Interview: JT Torres, Author of Taking Flight

In the second of my interviews with authors from this year’s Fairlight Moderns list of literary novellas, I speak to JT Torres. JT is an American author and academic, originally from Florida, who now teaches English at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. His novella, Taking Flight, will be published by Fairlight Books on 8th July.

~

Loree: You’ve got a very impressive CV, with a surprisingly long list of academic publications for one who is still so young! It’s clear you’ve been extremely busy over the past few years. Completing a PhD nearly killed me, but you seem to be thriving in the academic world. As well as your novella Taking Flight, you have four peer reviewed papers coming out this summer. My first question, then, has to be: how do you do it? How do you balance such a full academic life with your creative life? Do your academic research and your teaching responsibilities impinge upon your ability to write fiction, or do they help in some way?

JT:  The PhD nearly killed me, too! My escape was my fiction. When I first began the PhD, I really struggled with the objective, distant authorial voice. Even worse was my conflict with quantitative reasoning. I speak a language of metaphor and subjectivity! Fortunately, I had some amazing mentors who reminded me that science did not have to be a purely mathematical endeavour. Many of my academic publications are either about my arts-based research in Cuba (where we listened to and recorded elder narratives of a mythic social history) or about the ways students use writing to creatively and critically shape their identities. I think about art (fiction) and science (truth) as a Venn diagram, and I try to spend most of my time in the overlapping threshold.

Loree:  I was excited to see another American among the four authors published in this year’s Fairlight Moderns list. And I was even more excited to learn that you did your PhD in Educational Psychology at Washington State University, which is about 30 miles from where I grew up. I would guess the Palouse and that part of the country is very different from Florida, where you lived as a child. It’s a far dryer climate for a start, and there’s no worry about hurricanes. Landscape and the idea of ‘belonging to’ or being a part of a particular place feature a lot in my writing, and even though I’ve lived in the UK longer than I lived in Idaho, for me that place where I most feel I belong will always be the Pacific Northwest. It’s part of my DNA. Where do you call ‘home’? And by that, I don’t necessarily mean where you live.

JT:  While I will never be able to be called an ‘Alaskan author,’ I became an author in Alaska. I’m too much of a wanderer to ever have a particular place-based label; and yet, my writing is all about place, home, and how those two words can be both synonyms and antonyms. In Colorado, after briefly meeting Jon Krakauer, I read Into theWild for the first time and followed the book like prophecy:

Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man [sic] than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's [sic] living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun [emphasis mine].

Loree:  That’s brilliant. That last line is exactly what I experience when I’m cycle touring—waking up each day in a different world—and always eager to see what’s around the next corner. I never feel more alive than when I'm travelling like that.

JT:  Perhaps I treated the prophecy too literally. In 2013, I moved to Anchorage, where I taught at University of Alaska Anchorage and began work on Taking Flight. I could finally tell my grandmother’s story in Alaska. Place felt like home, something I did not expect. I remember calling my mother and telling her, ‘I’m done moving around. Alaska is it. I’m never leaving.’ But for a wanderer coming from a family of immigrants, home is an always changing place.

Early portions of Taking Flight were published in Cirque and read at the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference. When Jill Flanders Crosby, Professor of Dance at UAA read one of my stories, she invited me to join her team and travel with her to—of all places—Cuba. I wrote about our first trip in a series of blog posts with 49 Writers, beginning what would later become the book, Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance. It became more apparent how stories grow from roots in the soil we call home.

Parts of the book tell stories about Eleggua, an Arará deity who reveals particular paths in life, often in unexpected ways. Jill laughed at how Eleggua revealed this path for me. ‘Had you not been looking for home at the opposite end of the continent,’ she said, ‘You would have never made it to Cuba.’

Despite my sense that place had finally become home, Eleggua was not done revealing new paths. Pursuing a PhD at Washington State University meant leaving Alaska, and it has since been a struggle to return.

Recently, I think of home more along the lines of Gloria Anzaldúa:

Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement—an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of home.’ Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender.

