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Episode 35—Sybil Baker on Discovery and the Art of Being Different
132 Plays8 years ago
Sybil Baker talks about her book Immigration Essays, published by C&R Press.
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Transcript
Podcast Milestone
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh man, we are breaking records here at the hashtag CNFHQ. Four weeks in a row of a new episode of the podcast. Now granted, I did start this podcast back in 2013, so we're coming up on four full years of it being available to the public and quote-unquote only 35 episodes.
00:00:24
Speaker
but it's still a big step in the consistency of the product. And this year, it's something I'm real excited about, something I'm really leaning into.
Mission to Promote Creative Nonfiction
00:00:37
Speaker
And I'm just trying to focus on maybe this one thing, promoting great writers, promoting great creators of nonfiction, whether that be filmmakers or baseball coaches, anyone who has their finger on some sort of pulse of nonfiction, creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, that grants you a stamp of the passport into hashtag CNFHQ.
00:01:07
Speaker
And we get to talk shop, which is always a lot of fun.
Spotlight on Sybil Baker's 'Immigration Essays'
00:01:10
Speaker
And this week, episode 35, Sybil Baker. She's the author of immigration essays by CNR Press. It's too bad immigration isn't a very topical subject right now. It's just bad timing for Sybil.
00:01:28
Speaker
But in all seriousness, it's a wonderful collection of essays. A kick-ass book cover. So when you buy the book, I mean read it of course, but come on, let's buy it. Let's support our writers, support authors. It is just a great collection of work from a unique voice. And I think you'll find that when you listen to episode 35 with Sybil Baker.
00:01:53
Speaker
One last thing of housekeeping. If you think this episode will resonate with somebody, share it. Encourage people to subscribe so we can keep this thing going so it doesn't feel like I'm just shouting out into the void. Though the void can be a good friend sometimes. Alright, enough weirdness. Episode 35, Sybil Baker. Hit it!
00:02:21
Speaker
That's correct. You sound great. Fantastic. Well, that's very, very kind of you. I finished up the essays, and before we get granular on that, I kind of wanted to get a sense of where do you turn to for inspiration?
Inspiration Behind Baker's Work
00:02:45
Speaker
for fiction or non-fiction would you say? Let's start with non-fiction. Okay, well actually it's probably both the same actually so I'll backtrack and say it's for both which is it seems you know each project that I've worked on is different but definitely Place has had a
00:03:07
Speaker
has definitely defined most of my writing in some way. So before this nonfiction book, I had three novels or novel and stories out and those all take place in Asia because I lived in South Korea for 12 years and traveled around there. And so because that was the area I lived in, it wasn't me trying to write about something exotic, it was just where I lived.
00:03:34
Speaker
Um, but it was a place I wanted to get to know better. And then with this, uh, immigration essays, and then I also have a novel coming out with CNR, which is finished, but we're just waiting. Um, you know, obviously we don't want to release them at the same time. And that novels also takes place in Chattanooga and deals with some of the same themes as in the nonfiction. And I think that that I didn't start writing about Chattanooga until about five or six years after I'd lived here.
00:04:04
Speaker
And it takes a little while for me to get that distance to write about a place. But I think that is definitely one of the things that kind of gets my inspiration. And then beyond that, sometimes like with my last novel that came out, it was a painting in a museum. And I started asking questions about the painting. There was two girls in there.
00:04:34
Speaker
And I just wanted to find out who they were, and that was how that novel started. That's interesting, because a lot of good magazine journalism sometimes comes out of that very question. Specifically thinking of one of my heroes, John McPhee, and one of my favorite books that he wrote was Oranges. I don't know if you've read that or heard of it.
00:04:59
Speaker
But I'll definitely check it out. Yeah, it's a short little book, maybe 120 pages or so, give or take. And it's just about oranges and how the science of orange juice and the way the fruit had proliferated through history and how it's traveled around the world.
00:05:16
Speaker
So it's kind of like you like seeing this painting and asking questions and then getting, going real deep into it. And there's ways you can do that with through imagination and research and other times just pure factual research. But it's always interesting to see what, where, where are those little kernels and like how you go about popping them is a, is pretty, is pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. And I think, I think most writers, um,
00:05:43
Speaker
would agree that, you know, for me, at least writing is an act of discovery. So, you know, we're asking questions and we're trying to discover something, hopefully, and in whatever way that is. And so, as you said, this thing about the oranges or the book, the oranges is a great example of that.
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That active discovery is really the magnet that really draws us to the page in so many ways.
Baker's Journey to Becoming a Writer
00:06:17
Speaker
And I wonder, at what point did you decide you wanted to take on writing as a vocation? And how did you go about cultivating that? That's a great question. I've been writing
00:06:33
Speaker
Like a lot of people, I'm somebody who started writing almost as soon as I started reading, which was in first grade. And probably my, actually my happiest moment as a writer was in first grade where our first grade teacher, she would give us paper and we would write little stories and draw pictures with them.
00:06:56
Speaker
And then she would go home and this was back in the days of the typewriter and she would then type them up and then we would they would put them in a bound. We each had our own book and she would type them up and then you draw the pictures again and then that would go in our library in first grade. And I was very competitive back then and I wanted to have the most stories.
