"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."
- Toni Morrison, "Song of Solomon"
These are my intellectual interests:
Human redemption:
I’m a prison reform activist, and as part of one of my projects, The Incarceration Files, I have interviewed more than 100 inmates, correctional officers, and ex-convicts who have done time in US prisons (and prisons abroad). I’m interested in why people make mistakes in life, why they go to jail, and how they reform themselves after these mistakes. I like to question morality in these instances: is a thief a bad person? Is even a murder a bad person? How can they become a better person? And do they want to be a better person?
These questions evoke the character Raskolinkov in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Raskolkinov is a pioneering madman who kills someone, then does time in a Siberian prison. How did Raskolinikov improve himself? How can I explore human redemption in literature?
My solution is to pen a novel set in an American prison–ideally in the South–where quenching heats drown inmates in sweat. I want to study a character who commits a crime but feels bad about it–and well, just wants to be free and better.
During the course of my work with The Incarceration Files, I’ve come to realize that most people who did time in prison are not that bad. Many men end up in correctional facilities because they endured trauma in childhood–their father hit them, their father also committed crimes, and their family was desperate for money, living paycheck to paycheck, relying on food stamps just to satisfy their empty stomachs.
Studying prisoners has changed my life. I’ve realized that I can reform my ways too. Prisoners often tell me about the books they read behind bars–and the poems they write–and the religions they choose to pick up. I want to do these things too–I want to read great books that alter my life, and I want to engage in meaningful conversations about how I can be a better citizen, friend, and family member. So, in short, I believe that human redemption is real. I believe that someone can do something evil, and then be good again. And that, well, that makes me really happy.
Exploring sex and love:
In literature, I like to explore how people engage in sex and love. I like to be edgy and study BDSM, and the more I engage in the BDSM community, the more I realize that many men and women who enter it have good intentions. In fact, when they engage in acts of BDSM in a consensual, healthy way, they end up being happier and nicer to those around them in office settings and real life. The fact that doing a consensual act that is submissive or dominant can actually make you a better person is really interesting to me.
I also like to study people who fall in love with unconventional characters. There is the age old trope, explored in Avril Lavigne’s song Skater Boi, of the beautiful and popular woman who secretly has a crush on the guy who everyone deems a loser. The woman has tons of friends in school, or, alternatively, she’s a well established career professional, with pretty hair and a thick bank account, but she quietly wants to sleep with a younger guy who is struggling immensely in life, can’t take care of himself, but writes extremely well. This popular woman is often struck by one impressive personality trait in this flailing man, or the hot girl in high school is struck by how well that loser boy can skateboard. In this story arc, the loser ends up doing pretty well in life–he gets his act together, becomes clean from drugs and alcohol, and, a la Avril Lavigne, becomes a rockstar. On a similar note, the flailing young writer ends up being a star in the literary world. And suddenly, that well established woman pales in comparison to his career.
I’m interested in this relationship dynamic–why does the popular woman suppress her adoration of the loser man? Does she gossip about him behind his back, does she put him down? Does she do everything in her power to pretend like he’s not a piece of gold in her tortured heart? How does this woman deal with the fact that she’s attracted to a “lesser than”, a “loser”, someone with inferior status? And what happens when that person with inferior status becomes superior? When they start to shine in the world, when they become less awkward, when they become better looking and more intelligent? I want to talk about this dynamic in a novel set in a college town. The novel will be rife with secret sex scenes–scenes in which the woman plays out her adoration but then keeps it hidden the next day. I think this novel will be fun to write.
Epistolary novels:
Epistolary novels are novels written as a compilation of letters. Letters sent from one person to another, or an endless stream of letters sent from the author to the reader. Epistolary novels strike my interest because to me, they are easy to write: I write letters a lot, be it in secret or in the open. I believe that there is an intrinsic power to letter writing that captures the essence of first person narration: a person is in throbbing love, but the love goes unrequited. A transgender man is sneaking testosterone across state lines, and pens a few pages to the recipient of the hormone, in a tantamount act of defiance to the feds
Inspirations:
I am inspired by the following authors, business leaders, and other thought leaders:
Toni Morrison:
Toni Morrison is perhaps my greatest inspiration of them all. I got a tattoo in honor of her landmark book Song of Solomon when I was a meager track star trying to find her way in the world, and I am about to name a shorthair cat after her. Morrison strikes me as the best author of all time, and I have pontificated on this fact greatly in my old college paper the Yale Daily News (insert links). Her prose is lyrical in nature–it’s timeless and will etch a permanent place in the great literary cannon of the 20th, 21st, and future 22nd and 23rd centuries. Her invocation of magical realism to twist settings and plots to reflect distorted, yet beautiful realities, is second to none. And her use of primarily black characters to depict racism and other troubles beset on her community is a world class phenomenon that earned her both the Nobel and Pulitzer prize.
