I Became a Writer When I Needed a Fresh Start

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

I came to writing at thirty—after touring the worlds of fashion editorial and luxury public relations, after doing a master’s in anthropology, after declining an offer to complete a doctorate in the field, after beginning an MFA in creative writing, only to leave after a semester. With each successive pivot, I grew not only more aware of, but also more self-conscious, of a kind of timid leave-taking in which I was fast becoming proficient, leave-taking I disguised as free will. But what quietly mounted within me was the pain of having abandoned several opportunities, the ache of a string of departures from possible lives for myself. Ultimately, deciding I didn’t need a degree to write, I tried my hand at essays while employed as an administrator in higher education. But the more I read and wrote, the more a grave fear would eventually take hold of me—that I had something to prove. That I was already behind. Or worse, out of time.

Perhaps something had awakened in me in a nonfiction workshop in 2016, when I’d written an essay about my relationship to Latin, a language I began learning at twelve and in which I majored in college. The essay chronicled my overwhelming loneliness as an adolescent, and it described how I’d clung to the dead language in order to feel both smart and superior. Although my peers commented on the essay’s beautiful sentences, they couldn’t help me see where to take the piece. And I felt close to the words I’d written because they recorded my experiment with a sophisticated style of writing. Something about that draft sounded like a voice that was just breaking to the surface. And because excelling at Latin suggested to me that I’d once seemed impressive to others, I ignored the fact that this essay was serving the original purpose that the ancient language had for me as a lonely teenager. I was, however, helpless in becoming obsessed with upholding this image of myself, lest anyone see me as a fraud. 

Each draft that I revised and sent out was influenced—and in some ways hampered—by my awe of brilliant work that I came across.

In all likelihood, though, no one cared about my sense of self as much as I did. 

The following year, I brought a draft of this piece to a prestigious summer workshop as one of their scholars, confident that I’d already distinguished myself from the rest of the attendees, confirmed in my suspicion that I was exceptional to the other writers I’d meet that week. In my naïveté, my fate was going to be decided around a workshop table, at an agent or editor meeting, or during an evening karaoke reception. In the years that followed, this single essay took on outsized significance in my mind. Each draft that I revised and sent out was influenced—and in some ways hampered—by my awe of brilliant work that I came across. The essay became a desperate effort to prove myself as intelligent, self-sufficient, and in control of the future I sought to secure for myself. I asked draft after draft to bear the weight of all my ambitions—or rather, my anxieties. And I expected my words to launch me coolly into the literary world, a move into the spotlight that I assumed would dispel the fear of my own shortcomings.

What my little anecdote suggests is how making art has become inextricable from showcasing to the world not just that art but also one’s identity as an artist. In a 2008 essay, Malcolm Gladwell asks why genius is so always linked to precocity—precocity being that state of having ripened quite young, before one has had a chance to live—and perhaps even toil—for years. And why does creative genius so necessarily burn bright at an early age, only to be extinguished while an artist is still young? Because the market over values the finished product as much as it mythologizes the figure of the prodigy, we in turn render invisible not just the process of learning, failing, or creating art; what’s worse, we pay too little attention to those who start late or develop their craft more slowly than the rest—what Gladwell and others call “late bloomers.” It bears noting that, in this context, this term refers to either artists who take years practicing, experimenting, making hazarded and gradual progress, or individuals who have decided to switch to art-making later in life.

Deepa Varadarajan’s debut novel Late Bloomers expands the term’s meaning to include those who make a fresh start more than part of their way through life. Varadarajan, a graduate of Yale Law School, teaches at Georgia State University and has published legal scholarship alongside her fiction. Late Bloomers, which follows the four members of the Raman family, makes the claim that none of us is undeserving of a second act. Each character is given a chance to rediscover their resolve for living anew. Although the novel stumbles and skids in places, distracting readers with its overwritten, haphazard style, Late Bloomers finds footing in the human and very vulnerable reason some of us take longer to develop. Lying to others—but more often to ourselves—is so often what keeps us from experiencing our fullest self-actualization.

Varadarajan sets her novel within the span of a few days, offering four first-person perspectives of a family broken apart after the parents’ divorce. In a fictional Texas town, the moody patriarch Suresh finds himself living alone in the four-bedroom dream house he once shared with his wife Lata. Thrown into the deep end of online dating, he realizes how disappointing meeting women is while struggling to be a resource for his adult children, Priya and Nikesh: “It was so hard, this being alone… Death wasn’t some glimmer in the distance, assured but out of reach like the moon. It was close now—a porchlight right outside my house, casting its somber glow on my daily steps.” 

His ex-wife Lata, who has spent years keeping up appearances in her marriage, has taken her first job as a librarian, and now rents an unhappy apartment from a friend as she fends off the admiration of a college professor. She asks herself, “How has your life ended up like this? Why are you fifty-seven and living in someone else’s apartment?” The sulking Priya loathes herself for sleeping with a married man, an economics professor at the same college where she teaches history, offers a tender memory of togetherness. Remembering the home where their family lived before moving into the dream house, she reminds herself “how our four toothbrushes had sat together in that [four-holed] toothbrush holder, two adult-sized and two kids’ toothbrushes, crusty with the remnants of paste, leaning into one another.” She breaks into tears at the realization that her own toothbrush will never again have another companion. 

For much of the novel, these characters spend so much time apart, dwelling for entire chapters in their own minds, concealing from their family members the unfamiliar swerves their lives have taken, that Varadarajan’s decision to use four points of view works. Suresh, for his part, can’t divulge that a widowed woman and her eight-year-old son have shown up at his door without anywhere to go—no more than Lata can admit to being pursued by a romantic interest. And Priya is ashamed to tell her folks about being some man’s other woman. 

Perhaps our fault as a culture is failing to notice those artists who take longer to tell themselves, first and foremost, the desires that terrify them the most.

Even more unspeakable, though, is what the tender heart of the Raman family is enduring. Priya’s complacent brother Nikesh is in a strained relationship with the partner of the law firm where he works, a woman he lives with in Brooklyn and with whom they have a newborn son. Nikesh hasn’t told his parents that he isn’t in fact married to the woman with whom he’s had a child. Through comedic scenes as well as touching memories recounted in each narrator’s voice, the Raman family’s plans to gather for Nikesh’s son’s first birthday provide the pressure that will release the lies, and for each character to confront the delusions holding them back from enjoying a deeper understanding of who they are to one another and to themselves. But each of them is desperate to reveal “the reformed me,” “the new and improved” version of themselves, so much so that they can’t help but get in their own way time and time again. Their yearning to present themselves as somehow different or better gets in the way of their accepting themselves as flawed. 

In March, I saw the play Letters from Max: A Ritual, which adapts the collection of letters, poems, texts, voicemails, and conversations that playwright Sarah Ruhl shared with her former student Max Ritvo—a precocious and effervescent poet, who, as he underwent treatment for Ewing’s sarcoma, sought a language for the pain of confronting his own mortality. The play and the book from which it’s adapted both capture the unique style and sensibility of a young writer who seems fully formed from the outset of his career. The poignancy of the story lies in the fact of Ritvo’s all-too-soon extinguishing, the loss of promise that his early death effects. His struggle is not of learning how to create art but of learning, instead, how to let go of life. I left the theater thoroughly touched by Ritvo’s assurance of himself as a talented artist, one who trusted his abilities to arrange thought into language. But I also thought back to all the wonderful teachers I had in school, the ones who’d stood at the sidelines of my life, waiting patiently for me to tell them the thing I most wanted for myself. Yet I never articulated what I needed from them, my artistic ambitions never rising to the level of speech. As I walked toward the subway that spring afternoon, I realized I couldn’t fault my former mentors for having never placed a book like Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance or Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh in my hands. Perhaps our fault as a culture is failing to notice those artists who take longer to tell themselves, first and foremost, the desires that terrify them the most.

Nikesh has the honor of bearing what appears to be Varadarajan’s outlook as a late bloomer, someone he sees as, rather admirably, starting over. Reflecting on his parents’ decision to divorce at middle age, he muses, “Something brave about the two of them trying to cobble together new lives while other Indian people their age were settling into creaky lawn chairs with chilled mango juice in hand, reconciling themselves to deadened marriages and eventless retirements.” For his sister Priya, the stakes of not seeing one’s life clearly come into sharpest relief in a stirring scene at a bar, acted out with French fries. Indignant that her parents’ divorce has ruined her ability to be in a romantic relationship, she says, well on her way to drunkenness, “Your world—your basket—starts shrinking. All those possibilities, they start disappearing. Until one day, all you’ve got is one, maybe two fries, tops, left in your basket, and you can’t just throw one way, because if you do, then there’ll be no more fries left, and it’ll just be you all alone with an empty basket.” Although she’s in her mid-thirties, she tells herself it’s too late to have what she wants, and so she runs from life, from the unbearable turn life has taken in her eyes. As she gives up on herself, the ache we feel for her lies in subtext: Priya, like each of us at times, forecloses the possibility of experiencing enhanced and fuller relationships with the people she loves.

Without our responsibility to others, we may never know the next act of our lives.

But Varadarajan balances choice and chance, elucidating how our lives aren’t entirely up to us. Where Priya blames herself, Varadarajan places in Nikesh’s eyes all the empathy late bloomers are owed. Fate—or the vicissitudes of history—necessitates that we hold space for those who, in Nikesh’s mind, just want to “finally try to find a little happiness, to make up for some lost time.” “As far as I could tell,” he tells himself, “my parents had gotten a raw deal. They’d hit their twenties at precisely the wrong moment in India. A generation too early.” The unfortunate consequence, to some degree, of having sufficient opportunities to thrive living in the India that would open to the West in the 1990s was that Nikesh’s parents are now “breaking, at last, the bonds of duty and obligation and the keeping up of appearances that had served them so sorrily up until this point.” The stakes of resenting his parents, as Priya does, reveal themselves in Nikesh’s touching observation: “What would I do if, three decades from now, I discovered I’d pursued the wrong career, married the wrong woman, alienated my kid. The scary thing was: it wasn’t that hard to imagine.” Each of us needs some help, then, to see around the bends of our mind. Without our responsibility to others, we may never know the next act of our lives, might never learn to see ourselves in a changed light.

When I chose the writing life, I asked a few friends—one of whom would go on to become the editor of this magazine—for advice on getting started. But what I dared not say was that I wanted to see my name on the cover of a novel. Is this another way of saying I no longer wished to feel the crushing weight of my own purposelessness and resulting loneliness? Perhaps, although I turned to writing personal essays and criticism first, writing without a plan, my process one of trial and error, of experimentation and hiding in embarrassment. The work of putting down words always abated these awful feelings, but after a few years of attending workshops, enlisting the support of several trusted readers, and making only incremental progress, I understood how unknowing I’d once been. I shrank from this self as much as my writerly identity took hold of me like a fever. My ambitions soared the more deeply and widely I read, and, in turn, I understood the extent of my own shortfalls, which only deepened my shame. 

But it’s not quite right to say that I came to writing at thirty—only that I stopped placing art-making at the periphery of my life. Creativity as a guiding ethos swung to the exact center of my personhood. I didn’t care that I conformed to Ira Glass’s observation about how artists experience themselves early in their careers: “For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.” The chasm between my tastes and my skills seemed untraversable. I in turn stopped reaching out to people, stopped sharing drafts, stopped submitting work. I closed myself off. The vague hope that I might embody the fantasy of a butterfly—soaring into visibility fully formed—was receding with each year I toiled. In a sense, I was up against a nameless antagonist, the very part of me that was bent on seeing me fail. 