00:07:17
Speaker
And so I would go and kind of check who had more stories than me. And sad to say, I even plagiarized a story from one of my classmates because I enjoyed her so much. But there was just something. Ever since then, I've always enjoyed writing. And I don't think it was really late in life that I actually thought about maybe being a teacher and being able to teach creative writing.
00:07:47
Speaker
I think mostly I came to it as I'm going to do something. There'll be a day job and then I'll get my writing in and I don't know what will ever happen to it, but it was just something that I always enjoyed. When you first started out, how did you define success, say, when you were in your 20s and how did that evolve to the current day?
Redefining Success
00:08:12
Speaker
I think that's another that's a great question and I think in my 20s I don't think I thought about success I was I was writing but I wasn't getting a lot published and of course this was
00:08:30
Speaker
I didn't really know a lot about how to send stuff out and get it back. This was before, again, the internet where it's much easier to go online if you can go to submitable and find places to send stuff out. I think at that point I was just trying to learn how to express myself and be a writer.
00:08:52
Speaker
And then when I moved to Korea, I started sending stuff out again, or I would work on things. But again, I felt very disconnected from any kind of writing or literary scene over there. I didn't know a lot of other writers. And it was really hard to send stuff out because back then you had to have the self-addressed envelope, which meant I had to get US stamps. But I was in Korea, so it was very complicated and expensive.
00:09:20
Speaker
So I think that kind of forced me to not put an emphasis on kind of outward success as far as publication or anything like that, but more about just trying to work on projects and see where that would take me. And it wasn't until my late 30s, which I do talk and mention in the immigration essays, when I went through a divorce that I decided to really
00:09:49
Speaker
think more as you're saying about like, okay, I need to get a little bit. I mean, I'm enjoying writing, but what's, I may need to see if I can even get anything published. So I was living in Korea at the time, but I did go to, there was a Prague summer seminar, and that was the first time I was around other writers that I could see, well, I learned a lot from them. Do you think I, am I good enough to be able to think I can get into an MFA program?
00:10:18
Speaker
So that was when I got a little bit more serious as far as the outward part of writing, which trying to get published and forming some literary communities. So that came later in life. But after that, when I started getting my MFA, that was when I started getting more serious about trying to get stuff published and thinking about that.
00:10:43
Speaker
What was a strong moment of validation for you that allowed you to give yourself permission to keep going, to seek out those more public venues of publication?
Validation and Literary Role Models
00:11:03
Speaker
I think in some ways, I mean, I was always kind of writing in a place of despair, but in the sense that
00:11:13
Speaker
Like, you know, not seeing that my writing would ever really get me anywhere, but still wanting to do it. So, um, so I think my bar was set so low that that was actually kind of helpful. I think, you know, and as I said, things have changed so much. You know, if, if I were living in Korea now with the internet, I think, you know, it'd be so easy for me to join, uh, writing groups and get feedback and submit my work. So it would be much harder to.
00:11:42
Speaker
be removed in the way that I was for better and for worse. I started sending some stories out and I got them published in some small literary magazines and I applied to get into the low residency MFA program. I think getting into the program and getting a few stories published then
00:12:05
Speaker
was enough to say, OK, I still wasn't even thinking in terms of getting a book published. But at least that here I have a path, and here's a way for me to get more serious. And so I think that was definitely a big moment for me. And then I think, obviously, all of my stuff has been published by small presses.
00:12:35
Speaker
when there's a publisher actually wants to publish your work, that's always a validating moment as well.
00:12:46
Speaker
uh... a quote from tony robins that uh... said something like success leaves clues which i kind of like in a and i wonder like who have you tried to model your writing life after he's looking at those people your predecessors sources of inspiration who have maybe left little crumbs in the forest of publication and i wonder who you made a might look to as a
00:13:13
Speaker
source of inspiration in that sense to sort of keep perpetuating what it is you do?
Evolving Influences
00:13:20
Speaker
Well, I think people that I've read that I really have admired would be, for example, Virginia Woolf. She's just such an amazing writer and obviously I wouldn't want to necessarily imitate her
00:13:38
Speaker
her life in the sense of that she battled depression and committed suicide, but her engagement in fiction and nonfiction and her also writing in the face of a lot of despair. She's a great role model. And then I have a lot of, another one that I, in my 20s, I really love Simone de Beauvoir.
00:14:07
Speaker
So I think when you're, you know, some of the role models I was looking for were women writers who were maybe engaged in life in, um, not in traditional ways. These were, um, I'm, I'm married, but I don't have kids. And that was by choice. And, uh, some other writers who have lived that way and seemed happy about it, and then looking at their work and how they're engaging the world in a lot of different ways. And, um, writers that are alive have a lot of
00:14:36
Speaker
of people who are inspiration to me, and again, just from women writers, there's certain lots of male writers as well, but one of my mentors at Vermont College is a writer named Xu Xi, and she lives in, she's an American citizen, but she grew up in Hong Kong. And I used to teach in an MFA, low residency program in Hong Kong, and she was the director of that, and she was
00:15:07
Speaker
She was one of my mentors at Vermont College and I still consider her a mentor. She's a little bit older than me and has just written, she's been a prolific writer and writes in fiction and nonfiction and is also really interested in kind of the transnational novels. She's traveled a lot and so a lot of her interests have intersected with mine and I've really admired the way she's kind of lived her life
00:15:35
Speaker
straddling some different continents and also being a great teacher and a great inspiration to people. Do you find that writers that you admired say in your twenties and early thirties are still people you turn to or have your tastes changed over your career and as you've focused more on your writing fiction, nonfiction otherwise?
