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Episode 272: The Arc of a Goal with Shanna B. Tiayon
168 Plays3 years ago
Shanna B. Tiayon comes by to talk about her Pipe Wrench Magazine piece "If We Can Soar," as well as her work in Longreads, and is she training for a Half Ironman?
You can her @shannbtiayon on Twitter and @black_suburban_homestead on Instagram.
Support: West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing and Hippocamp 2021.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @CNFPod
Be a member: patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Shana B. Tiyan's Morning Routine
00:00:00
Speaker
I need to write before the rest of the world gets in my head and starts mucking up my thoughts. And so I am best at writing first thing in the morning. That is Shana B. Tiyan, the author behind the pipe wrench magazine piece, If We Can Soar, what Birmingham roller pigeons offer the men of South Central.
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Not one of the ninth year somehow. This is the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. You know what time it is.
00:00:39
Speaker
Oh yes, Shanna and I get into some great stuff in this episode. Yeah, I'm starting to play around with not asking guests to be as, let's say, prescriptive or advice-giving and just talking to them about how they go about the work, taking deeper dives into the books or essays, and letting their brilliant insights do the heavy lifting. I still like asking people about their routines and such, but I've been thinking a lot about, quote, advice, unquote, culture lately and how fraud it is and
00:01:09
Speaker
how I'm not entirely sure it actually serves the audience. Maybe I'll riff on this as part of a parting shot at the end of the show. I don't know if it'll make any sense, but whatever, you're still here. Thanks to...
Podcast Support and Promotions
00:01:26
Speaker
West Virginia Wesleyan College, low residency MFA in Creative Writing for the support. Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Randin Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks.
00:01:45
Speaker
Recent faculty include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:02:07
Speaker
Support for this podcast is also brought to you by HippoCamp 2021. It starts today, August 13th. Maybe you can roll up and knock on the door and still get in. If you use the promo code CNFPOD21 at checkout, you'll get 50 bucks off. It's a great time. By the time you hear this, I will be at HippoCamp. Hope to see you there.
Introduction to Shana B. Tiyan
00:02:34
Speaker
Yes, Shana is a writer, speaker, and well-being expert. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology and is known as the well-being doctor as owner of Wellbeing Works, LLC. Her work has appeared in long reads and Pipe Wrench magazine, among other places.
00:02:51
Speaker
She has spoken on the TEDx stage, and you'll find links to the stuff and embeds in the show notes at printedonmarathon.com. She's training for a half marathon, a half Ironman triathlon, which has a half marathon component to it. She is a suburban homesteader, and that Instagram is black underscore suburban underscore homestead. Pretty cool stuff.
00:03:16
Speaker
And as always, you can keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF Potter at Brendan O'Mara. The at CNF pot Instagram is still in the underage court of appeals. I don't know how I'm going to break that out of there. I, I appeal, I appeal, I appeal and nothing happens. So it could be dead.
00:03:34
Speaker
Show notes, of course, are at brendanamara.com. And you can subscribe to my up to 11 monthly newsletter for book recommendations, links to cool articles I come across, blog posts, writing prompts, sometimes a CNF and happy hour. I've tabled that for a little bit just because things are crazy. And in any case, it's a nice little respite. It's a little refuge of fun stuff that you get on the first of the month. No spam, can't beat it.
00:04:02
Speaker
You might also want to consider becoming ACNF and member at the Patreon community. You get transcripts, audio magazine for sure, coaching, it's all there. So shop around, see what tier might work best for you.
Shana's Athletic Journey and Challenges
00:04:14
Speaker
All those dollars that come and get funneled into the show to make a better product.
00:04:18
Speaker
The show's free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. And that money also goes to pay writers for their work. Patreon.com slash CNF pod. All right, enough with all that. Why don't we just get on, get onto this podcast, get onto this conversation. Here is Shanna B. Tia.
00:04:48
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. So are you based in DC? Yeah, the DC Metro area, but the Maryland side. So the Silver Spring, Maryland. Oh, very nice. Very nice. Yeah, I believe that's where Katie Ledecky, the great swimmer, hails from. Yeah. I'm a newish swimmer.
00:05:08
Speaker
And because I want to compete in an Ironman, a half Ironman. And so I just started swimming as an adult. And right after Katie, I think one of the 1,500 meters, I said, well, since Katie just won, it only makes sense to post my recent trip to the pool. She's from the DC Metro area. I'm from a DC Metro area. She's an Olympian. I think you get the picture.
00:05:33
Speaker
And people are like, no way, Shannon, are you any Caitlin Ducky? But absolutely. She's from Bethesda. Okay. And well, speaking of Iron Man and triathlons, I did an Iron Man almost 20 years ago in
00:05:49
Speaker
And it was one of those things like I couldn't swim worth a lick. And I couldn't swim 50 yards without being gassed. So like, you know, fortunately, I was sort of like young, stupid and athletic enough to do the other two without a whole lot of attention. But like swimming was the thing I needed to work on. What's that been like for you to to take on this kind of swimming as an adult?
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I was raised by a mother who was scared of the water, and she never really prioritized swim lessons. We have done so with our kids, but I was never really proficient. And so it takes some courage. You got to get over yourself, because here you are, this grown woman who doesn't know what to do in the water to keep herself from sinking very well. And so I had to sort of humble myself a little bit.
00:06:38
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Once I did, it was great. I'm a forever learner, so I like learning new things, and this was definitely something to learn. I like doing hard things, and so it was definitely hard, but probably about
00:06:52
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eight weeks in, I could say that I was pretty, you know, I could swim. Now how far I could swim, that's what I'm working on now, the endurance piece, but it was, it was good. I was proud of myself for setting the goal and actually moving through the steps to achieve it. And so it was very gratifying.
