Speaker 1 00:00:05 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. And tonight on, right on radio, Andy talks with Quan Barry about her latest novel. When I'm gone. Look for me in the east, the acclaimed author of we write upon sticks comes a luminous novel that moves across a wind swept Mongolia. As a strange twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict and renewed understanding born in Saigon and raised on Boston's north shore. Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry professor of English at the university of Wisconsin, Madison, where she has directed both the MFA program in creative writing and the Wisconsin Institute of creative writing.
Speaker 2 00:00:47 And it's me, Annie Harvey. In the second half of the hour, we are making it a . We are going to listen to right on radios, other Quan Barry interview from the 2020 release of we ride upon sticks. Um, Quan's previous novel. So get ready, buckle up. Thank you so much for joining us. Here we go.
Speaker 3 00:01:23 I'm Annie Harvey with right on radio and I am so excited to have Kwan Barry back on the show. We had a really wonderful interview with her when her last book came out, where we ride upon sticks. And today we are thrilled to have her back to talk about when I'm gone. Look for me in the east, her new book. Quan, welcome to the show. Fabulous. Thanks for having me on again. Thanks so much. Um, could you briefly describe the book for those who haven't had the chance to read it yet? Sure. So when I'm gone, look for me to east is set in contemporary Mongolia. And if we follow a young boost monk named Julian, as he is charged with going out into Mongolian countryside to look for tradition and is living a secular life in the capital. So their band goes out into the Mongolian countryside to search for this reincarnation and the book follows them, um, in their search.
Speaker 3 00:02:13 Great. So could you tell us a little about your research process? Yeah, so I'm really fortunate in the sense that I've been able to travel quite extensively in the world. And oftentimes when I go somewhere, I'm not quite sure if it's ever going to be used in my writing in any way, shape or form. Um, and so many years ago in 2007, I actually was in Mongolia. And again, I just went there as a tourist. I didn't know if I would ever use it, et cetera, et cetera. I got to see a lot of the country. Um, I did a lot of travels there and a lot of folks. And then when I came back to United States, I didn't really think about it for a long time. And then one day I heard this story that the Dalai Lama at the time, and I think this was around 2010 at the time he was saying, because he's worried that when he passes away, the Chinese will politicize his death and at the Chinese will name the new Dalai Lama and install a puppet.
Speaker 3 00:03:01 And because he doesn't want that to happen at the time the Dalai Lama was floating. The idea that he might, you know, take the unprecedented step of reincarnating while he's still alive. And so when I heard that story, I was laughing, my brain just exploded because it was so interesting just to think about reincarnations in general, and then to think about what that would entail if you reincarnated while you were still alive. Um, so I should say that since then, he has now changed his mind and the Dalai Lama has. And so he, he now has a different protocol in place, but at the time when I heard that story, I basically went down a very deep rabbit hole and thinking about reincarnations. And as I was doing this, I realized like if I already don't have to write a story about this novel about this, where would I set it?
Speaker 3 00:03:41 And I realized that Mongolia was the perfect landscape for it. And specifically, again, Mongolia and Tibet have had a long history with each other. So again, the term Dalai Lama is actually, it's a hybrid word, that's half Tibet and then half Mongolian. And so there's many characteristics that the two countries share and I just realized it would be a great place to set this story. And then, so after I realized that, you know, I was fortunate to be able to travel back to the area in general and, uh, to talk with folks. So I traveled quite a bit in India, um, in Dharamshala where the Dalai Lama is the where the Tibetan government is actually an exile. I also was able to travel the cecum, which is the Buddhist region of India. And then finally I also traveled in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan. And so, um, I was very fortunate to be able to do those things.
Speaker 3 00:04:26 And then lastly, I would say too, that Madison, Wisconsin has a long tradition of Buddhism here in our community. And basically my understanding is that in the 1970s, that there was a Tibetan monk who was set here and who basically established a community here. And so Madison is a place that the Dalai Lama has come to quite a bit back in the 1980s, it's actually a place where it was the first time that he gave this very rare teaching called the college Shockware teaching, which he only does every maybe decade or so, where he gives this teaching in India, a quarter of a million people will come, but the first time he ever gave this teaching in north America was actually right here in Wisconsin. And my understanding is at that time, about 3000 people came to it. So I also very much tapped into folks here in town. Um, there's a lot of scholars on campus who were studying these kinds of things. And so I also chatted quite a bit with my local resources as well.
Speaker 4 00:05:17 That's so cool. I just, I was not aware even as a Midwesterner, that there's that powerful community here in the Midwest. So that's, that's really cool to know. And maybe some listeners will want to go check that out to kind of talk a little more about the structure of the book. Um, as I was reading it, I noticed it was made up of super short, almost vignette like chapters of like one to five pages. And I was just wondering how you ended up with this particular structure.
