Live In The Mystery
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer, teacher, and former firefighter River Selby
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond.
What are you reading now?
I am currently reading for my preliminary exams, which means I am reading a lot of books at once, including a lot of theorists, like Judith Butler, bell hooks, and Franz Fanon. My areas of study are creative nonfiction and post-20th century literature and culture, with a focus on global literatures, diaspora, queer studies, and Black and Indigenous literature. The books I’ve most recently enjoyed are Linda Hogan’s Dwellings, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (a sprawling, ambitious novel that deserves more attention and close reading), James by Percival Everett, Mama Day by Gloria Naylor (a reread), and Ain’t I a Woman by bell hooks. I also loved Split Tooth, a memoir by Tanya Tagaq, which I listened to on audiobook. She narrates it herself and incorporates her singing into the text. It’s a visceral and beautifully written text.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
Both my mother and grandmother were avid readers, though my mother was always ashamed that she hadn’t graduated high-school, she was very smart. My grandma worked as a night nurse. I lived with her and my grandfather for a couple years when I was a child, and she introduced me to Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, and John Keats, though I gravitated more to Dean Koontz and her true crime books. My mom was a former Scientologist (I was born into the church but we left when I was very young). She always said “children are adults in little bodies.” I was allowed to watch and read whatever I wanted, which, in retrospect, wasn’t great for my development. We were quite transient throughout my childhood so books anchored me to some sort of dream-reality. They kept me going. I loved R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Stephen King, and L.M. Montgomery and often read several books a week. In my tweens and teens, when I wasn’t homeless or doing drugs, I gravitated towards stories about outsiders. I remember reading Junot Diaz’s Drown and feeling particularly seen, although my life was very different from the characters in his stories. I loved The Bell Jar and was obsessed with Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost. To be honest, books probably kept me alive as a child and teenager. I devoured stories of people making it through the worst things, because I wanted to make it through my own worst things and someday become a writer. The Liar’s Club was formative to my development, as was Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I think rereading books is so rewarding and necessary, especially as a writer. There are some books that I first read in community college and didn’t fully understand, like Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Toni Morrisons’s Beloved. Those two have become touchstones for me. The more time I spend writing, the more I can appreciate how an author’s aims unfold for the reader. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve also reread the V.C. Andrews Heaven series. I think there’s a lot to discover in popular fiction— about ourselves and what we do and don’t want to acknowledge in the wider culture. I’d love to reread Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai. Reading that book was transformative. I’m gifted with a terrible memory. If I wait long enough I can almost completely forget a book, so rereading it becomes a process of discovery; unearthing old memories and finding new meanings.
Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking helped me understand my own grief after my mom’s suicide, and Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart got me through the darkest moments.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
I usually wear big sweatshirts and jeans. I wish I could say I was a fashionable person, but I’ve never had much money or enough time to go thrifting and find things that fit me well. A long time ago I had a great shoe collection, but I ended up selling a lot of them. I do have a favorite dress— it’s brown corduroy, with bell sleeves and empire waist. It’s very baggy. I’ve never felt comfortable in form-fitting clothes, though I’ll wear them reluctantly. I got a cheap sewing machine a while ago and want to make some big sack dresses in bright colors. I love color and patterns and look forward to experimenting.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
It’s stressful having a forthcoming book; especially one that took six years to research and write. I was talking to a fellow Syracuse graduate who’s published two books, and he reminded me that publishing a book is its own accomplishment. We have no control beyond that. It’s a mystery. This was super helpful to me. When I start getting stressed about whether or not my book will find readers I remind myself to live in the “mystery” and feel grateful for having gotten this far.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
My cat, Edna, is my soulmate. She’s scared of everything and very timid, but also warm and curious with people she knows. I had a couple heartbreaking experiences with pets when I was younger, so it took me a while to let myself have a pet. But she isn’t mine— I’m just here to take care of her.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
During my undergraduate and MFA program I worked on a novel that I really, really wanted to be published. I spent years querying agents, revising and re-revising. The book was autobiographical, about my mom’s suicide and firefighting and stripping. There were so many “almosts.” It was demoralizing. After I graduated I gave up on the book. I threw it away. Literally. I threw it in the trash. Eventually an agent found me and I wrote the proposal for Hotshot, which is its own book but also comes from the years of hard work I put into the novel. One of my mentors told me that publishing is mysterious (there’s that mystery again), and I believe that. That first book was, in many ways, an emotional and artistic preparation for Hotshot.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
I sing a lot. Not in the shower but just throughout the day. Sometimes I dance. I like walking and lifting weights, and I also practice some somatic techniques to help manage my CPTSD. Whatever gets the energy moving.
What are your hopes for yourself?
Wow, this is quite an emotional question for me right now, because so many of the hopes I held for myself are slowly coming to fruition. I really hope that I can remain present rather than slipping into survival mode, which is my default. On a material level I do hope to be financially stable at some point, but even with that, if I’m not present and open I will never really feel like I have enough, so the material is almost irrelevant past the point of having my basic needs met. Meditation helps a lot with this. As long as I’m meditating on a daily basis, I can usually see things for what they are, rather than living from some past moment of fear and anxiety.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
A few months before I left firefighting I sent out a short story I’d written with a note saying I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d only had a couple semesters of community college. It was my first story, very autobiographical and quite mediocre. An editor not only accepted it but worked with me for several months, basically teaching me how to revise my own work. I know he had to fight to get the story published— he was a poet and the fiction editor didn’t think the story was good enough. But it got published, and that meant everything to me. I asked the editor whether I should apply to MFA programs, and he suggested I finish my BA. I applied to Syracuse (partially because they didn’t require SAT scores) and was admitted with funding. His name was Mark Halliday, and he did in fact change my life’s trajectory with his kindness and generosity.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
Forgiveness (for myself and others) and honesty.
If you enjoyed River’s questionnaire, you may also enjoy this one with
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So much of your essay resonates, River, but this is the one that stays: "books probably kept me alive as a child and teenager." I too had a fraught childhood, and encountered bullies particularly in middle school. One day at fifteen I set off drinking, overdosed on drugs, and arranged my body for my parents to find. They hauled me from the psych ward where I detoxed in restraints to our remote rural cabin, and I rediscovered "Portrait fo the Artist as a Young Man" (could a girl be an artist? The teachers and other kids told me no!) and then Ulysses. I threw myself once again into books and journals, which I devoured and which saved me in grade school. To this day, my weekly delivery on the Bookmobile that serves this remote area is my drug of choice.
such a tender interview. thank you for sharing your story River and the reminder to be open to the mystery. and Edna is a beauty!