Carry

What was the most difficult thing to reveal in your memoir?

I read the book aloud recently for the audiobook recording, and I had to work very hard to steady my voice when reading the moments where people I love were at risk. Those were the difficult parts, both to read and to write. I don’t know that I can properly explain why it’s not that hard for me to reveal the dark or hard moments of my life—of which there are many in this book. I think while writing the book, I worried most about how I portrayed other people’s lives and experiences. The main thing I tell my students about writing memoir is that you have to be willing to indict yourself if you’re indicting other people. You have to be honest about your own flaws and showcase them, for balance. In Carry, when I reveal moments of anger or weakness or fear in myself, I’m comfortable with doing it. But I still have a lot of complex feelings about depicting the pain of others in relation to telling my own story.

Did you have any hesitation about writing about guns or violence?

I was already a part of the world of gun violence, so I didn’t hesitate on my own behalf. But I did consider with care my daughter and other people in my life and their safety. Really, though, the book is not a polemic. I’m from rural America, from a no-stoplight town where most people own guns. I’m writing from both research and lived experience. When people ask—and they often do—what my stance is on guns, I say I’m against gun violence. I have yet to encounter anyone who’s willing to take the other side of that statement.

What’s your favorite book to teach?

Any book by Louise Erdrich is my favorite book to teach. It’s so hard to choose just one. I love equally teaching Tracks, LaRose, The Round House, and Love Medicine. There isn’t a better fiction writer for teaching character development. Plot and setting development, too, are easy to illustrate by teaching her novels, and every sentence is a master class in either beauty or efficiency or sometimes both. She’s also very funny and good at writing sex scenes. Both those things are hard to do and to teach without good examples.

You got married this June—congrats! What was the day like?

My husband, Matt Farwell, and I had to cancel our wedding in March, due to COVID-19. So instead, we were married outdoors in Livingston, Montana, in June. The ceremony took place at the band shell in Miles Park on a very rainy day. The park sits right by the Yellowstone River, and three mountain ranges are nearby, too: the Absaroka, the Bridger, and the Crazy Mountains. I fell in love with Livingston right around the time I started writing this book, and we were introduced by Amanda Fortini and Walter Kirn, who live there. So getting married there—with the book now finished, with Walter officiating and Amanda taking pictures—felt right.

That day, in the morning, I wrote my vows, and then my daughter did my makeup because she’s an expert, and I really am not. Through the window, we could see there was fog on the mountain, making it feel like we were suspended in a cloud. We drove into Livingston from the house we’d rented for the week in the Gallatin National Forest. It’s an hour-long drive into town, with stunning mountain, stream, and valley views the whole way. We wore black-and-white clothes with colorful birds and flowers as accents—outfits we’d planned to wear at our larger wedding’s reception. Matt forgot his tuxedo pants, so he borrowed a pair of Walter’s. We drank coffee at Walter and Amanda’s house to give Matt time to duck outside to write his vows. Amanda took photos, Walter read a passage from the scripture and officiated, and Eva wrangled the dogs. After the vows, we had pizza and salad at Gil’s, a local restaurant and bar. I have no idea if or when I’ll wear the elaborate white beaded dress that hangs in my mother-in-law’s closet. But I wouldn’t trade any part of that day.

You included Webster’s definitions throughout Carry—why? Is there one that’s most memorable to you?

Both my grandmothers were librarians, and my mother reads voraciously. It’s not surprising, then, that I’m interested in language, in our definitions and the origins of words. In America, it seems, we mostly go about our lives unconscious of how words are shaping us. I’m interested in making that unconsciousness shift toward noticing. Once you notice how words are used and sometimes weaponized, it’s difficult to pretend words are words only. I chose Webster’s because the OED seemed too fancy. My favorite of the Webster’s definitions is the one example of a Webster’s failure—when “dissociant” led only to “mutant” and offered no other definition. It still makes me laugh when I think about how mad I was. It was like my beloved Webster’s was gaslighting me.

Which memoirs have stuck with you?

I’ve read and reread Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies, Rick Bass’s Wild to the Heart, Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, and Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave. All hold beautiful, precise language. All are doing something interesting with their structures or forms, as well. None are straight, chronological memoirs. Mostly while writing Carry, though, I read poetry. The books of poems that kept me company and provided inspiration include Jamaal May’s two books Hum and The Big Book of Exit Strategies, Joan Naviyuk Kane’s Milk Black Carbon, David Tomas Martinez’s Hustle, Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things, Joy Harjo’s A Map to the Next World, Erika Meitner’s Holy Moly Carry Me, and Gary Jackson’s Missing You, Metropolis.

Are there any up-and-coming writers or students you’d recommend reading?

In new or soon-to-be-published nonfiction, I recommend Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land, Roberto Lovato’s Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas, Danielle Geller’s Dog Flowers, and Elissa Washuta’s White Magic. For debut fiction, I recommend Kelli Jo Ford’s Crooked Hallelujah, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts, and Sheree Renée Thomas’s Nine Bar Blues.

I love so much to recommend my students’ books and books by graduates of the programs in which I teach, and those recent books include Jamie Figueroa’s Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s All the Gay Saints, John Englehardt’s Bloomland and David Tromblay’s As You Were.