Speaker 3 00:05:46 So as you read the book, hopefully it will begin to Dawn on readers at the entire book is actually written in present tense, even though it's not necessarily chronologically laid out. And so I knew that I wanted to write the entire book in present tense. It was kind of a little bit of a challenge for me as a writer, like to keep me on my toes. I oftentimes like to give myself a challenge and again, writing an entire book in present tense definitely was a challenge. Um, and in doing that though, I realized that in order to make it as easy as possible on the reader that I probably needed to have my chapters be shorter in nature if I had had longer chapters. And if the book was written entirely in present tense, and again, skipped around in time, I was a little bit worried that that could be a little bit too taxing on the reader in certain kinds of ways. And so I made the decision to keep it all in presidents and again, to leave around in time, but at least by having it be these shorter chapters, hopefully that makes it a little bit more digestible for folks.
Speaker 4 00:06:38 Cool. That's, that's really smart. And it did feel very, very present to have these short chapters. It like you're living a moment with chillin and then you're living another moment with Julian, um, to kind of continue talking about the chronology of the book. Um, Joe Lynn's brother MUN has such a fascinating life story and it gets unpacked in breadcrumbs through the book. And there's some pretty big reveals like towards the end, like at the beginning. And I could tell this was an interesting guy, but then it kind of just kept unfolding and unfolding. Um, and that was also interesting to me as it's a first person book. Like there were a lot of things that were revealed later in the book that children probably knew, but that we were finding out later. Um, so could you tell me about like yourself as a writer and creator choosing that reveal process as a structure and kind of how you went about that?
Speaker 3 00:07:31 Yeah. So in thinking about that particular character and thinking about the entire arc of the book, right there are, to me, there's, there's several arcs in the book. Like one is just this group's search for a reincarnation. So on a narrative level, you simply get them searching again to find the story of incarnation. So that's one art, the other arts that are present in the book, one has to do with children. So these are character arc. So children's character arc is at the beginning of the book. He knows that in a few months he'll be taking his final vows and that when he does that, you know, he'll be committing himself to a life, for example, without a partner, a life of celibacy and among other things. And so his character arc is him making peace with the various things that he recognizes his upcoming ordination will bring into his life.
Speaker 3 00:08:12 And then there's also a character arc for Munn, who, again, at the beginning of the book has renounced his monastic vows and is living a secular life. And so his particular character arc is about what does that mean? He will continue on the secular path. Does that mean that he really truly has left behind, um, his Buddhist upbringing, you know, those kinds of things. So then so again, because he's on, um, a spiritual path himself, the reason why, you know, the various things get revealed over time is that he himself is discovering these things, you know, in his own spiritual life and, and realizing that things that are important to him as well. Um, and so in many ways, and then thinking also about the arc of the two brothers relationship, right? So they, they begin in a place of estrangement and, and hopefully by the end of the book, they've moved into a new space. So a lot of the things that happen, I do think, um, I do that they actually surprising to children as well. I don't think he necessarily knows, you know, where they're going to end up as brothers or what his brother's art is going to look like. Um, so, so yeah, so it was very important to me to have these multiple arcs in the, in the book to be moving through time as well.
Speaker 4 00:09:13 Yeah, absolutely attention just to dig into this a little more attention that I really liked in the book was between Taloon finding money to have these mysterious aspects are kind of wondering what Monas thinking or why he's doing the things he's doing, but they also have some twin telepathy, like sometimes there'll be near each other and hear the other one's thoughts. Um, and that was a really cool contrast to have them both truly able to think each other's thoughts, but also sometimes not know why the other is making a certain decision or reacting to something a certain way. Um, did you ever consider writing this book without this element and then kind of, how did you choose to incorporate this element into this story?
Speaker 3 00:09:59 So this is my third novel. Um, my first book was set in Vietnam and it's called, uh, she beeps each time you're born and that particular book there's, um, a child who's born, who's actually very dramatically pulled from a grave. Um, and that's, um, how she comes into the world. And, and because of that, she can hear the voices of the dead. And so that's this kind of the power that she has in my second book, we write upon sticks, which follows the girls field hockey team in the 1980s, as they begin to dabble in witchcraft in order to try and win games. And that particular book, it turns out over time at the team begins to develop a kind of hive mind where perhaps they can kind of move in and out of each other's thoughts and things like that. And so what I'm getting at here is that it's true.
Speaker 3 00:10:38 That for me, you know, when I began writing fiction, because I began my career as a poet, um, when I first started that sat down to write my first novel, I thought, well, what are my strengths as a writer? Right. And I hope a, that one of my strengths, I hope because I'm about what I hope one of my strengths is language, but then I actually came to the realization that actually one of my strengths was just, it's gonna sound odd, but it's just, it's making things up out of whole cloth, like just making up words, world and people and, and situations and plots. Like that's a real strength of mine, I think. And I realized that by having one magical element per book, it just enriches your world. So for example, if your world mostly is just a regular, a 3d world, in which all the rules of the world with your, with and regular life, you know, you can do so much with that. But for me, by adding one magical element, it almost gives you a world like a fourth element. So it becomes like 40 in a way. Right. Um, and so again, so all of my books have had one magical element in them because like I said, for me as a writer, having that magical element has allowed me then to explore things that the normal 3d world would. Um, and so I knew from the very get-go that these two brothers would have a connection.
