Doorways and collages and novels and more
Dear friends,
I’ve been gearing up to teach my Writing About Ancestor Trouble class, which starts next Tuesday (it’s full! I’ll let you know if I teach it again), and getting increasingly excited about the students and their projects and everything that we will explore and work on together. It took me a long time to figure out exactly how and what I wanted to teach. There’s an expectation sometimes that a writer’s book on a subject is their complete and total thesis, an end and conclusion tied up in a bow. And yes, Ancestor Trouble is the culmination of many years of research and thinking and feeling and writing. I’m happy it’s out in the world and grateful to everyone who’s read and engaged with it. But I view the book as an opening to everything that comes next.
The first chapter is titled “A Doorway,” and that’s what the book is for me. Of course it has to stand on its own and is for readers to take as they will, but everything I wrote about continues to circulate for me and matter to me. While I don’t have plans to write another book on the subject, I do intend to elaborate here—and in essays like the one I wrote for the Guardian.
I’ve continued working on a novel draft. For months I was grinding it out in third person, from multiple points of view. I’d decided on this perspective mostly because, when Ancestor Trouble came out, I was constantly talking and writing about myself and the book in order to promote it, and I was weary of “I” and wanted to take a break. But I had trouble getting it out in third, so much so that I had begun to resort to writing things in first person and then converting them. When I went for drinks with my friend Abbott Kahler (whose own juicy and riveting first novel is coming out next year! And whose nonfiction books as Karen Abbott I highly recommend) a few weeks ago, she urged me to write it however it comes out easiest, which was such good advice. Whatever happens with this project in the end, I’m remembering how I adore a confessional first-person narrative, as a reader and a writer. The freewheeling voice! The space for unreliability! It’s fun to let someone come forth and speak on the page and surprise me.
I’d hoped to write something narratively straightforward with this book, despite the complications of the story I want to tell, but it’s all getting weirder. Luckily I’m at the stage in my writing life where I understand that I have to surrender to being the kind of writer I am. I loved Alice Elliott Dark’s recent dispatch on this, and also the one on ghosts of books past, present, and future.
What else? Well, I’m not particularly gifted at visual art, but I’m signing up for Sebene Selassie’s 2 1/2 hour cosmic collage class, to mark the Lunar New Year in an intuitive way that doesn’t need to be tied up with outcomes. I am always touched by Sebene’s collages on Instagram (and moved by her writing and teaching).
My stepdaughter, Autumn (who is 29 and has repeatedly assured me that it’s fine if I write about her, so I am not going to ask her permission this time though I still feel the same protectiveness and reticence I did when she was a wee girl), has been making amazing collages for years now. The one above—“Maybe in the Next World”—is her latest. A couple other favorites hang in her room here, conjuring her in her absence. She also made the art at the top of this newsletter. I got to see her in Asheville last week, and I miss her.
My mom also lives in Asheville, as longtime readers may remember. I love my mom, and also whew is she a thorny person. I find it difficult on the Internet these days to straddle the lines between honesty, oversharing, and/or withholding to present a more appealing self. I know I’m not alone in this. In my case, I usually make the decision to lean toward honesty at the risk of coming in at you with more than you want to know. The main theme is that my mom is absolutely enraged that… my (kind, patient, wonderful) stepsister moved down to live with my stepfather and my mom and took care of them after my mom’s brain blood clot that very nearly killed her last summer? In her anger and insistence last fall that my stepsister leave, my mom cursed at all of us, tried to hit my stepsister, unplugged my stepfather’s oxygen (he has COPD) and told him she wanted him to die, and, when I called to tell her none of this was acceptable, told me she hated me and that I wasn’t welcome to contact them anymore. And so on. We were worried she’d bring on another stroke event in her screaming.
On the one hand, she’s obviously dealing with a lot after this brain injury—for a while she was convinced we were all in cahoots in having an elaborate system of tunnels built under the house—and on the other hand, being repeatedly called a bitch by my mother while she rages is not new but a facet of the dysfunction of my younger years that I am unwilling to sink back into. I sent her an email explaining that my stepsister is an incredible human being and caregiver whose love and support my mom is incredibly fortunate to have, and is all of our best and only option for in-home care and that we should all be grateful she is willing to provide it, and also establishing that civility is my bare minimum requirement for being in contact with my mom. (And I have been careful to constantly remind my stepsister that she is not obligated to martyr herself.) My mom and I haven’t had much direct contact since then. I’m still pitching in, covering the cost of their groceries for pick-up, covering other expenses here and there, checking in on my stepfather and helping from afar as best I can. At times my mom has accepted my stepsister’s help and been grateful for it. At times her rage has flared up, and we’re in a period of that again now. My stepsister has been steady throughout, as is her way, and she’s back in her own neck of the northeast at the moment, catching up with her grown daughters and tending to the rest of her life.
And so, long story short, I did not end up seeing my mom on this visit, and that was her choice. It’s painful, because I don’t know how many more chances I will have. A part of me wonders if I should have tried harder. Another, stronger part knows that it’s not good for her or for me to be together in an abusive situation, even if it’s our last chance to see each other in this form.
I’ve been putting most of my energy into my book, the class, the trip, my day job, and being present with Max and the animals and the land here, so my links will have to wait until next time.
Sending all good wishes to y’all until then.
"It’s not good for her or for me to be together in an abusive situation, even if it’s our last chance to see each other in this form." This is wise! I know it must have been a long, painful journey to get to this place.
I really love the artwork you included by Autumn. Lovely and thoughtful.
I'm grateful you share about your family. I'm daily navigating a semi (?) estrangement related to my own mom's Fundamentalism and my embrace of a beloved family member's true name and pronouns. And there's more to it than that, I'm sure you know. Drawing a line feels new.
I'm excited about Abbott's novel and the discoveries you're making while writing yours! There's something so sweet about anticipating the art of the future, especially from authors whose previous books I admired.