00:07:10
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Are you taking lessons through, let's say, the total immersion swimming program, if that makes any sense? Yeah. So I have a total immersion coach, private lessons. You know, I made it through. My time is so limited. I just needed to be about me for that hour that we're in the pool. And so I would go once a week and every now and then we would have gaps where he would travel because he's a triathlete too. And so he would travel for different events. And so,
00:07:38
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It would give me more time to practice, but he would teach me in lessons and I would go and practice on my own interim and then come back and we work on what I was having issues with. And so it was really efficient that way because the whole hour was just working on helping me to be able to be proficient.
00:07:58
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Yeah, it's all about trying to be one and be comfortable in the water. And those drills, those early drills can feel really goofy early on, like the Superman glide. I don't know if that's what you've done at all, where you just kind of like have to bob there and lean on your lungs and everything. It just feels really weird and you feel like everybody's watching you. But it's one of those things. It's like, well, this is how you sort of become one with the water, if you will. And over time, it's like, oh, wow, you start to really glide like a fish.
00:08:25
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totally like I'm there, you know, doing these basic drills. And then here comes just like, five year old just went on down the lane. I'm like, Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness. Take me now, Lord. But through my ego made it through somewhat ruse, but it also made it to the other side as well.
00:08:50
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Well, that gets to a point of what you already said, that you love to challenge yourself and try hard things.
Adventurous Life Choices and Mindset
00:08:56
Speaker
And some people, they tend to get into the well-worn grooves of their lives because it's easy. You don't have to think about it. You can put those things on autopilot. And yeah, there's value in that. But where does that come from for you where you want to get out of those grooves and challenge yourself? I don't know.
00:09:14
Speaker
I do think that certain people are sort of hardwired and just born a certain way. And I've noticed that a lot in terms of being a parent, just seeing how different my kids are and it just pop out the womb with these certain characteristics. And I think I maybe have always had a tendency to want to take the road less traveled and do hard things like
00:09:36
Speaker
I remember I was finishing up high school, and by the time I finished high school, I knew that after college, I was going to go into the Peace Corps.
00:09:50
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that wasn't anything that my peer group was talking about. And then certainly once I finished university, I did the job market a little bit, but only because I wanted to be flown around and wind and dime, but I had no intention of taking those jobs after graduating. But my friends were talking about these jobs, these great salaries, and I chose to do the Peace Corps. I wanted something different. I wanted to spam myself and challenge myself. And it just sort of went on from there, ended up working
00:10:20
Speaker
internationally after the Peace Corps wanted to stay abroad and ended up finding a job abroad and then continuing with that. Yeah, then the PhD, then the business. I just keep trying to stretch the boundaries of what's possible for me. And I just would have always been that way. And I'm not sure how, because I didn't necessarily have role models of people doing those kinds of things growing up.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, many people can be hamstrung by fear, to not be able to take that leap, whether it be to pursue these advanced degrees or travel abroad, work abroad, start a business.
00:11:03
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You know, just looking at your body of work that you found a way to embrace that that fear of that fear of doing the thing, taking a leap and the unknown. And how have you come to grapple with that over the years? And it seems like it goes back decades, really. I don't know. I think earlier it was sort of like your thing. You know, I was just young enough and I had.
00:11:23
Speaker
nothing to lose so I just do it and the worst you could do is fail and that's all right too and so it was a very different sort of mindset of around things. I think that I've gotten older and I do have more to lose and I do have other people depending on me what has kept me sort of propelling forward. I'm a long time meditator so I meditate quite a bit and just sort of
00:11:49
Speaker
staying present and truly believing that the universe has my back. And what I want to do wants me back. And so I just have to work for it to get it. It's already there. And so the mindset has really helped to propel me forward, even during hard times when it's not fun or glamorous or exciting. That's the hard part about the arc of a goal.
00:12:15
Speaker
Getting to the climaxes or to the sort of peak of it is great, but not always the road to it. But I've sort of relied on the belief that I can get to the top and so that sort of propelled me forward.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, the arc of a goal. I love hearing you say that. Getting to a higher degree of altitude, whatever that is, however you define it, in the middle between where you start and where you go, there's a whole lot of peaks and valleys. Absolutely. But it's just on that path, right? Those valleys that you're experiencing in the messy middle are still higher than where you started, most likely.
00:12:54
Speaker
Maybe, actually, maybe they might dip down below, but that's all part of the growth. And I always love talking to people on this show about you have that very experience when you're writing an essay or a book or whatever or a movie, and there are those messy middles that grind of the work. And when you're in that phase of growth, how have you learned to cultivate that grit that it takes to really grind through the middle of something?
Writing Passion and Influences
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's interesting. It's always sort of the eye towards the outcome that you want. And I think, you know, keep in mind, which we talked about Iron Man, I've been reading a lot of books lately, like these endurance athletes, Rich Roll, David Goggins, they have memoirs out and they all talk about this idea of if you want to do this kind of endurance athlete,
00:13:52
Speaker
work or space. You got to, you got to like, you got to be okay with suffering and pain. I'm just like, Oh gosh, that sounds awful. But you know, when you think about it, any like great, large goal, you got to be okay with the hard parts and the grittiness and the challenges, right? And you almost kind of got to get a small high off of your capacity to push through those things with
00:14:20
Speaker
knowing that when you get to the other end, you know, you are going to have the thing that you want. And so I think it's really similar. And perhaps that's what attracts me to endurance sports is that there is this this space where you just have to be okay with this sucking and and even like it just a little bit enough to get you up to do it the next day again and again. And it sort of applies to life as well as, you know, sports.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Echoing your point, I don't run a whole lot, but when I do and whenever I had, say, trained for a particular goal, you always know that people tend to not like running hills or something. And I always think like, okay,
00:15:09
Speaker
Well, there's a hill. If I learn to like the hill, then that's just going to give me a more mental mindset to be like, so many other people are going to hit this hill and want to hang their head. I'm going to see that hill and just want to attack it. Same thing with the rain. A lot of people are like, I don't want to run in the rain, but I love the rain.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so that might mean that I get an extra workout and someone else does, not that I'm necessarily in competition with anyone else other than myself, but it's just one of those things where, like you're saying, if you embrace that hard part and even learn to like it a little bit, it just gives you that much more of an edge. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah, David Goggins, he says it's about staying hard. And he actually says, you know, when you have a workout at range, what do you do? You know, you get your ass out there and run as ways, you know, you don't stay home. And so it's that sort of mentality that you push what you want is what propels you forward. And so yeah, totally.