00:16:03
Speaker
Um, I think I'm not like, for example, Samantha before, I haven't gone back to read her. So who knows? Maybe there's, you know, maybe if I reread her now, it wouldn't have the same resonance as it did for me when I, when I needed someone who was.
00:16:20
Speaker
You know, when I read her in my 20s, I had not traveled anywhere. I pretty much spent most of my life in Virginia and that she just had this kind of, to me, it was a very kind of exciting life and this life of the, you know, the life of the mind. But now if I went back to her work, it would be interesting to see what I think. And you know, that's okay. You know, different writers are different things to us at different times. I mean, when I was in my probably early 20s, I loved Hemingway.
00:16:50
Speaker
And not, and I've gone back and reread him and I can still enjoy him, but not in the way that I did at that time period. And certainly some writers, I think that I would, if I tried to read them in my twenties, I would not have enjoyed them. Like Jane Austen, for example, I avoided Jane Austen for a long time. I just thought there's no way I'm going to be interested in her. And only maybe about 10 years ago did I start reading her and just loved her.
00:17:19
Speaker
So sometimes it just depends on what you need at the time or what you can appreciate. And so a lot of the writers that I read in my 20s, I think I still love, but I don't necessarily go back to them. Flannery O'Connor is another writer that was a big influence on me because my family is Southern and Faulkner.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so I think when I go back to them, I appreciate them for other things now than I appreciated maybe when I first read them. I think when I first were reading them, it was more of the content and the feeling and what they were writing about where now I'm looking more at how did they structure this? How is this working on the sentence level? Those kinds of things.
00:18:05
Speaker
Now something you said when you were in first grade, when you were writing those stories, you said that was kind of one of your happiest moments as a writer.
Joy and Competitiveness in Writing
00:18:15
Speaker
What I love about that is there's that innocence there of just going, just writing something, creating something from whole cloth and just really having fun with it. And I wonder if
00:18:32
Speaker
even to this day, if all the work you do is an attempt to get back to that moment when you were six or seven years old? Not consciously, but maybe. And I should say, you know, I definitely enjoy writing now, and there is a joy in it. And it's just, I guess, you know, you're just as you're pointing out, there's a bit more of a
00:18:57
Speaker
you know, there's a lot more in your mind when you're writing now. And I did find my mom kept those stories and I went back to look at them. And some of them were these kind of like, what, like my big story that I wrote in first grade was 10 pages. So that to me was just, I was, you know, that was it. And it was called the talking flower. Um, there was like two flowers and one of them was talking. But when you look at the story, they're both talking. So,
00:19:24
Speaker
It's like that kind of logic for the six-year-old, but it was this kind of surreal story, which as you're saying, you're just writing stories when you're that age and you're not thinking about how they might fit in any kind of form. So I think that would be, there is something that would be really cool or is cool if you can approach the page with just a sense of playfulness. And on the other hand, in some ways in first grade was probably
00:19:55
Speaker
when I was my most overtly competitive as well and ruthless because I did want to have the most stories and I would, you know, I would plagiarize and I would, you know, my parents' stories, my parents read to me at night. I would just take any material I could just to beef up my collection.
00:20:14
Speaker
And so, in some ways, I don't feel that ruthless anymore. So it's an interesting combination, though, that there was a joy and there was kind of a joy in that competitiveness, where I think now the competitiveness, to me, feels kind of fraught and I try to avoid being overtly competitive with other people. To me, that seems to maybe sour the writing, where
00:20:39
Speaker
I think in first grade that was part of, that was what helped my productivity in some ways.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing that you wrote a 10-page story. If you scale that, a 10-page story written by a seven-year-old has to be something like a 1,500-page story written now. Well, I should say by 10 pages, it was like a sentence or two and then illustration. So it wasn't like 10 pages. And I did continue writing after that. Oh, I do have a, after that, I wrote a story that was like a 10-page notebook line story of our
00:21:16
Speaker
a story of our dog and that was around a fourth grade. And then in sixth grade, I remember writing a story that I, that I think there was a lot of positive reinforcement from my education at that age for those kinds of things. This was like the seventies and we could, me and my best friend would write plays as well. And we were allowed to just go and knock on doors for different classrooms and just perform our plays.
00:21:44
Speaker
So I think there was, and I don't know if you could maybe do that in today's school system, but there was that sense of kind of freedom in the 70s where they were just letting, at least where at the schools I went to was just kind of like, well, yeah, if you want to ride a play for this hour, go ahead and do that and go ahead and walk across the hall and they'll watch you do it and that kind of thing.
00:22:11
Speaker
So there was that playfulness, and as you're saying, it's cool if you can bring some of that playfulness back when you're older. Paul Lesicki, who was on the podcast a couple episodes ago, he talked a lot about maintaining a sense of play. And I think I've even heard some interviews or read interviews with David Foster Wallace, too, where it's easy to
00:22:40
Speaker
take yourself too seriously. He's like, by writing fiction, and even if you get a sense of his non-fiction, it's really fun, especially on his non-fiction when he gets it. To me, he resonates with me a lot. His sense of humor is kind of ... I just love him to pieces.
00:23:04
Speaker
The playfulness is integral to what you're doing because ultimately what you're trying to do is you need to entertain readers on some level. Maintaining that sense of play and fun is really important.
