Brooke Shaffner‘s book, Land of Underwon the 1729 Book Prize at Mason Jar Press and was recently republished by Split/Lip Press. The sun that shines all night Author Diane Zinna praised the novel, saying it had “a big heart” and was “a miracle.”
It follows Pilar, raised by her undocumented father, and Carlos/Carla/Río, who is gender-neutral and raised by his grandmother, as they return to the Rio Grande Valley after tragedy strikes years after their friendship began.
To help readers get to know her better, we asked the author to answer our recurring questionnaire “A Life Full of Books.”
When you think back, is there a book or series that shaped your childhood?
As a teenager I read all Anne of Green Gables Books marked by Anne’s nonconformist, indomitable spirit, then any book by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I was blown away for days by these stories about clever, imaginative girls growing up on Prince Edward Island in Canada in the late 19th century.
My father, an adventurous pilot, was left quadriplegic in an accident when I was 10, a year after my parents divorced. When I was 14 and my sister was eight, he told us he wanted to take a family trip, our first since his accident, and asked where we wanted to go. Since books are my preferred means of travel, I suggested Prince Edward Island. So Dad drove us up the east coast in his wheelchair-accessible van from his home in Fort Lauderdale to Prince Edward Island. A support team of fellow flight attendants and pilots, as well as several staff nurses, joined us at various points along the way to make the trip possible.
It was a long, arduous journey, especially for my father, and I longed for the familiar life with my mother and stepfather. When we finally reached Prince Edward Island, it was tiny and highly commercial – the house on which Green Gables is based, Anne’s Lake with glowing water and silvery-white birch trees, all marked and labeled like a Candyland board.
Sarah Polley played the lead role in the television series based on Montgomery’s The Story Girl and describes Montgomery’s books in her impressive collection of essays, Run towards dangeras “nostalgia for a time that never was… a fictional, glorified, all-white past.” Polley writes that Montgomery married a mentally ill, abusive minister, suffered severe depression, and eventually took her own life. I read further that Montgomery and her husband were addicted to opioids prescribed for depression, and that she needed a “shot” to be able to write – an image I can’t separate from her books.
At 14, I just felt like what we had driven so far for wasn’t in our destination. But I must have had some inkling of how meaningful the trip was to my father. In one photo, I’m smiling and holding his curled hand with intensity.
Four years after my father became quadriplegic, he drove us 2,000 miles on a grand road trip across America (and Canada). Recalling the trip recently, he said it showed him that adventures were still possible with us. It is my father’s irrepressible spirit that interests me today.
Would you like the children in your life (your own or those of your relatives) to read these books too? Or what is your philosophy regarding children’s reading?
A Jamaican-American middle school student I taught at the Brooklyn Public Library a few years ago came with a copy of Anne of Green Gables and told me she liked it. I think it’s important that children have access to a wide variety of books that reflect themselves and their lives, and that they have adults they can talk to openly about difficult topics. I know there are wonderful middle school books with diverse characters that encourage confidence, kindness, and a love of nature, and help children navigate our world today.
I discovered some of my favorite authors in high school. Which authors did you discover then? Either ones that were assigned for class or ones that you discovered on your own.
I chose Faulkner’s Light in August for an independent reading assignment in my sophomore year of high school and loved it without fully understanding it. I read it again in my MFA program and unconsciously imitated Faulkner’s use of lyricism and experimentation to depict the characters’ inner landscapes. In high school English class, I also remember Crime and Punishment to be a page-turner and to like The transformation, The Catcher in the RyeAnd The scarlet letterBut my favorite authors, the ones I’ve returned to over the years, I found in college – Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Jeanette Winterson.
Are there any books you read while writing your debut that influenced the direction of your own book?
Patti Smith’s memoirs Children only was a touchstone for Land of Underand her music plays a major role in the novel. At my book launch, drag artists performed “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo” and “Because the Night.” Children only, Land of Under is a double artist novel in which Pilar and Río’s development are intertwined. Their stories are intertwined and in many ways – as in my epigraph –believe in each other’s existence. I consider Patti Smith not only the godmother of punk, but also the perfect godmother for Río and Pilar with her clever, defiant, direct manner and her loyalty to a larger vision. Gloria Anzaldúa came from my hometown of Edinburg, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, where the beginning of Land of Under is set and Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza was a major influence. The themes and styles of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is illuminated and Amanda Coplins The OrchardistThoroughly researched socially critical novels that sacrifice neither poetry, fantasy nor characterization also shaped Land of UnderAnd Lily Kings Writers & Lovers helped me capture the emotions of Pilar and Río in all their youthful fullness while also adding the serenity of an older perspective.
What book have you read that made you think, “Damn, I wish that was mine”?
I’m just grateful that the books I love most exist, that I read and reread, and that I can connect with them. Good books are so unique and depend on the minds that create them. Land of Under is so intertwined with my own obsessions and the life journey I took in the ten years I spent working on it. I love Virginia Woolf’s The wavesthat impresses with its far-reaching vision, emotional complexity, poetic beauty and stylistic innovation. I wonder what a contemporary adaptation of The waveswith the seven characters currently present.
What have you read recently that you would recommend to Debutiful readers?
I read more memoirs because I am working on a memoir. Two of them were guides, one new and the other a re-reading from 2012: Carvell Wallace’s beautiful, searing, probing Another word for love and Jeanette Winterson’s fiery, luminous and often humorous Why be happy when you could be normal? A friend recommended Carter Sickels’ novel The most beautiful star as an alternative to a particular book about Appalachia, and it was really moving. I am doing two book events with SG Huerta, so I recently read her poetry collections and was deeply moved. I am currently reading and finding Ghost performance by the British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad very compelling. And to comic relief, I find Maria Bamford’s Sure, I’ll join your cult.
And finally, I have to ask… Excuse me. What’s next? But wait! Use only three words.
Accept radical uncertainty.