00:16:04
Speaker
Now I understand when you were younger you were always writing plays, short stories, even essays or something. So take me back to when you were growing up and just had a love of stories and a love of language.
00:16:18
Speaker
I was always a little bit sort of, you know, to myself, I love books a lot. I have a friend now, we're good friends now. She was my neighbor and she used to joke how she would always come over and say, hey, you want to come out and play? I said, no, I'm reading Charlotte's Web or something like that. She thought I was the corniest, nerdiest thing ever. But
00:16:39
Speaker
I've always taken value in this sort of internal world inside of my head. And so I never thought of myself, never thought about myself as a writer or being a writer too seriously then. It's just something I like to do. I think my mom recognized the interest. No, she actually wasn't that. She brought me this sort of tells you how old I am. She bought me a electronic word processor.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was. It was a brother. I got one of those in seventh grade when I was like 13, 14. It was like a typewriter slash, but it had a monitor too. Exactly. So it was an upgrade from just a regular typewriter, right? Yeah, yeah.
00:17:24
Speaker
That's exactly what I had. I had a little cover case and you put the cover on and you can slide it under your bed or somewhere. But she brought me one of those. She thought she was getting me ready for college. She had no idea that that thing was going to be so obsolete. But I used that to write plays and poems and just different things in my head, but never took it too seriously. But I always knew that when I did write, it felt good and so I did more of it.
00:17:51
Speaker
That's great. And sometimes along that path, you need people that recognize that light in you. It could be a mentor, someone in high school, or it could be a little bit later too. Who recognized that light, that little spark in young Shanna? I don't know. I don't know that anyone did.
00:18:15
Speaker
When I went, I entered a writing contest one time of our Mother's Day, a Mother's Day contest at a local hotel, and you got like a limousine ride in a brunch with your mom, and I won that, and I was like, oh, you had to write a paragraph, something about your mom, and I would win things, but I don't know if I got recognized a lot as a younger person for my writing.
00:18:43
Speaker
And then I went to college and I did an engineering program and wasn't a lot of writing in that at all. I think it really is after college that my talents in writing started to maybe garner a little recognition. And then even as of late, probably the last five or six years, even more so once I started to take myself seriously,
00:19:11
Speaker
with it and decided I did want to carve out a space in the world where Shanna is a writer as well. When it comes to the writing and the practice of writing, what do you do to get into the right headset?
Integrating Creativity into Daily Life
00:19:26
Speaker
When you're looking at that hill and you're going to run up that hill, what's the equivalent for you with the writing and how you're setting up that practice for yourself?
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, first thing in the morning, I'm an early riser and sort of a remnant. I wasn't always that way, but sort of a remnant of writing my dissertation. That was the only time I had to myself. And so I would get up early in the morning to write. And I realized I really liked it. The house was really quiet. There was no one who wanted to be up for that ungodly hour. And so it was all mine.
00:19:59
Speaker
To get in the headspace, what most of my mornings look like typically is that I will wake up, I'll come to my office, I will meditate for a little while, I'll get something hot to drink like hot water and lemon or hot water and apple cider vinegar. I will meditate, I will do some personal reading for about 30 minutes and then write into the writing.
00:20:24
Speaker
immediately. I need to write before the rest of the world gets in my head and starts mucking up my thoughts. And so I am best at writing first thing in the morning. But it follows after some sort of practice or ritual of self-care that I try to do most mornings.
00:20:44
Speaker
And when you're, I love this idea that while it's quiet and you read a little bit to kind of put a little fuel in the tank or something, typically what kind of stuff do you read in that time period before you start writing?
00:20:59
Speaker
Oh, gosh, I am so I am I am a complete book quarter and I will admit that I have come. I am a quarter. I've asked people, don't tell me that you're reading something interesting because I can't be trusted not to put in my Amazon cart and get it and it'll just sit there. But so I read a lot of things at the same time. And so at any given moment, I'm simultaneously reading about five books at one time. But I gave myself a little slack on that because
00:21:28
Speaker
Her President Obama also does that sort of thing. So it must be like a thing with like cool people. Oh, yeah. Yep. Great example. What am I reading now? I'm reading a book, The Five Invitations, so it's more sort of spiritually or not not spiritual religious, but sort of
00:21:49
Speaker
thoughts around death and how we can learn from people who are in their last days, how we can learn to live a fuller, more richer life. So there normally be something in that sort of Eastern thought, spiritual realm that I'll be reading. And then I'm also reading a memoir, The Yellow House.
00:22:12
Speaker
I've got the yellow house on my Kindle to read because I want to interview her. I'm putting it on her first name. Her last name is Broom though, right? Yeah, Sarah. Sarah. Yeah, yeah, totally. So I will read that. And then I'm reading just sort of align with the work that I'm doing. I'm reading this book, The Compton Cowboys.
00:22:36
Speaker
Oh, I read that ad, Walter, on the podcast. It's a great book. Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. Oh, I don't have to check that out there. You interview them. Yeah. Yeah. I had them on when the book came out. I don't know, probably a year, year and a half ago. Right. Right. Just a super cool guy. And what a book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just in the early stages of reading about the Compton Cowboys. That just gives you a sort of an idea of the kind of stuff that I could be reading at any given moment.
00:23:02
Speaker
Oh, I love that. It's kind of it's it's a it's a very wide palette of stuff. So depending on what kind of, you know, whatever mood you're in or maybe what inspiration you want to draw from, it's just like, OK, you know, I'm I'm feeling a little memoiristic right now. So here comes Sarah's book. You know, Walters is journalistic with a little bit of personal story in there. And, you know, that's that's really cool that you can just kind of draw and pull on those strings. And eventually, you know, you finish one and you move on to the next. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so and I like that I went that I
00:23:31
Speaker
I read for my pleasure and if I lose interest in it, I can always come back to it and pick up something else that feels better for the time.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I know some people that when they're when they're writing and they're reading something that might be a little, I don't know, too close thematically, if you will, that sometimes there can be kind of a voice creep or, you know, the influence of what you're reading, though you want that sort of percolating underneath the thing you're writing. But sometimes it can almost put an umbrella over or have a too powerful an influence. Do you have that issue at all or wrestle with that?