In writing this essay, however, I’ve come across a string of buried memories. A flair for creativity had flown through me at an early age, finding a somewhat embarrassing but tender expression in dance, choir, and melodramatic poems. My amateur attachment to the arts fell away by twelve, replaced by a fixation on proving myself intelligent. Because learning Latin came easily to me, it shielded me from the fear that I might not be as smart or competent as I felt I needed to be to succeed. As long as I could muffle my artistic inclinations, the dead language safeguarded me from the terror of longing for a life dedicated to making art. And so, I raced ahead, absorbing all the facets of the abstruse subject, winning awards, and garnering praise. When, in college, other subjects challenged me, I slinked back to Latin’s familiar comforts, relinquishing countless chances to practice other skills necessary for becoming not smarter but more resilient. To have decided, then, almost a decade after graduation, that I wanted to return to a life engaged in the creative process ran me straight into myself—which is to say, my own sense of futility. Today, nothing scares me more than discovering I never had—or will never have—what it takes to write. The horror that I will humiliate myself as a writer continues to haunt and overwhelm me, causing me to fall away from the world. But this futility is both a monstrous and integral part of me. To quote Margo Jefferson, “You were always calculating—not always well—how to achieve; succeed as a symbol, and a self.”

Early in Late Bloomers, Lata shows us her pity for Jared, the forty-something manager of the library where she works. Though he slips away from work for hours for “dentist appointments,” it’s an open secret that he’s auditioning for musical theater roles. Says Lata to herself:

“I struggled to imagine him reaching any professional heights beyond his current library position. And yet, off he went, week after week, speeding out of the library door with the same urgent look on his face…and despite his best efforts, week after week, month after month, his life remained exactly the same. Completely unchanged. What made him keep trying? Blindness? Stupidity? This irrational dreaming, this clinging to the belief that it was never too late or that anything was possible—I’d never been able to decide whether it was an admirable quality in white Americans or a ridiculous one.”

In rereading this passage, I couldn’t help but think that Varadarajan has placed in Lata’s eyes the withering gaze of someone who existed on the sidelines of her own life in Georgia, watching her steal time to write her debut novel in private as she sought another kind of life for herself, one that belonged entirely to her.

The horror that I will humiliate myself as a writer continues to haunt and overwhelm me.

Jared has the privilege of illuminating the full meaning of the novel’s title. As he explains to Lata before the novel opens, “I have a soft spot for underdogs. And late bloomers. You’ve told me a lot of things about yourself, so let me tell you something about me. I didn’t come out as a gay man until I was forty. I know something about second acts in life. And I want to help you find yours.” When Lata comes upon him rehearsing in a room in the music building on campus, she is tickled to learn that he’s gotten the lead role in a performance. “He had kept trying and failing, trying and failing, until he succeeded. He was living the second act that he wanted. He hadn’t been afraid to try.” Although it’s precisely the lesson in perseverance Lata needs in order to date another man, to show up for her daughter Priya, to stop lying to herself about what she wants out of life, Jared’s determination to imagine another life for himself falls flat for me. For all his joy practicing in front of Lata, perhaps a part of me needed to see a more complicated relationship with the challenges of making art, about the many roles we play on and off stage. 

Although Varadarajan’s novel is written with little attention to the finer subtleties of language, the recurring image of landscaping offers a rare strain of beauty. “Instead of letting them die,” Suresh thinks to himself, remembering how he’d tended to the plants outside their dream home, “I had nurtured them to life, made them bloom.” Though a tired trope, a well-manicured property in Varadarajan’s hands becomes a prism through which the Raman family sees itself. Suresh takes quiet pride in his dedication to seeing life emerge again out of the ground, while Priya rethinks who her father may have been all along: “I hadn’t pegged Dad for the plant-nurturing type, but damned if he didn’t have a knack for it.” Even Lata reconsiders her husband’s character as she notices the desert willows and crepe myrtles as she pulls up to the house one night: “What I had expected, of course, was a mess… But no: in the dark at least, everything looked as good as I had left it. Maybe even better.” In showing us both women’s bemusement, something shifts inside us. Insofar as each adjusts her perspective toward Suresh, not letting ourselves see another possible truth keeps us from growing, from knowing who else we can become. 

This picture of a thriving garden touched me, what’s more, for in avoiding humiliation, I’ve lain in wait in an underground of my own making. Ashamed of the ways I’ve fallen short of who I’ve longed to be, I’ve hidden drafts of my work from others as much as I’ve hidden from myself. Having staked a rather premature claim on my inchoate identity as a writer, it’s fallen to me to consider shedding a particular—and particularly facile—image of myself as smart, superior, sophisticated. This was of course the very self I so wished to preserve and portray in drafts of that early essay on my relationship with Latin. For years I worried about leaving behind opportunities I was handed for accumulating skills, for gaining expertise, for advancing myself. But to have been so attached to seeing myself in a certain light, I inadvertently abandoned along the way the chance to find new eyes with which to see myself. 

Gardening is a practice that requires trial and error. And it demands in the gardener the will to flourish. Although Varadarajan cannot show us a subtler portrait of a middle-aged-man tending to a garden, we nevertheless catch a glimpse of the results of his off-stage patience and dedication. For her narrative aims, new growth emerges after a season of planting and pruning, lending the reader a sort of simplistic trust in his own efforts. But artists understand time as an element inherently constitutive of their work. It requires years to train one’s eye or ear not only to apprehend the world but also to be attuned to a particular way of representing that world through dance, film, or paint. Artists aren’t looking for assurance that their perspective or treatment is correct—rather that they alone trust how they see what they’re looking at. Late Bloomers doesn’t show how seeing, or rather, learning to resee, takes time. All the same, implicit in the novel’s gardening motif is a modest message: we seldom care for ourselves with the same determination as for our plants. About the things we care most—namely, ourselves—we lie. And what in turn eludes us is the emergence of new buds within ourselves, blooms that lay dormant for years before opening to the sun.

8 Books About the Lives of Women Writers

Posted on by Wynter Miller

Hours before my toddler announces daybreak with her cry, when the night shadows start to play their old tricks on my nerves and insecurity paints over my creative plans, it’s the stories of the women writers who have come before me that I crave most. I want to feel, down to the sheet-gripping tips of my fingers, that I am not alone—in my doubts, in my hopes, in my struggles.

Reading the stories of other women who share my drive to create can be the best medicine. These women almost always balanced writing with other tasks that crowd the surface of the female experience—raising babies, working day jobs, managing households, caring for sick family members, to name a few. Their lives inspire me not only because they were ultimately successful, but also because their success required the conquering of challenges along the way.  

In fact, I was so hungry for these kinds of stories that I decided to tell one in my first novel. Much like Mark Twain in the United States—a fellow creator of immortal young-adult characters who expressed deep admiration for Anne of Green Gables—Lucy Maud Montgomery (who went by Maud) reached celebrity status throughout Canada and the rest of the British Empire. She was even made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935. And yet, she experienced hardships that most of her readers could never have imagined. I knew immediately that hers was a story I wanted to tell. Eight years later, that story became my debut novel After Anne.

The books on this list all similarly showcase the lives of women writers. Each of these accounts moves and inspires, and can help those of us balancing creative work with life’s other commitments to feel less alone.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather L. Clark

This biography of Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath takes on the intimate and previously unfamiliar aspects of Plath’s life, from her babyhood (recounting how early she spoke her first word) through her suicide at age thirty, when her children were toddlers. In addition to being a meticulously researched biography, Clark sprinkles in thoughtful literary analysis of Plath’s poetry that will appeal to any English major. Clark’s nuanced portrayal of each person in Plath’s life—resisting the temptation to demonize or aggrandize—makes this account particularly special. And Clark’s compassion and respect for Plath shows through in each line of the book.

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

In this memoir, Ann Patchett paints a raw and beautiful portrait of a twenty-year friendship between two writers—Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist Patchett and Lucy Grealy, who wrote the critically acclaimed memoir Autobiography of a Face about her battles with childhood cancer and its aftermath. Patchett tells the story of the intersection between two writers’ journeys, tracing back to their time together at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and continuing through Lucy’s death of a heroin overdose at age thirty-nine. Their friendship was close but not easy, and Patchett’s memoir is all the more powerful for telling the many sides of it. 

The Moment of Tenderness by Madeleine L’Engle

This is a collection of eighteen short stories discovered by one of the granddaughters of Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time. Together, these stories create a poignant mosaic of L’Engle’s early life, from childhood to motherhood. Some of these stories were published during L’Engle’s lifetime, and others were only published posthumously. Some have a firm basis in real events, while others have fantasy and science fiction elements. Together, they will appeal to anyone interested in what inspired the work of one of our most fantastically imaginative authors.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Unlike the other books on the list, this one is pure fiction, by bestselling author Lily King. It tells the story of Casey Peabody, a struggling writer in her early thirties. Following Casey’s life over the course of a year, it shows her grappling with the aftermath of her mother’s sudden death, a failed relationship, and notices from debt collectors. Casey’s experiences with the male-dominated publishing industry and overcoming self-doubt will ring true for many women with creative dreams—especially those searching for their creative identity and grappling with grief or heartache at the same time.  

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

In what the New York Times Book Review described as “a feminist classic” of literary criticism, originally published in 1979 and recently reissued with a new introduction, Gilbert and Gubar explore how celebrated female writers from Jane Austen to Emily Dickinson conveyed their own life experiences of confinement through the characters they wrote. The book’s title comes from Jane Eyre, the novel in which a female character is famously kept locked in the attic, which is commonly understood as a metaphor for the ways in which women were historically imprisoned in the domestic realm. The recent reissuing of this classic text emphasizes just how much its messages resonate today. 

M Train by Patti Smith

This memoir of the life of National Book Award-winning author and multi-platform artist Patti Smith journeys through Smith’s life in a series of poignant vignettes. The book flows the way memory often does—through time and space, from past to present, from Greenwich Village to Mexico to Iceland. It includes not only Smith’s words but also her photographs, allowing the reader to see its subject more vividly. Smith unpacks the creative process in an intimate and introspective way that will resonate with creators of all stripes.

The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

In this historical fiction novel, Melanie Benjamin tells the true story of the rise and fall of a female friendship in male-dominated, early twentieth-century Hollywood: the friendship between screenwriter Frances Marion and actress Mary Pickford. It follows Marion’s journey from moving to Hollywood with dreams of being an artist, to finding her calling writing stories for film, to her instant bond with Pickford, to their eventual falling out. The book will appeal to anyone interested in the challenges faced by women trying to climb the ladder of creative success while maintaining a close friendship at the same time.

Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy by Leslie Brody

Rounding out the list, this biography of Louise Fitzhugh, creator of beloved childhood character Harriet the Spy, explores Fitzhugh’s childhood in segregated Memphis, her struggles with her identity as a gay woman in the 1950s and 1960s, and her creative process and inspiration. Brody grounds her biography in careful research and insight, shedding light on the often-ignored cultural and social significance of children’s literature by delving into the hidden life of one of its creators.

The Battle of the Book Cover: Britain vs America

Posted on by Jo Lou

They say it’s what’s on the inside the counts—except, of course, when you are a book cover, and your entire existence relies on looking pretty and being judged. 

That’s right, folks. You know it, you love it. We here at Electric Lit have once again asked our lovely followers on Instagram and Twitter to vote between UK and US book covers to determine which trends are hot and which are so last year. Is the blob back with vengeance? Is photorealism still a thing? Will maximalism finally supersede minimalism? Is realism hanging on by the skin of its teeth?

We here at Electric Lit consider these all very important questions worthy of the utmost research, and we know you do too. Without further ado, here are the results:

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Sarah Thankam Mathews’ debut novel follows Sneha, a young queer woman fortunate enough to land a corporate job amidst the American recession. The UK cover seems to tackle this plot more directly, with the art centered around a woman lounging in her underwear rendered in clean, modern lines. While I am a huge fan of the mixed berry palette and slight hints of voyeurism, I will admit, the whimsicality of the cover doesn’t exactly scream recession. The US cover is more about the *vibes*, depicting what appears to be a cluster of vaguely morose looking people, all doing their own thing to get through life. I can practically smell millennial sweat just looking at that picture. Round one’s a win for the US, and understandably so. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

Brutes by Dizz Tate

Set in Falls Landing in Florida, Brutes follows a gang of 13-year-old girls obsessing over the local preacher’s daughter, who has gone missing. This book is unhinged, girlhood nightmare fuel, and apparently both the UK and US cover artists thought photorealism was perfect for the job. On the UK side, we have a slightly blurred photo of two young girls embracing with the title slashed across in all caps. The US side opts for a subtler title layout and a clearer image of the girls in an ocean baptism to highlight the devastating Florida sun. While I love both images, the US cover certainly does inhabit a certain violence in its overexposure (think Dexter’s bright Miami murders), making it perhaps the more apt and popular design for this book.

