Episode 583
with Cheryl Strayed, Joseph Earl Thomas, and Stephanie Anne Johnson
Celebrated author Cheryl Strayed (Wild, Dear Sugar) revisits her collection of advice columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, which celebrates its tenth anniversary and has recently been adapted as a Hulu series starring Kathryn Hahn; writer Joseph Earl Thomas unpacks his memoir Sink, in which he describes how geek culture saved him from his hazardous upbringing; and singer-songwriter Stephanie Anne Johnson performs their song "The Day That You Begin." Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share some life advice from our listeners.
Cheryl Strayed
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Alongside being a Portland gem, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide and was made into an Oscar-nominated major motion picture. Her bestselling book Tiny Beautiful Things, a book of essays compiled from her anonymously written advice column "Dear Sugar" is being adapted for a Hulu television show, and was previously adapted into a play that has been staged in theaters around the world. Strayed is also the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Torch, and the bestselling collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her quotes. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere. She has hosted two hit podcasts, Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars.
Joseph Earl Thomas
Writer and Author
Described as "brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), Joseph Earl Thomas is a multi-genre writer on a mission. His newest book, Sink, a coming-of-age memoir that investigates an unsteady childhood and the saving grace of geek culture, is yet another example of Joseph's writerly prowess. His other creative work has appeared in renowned literary journals such as VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review, while an excerpt from Sink won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize. Alongside his publications, Joseph has recieved fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, Kimbilio, & Breadloaf, though he is now the Anisfield-Wolf Fellow at the CSU Poetry Center. An unstoppable literary force, he’s currently writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is also an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, as well as Director of Programs at Blue Stoop, a literary hub for Philly writers.
Stephanie Anne Johnson
Americana-inspired singer-songwriter
Stephanie Anne Johnson is a special musical talent. They can bring a crowded dive bar to a collective hush. They can bring one of the biggest audiences on the planet to a standing ovation. They can even don a cowboy hat and sing over a slide as old timers weep. Stephanie's voice wowed judges on The Voice, and it’s no surprise that Johnson is so affecting with a mantra like, “find your joy and go there.” Their music, which is steeped in all that’s American, expresses the pain of the past, the roots of home, and the hope that hard work will lead to proper reward. Stephanie Anne Johnson has opened for acts that include political figure Bernie Sanders, and artists such as Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, and Ani DiFranco.
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Luke Burbank: This episode was originally recorded in March 2023. Hey Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going very well, actually, this week. Are you ready for our weekly Station Location Identification Examination appointment?
Elena Passarello: Yes. I am so ready.
Luke Burbank: Like, we need one more letter on that acronym. Now we're adding appointment to the end of it. This is where I quiz you about a place in the country where Live Wire's on the radio. You got to guess the place I'm talking about. November 12th, 1970, the Department of Transportation used a half a ton of dynamite to blow up a dead whale that had washed up on the beach in the city and it did not go great.
Elena Passarello: I totally teach this video when I used to teach freshmen comp when I was trying to teach, like who were the involved parties. I would show the whale blowing up and I would be like, Who are the people who would be concerned with this issue? I believe it's Gold Beach, Oregon. Is that right?
Luke Burbank: It is close. Florence, [Elena:Florence] Florence, Oregon. Now, the Gold Beach might be the name of the beach. The town that we are on the radio is Florence, Oregon, where KLFO FM is playing the program. Now, you're right. The concerned parties, it turned out Elena would be anyone within the blast radius who were covered in whale blubber and other unmentionable things.
Elena Passarello: I love that video so much.
Luke Burbank: It is. It's a real treasure. Anyway, shout out to everyone in Florence, Oregon. [Elena: Woo-hoo] All right. Should we get to the program?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's Live Wire. This week, writer and advice columnist Cheryl Strayed.
Cheryl Strayed: I don't know what you should do, but I am willing to go down there with you into all the corners and crevices and try to figure it out.
Elena Passarello: And writer Joseph Earl Thomas.
Joseph Earl Thomas: I'm driving on the expressway and I'm getting on the ramp and there's somebody with like an iguana or whatever, like trying to sell me the iguana and like, homemade ice tea.