The places we think of as home—Alaska, Cuba, Florida—can be brutal in their insistence otherwise. Place is unforgiving. Place is the soil from which all stories grow. Place will welcome you like kin. Place will say goodbye to you and mean it, even if you aren’t ready to hear it. Place can be home, and it can also be the exact opposite. For now, as a wandering writer, the stories of myself occur in the spaces between homes.

Loree:  Storytelling is an innate part of being human. It’s what we do. In every society in the world, it’s an essential part of the culture, from individual family units where stories are told about parents and grandparents, and where children begin to see the connections between themselves and their family’s past, to the textbooks used to pass on our national ‘story’. The act of connecting the dots and creating narratives permeates everything we do and confirms to us—and others—who we are or who we want to be. I think you and I share an interest in the creation of identities. Could you say a little bit about your interest and how it filters into your writing?

JT: Oh man I love this question. It’s like my dissertation defence! One of my favourite quotes from a scholar from whom I drew for my dissertation comes from Robert Yagelski, who said that writing ‘develops an awareness of myself at that moment.’ Language is not just an expression of who we are, it is an authentic performance of our selves. If I recite the ‘Our Father,’ I am being a Christian. If I use academic jargon, I am being an academic. Every utterance we make, down to the words we choose, come from our cognitive landscape—our beliefs, values, biases, and histories.

Loree: I find all this really exciting. It takes me back to writing my thesis, as well. I didn't go too deeply into the performative aspect of identity, but I did touch on it a time or two. We take on different identities according to where we are and what we are doing. 

I believe your parents/grandparents were born in Cuba. That must have been a big presence in your life while you were growing up. When you first went there, was it what you expected? And how have the ‘idea’ and the reality of Cuba appeared in your writing?

JT:  In many ways, Cuba was what I expected from my grandmother’s stories. She spoke of spirits and community, and those are the things I found.

There were also family members who did not want me traveling to Cuba. Some members of my family are so anti-Castro that returning to Cuba is betrayal. They told me dystopic stories about how Cubans suffer in the streets because of the so-called evils of communism, but Cuba, of course, is far more complicated. Yes, it is hard for Cubans to consistently get food from markets, but much of that has to do with the U.S.’s embargoes and Cuba’s historic economic dependence on Russia. Many rural communities in Cuba are almost food sovereign because they maintain their own chickens, lambs, and gardens.

Loree: I would love to go to Cuba, and see it before it changes. One day, I expect, it will have a McDonalds on every street corner, and be like everywhere else in the world. I'd like to see it before that happens.

Am I right in saying that Taking Flight grew out of a short story? Can you tell me a little bit about the novella’s development?

JT:  Taking Flight grew out of my MFA thesis. It was initially a sprawling multi-generational saga about Cuban immigration, but there wasn’t really a ‘story’ to it. It felt more documentarian with weird magical realist elements. Once I realised the real ‘story’ was this perplexing relationship between grandmother and grandson, I removed everything else and homed in on that relationship. As a novella, Taking Flight was originally going to be published by VP&D House, a small press out of Anchorage. During the copyediting process, my editor, strangely, moved to Cuba suddenly. She decided she would live in Cuba and cancelled all projects. At least I had a much cleaner, copyedited manuscript for Fairlight Moderns ready to go!

Loree: Fairlight Books specifically publish ‘literary fiction,’ but a lot of people seem to have trouble defining that term. How would you define it?

JT:  Great question! I’m not a fan of any kind of high/low culture division in art. Often, ‘literary’ is thought of as a genre synonymous with ‘drama,’ which excludes sci-fi, comedy, fantasy, young adult, and graphic (all genres that I adore). In my mind, ‘literary’ is a designation of quality, signifying the use of complex characters, emotionally challenging stories, and socially critical themes. For instance, Pixar (who we might think produces movies for children and is therefore not literary) meets each of these criteria.

Loree: You and I have both done MFAs/MAs in Creative Writing. In the UK, there’s a recurring debate about the value of Creative Writing degrees (and arts degrees, in general) and many universities are cutting back on these programmes in favour of the STEM subjects and degrees that lead to a ‘proper job’. How important do you see your MFA in your development as a writer, and what could you say, more generally, to defend the existence of these degrees?