Speaker 4 00:11:45 Yeah. And I think, again, I think it was a really great choice in that it really allowed, um, kind of a, between the things like a real emphasis and ability to toy with the things you know, about your siblings and your family and the experiences you have, that'll never go away versus ways that they're just completely alien to you. And I thought that the telepathy specifically as a way to explore that was super fun, very present, like, yeah, just really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 00:12:16 I should also say too, that, um, you know, in many religious traditions, so it's not just Buddhism, but there in many traditions, there's this concept of the idea of, of no self in a way in the idea that we all connected. Right. And so some, some religious ticket, very, you know, all the way to like, you know, everything is an illusion, self, and others just talk about the idea and action. Right. But broadly. And so in many ways, again, having the brother to have this teller, you know, telepathic connection to me also made sense within the spiritual realm. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:12:45 Yeah. I don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't had the chance to get all the way through the book yet you should definitely check it out if you have not. Um, but as chillin story goes on and you get further and further into the book, um, Taloon begins to, uh, take a greater comfort in an acceptance of the ambiguity of life. And he gets better at detaching from, I guess, like the anxieties that he seems burdened by at the beginning of the book from uncertainties and more able to accept information that disrupts his previous expectations. Um, when you were writing this, did you think of it as having takeaway messages for those reading? Or did you think that this conclusion was just kind of a result of both the cultural and spiritual environment of the characters and then also that characters personal journey?
Speaker 3 00:13:39 So I would say both, but more, um, I was thinking about it more in terms of the character, right? So I think about this with all of my characters in some company, you know, if you write them in a manner that's authentic, it will resonate hopefully with your readers who don't necessarily have, who have different lived experiences than your characters, right? Yeah. So in thinking about this book, because of its spiritual, um, essence it's then thinking about the themes of spirituality and coming into ourselves and knowing ourselves, um, it was important to me that again, that the character's journey and resolution and, um, the ways in which he finally comes to realize, you know, what's important and what isn't and what we, what we can let go when he comes to realize, you know, the power of living in the present moment and of not having expectations and living in a future realm and things like that, you know?
Speaker 3 00:14:26 And so in many ways that all those things are true to his personal journey and true to who he is and true to the life lessons that he learns. And Hey, it's, it's just kind of gravy for me. If it turns out that the reader can find ways to sort of also think about their own lives and how their own lives might be enhanced, you know, if we can put down the phones and just sort of unplug a little bit more and just sort of be present with ourselves and with each other, then, like I said, so it's just kind of gravy for me. If the characters are, if the reader can see that in themselves.
Speaker 4 00:14:56 Absolutely cool. Well, there's one other thing that I really wanted to talk to you about. Um, I understand that you have a play coming out around the time of this book. Tell me about your play.
Speaker 3 00:15:09 Yes, absolutely. So, um, it's interesting. Cause again, I started my career as a poet and then I became a fiction writer and then the past couple of years I've actually been writing plays. And so this play, which is called the Mediterranean debate is actually my first produced play. And it's going to happen here in Madison, Wisconsin, and it's being produced by a theater company called forward theater for theater. And the thing that's really exciting to me, one of the small pluses to come out of the pandemic is that more and more theaters are now offering their audience members, the option of seeing a play either in person in the theater or watching it from the safety of their own homes. And so it means that anybody anywhere in the country can actually watch this play. So if you go to Fort road theater, that's all one word.com.
Speaker 3 00:15:51 You'll find out more information about it. But just to tell you about the play really briefly, uh, the Mediterranean debate has, uh, it features four characters. Um, so there's two couples, one older African-American couple and one interracial couple, and it follows their lives. Um, in the weeks and months after nine 11 in New York city, as they look like many people at that time to infuse their lives with more meaning as they began to question the bonds of family and relationships and those kinds of things. So again, it's called the middle east and debate and it's running from February 24th through March 13th. So again, like I said, folks don't have to be in Madison to see it. Cool.
Speaker 4 00:16:29 Well, I definitely want to take advantage of that just as a side question. How do you feel as someone who's an interdisciplinary writer and you got some poetry, you got plays, you got novels. How do you feel like the different kinds of writing, perhaps feed or inform each other? And when you start to have an idea for a story, um, how quickly does it take shape in a certain medium, or do you ever have to kind of try it multiple ways?