Playfulness in Writing
00:23:22
Speaker
In some sense you want to please yourself artistically, but you also need to keep in mind that there's someone on the receiving end of that art.
00:23:32
Speaker
I think in some levels you do want to keep them in mind and keep them entertained and invaded. And if they sense that you're having fun, it becomes a good experience for them. Sure. I think that's a really good point. And I think that, um, or I'd like to believe that the reader can tell if you're enjoying the piece that you're, if you're, if you're emotionally engaged with the piece and that means either, you know, through play or this questioning or discovery.
00:23:58
Speaker
And if you're not, if you're just slogging through, I think that that, you know, that eventually, as technically good as it may seem, I think the readers can sense that. And, you know, the piece isn't as alive as it was. And there's, I just saw on Facebook, Michael Martone, who writes a lot of fiction and nonfiction, wrote something. He says, you know, I'm less interested in getting better or worse, but more about just being different.
00:24:27
Speaker
with my writing. And I thought that was a useful thing to ponder that instead of just saying, oh, well, my next work has to be better than the last one, or, oh, gee, am I slipping? Is it not as good? It's like, well, let me just think more horizontally. Let me just do a move here and try something different. And it's not necessarily better or worse. And so I thought that was an interesting thing to think about, too.
00:24:54
Speaker
Writers can be notoriously self-destructive in some instances. I wonder, how do you deal with self-destructive patterns in your own writing and ensuring that the work gets done?
Managing Distractions and Balance
00:25:17
Speaker
And maybe this is a bit of a stereotype too. Maybe in the 20s when you're younger, the self-destruction can be more in terms of just partying too much and not spending enough time on the work. But as you get older, and nowadays it seems like it's just how do you stay off social media?
00:25:39
Speaker
you know, for example, and how do you make sure that you're not being distracted by, you know, six different things. And it's hard because it, as a, you're often expected to be on social media a little bit, even if you, you know, even if you're not, that you have a big, I don't have a big following or anything, but there's just an expectation that writers should be engaged. And I've learned so much
00:26:06
Speaker
from social media, like I get pointed to articles I wouldn't have found out about, writers I wouldn't know about, so there's something great about it. But I think that in that sense what self-destructive is trying to make sure you have time for the silence to have that space to work on something that you can give your attention to. And I think for anybody, most people have jobs
00:26:36
Speaker
and in or outside of academia, or if not, they're often at home taking care of kids. And so I think the self-destruction is, it's easy to allow the writing to get lost and become a lower priority than it should be. So how do you manage that? How do you keep the train on the tracks?
00:27:05
Speaker
That's a great question. For me, I'm very lucky that I teach in academia so that I don't have a nine to five job. Certainly, the amount of time it takes is about the same, but I have a little bit more flexibility in how I might move the hours around.
00:27:33
Speaker
I think a lot of it is if I'm working on a project. And so if I have a project that I'm in the middle of, I think of it in terms of I have goals, but not necessarily a daily writing goal, but more of like, OK, by the end of this month, I want to have these many chapters written. And I also, during winter break and in the summer, that's like, OK, this is my writing time.
00:28:03
Speaker
And I'm really just going to focus on that. And so the other stuff goes by the wayside, where when I'm teaching, I have to make sure that that gets done. And that requires a lot of reading and grading. So I've learned to kind of be accepting in that I'm not going to have, I'm not going to be a thousand words every day. There's certain times in the semester where I'm just going to be giving myself over to grading a lot of papers.
00:28:30
Speaker
But that within that semester, I have certain goals that I need to have met. And so that tends to work for me, especially if I'm working on a project, then I'm interested in it. So that helps also when you want to get back to something. Given that you have those little, that you're able to give yourself little rungs on the ladder, so to speak,
Productive Morning Routines
00:29:00
Speaker
What do you have or adopt a kind of morning routine? Every day do you have a certain schedule, that first 60 to 90 minutes of your day? What does that look like if you have anything that is more or less set in stone yet sort of fluid? Yeah. I've been reading a lot of books about habits of artists that
00:29:26
Speaker
A lot of them tend to be morning people. So are you a morning person? Is that your routine? Yeah, I'm definitively and unapologetically a morning person. My brain shuts off around dinnertime. There's no way I can get anything resembling construction done in the evening. I've tried. It does not happen. But that's great that you know that.
00:29:54
Speaker
I've often recommended like I'm teaching a novel writing class this semester and you know and that is in that class they do have to get a certain number of words done every week the you know the shitty first draft and I you know if they're trying to figure out how to manage that time I'll if they don't have if they don't some some of my students say they know that they're night people I'm like okay if you know that and that's working for you but if you're not sure do the morning thing
00:30:22
Speaker
And I think it's a default for people who are trying to find a time to write that morning, by nighttime, as you point out, either their brain's done or just other things happen. So to get back to me, ideally what I do is I'll get up at six and I have a friend that comes over and we do a quick, we do like a 30-minute workout and then I,
00:30:52
Speaker
These days I've been reading the paper with my husband and then I'll get to the writing. And if I'm in a project that I know that I need, you know, either like I'm really into it or I can, you know, I have a lot of momentum, then I'll just get up and I don't do that workout every day. I'll get up and not do the paper and the coffee and that kind of thing.
