Desire, Memory, and Poetry as a Form of Prayer

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

“I dropped from my mother’s mouth with an axe, a net of lemons to which I was allergic, a limp, and a pair of Ray-Bans that fit awkwardly on my nose,” says the speaker of “Waiting in Line with Hemingway,” from Achy Obejas’s recent bilingual collection of poems, Boomerang/Bumerán.

The humor here is mixed with a heavy dose of pathos, a reminder of how the sense-defying circumstances sometimes dealt us can often generate feelings of helplessness, making us believe we have little or no say in our own lives. And yet, Obejas reminds us that we do have at least some freedom of choice, as when, in the opening poem, “Boomerang, After Aime Cesaire,” the speaker declares: “I and I alone choose to be born on this island, to this family, on this day.” This singular sensibility, almost defiant in its insistence on the possibility of creating one’s own reality, is evident throughout this collection, perhaps nowhere more so than in the poet’s choice to embrace a nearly gender-free language in Spanish, a notoriously difficult task, and in so doing, begin to reimagine gendered ways of thinking and being in the world. 

Obejas’s identity as a Cuban-American, queer, Jewish woman looms large in these poems, which explore love and desire, questions of memory—both personal and collective—, the possibilities and pitfalls of gender, and the subversive power of poetry as a kind of prayer. Obejas and I spoke over Zoom in February, from our respective homes in Northern and Southern California, and later communicated via email. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows:

Shoshana Olidort: How did you come up with the title for your book, Boomerang/Bumerán? 

Achy Obejas: The book is about this sort of constant return. I always feel like there’s this very cyclical, very circular returning that is always happening in my life in one way or another. I have the same friends from a million years ago in part because I’m constantly returning to those friends, for solace, and also for joy. In 1963, when I was 6, we left Havana in the middle of the night. There were 44 of us on a 28 foot boat. Midway through we’d run into a storm and ran out of fuel and were mercifully picked up by an American oil tanker that then detoured to drop us off. Because the world is very, very small, many, many, many years later, after I moved to California, I met the daughter of the captain of that ship and we became friends. It was a real circular sort of return.

SO: In the introduction you write about how you try to avoid grammatical gender in these poems, which is particularly challenging in Spanish, and you describe the poems as being “mostly gender-free.” I’m wondering if this is in part motivated by a desire to return to some primordial world or a way of thinking that precedes gender.

AO: It’s possible, but for me questions of gender and gendered language came later in life. Part of that is because the conversation has really bubbled up in recent times, part of it may be because I’m so comfortable as a woman that a lot of the questioning of gender has been more theoretical or social, rather than personal. I know I came to these issues very much through language, specifically through translation, not just trying to find and construct terms but also wondering why languages are built the way they are. How did we get here? How do we move to the next and better place?

While this shift de-gendered humans, it left the rest of language completely gendered.

I remember when my students first started asking about preferred pronouns, one of the things that struck me was the very quick adaptation of the “-x” for Latinx in academia but not in the Latino community. The Latino community actually seemed to very actively reject it. You can’t pronounce the x in Spanish, it’s completely impossible to say this term. I remember trying to engage with the white administrators at Mills college, which was my last academic appointment, about why this decision had been made when in fact none of the Latino faculty or staff had ever been consulted. I realized it was a very convenient way for white people to signal virtue and inclusivity, but it had little to do with us. I started noticing that in Latin America the preferred ending seemed to be the “-e” which made so much sense because it’s the space between the feminized “-a” and the masculinized “-o” that signal gender in Spanish. But while this shift de-gendered humans, it left the rest of language completely gendered so that the de-gendered person would be sitting at the feminine table drinking their masculine coffee. 

I think the radical part of my book lies not in the use of the “-e” but in the use of the “-e” throughout the language, so that the language is completely degendered except with certain people. When I allowed gender in it was almost always to address a personal issue, an issue around a person. I gendered Ana Mendieta because I strongly believe Ana was marginalized and suffered as an artist precisely because she was a woman and because she was a woman of color. I think if she’d been a man, especially if she’d been a white man, she would have had a very different trajectory in the art world.

I couldn’t de-gender my mother, not just because she’s my mother but because my mother was very much the product of a misogynistic and sexist society. And I allowed Hemingway to stay gendered for very similar reasons. Here’s a man who’s known for his toxic masculinity. To de-gender him really cleans him up, and I think it’s important to deal with what’s there, to talk about what that means. 

SO: In “The president of Coca-Cola” there are instances when Ana Mendieta is gendered, but there are also quite a few moments where you do use the “-e,” and I’m wondering about that seeming inconsistency?

AO: I think Ana would have loved the whole discussion about gender that’s so mainstream now. And she was impish and sometimes boyish and I was playing with that, imagining her in today’s context. I think that “inconsistency” is very much a part of her rebel spirit. She was a great, great rule breaker.

SO: Can you describe your translation process with this book. Were the poems written originally in Spanish, or in English?

I don’t believe translators are traitors, I believe translators are bridges.

AO: I made a decision not to talk about the original language, and not to talk about which translator worked on what piece with me, I think people get really hung up on what’s the original, what are you really trying to say. And sometimes I don’t think it matters what the original is. I think some translations get there only 90% of the way, they get 90% of the full effect—the words, the sound, the rhythm, the meaning, and I think some translations actually improve the original. Gabriel García Márquez always said that Edith Grossman did a better job on One Hundred Years of Solitude, that she made it a better book.  Grossman understood the work not just in terms of putting words together on the page but in terms of rhythm and sound and meaning and soulfulness. I think the point of origin is beside the point. I don’t believe translators are traitors, I believe translators are bridges. I think translators really make a difference and are actually a part of the possibility of hope in this world. 

SO: Can you talk a bit about the differences between the versions you have in English and Spanish, and specifically poems where you preserve some of the “original” language, as in “Volver,” for example, a poem about a return to Cuba, which was originally written and published in English in Bridges to/from Cuba, and which includes quite a bit of Spanish?

AO: A lot of that poem has borrowed text—lyrics from Carlos Gardel’s tango, from a song by Los Tigres del Norte, poems by José Martí. It made no sense to translate them—they’d lose their spirit (esp Martí), and once that door was open, it stayed that way. To be honest, I rarely make a choice to “insert” anything. My everyday speech is very much Spanish and I’m constantly code-switching. 

SO: How do you see poetry intersecting with questions of identity?

AO: I think poetry is the form that’s closest to my heart. It’s the first kind of writing that I did. It’s the first place where I felt like English became my language and something that I could manipulate in an artistic fashion, that I could shape and form. It’s also been the one that I’ve least sought to publicize or commercialize. Part of that was because it was always pretty personal. A lot of stuff about identity, a lot of stuff about assimilation. When I was younger of course I didn’t understand it that way, I understood it as me feeling heartbroken about this or that and not fitting in and not understanding why I didn’t fit in. 

The thing about poetry is that even if you take on a persona in a poem it’s ultimately autobiographical in a way that prose isn’t. You can actually write prose in the voice of a character that has nothing to do with you. Poetry is much more directly autobiographical and I think it’s read as autobiographical. It also intersects with liturgical texts in ways that are profoundly about identity, because the god we pray to is always a very personal god no matter how we approach our worship. 

SO: Speaking of god, and prayer, “Kol Nidrei” is probably my favorite poem in the book. In it, you reimagine this core Jewish liturgical text, the opening prayer of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which, incidentally, has always struck me as very dry and legalistic—it’s a formula for nullifying vows that is said to have originated with the forced conversion of Jews in Spain in the early Middle Ages, as a way of reckoning with their apostasy. And you reimagine it in this way that’s so incredibly powerful and also empowering. Instead of “With the consent of the Almighty … with the consent of this congregation,” you open the poem: “With the consent of no one, we pray among the dykes, the miscreants, the homeless, the enraged …” What inspired you about this prayer, why did you choose to rewrite Kol Nidrei in particular?

AO: Kol Nidrei made sense to me once I understood my own family history, not just the part about being Sephardic and not just about being anusim (forced converts), but my particular family, I learned after I wrote Days of Awe, had actually collaborated with the inquisition in order to save themselves. This was tremendously shameful and shattering. Kol Nidrei is the prayer right before the big day, it’s about apostasy and survival against all costs. I think the biggest apostates of all are women. Women are constantly taking on vows and promises to comfort, reassure, take care of, deal with others—vows and promises that are not true to them or their dreams, vows and promises that compromise their integrity and their own ambitions. I think this has always happened, and so that prayer, for me, can be very much about freeing ourselves from the restraints we take on when we feel duty bound, when we think it’s what we should do. My first encounters with Kol Nidrei were through Sephardic high holiday services, and so the ghost of the Inquisition was always present—Kol Nidrei struck me as a way for all those Jews who pretended to be something else in order to survive to come back, to proclaim their Jewishness, and to forgive themselves, to be grateful for having lived.

SO: I wanted to end with your deeply moving poem about the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, which is written in a form that directly invokes the Amidah, a central Jewish prayer. Can you tell me about your thought process around the writing of this poem?

AO: I think that particular terrorist act and the assault on the Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the massacre that Dylan Roof enacted on those nine people at the Baptist church, all those events strike a very similar cord for me. Obviously I related more to the Tree of Life because they’re closer to my people if you want to call it that. I think people forget that hatred against Jews is one of the earliest of the hatreds. But also, I find these events so beyond my scope, I try to imagine what it would be like to be there. 

Is it possible to be in this space of godliness and know that you’re being murdered?

When I think of Tree of Life, I think: What is the hatred that fuels the impulse to do something like that that? And if you’re there and you’re vulnerable and you’re praying and you’re in this space where you think you’re safe and you’re blessed, do you even recognize it as it’s happening? Is it possible to be in this space of godliness and know that you’re being murdered? These are experiences that seem unfathomable. Especially when I heard they were older people, it felt like these people survived everything just to get to this point, they were with their god, they were exposed, they were skinless, and this is how they went. 

SO: Is poetry for you, then, a form of prayer?

AO: Yes, poetry is prayer, I go to poetry for a similar feeling that I get with prayer. My own prayer practice is so iconoclastic and not religious in the conventional sense. I read poems every day. Poetry serves as a sort of morning prayer, it does sort of create a space of wonder and a space of calm, especially during hard times. I enter my day with language very much in the forefront of my mind and the possibility of communication, which is important to me. I want to communicate, to connect, to touch and be touched. 

Were We Too Harsh on Penny Lane?

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

When I first saw Cameron Crowe’s 2000 movie Almost Famous at sixteen, wide-eyed and hungry for cinematic coming-of-age, I recognized Penny Lane. Played by Kate Hudson with bouncing golden ringlets and a draping fur coat, Almost Famous’s central female character is iconic. The twinkling gleam in her eye and her aloof charisma make her easy to favor. I’d seen stills of her dancing among rose petals on Instagram, artfully captioned screenshots of her cryptic catchphrases circulating on Tumblr, and outfits inspired by her silky tops and bell bottoms on Pinterest mood boards.

But when she made her first appearance in the movie, half an hour in, stepping slow and controlled toward teenage reporter, William (played by a baby-faced Patrick Fugit) in a midnight parking lot, those images didn’t come to mind. What I knew right away was that I wasn’t supposed to like her, because she’d been dubbed a manic pixie dream girl. 

Lists of manic pixie dream girls—an archetype of an unusual, easy-breezy wondergirl who adds quirky joy to a man’s humdrum brooding—abounded by the time I was  at the end of the aughts. Accessible sites like BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and even crowd-sourced TV Tropes collected examples of this decidedly unprogressive cliche. Penny Lane was listed alongside Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, and (500) Days of Summer’s titular Zooey Deschanel role. Once a MPDG was named, my modus operandi was clear: refuse to engage with her work of origin and shake my little head at the weak writing that reduced women to plot devices. 

I get how Penny Lane was pegged as a MPDG. Her life is devoted to a revolving door of male-fronted bands (primarily Stillwater and its oh-so-moody guitarist Russell, played by Billy Crudup). She takes inexperienced square William under her wing and teaches him how to be free-spirited. She leads a troupe of equally enthusiastic groupies, calling them Band Aids because they inspire the music, set apart from the rabble. Her mystery extends to the real name she’ll “never tell” and countless high-concept speeches and spur-of-the-moment announcements. Penny Lane doesn’t have a lot of feelings. Penny Lane doesn’t seem to need much—aside from male attention—and if the mood strikes, a glass of something cold and bubbly in her hand. More recently, it’s clear a lot of the manic pixie uproar came from pitifully simplified media criticism. Nathan Rabin, who coined the term in a 2007 Elizabethtown review, denounced it as a “cliché” which “spun out of control” in a 2014 Salon article. He called for “its erasure from public discourse” and “an end to articles about its countless different permutations.”