00:24:07
Speaker
Not really. Taking everything is data. For example, comping cowboys is really close to the topic that I'm working on a book proposal for.
00:24:24
Speaker
But I don't see it as sort of the writer taking over my head. It's just like, oh, here's a really cool aspect of something that's being written. And so it's just sort of more data to consider as I sort of map my way forward. But I know I live in my head. I tell people quite a bit. And so I'm
00:24:42
Speaker
I'm pretty clear on my thoughts and what I think about things in the world and what my voice is. And maybe that's an advantage to coming truly into writing a little later in life is that I have had time to sort of do that internal work. So there's a little more clarity around it. When I sit down to write things, then maybe if I was sort of just developing as a newish writer.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, and coming to writing later in life, how have you processed that, given that there's oftentimes a lot of competition, sometimes jealousy and resentment among writers who have different paths in
Writing for Pleasure vs. Necessity
00:25:19
Speaker
this? You look over your shoulder and you're like, oh man.
00:25:22
Speaker
How are they doing that? I'm over here. And given that you started a little bit late and you're looking at a lot of your peers and people who have been doing this for decades, you'd be like, oh man, they're over there. How have you just managed to cultivate your own race?
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, so I think it helps that I write for pleasure. It is completely I write for my pleasure. I am not, you know, your typical kind of journalist that you want to sit on a beat, you know, less is the beat I want to be on. I don't want to go there. So I really write for things that are interesting to me that I am curious about. And so that helps. And so when I see people doing great things that I'm inspired, I say, wow, this is
00:26:06
Speaker
the scope of what is possible for me. I think it also helps too that while I do want to be paid equitably and compensated well for writing, I don't write to eat. My family is not being, if I don't write, if I don't get something commissioned in every month or whatever,
00:26:26
Speaker
it has no financial bearing over my family. And so I can be a little more relaxed and open with the work than if we needed it to survive. And so I think that has played a big role in it as well.
00:26:40
Speaker
Nice. And given that you're reading Compton Cowboys, as I think for research for a book proposal that you just said, I have to imagine that the book proposal is stemming from what you wrote for Pipe Wrench that if we can soar. Yeah. Am I. Is that right? Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. It's pulling back
Exploring Subcultures and Histories in Writing
00:26:59
Speaker
a little bit and sort of getting the bird's eye view of other things that were going on at the time and then sort of weaving it all together. And so it's
00:27:08
Speaker
it promises to be the great rabbit hole. I love rabbit holes where you just sort of go down the sort of research hole and you come back up and say, wait a minute, what was I looking for?
00:27:20
Speaker
the best. Yeah. And so, but it's all interesting, but you're like, wait a minute, what do I need this for? And so it promises to have a tremendous amount of rabbit holes, but hopefully will also be a very meaningful work as well. And so, yeah, that is exactly that sort of looking at different subcultures at the time in LA.
00:27:40
Speaker
Well, that's it. I think there might have been an accidental pun in there when you said a bird's eye view because a lot of it has to do with the Birmingham roller pigeons. So for people who haven't read this amazing piece that you did, just talk a little bit about it and the crooks of it and maybe how you arrived at it.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So maybe how I arrived at it might be a good place to start. It was during the pandemic and I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I will binge, you know, binge watch. So like watch several hours, you know, at a time.
00:28:14
Speaker
And I was just looking for something to sort of binge, and I was flipping around on Hulu, and I saw this really cool picture of this guy with a pigeon on his head, or bird. I didn't know it was a pigeon. I was a bird. I'm not even going to pretend that I was that sophisticated in knowing it was a pigeon. But I thought, wow, that's really cool.
00:28:34
Speaker
I looked at it. It was a documentary, The Pigeon Kings. It explored the current Birmingham Roller community in South Central LA right now. And so, watched it. I was really
00:28:49
Speaker
grateful for the documentary for having been exposed to this new subculture, but it left me with more questions than answers. It just felt very unsettling in terms of really understanding what drew these men to the hobby and particularly just sort of rooting or sort of framing it a little bit more in this sort of socio-cultural
00:29:19
Speaker
and historical things that were going on in South Central during that time that most of them likely started. And so ended up reaching out to the sort of focal character of the documentary Keith London to just see if he would talk to me. I reached out via Twitter and he got back to me. And then from there, it just sort of spun off to connecting with other men who were Birmingham Roller
00:29:49
Speaker
razors and competed with Birmingham Rollers. And what I found is what was really interesting were some of the older men who had been in it for decades and their stories that were really rich and just sort of rooted and a lot rooted or anchored in what the community was experiencing at the time. And so that is where the story shifted to focus on the sort of earlier generations of Birmingham Roller
00:30:18
Speaker
black Birmingham rollerman in South Central LA. What excited you about the reporting and the research behind this particular piece? As you said, some of these research rabbit holes. What were the rabbit holes that you got down when you were researching and reporting this piece?
00:30:36
Speaker
Well, first, like, what? Black men are flying pigeons? Like, I'm from Hampton, Virginia, like suburban Virginia. And the thought of it was just so foreign to me. I was like, wow, this is a thing in the world. Like, I would see it occasionally in movies, but I just thought it was more cinematic hype and not a real thing. And so that was really interesting to me. And then the men who were featured in the article, like Chuck and Paul and
00:31:04
Speaker
William and Jason, they were all such really fantastic storytellers and just really, really sort of vivid and detailed. And you could really tell they were reliving the experiences. And so that sort of drew me in as well. Also the genealogy piece of Cornell, I had to get an ancestry
00:31:30
Speaker
and started pulling up archival files and draft cards and birth certificates. And so there was just so many
00:31:41
Speaker
different holes to go down and understanding the pigeon world and what makes a good Birmingham roller pigeon. So I bought Bill Pinsome's book and started reading on that. So there was a lot of historical research, a lot of technical research, and a lot of genealogy research for this piece, which was really fun. Is that a part of the process that you find you're just very locked in and engaged in? You know, the research part?