Speaker 3 00:16:53 So the second question, um, for whatever reason, as of right now, I, I pretty much know, okay, this is gonna be a poem, okay, this is going to be a novel, okay, this is going to be a play. Um, so as of right now, that's not something that I've had to wrestle with so much, but as far as like how they all, you know, influence each other and those kinds of things, it's true that I, I'm very glad that I began my career as a poet, because as I mentioned to me, I'd like to think that that gave me the most essential tool for a writer and that that tool is language, right? So the poetry informs sort of everything first and foremost, because it helps me with, with respect to having tight language, surprising language, um, imagistic language, you know, all those sorts of fun things.
Speaker 3 00:17:32 And then when I moved into fiction, you know, I began to learn more just about plot and about character and those kinds of things. So it kind of makes sense to me that I would have come to fiction next. Um, and so my fiction definitely informs my playwriting as well. My sense of plot, um, all those kinds of fun things. But the thing that I'm really right now in the playwriting world, which is an obvious thing, you know, for the first 20 years of my career, I was really a lone Wolf. Like many writers are, it's just me and my laptop, me doing my thing, you know, that kind of thing. And then I obviously have an editor who helps me think through the choices that I've made, but really it's a very small group of people who helped me think a project like a poetry book or a novel, right.
Speaker 3 00:18:10 But when it comes to play writing, it's like, wow, this, this is the strength of play writing is that you, there are people here who are going to interpret your work. We're going to bring it out into the real world. And so it's exciting to see the kinds of choices that a director or actors make, um, and those kinds of things. And so I'm learning a lot just about how other people think about character and characters, intentions, and things like that. And it's making, I was talking to a friend of mine, who's a writer about it recently. And I was saying like, how excited I am now. Um, having learned all these things about the ways in which characters can be created to take what I've learned about this from playwriting and to apply it back and fiction. So, um, so I'm really interested to see what will happen when I sit down once again, at some point in the future and start working on a novel that is so cool. And I will absolutely have to speak to your publicist about getting my hands on, whatever that is.
Speaker 3 00:19:02 Cool. Well, do you have any other, um, projects, webpages, anything like that that you want to want to share with folks? It's so funny, you know, because again, I've had a career for about 20 years and I'm very fortunate to be able to say that, and I've never had a webpage. And until now I have the world's most basic websites like two pages, it's just Quan barry.com. And the only reason why I'm plugging it again is just because as I mentioned, it's the idea that if people wanted to check out this play and again, to support local local theater companies, obviously, you know, Minneapolis is a great theater town. We, we look at you all and we're all just like in awe of that. And so I don't have to tell your audience about the importance of supporting local theaters, right. And that was just a really exciting time because not only can you support local theater in your own community, but you can support local theaters and other places as well. So again, my website, cranberry.com, isn't another place that could, could direct you toward finding out more about the play. Cool. Well, thank you so much. It's been really, it's been really lovely to have you, uh, on, right on radio once again. Thank you so much. Fabulous. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:20:15 KFH 90.3 FM Minneapolis St. Paul and streaming live on kfa.org. Um, I'm Annie and tonight we are joined by the amazing Kwan Barry. Um, she is a poet and a novelist. She's a Penn award winner and she is faculty at the university of Wisconsin, Madison Kwon. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5 00:20:36 Thanks for having
Speaker 2 00:20:36 Me. Uh, do you want to start us off today, uh, with a little reading from your latest novel, we write upon sticks.
Speaker 5 00:20:43 Sure. I'd love to. So this excerpt I'm going to read actually introduces you to the 11 characters of the Danvers, varsity women's steel hockey team. And it actually, it opens with them at a pep rally, the fall pep rally, and the only things that you need to know for it, you'll hear a reference to somebody, two people named Bert and Ernie. And so Bert and Ernie are the two police officers who were assigned to work the school beat. And students refer to them as Burton Ernie, because one has a unit brow and there's a large difference in their Heights. So you will hear a reference to them. But again, this is what happens at the annual fall pep rally. Then principal Yoffe was standing at the microphone, trying to get the student body to shut up. When it finally quieted down, he said a bunch of stuff about Falcon spirit, the trophy case outside the main office, the exceptionalism of Danvers, highs, young men and women.
Speaker 5 00:21:34 Blah-blah-blah. We always wondered if principal Jase even liked pep rallies, the guy had a PhD in education from Wisconsin. Did he feel like a tool standing up there in front of the student body yammering on about winning? We felt embarrassed for him when he concluded his speech with his fist in the air and a weak noise that we gathered from context was supposed to be some sort of rebel yell. Bert and Ernie were standing off to the side and their police uniforms. They nodded approvingly at the strange yodeling emanating out of principle you off. We didn't even know why they were there to show school spirit, but it was probably part of some new initiative to convince us kids. The cops were our friends, the thinking being, if we viewed them as allies today, tomorrow, we'd be more likely to run to them. Knocking on our friends when something serious went down from there, the rally was pretty unremarkable until the hoop appeared Cameron Burroughs and the cheerleaders had just gotten it positioned in place.