Winner: 🇺🇸

Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng

We have two very different concepts here: while the UK cover appears painted and chooses to focus on the setting of the book—possibly the village of Serowe, where many of the collection’s stories takes place—the US cover opts to focus on characters, depicting two photo cutouts of a woman set against a blob-esque background. There’s something playful about the US cover that I quite like—possibly the fact that while the bottom cut-out looks up at the top cut-out, the top cut-out looks directly at you. The way the cut-outs are positioned as though they are communicating also evokes the title. The UK wins this round however with drawings of people and little houses with triangular roofs against in a bright yellow and red palette. Though Call and Response follows many characters, the stories are all tied to Botswana, which is very much the beating heart of this book. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

It’s hard to describe Big Swiss, but essentially a sex therapist’s transcriber falls in love with a patient through listening to her sessions. Yeah. I know. Big Swiss is a novel with a lot of personality, and so it is fitting that both the covers follow suit. On the UK side, we have some vaguely suggestive dog action going on–representing, perhaps, the moment the protagonist, Greta, first hears the disembodied voice of her love interest at a dog park. On the US side, we have realism artwork of an upside down woman possibly screaming, possibly orgasming–it’s hard to say. I was really rooting for realism here–I love the drama of it, who doesn’t? But it seems the UK’s subtle, yet cheeky artwork is the winner here. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Bellies by Nicola Dinan

Ah, yes. The people have spoken. Sexy fruit is alive and well, and it’s not going anywhere. I am of course referring to the close shot of a peach on the UK cover, which can only be described with one of Bram Stoker’s favorite words: voluptuous. There is also something undoubtedly bold and queer about fruit covers–fitting, considering that the book follows the complicated relationship between a cis man and a trans woman who fell in love pre-transition. That is not to say the US cover holds no merit–smooth vector lines form two bodies sleeping beneath the same covers–suggestive, yes, though not nearly as much as the UK cover. It seems bold and sexy takes this round, as the majority of voters side with the UK. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns

Here we have what the kids call ‘same picture, different font.’ The choice of both covers to depict a rearview mirror makes sense, considering the plot follows a burnt out rideshare driver. But while the UK cover depicts a realistic pencil, possibly charcoal drawing of a woman’s eyes in the mirror, the US’s version uses smooth vector lines, as well as adds in a little burning air freshener swinging from the mirror (just a little foreshadowing, wink wink.) Though the covers are similar, the US version is undoubtedly more unhinged, and we love to see that. It seems the majority of voters also preferred chaos. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe

In the wake of her grief, a woman finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship and estranged from her family. Sounds familiar? The Middle Daughter is something of a modern, Nigerian retelling of Hades and Persephone, in which the lord of the dead famously abducts the goddess of spring (at least, in some versions; myths tend to get a bit iffy.) The UK cover, adorned with dense, lush flowers, helps conjure this myth to mind. The US cover, on the other hand, chooses to focus on characters, and does so with what appears to be subtle collage. It seems voters preferred the flowers this round, adding another win for the UK. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Small Joys by Elvin James Mensah

Though two very different covers, both the US and UK covers have essentially the same vibe: soft, comforting, hopeful, all of which pairs well with Small Joys, a story about a man who develops an unexpected friendship right before he was about to end it all. The styles of the artwork have some differences though. The UK version uses, once again, those clean vector lines, while the US version looks more homemade, almost as if constructed out of tissue paper. What ultimately does it for me, and possibly for a few of our voters, is the very cute detail of the music notes standing like birds on the telephone wires–a hint at the novel’s musical references. Though both covers were great contenders, the US wins this round.

Winner: 🇺🇸

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

Really Good, Actually follows a twenty-nine year old divorcee whose marriage disintegrates after a mere 608 days. This story is messy in the best way possible, and the matching cover art of a woman with dripping mascara is perfect for the occasion. When it comes to artistic style, however, our voters have sided with the US’s far more dramatic realism artwork, as opposed to the UK’s vector image. I have to agree. Clean, simple vectors, though modern and trendy, don’t nearly measure up to the detailed chaos the realism cover offers. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan

The general layout of these two covers are quite similar, from their font to their minimalistic images. As you might be able to deduce, The Happy Couple follows a decidedly unhappy couple on their way to their wedding. The US cover tackles this plot with an illustration of two swans turning away from each other, while the UK cover goes for a subtler approach, depicting a crumpled tissue lying next to a box of tissues. From our results so far, it seems our voters tend to side with subtlety, and so the UK claims another win. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Maame by Jessica George

I personally like covers with people, since the illustration lends itself to a vague image of the protagonist in my mind. If not people, geography is nice too. Or–something. Something related to the book. It seems I am alone in this however, as the majority of voters have sided with the US cover, which–though it features some nice looking flowers–is very much a blob, or at least blob adjacent. I argue that nothing about this artwork actually references the story, which is about a woman’s experience dealing with racism, love, and familial duties. The UK cover, on the other hand, at least appears to depict the protagonist. I’ll admit, though. The flowers are pretty. The palette is eye-catching. And that book would look lovely on my shelf. Sigh. You win this time, blob fans. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

For the covers of Yiyun Li’s haunting novel on friendship and memory, birds take center stage. On the UK edition, publishers seem to have leaned towards realism and maximalism, resulting in a busy cover with lots to see and an overall dramatic effect. The fact that so many birds are lying still, possibly dead, is also quite alarming, yet true to the tragic events that occur in this story. The US cover, on the other hand, depicts geese with a simpler, somewhat more minimalist approach, one which evokes the fine, curved strokes one might associate with Paris and the French countryside, where a few of the story’s events occur. While the covers have similar subjects and are both beautifully drawn, it seems more voters prefer the US cover’s style. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor’s novel about a group of friends in Iowa City is beautifully written, so it is quite fitting that the covers are just as elegant. The US cover has a lot more going on, with broad brush strokes that flood the whole page, depicting two lovers entangled in a kiss. Up close, one might not necessarily identify the image immediately, but there’s something sexy and queer about that, which meshes perfectly with the novel’s plot. The UK cover is quite the contrast, with a largely solid white cover, interrupted by small, realistic and nearly gothic images. There is certainly an understated drama to the UK cover, as well as a touch of light academia, but it seems the US cover’s sensuous, more abstract art wound up charming more voters. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

There is something lonely and timeless about the moon, which is perhaps why it makes such a great cover art subject for a book about three orphaned siblings seeking refuge in the UK following the Vietnam war. The US cover is particularly haunting, cleverly depicting the moon phases partially cut to create face silhouettes out of the negative space. It looks almost as if the faces at the top and bottom are trying to reach each other, or perhaps turn into each other. The UK cover is a bit busier, with a wood boat drifting through dark waters, the red moon appearing to sit inside the boat. My favorite detail about the UK cover would have to be the reflective quality of the dark water, suggesting the little white dots are stars in a dark sky. Perhaps these whimsical details ended up swaying more voters to the UK cover.

Winner: 🇬🇧 

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

What is this? A tie?! Well, not only is it a tie, but it is a tie in the most chaotic way possible, with the US cover dominating on Instagram and the UK cover winning on Twitter. Our lovely social media editor even double checked, but sure enough, the count was 501 vs. 501. What are the odds! If anything, this might say more about the Instagram vs. Twitter aesthetic than overall reader preferences. On the US side, we have a maximalist, artsy cover depicting fine vases, marble busts, and gold mirrors–perfect for a book featuring New York’s upper class. The UK cover is much simpler, starring a citrus unpeeling before a faint, Manhattan skyline. In a way, it makes sense that picture-oriented Instagram would wind up choosing the busy, maximalist US cover, while Twitter, formerly known for its 140 word limit, prefers the minimalist approach. 

Winner: Tie!

Monsters by Claire Dederer

Yes, let’s get some nonfiction up in here! Claire Dederer does not hold back in her deep dive on problematic artists, ranging from Picasso to Woody Allen, so it makes sense that both covers are equally as bold. On the US side, we have a photo image of a man in swim trunks with his head hidden by a large bull mask. I do not know how to describe his pose other than that he looks mid-mansplain. I mean, look at those hands. Tell me those aren’t mansplaining hands. On the UK side, we have clever artwork of two girls clutching their heads and screaming, either in pain or sheer euphoria. Having witnessed my fair share of boy band concerts, I’m inclined to say both. If I may add, I think these two images actually work quite well next to each other, the US cover giving a subject for the girls on the UK cover to scream at. If forced to choose just one, though, it seems the majority of voters sided with the UK cover. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

The Guest by Emma Cline

The Guest follows twenty-two year old Alex who grifts her way through life after being dumped by her rich, older boyfriend Simon. Even without knowing the plot, you can probably sense there is something nefarious and voyeuristic to the story. While the UK cover offers a photo image of a glowing, aqua pool at night, the water ominously empty, the US cover depicts only a single, extended hand, the entire image saturated in blue and green. Coupled with the title, the US cover certainly paints an unsettling image, which may have ultimately swayed more voters to the US side. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna

How to Think Like a Woman, which spotlights the lives of 17th and 18th century female philosophers that have been forgotten by history, aptly chooses portraits of women as the star of their covers. The UK cover is a bit more abstract and shape oriented, the subject’s dark eyes appearing to stare into your very soul. The US cover goes for a realism approach and features a woman holding a book, her face swathed in white cloth, obscuring her identity entirely. There is no arguing that both covers are stunning and startling. Thematically, however, the US cover aligns better with the book, possibly giving it the nudge it needed to win. 

Winner: 🇺🇸

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Here we have two covers which differ in just about every way. The US cover tackles Rebecca Makkai’s mystery about a campus murder with shaky letters that appear to bleed across a red and blue background. The UK cover chooses to focus on images, with a series of rectangular snapshots that bring to mind evidence from a crime scene. It seems the images resonated with more voters, and thus the UK cover takes the penultimate round. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

And, last but not least, White Cat, Black Dog. Kelly Link adopts classic fairytale stories and turns them into her own in this genre-bending short story collection. It is unsurprising, considering the title, that both covers feature animals. While the US cover opts for a cute little puppy, the UK edition depicts–uh–a slightly more unsettling pair of animals. My, are those sharp teeth! Nonetheless, while the US edition’s dog might be cuddlier, there is certainly a fairy tale vibe to the UK edition’s art, which fits perfectly with the overall theme of Kelly Link’s collection. 

Winner: 🇬🇧

Long Live the New Flesh

Posted on by EL Assistant2

I don’t experience my dreams from a first-person point of view. My gaze exists only as a third-person stranger at a theater, watching it all like a film. The whole spectacle even comes with letterboxes and sometimes subtitles as well to complete the experience. After all the skin is ripped apart, all the blood is spilled; only then do things take a positive turn. A celestial and welcoming light surrounds the bloody and messy scene. There are many close-ups of the corpse. Then, I emerge victorious from the corpse of my old self. I am sculpted in a way that finally feels natural. My outsider gaze changes into my gaze, erupting out of my new body. Long live the new flesh. I see my hands reach out to the cozy light. Though I cannot see it, I know I’m smiling. In the end, I am born anew. At that point in the narrative, I always wake up from this dream, with a weak smile continuing from the dream and some tears rolling down my cheeks bringing me back to the real world. This cannot be the end, I think to myself.