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, I do. I like learning new things, and I like research and getting the information, and then I find it, while it can be simultaneously frustrating and challenging, I also find it quite gratifying. Okay, now that you have all this stuff, Shana, how did you weave this into a comprehensive story that people actually want to read, right?
00:32:34
Speaker
I think it's a combination of those pieces that are really appealing to me. But I do like the research part is probably maybe the academic in me, but I just find this research gratifying in ways that I may not have felt all the time in the academic space because there's so many touch points with real people to be able to contextualize what you find.
00:33:00
Speaker
really enjoyable and helpful to move the piece forward.
Organizing Research and Storytelling Techniques
00:33:05
Speaker
And a lot of people, you know, they love the research, but it can get overwhelming and get all this information. And sometimes it's hard to get your head around, certainly organized. So as someone who has a lot of academic experience with research and then this is more journalistic, you know, what are the skills at your disposal? So you're doing this research, but you're organizing it in a way that you can properly synthesize it later for when you're ready to write about it.
00:33:30
Speaker
I'm a visual person and so for the, if we can soar, I use Evernote to help me organize information. But I also have a court board that is in my office where I can sort of map things. I have a map of Los Angeles and different pieces that are relevant to the story that I can sort of move around. I also had a timeline taped to my wall
00:34:00
Speaker
using index cards of key dates in sort of the history of what was going on in South Central LA at the time. And so I need to have those sort of visual pieces because it helps me to be able to put things in place. So while the content, the bulk of the content may be in something like Evernote or Scrivener, I need
00:34:24
Speaker
I need the anchors, the buckets, or the things that will sort of help me position that broader research visually available to me. So on a board or a wall or something.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I love in this piece, too, how you come to it at the end where you write, the kernels of the world are rarely recognized for the contributions outside of the communities that they serve. Soldiers in the fight against the structure they did not create. He was too loud, too street, too unstatticed quo. The detriment of racism is that it not only binds people's opportunities, but blinds us from seeing the inherent humanity and value of those with black and brown skin.
00:35:04
Speaker
ensuring that black boys and men will continue to need spaces of refuge and it just that soars it comes to such a great crescendo at the end of the piece and I was like maybe you can speak to that that need for need for refuge that this piece really fosters
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think 2020 speaks pretty clear, I think, to what the ending of that piece is trying to sort of convey to the reader. I mean, there's just so much I can bring in data and research, but even there's sort of the lived experiences that we sort of faced. And it's not to say that Black women are not also vulnerable to being overlooked, to being
00:35:45
Speaker
to being denigrated or subjugated in society. It's sort of Black people at large, but this piece focused really on Black men. And we saw that. We have very recurrent and invisible reminders of this from the George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, you know, even Christian Cooper, he was the birder, the Black birder in New York, who
00:36:10
Speaker
Amy Cooper called the cops on and sort of used her race and gender and privilege to be able to paint a picture that is painted frequently about black men and boys in terms of them being violent and them being, and them,
00:36:30
Speaker
being something that needs to be controlled or watched. And so this is not something, I think what the piece also hoped to do was to show that while we have advanced quite a bit in this country, or in narrowing it down to the South Central area, things haven't changed as much as we would like to think they have. That we are living in very comparable times in terms of the perceptions of Black people and how they are treated, particularly
Systemic Challenges and Historical Contexts
00:37:00
Speaker
by those in positions of power, and particularly by those who are in that power supposedly to be able to be there to protect all people. But it's not the experience of Black and brown people in this country. And as a result,
00:37:18
Speaker
They will always, we will always need spaces to be able to reconnect with ourselves, not the self that the world says we are, that we should be, to be able to support and uplift one another and to be able to gain the energy that we need to live another day. And when I say living, I'm not talking about grand things, not even social justice movements, just to get up the next day and be able to have a certain optimism about the world that you live in, in spite of everything.
00:37:48
Speaker
It's such a brilliant point you make about just trying to live with a spark of optimism, given that the power structures in place are all these, quote-unquote, voting integrity laws that are trying to be put in place, namely in red states in the South.
00:38:07
Speaker
where they're like, all right, you know, what happened in 2020 happened? We're going to make sure that things, they just play in this very insidious long game, which is just very dispiriting. And I don't know how we stay optimistic in the face of that, but I guess it's just a matter of mobilizing.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, what's interesting is that these things are always masqueraded as something else. You know, with the police issue, it's protection. With the voting issue, it's about being fair, you know, but it's always, there's always a cold word. And if you're not careful, you miss the change of the cold word from one moment to the next, but it all boils down to the same sort of intention.
00:38:45
Speaker
you know, there is organizing, there is getting behind, putting in place a political representation that is more reflective of the diversity as well, diversity, racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, but also the diversity of opinion.
00:39:05
Speaker
that is in the U.S. So not just having the status quo be the representatives for what happens in this country. And then that requires political engagement, the very thing that is being threatened right now, the ability to be able to decide who represents you and who speaks for you.