Speaker 5 00:22:31 A big blue Falcon painted right in the middle of it. When Jen fear runs a turn to us and screamed field, field, field hockey, hockey, hockey, we yelled. And before any of us knew what was happening, we were charging the hoop, our herd of water, Buffalo stampeding on the African plain principle. You off a casualty of our herd mentality. The guy buffeted every which way as B word passed. Jen was the first through her claw, a rhino horn, the paper tearing each of us as if we were being born again only to re-emerge in a whole new world. All 11 of us pouring through Abby Putnam or Ray of light girl Corey, a woman scorned Malibu say with the dark mark on her neck, boy, Corey, hoping nobody was looking at him. Becca Angelica, wondering why she hadn't worn a third bra Sue Yoon with their hair dyed Kool aid and credit Barry H J Johnson wondering who among us really had her back. Heather Houston, following blindly without her glasses, duly, Caitlyn like a Monarch butterfly on his way to Mexico, little Smitty, gnashing badly at the paper with their teeth, be aggressive, be aggressive, the other fall sports falling in line behind us football, bringing up the rear, the marching band, blowing their brains out the cheerleaders, screaming along to the theme. When you say DHS, you've said it all. Thanks.
Speaker 2 00:23:50 Oh, there's so much to unpack there and so much to love. Um, but I just want to start out by saying, um, I was compelled by your choice to write the book in the plural third-person we, uh, without it being tagged to a specific character as if the book had been written by like an unnamed teammate friend, or maybe even by the team's collective mind, um, I think this really set the tone of the book and its energy. How did you come to the decision to do that? Um, and how did it feel to craft the text like that?
Speaker 5 00:24:22 Um, yeah, so it's true that the, we voice the first person, plural is not a voice, a number that you often see in fiction. Some of the more famous examples of that are one of the more famous examples is Jeffrey eugenics, the Virgin suicides. So in that book, it's a group of teen boys who live in a neighborhood and they're basically watching a family of girls. And so we get the we boys of the boat watching this family. And so when I started to write the book, I always knew that I wanted to write it in a first-person plural voice. I just wasn't sure who the voice was going to belong to like who the we was going to be. So when I first started off at first, I thought maybe it was the entire school that maybe this whole school was watching this varsity team of women who play field hockey.
Speaker 5 00:25:04 But there was just a little bit too unwieldy when I first started. And then I thought, well, maybe the wee boys will belong to the freshmen team. So oftentimes when it comes to sports, you know, you usually have a freshmen team, you have a junior varsity team, and then you have a varsity team. And I thought, well, maybe it's the freshmen team. There's a way in which younger classmen oftentimes idealized like the senior girls. It was definitely true when I was playing field hockey. And so I thought, well, maybe it's the freshmen team and they're watching the seniors and they're just really, you know, just, they just idolize them. But when I started doing that, I had, I had a hard time because I couldn't quite justify why these freshmen girls would have been in certain spaces or why they would have known certain things.
Speaker 5 00:25:42 And so I realized that that voice didn't work. And then after that, I realized pretty quickly then, um, that the voice actually does belong to the team collectively. And that in doing that, it allowed me a couple of things. So one thing I always like to joke that there's no I in team, right. So teams are supposed to be collective. So it kind of makes sense that it would be the team telling their own story. Um, and then the other thing that allowed me to do is because the book does have elements of witchcraft in it. It allowed me to bring in an element of magical realism by having it be this collective voice that tells the story. And so it made sense then to that the team over time begins to develop a collective hive mentality as well, which just adds to the overall wittiness of the book.
Speaker 2 00:26:21 Yeah. Um, I think that's a fantastic answer. Um, and that actually makes me think of, uh, do you mind if I ask about the, um, the, kind of the, what, what gets called the internal line on the team? Um, cause I love the way that, um, though throughout the book though, various witchy happenings, um, get, sometimes they get called into question and sometimes they get proven to actually just be one of the girls on the team being really extraordinary, but the girls on the team do communicate telepathically through the story on what they refer to as the internal line for those of you who haven't read the book yet. Um, and I was wondering, um, did you have a worldly explanation for that or is it just, um, the magical realism of a bunch of women finding their strengths?