Elena Passarello: With music from Stephanie Anne Johnson and our fabulous house band, I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone listening all over the country, including in beautiful Florence, Oregon. We have a great show in store for you this week. We've asked the listeners a question. We ask, What advice would you give yourself ten years ago? This is because we're going to be talking to Cheryl Strayed, who gives out advice as the Dear Sugar columnist. She's a recognized master in the field. We're going to hear those responses coming up in a few minutes. First, though, it's time for the best news we've heard all week. This is our little reminder start of the show that there's some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news that you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Okay, this is news to me, but this is actually a thing that's been going on for over a decade and it's just such a great idea. I love it so much. And I wish I lived closer to Staten Island, New York.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: Where in 2007 after the loss of his beloved Italian mother, a man named Joe Scaravella was looking for something to do with his grief. And I don't know what line of work he was in, but he was not a restaurateur. He definitely wants us to know that because he opened up a restaurant.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: It's called Enoteca Maria, named after his beloved mother, who not just was a mother, she was a nonna or a grandmother. And basically he was operating on this very commonly felt sentiment that the best food you've ever had in your whole life was made by your grandma. Yes. I mean, I'm one of the rare people who've had I have five grandmothers because of all the divorces and remarriages in my family that not all of them were great cooks, but a couple of them. My step father's mother, Grandmother Horton. Man, she could make a southern table of food.
Luke Burbank: With a last name like Passarello, I thought that you were going to go a lot more, you know, Mamma Mia on it. That's a spicy meatball.
Elena Passarello: No, you know, South Carolina Italians, they just didn't. I mean, I guess they just dumped tomato sauce on red beans and rice and that that's not where the cooking comes from in my family. It's the Southerners that really could cook. But anyway, so at Enoteca Maria, starting in 2007, Joe Scaravella welcomed different nonnas around the community to come in and they'd have a night and they would make the dishes that they knew best. They would be in charge of the kitchen. The whole staff would work for them and would perfect these recipes for whoever wanted to come in and taste the food. And of course, it went over like gangbusters.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Elena Passarello: So fast forward like seven years later. In 2015, he expanded the concept to include Nonna's from around the world. So now three nights a week, Friday and Saturday and Sunday, a different grandmother cooks cuisine from a different cultural place. And there's like something like 15 countries represented. So Nonna Carmen from Argentina is cooking. Nonna Rosa from Peru. Nonna Linda from Hong Kong, Nonna Irene from Puerto Rico. There's also Turkey, Italy, as we know, Greece, Egypt, Trinidad and Tobago. And they all come in and they have they've now developed neighborhood favorites, people who wait for a certain nonna to come back up on the calendar. [Luke: Oh my gosh.] And Joe Scaravella brought up a really interesting point. You know, it's crazy grueling to run a restaurant, but it's not so bad to cook just one night, a couple of months out of the year. And a lot of these folks are empty nesters or their kids have grown up and moved away or they're widows. And so it makes them feel really good to come in and just have complete and total reign over a kitchen and to make people happy and to become kind of Nonna's for the greater Staten Island community.
Luke Burbank: That's amazing. The best news that I saw this week is coming from Chicago, where there is an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in operating on young patients. Her name is Felicity Fishman at Shriners Children's in Chicago. And her specialty, along with the surgery, of course, is the aftercare, where what she does is she draws a very elaborate drawing on the casts of the kids that she has done surgery on. They talked about a two-year-old kid named Wesley who's having a surgery on his hand and woke up, this was at his request, by the way, with a bright green and yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex that had been drawn on there. The way that Dr. Fishman does this is she's got a whole bunch of photos of previous drawings on her phone. And when she has a young patient in there and they're kind of doing the initial consult, she shows them all the pictures she's done or asked them to just come up with something out of their head. And then she draws it while they're still kind of coming to, from having had the surgery. And so they wake up with these, like really amazing, elaborate, pretty good, like, art renderings on their casts. There's a kid named Michael who's had to have seven surgeries because of a congenital bone length thing. And so he's had all kinds of stuff. He's had a chicken wearing sneakers, he had Thanos from the Marvel movies one time, and he's like, loves it so much. This is the one downside of this is that none of the kids want to have the cast taken off because they're enjoying how cool the art is. They also don't want anyone else to sign it. But these kids are apparently like loving this artwork and it really seems like it makes the experience a lot better for them. You know, having a cast is really not fun, but if you can at least have a cool piece of art on your arm or ankle or whatever it might be, that makes a little better. So shout out to Dr.Felicity Fishman at Shriners Children in Chicago to make things a little better for these young patients. That's the best news that I heard this week. All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. She's the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. That book has sold more than 4 million copies. It was also made into an Oscar nominated film, which I'm sure many of the people listening saw. It was starring Reese Witherspoon. And also Cheryl Strayed has for many years been an advice columnist writing under the name Dear Sugar. She put out a book called Tiny Beautiful Things. That was a collection of these pieces of advice. It's also being turned into a series on Hulu starring Kathryn Hahn. Cheryl joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon, to talk about the book. Take a listen to this.