00:39:25
Speaker
Absolutely, and also doing what you've done with the piece you did for Pipe Wrench 2 of bringing stories to light that are inspiring on just inspiring great storytelling, but also just to
00:39:40
Speaker
to shine light in places where historically there haven't been a whole lot of that representation on the page or on the screen. So it's just all the more important to hear these things and be like, oh, this is inspiring and this is gonna make me want to lift people up and live in a world where these stories can find the page, find the light, find eyeballs, because it's just so important to hear and see these things.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And I think too with the piece for pipe wrench and other pieces that do similar work is that while we are seeing sort of the visible examples of the problems that are sort of inbred in the country and
00:40:28
Speaker
where we are today, I think I would, if I'm not a betting woman, but if I was to bet, I would be willing to bet that the greater majority of the US population is probably pretty unclear about how we got here, right? I think they think it's just something of today, but it isn't. Like this has been building for centuries. And so I think shining a light on the fact that this is something that we are sort of
00:40:55
Speaker
reaping based on what was so many, many years ago, and that it is going to take a similar kind of concerted effort in trying to undo it. It's not an overnight thing, but there needs to be an awareness that we, that's the nature when people say things are systemic, right? That they have been hard baked into the way that this country operates. And so to undo that is going to take time, but we have to recognize
00:41:24
Speaker
historically how we got there in hopes that we don't repeat that history.
00:41:29
Speaker
Absolutely right and I think there's a there there's a I think a lot of people probably want to just say oh those those old old race it's racist or just they're just gonna die and then once they die we can sort of plant new ground above it and live in live in a new day but the fact of the matter is they're just there they don't die it like you say it's hard baked it's systemic it's almost genetic
00:41:56
Speaker
And it will never go away unless you kind of break down those structures and rebuild systems. But to hope that it's just going to die away, I'm sorry. There are a lot of very young and powerful racist politicians in Congress today that replaced the Strom Thurmond's of the world. They're not going anywhere.
00:42:14
Speaker
Absolutely. And guess what, folks? Most of the time, racist, homophobic, xenophobic people, race, racist, homophobic, xenophobic children. But what happens is they learn to present this part of themselves differently, you know, as the times morph, but the core value is still the same. So this stuff isn't disappearing overnight. You know, it is something that is hard baked.
00:42:42
Speaker
And we have to address and call it out. I've been loving examples of people calling it out more for what it is and giving it a name and giving voice to it versus ignoring it and pretending that it's going to go away because it hasn't and it won't unless there is something that is done to change it.
00:43:02
Speaker
And when you were writing the piece for Pipe Wrench, I imagine you were working with Michelle. What were some of the dialogues that you were having, editor to writer, as you were composing this piece and trying to make it the best that it could possibly be?
00:43:15
Speaker
So first I want to start off by saying Michelle is awesome. I think she is by far the best editorial experience I have had in my very young, nascent writing career. She has ruined it for probably every other editor that I work with because the bar is so dang high in terms of
00:43:34
Speaker
Really, she came into it as saying, I am in service of you in this piece, and I am here to help you birth this baby. She's like a writing doula almost. She was there to help me birth this baby in any way that was meaningful, if it meant getting
00:43:54
Speaker
house, cold compresses or whatever, she was really willing to do it. And so it was helpful because I gave an initial iteration of the first draft and it was totally not the right direction. Um, but she didn't say that. She said, look, you just need to keep writing. You need to keep writing your way through it. You need to keep getting more words on the page and it's going to come together. And I think
00:44:17
Speaker
being given that space, that sort of non-judgmental space to do that, in fact, really did help me come into my own with this piece more and figure out where different parts needed to go.
00:44:30
Speaker
She sort of pushed me to continue to write more and to think through different aspects a little bit more. She also encouraged me to be more voicey. She wanted to see more of me in the piece. I'm very good at writing about the stories of others and very careful sometimes about inserting my own opinions or
00:44:58
Speaker
sort of voice too directly, but she encouraged that, which was helpful for me to know that there is a space for me to write about others and bring my voice more prominently into pieces, and that if this is something that pipelines value, then likely other publications do or will too.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I like what you're getting at is this kind of working through the rewrites and the revision process of a draft and just pushing it through and developing it and developing it. And in your TEDx talk about dealing with unkindness about this horrible experience, you had a horrible culmination to what was a great experience at the Grand Canyon boat which soured it.
00:45:41
Speaker
this notion of writing through the anger of what you and your family experience. And maybe you can talk a little bit about that piece and what that experience was like, but then how you wrote your way through it to ultimately get to where you got for this Long Reads piece.
Processing Trauma through Writing
00:46:01
Speaker
Yeah, so that was one of my first long-form pieces that I wrote for Longreeds, which was also a really great partner in helping me develop my writing. It was about this experience. You know, my family and I, we planned this great vacation. I just finished my M.I.P.H.D.
00:46:18
Speaker
I'm going to punch in real quick, just real quick right here. So what we're referring to here is this piece that Shanna wrote for a long reads. She was on a bus and the Grand Canyon and the bus driver literally asked Shanna and her family to move to the back of the bus. Okay. So that, that should give you all the context you need. Okay. So back to, back to Shanna.
00:46:46
Speaker
to Arizona. We wanted to tour the state a little bit. And it was, except for this one experience, a really great vacation. Arizona was beautiful. We loved Sedona. And the Grand Canyon was phenomenal. But we encountered a bus driver who really was racist and discriminatory towards us. And so it
00:47:11
Speaker
cast a bit of a shadow over our trip and really caused my husband and I to have discussions with our children that we just didn't plan to have to have on a vacation that we had paid to fly across the US for. And I was angry. I was angry for a long time. For me, initially being angry propels me towards action. What can I do about it?
00:47:39
Speaker
I wrote formal complaints to the Grand Canyon, to the bus company that actually manages the buses for the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon does not manage them directly. I made phone calls and looked for other avenues to make sure that this situation was corrected and that this bus driver was reprimanded or disciplined as they saw fit.
00:48:04
Speaker
And in both cases, both the Grand Canyon and the bus management company managed things correctly. They were empathetic. They disciplined the bus driver. They wrote formal letters of apology. It was fine after that, but I was still angry that this happened to us. And so I wrote several iterations of that essay from different angles. And each time I wrote it,
00:48:31
Speaker
I was able to soften up to the experience and be vulnerable to my own pain and sadness about what had happened. And it got better the more I was able to sort of drop into that space of vulnerability and not just sort of hover above it with the anger.