Speaker 5 00:27:09 So to me it's an both, so it's both things, right? Yeah. So, um, I almost think of it in terms of even just like the witchy aspects in general. I almost think of it as in terms of like, um, Dumbo, if you remembering Dumbo, he has that like magical feather that helps him to fly it's really about confidence. Right. And so, but then he can also really fly to right. Magical. So here I think of it in the same kind of thing. Like, so the question is like, is there some kind of supernatural connection between these people or is it just kind of a sisterhood the way that women oftentimes do form really close bonds? You know, oftentimes like for example, it's not unusual for sisters, even for good friends to be able to finish each other's sentences. And I'm not suggesting that that's like a gendered thing, but we usually don't think of men as having that same kind of closeness, you know, among friendships the way that women do. Right. Yeah. And so to me it is it's, it's that, well, is it a little bit of this or a little bit of that? And so I was definitely trying to have it both ways, the idea that like, okay, maybe there is something supernatural going on here and at the same time, maybe it's just the idea of just the closeness of girls, particularly teen girls and what that can result in.
Speaker 2 00:28:12 Yeah. Um, continuing on that strong female energy, um, the writing throughout the book has this largely useful humor that I like really was drawn into and found very lively. And it kept me reading this book on the bus and at the stove while I'm cooking just all over the place. Um, and the humor itself, um, I noticed that it was often built on physical and visual comedy, but it's never like, it's not usually like violent comedy someone's slipping on a banana peel. It was always these really smart well-crafted observations about odd things in the world. Um, and I found that that played in really prominently to the kind of magical realism you hinted at earlier. Um, and I was just wondering if you had either your own ideas or, um, inspiration from other writers and artists, um, in terms of how you created the particular magical realism in the Danvers of your novel.
Speaker 5 00:29:11 So going back to the idea of humor, so I want to dress the magical realism just yet, but just as far as how I, how I thought about humor working in this book and what I was trying to do. So I didn't look at too many. So I can't say that I did a lot of research in it, but I did look at a few, um, novels written by women for women that are considered to be humorous. I don't want to throw any under the bus, but kind of like in the vein, for example, of Bridget Jones diary, if you remember those books. Yeah. Um, again near there, I don't know, 15 years old, 20 years old. And again, I have to make, it's not, so I'm not throwing Bridget Jones's diary under the bus. Um, but a lot of those kinds of books, I noticed that the humor in them was what I call quote unquote situational, right?
Speaker 5 00:29:50 Yes. It was the humor of like, oh my God, I'm going on a first date. And I forget my dress. Oh my God I've burned the roast or whatever it was. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it is kind of a little bit like the slipping on the botanical kind of humor and the kind of humor that I'm interested in is humor. That's actually baked in at the level of the sentence. Right. It's actually done through description and those kinds of things. I find that kind of humor to be more interesting, to be more cerebral and to be more satisfying. Yeah. So somebody that, I'm a big fan of a lot of Americans don't read him anymore, but I he's a master to me. Um, British author who admittedly, maybe thought the world's most PC person, but it's Martin Amos. Oh yeah. So Martin Amos, British novelist whose father was Kingsley Amos.
Speaker 5 00:30:31 He was poet Laureate of England, Martin Amos, particularly in his essays. He doesn't write many essays, but he does have a couple of books of essay is he's also a novelist primarily, but he has a way of describing things. And it's in the actual description is where the humor is. So I'm going to totally blow this description. But like for example, in one of his political essays, and if you've never read him, you should read his political essays because they're just so astute and so funny. Um, but he has a description of Mitt Romney order from Utah in one of his essays. He basically describes Mitt Romney. And again, I'm paraphrasing quote unquote, um, rice, sequent quilt, but he paraphrased his wife. He said, he says that Mitt Romney always has the pained expression of a man with a sore shoulder. Who's just shrugged his way into a too tight dinner jacket.
Speaker 5 00:31:21 You know, it's like the, he always had that paint expression. I'm like, he does, he doesn't know what to do with a sore shoulder who just shrugged his way into a too tight dinner jacket. Right. So to me, like the humor is in the description of that. It's not just in the fact that Nick Romney always looks pained and like how it's like the precision of how he describes that. Yeah. So that's something that I was very much thinking about and writing this book. So I'm interested in, in that kind of humor and knocking the, oh, I slipped on a banana peel kind of thing, which has its place at times too. Right? Yeah. And I can like that kind of thing as well. But to me it's the, it's the actual literary descriptions that, um, I think are most effective. Um, and again, you might be the second to have a baguette about magical realism or,
Speaker 2 00:32:00 Um, I was just wondering if in terms of magical realism, especially funny, magical realism, um, kind of how you decided on the, both the level of magic that was going to be going on in Danvers. And, um, also if you had any, any inspirations or if you just set your own parameters and ran with them,
Speaker 5 00:32:19 I think of the magic and the book is being really DIY in a way in which I think girls in the 1980s would have been DIY, right. So it's before the internet, they can't just look stuff up and find out how to do stuff, um, as kids. And I'm sure I wasn't the only one with my friends who was doing it, you know, you would try and do the like magical things where you try and lift somebody using on your fingers, like light as a feather stiff as a board, or, you know, there are ways in which you might stand in front of a mirror and say, you know, it was mostly about the creeped yourself out, like at a slumber party. And so I thought of a lot of the kinds of things that they would be doing is being like that. Like, they're just trying to figure this out, whatever works for them, they don't really have any set ways of casting spells or what have you.