Susie Banks, a postgraduate student of History and Film and Television, explained to me, “the manic pixie dream girl was scrutinized in the digital age through popular discourse. This accessibility accelerates the process of cultural cycles and their respective opposition. When Ramona Flowers or, I don’t know, that blue-haired girl from Eternal Sunshine, came under fire, not just for their purpose as an object for the hapless nerd to gain, but for their value as hallowed objects being based on being “not like other girls,” the knee-jerk reaction sought to subvert their subversion.” 

It’s clear a lot of the manic pixie uproar came from pitifully simplified media criticism.

Penny Lane is a subverted subversion of the trope so accidentally ahead of her time that no one realized it. I agree that billing every lighthearted female character an MPDG is passé, but there’s still something interesting about the archetype. Penny Lane fits the mold, but it’s on purpose. She’s a curated persona, putting on a party girl “lampshade” to remain distant and to fit her role. From a writing standpoint, this choice is unexpectedly progressive for a 2000 film pre-empting the MPDG hoopla. Yet, the movie from William’s perspective obscures the depth Penny Lane has. And there’s the catch: with her consumable one-dimensional persona, it’s not just the characters of the film she fools. It’s often audiences. Maybe we weren’t expecting a subversion of a trope so early in that trope’s life cycle, or it wasn’t clear enough. 

Asked about Penny Lane’s MPDG billing in 2019, Cameron Crowe pushed back. He told the Los Angeles Times she wasn’t meant to be a “cipher” but rather “a soulful, selfless, loving person who was super into community and kept herself a little bit hidden.” But the movie is semi-autobiographical, and Penny Lane is based on a real person.

Crowe believed he was writing someone ‘real’ who forces herself to act ‘real’ in a way that ends up not being real at all.

Susie Banks suggested “it lends some credibility to her characterization that the story is tethered to reality and not necessarily narrative conventions.” Still, “given the film’s marketing [the poster features a Mona Lisa closeup of Penny Lane] and the narrative of the film, she is certainly symbolic of something, but in that respect she’s also reduced to an object.” Ignoring Penny Lane’s conscious effort to be carefree is bad faith criticism, but ignoring how the film pays little attention to her depth and how her quirk-level-maximum groupie kin don’t demonstrate the same depth is also unwise. It’s no wonder she confused us. Crowe believed he was writing someone “real” who forces herself to act “real” in a way that ends up not being real at all. To quote the film, “it’s all happening”—authenticity, performativity, and God forbid, performative authenticity. 

Audiences are left grappling to determine if Penny Lane is a Well-Written Woman or a Very Bad, No Good Manic Pixie Dream Girl. 

Are you out of breath yet? I am. 

Here’s the thing: figuring out if a trope is subverted well enough is a circular game. Splaying out her parts and piecing them together like autopsy-table wreckage isn’t what matters. What matters about Penny Lane is she’s obscured herself to such an extent that neither the characters in the film nor the audience can determine how much of her persona is performance. 

It’s uncool to be an open book. More, it isn’t safe.

Almost Famous emphasizes the mystique of the socially unknown. Characters stipulate what gives rock ‘n’ roll appeal. Russell tells William that rock ‘n’ roll isn’t what you include, but “what you leave out.” Each character plays cat-and-mouse with truth: Stillwater debates what reporter William should know, William lies about his age and takes advantage of misunderstandings, and even the other Band Aids play it cool before flipping their lids as Ozzy Osbourne drives by. It’s uncool to be an open book. More, it isn’t safe. At least it doesn’t feel that way.

Penny Lane lets William see behind her facade every so often. An often-quoted scene has her outline her rules for a happy life on the road: “I always tell the girls never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, then you never get hurt. If you never get hurt, then you always have fun.” She defers to safe methods of behavior to keep her desirable status. Musicians thrill to see her, shouting her name and begging her to follow them to whatever midwestern city they’re off to next. She throws them off, telling William to “watch” as she pretends she doesn’t recognize them. She might let William see some of her true self, but never for long and never fully. She toys with him to learn his real age (declaring hers to be the same as his every time he modifies). When William clues into the history between Penny Lane and Russell, she overcompensates with an announcement of intent to move to Morocco. Each time the veneer cracks, she repairs it.

The rock ‘n’ roll space is set apart and superior to the “real world.” Stillwater’s singer, Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) sincerely says when he sees the musicians around him, he knows “one of these people is going to save the world.” Characters feel lucky to be part of this world. That’s why William is drawn to it after being told his sister’s rock records will change his life. That’s why the film shows screaming fans in stadiums and doting groupies at the Riot House. The crux of the rock ‘n’ roll dreamland in Almost Famous is its foolish belief in its absolute sincerity. Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tells William, “the day [rock ‘n’ roll] ceases to be dumb is the day it ceases to be real.”

The crux of the rock ‘n’ roll dreamland in Almost Famous is its foolish belief in its absolute sincerity.

Penny Lane isn’t dumb and she isn’t real. She’s smart enough to curate her personal performance, but naive enough to not realize she’s getting little in return as she irons bands’ shirts. She acts so mysterious, so strange, so intriguing—it must be Penny Lane being herself. Her winking tricks and rehearsed speeches emulate the authentic love a groupie ought to give.

Being too real is how you “get hurt,” so performing is the only option, especially for a woman. For Penny Lane to have any power, she needs to pretend she doesn’t. Almost Famous is set in the early 1970s, when (second-wave) feminism was more a burgeoning controversy than a pop-fied Instagram axiom. In the film’s rock circle, the roles are clear: men are to be adored, women are to be adoring. Penny Lane understands the dynamic but still refuses to “retire.” Even her name shows her woeful self-determination. Although she’s based on Pennie Lane Trumbull, the association with her namesake Beatles song sticks out. The 1967 song lists the various unusual happenings and citizens of the titular lane. “Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout / A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray / And though she feels as if she’s in a play / She is anyway.”

Knowing she’s acting in a play works until it doesn’t. When she shrugs off Russell ignoring her for his wife and being sold to band Humble Pie for “fifty dollars and a case of beer,” William begs her to admit she has feelings. She doesn’t fold. It’s only when William tracks her down in a hotel room, overdosing on quaaludes, that the audience sees her as fallible. Still, as William waits for EMTs, he keeps her aloft by having her repeat her stock speeches. As she’s on the verge of death, William remains half-convinced by her manic pixie gloss and tries to kiss her as she goes limp. He still wants the artificial. He still half-believes in it.

As she’s on the verge of death, William remains half-convinced by her manic pixie gloss and tries to kiss her as she goes limp.

William is the hero of Penny Lane’s only damsel-in-distress moment. While it’s true that for most of the film she stands her ground, it’s also true that for most of the film the stakes are way lower: relationship troubles, travel concerns, petty arguments. Penny Lane’s life is only at stake once. The film could have shown her crawling independently to the telephone, or a Band Aid hoisting her away. Instead, William gets his chance to assert his masculinity by acting as savior and, as he scatters away the other men in the room, protector.

The manic pixie dream girl is, in many ways, the modern depthless, helpless damsel. She might “save” her male lead from his crabbiness or ennui, but it’s the male lead who saves her when things become grim. Although these men are often unusual heroes—depressed and bumbling Andrew (Zach Braff) in Garden State, every-boy teenager Leo (Graham Verchere) in Stargirl, or plucky and unsure William—they are always allotted at least a moment to assert their traditional masculinity. The MPDG is not a whole woman, but a silhouette of one. From far away, she has the right shape, but when you get too close, she’s just a shadow. MPDGs are a roundabout way for otherwise-unlikely men to access the traditional masculine role. Through her, they get to have heroic moments. Through her, they get to grow.

I almost want to give Almost Famous some credit. Penny Lane has legitimate problems, so she isn’t entirely static. But Crowe’s writing, despite giving nuance to Penny Lane, doesn’t spare her from being a wilting flower in desperate need of water in this scene of vulnerability. Rather than lingering in this exposed moment and letting the viewer recognize that there’s more to her, the film shrinks away and reverts. While her in-universe manic pixie act ends here, the film’s use of the trope is only reinforced. This is William’s coming-of-age movie, and in saving Penny Lane, he becomes a man.

MPDGs are a roundabout way for otherwise-unlikely men to access the traditional masculine role.

After her brush with death, Penny Lane finally reveals her real name and baby-groupie origins to William. In this scene, the pair is outdoors in soft light unlike the previous stark neon dim. He sees her off as she finally steps on a plane. Is she going to break out of her performative ways? Or will she find a new identity to force herself into? After living performatively since age fourteen, it feels unlikely she’ll totally get in touch with her true self. 

When I rewatched the movie, I paused it. I dimmed my living room lights, lit a small soy candle, cleared off the magazine clutter on my coffee table, and waited for the perfect frame to snap a photo for my Instagram story. I was so proud of cracking the code of Penny Lane’s performative authenticity! I had to tell everyone. I looked at the photo. I snapped the light back on and stuck my feet on the table with a slouch. I was picking and choosing how to present my life, pretending I hadn’t picked at all. I’m bound to the same self-curation curse as Penny Lane. 

Almost Famous came out long before even Myspace, much less Instagram and TikTok. But Penny Lane’s performative authenticity mirrors our contemporary social media trends. Social media might be meant as the space where I’m just “being myself” online, but that’s never been true. Denizens of Instagram and other platforms are hyper-aware of how we present ourselves. I’m not under the impression I’m the first person to have this thought. For a while, we all took it as fact. Selfies over-processed through VSCO and Facetune and carefully drafted not-so-off-the-cuff tweets were internet bread and butter. Lately, though, there’s been a push toward so-called authenticity on the internet. 

In 2019, The Atlantic declared the end of the “Instagram aesthetic”—the death of curated feeds and the dawning of the effortless Emma Chamberlain era. Photo dumps (collections of random, unrelated images) are on the formerly highly-produced feeds of Ariana Grande and Bella Hadid. Social media’s casual now! We’re all just posting whatever we want! We’re being so real and authentic, right?

Right?

The careless aesthetic doesn’t achieve authenticity so much as it performs it. I’m guilty of arranging an open book to lie just so, and pulling open the blinds to snap a seemingly candid shot. I want to seem like I’m always charming and unbothered. When I do this, I’m not being myself. I’m acting, setting up a role and filling it. Just like Penny Lane, who puts on the lampshade to fit her Band Aid role, I put on my own hat. I’m working so hard to look like I’m not trying. But who am I if I’ve been doing this for so long?

True feelings don’t fit into the manic pixie role.

Penny Lane’s self-performance created unhealthy distance from others. It might have felt safe to her, but it led to unrecognized turmoil that barely anyone could detect. True feelings don’t fit into the manic pixie role. We as an audience need to know better than to fall for it, especially those of us who find ourselves in a similar position. It’s all happening, and I can’t stop it. The real, the fake, the fake-real. 

Susie Banks said, “If subversion becomes the de facto mode of presenting oneself then … where do we go from here? I bet you the next cultural trend will be duckface nostalgia. I don’t see myself joining the ranks of pop culture critics thinking they’re inventing the wheel by pointing out manufactured authenticity. This precarious point in time still has a long way to go before we can make sweeping statements about the impact of social media. There is also the subconscious of outward expression, which is a dumb way of saying ‘people like Instagram because it’s fun.’”

And it is fun! It’s fun, and current, and frankly unavoidable for most. I can’t escape the realm of manufactured authenticity while we’re still all looped into it. After I learned what a manic pixie dream girl was, a strange thing happened. As much as I knew these women were plot devices and not real, I still wanted to be like them. I dressed in Zooey Deschanel kitsch, I pinned vinyl record sleeves to my walls, I skipped over puddles and forced myself to giggle. Maybe I could do it right, I thought. I could be the real version, the whole version, of these fake girls. 

Maybe, I thought, if I put on the lampshade, I’ll be the one to have it grow into me and stick. I’ll be the one who never needs to take it off. 

Power, Privilege, and Love in a Residential School for Deaf Students

Posted on by Jo Lou

How do you fit into a new community of people who see and understand you better than the world at large does? That’s the central question at the heart of Sara Nović’s enamoring second novel, True Biz.