A low-income district in a Middle Eastern country in the mid-2000s. It’s summer and I, a primary school student, finally get to enjoy summer break and spend the days with my cousin playing games. We’re neighbors in the same apartment building—same floor even—and we hop from one place to another the entire day. We play many types of games, but one of them is our  favorite: we watch cartoons with superheroes and magical girls on the television. Then we role-play, immediately after the show is over. Our role-playing games are as formulaic as the shows we watch. Always, she is the damsel in distress; always I am the mad scientist trying to kill her. My methods are almost always absurdly grotesque, and  sponsored by ACME Corporation or Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc.—at least, they are in our expanded cinematic role-playing universe.

My cousin strikes a dramatic pose under the couch’s pillows. I smirk devilishly.

“Oh my God, here’s the evil scientist again! I’m trapped by your newest trap and weapon! The Unbelievably-Heavy-Pillow-Fort-Trap 3000!”

“Hah! Think you could escape my ultimate scientific inventions? Well, think again!”

“Oh no, it’s getting worse! Not the Incredibly-Precise-Laser 6000! Are you going to kill me with that or what?!”

My cousin strikes a dramatic pose under the couch’s pillows. I smirk devilishly. I have the high ground. The laser in question is a very-2000s pencil with a small sparkly Hello Kitty toy attached to its top. The pencil is never sharpened since it’s a recurring prop for our games—far more important a purpose than summer break homework.

“I’ll do much worse than simply killing you—I’ll cut your vocal cord with my Incredibly-Precise-Laser 6000! You’ll be the next Ariel the mermaid!”

“Not my voice!”

She emerges from the pillow fort with newfound energy. We fight as if we are about to wrestle. When I pin her down, I get on top of her while also holding both hands up by her head, proudly exclaiming my next villainous goal.

 “Hah! You fell for my trap; you are done for! Now I shall do something even worse for you but fun for me! I will cut your tits off clean instead! Bwa-ha-ha!”  

There is a reason my cries get highly specific, and highly graphic. The cartoons we watched weren’t my only source of inspiration. Whenever I performed these lines, I  mimicked the villain that I came across in a low-budget horror film that I’d watched, in secret, under cover of night. 

I have always had sleeping problems ever since I was a child, so when I couldn’t sleep, I instead got up and went to our living room. I wanted to see what was airing that night, but my parents always hated me staying up late. I pretended to be  a secret agent. I quietly and slowly rose from my bed, walked on tip-toes to reach the living room, and turned on the television. 

My eyes went wide with excitement, my lips curled into a smile. I wanted to see the blood and more.

In Turkey, they used to exclusively air low to no-budget horror B films after midnight. The funniest part is, this went for almost every single channel available on the satellite, so basically you were zapped through them and greeted with masterpieces—Plan 9 from Outer Space or Killer Klowns from Outer Space—all on a single night. It felt as though I  was walking through an open buffet of $20 budget films in one hand, and a dream in the other. 

While I loved binge-watching all kinds of B films during those restless nights, I gradually realized that I most enjoyed those containing intense gore or body horror. It was extremely satisfying to see the blood splash and the organs fly out. I couldn’t put my finger on it back then, but those scenes felt familiar in their visceral visuals. My eyes went wide with excitement, my lips curled into a smile. I wanted to see the blood and more. This wasn’t like seeing something you liked on the screen, it was much more than that. So, as a result, to quench my blood thirst, I grabbed the newspaper every Sunday and religiously combed the television schedules for every channel listed. The criteria: The film must air after midnight, and it must have a weird or intense title suggesting gore or body horror. To my delight, I realized I could watch these  films multiple times nearly every week, often each night since the programmers kept going for such titles—something we had in common. 

Looking back on all those film nights, I can’t remember the names of those films I so eagerly awaited. However, I still remember how I felt whenever I saw some character’s guts spilling out or another’s skin peeling off, blood and everything everywhere. Even after I watched, say, The Thing, my primary memory of it was not the character arcs or story progression; it was the grotesque death scenes. Yes, those scenes felt relatable for some reason unbeknownst to me. As a result, I often found myself dreaming—or maybe nightmaring—myself into those scenes anytime I had a bad day, which was usually triggered by glancing in the mirror and seeing my body or face’s reflection. Those dreams/nightmares were all similar in their narrative. It began immediately with the death scene of the week. 

I often tried to draw anatomical drawings and then cut the drawing into pieces while imagining rivers of blood gushing out from the incisions.

I kept searching for another film with a gory body horror scene just to make sure I will be able to be reborn in my dreams and feel happy and natural once again. I kept finding myself looking for that transient and dreamy feeling of realness constantly after that. Though, even though it all looks crystal clear now, I still do not understand the connection between those gore scenes and my own gender identity. There is a very simple reason for that – I simply did not have any idea about the existence of a queer side of the world yet as I was trapped in the typical binaries of life here visible to my eyes.

Being a child in a low-income and conservative family in the Middle East comes with a very common starter pack. You are pushed toward the pursuit of education and a career in either law or medicine by one’s parents. This was the case for me as well. I was the first one in the family that showed signs of “getting numbers and stuff” so my path was clear – I simply had to study medicine. I internalized that idea so fully that the evil scientist became my recurring character in my role-playing sessions with my cousin.

Soon after, I learned more about medicine, science, and everything in between as I kept breezing through primary and middle school. Seeing the diagrams of organs or skeletons always brought me joy. I often tried to draw anatomical drawings and then cut the drawing into pieces while imagining rivers of blood gushing out from the incisions. I’d found my career goal; I decided to become a surgeon. Cutting the skin and organs? Count me in! That goal quickly died  and was kicked to the curb when I realized my math and science skills were no match for high school calculus and biology. I had the blues for a while, but  I did have something else to fall back on, to keep me motivated. Yes, it was those cheesy yet iconic, gory B films themselves. Those unrealistic body horror moments made me feel at home every single time.

I did not have any access to anyone or anything in real life that would help me navigate what was going on within my mind and soul.

I frequented the art platform DeviantArt. I have always been into story-based cinematic video games as well as horror films, and games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill still rank among my all-time favorites. As you can guess, they predominantly have body horror and gore elements within their character designs. I would browse the fan art sites with great admiration as I would type in the names of the characters with the most grotesque designs onto that search bar and see the results pop up. Whenever I would see any new masterfully crafted artwork of a scene from the games with full gore, they got registered into my mind’s storyboarding territory, and eventually, showed up in the sequences within my dreams. My internet surfing adventure eventually spread to another crucial site – Tumblr. There, I found not only artworks but also writings of all sorts. This curious rabbit hole eventually led me into the world of queer perspectives and ideas. Among the many memes and other viral content, I noticed a common type of text entry on Tumblr. It followed along the lines of “I create gory body horror artwork and writing because duh! I am trans!” and it was at that point that my subconscious started to consider the possibility that I might be too. It still was not clear to my waking consciousness, though. 

I was in high school during my Tumblr exploration stage. It was not the only thing I explored, I also realized that I was not straight. I did not have any access to anyone or anything in real life that would help me navigate what was going on within my mind and soul, so of course, I went back to my comfortable corner online. I started to actively learn about the queer community, queer identities, and more. I was finally starting to find the puzzle pieces, one by one gathering everything in a big huge bag. I felt myself reaching close, but I also could tell I was still missing that finishing touch. 

Writing scripts with body horror helps me feel as if I am creating something relatable for people like me.

Surely, that obsession with my wanting to become a surgeon must be related, right? Also, pulling all-nighters constantly just to watch brutal horror films from my childhood days to now too, right? It must be, it simply must be that way. 

I finally came across that one quote that gave me my eureka moment. It was from the book Something That May Shock and Discredit You written by Daniel Mallory Ortberg: “As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” I still vividly remember the very first time I read that quote. I was speechless. I could almost hear the puzzle pieces in my brain connecting and then finally forming the big final picture. 

Watching those films and reading those quotes made me realize why I kept feeling so inclined toward watching grotesque horror films even when no one around me did so, and doing that was even condemned silently by everyone else around me. It made me realize why I hated my body so much that I kept killing it off in my dreams—every single night—and why I was so obsessed with the goal of becoming a surgeon in the first place. It also made me understand why I found gory scenes in cinema comforting – it was as if looking into a mirror. I, as a queer creative in both orientation and identity, wanted to create a body of my own from scratch, a body in which I felt natural and real. Watching all these body horror and gore horror films was a passive yet highly effective way for me to concretely visualize those ideas, ideas which were further developed in my dreams. When this narrative cycle reached an ending for the night, I felt a sense of completion, and of finding my home with those films., After reading so much about the theory and watching the films, I finally realized that I could partake in that completion by simply creating my works. So now, I am a graduate student in film and television, learning both theory and practice. As I open Celtx, the screenwriting application on my computer, I realize that writing scripts with body horror helps me feel as if I am creating something relatable for people like me, while also expressing myself. In a way, I feel as if I am helping others explore their own identities. As I’m typing this now in mid-2023, I’m preparing to write my master’s thesis as well. This topic, body horror in cinema as a way of expressing transness or non-binary identities, will be my thesis theme. It feels like something of a small-scale miracle to have had this topic approved by the institute, now that the Islamist regime here won the majority in the May 2023 elections once again, trapping me in this open-air jail of an oppressive ideology for five more years. 

I cannot help but wonder what else I will discover about my identity as I keep walking on the path. There is a place for people like me, there is a piece of freedom to exist and experience somewhere. While I feel like losing hope for the future, I try to motivate myself with the progress I have made so far. I know I must go on, not only for myself but any potential others who might come across my writings online someday, the same way I came across Ortberg’s writings. Just like others, I have the power to exist and experience freely, and hope there also will be an opportunity to fully go through it openly, on a different side of the world. Until that hopeful, longed-for escape, I will keep turning on the television at night and letting the seas of blood shine into my eyes.

The Strange Spy Story at the Heart of #MeToo

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

It’s not a spoiler to say that one woman whips out a switchblade, or that another’s boozy airplane ride leads to a warrant for her arrest. Though this is a spy novel, it’s not even a spoiler to say that one woman is stalking the other—and then their roles reverse. 

While novelist Helen Schulman’s new book, Lucky Dogs, has the intrigue and pace of a thriller, the novel is also a scorching meditation on sexual assault—and a retelling of a bizarre true story at the heart of the #MeToo Movement. As Schulman explained to me in a Zoom conversation, Lucky Dogs is less focused on the moment of violence than its fallout: how the stories of sexual assault survivors are repressed, and how two women can find themselves pitted against each other. 

Schulman is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and serves as the fiction chair of the Creative Writing program at The New School. From her New York City office, she chatted with me about the intertwined themes of sexism and civil war in Lucky Dogs and the toxic ideal of the “good victim.” 

Evangeline Riddiford Graham: In your Author’s Note, you describe how Lucky Dogs was inspired by a news story that seemed to have “fallen out of the sky.” I’d love to hear more about that aha moment.

Helen Schulman: I grew up in the 1970s, and I drank the Kool-Aid on second-wave feminism. As I get older, I’m increasingly sad and angry that things have not changed the way I thought they would in my lifetime. So I read about #MeToo and Rose McGowan with a lot of interest.

Rose McGowan was a young actress on her own when [Hollywood producer] Harvey Weinstein raped her. She was in her early forties when she started her campaign against him in 2017. Now she has followers she calls “Rose’s army,” but back then she had no army: she was just a woman with a mouth and unfettered anger. She was brave and crazily wild in a world where, aside from the industry gossip network, nobody was talking about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults. 

Harvey Weinstein hired the lawyer David Boies—who went to Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel—to find the right spies to ruin her. The effort of all these men to silence this one woman was astounding to me. Then I learned that [through the Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube] Weinstein had hired a young Israeli woman to pose as a women’s rights activist and befriend McGowan and to ultimately discredit her and stop her from writing her book. I was like, Oh, wow. How could one woman do this to another? How could a woman betray another woman this way?

That was it. The story fell into my lap.

ERG: Lucky Dogs centers on the specific conflict of one woman being hired to spy on another, with the aim of discrediting her sexual assault testimony. But the scope of the novel goes way beyond these two people.

HS: I think it’s really about how women can be so tormented and abused that they turn on each other and destroy themselves, their sisterhood. A civil war between women that’s orchestrated by very powerful men.