Speaker 5 00:32:59 It's true that they eventually, you know, they go to Salem and they maybe find a book and then, you know, it kind of pumps up what they're up to, but it wasn't really sort of DIY thing. And then I also, because I am interested in magical realism in my fiction, um, and the way I try and use it is that you can only really have at the end of the day, you could only really have like one magical element. If you have too many, then the reader just doesn't buy it anymore. So for example, like we've all seen those movies where, you know, somebody gets into trouble and then all of a sudden, like there's a magical door in the wall that they can just walk through and then it's over. You're like, well, you know, it just, it lets go of attention and then it, it just seems like anything could happen. You know what I mean? And so to me, the, the major magical element was just going to be in communication and how they can communicate and things like that. So I tried to limit myself. There might be a couple of other things that happen in the book, but I tried to limit myself just to that one magical element.
Speaker 2 00:33:48 Cool. Um, great. So for anyone who's just joining us, uh, we're in conversation with Kwan Berry author of we ride upon sticks on KFH 90.3 FM. Um, getting back into the book, uh, Kwan the story lays down some underpinning just like lightly throughout the book in the origin of witchcraft, um, and the way it, uh, witchcraft a lot of elements of it stemmed from African and African-American culture. Um, including, um, a moment I really loved in which AIG Johnson's mom, um, kind of explicitly points out to the reader that the powerful arm bands that all of the girls on the field hockey team were together to keep their magic with them, um, are also a tradition in parts of Africa, which it is unclear if the girls on the team know that or not. Um, what was your research project like in learning about witchcraft history worldwide? Um, and would you say it's similar or different to that of the Danvers team? I know you probably had a search engine to use and they didn't, but, um, tell me about your witchcraft story.
Speaker 5 00:34:55 So, uh, I, myself, I'm, I'm fortunate to have traveled quite a bit in the world and I have actually, uh, I was in west Africa a few summers ago and I observed firsthand how people, um, I don't think they would, I don't know if they would do this or use the word witchcraft, but ways in which items that have been, um, imbued with magical qualities are an important part of some people's lives. And so I saw that firsthand, you know, this idea of these traditions, continuing, um, and I know too that, um, some of those things still hold in places in the south. I don't wanna think just the south, but there are certain places again in black communities, um, where people still turn to traditional healings, traditional methods of staying safe and things like that. So I was interested in that. Um, you know, the things that you point out are definitely in the book, but it's like, I feel like those are the only two mentions.
Speaker 5 00:35:44 Did you happen to pick up on both of them in certain kinds of ways? So when it comes to the idea of research, I myself grew up in the town of Danvers Danvers back in 1692 was actually part of Salem. It was a park called Salem village. Um, and that's actually where the first sort of events happened that then spurred on the Salem witch trials. Um, and so growing up in the town of Danvers, I was always familiar with what happened in 1692 because, you know, I grew up less than a mile away from some of the happenings, um, some of the places where those things happen. So I have to admit, I just always kind of, it was always, you know, in fifth grade you take a class field trip where you go to various sites. It was always something that we studied. It was just something that I always knew as far as the history of witchcraft in Massachusetts.
Speaker 5 00:36:26 And I have to admit that I don't know necessarily as much about the history of witchcraft in Europe. Um, but I know that again, thousands of people in Europe were killed including men, but mostly women. Um, and the things that I do know about the history of witchcraft in Europe is that, um, to me, witchcraft aligns very closely with the idea of female empowerment and, um, and that's always been true, I think, throughout the ages. So, you know, many of the women who were hung, um, or who were killed, um, in Europe, there were women who didn't conform in certain kinds of ways, women who weren't typically feminine meter, they were too old. Maybe they were too independent. Um, maybe they weren't mothers, maybe they weren't married. You know, there were always ways in which it was women who are outliers, who again were conforming societaly were the ones who were oftentimes, um, singled out, um, as is, and that was also true in Salem village in 16 92, 1 of the first women who was actually hung was a woman named Bridget Bishop.
Speaker 5 00:37:20 My understanding of her at the time is that she was a, she was a Tavern owner, which, you know, for a woman to own her own Tavern. And that, secondly, it was sad that she, she liked to wear red and that was something that was kind of held against her. Um, and so I was really, so, you know, as far as the amount of research I did, I, I, I, again, with respect to dammar that south by actually have a lot of knowledge about Denver since I grew up there. But, um, it was important to me to incorporate actual historical facts into the book. So you, do you get the names of all the people who were hung, you know, you find out things about them, you find out things about , who was the enslaved woman who lived in the home of the Reverend Samuel Paris. And his homestead is where, um, many of the girls, uh, were spending time who eventually accused people. So it was important to me to work in, like I said, those historical moments. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:38:11 Um, so I noticed also that a strong undercurrent of the book is the girls on the team. Not only discovering like kind of discovering witchcraft, but largely discovering themselves and their very different identities long before things like body positivity or queer acceptance or black girl magic or black lives matter or intersectional feminism. Um, but I found all of those ideas to be present in the book without being named as explicitly. Um, how did it feel writing about these issues in an eighties context while you're sitting in 2020? And it kind of feels like women have, at least from my end reading the book, it kind of felt like women had come so far, but it also felt like very little had changed.