True Biz by Sara Novic

From the opening pages, we immediately empathize with a teenage girl, Charlie, who struggles to hear and fit in. After her hearing parents’ divorce, she is enrolled at River Valley School of the Deaf, a residential school for Deaf students. But not everything is paradise. The headmistress of the Deaf school, February Waters, struggles with the shifting sociopolitical climate and how much she can give to those under her care. Austin, the school’s shining beacon of Deafness, is taken aback when his new sister is born hearing. As Charlie settles in at her new school and starts to master American Sign Language, she begins to fully see the nuances of the world around her.

Inquiries of community, isolation, and social expectations are nothing new to Nović, who is Deaf herself. Beyond her excellent fiction writing, she consistently writes nonfiction about social justice issues, disability, and representation in media, in places like the New York Times, Slate, CNN, and elsewhere. She is a force and an inspiration, both on Twitter and in person. She demands space to ask her questions about the world; in doing so, she makes the world a better place for the Deaf writers who come after her. 

I met with Sara Nović over Zoom to ask her about how True Biz took shape; the following conversation was conducted in American Sign Language, and then translated into written English.

Ross Showalter: River Valley School of the Deaf (RVSD) is the central location of True Biz. It’s a Deaf institute, meaning it houses, feeds, and educates Deaf students from kindergarten to 12th grade. It’s an institution with its struggles—financially, bureaucratically, and so on. It’s also fictional, Google tells me. What was the process like of developing that setting?

Sara Nović: That was one of the fun parts of writing True Biz, for me—the opportunity to invent that whole place. That whole town is fictional—it’s not a real place.

When I started writing about RVSD, I wanted to find a balance between invention and being able to show people and the experiences they’d had within an institution. So I did a lot of research. I was also touring for my first novel. I went to different Deaf institutes and talked with the students, which was really fun and probably the best part of the tour. I learned about the way those Deaf institutes were set up. I also interviewed some adults and we discussed their experiences at the institutes because that wasn’t my experience growing up. It was important to go in-depth and see what was important to them about that experience. One thing that kept popping up was racism, biases, and the petty types of cliques that grouped the students away from each other. That changed the direction of some parts of this book, obviously, but that’s only in the book because people told me about their experiences dealing with that.

RS: I’m so curious about one of the book’s central figures, February. February is a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), and she is the headmistress of RVSD. Where did her character come from? How did you decide to make her a CODA and to put her in a position of power in a Deaf setting, where she has enormous privilege as a hearing person?

The Deaf community as well is having a lot of conversations about who has power and who has privilege within the community.

SN: A lot of my friends in college were CODAs and I was just drawn to their perspective. It was so interesting to me to encounter someone who saw the world similar to me but not exactly. February, as a character, is one of the most surprising to me, where I had no plan for her, but she evolved so much in the process of writing. I didn’t even know she was married and then, one night while I was writing, her wife, Mel, just walked into the room.

RS: I just love that relationship. I love the relationship between them.

SN: Thank you! I was so happy she showed up, but I had no plan. I had no idea she was a part of the book. She walked into the room and I was like, “Okay. Hi. Back up and let’s write you in.” 

I think the Deaf community as well is having a lot of conversations about who has power and who has privilege within the community. CODAs and interpreters have both power and privilege, and I wanted to find a way to include all those kind of experiences within the Deaf community. I think February’s interesting because she really will do anything for the Deaf community, but maybe she’s not always thinking clearly because she’s trying to prove herself.

RS: All these characters in True Biz get themselves in conflicts with ableist people and ableist systems and ableist ideas. There are so many conflicts and obstacles throughout this book that revolve around having a disability in a society that largely ignores disabled people. I wonder, now that you’re on the other side of this book, if you find it easier to define what ableism is or if you consider it an insidious thing that’s hard to really pinpoint.

SN: I think the problem in defining it is that there’s always something new. I think when I was writing the book, there were different types and different layers of ableism and bias I had in mind. But, now, the world is just so different from when I started writing the book. Now, we have all these different kinds of biases popping into our consciousness every day. Technology, for example, creates barriers even when it’s supposed to support. Like, when the pandemic started, it was like, “Okay, we’ll have Zoom meetings.” Then when we got there, we realized, “Right. We need accommodations there too.” So I always want to learn things while I’m writing, that’s important to me. But I also have to understand that there’s new things that are going to evolve on their own, and new things are always going to pop up. Things are always changing. 

RS: I think in deaf literature and disability literature, Deaf and disabled authors often feel like they have to educate through their work. Authors can feel like it’s their responsibility to teach hearing, abled people what it’s like for disabled and Deaf folks. Do you envision disability literature moving past that starkly educational role?

If a reader is confused about something, my reaction is, ‘You don’t get it? Try harder.’ Try harder and it’s okay for you to feel uncomfortable for one minute.

SN: I believe, in general, it’s not our job to educate through creative writing. We can teach about our experiences without being didactic. I resisted this book for a while, but then I realized it gave me an opportunity to teach because it was set at a Deaf school and a teacher is one of the top characters—why not take that opportunity? It was silly for me to feel like, “I don’t want to teach through writing,” but then I gave myself the space to do that and it worked out. But we should be allowed to write the way hearing people write about the world and tell stories from our points-of-view. Readers do learn from that, and they should, yes. But, if a reader is confused about something, my reaction is, “You don’t get it? Try harder.” Try harder and it’s okay for you to feel uncomfortable for one minute.

RS: Language is a major topic in this book, not only in theme but in form. There’s a lot of super rad ASL lessons peppered throughout the book and asides about ASL slang. Did you envision that from the beginning, or was it something that happened when Brittany Castle (the ASL artist for True Biz) came in?

SN: Yeah, that process took forever. I was writing these characters and their stories and I struggled with wanting to show ASL on paper. How do I do that? There’s so much I could do. So I tried a bunch of things. I tried colors. I tried organization. Then I tried playing with syntax and realized that hearing people would read that and think ASL is nothing but broken English. I really wanted to show for certain characters that ASL is better than English. I decided to use space on the page and show how clear it is for certain characters when signed communication happens, compared to English dialogue. I showed the gaps in lipreading and what the character gets and doesn’t get when lipreading. For signed conversations, I basically tried to orient sign to a specific space on the page, according to a specific character, and essentially use dialogue tags but in a visual way.

But I also wanted to do more in representing ASL in the book. And because Charlie was learning sign, that gave me the opportunity to show ASL on the page and direct readers to look at what the sign is, visually. I took a bunch of signs from the internet that I knew I wanted in the book. I laid them out in the way I wanted them to be in the book and then I asked Brittany Castle to draw like 100 signs. It was a very weird project, but it was important to have Deaf artists depict the signs. I’m really happy that Brittany said yes because I’ve loved her work for a while. And it was so smooth working with her because she knew what I meant with my list of signs and pictures from the internet. A hearing artist would never have been compatible with this project the way Brittany was, because she knew ASL and knew my intention. 

RS: There’s this gorgeous thread throughout the book about language deprivation, not having the language for how you feel, and how that often results in miscommunication. I wonder if you could speak to the role of language and miscommunication in True Biz and how much of a role it plays in these Deaf characters expressing themselves.

SN: Charlie’s an interesting character. She has had access to some language, and she’s interesting because of that. She’s an example of what happens to most people like her growing up. She was never fully deprived of language, but the access and communication she has is still too much work for her. She misses a lot. She can’t communicate well with her family. It was important to me to show that middle experience too.

RS: That sort of liminal space that can exist for Deaf folks.

SN: Exactly. I have a friend who’s done very well for themselves, but, back then, she was often put in special education. And I think that is the norm in mainstream schools, depending on where you are in the country or your family’s involvement in your education. That’s an experience many people have because that kind of special education classroom has equipment to engage with behavioral problems, but not the root causes or the student’s actual needs. I think that happens more than people realize.

RS: There’s this interesting dynamic between Austin and Charlie, two deaf students at RVSD. Charlie is the only Deaf kid in her family, has a cochlear implant, and comes to ASL late. Austin is from a Deaf family and grew up with ASL. There’s this moment where Charlie is told that Austin is like royalty, because he came from a Deaf family, and he typically gets what he wants. This sort of prestige, being Deaf and growing up in a Deaf family, has been covered in other media about Deaf people, like the Netflix show Deaf U. What’s your opinion on the role that that Deaf lineage plays in the Deaf community?

SN: That’s something I never really thought about that much. It’s not my experience. When I was at the Deaf institutes, I saw that that kind of family was important to the school. It’s tough, because I think Deaf families are important to the community because they do a lot of the work of passing down the history and the knowledge of the Deaf community. I think sometimes people who live that experience, growing up deaf in a Deaf family, don’t realize the privilege they have. Maybe they look down on other people because that access to sign is automatic to them. Other Deaf people don’t have that automatic access and it’s not their fault because they don’t know. They couldn’t make that choice for themselves and that lack of a choice is a problem. It’s a big problem.

RS: I’m also curious about your opinion on Deaf U and all of the books, shows, and films that look at Deaf people and that are ultimately shepherded by hearing folks. I wonder if it is authenticity or if it’s just Deaf people hiding the hearing mastermind and the hearing point-of-view. Do you think it benefits us to have more media about us, even with a hearing person in charge? Or do you think Deaf stories can only truly be told by only us? It’s a hot-button topic, I’m sorry.

SN: Yeah, no, it’s tough! I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially because we’re working on a TV show for True Biz. It’s still in the very early stages, but if we have the chance to make this show, then it’s really important to make sure there are Deaf people everywhere and in every stage of this process. Deaf people in the writers room. Deaf people behind the camera. We see things differently, and if this gets made, then I hope we can show people that the outcome can be better when you make it authentically. But, I think having Deaf people on screen is valuable. I think it’s cool for Deaf kids to grow up and see Lauren Ridloff as a superhero. That’s cool. That’s important.

For a long time, I didn’t realize I could be a writer, as a job, as a profession. Like, I was studying writing in school and I still didn’t realize, “Oh, this is my job. I can be a writer. I can tell stories, like anyone else.” And I think I would have come to that understanding faster if I’d seen other Deaf writers out there. Representation has value, but I don’t think representation does all the work of authentic storytelling that we need to have happen.

RS: I wonder about the audience that you wrote for, for this book. Did you write this for the Deaf community? For the hearing community? Was that something you had to think about? Or did you just decide to write this book for yourself?

I want a place where Deaf people can see themselves and their experiences, but at the same time, I still want hearing people to see these characters in ways that they can identify with.

SN: A good story always starts for yourself. But, obviously, when I realized, “Okay, this is going to become something I want other people to read,” I had to start thinking about the audience. And for me, it’s a balancing act.

I want a place where Deaf people can see themselves and their experiences, but at the same time, I still want hearing people to learn and see these characters in ways that they can identify with. So, throughout the editing process, I was always cutting and adding so many different explanations. My editor’s really good for winnowing out those explanations, because she’s a hearing woman. But if she had a question or a moment of confusion, it would be a chance for me to ask myself, “Will most people understand this? Do I care if they understand this or not?” So, I had to decide how much I wanted to explain versus how much I wanted to make the reader work for it.

RS: And that’s really the million-dollar question: How much do you want to explain?

SN: Many times, hearing readers ask me for more. Most of the time, I resist. Sometimes, I’ll take their questions and I’ll answer what they want to know. So, I hope I’ve found a balance in that the explanations aren’t boring for Deaf readers, they still enjoy the story, and they’re able to see themselves in the characters I’ve invented. But, if I want hearing readers to empathize with those Deaf characters too, I need to give them a trail of breadcrumbs that they’re able to follow.

My Therapist Says the Abuse Wasn’t Love

Posted on by Alex Juarez

Paradise

Progress—we’ve taken to sunsets at the beach close to 
your house. Laughing, I’ve chased you into the waves. 

You’re always so patient with me, even when your face 
says it all: lips pulled over your teeth, furrow set in the 

brow. I love that about you. We’ve been going steady 
a year now; today I’m treading lightly. You don’t 

need to say anything, love—I know you’re no good 
with words; it’s the thought that counts. I’ll say it: sorry 

is nothing if it isn’t true, & I’m getting better at 
seeing the signs: yesterday, the flush told me the tide 

was coming in. Was it your cheeks or mine? Scared, 
I hid in the laundry room; I cried before your hand 

came down. I understood: I’m only a thing to keep 
you above water. You’re always at your most honest 

the evening after; how you nuzzle my hair—an apology 
says so much less. But love, where has your head gone 

now, your shoulders are gliding back, vanishing in 
blue. Who needs respect when your hand’s slipping 

from my waist, no longer quite solid, the low thrum 
frantic, push pull kick, my legs bright, burning—wait,
 
I need you to get back, I won’t make it far without 
you with me—together, distant.