00:31:20
Speaker
then I'll just go and get the writing done. But as you said, I think for me as well, especially any time before noon, but getting up at six seems to be the best for me. And it's just getting up out of bed then. Once I can get up, then I'm good. Yeah, there's something to be said.
00:31:42
Speaker
It just kind of echoes the competitive nature that you had when you were a child. Getting up early, specifically six and earlier, it just gives you this sense that you're
00:31:56
Speaker
you're getting sort of a leg up on the competition. Even though it's an unwinnable war, it's at least, in your mind, at least it's something like, okay, I'm getting work done while maybe someone else is still sleeping. And it just gives you kind of that mental edge that you're capable of doing something that most other people can't. Sure. And there's a great feeling when you do that by 10 o'clock or so, you're like, wow, I've done maybe more writing
00:32:26
Speaker
at 10 a.m. in the morning and most people haven't even started. It gives you a little bit more freedom for later at the day to do things. Even if the competitor, as you're pointing out, is just your other self, the self who would be sleeping in. Even if you want to think of it that way, if I'm not at the six, the other me who's hit the snooze alarm is not doing the writing.
00:32:49
Speaker
So I've got a, you know, you have multiple, I think, you know, versions of yourself in a way. And so, yeah, I think that's a great way to be. I think that's wonderful that you are consistently, it sounds like you're consistently getting up and being a morning person.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, I like to get up, I take care of the dogs, meditate, journal a few pages, and I get the coffee going. So it's kind of a slow burn to start getting up. But I kind of like, I call it like a more, because I do most of my work from home, I call it more, I don't have really a physical commute, I call it a mental commute. So in that sense, I'm like taking my brain from
00:33:37
Speaker
from the bed to a place of work but it takes a little bit of time and I sort of relish and swim in that moment for an hour to 90 minutes and it works for me. The one thing you just said you did that I keep wanting to incorporate more is when I get up is do some sort of meditation. I admire you for having incorporating that into your
00:34:03
Speaker
Routine I work I use the the headspace app use that one, too So I've been using it for go I was using it for going to sleep But I do have that app and so I and it's just a matter of just getting my act together and playing in the morning Yeah, yeah, I did the the take 10 for a while I just did that on a loop for maybe a month and a half because I was I was a little bit gun-shy to buy into a subscription and
00:34:29
Speaker
And I was like, all right, if you can do this for 30 or 40 days in a row on a loop, then you've proven to yourself that you can spend the $100 for the year. And that unlocks the whole library, which is pretty cool.
00:34:48
Speaker
So I like it. It's one of those things where if I get up and I walk the dogs for half an hour to 45 minutes or an hour and I come back on my walk, I'm actually looking forward to getting to that meditation just to sort of like defrag the computer before I go. So it's one of those things that once you start making it a habit, you kind of get addicted to it. I mean, I still have like a monkey brain that's all over the place, but it definitely
00:35:17
Speaker
It definitely helps and I definitely recommend it. Yeah. So that's great that you have that app and have access to that tool because I think it's very valuable once you really lean into it. I did use it a lot. So I should backtrack and say a couple years ago, again, this is one of the benefits of academia is that I was able to take a year sabbatical a couple of years ago.
00:35:43
Speaker
And, um, it was on like half my salary, but I was determined to be gone for a year. And my, um, which I guess is that mentioned essay collection, my brother, my sister-in-law is Turkish and they live in Turkey and they were able to, um, help me get a visiting professor position first semester in Cyprus.
00:36:06
Speaker
And so that was the time where I would use Headspace every day and that was the time when, because I didn't have all the responsibilities that I had here in Chattanooga. Now that kind of routine was I would get up and it was this great feeling though of not having, the day was mine. And so the day felt very long but in a good way. I could get up, I could have my coffee, I could listen to my meditation and then I could just spend the day
00:36:35
Speaker
walking, working on my writing. And so during that time I was very productive and got a lot done. And I was doing the meditation that had space every morning then. So that was cool.
00:36:53
Speaker
How much time of the writing process do you give to just thinking about what it is you're writing
Mental Composition in Writing
00:37:00
Speaker
about? Not necessarily being down and button the chair in front of the computer or right in front of a notebook, but just stewing over it and just putting pieces together, just meditating on an idea. To what extent or what fraction of your writing process is devoted to just the thinking?
00:37:20
Speaker
I think a lot and I suspect, I think that most, I'm sure you're the same way, most writers, it's just in the back of the head, especially if you're having problems or trying to work something out or ideas, even if it's like what's the next thing I'm going to write. So I think there's a lot, for me at least a lot of thinking or composition goes into my head, goes in my head before I sit down and write.
00:37:49
Speaker
So it looks like when I sit down, it's like I can write, I usually don't have that so-called writer's block in that sense. But that's because I've been thinking about it a lot beforehand. And yeah, I think a lot of, I suspect a lot of writers are that way, unless they, or maybe they're, you know, journaling, and maybe that's the way they think through things.
00:38:10
Speaker
Do you carry a notebook around with you all the time in case you get that little spark and you don't want to forget it? Sometimes I do, but then I always lose the notebook. So I'll find something and I've got six random notes on it from when I had it. And I know people that do it. I've always admired that. And I think that's pretty cool. And I try to write stuff down.