Junot Diaz:
I am drawn to Junot Diaz’s intense and staccato verbiage: in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he inserts references to Dominican American culture at every turn, and even evokes a certain machismo embedded in his words that is appealing to a man like me. While Diaz has faced accusations of inappropriate behavior in his personal life, I believe in separating art from the artist, so I will appreciate his art at every turn. Diaz is inspiring for his low level beginnings as a gas attendant in New Jersey, and he worked his way up in the literary world to earn an MFA from Cornell University and then become tenured at MIT. His prose is lively–it is vicarious, it jumps out from the page, and it keeps the reader on their heels. Diaz shows, and not tells.
Michael Cunningham:
Michael Cunningham taught me at Yale, and his class was my favorite. Reading Fiction For Craft felt like a hobby–and not a chore. Michael pranced from blackboard to blackboard in his seminar, writing down elaborate verbs and plot lines. His verbiage in Days and The Hours is lyrical and his adjectives are second to none. Michael’s ability to weave Virginia Woolf into the modern day lives of a few women in Manhattan was a difficult feat to do. He brings confidence and a subtle kind of joy to the teaching table. It’s no wonder he earned the Pulitzer Prize. Instead of being a serious and downtrodden writer, always pontificating on deep themes, he’s kind of a stud–a handsome man who just happens to be gay and knows how to have a good time. In his public speeches, he speaks of people in his life like Helen, who was a woman he once worked with at a tiki bar in Laguna Beach. He tells a tale of still writing for Helen–who prized cheap low brow fiction like Michael Connelly over some of the greats. He still pens novels for people like Helen–for people who don’t know any better than to not say that they are into Michael Connelly. Michael also spent many years as a bartender, and can understand the struggle of making it in the world as an author who sometimes barely scrapes by.
Anne Fadiman:
Anne Fadiman also taught me at Yale, and she’s near and dear to my heart. I let her know this in the occasional email I still pen to her. Anne made a mark in the literary world with her landmark, National Book Award-winning title The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Her prose is detailed, and she is an inordinately detail oriented person. But what most people don’t know is that Anne tends to her students like they are her own children: she tracks not only our progress during undergrad years but our progress beyond graduation. She scrupulously writes letters of recommendation past dark and hosts dinners with alumni. She champions our work, whether it’s in plays or books like hers, when we are working professionals. Anne cares deeply about the people she teaches, and she cares deeply about her craft, even earning a crossword puzzle clue in the national arena. It’s my hope one day to surprise her with a collection of essays that will live up to her intellectual prowess as well. Hopefully that day is soon to come.
Jamie Dimon:
You might be surprised to hear me idolize a finance tycoon in a website dedicated to writing, but I must do so nonetheless. Jamie Dimon has been the CEO of JP Morgan for [insert years], and he has built an extensive track record on Wall Street, having worked for [insert details]–all which happened after his graduation from Harvard Business School. After beating throat cancer, Jamie Dimon still rose to the occasion to continue his vital work in finance. He is level headed, balanced, highly intelligent, and an articulate leader and speaker. Other notable figures like Barack Obama are a big fan of Jamie, and rightly so: Dimon takes a centrist political stance, has advised presidents on both sides of the aisle, and inserts high intensity and rigor to his workforce, standing against work from home policies–and instead advocating for employees to be in physical office spaces, where they can cohort and share ideas face to face, and not over Zoom. This attention to human interaction spiked my interest, and I consistently watch clips of Dimon when I am feeling discouraged in life. His charisma and personality is motivating, and his personality is endearing. I hope he can continue to be the smart and capable Wall Street tycoon that he has proved to be time and again.
Barack Obama:
How can I create a list of idols without mentioning Barack Obama? America’s 44th president was not only an established lawyer and statesman, but an eloquent writer as well. The prose he pens in Dreams From My Father rivals that of a supreme novelist. In his paragraphs, Obama shows a kindred connection to the written word–a hearty relationship with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. I would have loved to have sat next to him in a creative writing seminar at Columbia. In his high school and college years, Obama confronts an identity crisis: he is plagued by being half-white, half-black, and resorts to substances to cope with some pain. But he resolves this pain within him and succeeds at Harvard Law and on into Chicago. Obama embodies a certain kind of purity that is rare among presidents: his narration of Our Oceans, a nature documentary premiered far after his time in the White House, showcases the voice of a man who wishes everything well on the world. I watch it, time in and time out, just to hear the tenor in the way he speaks. Amid the Trump chaos, his notes stand out as symbols to hang onto–symbols of hope, and not fear.