My Therapist Tells Me the Abuse Wasn’t Love

after Taneum Bambrick

You’re not listening to me either. What 
you know is what I have done to myself. 
You picture a heart gutted from fishing 
line; I see the man who kissed me before 

it hooked through. I’m in love, not stupid— 
a Heaven void of respect is just a dark room 
with blood on the walls. That’s not what this 
is about. The problem isn’t what’s stained 

his hands; it’s defending the boogeyman 
for wearing the face of my beloved. 
This wasn’t the first thing I’ve done against 
my will—I left Heaven in a night 

& I yanked the reel clean from my heart myself. 
You’re not the first person I’ve explained this to.

7 Books That Show a Different Side of Appalachia

Posted on by Jo Lou

When I tell people where I’m from, the reaction is often one of disbelief: “There are Indian people in Appalachia?” Indeed there are, just as there are Black folks in Appalachia, and Indigenous folks in Appalachia, and Mexican and Filipino and Chinese folks in Appalachia. Appalachia, in fact, is a massive region of the United States, as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It spans 423 counties in 13 states, and runs from northern Mississippi to southern New York. 26 million people live within its 206,000 square miles of land. But to far too many people, Appalachia is a much smaller, much more homogenous place. If you relied on the narratives put forth by large publishers and mainstream media sources, you would think Appalachia only meant the states of West Virginia and Kentucky, and that its inhabitants were strictly white, straight, poor, and Christian. 

My essay collection is entitled Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place. I choose the word “another” with intention, because there are many Appalachias, and many versions of Appalachian identity. My experience—of growing up in southern West Virginia as the child of Indian immigrants, and slowly developing an understanding of my queer identity—is only one. There are so many “anothers” in Appalachia—so many people living in ways that subvert stereotypes, and have been subverting them for generations. And their stories are being written by authors who refuse to let stereotypes define the region, and published by incredible small presses like Belt and Hub City, and by university presses at West Virginia University, University of Kentucky, and Ohio University who are committed to this work as well.

I didn’t always know that Appalachia was home to so many “anothers”. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s thinking, in many ways, that I was “other”, and not “another”. Subject to Confederate flags and racial epithets, it was difficult to understand where I fit into the Appalachian story. And without visible models of queerness, it was so much harder for me to understand my own burgeoning sexuality. In my essays, I write about what it was like to develop a coherent sense of self and identity in the absence of models. I write about the relationships in my life that have both nourished me and starved me, in my quest for authenticity and integrated sense of self. But it is ultimately through reading that I’ve found my identity as an Appalachian, and that I’ve found a community of readers and writers who both embrace and live out anotherness in Appalachia. This list contains just some of the incredible Appalachian writers who are constructing another Appalachian narrative through their words.

Affrilachia by Frank X Walker 

Any list about pushing back on the dominant narrative regarding Appalachia has to start with Frank X Walker’s stunning poetry collection about Black Appalachian culture. Reading Walker’s work was the first time I saw someone who wasn’t white staking out a claim to Appalachian identity, and showing readers how Black culture informed and shaped Appalachian culture as a whole. His articulation of Affrilachia gave me permission to consider the relationship between my own identity and the external construction of what it means to be Appalachian. Safe to say, there would be no Another Appalachia without Affrilachia.  

Trampoline by Robert Gipe 

If you haven’t met Dawn Jewell, the badass protagonist of Robert Gipe’s graphic novel Trampoline, your reading life is incomplete. Dawn is a Kentucky teen who listens to punk music and has a destructive streak, but soon finds herself caught up in her community’s fight against mountaintop removal. Dawn is an accidental radical, a kind of activist who is drawn to the fight not because of theoretical politics, but because of the lived realities she and her family experience each day. Her mix of vulnerability and humor, and her deep love of home will carry you through Trampoline and straight into the sequel, Weedeater.

The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels

Growing up, I did not know any young people or adults who were open about their LGBTQIA+ identities. In retrospect, I can see that there were folks in my community who were quietly living their truth, but I also know many people for whom leaving was a part of coming out. In The Prettiest Star, Carter Sickels writes about what it means to leave home in search of wholeness and authenticity, only to have to experience the costs of coming home again. Set in Appalachian Ohio during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, this story about how a community responds when one of its members comes home HIV-positive will not leave your mind, even years after you’ve read it.

F*ckface by Leah Hampton 

Besides having quite possibly the best book title ever conceived, F*ckface is about what it means to live in post-coal Appalachia, a place where solid union jobs have been replaced by transient service jobs, and where residents’ bodies carry the toxic traces left by the coal and chemical industries. This collection is a kaleidoscope, with each short story offering readers a different lens into what it’s like to live in communities where work has, by and large, disappeared, but people continue to both struggle and persist.

The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns by Dr. William H. Turner

When the title for my book was announced, the first email I received was from Dr. Turner. He wrote, “If there is anyone who knows what you mean, metaphorically, about ‘Another Appalachia,’ it’s me and legions of family and friends.” Dr. Turner’s book describes the lives of Black families living in Harlan County mining communities during both the coal boom, and the subsequent bust. The erasure of Black communities and Black history from the mainstream narrative around Appalachia has been profound. So profound that as a student educated in West Virginia’s public schools, I didn’t learn about the interracial coalition of miners who united to fight at the Battle of Blair Mountain, or about the fact that the Kanawha Salines, just 15 miles from my home, were mined by people who had been enslaved. Dr. Turner corrects this erasure with his book, centering the stories of Black Appalachian people and communities in a rapidly changing economic context.

Even as We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Even as We Breathe is the first book to be published by an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, whose home is in the heart of Appalachia. Cowney, the main character in Clapsaddle’s book, struggles with the same questions that arise for so many young Appalachians: What does it mean when our homes simultaneously nourish and stifle us? What do we gain when we leave? What do we lose? Cowney is accused of a crime early in the story, and while the novel follows this plot line through, the larger questions of identity and belonging that Clapsaddle raises feel just as important as the resolution to Cowney’s story.

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll

This anthology is an entire collection of “anothers”—Appalachian writers from a wide range of identities and geographies who share one thing in common: a deep sense of injustice at the way our home and our people are represented in J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. Through a mix of essays and creative work, the writers in this collection articulate a much more complex representation of Appalachia, both its beautiful aspects and its messy, hard parts. This book is a necessary counter to both Vance’s oversimplified narrative, and to the rampant stereotypes about Appalachian people that his narrative girds up. 

7 Books Set During Spring Time

Posted on by Jo Lou

The magnolias are blooming where I live in Spain—big bursts of pink blossoms garlanding the streets, sprays of pastel petals on gray pavements, a twist of color among concrete. It feels like magic every time, every year: the shoots and sprouts, buds, blooms, and blossoms, that literal spring in your step as winter fades. I buy bouquets of daffodils, fawn over sidewalk tulips, and embrace with open arms the big fat cliché that this season is. A grand old flowering tree after a cold, dark winter is surely enough to warm even a cynic’s heart, no?

Perhaps you’re a cynic, perhaps a seasoned spring fiend, or ambivalent about this season that can feel in-between. Here are some reads to welcome the new season:

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

Dorayaki is a delicious Japanese pancake filled with sweet bean paste. A treat that you will most definitely be craving when reading this book, so fair warning to seek out some sweet bites to snack on. To set the scene: it’s cherry blossom season in Tokyo, a disgruntled, depressed employee runs a dorayaki shop on the blossomiest street of them all, and an elderly lady appears out of nowhere and infiltrates his life with her magical bean paste. A story of friendship, loneliness, injustice, aging, and empathy.

Intimations by Zadie Smith

This is a whole different kind of spring story—a pandemic spring. Zadie Smith famously wrote this slim tome of excellent essays during the early days of Covid, reflecting on life in this strange time of ours: the miseries of lockdown and ruminations on writing, George Floyd, privilege, suffering, contempt.

In Intimations, Smith compares writing novels to baking banana bread (it’s just something to do). She sketches a few portraits of New York City with the sharpest of pencils, turning tulips into peonies and deploying memes as readily as she references Marcus Aurelius. She offers us a handful of tiny, brilliant gems—crisp, catching the light, and full of clarity. 

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

When I think of spring in literature, the first thing that comes to mind is my childhood friend, Anne Shirley. Even though life in Green Gables moves through all the seasons, to me it seems to be always enveloped in branches bursting with blossoms, in green shoots sprouting out of fresh dirt, in birdsong and perpetual May. Spring is there on the very first page, lush and shimmery, the orchard “in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees.” If you haven’t met Anne yet, maybe now’s the time for a little escape into her world.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

“I want to do with you what Spring does to the cherry trees,” Neruda once famously wrote in a poem. This sentiment succinctly captures the atmosphere of Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday, which is rich with Salter-esque sensuality set against a backdrop of a blooming spring day in the English countryside, a March day that feels like June. Mother’s Day, to be precise, traditionally a day off for servants so they could return home and visit their mothers. For Jane, a maid, this is a day of celebration, a day to do what she pleases, as she has no home to return to: a day to spend with her lover. A deliciously seductive handful of hours turns out to be a turning point in her life. Moving, dreamy, and enviously crafted.

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald

This is the kind of book that soaks in and settles into your corners and cobwebs. Long after reading it, I kept thinking of the windows in Moscow and their springtime opening, the unsealing of winter layers to let the fresh air in, finally.

Penelope Fitzgerald weaves a fine, elegant tale, as always, masterfully setting a scene with just a few brushstrokes. It is March 1913 in the city and Frank Reid’s wife has left him, hopping on a train with destination unknown, leaving three kids behind. He is left to pick up the pieces, to solve the mystery of her sudden vanishing, hoping for a return. The minutiae of Russian life during this era are skillfully constructed, with plenty of samovars, birch trees, and wintry scenes to make you feel fully transported. And the timing of it all, Russia on the brink of war and revolution, injects the book with an underlying haunted, electric energy.

Things I Don’t Want To Know by Deborah Levy

A compact book that I keep coming back to, this is the first part of Deborah Levy’s “Living Autobiography.” Levy has a way of crafting sentences that you both want to savor and swallow without chewing so as to gobble up the next and the next. A response to Orwell’s famous “Why I Write” essay, this is a meditation on the writing life, primarily, but also on family, womanhood, living and being and love and everything that makes a life. Levy’s spring is one of crying on escalators. The book opens just so:

“That spring when life was hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn’t see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations.”

And it unfurls from there, skipping off to Mallorca, with flights of recollection to Poland, to South Africa, to England.

Spring by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Knausgaard’s Seasons quartet is dedicated to his youngest daughter, each book containing letters, essays, and diaries addressing the author’s newest child. Spring veers away from this formula and into autofiction territory, a tried-and-true comfort zone for Knausgaard. The novel takes place on Walpurgis, a big Scandinavian celebration on the last day of April, an eve of bonfires and flaming torches that herald spring.

The narrator goes through his daily motions of caring for his kids, attempting to write, spiraling into the past and into a recounting of his wife’s pregnancy. Like a bonfire, this book crackles and mesmerizes, lends itself to reminiscing and drawn-out discussions, fades and flickers a bit, drifts off into monotony, but ultimately snaps and sparks and celebrates life.

Falling in Love Is Hard When You’re the Guardian of the Dead

Posted on by Jo Lou

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel When We Were Birds begins in the time before time and follows the uneasy truce between the living and the dead. Cigarettes are offered, liquor is poured, prayers are said, all in the hope that the buried stay buried. This is the story of Yejide, a young woman who becomes the reluctant heir of a family secret that binds her to the grave, and Darwin, a man forbidden from touching the dead who will follow to the end of the earth the woman who communes with them.  

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

All her life, Yejide has listened to her grandmother’s creation stories, never expecting that her family—a line of powerful women—are the direct descendants of corbeaux, the birds that “devour the dead” and bring balance to the world. After her mother dies, it falls on Yejide to protect the exchange between the living and the deceased, to listen to the old dead and new dead, and to be a witness to all that has been buried. She feels the dead “rub up on her like cats.” This is a heavy and lonely path, and it feels only right—part of a necessary balance—that Yejide finds Darwin, an outsider like her. 

Darwin, raised Rasta, has taken a vow never to touch the dead, never to cut his hair, and yet hunger and certain unnamed desperations cause him to break his promises, and he gets a job digging graves. Darwin is new to Port Angeles and city life, where “everybody face set up, walking fast-fast like fire ants.” He cannot hear the dead like Yejide can (“the power belong to the women”), yet he becomes a guardian in his own right.