00:38:40
Speaker
either in a little notebook or my phone, but I don't do it enough. And I guess I'm more of an impressionistic writer, so the things that I write about are things that have tended to stay with me for a long time. And those are, again, I think it was Patricia Henley, she's a writer who was one of my teachers at Vermont College.
00:39:07
Speaker
She always said, think about writing about your obsessions. Obsessions may be too strong of a word, but where is your energy taking you for that day? I have my students do this sometimes to write a list of what's on your mind right now. It could be something just like, I'm really craving some ice cream.
00:39:28
Speaker
to my father's death five years ago. And writing those down and thinking about where are your obsessions or your energy I think can really help you figure out what to write about. And in that sense, the note taking is nice in the sense that I think it allows people to have a lot of details and to write those descriptions that you're gonna forget. But I think even more important is what is,
00:39:58
Speaker
What is the thing that you're going to remember even if you don't write it down? So as you, you're someone who's logged an incredible amount of frequent flyer miles, no doubt.
Cultural Insights from Travel
00:40:12
Speaker
I wonder what might be one of your most memorable experiences overseas? I think so.
00:40:24
Speaker
Um, I didn't, I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, you know, my family, we, we, we did take vacations, but my dad had two weeks vacation. Um, we went in a camper cause we couldn't afford to fly and, and, you know, stay in hotels. And that was fun. You know, you still get the idea of that you're moving and you're going somewhere and you're seeing new things. And I really didn't start traveling a lot until I was a 30, which was when I moved abroad to Korea. And so it wasn't, um,
00:40:52
Speaker
I wasn't from this big jet setter family or anything. And so because of that, I would say my travels in my 30s was when I was really first traveling a lot in two places that were very different. Certainly going to Cambodia, and I think I was there in 97, had a huge impact on me seeing Angkor Wat, this array of these amazing temples, but also seeing
00:41:20
Speaker
the legacies of the Khmer Rouge, which had been maybe about not quite 20 years earlier. And yeah, I think just seeing, there was something very haunting about that place for me that has stayed with me.
00:41:37
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, the other ones that, uh, that have a big impact on me are places where, uh, where I know people. So, um, you know, Turkey, I've been there many times. So because of that, I've gotten to see it in different layers and I get to go and see places that I might not, if I were just traveling. And since my sister-in-law is, you know, she's Turkish, so that helps with the,
00:42:02
Speaker
a lot of language barriers and her and my brother knowing places to go. So that, I feel like I can see the country a little bit differently. And then my husband is South African, and going to South Africa has been great because again, traveling with them to maybe see some parts that I wouldn't normally have been able to see. So those have been some highlights for me for sure.
00:42:28
Speaker
What do you think most Americans are missing? Most don't travel to the extent, certainly that you have, and even a fraction of that. So what do you think most people are missing by not having even a fraction of the experiences that you've had seeing the world? Well, first of all, I would say that I understand why Americans don't
00:42:58
Speaker
Travel a lot compared so, you know Europeans when they travel it's easy to go to another country in Europe It's like crossing state lines here. Yeah live in Tennessee, you know, I can go to Georgia and then Europe that'd be like going to another country So I think you know, it's it's not really fair to say Oh Americans, they're not traveling like Europeans Well, it's much easier in Europe you hop on a train and an hour later you're somewhere else, right?
00:43:25
Speaker
So that's one thing and also we just have such a woefully inadequate vacation time. And so I can't, if you only have two weeks a year, probably you're going to spend that time on holidays visiting your relatives, those kinds of things, which makes perfect sense.
00:43:45
Speaker
I'm not one of those who looks it down. I do wish that Americans did have more opportunity to travel. And third, it's expensive. So again, if you are living in this economy and you've got children and student loans, it's very hard to justify taking a trip overseas.
Seeing the World Anew
00:44:09
Speaker
So all of that said, I think the main thing that I recommend is
00:44:16
Speaker
You know, Viktor Shklovsky is a Russian formless and he talks about the theory people talk a lot about called defamiliarization. And he talks about the artist's job is to make us see something differently. So, you know, if you're describing a flower, if you help the reader see it differently than we would have seen it before, that is to see the world anew in a sense.
00:44:45
Speaker
Certainly, travel has helped me see things differently. I try to convey some of that in my writing, but that can be done in your town. Here in Chattanooga, downtown, we have two grocery stores. They're on two different sides of the river. They're maybe a mile and a half apart from each other. One store is the Whole Foods.
00:45:15
Speaker
So you can imagine, you walk in there, usually there's some nice new aging music playing. There's a lot of attractive white people walking around. And you can see it's got a cafe where you can sit and watch. And in some ways, it looks like that Whole Foods could be almost anywhere in America. It doesn't look necessarily like you're in Chattanooga. But a mile and a half away from there is a place called Bueller's.
00:45:43
Speaker
And it's got a lot of Southern food there, your pork rinds and your pork belly or whatever you might think to get there, plus your salad, lots of iceberg lettuce and those kinds of things. And it is predominantly an African-American market and people that are on fixed income.
00:46:10
Speaker
So economically, it's a very different place and it's a very different feeling. It's very lively and the types of foods that are sold there. And to think that it's completely different demographic. So right there, you don't have to go far to see your neighborhood differently or your life. And that to me is traveling.
