shingle
Creek and Bohannon, like launching hot air balloons,
pie-eating and greased watermelon contests, annual
ragweed pulls, and painting the ice skating rink into
one giant mural,” Yale says. “And the
kids at Bohannon actually did build Shakespeare’s
Hut out of old plywood, just like the story on page
66 of my novel.”
Several scenes in Saying No to Naked Women
are set in Minnesota. See pages 360-387. For
a review copy, click here.
•
Bay Area: A resident of San Francisco from
1974 to 1979, David R. Yale, author of Saying
No to Naked Women was a Public Information Officer
for the City of Oakland, assigned first to the Parks
& Recreation Department and later to the Oakland
Public Library. Yale also developed popular seminars
on publicity and graphic design for non-profits which
were given at Media Alliance in San Francisco, and
the University of California in Davis, La Jolla, and
Santa Cruz, as well as for the Bay Area Reference
Center.
Yale was instrumental in helping Media Alliance develop
its first community education programs. And he gave
readings from his fiction at the San Francisco Jewish
Community Center and San Francisco State University
Hillel. For a review copy, click
here. h^=99hjh**$kkg565