00:48:50
Speaker
Yeah, and you talk about how there's a guardedness that you've walked through the world with. And when you were at the Grand Canyon, you're like, I need to break this wall down so you can take in the wonder. And it was just like in that moment of vulnerability is just when this woman trespassed on that after having experienced this beautiful hike with your whole family and the wonder of one of the great natural wonders of the world.
00:49:20
Speaker
You know having let that garden this down is when the you know when this happens So it's just like and you talk about that so beautifully in your in your talk. Yeah, totally It was almost like, you know You do the one thing that you're most scared of doing and then you get stuck upon just like oh I don't want to do that anymore. It hurts. Yeah You know, and so it didn't suck. I was like man cuz I my my general disposition is
00:49:50
Speaker
in the past has been to be more guarded, reserved, on the lookout for the next shoe to drop so that I'm ready for it with the one-two punch before it sort of happens to me. But in this one experience, I sort of let myself be in the moment and not have to be
00:50:06
Speaker
you know, Black female Shanna looking, scanning her environment for threats, right? And so, and then this happens. And I think part of it too was that I was allowing this experience
00:50:20
Speaker
to take away the joy of other experiences after it happened. I was much more guarded after that for a while. And I was like, wait a minute, this lady, this bus driver does not get to have that kind of power over your life, Shannon. Like, she is not worth it. And I realized how much power I was giving over to the experience and how
00:50:40
Speaker
I could continue that way and chances are, if it happened again, I would be ready. But how much would I have lost in the interim of one unfortunate experience to the next? And so I think that was really what propelled me to try to find some way to heal from it so that I could move on and enjoy my life.
00:51:02
Speaker
And you talk about how, you know, there's a balance of protecting yourself from unkindness without causing self-harm or even like bad, you know, experiences in that, in that garden. So there is a, there's a guarded vulnerability spectrum. And you talk about that. I was wondering maybe if you can, I don't know, maybe elaborate on that about, you know, striking that balance. Yeah. It's hard. It's a daily task.
00:51:31
Speaker
A reminder or practice is probably a better word of how to strike that balance.
00:51:39
Speaker
Um, I have learned to lean into my intuition a lot more when you walk into a space or a scene or you meet people and it just feels off. It probably is, you know, and so not pushing those experiences only to prove what my intuition was telling me in the first place. And so that has been helpful. And I also take people at face value. I know that there's when people show me
00:52:05
Speaker
how they are. Rather than wishing they were different or hoping or believing that my hope can hope them into a different state of being, I take them for how they are and make a decision if I want to continue to engage with them.
00:52:19
Speaker
be it personally or professionally. And so that has been really helpful in striking the balance in that I don't have to do as much work because it filters out those bad interpersonal interactions before they happen. And giving myself grace when I make a wrong call, not to beat myself up about it too much, but to learn from it and to try to
00:52:47
Speaker
develop a better habit of standing in my own power. I think that was what really bothered me about the Grand Canyon situation is that I didn't feel as though I stood in my own power enough in that situation. There was more to be said. There was more that could have been done. There was more that I shouldn't have done.
00:53:03
Speaker
you know, when the bus driver made the request and it just felt like I gave my power away in that situation. So I'm learning to stand more in that power more regularly and to feel okay with it feeling uncomfortable as long as I sort of have a consistency around it.
00:53:22
Speaker
Yeah. And you also talk about, you know, releasing recording in the respite component of, you know, of dealing with an experience of, you know, could be of that nature or something else. And, you know, how important has that practice been for you to process, you know, process events or, you know, whether they be negative or positive? Yeah. And immensely helpful for me, you know, the release recount
00:53:49
Speaker
and take respite. The releasing is, I largely contribute to my meditation practice, being able to bring myself back to the present moment. Because when I'm not releasing, when I'm caught in those moments, what I found is that I'm stuck in that past experience, ruminating about it. But if I can bring myself into the present moment and focus on all that is good and is well and is
00:54:17
Speaker
that is helpful. And then also with the meditation practice, it gives you a space to intentionally focus on past experiences and the anger and the frustration and all the ugly feelings that you feel around it.
00:54:34
Speaker
and just sort of sitting with that. And so it sort of serves both purposes. And so it's been immensely helpful for me. Recounting is my writing and speaking. It is how I process the world. I'm much more of an internal person, but being able to gather my head and write and speak about things has really been helpful for me in moving beyond things that happen to me directly or things that I see in the world that I'm angry or upset about. And then respite. I'm embracing the respite more and more formally
00:55:03
Speaker
by scheduling time for rest, scheduling time for vacation, scheduling time to check out. I'm trying to be more intentional about integrating that in my life than I have been in the past and building communities that support that through friends or connections or other sort of spaces that are supportive of that need for respite.
00:55:30
Speaker
Now tell me a little bit about your Instagram and the homesteading you do. Yeah, so I am a suburban homesteader. Interesting story about
Suburban Homesteading and Community Building
00:55:47
Speaker
that. It actually started homesteading
00:55:51
Speaker
After I think my third year in my doctoral program, because I was a hot mess, I was mentally and physically just a mess. And I was like, I'm not going to make it. I was doing a full time doctoral program. I had to be kids at the time. You know, I was also working full time and I was just a mess. And so I needed to shake things up.
00:56:12
Speaker
A friend suggested that we join a community garden. And keep in mind, I hated dirt upwards at that point. I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to be around it. Despite the fact that I was an agroforestry volunteer in Peace Corps, I was not into gardening in any way, but decided to do it around 2014 and just fell in love with it. Drug my kids and my husband into it and said, this will be great family time. I was really looking for partners in misery because I thought I was going to suck.
00:56:42
Speaker
But we loved it, and we have been doing it ever since. We expand it. We cultivate in two community gardens and a large portion of our residents. And our Instagram page, Black Suburban Homestead, is sort of sharing that experience. And it's an effort to increase representation in this homesteading space. It is typically
00:57:03
Speaker
considered to be a very, very white space. So you don't see a lot of racial and ethnic diversity in people who consider themselves to be homesteaders. And we love it. It's been a great community where we share what we know and people share what they know. If we have questions, people are more than willing to provide advice or suggestion. There's just been
00:57:24
Speaker
a real community in that space and something that we have really liked a lot more than we thought we would have when we started the page.