JT: The MFA was absolutely critical for me, not just in my development as a writer, but also in my development as a scientist, believe it or not! The MFA provided me with my first teaching experience. I fell in love with teaching Creative Writing (and writing in general). Following the MFA, I began teaching basic writing in Colorado and in Alaska. I borrowed heavily from my MFA experience, creating a playful environment that encouraged risk-taking and storytelling. I was amazed at how fast students learned how to write complex sentences and paragraphs by thinking less about formula and more about the storytellers they were becoming. From these experiences, I began to foster interest in researching this anecdotal experience of storytelling being a powerful way to learn literacy, something we see everywhere from indigenous education to video games. I would not have a ‘proper job’ without the MFA to inspire my identity as an artist and as a scholar.

Loree: I loved studying for my MA (much more so than for my PhD). I had some excellent tutors who were very encouraging, and who allowed me to experiment with my writing. They introduced me to writers and to ideas that I probably never would have encountered on my own. Plus, it engaged me with a group of highly talented people who continue to be a great source of inspiration and support. As a writer, what were some of the key things your MFA gave you?

JT: My MFA explicitly trained us in the teaching of writing as well as the theoretical foundations of writing. There were very critical expectations that really formed the bedrock of my curiosity. Thus, students graduate my programme (which was at Georgia College & State University, home of Flannery O’Connor) ready-trained to teach, research, or write.

Loree: I’ve recently started a heated debate in an online writing community about the merits of traditional publishing. It’s always been my goal to publish with a traditional publisher such as Fairlight Books because I know they have expertise in developing a book and in marketing it once it’s been published. Has this been important for you as well?

JT:  Absolutely! It’s the ultimate validation! A professional read my story and wants to invest in it? Yes, please!

Loree:  Who are your literary heroes—the writers who have inspired you, or taught you something about the craft of writing?

JT:  GloriaAnzaldúa, Daniel Quinn, and June Jordan. The three of them taught me the responsibility of storytelling. It isn’t enough to just craft an expert story. The story must mean something. If a story does not critique injustice or imagine a more just world, the best we could have is well-written propaganda. When I read Anzaldúa, Quinn, or Jordan, I’m not only elated by the beautiful use of language, I’m also inspired to change the world.

Loree:  Many writers say they ‘have to write,’ and this remains true even when there is only a slim chance for ‘literary acclaim’ or financial reward. Why do you write, JT? What are the things you wish to achieve (or indeed do achieve) by writing?

JT:  Many writers self-glorify when they say they ‘have to write.’ Sometimes, it is also a curse. I often fantasise about what life would be like had I majored in engineering or business, making $70k upon graduation. But I had to write, and that need (which was not always the same as desire) took me down a path of poverty. That said, it’s totally worth it.

Loree:  Do you think there are any essential qualities that a person needs to be a writer?

JT:  I’m a pretty anti-essentialist person, so not really. However, if I had to pick one, I’d say determination. Writing is such a lifelong process. Not only is one trying to master the craft of language, but one is also trying to understand the universe on a deep enough level to make sense out of it into a story, poem, or song. Experience also plays a big role. So maybe an ‘essential’ quality would be a determined and experimental person.

Loree:  Do you have any advice of your own that you’d like to pass on to aspiring writers?

JT:  Try everything at least once and never give up.

Loree:  And finally, a question I’m asking everyone: do you ride a bike?

JT:  Yes! I love bike riding. I also happen to need a bike, which have been quite hard to come by since the pandemic. If anyone wants to send a bike to Connecticut, I’d be grateful!

~

To read more about JT Torres and his novella Taking Flight, visit his page at Fairlight Books.

Taking Flight can be pre-ordered, now, at your local bookshop or from the online retailer of your choice.

 

 

 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gathering historical research on William Clark's Nez Perce son

A Discussion of Sherman Alexie's novel, Indian Killer

Quotes from Chief Joseph