And Then There’s Me: Barrelhousing with Neema Avashia
An interview with Neema Avashia about her memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place.
Barrelhouse Editor Dave Housley sat down to talk with Neema Avashia about her big-hearted and absorbing memoir, Another Appalachia, one of the featured books at Barrelhouse’s Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing conference in DC on April 15, 2023.
Dave Housley: Since a lot of our readers are writers themselves, I’d like to start off talking a bit about the book’s path to publication. I guess a general and a specific question there: did you have a concept of this kind of memoir in your mind when you started, or were you writing essays and saw that there was some connective tissue in them, or did the writing project come about in some other way?
NA: I definitely did not know that I was working towards a memoir. I studied creative writing in undergrad, and then didn’t write for a long time afterwards because of family blowback around my senior thesis. It really wasn’t until 2016, when a certain senator from Ohio published a certain political screed masquerading as memoir, that I started to try to write about my experiences growing up at the intersection of queer, Desi, and Appalachian. Prior to the publication of that book, I’d always viewed my experience as anomalous, and as something I’d spend my life explaining to people. But after watching people migrate towards that book as an explainer for Appalachia and Appalachian people, despite the fact that it never acknowledged the existence of queer folks, Black folks, immigrants, or progressives in Appalachia, and really using this culture of poverty rhetoric to describe White Appalachians, I felt compelled to write a counter-narrative. To effectively say: maybe that’s one rendering of Appalachia, but here’s another one. And if this is another, then that means there could also be many other “another” Appalachias that readers haven’t considered. So I started writing one-off essays sketching out different elements of my experience: relationships, questions around identity, explorations of culture, and so on.
But when I began to take those essays into workshop spaces, other folks in workshop were always asking for more. They wanted more backstory. They wanted more time with the people in the essays. They wanted more of the details around the communities and cultures I was rendering. And that message of “more” eventually helped me to realize that I wasn’t just writing one-offs. That there was a potential for an entire collection.
DH: I didn’t really think of this book as a reaction to That Book but obviously it makes perfect sense and I absolutely love that that was part of the impetus for you to start writing these essays. I also love the idea that Another Appalachia might serve as a way to make space for more “other Appalachian” stories. It’s such a big hearted, positive book, that role seems very appropriate.
You touched on something I was going to ask about later so I’ll just ask now. This is one of the few memoir projects that I’ve read (and admittedly I’m not very well read in this area} where the author is kind of actively wrestling with how their people – family, friends, neighbors – might react or have reacted to the work. When I do read memoir, especially, from a younger person, I often find myself wondering this question, and it’s something I even worry about in my own fiction, which tends to have ghosts and aliens but also a decent helping of my own background and experiences and quiet desperation. The way your family reacts to some of these essays is very much a part of the book. Your sister has a line that’s something like “maybe this is one that Mom doesn’t have to read,” which really stuck with me. A few questions related to that. How much of that do you think is cultural (both Indian and West Virginia)? And did you worry about kind of doubling down on those kinds of reactions with this book?
NA: I appreciate you pulling on a thread that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, which is the overlap between Appalachian and Desi cultures. Being forthright about the complexities and conflicts, really bringing them into the light and interrogating them, isn’t necessarily a value of either. In a lot of ways, I think this is because relationships are so central to both—better to hold the question and preserve the relationship than to ask the question and risk a breach.
And then there’s me. And the third element of my identity, which sometimes flies in direct opposition to the other two, which is my queerness. bell hooks talked about queerness as a lens, a way of viewing the world, a willingness to ask why things are a certain way, or to try doing them in other ways, rather than just living within the bounds of the status quo. Reading her writing about queerness was so freeing for me, because it gave me permission to speak my questions (and I have SO MANY questions, always) aloud.
I knew that no matter what words I put on the page, no matter how hard I tried to extend grace in my writing, the very fact that the words existed, that the book existed, was going to be incredibly difficult for some of the Appalachian and Desi folks that I love most. And I also know that, culturally, our silence isn’t serving us. Desi folks’ silence on issues of mental health has contributed to a massive mental health crisis among Desi youth, with fatal outcomes. Appalachian folks’ silence about the queer and immigrant folks in their lives has contributed to a kind of implicit sanction of anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant legislation that will also have awful, fatal outcomes.