When We Were Birds weaves story, history, place, and the supernatural. It gives us a fictional Trinidad very much alive: the fruit vendors selling juicy papaw, the fish vendors weighing kingfish on their shiny scales, customers sticking their hands through bars to collect goods from shopkeepers, heavy dance hall bass, women in heels, boys hustling loosies. This is “a place that not only wide but have all kinda layers and hidden corners and subterranean levels that you could only find if you know where to look.” The work is lyrical, at points virtuosic (“mourning…is not a rope”) and often written in a style inflected with Trini creole. It is a love story if love is remembrance, recognition, a connection beyond words and temporality. It speaks to what it means to break a promise in order to live, and how making a promise can save our very selves.  

Annie Liontas: Yejide, our guide between the living and the dead, discovers that the stories she’s heard all her life have more truth to them than she believed. What do stories help us remember or hold onto? How does myth and story shape identity? How does storytelling help us keep the dead?

We’re living on captured land. These are colonized spaces and sites of wars. We live on burial grounds.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo: The first instruction manuals for living as a species, as human beings, are stories. The Griots, the shamans, the people that hold the history of a tribe or a community. Stories start as a way to keep us safe. You know the one that says, “If you go down by the river in the back of the house, there’s something that lives there, it’s gonna pull you under.” Stories give us a map to navigate the physical world that we live in. To give us boundaries. To tell us how to safely cross those boundaries. It’s cultural, story. It’s song. It’s poems. It’s our first books. Or it’s a rom-com meet-cute with two people who are meeting at a bar. It invokes an entire moment and experience, a place maybe they’ve never been to, or a place that they’ve been to so often that they stop seeing it.

AL: Yejide knows the buried aren’t confined to the cemeteries: 

“It is not only headstones that make a place a burial ground. Under fancy restaurants that used to be plantation houses… under the shopping malls is layers and layers of dead—unknown, unnamed, unclaimed…”

What does it mean for Yejide to feel not only the presence of the dead, but of their buried and erased histories?  

ALB: I mean, where we’re talking—you in the US, me currently in London but psychologically in the Caribbean—we’re living on captured land. These are colonized spaces and sites of wars. We live on burial grounds, and there’s no way around that. Our dead have not always been buried or remembered properly. We don’t always even know that they’re there.

The very nature of colonialism says ‘no one was here and then someone arrived.’ We know that the islands of the Caribbean have a long, long history.

In Trinidad, at the Red House, they discovered a huge Amerindian burial ground during renovation. Construction had to stop. They had to remove the bones. They had to consult with the First Peoples to make sure that these bones would be marked properly. They brought in their holy man and woman to have a ceremony to mark this thing. Because you can’t start over, right? You can’t remove the Red House and begin again. But you can operate in a way that you are respectful and are aware that there are two things occupying this land at the same time. I think it’s important for us to not pay lip service to that. We walk around having our coffees and our wedding ceremonies and collecting death certificates and in the most benign way, burying or cremating our dead, all on borrowed land. We’re sharing that land with people who aren’t here anymore.

AL: Tell us about corbeaux.  

ALB: We say “cobo.” The black vulture. You cannot see them and not think of the stories told up and down North and South America, like Oshun who turned into a vulture to save the world. The creation story in the beginning of the novel wasn’t something that I read somewhere and it also isn’t something that I made up all on my own. It’s just all these different stories kind of blended together, my years long fascination with these spectral birds. And, of course, physically how they actually operate as scavenger birds, that they are able to take in the dead because of their unique biochemistry. Not to be poisoned or killed by eating rotting flesh. They are the cleansers of space, they’re able to transform the dead into something else.

Of course, they’re seen as bad omens like any black birds, your crow, your raven.  They’re quite awkward and ungainly. You see them sitting on a line and think, what’s going on here? You can’t help but feel a little bit creeped out when you encounter them because they’re silent. They don’t have a song. These aren’t singing birds.  

AL: Time and place are elastic on the page, from the felt presence of those who are long gone, to the ways myths collapse time, to Petronella’s assertion, “Any place is ever one place?” How are you conceptualizing time and place in When We Were Birds?   

ALB: So the thing about islands is, they lie, right? They’re small places and the colonial gaze simplifies them. The very nature of colonialism says “no one was here and then someone arrived,” and this is when time sort of begins in these islands, right? This shortening of time and simplifying of space, that is the fiction. We know that the islands of the Caribbean have a long, long history. 

And for me, just the idea that death came into the world—the oldest thing that one could imagine—that in fact there was a place that predated death, was really important for me to situate. To make time extremely long. Deep time. I remember when I was first writing out the threads of the novel, I was trying to pin the individual timelines to each other in a very close way. And I was like, no, that’s actually not right. I want that feeling of this is happening at the same time. Even Darwin at Fidelis— his experience of time in the cemetery feels different from his experience of time in the city. It’s just a more realistic measure of how we experience time. Nobody can tell me these two years have been two years. We’ve lived several lives in that period.

AL: What choices were you making as you developed the novel’s style and use of Trinidad Creole?

ALB: You know, I thought I had written this weird book in Trinidad Creole and that I’d get all this push back. When I didn’t any push back, then I got even more scared. I was like, why do these white people like this book? There is something wrong with this book!

AL: Darwin pays attention to graves nobody goes to. He sits with Mr. Julius when he returns to the grave of his wife and only friend. He thinks constantly about all of the people beneath Fidelis. Darwin is an attuned and sensitive man. The power to hear the dead belongs to the women, but how might we read the gift of Darwin’s own clairvoyance?

ALB: For me, that is so in tune with him being Rastafari. The Rastaman is, for use of a better word, a mystical figure that is attuned with spirit and one who is navigating being in the world but not being of the world. As much as him having this job in the cemetery is outside of the very traditional interpretations of the Nazarite vow, it also probably makes him the most ideal person to be sensitive to that sort of death-work. He’s not gonna just tell some old man, “get out, time to close up.”  

His masculinity and the masculinity of the other men at Morne Marie was something that I was really thinking about, too. This is a community that is supporting the domestic, the running of life because half the time these women are not in the world: they’re somewhere else. So what do we need from men in these times? What is required? What is the softness that is so valuable, but which is not seen as valuable in traditional masculinity? I think the conversation is now going there for men to see. There’s so many young men who are terrible, but there are also many who are almost paralyzed. They’re crippled by patriarchy in ways that they don’t even know. They’re really asking: “How can I be a better human being? How could I be a better ally to you? How can I be a better person to myself?” For me, Darwin was an exercise in crafting a West Indian Black man who does all of those things, but who would still throw down in fights and would still wait in a cemetery with a blade. It doesn’t make him a pushover, it makes him soft in all the ways that is human and necessary.

AL: Yejide, who has a painful and tumultuous relationship with Petronella, is a daughter grieving for a mother not yet lost. Darwin must leave his own mother for the city that took his own father. What is this book saying about how we must sometimes become other people than the ones our mothers need us to be? What is We the Birds asking us to remember about the power of all the women who came before when it says that it is a daughter that makes a mother an ancestor?  

ALB: The thing is that a mother is a woman before she’s a mother. And she’s a girl before she’s a woman. She’s had dreams and goals and ideas about who she wants to be and which, for most of her life, have nothing to do with having a child or even being the matriarch of a family. 

I sometimes wonder about this role we put on grandmothers. They are the ones that hold the family together and nobody asks Granny if she wants to do that. Suppose Granny wants to run away to Paris and drink wine and go about her business. You sometimes just fall into these gender roles of caretaking, family. And somebody has to do that work. But it doesn’t mean that we all go easily into it. 

A mother is a woman before she’s a mother… She’s had dreams about who she wants to be and which, for most of her life, have nothing to do with having.

A mother is not perfect people. They were sometimes mean, they were sometimes angry, they were sometimes tormented, they were sometimes fed up. They were doing the best that they could sometimes, and other times not really doing their best at all. But you know that that legacy is also a bunch of fed up women who wish they could have been doing something else. In our own families, I’m sure we find them. They inherit a series of choices that in some ways they had no control over. How do you look at your mother’s choices and how they affected you? For Petronella, there’s stakes if she does what she wants to do, if she just says fuck it. But in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what she’s done, and her daughter pays for the fact that Petronella feels trapped. This is a spiritual story. But so many women don’t have the luxury of choice, you just have to get on with it. The children have to eat. 

There’s a lovely picture of my grandparents on their wedding day. It looks beautiful, but my grandmother couldn’t stand the photo. I always wondered why until she got ill and was really talking her business, and she told me that all she wanted was just have a picture by herself in her wedding dress but her husband said no. Back then, there’s no camera man, you go into a photo studio as man and wife, and he’s saying, maybe, listen, we have money only for one picture, I don’t know. My grandmother deeply resented that she didn’t have a photo of herself. Just one picture. In my wedding dress. Looking nice.

AL: You set When We Were Birds in a Trinidad “with the volume turned up.” How does your home country inspire the fictional island in this novel? How do secondary characters give us the island in its complexity?  

ALB: I grew up in Diego Martin, which is a suburb outside of Port of Spain, on the Western Peninsula. Where I went to primary school, all my friends were able to walk to and from school, but I lived a little bit farther out and walking wasn’t possible. Then when I went to secondary school in Port of Spain, I wanted to live in Woodbrook. It was always this kind of in-between life, not fully suburban but not in town either. My mother grew up in Belmont, which is Bellemere in the novel. She taught at a school that was seen as a sort of a “bad school”, in East Port of Spain. She was very comfortable. I’ve always been fascinated with town. It had a glamor to me, it was exciting. It was a little bit dangerous. It was places that I knew but didn’t really know. I wish I had more freedom when I was young to be able to go about on my own and jump in a maxi. I didn’t get that until I was fully in my 20s. I think a lot of my writing of Port of Spain is from that place. I almost had to imagine it. 

Port Angeles, like Port of Spain, is a city of “characters”—the street vendors, the vagrants, the shopkeepers, the maxi conductors—and none of them are secondary, they are vital and every one of them have main character energy.

My Disability Forced Me To Become More Visible in My Work as a Translator

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

First, I disappeared. Then I became a translator. 

It’s supposed to happen the other way around. Crawling in between the lines, you practice effacing yourself. You perfect your ventriloquism, distinguishing yourself through a vanishing act. You’re expected to slip unnoticed from one language to another, masking otherness, both the original text’s and yours. You train for years, decades, to carry the burden of transparency. Gracefully. “Fluently.” Like an actor, you artfully displace your identity, delivering lines that don’t belong to you. But your performance happens behind the scenes. You scout talent, shop projects, manage PR. A translation succeeds when the reader can’t tell it’s a translation. This, according to Lawrence Venuti in The Translator’s Invisibility, is the constraint placed on translators. The illusion he calls them to subvert.

We translators know all this; we knew it long before Venuti wrote his book. We make common cause of our invisibility. Translators, we say, are flesh-and-blood people. We say words and translators pulse with history, and it was the translator who chose the words on the page. We demand a share of the light. I confess I’ve always followed the conversation from a distance, found it important and urgent but entirely out of my reach. How can I resist invisibility, when I owe my origin story to it?     

Eight years ago, during the final semester of my Master’s in intercultural communications, my adviser urged me to drop in on a literary translation conference. It was convenient, just a three hours’ drive from my home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She had a colleague, a PhD who’d been a fixture in the organization since the seventies. He was venerable and she would arrange a meeting. I anticipated the conference starstruck: imagine—me!—talking to people who lived off their words. You’ll never make a living off translation, the translator crowed, mid-handshake, before I’d managed to utter anything more than my name. That was three months before the symptoms began.

His pronouncement floored me, not least because there had never been any question of making a living from translation. Growing up in Indiana, books were the means to a job, never the job itself. Something to be indulged beneath blank looks and the glare of the ever-blaring TV. I thought I was fortunate, different. I could disappear into my bedroom and write thick folders of wor(l)ds for my eyes only. From books I taught myself languages. I dreamt of travel, and I did travel, briefly, in college. A month in Brazil, a month in France, that was all I could afford. No one advised me of other options. After graduation, I worked a series of jobs in manufacturing. It was a man’s world, a step above the typical Rust Belt trajectory. Customers called, all speaking Spanish, French, Portuguese; there were occasional work trips abroad; co-workers mocked me for reading books on the plane. I thought I was fortunate, different. I built the global relationships that built the company, while men took all the credit. I was no stranger to invisibility, even then—four years before my invisible disability.