00:46:37
Speaker
So I think sometimes people think, oh, I have to travel to some exotic place or be like Hemingway and live in Paris. And I'd say, no, look in your own city or town and go somewhere that you don't normally go. And that will hopefully help you see where you do go in a different way. So once you've gone to Bueller's, when you go back to Whole Foods, you're going to see Whole Foods differently and vice versa.
00:47:04
Speaker
There's a great nature photographer I know out of Western Massachusetts, kind of where I went to college. And a lot of the photography does just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. But a lot of it is a good chunk of it's right in his backyard. So it's one of those things where he gives you this impression that he's
00:47:27
Speaker
go into these majestic places in these national parks but like so much of it is actually just a beautifully composed flower out of his garden or going down to the club and reservoir which is flooded and you know washed out some towns, small western Massachusetts towns but these these landscapes he's able to expose have this exotic appeal but it's really
00:47:51
Speaker
it's essentially just backyard photography. Like you're saying, it illuminates and opens your eyes to the beauty that's kind of right underneath your nose. You don't have to go to France to have great food and to see great vistas. A lot of times, wow, if you just open up your window, there's exoticism right in your backyard that you probably just didn't notice or you weren't ready to notice.
00:48:20
Speaker
Exactly. And I will add that even though I've just kind of given everyone a pass on not traveling, I think especially, you know, I think it's just harder when you get as you get older, as you know, we accrue more responsibilities. And I've just been the person who chose to live a life that didn't have a lot of those. But I understand a lot of people don't want that or can't do that. But certainly I tell a lot of my college students, you know,
00:48:51
Speaker
If you don't have any plans after you graduate, go to somewhere like Korea for a year. You can pay off your student loans, and you can save money and then travel for six months. And it's easier than you think it is. And so before I travel abroad, I thought it was going to be hard. Like, oh my gosh, how is this going to happen, especially in a place like Asia, where you're like, well, I don't know the language.
00:49:17
Speaker
But I think one of the things I will say for people who want to travel is that it's not as hard as you think it's going to be and it gets easier each time you go. So don't let kind of a fear keep you away from that if you're able to make that happen.
00:49:38
Speaker
So a lot of these themes you're talking about emerge in your immigration essays. And I wonder, what was your inspiration to start compiling these types of stories of outsiders coming in and then insiders looking out to the world?
Evolution of 'Immigration Essays'
00:50:00
Speaker
I think this book, because it's
00:50:04
Speaker
It's a book of essays, and I've been primarily a fiction writer. I have written essays that have been published. Some of them are critical reviews. I've had an essay on actually expatriate literature and the Writers' Chronicle, but I've never thought of myself as a nonfiction writer. I think, as I kind of mentioned in the beginning of the book, this came about through a grant.
00:50:33
Speaker
I had no idea what I was doing and I still feel like definitely a newbie or a beginner in the non-fiction genre, I guess. And I really admire a lot of writers who do it. And so what happened was this really was a long process for me, probably longer than the short book shows because I just had no idea what I was doing.
00:51:01
Speaker
And it started off where basically what happened was I got a grant. So if you get a grant, then you're like, Grant, I got a grant. Oh, wait, now I actually have to do something. And originally the idea that the original grant was supposed to be writing about unheard voices in Chattanooga, which I was very interested in. But I was originally just going to interview people and write their stories, maybe be kind of a ghostwriter.
00:51:28
Speaker
And then that was a bit overwhelming as I started finding out there's lots of people I could interview. So I thought, well, let me start, let me focus on refugees. Um, you know, which I, which I had an interest in because of my travels. And, um, so that was how it started. And I interviewed these refugees and I read their stories and through no fault of their own, cause their stories were fascinating. I just, they felt kind of flat.
00:51:56
Speaker
I just obviously didn't have the skills to tell their stories in a real interesting fashion. And so that forced me to think about how I could tell their stories. I started bringing in more literature and what people were telling me was you need to bring more of yourself, bring some more of yourself in because I was not bringing myself in the essays. And so that's when they became a bit more of the hybrid of a lot of the personal essays in there.
00:52:26
Speaker
So I think the essay started from that. And then in a very early version of the essays, which were not that good and very much rewritten, but the previous editor of this press chat, the pre-post read the essays and he says, well, you know, there's a lot of, maybe you should do some more stuff with Chattanooga in the South. And especially considering you've got this Southern
00:52:56
Speaker
you know, your whole family is Southern. And so that was when I began to explore that aspect. So each one became a different thread, just kept adding on. And then I was on sabbatical. And that was when I was doing the traveling around with the reverse migration route. And those, you know, that the Syrian refugee and that crisis were essays that came out of that. And I, you know, I didn't know that was going to happen.
00:53:22
Speaker
And so it was very much an unplanned evolution of the essays. But it did come back to kind of what I was interested in and me trying to explore and understand maybe how these things might tie together.
00:53:40
Speaker
that in in reading it i i kind of got a sense and correct me if i'm wrong uh... that there is a little bit of uh... a sense of a sense of kill like maybe uh... that you were having certain freedoms that other people just the warrant afforded them you know there was there's an instance where uh... near your travel you're able to cross certain borders but other people can't uh... you're traveling
00:54:07
Speaker
You know just in various places on a certain day and like you footnote it that there is some you know Major attack across the globe and so forth so you kind of get this at least I I got a sense that it was like these are little things that are hanging over your head that while you're getting to experience these things and maybe have
00:54:26
Speaker
certain privileges that aren't afforded to other people that maybe you were kind of riddled with a little bit of that guilt. And I wonder if, you know, if I'm off base, tell me, but I wonder if that's true, how you process that through the writing.