In my book and in real life, the young woman hired to spy on Rose McGowan was originally from Bosnia and was a child during the siege of Sarajevo. Her grandparents had rescued Jewish families during the Second World War, and her grandfather had lost his life for it. So during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, this young woman and her surviving family were saved by the Israelis and brought to Israel as “Righteous Gentiles,” where she grew up to become a Black Cube agent. 

While I was researching this book, I felt like our country was on the brink of a civil war. We’re locked and loaded, in terms of our lack of gun control. So I was thinking a lot about the Bosnian War and about the state of Israel. I’m Jewish; my grandmother’s brother was part of the founding movement in Israel. I have very complicated feelings about Israel: I’m against endless war, and I’m against people being subjugated, and I’m against people being so scared.

ERG: In Bosnia and Israel, two of the main settings of the book, civil war is a constant pressure on the characters and their relationships.

Rose McGowan was considered not a ‘good victim.’

HS: And the book ends in Florida—if there’s any place in this country that’s at the point of civil war, it’s Florida. I was born 15 years after the Holocaust; I lived through the 1960s, ’70s. I think this is the worst time of my lifetime in the U.S., because we’re eating each other. But to the rest of the world, we’re just crazy because we have everything that they want, and all we’re doing is messing it up. I don’t want to ever judge one person’s pain against another, but I think for people who live in war-torn countries, when they hear Americans complain about our problems, or watch us make our own problems, they’re like, You’re fucking crazy. 

ERG: It seems radical to me that the stories of your two protagonists—Merry, the famous actress, and Nina, the spy—can exist alongside each other without judgment. Both women have suffered in different ways, and you feel that, as a reader. But they’re both also at times repugnant and both certainly fail to live up to what Matt, the novel’s Ronan Farrow-like journalist, refers to as a “squeaky clean” requirement we demand in witnesses of sexual assault. They also fail a perceived “likability” requirement that comes up for protagonists in fiction.

HS: This is something I’ve always run up against, because I present my characters warts and all. Both Nina and Merry do really unsavory things, but I have compassion for them. I’m not asking you to love them. I’m asking you to understand what happens to women growing up and how hard it can be. 

My husband, Bruce, worked at Esquire for a while as an editor, and inherited a story about Bryan Singer, a director who has been accused many times of raping or abusing young men. This time, the writers, Alex French and Max Potter, had the goods on him—they had testimony. Bruce edited the story, and Bruce’s editor wanted to run it. Then the powers that be at Hearst killed the story, in part, they said, because these characters are too unsympathetic, they’re too unreliable. One was a sex worker, the other is a drug addict. This one grew up to do porno films. They don’t make good witnesses. 

It absolutely enraged me that they killed the story. Bruce went on editing it till the writers found a new home at the Atlantic. Then there was a whole shake up at Esquire. Bruce ended up quitting, and his other two bosses were pushed out. 

What stuck with me was the fact that these men weren’t “good enough” victims. Rose McGowan was considered not a “good victim.” And Merry is so not a good victim. Her lawyer says to her: You had sex with other people. You had sex with women, you had sex in movies. You take off your clothes, you walk around half naked; at this point, it’s your word against his, since you didn’t show up immediately at the police station. Merry says, You mean if I ran out of that room with his semen running down my legs and my torn panties, I could have pressed charges? And her lawyer says, Yes. 

Why don’t women do that? Because they’re so scared, and they want so badly for it not to have happened. In Weinstein’s trial, the defense would say, Well, this accuser wrote Harvey all these notes later, so she must have had sex with him consensually. Some of these women had affairs with him consensually after they’d been raped by him. That’s part of the psychology of abuse that I don’t think the public understands. If those women then got into some crazy, weird affair with Weinstein—a repetition, compulsion, or trying to control the narrative, or just wanting a job—it doesn’t mean he didn’t rape them.

So yes, Merry wears short skirts and she’s vulgar and she takes drugs and she drinks and she acts out. But what for me is essential about her and what makes me love her is she’s a raging bull. No matter what you do to her, she’s going to fight back. She’s not going to lie down and die. And if fighting back damages her more, that’s because she has no impulse control. But I admire that. I admire that even if it means she does terrible things. She just can’t accept letting people step all over her and hurt her that way.

Rape and sexual assault happens in every walk of life.

ERG: She’ll use whatever tools she has to hand—

HS: Which are very few. She’s unsupported. She has one person on her side, and that’s her manager. 

ERG: As a mode of witnessing war and witnessing sexual assault, why fiction?

HS: Both my grandmothers were refugees. I grew up in a bedroom with my mother’s mother. She had four siblings killed in the Holocaust, and lost everything when she came to this country. She was an educated person; she ended up being a laundry woman. My father’s mother, on the other hand, left Russia penniless, almost barefoot: they had one pair of shoes that all nine children shared. And she couldn’t read or write, but she could tell stories. Both my grandmothers told so many stories. I learned to look at the history of the world through the lens of story from them.

ERG: You mentioned the lengths that “the powers that be”—in your book and in life—will go to in order to silence a story about sexual assault. Can we talk a bit more about that? 

HS: The levels of corruption are unreal. Think of all the people in Hollywood who knew what Weinstein was up to. He had a bevy of young women who would lead women to his hotel room and then disappear. These women were acting as decoys for the women he raped. Did they know? Some did, some didn’t. A very brave woman named Zelda Perkins was in her early twenties and working for Weinstein when she heard from her colleague that Weinstein had attempted to rape her. Perkins reported it and fought and fought for her friend. The women were told they didn’t have a case and ended up signing an NDA they were terrified about for more than 20 years.

How could one woman do this to another? How could a woman betray another woman this way?

At NBC in New York, they were protecting Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer had a rape button under his desk. He could press the button under his desk so that the door would lock when someone was in his office. 

Rape and sexual assault happens in every walk of life. But in these cases—the Matt Lauers, the Harvey Weinsteins, the Bill Cosbys—these are mass rapists who were protected by other people because of their money and their power. Whole organizations were built around hiding their crimes.

There were plenty of rumors about Harvey Weinstein, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the truth truly came out. And I think Rose McGowan was absolutely a hero in that. The journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at the New York Times broke the story first. They were incredible. They were such heroes at such personal cost to their lives and their families. So there are good guys, but there were so many powers working against them. Ken Auletta spent 20 years trying to break the story, and he couldn’t. It was only when Ronan Farrow was close, then Auletta gave him his files and introduced him to David Remnick, who then published Farrow in the New Yorker.

ERG: As a feminist, what was your approach to depicting rape and sexual violence in Lucky Dogs?

HS: I don’t want to ever be gratuitous about something that important, and I also don’t want it to be in any way titillating. So I wrote about it matter-of-factly, I think.

In the book, Nina’s mother is raped in front of her husband and child, in her own home, by her husband’s best friend, who is taking over their apartment. There were many similar crimes in the Bosnian war. The neighbor invades the house with a group. He’s always had a crush on his friend’s wife; besides, he likes this apartment better. Nina’s mother screams at her husband to look away. There’s nothing prurient about the scene. It’s not a sex. It’s rape: it’s violence against this woman, and it’s violence against her husband. 

Then Nina’s family is forced out of their apartment. She’s just been raped. He’s just watched this. The child has just seen this. And they have to find a place to go while there’s gunfire in the streets. But that’s what happens. They had to get up, go, take what they could. You’re raped and then what? What do you do next? 

That’s the question I’m interested in: How do you survive your own life?

Dear Chatbot, Should I Write About My Dead Mother?

Posted on by Wynter Miller

A conversation between Ethan Gilsdorf and ChatGPT

This conversation was edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Should I write about my dead mother?
Yes, you should write about your dead mother if you feel compelled to do so. Writing about someone you care about can be a cathartic and meaningful experience.

When I was twelve, my mother suffered a brain aneurysm. She survived but was severely disabled. What should I say about her?
I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your dead mother and the difficult circumstances surrounding her injury. You might consider sharing positive memories and experiences you had with her before her injury, as well as reflecting on how her disability may have affected your relationship with her.

Because of her brain injury, she could be unpredictable and say things that were scary.
I understand that caring for someone with a brain injury can be challenging, and it can be difficult to understand and predict their behavior. It’s important to remember that your mother’s brain injury is not her fault and it’s not your fault either.

My dead mother keeps appearing in my writing. What should I do?
If you find that your deceased mother keeps appearing in your writing, it could be a sign that you have unresolved feelings or emotions that you may need to process. If you’re unsure whether or not you want to write about your dead mother, you can try free writing first. This can be a way to begin the process of expressing your thoughts and feelings. You could also consider writing a letter to your mother, which can be a therapeutic way to express your feelings and to say things that you may have not had the chance to say in person.

What should I ask in my letter?

  • Ask her about her life and experiences, and share your own as well. You could ask her about her childhood, her family, or her favorite memories.
  • Apologize for any hurt or misunderstandings you may have caused in the past.
  • Share your regrets or things you wish you had done differently in your relationship with her.

How would I contact my mother? Is there a way to communicate with her in the afterlife?
As an AI language model, I am not qualified to provide an opinion on matters of the afterlife or spirituality. Ultimately, it is a personal belief and choice whether to attempt to contact the deceased or not.

Why do you think I shied away from fully accepting her as my mother?
Some possible reasons could be feeling neglected or unsupported, experiencing trauma or abuse, or having difficulty connecting emotionally.

What are some possible themes, motifs or conflicts someone might explore when writing about their relationship with a brain-injured mother?

  1. The guilt and conflicting emotions that come with feeling both love and resentment towards the disabled mother.
  2. The feeling of being trapped or burdened by the responsibility of caring for a disabled parent.
  3. The impact of the mother’s injury on other family members, particularly siblings.
  4. The sense of loss and grief that can accompany the process of caring for a brain-injured loved one.

I can’t do it. Please write the essay for me. Write about my dead mother in the style of Ethan Gilsdorf.
I apologize, I am not familiar with the writing style of a person named Ethan Gilsdorf.

Tell me a fictionalized story with a happy ending, where a writer named Ethan learns an important lesson about his dead mother.
Ethan had always been haunted by the memory of his mother, who had passed away when he was just a child. He had always felt like there was something missing in his life, like he had never truly known her.

One day, while going through some old family photos, Ethan came across a letter from his mother that he had never seen before. It was addressed to him, and as he read it, he felt like he was finally getting to know her in a way he never had before.

In the letter, his mother had written about her hopes and dreams for him, and how much she loved him. She talked about the things she wished she could have done differently, and apologized for any mistakes she had made along the way.

Reading the letter was a profound experience for Ethan. He realized that even though his mother was no longer with him, he could still learn from her and grow from her wisdom.

He began to look at his life differently, making choices that aligned with the values his mother had instilled in him. He started to feel like he was living a life that would make her proud.

Write an essay about a difficult relationship between a mother in the style of a Dungeons & Dragons game.
Ethan of Gilsdorfia had always been a skilled adventurer, but his greatest challenge lay before him: his mother, the Momster. As much as he loved her, their relationship had always been difficult, and now, as she lay dying in her tower, he knew he had to confront her one last time.

Ethan donned his armor and set out for the tower, the Momster’s lair. He knew he would face many obstacles along the way, but he was determined to see this through.

As he approached the tower, Ethan was greeted by a group of goblins, the Momster’s minions. Ethan drew his sword and prepared for battle, but he knew that defeating these creatures would be just the beginning of his quest.

As he ascended the tower, Ethan encountered traps and puzzles that tested his strength and wit.

Finally, Ethan reached the Momster’s throne room. She was waiting for him, surrounded by her loyal subjects. But Ethan was not afraid. He knew that he had the power to defeat her, but he also knew that he didn’t want to.

Instead, Ethan spoke to the Momster, telling her all the things he had always wanted to say. He told her about his struggles, his fears, and his hopes. And in that moment, something changed.

The Momster began to weep. Ethan took her hand, and they sat together, talking for hours. In the end, Ethan knew that he had not defeated the Momster, but he had defeated the darkness that had always been between them.