There are definitely folks who have had a shame response to my book. And on a personal level, that hasn’t been easy. At the same time, I am clear that our silence doesn’t keep us safe, and it doesn’t allow us to fully be in relationship with one another, because we aren’t being honest about who we are, or what’s at stake. That clarity has made me willing to test personal relationships for the sake of the many, many folks inside Appalachia and out who can find comfort in the pages of this book, who can see that we share the same questions, and maybe feel a little less lonely as a result.
DH: “And then there’s me.” I love that and I really enjoyed learning more about you and those three elements that come together in you and the project of the memoir. I grew up in Appalachian Central Pennsylvania and I definitely recognized the silence about queerness and anti-LGBTQ and immigrant sentiments, and also the very real uptick in public displays of all kinds of ugly hatred and fear since 2015. One thing I was struck by is the way you were actively dealing with those issues in the memoir. There’s the really heartbreaking checking of Facebook posts and just not being able to reconcile the rancor there with the people you knew growing up. My Facebook is basically burned to the ground, so I really respected your restraint and ability to continue to see the good, or to remain in touch with the good things you saw and felt and learned from those people growing up. This is maybe a naive memoir question, since I don’t really write in this genre at all, but were you aware of the character of “you” in this memoir? I say that because one of my primary takeaways from the book is that “and then there’s me” is a really complicated, thoughtful, but mostly positive character, that idea that you’re wrestling with all of this but also seem to continually be able to at least remember the good in people is really one of the main things I think about when I think about the book (and clearly I’ve been thinking about it a lot ;-)). Was you as a character something you thought about, especially once you had it all together as a manuscript? Or is that more a result of writing this as honestly as possible?
NA: I don’t think I was aware of me as a character, per se, but I definitely was aware of me as the audience from the moment I started writing. I think that when growing up as a triple anomaly, it was hard to imagine that there was an audience outside of me for my work, especially because there have been so few mirrors in literature that reflect that set of anomalies back to me. I can sometimes find books that are about queer Appalachian people, or about queer Desi people, or maybe about desi Appalachian people, but finding books that hold all three aspects of my identity is nearly impossible. So there’s a way in which the writing of this book was for me first and foremost: it was about creating a space where all three aspects of my identity could exist as coherent, instead of anomalous.
Once I started to realize that there was a slightly bigger audience for my writing than just me, I thought a lot about what values I wanted to express through my writing: grace, empathy, humility, humanity. I wanted to extend those sentiments towards other people I was writing about, and also, to extend them back towards myself–towards the character Neema, who is moving through moments on the page, and towards the writer Neema, who is trying to make sense of those moments.
DH: I think that really comes through on the page. The word “big-hearted” is the first one that comes to mind when I think about the book. It makes all the sense in the world that this would start as a book for you first and foremost. I think it’s also very much in keeping with your approach and the book in general that it would have started with that quite specific audience, but also wind up being something that might open up the opportunity for other people to write about other Appalachias and their own very specific experiences.
As a fellow Appalachian who lived in Central Pennsylvania until college, then moved DC for 17 years (some of which were spent working at the Appalachian Regional Commission), and then moved back to Central Pennsylvania, I’m curious how you think distance may have played into your feelings about Appalachia in general. You live in Boston now, and I thought some of the most compelling parts of the book were about neighbors, and the difference between your neighborly experiences growing up, and what you found in Boston. Do you think distance plays a part in that?
