Trashlands
I didn’t choose--family or art
Party Invite
There’s a virtual book party Tuesday 10/26 night, and you’re going to want to be there. Here is the link (passcode: trash). The theme is trashy Halloween costume party. It’s free, will include a guest performance by an Ohio dancer, a short reading from Trashlands and a Q & A. And there will be prize$$ for best Halloween costume and best Zoom background (costumes and turning your video on are both optional). See you—or the black box that is you—there?
Trashlands
Why am I scared?
I have done and continue to do so much press. In most of the interviews, they ask the same things. In most of the interviews, I answer the same—I’ve learned how to. I’ve learned what sound bites work, what is quotable, how to deflect the inappropriate questions and inevitable ableism and sexism (wow, women are writing a lot of books now, aren’t they?).
But sometime in the last few interviews, I had a realization, something I’ve never thought before.
This book is my life.
I’ve just spun it wildly.
Trashlands is set at strip club at the end of the world. The main character, a young mother named Coral, lives in a school bus at the edge of a junkyard with her lover, a tattoo artist. Coral has always made art, strange sculptures from trash and plastic that she leaves in the woods—but she spends almost all of her time trying to make enough money, scavenging plastic from a river, to bring her son home.
That’s definitely not a world I live in (though I have slept in a bus; though I have made art and left it). I’ve said that I pulled from my life in rural poverty to write Trashlands. I’ve said that I pulled from my experiences being a single parent.
But what I haven’t said in interviews is what I know now. I pulled from me too.
From deep inside: Motherhood alone when you aren’t really given a choice in the matter. The knife point that all artists who are not men must walk: love or art—you aren’t allowed both. And most of the choices are made for you before you even know enough to ask.
It’s the Red Shoes. It’s me at nineteen, when my college advisor slid a VHS tape across the desk, the 1948 film about a ballerina, and said, Men are going to make you choose.
Them or art.
Family or art.
In revision, my editor told me, You have to have Coral choose. And I kept resisting for so long, leaving the ending open (it’s still pretty open) because I wanted both for her: love and an artistic life. Family and deep work. I want both for me. Why is it only men who get to have children and a studio, love and a life as a working artist? I want to believe we can have both. I think of the few women who did: Patti Smith, Angela Carter, Ursula K. Le Guin. I think of the women who sacrificed everything for art: Octavia Butler, Mary Shelley, Marina Abramović.
I’m not sure which kind of person I am, and what my life will end up being. There is a not-small part of me that worries this is my last book, not because I’m out of stories—I’ll never run out of stories—but because the publishing industry doesn’t really support people like me. And this novel takes risks, like I’m not supposed to.
My plan has always been be like Octavia, be like Angela, be like Ursula—though they were different; they faced different kinds of resistance. Octavia was a Black woman. Angela died young. Ursula was married to a wealthy, supportive professor. But they all wrote and wrote and wrote, and made and made and made art until the very end.
That’s the only plan someone like me can have. And if they say no to the next book, I’ll write a screenplay. And if they say no to the screenplay, I’ll write an album. And if they say no to my woman’s name, I’ll find another name.
I didn’t choose—family or art. And maybe I’ll look back and realize that was a colossal error.
But also, I haven’t quit. I think the only real error is how the world treats some people: disabled people, those raising children, those raising them alone. And that won’t be realized as a mistake until long after my death, if ever. Maybe my son will get to see a new world in his lifetime.
In the meantime, I wrote one for you.
This is brilliant and beautiful. I can't wait to read Trashlands.