By the time the symptoms hit, I’d survived the Great Recession, gone back to school, graduated, and launched into my search for a second career. I felt more old than wise. Things were shaky in the Midwest, but no shakier than they’d been for the last thirty years. I wanted to escape but didn’t know how. The isolation, the low cost of living, the mounting debt despite the low cost of living, everything conspired to trap me. That February morning, I woke up and knew, fatally, that something had misfired. The benign winter sounded different, all that white, shrill, and the deafening snow. Certain sounds lingered, repeating, I couldn’t hear my own thoughts, buried beneath the deafening snow. I struggled to read, follow conversations. The world felt too disorienting, spatially distorted and acoustically fragmented. I feared going to stores and restaurants. I stopped leaving my house. I wanted nothing to do with the light.

The world felt too disorienting, spatially distorted and acoustically fragmented.

Pursuing translation was my husband’s idea, a way to keep my languages up while I searched for answers. In truth, my symptoms were so disabling that even if I had known how to break in, I couldn’t physically translate. At least not texts. Instead, I spent the next three years finding words for the invisible. Workshopping my translations with doctor after doctor, I’d examine their eyes for some spark of understanding, anything to reassure myself that what I experienced was real. But the more I said, the more invisible I became. Never mind my carefully constructed sentences, my vivid analogies, they doggedly looked right through me, to charts and referrals and test results, always negative. I had no authority. I was a woman navigating a system whose myriad biases are well-documented. Even when reading and commiserating with the stories of women whose pain was dismissed, I couldn’t surrender that burden of bilingualism: I was the only one who spoke the language of my body. If doctors failed to understand, I told myself, confronting the translator’s predicament—foreignize or domesticate—as if it made any difference, well, that was on me.

At last, on the cusp of a diagnosis, I found myself once again tiptoeing between the lines. Why? I struggle to remember. Because translation was hard? Because everything else was harder? Because I had something to say and the invisibility helped me to say it? All I know is for me translation and disability are inextricable and have been since the beginning. I could no longer pretend that either was temporary. Yet accepting this meant making sense of the dissonance. I was a body with invisible limitations, a body that needed to disappear every once in a while. And: I was an unknown translator, working hard to make a name for herself. Even the label, emerging, hummed with impossible obligations, the pressure to appear.

I was the only one who spoke the language of my body. If doctors failed to understand, I told myself, … that was on me.

During this time, translation was experiencing an identity crisis of its own. The field had been questioning whether it could sustainably remain out of sight. The phrase I’d heard repeatedly during that first conference was “labor of love,” as though romanticizing the low pay and poor working conditions might weed out the faint-of-heart. Three years later when I returned to translation, it was still a closed profession, but the conversation had changed. Advocacy was on everyone’s lips. In theory, this was meant to bring greater visibility to the work of translators, to translators themselves, so more could afford to do it. In practice, the barriers only multiplied. Translation had always demanded reams of unpaid labor—researching markets, securing rights, pitching to editors. Now sustained presence was part of the job description. The work of activism and networking and community-building and belonging. Presence at conferences, collectives, committees, residencies, launches, workshops, happy hours, out of sight, out of mind. I lived in Indiana. I was blue-collar. I’d learned languages from books and had a combined total of six months’ travel under my belt. (Maybe.) I could feel the distance in my bones, could see crossing it would take everything I had.

I remember the sting when I introduced myself to a fellow translator and she asked, looking right through me, if I knew anything about Brazilian literature. As if to remind me I had no authority. That I didn’t belong here, any more than I’d belonged there. No one knew the negotiations required of me just to show up, the preparations made behind closed doors. How I drove ten hours to New York alone in an ice storm because my illness prevented me from flying. How my husband would drive me to and from Chicago for a bi-monthly translators’ collective, how I’d spend the return trip vomiting or reclining the passenger seat all the way down, then spend the next several days in bed. How an invitation for coffee with a distinguished translator sent me spiraling into panic—only a few days to make the phone calls, find an accessible coffee shop. I appeared and reappeared. It wasn’t enough. 

No one knew the negotiations required of me just to show up, the preparations made behind closed doors.

With difficulty, I could attend some conferences, the ones within driving distance, but once there, my symptoms sidelined me from all social activities: the lunch dates and late nights at the bar. I thought I was fortunate, different. I found the words and the nerve to ask for accommodations and felt myself coming into focus. After years of being dismissed by doctors, I believed the most radical acceptance of my invisible illness was that someone acknowledged it, deemed it worthy of the label disability. I didn’t understand that erasure can take many forms. The translators I approached were sympathetic, but their version of access merely paraphrased the status quo. Instead of re-envisioning communal spaces, they worked to shield me from them—packed me in bubble wrap, tucked me away. Those with disabilities often bear the burden of inventing their own accommodations, more so when the disability is invisible and beyond the borders of abled imaginations. For various reasons—I felt precarious, I struggled to name my needs, I didn’t want to be seen as asking for too much—I took what was offered and didn’t complain. I thought I was fortunate, different. But the performance got harder with each passing year. Why kill myself keeping up appearances, if I would be isolated no matter what?

For some, my illness might have read as privilege. I had the time for translation, because I couldn’t do much else. My symptoms were unpredictable, working outside the home out of the question. I could give two or three hours a day to my words before the cognitive effort drained my bodymind completely. I knew translators working “translation-adjacent” jobs—teaching, editing—who dug deep for those three hours, too, but at least their paid work kept them connected, ever-exposed. I was peripheral. A full-time patient: Days swallowed by phone calls, doctor’s appointments, insurance appeals, records requests, side effects, darkened rooms. This, too, is labor, as any caregiver will tell you: essential and noble but looks out of place on a CV. Medical privacy wasn’t the only reason I kept my disability hidden. The hours unaccounted for, my utter lack of income, the full reality of my situation felt taboo.

Those with disabilities often bear the burden of inventing their own accommodations, more so when the disability is invisible.

Also taboo: the fact that none of it would have been possible, without my husband’s paycheck. His health insurance. Still, we were sinking. The question was: Would we go down together, or would he toss out his burden, ballast overboard? Either way, disaster always loomed. On good days he reassured me in first-person plural. We’ll get through this, we’ll make it work. On bad days, he stewed in the singular. He felt trapped, and I was dead weight. We both knew if it came to divorce, I would have nowhere to go, my condition severely limited my options. But the thought slipped in among all the other unbearable scenarios. I’d ask myself, ask him, if translation wasn’t a selfish, untenable occupation, maybe I should bow out, fade away, find some remote work, flexible and probably low-paid, but anything was better than this. And he would say no, if I took another job, I’d never make it as a translator. And he believed in me. Despite his faith, I felt alone, perpetually close to the streets. I felt confused that translation could both give me worth and take it away.

There was no denying my chronic illness strained our resources—physically, financially, and emotionally. To have chosen a field in which eight years of spending money just to make money wasn’t uncommon—well, that made me doubly vulnerable. Sometimes, I resented translation for failing to reckon with how its prolonged invisibility impacts the disabled especially. Shortly before my diagnosis, the translators’ organization introduced a work exchange they believed would make their conferences more financially accessible. I’d spent over ten thousand dollars that year on tests and medical travel. Even foregoing the group hotel for a budget option ten minutes away (a move that isolated me further), I needed that reduced registration. Once there, I learned I’d been assigned to spaces I couldn’t go. It cost me additional labor to negotiate a workaround. The accommodation, once again, was disappearance: back rooms and far-flung corners. And then there were the panels I missed while working, and the panels I skipped after tiring myself out working. If it wasn’t for the pain, even I would have overlooked my own presence. 

In 2020, just before the world went dark, I made a New Year’s resolution. I’d been emerging since 2013, and I was exhausted. This, I vowed, would be my Hail Mary Year. I polished my CV and recommitted myself to social media. Improbable deadlines cluttered my calendar—grants and residencies and open submissions. I made my peace with failure. At the same time, I had no plan for what I’d do if I missed.

If it wasn’t for the pain, even I would have overlooked my own presence.

With Covid, suddenly the whole world understood exhaustion, the steely shiver of isolation. From lockdown I watched as an industry reeling managed to collapse its distances overnight. The adaptations looked painless. Spaces I’d long struggled to reach went virtual, now that the able-bodied couldn’t reach them either. Those first months I broke myself trying to Zoom everywhere at once. I’d gained the world in ones and zeroes, any day now it would all disappear. Sure enough, only three weeks in, the shock had worn off, everyone talked of returning to “normal.” In translation many of the same structures simply migrated to an online forum. For a year, maybe two, not to worry, they assured us, we’ll meet again. Even in our collective invisibility, I felt othered, ignored. If ever there were a season for reimagining…. The missed opportunities gaped like a wound.

Like so many spheres, the world of translation has more work to do when it comes to making space for difference. This means recognizing that unseen genres of experience count as diversity, too, and should be valued as such. Invisible disability, yes, also: class, geography, caregiving, day jobs, the totality of intersections that bring each and every one of us to this profession. After all, a translator is someone who inhabits the in-between. We are a field of misfits, our authority as translators lies in our chronic otherness. Our way of looking always from outside. Then perhaps when we talk of the translator’s (in)visibility, we might redefine the word: Let us not just advocate for translators to be seen; let’s also celebrate the confluence of identities—both visible and invisible—that allow a translator to see. It’s the end of 2021, and I’m still here. I’ve stayed connected to translation by serving as co-chair of a translators’ committee based in New York. When I joined, just before the pandemic, the organization, an arts advocacy group, was looking to widen its borders and acknowledge the barriers faced by emerging translators. They made the effort to seek out someone with my profile. In a sense, they saved me. Still, it’s a volunteer role, and the work, though fulfilling, leaves me little time or energy to translate. Over the past two years, this brave new world has dissolved boundaries between work and home. Those with disabilities feel the encroachment more acutely because our home is also our sickbed. It’s a process, learning to name your needs.

We are a field of misfits, our authority as translators lies in our chronic otherness.

But a text, at least, waits. Patiently. Mine is an experimental Brazilian novel I stumbled upon years ago. The story of a woman grappling with language after a rape, constantly frustrated in her efforts to adequately convey her pain. Would I have been drawn to this book, had I not carried a similarly invisible burden—helplessly spinning sentences as my pain was dismissed? Would I have appreciated what the author was doing—her rhythms, her synesthetic descriptions, the way she makes her protagonist syntactically disappear, swallowed by sensory perception—if I’d been anyone else? Then why doubt my authority as a translator?

There it is, written into me bone and sinew. It is my night vision, my ability to peer into the text and see what others could not. On the question of the translator’s (in)visibility, I’ll confess, I sometimes flinch; I’m still reconciling all the competing variables. But I’m beginning to think we translators have superpowers. We appear, we disappear. We bring whole worlds into the light.

7 Contemporary Horror Novels that Push Boundaries

Posted on by Jo Lou

The grocery store of all places was my initial indoctrination into the world of horror. As my father shuffled up and down the aisles, dutifully stacking groceries in the cart for our family, I would sneak away to the magazine section and my eye was always drawn to the shiny paperback display brimming with such creepy covers as Salem’s Lot, The Legacy, and Flowers in the Attic. 

sommelier_cover.jpg

At first, I was too frightened to even touch the books. My young mind was convinced whatever horrors lurked behind those monolithic and terrifying covers would surely emerge from the pages and follow me home to stalk me at night. But as I grew older, just as Lucky Charms were a staple of my grocery booty as a kid, mass market horror novels found their way into my diet as an early teen.

My love for the genre has only grown in time, and my tastes in horror have become vast. Lately, I have been craving new voices and favoring authors who are not afraid to take risks, push boundaries, and speak bravely from their own unique perspective. 

More importantly, I enjoy reading from voices that have a unique or daring tone that breaks the mold and pushes the horror genre into interesting and new paradigms—everything from classic monster scares, to psychological horror, to shivering Gothic tales. These are my seven favorite horror novels from boundary pushing authors with bold and unique voices. 

Blanky by Kealan Patrick Burke

A quick and biting read from one of my favorite contemporary horror authors. The amount of grief, despair, and dread Burke manages to cram into 79 pages is a feat in its own right as we follow the tale of a father coping with his recently deceased infant daughter. The revelations are beyond disturbing and if you’d ever told me that someone could make a baby blanket frightening, well, then welcome to the world of Kealan Patrick Burke.

The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza

A powerful Gothic tale that strikes at the heart of male-female binary issues. An unnamed narrator’s home is invaded in the middle of a storm as two mysterious intruders proceed to question the host’s identity. Our protagonist grows increasingly frantic as he fails to satisfy the strange intruders’ harassment to the point where his own sanity begins to crack. A stand out and original tale on the horrors of gendered violence. 