Speaker 5 00:38:57 I was really interested because I think nowadays particularly with some maybe younger generations, or maybe even my own generation to think about the eighties, oh, the eighties, they had those funny, funny outfits they wore the hair was crazy and the music is pretty good still, but other things that maybe haven't aged so well. Um, and so it's easy to just look back on it kind of just a hundred percent nostalgically rather than critically, right? Yeah. But it's true. If you go back and you look at a lot of the cultural things that were, um, circulating a lot of that was just unhealthy stuff that we, we just took for granted. I recently, actually in the last year I rewatched a purple rain prince purple rain, but it's true that while the music really stay, I mean, music is still amazing. Like the, the club scenes, it's still amazing, amazing, but you know, in quite a few scenes, like he hits his girlfriend quite a bit.
Speaker 5 00:39:44 And there's, I don't remember at the time anybody criticizing that, like, wow, why is this character hitting his girlfriend repeatedly? Um, and so I was super interested. I knew if I was going to write about the eighties, I couldn't just write about that part of the eighties. I had to write about all of the eighties. Right. And so, I mean, the eighties it's post Reagan, it's, you know, the aids crisis is really ramping up. Unfortunately, you know, the central park five happened. There's just a lot of things happening. And I felt like it would have been irresponsible of me just to present the eighties again, through that rose tinted big hair lens. Um, and so because of that, I was interested in, you know, in looking at the eighties with a more critical eye while still having fun with it. Um, and so I actually found it really satisfying to rethink that time period, but to complicate it right. So it's not a John Hughes movie where everything works out in the end necessarily, you know, it's like, what are the ways of which it was complicated? What are the ways in which, you know, if you don't have a language for who you are, if there isn't a language for black girl magic, or if there isn't a language for LGBTQ people, like how do you form yourself identity? Um, and so I was, I was super interested in thinking about those kinds of things and I found it very satisfying to reconsider all that stuff.
Speaker 2 00:40:55 Cool. Yeah. I, that was another thing that I just loved about the book, um, and that hit home in a powerful way while still being part of a reading experience. That was for the most part, super fun and relatively light. Um, just to ask one last question, since we're running out of time, um, I don't want to spoil anything for readers who haven't finished the book yet, or, um, might pick it up from the store. Um, I did like the way you got good mileage out of having an epilogue style section that, um, reveal some logical, but still surprising things about the Danvers teammates as we're adult, as adults in contempt, like our time. Um, did you write the book with the characters adulthoods in mind or did you find everyone as you went along the story?
Speaker 5 00:41:36 Yeah. I'm the kind of writer I plan nothing. I think it's also a reason why I like magical, magical realism. Is it because it throws like an ex unexpected factor into things. Um, I'm somebody who like, I like to write my way into a corner and then I have to figure out how to get out of that. So I didn't know until we were getting pretty, pretty close to the end, how, what was going to happen or where we were going to end up or what have you. Um, and I think it's that. So Robert Frost, the poet very famous poets are always quoting this. Robert Frost very famously said, you know, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader, what he means by that. It's like, if you have a deterministic idea, right. From the get-go of what you're gonna do, it's going to feel fairly formulaic in certain kinds of ways. Right? Yeah. So I think the same thing holds with fiction. So it was the idea that like, you know, I knew what the general structure of the book was that every chapter was a different game and a different character was featured, but beyond that, I didn't really have any ideas. And so it's true. Like I oftentimes was surprised that that was writing it. And hopefully that element of surprise then also translate to surprises for the reader as well.
Speaker 2 00:42:36 Yeah. It totally felt, it felt very authentically surprising and engaging to me. Um, well, thank you so much for this great conversation. Uh, we have to wrap up right now, but, um, I really appreciate you joining us tonight.
Speaker 5 00:42:49 Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 00:42:50 Thank you. Take care.
Speaker 1 00:43:14 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected], like to thank our special guest tonight, Quan Barry and Quan Barry for both interviews and for the full hour. And of course, all of our listeners out there without your support and donations cafe would not be possible. You can find more news and info they'll right on radio at cafe.org/write on radio plus listen to recent episodes on our recently launched podcast. No, not so much recently, but it's been around for a while, but it's just out there. It's on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, and anywhere podcasts can be found. Now stay tuned football and Juul, Minnesota