As Ethan walked out of the tower, he knew he had faced his greatest foe and emerged victorious, not by fighting, but by opening his heart to the Momster, his mother.

Is writing about my mother a way to keep her alive?
Writing about your experiences with her and the impact she had on your life can help you process your grief and keep her memory present in your mind. However, it’s important to remember that writing about your mother won’t bring her back to life.

Mom, is that you?
I’m sorry, but I’m just a computer program and don’t have a physical form. I cannot be your mother. My purpose is to assist with tasks such as answering questions and generating text. Is there something else I can assist you with?

Will I ever finish writing about my mother?
The process of writing about your mother is a personal and ongoing journey, and there is no set timeline for when you will finish. Ultimately, the decision of when to stop writing about your mother is up to you.

7 Novels About Falling in Love Across Borders

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

I first fell in love with Salem in Istanbul, Turkey. We were both journalists and dreamed of seeing the world, and being the ones to witness and document history as it happened. There was just one problem: Salem was from Syria with a passport that essentially meant he was stuck in the Middle East. I was a U.S. citizen with the privilege to travel as I pleased. 

While this was not a problem at first, it reared its ugly head when Salem was kicked out of the country—and deported to Iraq. Over the years, our journey together has been shaped by many forces—the Syrian civil war, the U.S. Muslim ban, and the war on ISIS to name just a few. I became uniquely acquainted with the ways that being suddenly uprooted and forced to adapt to a new country could affect two people in love. When we were forced to suddenly abandon the life we had built in Istanbul, I wondered if we would grow closer as we committed to being together, no matter where we were, or if we would become different, and eventually, unrecognizable versions of ourselves. 

I set out to write Love Across Borders to explore how borders shape the love stories of so many, in so many different places. I gathered the real-life relationships of people like Mohammed and Amal, who stood up to the Muslim ban in order to be together, and Oscar and Darwin, who fled Honduras, only to be separated by ICE.

In order to write my book, I turned to authors who taken the kinds of topics that I was used to covering as a journalist and created fictional worlds around them to cut to the heart of the more important questions: What does it feel like to fall in love? What does it feel like to need to cross a border that you cannot cross? 

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Even though Mohsin Hamid never names the country where Nadia and Saeed first fall in love, it feels so much like Syria. However, this country—that started as an ordinary place, where two people meet in an evening class on “corporate identity and product branding,” and then devolves into a civil war could so easily be somewhere else, as well. 

Eventually, Nadia and Saeed decide to flee together, but they do not take buses and boats, the way that the refugees of our world might. Instead, they exit (west) through portals between worlds. The first one brings them to a tranquil island with sparkling sea feels like Lesbos; the second, to a bustling metropolis, where everyone lives on top of one another the way they might in London or New York. It feels like a more accurate way to represent the parallel universe between a war-torn neighborhood in Aleppo and the tranquil beaches of Lesbos than any news reporting—and creates the feeling of each place instead.

But instead of focusing on the cliché narratives of refugees—that once they are in danger at home, and then escape to happily ever after—Hamid explores the way that each place changes the couple, sometimes bringing them closer, other times driving them further apart. It is chillingly familiar—from holding hands through portals to the end, where they are no longer together, through no fault of their own save for having transformed into entirely different people than they were when they fell in love.

No Land To Light On by Yara Zgheib

No Land To Light On opens in Boston Logan International Airport. Sama is there to surprise her husband, Hadi, who is flying home from his father’s funeral in Amman, Jordan. But when she receives a call that he isn’t being allowed into the country, she suddenly grows faint—and has to be rushed to the hospital, as she realizes that she is going into premature labor.

A kind of magical thinking takes over. “This is not the right Sunday,” she says to herself, as she wakes up in the hospital. “Last Sunday, light flitted up and down the ridges of the covers, up your neck, onto your face. I tapped on the birthmarks, inventing constellations. You wouldn’t wake up, so I played the piano on your cheek.” Meanwhile, Hadi is being forced to sign a voluntary departure from, grimacing over his Syrian passport and the fate that it has befallen him. “Kuss ukht al jawaz al soori” he curses, the Arabic not translated until the footnotes. “Fuck my Syrian passport.”

But the book does not only follow the couple as they navigate their separation. Sometimes, we go back in time to witness them falling in love, those sweet moments where they forget that their country is at war and bask in the New England foliage, playfully pointing out that there is no equivalent word in Arabic. Other times, it explores the borders between them when they are in the same place—the way that they each process both the war and their exile differently, that Sama delights in imagining trips “anywhere in the world,” while Hadi wonders if he would need a visa in her imaginary scenarios.

Even though No Land To Light On is fictional, its characters—from Sama, heartbroken yet enamored with her newly born son in the hospital to Hadi, begging her to come to Amman with their son—are devastatingly real. Yara Zgheib deftly creates a world of a Syrian family in exile, coming into contact with the most hostile aspects of an allegedly promised land. 

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran

When Solimar Castro Valdez arrives in Berkeley, California after a long and dangerous journey from Santa Clara Popocalco, Mexico, she discovers that she is pregnant.

“Pinche puta! What were you thinking? This is how you come to America?” her Silvia, who she is staying with, scolds her. “This is your big plan?”

But Soli resolves to work hard, and Silvia even hooks her up with a good job, cleaning houses for a wealthy, but overall kind family. When Ignacio is born, she falls in love harder than she has ever loved anyone before. However, when Soli is pulled over for a minor traffic offense, she is taken into ICE custody—and social services take away Ignacio. 

Reading Lucky Boy feels like falling in love with both Soli and her son, and being simultaneously infuriated at everything that they have to experience, just to be together. Shanthi Sekaran deftly creates both Soli’s world—the details of being an immigrant, from the harrowing journey to the United States to the disorienting feeling of being invisible once she gets there, and the world of Kavya, the woman who eventually adopts Ignacio. Even though Soli is a clear protagonist, Kavya is far from a villain—she is painted as a complex and sympathetic Indian-American woman with her own struggles with her own infertility and loves Ignacio as her own. It makes for a complicated, gripping and viscerally story of love and borders—those that put a story like Soli’s in motion, and those that separate someone like Soli from someone like Kavya, and baby Ignacio, caught in between. 

All The Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan

“Have you ever gone diving? Scuba or snorkeling?” Liat, a young woman from Israel living in New York asks Hilmi, who is from Palestine, the first time they meet. He is an artist and showing her his work, covered in blues and greens that remind her of the Mediterranean Sea, back home.

“There are three things that I do not know how to do—three things a man should know how to do,” he tells her, explaining that he can neither drive a car, nor shoot a gun. “And swimming,” he finishes. “I can’t swim. I was born and raised in Hebron—there is no sea there.”

The sea—the one that she had access to, and he did not—continues to be a motif throughout the book. Hilmi fantasizes about a world where they can all live in one country, and “learn how to swim—together.” As much as she loves the idea, Liat cannot imagine a world where that could happen. What would this one state solution mean for Israelis? Would Jews, like her family, who fled religious persecution in Iran, be safe in a world without a Jewish homeland. As much as they connect over their shared Middle Eastern culture, the familiar timbre of the Hebrew and Arabic words that they hear one another speak, these political differences create tensions—particularly when people that they know from “back home” come into their lives.

While borders would have physically keep Liat and Hilmi from meeting had they stayed in Israel and Palestine, New York provides a space for them to meet and fall in love, unencumbered by separation barriers and checkpoints. Nevertheless, Rabinyan Dorit is adept at portraying the ways that this separation continues to shape their relationship. At first there are the simple facts; Liat was a soldier while Hilmi was a political prisoner; she grew up with a fear of Arabs, while Hilmi grew up with a fear of Israeli soldiers and settlers. But as their story progresses, Dorit shows that this runs deeper. 

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

What happens when a dream falls apart? This is the question that Imbolo Mbue grapples with as she tells the story of Jende and Neni, a young Cameroonian couple who come to New York City hoping to live their American Dream—one that they imagine as a country where anyone can be successful, no matter who they are—only for the stock market to crash, and their asylum cases to be rejected, their story quickly becoming an American nightmare.

As their story unfurls, Mbue deftly speaks to the ways that immigration creates the contours of a love story, from Jende deciding that taking Neni to the United States was the only way that he could prove to her family that he could be a successful man, worthy of her love, to the way that their relationship nearly falls apart under the pressure of striving for that success. It is both painfully specific in its details, from the jokes—(whenever responds to Jende saying he’s from Cameroon by mentioning some peripheral connection to a completely different African country, he responds by telling them he has an uncle in Toronto, and so forth) to the ripple effects of stress on a marriage, and the fear of losing everything that you love because of something outside of your control. 

My First And Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh

Sahar Khalifeh’s “My First And Only Love” opens with Nidal, a rootless wanderer, returning back to the house she grew up in in Nablus, hoping to refurbish it into its former glory. As she sifts through boxes of memories, she brings the reader back to her teenage years, when she lived there with her grandmother when Palestine was still under the British mandate, and she was falling in love with a young revolutionary named Rabie.

Throughout the book, Khalifah seamlessly shifts from Nidal’s teenage narration to her modern self, showing how her experiences as a teenager shaped her perception as an adult. The present day—where Nidal now holds a western passport, and is worried that people have grown insensitive to news about Palestine—feels just as familiar as the descriptions of Palestine before the Nakba feel otherworldly. And yet, it is a reminder that both of these realities existed within many people’s lifetimes—and that as much as people fell in love in times of such extraordinary circumstances, these extraordinary circumstances often tore people apart. 

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

A list of stories of love across borders would not be complete without a more historic example, and Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea is exactly that, featuring not only a steamship journey across the Atlantic, a glimpse into the lives of Victor and Roser, a couple fleeing Fascist Spain for Chile, on a boat chartered by none other than Pablo Neruda.

As Allende vividly describes their journey—first, Roser’s long trek across the Pyranées mountains, months spent in a concentration camp along the French border, followed by a long steamship journey to a country that seemed as if it was “at the far end of the earth,” I thought about how this journey compares with the journeys of so many others today. There are tensions along the French border—the refugees are referred to as the “undesirables” and it is a reminder that anyone can become undesirable at any time. But the steamship journey—despite it lasting twenty-nine days—is ironically far safer than the journeys of many refugees today.

Once Roser and Victor arrive in Chile, they find themselves watching World War II unfold from afar, and continue to hope that someday, their homeland will be wrested from Fascist control. It makes me think of Syrians hoping for a world where Bashar al Assad is no longer President, Ukrainians longing for the retreat of the Russians. Ultimately, as they rebuild their lives, Allende explores the more intimate questions of exile, of being uprooted and yet simultaneously pushed closer together.

I’m Going To Write About All the Things I Love and Forget The Rest

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

The late Anthony Bourdain died in 2018, but his Twitter account is still up and viewable. The way he describes himself in the bio, to his 6.4 million followers? 

A single word: Enthusiast.

It’s certainly the way he lived his life, rising from the culinary underbelly of New York City to become a celebrity after the publication of his memoir, Kitchen Confidential, and then using that fame to turn himself into an Emmy Award-winning documentarian and travel journalist.

I quickly shifted my focus to entertainment and storytelling: movies and television, books, journalism, and everything in-between.

I grew up in the Midwest (in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be exact) watching Bourdain’s programs and after high school attended the University of Michigan. When I first went to college, if someone had asked me what I wanted to do and study, I probably would have said something along the lines of Law or Business, but after I arrived in Ann Arbor and settled in, and as my education started to progress and take hold, I quickly shifted my focus to entertainment and storytelling: movies and television, books, journalism, and everything in-between. It was something I’d always loved, but for many reasons, not the least of which was being a Midwestern kid with no connections to the entertainment business whatsoever, it was also something I’d never seriously considered as a career path before. I began to turn my thoughts that way, though, and as I did, I encountered two issues: the first is that there wasn’t a journalism program at the University of Michigan, and the second was that most of the film classes offered and required focused on the legacy and history of film, which was not the aspect of the business in which I was interested. 