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun

A South Korean bestseller and winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, The Hole tells the tale of a man who wakes from a coma after a horrific car accident that killed his wife and left him paralyzed and disfigured. Enter the caretaker, his mother-in-law, who is awash with grief over the loss of her daughter. This is a deeply unnerving tale that teeters between brutality and boredom, exploring themes of loss, isolation, and grief. 

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez

A Lambda Literary Award-winning novel, this vanguard of a vampire novel tells the tale of Gilda, an escaped slave who finds her way to a brothel before given the gift of eternal life. Using the vampire as metaphor we are taken on a 200 year journey as Gilda attempts to find her place in the world while exploring themes of race, family, and queer identity. 

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Wearing its Lovecraftian influences on its sleeve, Ring Shout thrusts readers into a wild ride that includes demonic KKK members and hits all the high notes of melding metaphor and horror. Ring Shout is a fun horror romp, but it’s also far deeper in its messaging without being preachy. In addition to the subtext and symbolism, the pacing is a stand out feature in this tight 176-page banger.

Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror by Shane Hawk

An excellent short story collection from an emerging Cheyenne & Arapaho author that offers a fresh perspective on several horror tropes including: werewolves, clones, witchcraft, and even bone collectors. Set in the eponymous small Minnesota town, dubbed “The Halloween Capital of the World,” the book also works as supernatural historical fiction as the author weaves in some history, making the reader question reality itself.  

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred tells the tale of a modern-day African American woman who becomes involved in a time-loop with her past ancestors during the time of slavery. One minute the protagonist, Edana Franklin, is in her apartment conversing with her boyfriend, the next she is transported back to a slave plantation and her plight between the past and the present becomes more dangerous with each leap between time periods. It works as sci-fi due to the time travel element, but the contrast between her present day life versus the terror she must confront to aide her ancestors certainly qualifies as horror. 

Not Even This Jesus Look-Alike Can Heal My Heartache

Posted on by Alex Juarez

“The Treatment” by Marcia Walker

On the second anniversary of Margot’s death I met Jesus. He was holed up in one of those furnished condos on Bolton Avenue that attract newly divorced dads and low-level executives staying in the city for less than three months. The kind of building where each door has dampeners fixed to its hinges, making them impossible to slam. That alone prevented me from living in such a place. 

Jesus didn’t seem to mind. Not a whiff of irritation or impatience came off him. He appeared in the doorway, leaning against the metal frame, with a placid expression on his face that revealed nothing about his emotional state yet also looked open and unguarded. He paused, long enough for the stale smell of brown rice and drywall dust to itch the hairs of my nostrils, long enough I had the sense this was still open to negotiation. Even though I was paying him I worried he might turn me away. Then where would I go? I had already been through doctors, therapists, social workers, support groups, naturopaths, astrologers, more than a few liquor stores. Some of them had given temporary relief to the feeling, which for lack of a better word, I called sadness. It was more like I had been underwater for too long, deep in the aphotic zone, and had forgotten where the light came from and in which direction to swim for air. I had come to Jesus, as I’d already decided to call him, for healing. I drew myself into an unsustainably perfect posture, as though my height might convince him of my worthiness. After a slow labored blink, he invited me in. 

He must have told me his real name but I didn’t retain it. I was having difficulty concentrating at that time. Thoughts flew in and out of my mind at an alarming speed and rarely related to where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing. It was only after I took off my coat and followed him into the sunlit, IKEA clad living room that I focused on what he was saying. 

“People aren’t sure what to call me.” He dropped onto the couch and his bony hips cut into the orange cushions. “If it helps, you can call me an energy specialist.”

“I will call you Jesus.” I didn’t say that out loud. 

He had all the obvious Messianic signifiers: v-shaped beard; long, feathered hair; emaciated frame. But those are a dime a dozen on the street these days. It was the immediate effect he had on my nervous system that made me think of redemption. A heavy sleepiness came over me. I had an urge to lay my head on the bones of his chest. It was also possible I was looking for a savior. 

“Energy specialist,” I eventually murmured, letting him know my hearing worked and that we understood one another. 

“What I do, Jean,” and he interrupted himself, “or do you prefer Jeanette?” 

“Jeanette.” 

He continued. “What I do, Jeanette, doesn’t follow a pattern. It is highly intuitive. Often intense. Life changing. I focus on healing.” A rise of color dotted his cheeks. “It changes peoples’ lives.” He kept speaking while my eyes flitted to the window, across the road to the deserted parking lot. His voice reminded me of public radio. I tuned back in when he mentioned Margot. 

“I understand your spouse died several years ago.”

She wasn’t technically my spouse, but I didn’t correct him. We sat in condominium silence until my purse chirped twice. Then two more times. My body burned as I thought of the incoming texts. Then I thought of Margot. Then I thought of thoughts which I can’t pull or access. Lost thoughts. 

We scheduled three “healing sessions” over the following three weeks. I labeled them in my calendar as “personal trainer—J.” I opened my purse and took out the seven hundred- and fifty-dollars cash he had asked me to bring and placed the fifties in a stack on the glass table. The money reminded me of the pink sticky notes Margot used to pile on top of one another on the kitchen counter, each with its own task, a random to-do list of sorts that she rarely, if ever, completed. I expected him to glance down at the payment but his eyes remained on my face and I thought, Jesus, just take the money, you’re not fooling anybody. Charlatan. Quack. Fake. I didn’t have the heart to look him in the eye as I thought these things. 

He told me that was it for the day. The first meeting was just to explain the procedure and to make sure we were a good fit, “energetically speaking.” He followed me to the hallway and helped me with my coat, a gesture I’ve noticed happens to me more and more as I get older. Now that I’ve stopped dying my hair I’m everyone’s grandmother. 

“One more thing,” he said, as my hand turned the cold stainless-steel handle. “Are you okay with me touching you during the treatment?”

Trying to think of something funny to say, I blew the air out of my cheeks. Margot used to warm her hands under my bum in bed at night. She waited until she thought I was asleep and slid her icy fingers between the sheet and the slack of my skin.  

“Touching’s okay,” I said.  

“Is anywhere off limits?”

“It’s fine. It’s all fine.” I needed to leave immediately. Had it really come to this? Paying a Jesus-look-alike $750 to touch me? I peeled out of his condo, leaving him standing by the closet, and hurried into the stairwell before his controlled door had a chance to seal shut. 

Olga, the real estate agent I’d used to sell our place, had recommended him. I wasn’t getting an unbiased opinion; they were lovers. They had met at a wellness retreat near his cabin on Saltspring Island, where he lived year-round. Taking on clients in Toronto was a way to help pay for his visit to see her. I knew the intimate details about their sex life and the handful of cross-country rendezvous she’d funded over the past four months. She told me they liked to trim each other’s pubic hair. She told me he once got off while he watched her eat roast chicken with her fingers. Other things I knew: he rarely slept more than five hours at a time, was allergic to walnuts, and had dropped out of university to join a folk band that toured the West Coast. But I did not know his name. To Olga he was Croz. It was an album they both loved and became her pet name for him. “Call Croz,” she had said the third time I’d started crying for no reason. “He’ll fix you up.” 

I tried listening to the album and didn’t get past the second song. I preferred to call him Jesus. I thought about Olga and Jesus, their unlikely couplehood, as I began the two-hour walk home to the west end of the city. In my pocket my hand gripped the slick casing of my phone but I did not check the texts. I wanted to wait until the privacy of my home. A cold November wind ripped through my thin wool coat. The fall had been unusually warm and when the frost came, a few days earlier, hard and sudden, the leaves froze on the trees and blew off in clusters, clapping against one another as they fell. The branches around me, stripped of their leaves, reminded me of naked arms with innumerable fingers.

Within half an hour, Olga called me for an update.

“What did I tell you? He’s amazing, right?” Her voice roared in my ear buds and I adjusted the volume. “This is going to change everything for you, Jeanette.” Then she had to go. That was Olga. She never stayed in one place, or one conversation, for long. 

Most, if not all of my friends, our friends, Margot’s and mine, had dropped off over the past year. My fault entirely. There’s only so many times you can act like an asshole without actually becoming an asshole. They’d understood and tolerated my distant behavior after the funeral, but after a year, I knew my sadness had become excessive. No doubt I was supposed to do something and hadn’t. Showing up to a wedding or a sixtieth birthday, even keeping lunch dates was too much effort. Gradually they stopped calling and texting. The only friend I had left was my real estate agent. 

So, you see, I was not completely alone. 

I kept walking. Several pumpkins remained on porches, more gruesome now as squirrels mangled and chewed the remnants of their carved faces. Black rot was beginning to settle into the edges of their orange skin. It was difficult not to check my phone, to read the texts. I increased my pace. 

Walking, I had discovered, was an excellent way to kill time. I used to hate that phrase, but that’s how I’d come to feel about time since I’d been on my own, and that’s how I treated it: not exactly as an enemy, but something unwanted and needling, something I had to exterminate. I knew at each point in the day or night, almost down to the second, without looking at my watch, exactly what time it was. At night I felt the carnage of hours and minutes piling up. 

When I arrived home, three bags of groceries were waiting outside my door. I had forgotten I’d ordered them. They were an automatic refill that I had set up when I first moved in a few months ago and had not gotten around to canceling. Dozens of eggs piled up in my fridge. Rotting plums lay at the bottom of the crisper. Occasionally a delivery boy carried the paper bags into my kitchen but he had come and gone. I lugged each bag onto my counter and methodically put everything away. Often an additional item appeared in the bags that was not in my order. Stems of organic bananas. A package of granola. Once a bag of giant chocolate covered raisins. They never charged me for these. This time it was figs from Egypt. I had never been to Egypt. Margot had, once, before we met.  

I bit into the tough, purple skin. The seeds scraped along my tongue. I remembered reading that female wasps crawl inside figs to pollinate their eggs. Once the wasp has burrowed she dies, whether she lays her eggs or not. Figs have an enzyme that digests the wasp’s body completely. It was possible that I had fossilized remnants of a wasp in my mouth. That was the kind of thing I used to store up to tell Margot. 

I plated quarters of fig with two thick slices of cheese and sat in the chair next to the window to read the texts. They arrived daily, for the past month, always around noon, from the same unknown number. 

I want you to beg me to fuck you more 

Ill cum inside your pretty little mouth and your going to swallow every drop

I scrolled through the ones from previous days. 

Take it deep

I want to cum all over your face

Hows your gag reflex?

I closed my eyes and thought of Margot. 

Grieving has not taken the form I thought it would. 

The following Wednesday I was back in Jesus’ condo. He asked me if I wanted a glass of water and I declined. For a few minutes he spoke of Olga and how much he enjoyed being in Toronto. I was impatient to start the treatment and didn’t say anything more. My phone chirped and he suggested I turn it off. I muted it. I feared missing the texts if I powered it down entirely. Then Jesus told me to lie down on my back with my knees bent and open. I paused, muted phone in my hand, pretending I hadn’t understood him. 

In a gentle voice, he said, “We can stop at any time. If you are uncomfortable.” 

I surveyed the yellow rug, placed my phone on the table, and tentatively lowered down to my knees. After rubbing my thighs several times, I wobbled onto my bum and from there had a clear view of three dust balls under the TV stand. I scootched away from them and gradually laid back. 

“Let your knees open to the sides,” Jesus said. 

I sucked in my upper lip. I could still leave. Instead I splayed my knees as though I was giving birth. 

“I want you to know you’re safe.” He watched me from the nearby couch. “Close your eyes.” 

I kept my eyes strained on the dimmed pot lights. 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to close them, but as we go along they may get heavy. Feel free to close them at any time.” 

I blinked in response. 

“Take a deep breath,” he said. 

I thought about what kind of training Jesus had for this kind of work and what Olga saw in him and the texts and Margot and what I was doing here and how much I wanted to tell her about Jesus. I forgot to breathe deeply until he said it again and I was back in the condo, trying to breathe deeply. 

“Slowly,” Jesus said. “Draw your knees together.” 

I drew my knees together.

“No, not so fast. Much, much slower.” 

I flopped them open again. Something poked from the rug into my shoulder blade. When my knees were half-way lifted Jesus told me to hold them there. 

“What do you feel?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” I said, but my voice was tight in my throat.

“Whatever it is, you can feel it.”

He shifted from the couch to my side, kneeling, and the faint scent of cannabis oil wafted from his body. That brought Margot sharp into my mind, the CBD mouth spray she carried, supposedly to help with the vomiting. My knees sagged. 

“Draw your knees together,” he said.