00:57:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important to have those things that are so completely divorced from writing or creativity, but it informs it also at the same time. I love hearing you talk about it like that. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great way to reflect and commune and just sort of think and not think and just be at the same time.
00:57:57
Speaker
It really offers a lot of great advantages or great compliments to the work that I do. And so I really enjoy it. And you get food from it. I mean, who doesn't like food?
00:58:09
Speaker
Oh, exactly. Ellie, you're quite literally giving people nourishment. Like if you're made for your family and if you have a surplus, you're like, here's some tomatoes. These are great. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. My thing that sort of my jam, literally and figuratively, is this spicy tomato jam that I make. And that's what I give to people. And they like it. It's like ketchup with a kick. And so. Whoa.
00:58:31
Speaker
That's my thing, too. I'm also a first-generation canner, so I taught myself how to can. And so, again, learning new things, doing different things, that's kind of always sort of been my thing, I guess. You're going to be an Iron Man. You're canning. You're doing all these things. This is amazing. Yeah. Life is full of so many possibilities. I truly do believe that.
00:58:55
Speaker
Well, as I like to bring this airliner down by asking guests for recommendations of some kind, and I think I primed the pump with you of this a few emails ago, but if I did, great. If not, if I catch you flat-footed, I'm sorry. But I always like to ask for a recommendation for the listeners out there from the guests, so if you've got one, I'd love to hear it.
00:59:20
Speaker
Okay. Anything, right? It doesn't have to be like writing related, right? Correct. It could be anything. I always say that. It could be a book. It could be a brand of coffee or a new pair of socks. It could be anything. I'm going to suggest my new sort of thing that I'm vibing off of right now is mushroom tea. Okay. Like the Four Sigmatic stuff.
00:59:40
Speaker
Well, the one I have, it is a lion's mane blend, but there's so many different variety. I won't say that I am loyal to one particular variety, but there are lots of different varieties out there, but just drinking more mushrooms, they have really great
00:59:58
Speaker
health and beneficial properties for your mood, for your digestion. And it's just a nice alternative sometimes to coffee and just regular tea. And so I've really been enjoying that with a little bit of oat note. And that's sort of my jam right now.
01:00:13
Speaker
Fantastic. Mushroom tea. I love it. Well, Shannon, this was so great to talk to you about the work you're doing and all the other things you've got going on on the side. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking shop. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. This was fun for me too. I didn't know what to expect, but it was great. It was a great conversation and it sort of covered a wide array of topics. So thank you.
01:00:42
Speaker
Alright, thanks to Shanna for the time and to Michelle Weber of Pipe Wrench Magazine for putting us in touch. Shanna is at ShannaBTION on Twitter and black underscore suburban underscore homestead on Instagram. Great follows.
01:01:01
Speaker
Hey, thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's creative writing program MFA for the support in Hippo Camp 2021. We did it. We did it again. Another year. Thanks, Hippo Camp. It's been real. It's happening right now, depending on when you listen to this. So I teased out in the intro that the problem I have with advice culture, if you will, if you want to call it a problem, is
01:01:28
Speaker
You occasionally hear these podcasts, many of which I enjoy. To some extent, deep questions with Cal Newport, even though that one can get a little bit grating. Even the Q&A part of Seth Godin's akimbo, that one's not nearly as grating. Listeners, ask questions.
01:01:46
Speaker
I've asked a question, I've actually had a question run on the akimbo one too. Many of them I fear are looking for the panacea that cure all answer to their woes and by turning to a quote expert and I'm presuming that they're trying to do an end around or shortcut to get where they want to go. And I understand this because I think on some level I was once like that frustrated that the tires were just spinning and spinning and spinning. It's like geez,
01:02:16
Speaker
some sort of a key to unlock this door and or maybe they're looking for hacks I really hate hacks and life hacks and hack culture that's been ushered in by the tech bros namely Tim Ferriss at the spearhead of that
01:02:33
Speaker
There's no substitute for trial and error if you ask me, and finding out what works for you. You go to the shoe store, you try on a whole bunch of shoes, and that's the whole point, see what fits. But at the same time, I understand that if you're trying to find answers, and you're not looking for shortcuts, and you might hope to find a headlamp through the dark path that you're on,
01:02:59
Speaker
I can see value in both, but I can't seem to shake this idea of that always seeking advice is also a crafty way to hide and avoid the work. If you find another podcast to listen to or another book to read or another YouTube video to get inspired, what you're really doing is kind of avoiding the slog.
01:03:19
Speaker
and the grind it takes to do creative work. There's a balance, of course, but I think there are definitely traps to this. If I listen to just one more podcast, one more interview, that's gonna be the one that'll give me the kick in the butt I really need.
01:03:38
Speaker
I'm no different. I've asked questions and advice in an effort to grease the skids of my own train tracks. And like I said, there's a balance. If you're really stuck, then maybe it's time to seek answers from people who have been there. Not as a shortcut, but because you're trying to navigate, I don't know, Alabama with a Massachusetts map. It's not lining up.
01:03:59
Speaker
But there are some out there who have to know that every little tool, trick, tip, and hack, that all you're doing at this point is spinning your wheels, trying to apply someone else's hard one recipe to your own life, hoping it'll blast you off into the stratosphere.
01:04:15
Speaker
Now, if you have questions that maybe I can answer, ask away. But if you're looking for the capital A answers, well, I don't think anybody has them. And you're better off taking out your own machete, blazing your own path and consulting Mr. Trial and Mrs. Error, or the other way around.
01:04:35
Speaker
The thing is, next week I might have an entirely different take on this, but my main point is not to get too lost in seeking advice. As far as I can tell, the only way through it is through it, man. And that's not particularly wise advice, but the shoe fits for the moment. So stay wild, CNFers, and if you can do interviews, see ya!
01:05:16
Speaker
you