NA: Very much so! I don’t think I was able to see Appalachia clearly until I left, in some ways. The cultural disconnects I’ve experienced in the places I’ve lived since, whether it was Pittsburgh in the late 90s (at which time a lot of Pittsburgh didn’t claim its Appalachian-ness, and instead mocked Appalachian people), or Madison in the early 2000s, or Boston since 2003, have made both my identity as an Appalachian person, and the nuances of Appalachian culture, a lot more visible to me. Growing up in Appalachia, I often felt like my identity as the child of Indian immigrants was the thing putting me on the outside. Looking back, I can see that my queerness was also at play. But since leaving, the thing that I feel like most often puts me on the outside is my Appalachian heritage. That fundamentally, the way I think about community, relationships, and place is very different than that of most of the people who surround me. The interdependence that exists in Appalachian spaces, which is largely borne out of the fact that no politician or policy is coming to save us, doesn’t exist in Boston. In Appalachia, folks’ vulnerability is visible. In Boston, people do their damnedest to hide their vulnerability. In Appalachia, you can’t help but be humble–the mountains are constantly reminding you of how small you are. The most outsize egos I’ve ever experienced have been in coastal places, where people don’t have that visible reminder. I think I needed the contrasting cultures and geographies to be able to unpack how the communities I’ve lived in are different, and to upend the notion that Appalachia is “behind” or “backwards”, when in fact, I think the rest of America has a hell of a lot to learn from Appalachia.
DH: Speaking of queerness, congratulations on being nominated for a Lammy! What does that recognition mean to you?
NA: Thank you! It’s such a tremendous honor, and not one I’d ever dreamed of when I started this publication journey. Particularly in this moment where queer folks in Appalachia are under attack by state legislatures in Kentucky and WV and Tennessee, it feels especially powerful to have a queer Appalachian story be recognized in this way by the folks at Lambda Literary. So often, I think non-coastal, non-urban queerness gets erased in dominant narratives about queer identity and community, so I’m grateful to have my book take some space on the very visible shelf that the Lammys offer, and to metaphorically throw some elbows to make space for more our stories! (Sorry Dave, it wouldn’t be an interview with me if I didn’t work in a little basketball at some point.)
DH: I’m always curious about the nuts and bolts of the publication process: how did this go from a word file on your computer to a book that’s sitting on the floor of my parent’s house in Florida right now?
NA: I should say first that I’m an educator, and have been a teacher in the Boston Public Schools for close to two decades. I don’t have an MFA, and my connections to that world are tenuous at best. So even when I had a set of essays that felt like a full collection, I wasn’t totally sure what to do with it. I looked at how other people I knew, even peripherally, had gone about publishing books, and I tried to follow their model: I wrote a book proposal. I queried agents. I sent out the full manuscript to folks who requested it. And very quickly, it became clear that this path wasn’t going to work for me. The agents I queried were incredibly kind and complimentary, and told me that my book was beautiful, but that they didn’t think they could sell it. I could have taken that feedback and done a second round, or third or fourth round, of queries to other agents. But like I said, I’m a teacher. Which means when I get feedback, it tells me what I need to do differently. And if agents were telling me they couldn’t sell my book, then that told me I was looking in the wrong direction. So with a lot of help from my Pittsburgh writing aunties (Geeta Kothari, Jane McCafferty, and Jane Bernstein–all incredible, long-time mentors), I pivoted. I looked to small presses and university presses, particularly those with a regional focus on Appalachia and the South, and with missions that specifically addressed highlighting underrepresented voices in those regions. And in making that pivot, I got so much more interest in my book. Those folks didn’t have concerns about selling the book, because books like mine are the ones they sell every day. When the opportunity arose to publish with WVU Press, it felt like a no-brainer. Folks at home wanted to publish my book. They got my little, complicated book, and I knew they would champion it from their hearts, because it’s a story they know viscerally, and not just intellectually. And there’s not a single day in the past year where I’ve regretted that decision!
DH: I do think the book wound up at exactly the right publisher, with West Virginia University Press. Okay just one more question, and it is our standard Barrelhouse question: what’s your favorite Patrick Swayze movie?
NA: Ohh…tough question. It’s gonna have to be a tie between City of Joy, which has Swayze in India, and Next of Kin, which has him repping Appalachia. Would you expect anything less? 😀
Neema Avashia was born and raised in southern West Virginia to parents who immigrated to the United States. She has been a middle school teacher in the Boston Public Schools since 2003. Her essays have appeared in the Bitter Southerner, Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.
Pick up a copy of Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer in a Mountain Place from the publisher, West Virginia University Press.