Travel Privileges and Personal Reparations
00:54:39
Speaker
No, I think that's very true. And I don't think that that guilt is a bad thing. Sometimes, I mean, it's just, it's just, you know, to me, and then that is one of the benefits of traveling is being aware of your position in the world.
00:54:56
Speaker
And, um, you know, um, I think the, um, you know, I think the opening that the function of freedom is to free someone else is how is the Toni Morrison quote, I used to start the book. And, and so to me, it's, it's not, you know, if you just feel guilty, that doesn't do a lot, but if you can see that, yeah, um,
00:55:20
Speaker
I've had a lot of great advantages or possibilities, and that's really cool. If you just sit and feel guilty about them, that doesn't help anyone. How can I maybe use this to expand my own outlook on the world and to maybe help other people? This was something that came to me when I was writing, because I had not thought about it a lot, but more toward the end, which is this idea of
00:55:48
Speaker
personal reparations and You know, I tried to keep a lot of the politically Charged words out of the collection because I feel like at this point they don't really Help conversation, you know, like I don't think I use the word like privilege that much in there although I sort of talk about it in a way, but I feel like as soon as you say, you know white privilege and
00:56:14
Speaker
people already have their feelings about that and it shuts down the discussion rather than enhances it. And I know reparations is one of those words. So I try to talk about it more in terms of my personal. For me, doing some sort of personal reparations is good for me. So it's not just about guilt, but this is something that helps me heal, to be a better person,
00:56:45
Speaker
and expands my own way of seeing the world. So, you know, there's no doubt that, you know, I talk about my father, he was, you know, he was, you know, I really admired him a lot and he was a hard worker so it's not to take away anything that, I mean, take away from all the hard work that he went through and, you know, he got, he did get the GI Bill and that was fantastic.
00:57:14
Speaker
but other people were not as lucky. So just thinking about that and being aware of it. It's about being thankful and thinking about your own position in the world and what can you, I guess as a Spiderman would say, with power comes great responsibility. And it's not that I have that much power, but understanding, yeah, I can travel and I can see these things and so what am I gonna do with that?
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah, but anytime anybody can summon comic book lore and wisdom on the podcast gets a big standing ovation from me.
00:57:53
Speaker
There's a great set piece, if you will, in your book about wandering and that theme of wandering across literature.
Wandering in Literature
00:58:02
Speaker
And I wondered, how did you come to that and wanting to stew on that for a while? And how did that sense of wandering really resonate with you and your life? And then when you saw that theme emerge through countless works of literature?
00:58:22
Speaker
And it's something that, you know, I'm still really interested in. I feel like a lot more can be written about it because that is a word people use a lot that has a lot of different meanings. And the way that that came to me, it's one of the few pieces, I think, that came directly from teaching as I do teach Western humanities to freshmen students.
00:58:50
Speaker
We were, that semester we were reading Paradise Lost. We were reading Jane Eyre and Jane Austen. And I think it was when I was researching Paradise Lost that I ran across this thing about Eve and wandering. And I found that so interesting. And then as we were reading the other books that semester, that word just kept popping up and I just started circling it. And that was, and I thought, you know, I want to write something about this at some point.
00:59:18
Speaker
And that was kind of how it started. And then, um, and so then I added some more books and, um, um, that, um, you know, I love the, um, and you know, sheltering sky. And, um, I had just read Nell Zink and I just started, um, seeing, you know, this is, this is something about women and wandering that, that, that to me is going on this literature. And, and how can I, how can I relate that to my own life and what that means?
00:59:46
Speaker
So that was the one essay with definitely with the literary connections. And then the other essay was also a little bit about wandering. And that was, yeah, again, reading about essays and talking about how do we define, I would say maybe wanderers in the sense of expatriates and exiles and what does that mean. And there's wandering of the brain and there's the wandering of the mind and there's the wandering of the body.
01:00:16
Speaker
are the, is it seen in a negative way or a positive way? So it's just something that's very, I find very interesting and that was, yeah, started from this class when I was teaching these texts and noticing, just started noticing these connections there. And when you were writing this book and putting a bow on it, obviously, what's a big takeaway that you're hoping people get out of this book?
Sparking Conversations on Immigration
01:00:44
Speaker
I would just like more people to have conversations about some of the things I'm writing about. So I think even still, especially in this election cycle, it seems like a lot of these topics like refugees, immigration, traveling, race, these just seem to be
01:01:10
Speaker
of things that are people are talking about. And so I don't necessarily want people to come away feeling a certain way or having a certain belief, but more about, oh, wow, I didn't think about this before. Or maybe this is a conversation I'd like to continue or have with someone.
01:01:30
Speaker
Great, and I think that might be a wonderful place to wrap our conversation up on. One last thing, Sybil, where can people find you online to find more about your work and engage with you in this increasingly interconnected world of artists and writers? Well, I'm on Twitter with just my name, Sybil Baker, Facebook, same thing.
01:01:57
Speaker
And then my website is SybilBaker.net. So those are all three places you can find me. Fantastic. Well, the name of the book is Immigration Essays. And well, thank you so much, Sybil, for coming on the podcast. And we'll have to keep in touch down the road, for sure. OK. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you so much. OK. Take care. Bye.