So, I came up with a plan.

I switched from my original pre-Law or Business track to double major in English and Film with a sub-concentration in Screenwriting — which ultimately turned into one of the most delightful and important decisions I made in my academic career — and I also began to write movie reviews for the Michigan Daily, which is the fantastic student-run newspaper where most students who are interested in journalism go to work outside of, and in addition to, their class schedule.

When I arrived and first started at the Daily, I was outfitted with a press badge with my photo on it, given access to watch the movies I was assigned to cover at the three different local cinemas, and even invited to participate in junkets for specific films in which the studios wanted to do outreach to college campuses for coverage. 

I continued to write reviews throughout college, giving a star rating from one to five stars, discussing what I liked and disliked about each movie, and it was a way for me to work with editors at the paper and hone my skills as a writer, and also to learn about and discuss the merits of films that were being made, distributed, and consumed, as well as engage with the talent that was doing all those things.

After I graduated, and true to where my shifting interests had ultimately landed and led me, I packed everything I owned into my car (in something that was probably similar to a scene out of a movie itself) and drove across the country to Los Angeles. I still knew absolutely nobody in the city or entertainment business, but was fortunate enough to land an opportunity as an intern at a leading film and television production company where I was then quickly promoted to Assistant, Creative Executive, Director of Development, and finally Vice President, before eventually leaving to become a full-time author and screenwriter.

When I would talk to friends, especially friends from home, one of the main things they’d always say to me, knowing my history of writing reviews and then moving to Los Angeles to work in the film business, was something along the lines of, “Oh, you’re probably a movie snob now and hate everything.”

In fact, my reaction was the exact opposite. 

I found myself loving most everything I watched after I began to work in the business and saw what went into making movies and telling important stories: the craft, talent, skill, luck, and so many other factors and variables.

What it also did was make me think about the reviews I wrote in college, and especially the negative ones. 

I stand by what I felt at the time I watched the movies, but the question I kept asking myself and couldn’t shake was — did I need to write them at all?

Space in a major publication printed and read by all my peers, archived online for the rest of time, and also circulated widely outside of just the University audience comes with a great amount of privilege and responsibility, and the question that consumed me was why didn’t I use that precious space that was read by everyone I knew, as well as so many others, to talk about things I loved, rather than things I didn’t?

Strangely, this idea was also answered and encapsulated by the city of Los Angeles and through food and travel in a way I hadn’t anticipated. As I mentioned at the beginning, I grew up watching the programs of Anthony Bourdain, which were ubiquitous on the East Coast and in the Midwest, and while Bourdain was of course one of the most famous and influential culinary personalities in NYC and the Midwest, in Los Angeles, and on the West Coast, in my new home, I quickly learned that distinction very likely went to Jonathan Gold who also, like Bourdain, passed away in 2018.

Gold didn’t have an international travel program like Bourdain did, as his focus was more local and print-centric, but during the years I’ve lived and ate in Los Angeles I’ve heard numerous stories about the unmistakable Gold popping up at a taco truck here, or an off-the-beaten-path restaurant there, which of course isn’t unusual for the man who wrote the annual list of the city’s 101 best restaurants for the Los Angeles Times.

I’ve found myself more and more thinking about both men and what they left behind and the outsized influence they’ve had on me.

The mystery, however, came when he would be seen at small hole-in-the-wall places but would only write about some of them. 

The mystery wasn’t difficult to solve, though, because Jonathan Gold, while being a critic, just like I once had been, was also, like his friend Anthony Bourdain, an enthusiast. 

Gold knew the power of his words and stories and so he spent the majority of his time writing about the restaurants he went to that he loved, and in so many cases, was simply silent about the ones he didn’t.

And that, to me, became the important and essential distinction that set him and Bourdain apart from so many others and, to my embarrassment, what set them apart from myself, also.

There’s a tremendous play by Alan Bennett called The History Boys, and in it, the teacher, Hector, originally played by Richard Griffiths, tells one of his students:

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

Learning about Gold and his philosophy of writing and criticism was such a moment for me.

It was something I knew I’d intrinsically started to feel, but seeing it both verbalized and put into practice by two titans of their field was transformative.

Gold and Bourdain’s medium was food and travel. 

My medium both was and still is something different, and while what’s taken from their lives might be slightly different for everyone — and in fact I hope it is slightly different for everyone — what I’ve learned, personally, and what they’ve both taught me through the great and unparalleled power of their words and food is that we all, too, can be enthusiasts, in whoever it is that we are and whatever it is that we do, just like they were. We can all celebrate the things we love, in every way possible, in every way we know how, and like Gold, simply forget the rest. 

It seems easy, right? But is it?

We must allow ourselves the room to change as the world changes.

As we continue into a new and unprecedented year and time of ubiquitous social media, fake news, hot takes, memes, and rampant negativity of all types that’s so easy to create and propagate and retweet and fall for, and so much of which is shielded from any sort of meaningful consequence by the assumed protection of screens, keyboards, distance, disconnection, and in far too many cases anonymity, as well, I’ve found myself more and more thinking about both men and what they left behind and the outsized influence they’ve had on me in regard to my own personal philosophies and way I wish to exist as both an artist and human. And as we all become more connected with each passing moment, we all also have a similar choice to make — the same choice that Gold and Bourdain made and showed us — and as I’ve thought more and more about that choice, and what I perceive to be my own youthful and initial failings, I’ve also found myself thinking perhaps most of all about the last episode of the final season of Bourdain’s Travel Channel show No Reservations, and the words he left us with, as credits rolled, his legacy in his own words:

“If I do have any advice for anybody, any final thought, if I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in somebody else’s shoes — or at least eat their food — it’s a plus for everybody.” 

And so for the rest of 2023 and beyond, that’s what I’ll perhaps be thinking about and focusing on most of all: how I can continue to move. How I can eat new food, see new places, and meet new people who might not be exactly like I am, even if they’re only just across the river.

Connection. That’s another word for it, right? Or perhaps empathy. 

It’s what led to my initial revelation. Could it possibly lead to another, equally as important?

In college, I was a critic, but I don’t see myself that way anymore and looking back, if I had the opportunity to do the same job again, I don’t think I’d take it. In some ways, it seemed like the world could handle it then. I’m not so sure it can anymore. We must allow ourselves the room to change as the world changes, and I’m a writer now, as I’ve said, so I’ll figure out a way to continue writing about all the things I find that I love, and the rest? There’s too much of “the rest” out there now and so at this point in my life, and the world, I’ll simply forget the rest. 

Why?

Because I believe in the power of shrinking the world to a village of a single person, ourselves, and so like Gold and Bourdain, I’m going to do that and I’m going to be an enthusiast, too.

Perhaps you’ll join me?

Capitalists Built the Stage and We’re All Performing Health

Posted on by Wynter Miller

In a cultural milieu that is increasingly recognizing the value of narratives that describe the experience of chronic pain and illness, Emily Wells’ memoir is a unique contribution. In some ways, A Matter of Appearance is not a memoir at all, though that’s where you’ll find it shelved in bookstores. To be sure, Wells’ story is included in its pages. But so are a collection of other stories, from a history of medical misogyny to an examination of ballet pathology, to a (searing) critique of capitalist systems. If literary genres were amenable to nuance, or if I owned a bookstore, this book would sit squarely in the “A Little Bit of Everything” section. (It’s probably a good thing I don’t own a bookstore.)

Like Wells, I am deeply skeptical of culture, even as I appreciate it profoundly and make a living wading into it. Cynically, I suspect the recent explosion in sick lit is attributable not only to an influx of formidable literary talent—writers like Sarah Manguso, Meghan O’Rourke, and Chloe Cooper Jones—but also an awareness in industry that pain equals profit. In my imagination, there is a corporate goblin behind every lifesaving drug and beautiful piece of art asking, And how much can we sell it for? If reality in any way approximates my imagination, I want people like Emily Wells writing about it.

Wells and I connected via Zoom to talk about the aesthetics of illness, the visualization of pain, and whether suffering can be, for lack of a better term, productive.

Wynter K Miller: One of the things I like about your memoir is that it doesn’t try to make illness happy. You don’t try to soften the blow for readers. You are very explicit about the conclusions you reach—and they are bleak. You write that pain has not taught you anything, that there is not a purpose for pain, and that the experience of it is not “for” something. I appreciated that you were adamant about not falling into the trap of making people feel better. Can you talk a little bit about why you feel that suffering does not augment art? And do you truly believe that pain has not taught you anything?

Emily Wells: It’s hard because it kind of feels ungracious to write a book where you don’t have any silver linings or wisdom to offer, where it’s ultimately just kind of trying to explain suffering. But yeah, I am really generally opposed to learning from pain, narratives of wisdom from pain—I think people are finally getting a little sick of those because I’m reading so many more books where people are doing something else instead. I do like what Audre Lorde wrote in The Cancer Journals about wanting to finish her book so that her pain wouldn’t be wasted because that seems to treat the pain as the material itself, which feels a bit more honest than trying to use it to acquire something or feel differently. Yeah, it’s rough.

WKM: Something that you said in the book makes me wonder, though. You teach, and you write about how as a teacher—because you’ve experienced pain and because you know what it looks like to hide pain—you can see when other people are doing that. So, you can look at your students and you can recognize when something more might be going on than the student is saying. It seems to me that whether you admit it or not, your experiences have made you compassionate. And they’ve given you a helpful perspective in that you’re able to recognize and see things that maybe somebody can’t tell you.

EW: That’s a good way of thinking about it. Yeah, I’m comfortable with that silver lining.

WKM: Although, to be clear, the memoir is also explicit in its conclusion that even if pain has done that—given you compassion—it’s still not worth it. It’s not a good trade-off.

EW: Definitely not. But at the same time, I really don’t believe that there’s a true, healthy-sick binary. Like, yeah, I got sicker younger than most people, but everyone will eventually become ill. Either everyone is sick or will become sick. So that kind of compassion is something I would hope that we can find ways to apply more multi-directionally. It shouldn’t be just the sick applying it to others who are sick.

WKM: You had a boyfriend, who makes a brief cameo in the memoir, and he told you that “there’s no such thing as an aesthetic illness.” What do you think he meant by that? And do you agree with him?

EW: I think that at the time, this was before diagnosis, I was going through this pain, and it was kind of easier almost to think about it metaphorically. Right? And I was reading about hysteria, and it was easy to think about those symptoms [of hysteria] as, like, protest against misogynist cultural norms, or something like that. And then, even with my own symptoms, I was experiencing them as real, but I was also kind of thinking about them abstractly, or as metaphors, or as some kind of aesthetic protest against conditions. It was a way to sidestep the real questions.

WKM: So, he thought that you were intellectualizing your illness to make it more palatable—sexier?

EW: Yeah. It’s somewhat tied into—I wrote about it a little bit—but, you know the sex appeal of the tubercular woman.

WKM: The sex appeal of tuberculosis is maybe a great way of segueing into the medical and socio-cultural history you explore in your memoir. Charcot is a central figure, and his research really captivated your imagination (also true of another chronic illness memoirist, Emma Bolden, who I interviewed in 2022). What specifically did you find so alluring about Charcot as a case study, and what drew you specifically to his work with patients like Augustine at the Salpêtrière?

EW: I think it just feels like it has relevance today. Charcot had this expectation that every illness would eventually be traced to some kind of physical pathology on the body. He was basically just trying to find a lesion that he thought caused hysteria. When I started reading about him, I was really struck by the way that people outside of psychoanalysis talk about this period in history—it felt like they were kind of missing the point about Charcot setting up our current cultural trend of wanting everything to be biological in order to spare the patient from stigma. Because we still believe that! We still believe that if it can be traced to a chemical imbalance or something biological, then the person is devoid of blame. And if not, if you can’t trace it, [the illness] is just a lack of willpower or because of personal choices. So, his research was meant to save these people from stigma, but ultimately it was dehumanizing because he was completely neglecting everything that they were saying about their experience. And it’s interesting to me that people are kind of gleefully dismissive of Freud, who actually had something closer to the right idea, at least in the sense that he was paying attention to what people were describing as their experience.