Too tired to hold them any longer and not seeing the point, I let them drop.

“Slowly draw your knees together,” he repeated in a little over a whisper. 

I knew, on some level, I was failing the exercise. When I no longer responded to his voice, he stopped instructing me and got up to make some tea. I lay on the floor, discouraged. 

He offered me a mug of swampy-looking tea and left it on the table between us. I wanted to leave the room but I felt unusually weak, and after managing to roll up off the floor, I sunk into the armchair. Jesus appeared younger in front of me now as he blew the steam off his own mug. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said, by which I meant I felt nothing. 

“You may not notice anything. Or it may be subtle. And that’s okay too.”  

After that we spoke for a little while. I told him how I had worked in TV but had been unable to continue my work as a producer after Margot died. I couldn’t to do much. I was living off the sale of my house. I felt the need to explain how I lived. He began to speak of small inconsequential topics, the city, the price of coffee, and then shifted to his relationship with Olga. He had never felt anything like this before. He told me he wanted to move to Toronto to be closer to her. 

“That’s a big decision,” I said.

“I am dedicating myself to love.” 

Yes, he spoke like this, I wanted to tell Margot. She would think I was exaggerating, but I wasn’t. And his face, such optimism; he really believed his own words. 

“What does that mean?” I finally asked. 

“Only those things which you can’t define are worth dedicating your life to.”

I sipped my tea in tiny increments and thought: how dare you say such things to me. 

That night, when I could not sleep, I imagined Margot cheating on me. Unwanted, fabricated, uncontrollable scenarios. All the reassuring memories of her had faded and I was left lonely and insecure. Her lovers were all men. I saw her fucking them. In each vision she looked terribly alive. She was Margot in a fullness she never had been with me. I imagined these men attending her funeral and approaching me one by one. When I asked how they knew Margot, they all gave the same response, “We’re old friends,” and each time they said this I worried about the parts of Margot that I never knew, would never get to know.  

To make it worse, I pictured finding the evidence of these lovers on her phone. Not photos, but emails and texts. A staggering number of each. Her words were eloquent and expressive, nothing like what she’d ever written to me. I could not stop my mind from the cruel place it rushed to in the solitary darkness. I heard her mocking me to her lovers. Then, to make my thoughts worse, I had her never speak of me at all. She never mentioned she had a girlfriend, except to say meeting at her place was not an option. Her phrase was: I am unable to host. I said that out loud in the night. I wanted to hear her whisper it to me. I wanted to hear anything at all. On my own, I was ruining us. Eventually I got out of bed and got my phone.

“How are the sessions going?” Olga linked her arm through mine as we made our way to the booth at the trendy upscale bar Olga frequented. The clientele was much younger than me, or if they were my age they took great pains to look younger. Trays passed by with foamy pastel cocktails. Olga knew the wait staff by name. People liked to be close to her. When she zoned in on you it was like the past and future didn’t exist; there was only now, and now, and now. I swore people bought houses from her just to feel that quality of focus.  

“I’m not doing it right,” I said. “My first session didn’t go very well.”

“It’s only been one. Keep going. What do you have to lose?”

I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I had something to lose. I held the stem of my martini glass. I thought of telling her about the texts I’d received over the past month. That someone was cyber-stalking me. That I thought it was Margot. But I held back. I knew what she’d say: it’s not Margot. Or: just block the number. Why don’t you block the number? Why, Jeanette? 

“How’s it going with the two of you?” I asked her instead. 

“Good. Yeah.” Her eyes darted to the door. He was expected to join us any minute. “Now that he’s in town…” Her voice trailed off. 

Olga’s heel tapped under the table. “My freedom is important to me. We’ll see.”

I thought about Jesus, his open expression, and knew his days were numbered with Olga. He had no idea. My phone chirped. My hand reflexively moved to my coat pocket, but I didn’t take out the phone. 

“Do you want to check that?” Olga asked. 

“It’s nothing.” Clearly my face said otherwise, but Olga didn’t force it. “He told me he is dedicating his life to love.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said. Are you? Dedicating yourself to love?”

The skin around Olga’s eyes tensed. “I’m dedicating my life to pleasure.” 

At that point Jesus showed up and sat next to her in the booth. He reached for her hand on the table. She smiled noncommittally. He said he had been looking at apartments in the city that afternoon and thought he might have found something. He squeezed Olga’s hand. How foolish he seemed in that moment. He was so deliriously happy. I had to look away. I went to the bathroom and while in the stall I checked my phone. 

I want to fuck you hard

I texted back. 

I miss you  

The next day, after more groceries arrived that I still had not canceled, I checked for the latest text. 

Spread your legs wide and wait for my big hard cock to fill you up 

Oh, that’s a good one. I laughed as I patted my hands to my face. Margot, that was a good one. 

I began to type back. These coded messages. These love letters from beyond. I had energy for the first time in months. It was like she was saying, Jeany, it’s okay, all those parts we both hid from each other, that we never wanted each other to see, we can love them now. Every flash or buzz or chirp made me feel near to her again. Physically, her body came back to me, a stray eyelash under my tongue.

Sometimes, in my bathroom late at night, after giving up trying to sleep, I reread the texts. I imagined her saying them to me and the two of us laughing and then touching each other like something new and vulnerable to this world. I pressed my fingers against the words as though they were her mouth. First her upper lip, then her lower. Then in between, the place where her mouth opened. My finger between her teeth as she pressed down, just hard enough to leave an imprint. Minutes passed in the darkness before I realized it was my own finger in my mouth. It had not been hers for a long time. 

I typed back: I want to see you. 

At my next session Jesus no longer felt like Jesus. He had turned into a regular person, someone who was about to have his heart broken, and this made me like him more. It also made me afraid for him. And angry with Olga. I’d been wrapped up, against my will, in their love affair. Why did she not return his affections in the same way? Why did she not take better care of him? I wanted to tell him to leave her, to find someone who treated him better. He deserved to be loved.

Before we began we sat down opposite one another in the living room. I asked him about his apartment hunt and he told me he was going to sign the lease that afternoon. His cheeriness as he wagged his bare feet side to side astonished and chastised me.  Before I had the chance to ask him more about Olga he grew calm and serious and asked me if I was ready to begin. I told him I was. I lay on the floor again and repeated the same exercises from the previous week. Almost immediately my legs began to shake. Embarrassed, I tried to stop them; however, the harder I tried to control them the more they shook. 

“Let your body go,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m here. Whatever happens.”

I did not want him here. I wanted him to leave the room, to stop staring at me. My eyes closed. The shaking in my legs traveled to my hips, spreading to my stomach and shoulders. My jaw vibrated. 

“Your body may do things that you’re not used to. Let it happen. I will make sure you are okay.”

Stop talking, I wanted to say, but I could not form words. I pictured Margot laughing at me. I did not want her to see me like this. Stop talking, I tried to say but it came out as a moan. Stay away from me. Thoughts of hurting Jesus flooded my mind. I imagined kicking and thrashing him, tugging at his beard, his long hair, scaling my fingers down his face, scarring him. This terrified me and yet, like the shaking I could not stop my violent thoughts. They became more brutal. Not merely to hurt but to really harm him. I wanted to puncture his lungs. Then I saw Margot again. Her hair gone. Her tired, used-up body. I kicked her. My body kept thumping on the ground, a thing possessed. Then her face changed and it was my mother, though I had not seen her in over thirty years. My hands squeezed around her neck. As I did this, her expression, one of calm disdain, did not change. Until she was almost out of breath and it was my face I was looking at. My own face turning red, then deep purple, as if taunting me. “Go on, do it. I can take it.”

“Jeanette.” The voice was next to me but felt distant, as though from across a field. “Tell me what you see.” 

I shook him away. His voice. His interruption. I sputtered to breathe. 

“I am going to touch you. This may hurt. I will make sure you are okay.”

Despite his words of warning, his weight startled me. He laid his chest over me, not lover-like, but across, perpendicular. His heart pushed against my breast bone. Despite his leanness, his chest was heavy and the unexpected weight made it even more difficult for me to breathe. It felt like an unbearable burden. Yellow and orange stars burst under my eyelids. I could not get enough air. I coughed, choking on whatever air I could grasp. Once. And again. Dry heaves, lengthening. He pressed down harder. I thought he would crack the bones protecting my organs. Someone was yelling, moaning. A sound so honest it could only come from the insane, the untethered. I had stopped shaking. The sounds kept coming. He remained on my chest, his heart directly over mine, beating. My mouth remained open. Cold tears leaked from my eyes and clogged my ear canals. Then I drifted off into something not unlike sleep. 

When I woke, Jesus was sitting back on the couch, watching me attentively. He gestured to a glass of water. I drank the tall glass in one long gulp. He refilled it. As I gulped the second one, the water spilled over my chin. Jesus sat, in complete stillness. He looked exhausted. My body felt lighter, while he rose from the couch like an old man, pressing his hands into his thighs for leverage. He told me to stay for as long as I wanted. He’d make tea.

“I don’t know what happened,” I finally said.

“Don’t be in a hurry to understand it.” We waited together in silence, slowly drinking our tea, as dim November sunlight faded into night. When he flicked on the side table light, I managed to stand and put on my coat. 

The following day I went to Starbucks at the appointed time to meet the texter. I cruised the room shamelessly. No one had long curly hair. Not even close. I’d known Margot would not be there, but I’d also hoped. For what? For her to rise from the dead? To haunt me? It wasn’t clear: I hoped without a goal. I ordered a cappuccino from the barista and waited at the bar for my drink. The barista took off his apron and asked his co-worker if he could take a break which I knew meant my drink would take twice as long. I shifted for him to pass by, but he stopped in front of me and handed me my cappuccino. A delicate rose and two leaves bloomed in the foam. His mouth twisted to the side, accentuating the pock-marks on his right cheek. Then he said, “Hi, it’s me.”

He could not have been more than twenty-two years old. So thin. Like Jesus. All these half-starved young men. He did not resemble Margot in the least. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course, he didn’t. Of course. 

I sat down and began to cry. 

The boy apologized and left the table. He returned with several napkins. He returned with a fudge oat bar. He returned with a glass of water. He apologized again. 

“You need to stop texting me such things.”

“Okay,” he agreed, without any hesitation. “It was just meant to be fun.” 

“I am a person.” I rubbed the wetness of my face into my hands. “I am a person,” I said again, with emphasis. I realized I had never said this before. It seemed important for me to hear. Like something Jesus would say. 

“Were you making fun of me?”

“No! It wasn’t meant like that.”

“I’m fifty-seven years old.”

“I like older women.”

“I’m gay.” I leveled my watery gaze at him. It was difficult for me to see him as a man, not as a boy, not as a child who might have been born from my body had I made different choices. “Are you looking for a mother-figure? Is that it?”

He flushed and I realized I had hit on something. 

“How did you get my number?” I asked, finally. 

“I deliver your groceries.”

I sat back. The delivery boy. I had never looked at his face. 

“Did you get the figs?” he asked. 

“You must stop. You must stop now with the texts.”

A long line had formed and his coworkers were getting impatient. “Tim, we need some help back here,” one called. 

Tim stood up and put his green apron back on. “I thought you were into it.”

That week I canceled my recurring grocery order and emptied out my fridge. I deleted all the texts. Even the real texts from Margot. The old ones which I’d kept for years. Often they were logistical. 

Be home soon

Do we need milk?

Where are you parked? 

I can’t see you

Are you still here?

I had held onto these like they were poetry, like they were her body. What did that say about me?

Jesus rescheduled the third session. He was leaving town earlier than he had planned. He didn’t say it, but Olga had ended things. When I arrived, a battered duffel bag slouched beside the door. “I leave on a flight this afternoon,” he admitted. He appeared smaller, shrunken, since I’d seen him last and he told me he didn’t think he would have the energy to do the final session today after all. He said he was sorry for wasting my time and tried to refund me the money. I refused to take any of it back. It made me feel abundant to let him have it, like I was investing in something. I wondered if he was still dedicating his life to love. He offered me tea as he usually did and we sat in the room together without speaking. Hip hop music from the condo next door filtered through the wall. I told him I had made plans to begin a new project, a new documentary I was helping to produce. I had called my old production partner to work together again and she agreed. “It’s a small project,” I said, to clarify. 

“That’s good news, Jeanette.” The beads on his wooden bracelet shifted and settled. I wanted to say something to soothe him. I wanted to say it’s okay to love someone that doesn’t love you back. I wanted to lay my heart on his. Instead, I smiled in embarrassment down at my mug, apologized, and asked him to tell me his name.