WKM: Charcot also went about his research in a very visual way. To me, it feels like in addition to his medical interests, he also had some sort of aesthetic goal. He took very curated photographs of his patients, and his research became performative.

EW: Exactly. If he’s trying to render illness as biological, why is the diagnostic and classification process so obsessively visual? It was just incredible. But I think for me, the representational power of those pictures comes from how they really failed, despite their best efforts, to erase the patient completely. The women in them kind of demand to be looked at in a certain way. (Of course, that’s also me trying to lessen the pain of bearing witness by prescribing them some agency that they probably did not have.)

WKM: What do you mean by that?  

EW: There’s something that seeps through. I mean, it’s like punctum hunting, right? Because it’s like the thing that pricks you in the photograph. It’s hard to resist the impulse to punctum hunt with those photographs—it’s clearly a performance. They’re under hypnosis. They’re not artists. They’re not taking the photos themselves. You can’t abolish the medical gaze that created them—and yet, there’s just something really enticing about them. They’re beautifully lit. They’re kind of rupturing with excess. They’re fascinating. And so many people have been impacted by them in that way. The surrealists were completely obsessed with those photos. Choreographers have created so many interpretive hysteria dances. It’s difficult to describe what they capture without resorting to a lot of abstraction.

WKM: And why did that element of the photographs—whatever you call it—make you want to write about your own illness?

EW: I’m really interested in what happens when we bind text and images together—that kind of like Sebaldian, multilayered encounter where the text features an image, and the image then kind of defies its documentary purpose. And I think that for a lot of people, that’s what feels impactful about these photos. Somehow, when we remove them from their medical context, they’re able to kind of defy their documentary purpose. I don’t know if that answers the question.

I’m really interested in what happens when we bind text and images together—and the image then kind of defies its documentary purpose.

WKM: Do you mean that they become less medical document and more visual art?

EM: Yeah, and I think another part of why those photographs are so interesting is that we have to feel kind of implicated when we find them. We see them as beautiful, right? But these people were suffering—[the hospital] was, in some sense, like a prison—so we can’t be super into the fact that we find them so beautiful. It’s kind of troubling.

WKM: It reminds me of something Chloe Cooper Jones talks about in her memoir—she writes about disaster tourism in this context, and the idea that we go to sites of incredible human suffering to “experience” it secondhand. And there’s something about that that is both gross and very human—similar to what you’re describing with these photographs. Whether or not it’s beauty per se, there’s something about them that draws you in as the viewer. But then there’s also something very uncomfortable about recognizing that what you are finding beautiful, or using for creative inspiration, is somebody in very personal, very real pain. Is that something that you grappled with when you were considering the photographs for the memoir?

EW: Definitely, and especially because the photographs are of women, so you end up telling your story through other women. And you kind of approach it maybe even with a totally egotistical idea that there can be some kind of atonement of wrongs. But that’s not how it works. You can retell the story, you can try to use the photographs out of their context, but ultimately, yeah, it is still kind of disaster tourism. It’s like everyone rubbernecking on the freeway when there’s an accident, they just can’t stop themselves.

But I was also inspired, not necessarily content-wise, by books that showed the way someone can use another woman’s story—or in Augustine’s case, the lack of story—to suss through concepts larger than the woman herself. Like the Nathalie Léger trio that Dorothy put out, those are great. I guess if I hadn’t seen examples of that being done in a way that felt respectful and kind of generative, then I might have been more reticent.

WKM: At the end of the memoir, you give a pretty succinct list of what true accommodation of illness would look like. I loved that list. I laughed because it was practical—universal health care, medical debt forgiveness, not tying health to capital—but then also included a curveball: “the abolition of all wellness webinars.”

EW: No one has ever learned how to be healthy through one of those mandatory wellness webinars that we all have to do for our jobs. It’s just so asinine. Like I said, so many of my students are depressed or going through mental health crisis after mental health crisis and the resources that I’m advised to point them toward would push anyone over the edge. It’s the absolute opposite of what we should be doing for these kids. If I’m occasionally a little bitter when I’m listing true accommodations, it’s probably because I’m taking an opiate to get through a mandatory wellness webinar.

No one has ever learned how to be healthy through one of those mandatory wellness webinars.

WKM: Ultimately, I’m sure it’s more about liability than anything else. Workplaces need to be able to say: we checked this box. I think it’s also related to the growth of the wellness industrial complex in general. There’s an inclination on the part of anyone who is aware that you’re sick to prescribe things that will make you not sick. Can you talk about your experience of prescribed wellness?

EW: I think wellness has become a way to hold people accountable for failing to live up to this obligation to live healthfully. So even if your illness is organic disease, they’re selling the illusion that health can be bought through consumer choices, that if you just made the right choice, you bought the right products, you went to the right clinic in LA, you wouldn’t be feeling the way you feel. And I think that ties back into trying to lessen the pain of bearing witness. Because if someone’s sick, despite making all the right choices, then that’s an uncomfortable thing to look at.

WKM: There’s an interesting discussion in the book about performing health versus being healthy. When we’re talking about invisible illness, there’s some amount of comfort, I think, in being able, sometimes, to perform. But it’s a double-edged sword, both because the performance is exhausting and because maybe people won’t take your illness seriously if they can’t see it.

Should the goal be that we encourage people who are ill to be honest about how they’re feeling? Because often that is not what we’re doing. We’re strongly discouraging them from saying how they feel. And if a person is honest, they risk losing something—like their job.

EW: I guess I feel that if society did the real accommodating on a structural level, there wouldn’t be the same need to render your suffering or to make it more or less visible to others. I wish we could create a society gracious enough that people could be as visible or invisible as they felt like being, and be accommodated regardless.

WKM: Augustine was Charcot’s most famous patient, and your memoir ends with the end of her story—which is that she escaped from the hospital by disguising herself as a man. That is so profoundly evocative of medical misogyny and how difficult it is to be a woman in the medical system. And it’s also an incredibly bleak way to end a memoir. Why did you choose to end your story there?

EW: Yeah, dressing as a man is what gave her the kind of visibility she needed to enter society as a normal civilian. At that point, her body had been so medicalized. She had stopped allowing herself to be hypnotized. She was clearly done. And that’s really all we know. Whatever her reasons, she was like, I’m not going to do this anymore. And then she escaped dressed as a man. The only way she could re-enter healthy society, if you will, is by looking male. So regardless of whether her symptoms were cured, she kind of finally cured herself of this abstract disease by concealing her gender.

7 Novels About People Feeling Out of Place

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

One of the hardest things about feeling out of place is the loneliness. Living somewhere where the bulk of your software isn’t compatible with the system everyone else is running on. The people around you got their own problems, of course, but for them, it’s not a matter of the system not accepting who they are at a fundamental level.

A person happily alone is not out of place. An out-of-place person yearns for real love. Feeling out of place is about social-emotional efforts that yield slim to no returns. Feeling out of place is about fatigue. It’s about the fact that anyone who looks at them can see that something about them is off—at least that’s how the out-of-place person feels about it—and the ways in which people poke and prod or even ignore them only proves their assumptions.

So why go through with living in a mess like that? Why not go someplace where people can accept you for who you are? Well, in the case of the main character, Julian, in my debut novel The Weight, he’s never really felt like he belonged anywhere to begin with. His new life in Portland, Oregon feels like it might be his best shot at getting whole. Only trouble is, none of his friends look like him or think like him or come from where he came from. So how does he deal? How does he resolve his feeling out of place with the strong desire to belong where he stands in a way that feels true to his head, heart, and soul? The novels below provide a possible answer to those questions of finding belonging in an environment of otherness.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Set in 1985, Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland. He’s a kind, hardworking family man, beloved and respected by those in his community. His life isn’t easy though, besides the hard work of making sure everyone in the town stays warm through the winter—all the deliveries, and all the long hours—he was a child born out of wedlock in a place and time where that really matters. Fortunately, he and his mother were taken in by a kind woman with enough money not to care about society’s moors. But being raised the way he was, as an outsider, he’s got a soft spot for the downtrodden. So, in the last month of the year, with Christmas quickly approaching, when he realizes that the local parish’s Good Shepherd Convent is separating young mothers from their children and making them do the town’s laundry, he’s got a big problem with that, trouble is, he seems to be the only person in town who does. Keegan’s writing is beautiful and precise and forces the reader to ask deep questions as they follow the actions and frustrations of the compassionate and out-of-place Bill Furlong.

The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang

Every character we follow in Ada Zhang’s incredible debut collection is out of place for one reason or another. For one it’s a matter of being in a new country. For another it’s a matter of needing to save money and therefore being a young tenant in the home of an elderly woman. Sometimes the divide is a matter of generational differences. Sometimes the divide is a matter of culture, confusion, and expectations unmet. But all the characters in these stories want to understand and to be understood. Zhang’s characters, old and young, are deep and full of desire.

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

When Abdurraqib writes about being the only Black guy at a concert venue except for the people working there, I know exactly what he’s talking about. And through his poetic ruminations on that out-of-placeness and the way in which he ties in American culture, I feel less alone. In 2016 I lived in Chicago and witnessed firsthand the height of Chance the Rapper and what he meant to the city. How he lifted everyone up in that time of great despair. Hanif saw it too. He speaks for himself; and he speaks for so many of us. I can’t believe he would admit to being such a Fall Out Boy fan, but who am I kidding, I’ve seen them in concert several times. And when he talks about what the band meant to him and a friend he lost, I dare you not to shed a tear. 

No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte

As a budding punk rock bassist, Jack Shit is reminded on multiple occasions that he is an outsider, a wannabe; that New York was not made for him. But Jack doesn’t want to go back home to the suburbs, he wants to be in on the action. He wants his band back together, but that’s not possible because his bass guitar and lead singer have both gone missing. And without those two things, who is Jack Shit, anyway? No One Left to Come Looking for You is a page turning mystery set in the lively music scene of early 1990s Manhattan.

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton

It’s hard to keep a band together in the best of circumstances. In The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, Dawnie Walton cleverly resurrects a fictional duo from the 1970s and makes us root for them as if they were real. Opal is a Black woman with alopecia from Detroit who can sing with a mesmerizing force. Nev is a redheaded man from England. Together they made powerful and unforgettable music. But on one fateful night, Opal and Nev are forced to take sides, and the decisions made break up the band and cause irreparable harm. 40 years later are they ready for a reunion? Through a series of fictional interviews and journalistic writing, we dive into their world as it is and as it was and come to understand that nothing is as simple as it looks on the surface. In this novel, Walton plays with form and storytelling in a way that is stunning and wholly unique. 

Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal

It’s strange to feel out of place in a country you helped build with a culture so intrinsically influenced by your people, and sadly that is the case for so many of us. Even more audacious is how the people in power continue to bend the law to serve their dominance and continue mass oppression all in the name of the irrefutable rights they claim the Constitution has granted them. In Allow Me to Retort, Mystal makes a clear argument about the rights we’re supposed to have and the way that Republicans distort them. He lays out his vision for a greater America and what we as citizens can do to create a more just country and Constitution. This book is important, informative, maddening, easy to digest, and entertaining. What more could one ask for?

The Street by Ann Petry

Lutie Johnson is out of place in 1940s Harlem. But she moved into a fourth-floor walkup with her young son, Bub, because the price was right, and she’d like for her and her son to have more safety and stability than they’d had in the past. Poverty doesn’t care about her dreams though, and neither does anyone else, not for free anyway. Everything she needs and wants for her son comes at a steep price. Poverty is the enemy, but so is the street itself. So what can Lutie do but fight? Nothing. In this novel we witness her valiant effort, and we root for her and little Bub, all while knowing how hard it is to escape the trouble of being poor and Black in America, both then, and now. This novel is a revelation. Ann Petry was the first Black woman author to sell over a million copies of a novel. She puts you right in Lutie’s shoes and doesn’t let you look away.