Cheryl Strayed: Hello, everyone. I'm so glad to be in Portland on stage in front of actual people.
Luke Burbank: These real people are so glad to have you here, Cheryl. Was really fun to get to kind of revisit Tiny, Beautiful things which, like, just turned ten years old.
Cheryl Strayed: That's right.
Luke Burbank: And I was reading in the preface, you wrote the only thing that you hope to do as a writer is to make people feel less alone. And I'm wondering, how do you actually do that as a writer?
Cheryl Strayed: Well, it's really simple and also really complex, right? I do what other writers have done to me, really, since I began to read when I was six years old. I remember feeling so deeply struck by the power of words on the page that the way that it could make you feel seen, the way that it could make, you know, pain and beauty. You could feel somebody else's struggle in your own heart. And my mission as a writer has always been to simply join the ranks of those people who do that. And so, of course, the simplicity is tell the truth, be as raw and honest and transparent as possible on the page. That's what I try to do. And of course, that's incredibly hard to do as well.
Luke Burbank: Particularly when if we're talking about tiny, beautiful things, people are asking you for guidance and some of the folks are going through unimaginable circumstances. [Cheryl: Yeah.] I'm curious. Where were you at in your life, like personally when you took on the unpaid assignment to become Sugar, this advice columnist — this anonymous advice columnist?
Cheryl Strayed: Well, I was I was at the time I had my kids who are now teenagers, were little like preschoolers. And I had just finished the first draft of Wild, and I had sent it off to my editor. And I didn't know what would happen with that book. My husband, who's a documentary filmmaker, and I were just two struggling artists living in Southeast Portland at the time, and I was asked to write this column and the pay was zero, which is a wage that I was very familiar with at that time. And, you know, where I was is skeptical that I could do it because I am not a therapist. I never took a class in psychology. I never myself had even gone through therapy at that point in my life. Yeah, really.
Luke Burbank: There's like a lot of wisdom in in this advice you're giving, which I assumed was the result of a lot of therapy.
Cheryl Strayed: And I was so unqualified for it. Or, you know, or so I thought.
Luke Burbank: I don't know if this book is such a good idea, being honest.
Cheryl Strayed: But you know what? What I realized once I started to write the column is that I had trained as a writer and to be a writer, it goes back to that first thing I just said to you. It is to attempt to tell the truth about who I am and who we are and who you are, and to create, whether it be in a fictional way, characters who seem real. Or to write about myself on the page in a way that will resonate with others. And so I just put all of that into this work, as Dear Sugar. And I decided to that because stories had been what had helped me in all of my struggles and hardships and losses. And there had been many by that point in my life that I could use stories that saved me in those struggles and hardships to help other people. And so that's how I approached the Dear Sugar column. I'm not you know, I often advise people go to therapy because I'm not a therapist. But here is a story I can tell you that might help illuminate the question you've asked me.
Luke Burbank: Well, actually, I want to ask you a little bit about that when we come back from the break. I'm curious your process of writing as Sugar, because I know that your book Wild, went through a writer's group and lots of revision and bouncing it off of people. But we've got to take a quick break. This is Live Wire Radio talking to Cheryl Strayed about her collection, Tiny, Beautiful Things. We'll be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We are coming to you this week from the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Yes, indeed. And talking to Cheryl Strayed about her collection, Tiny, Beautiful Things, which just celebrated a ten year anniversary. So I'm curious how you write these advice sort of pieces, because they're very important, obviously, to the people who they're directed to and to the rest of us who read them so you want to get them right. Do they go through the same writerly process that your other sort of prose do?
Cheryl Strayed: No. You know, it's weird. I break all of my own rules in the Dear Sugar column in terms of the way it gets written and edited, which is that I write it and my husband reads it and says, Uh-huh, yeah, it's good. And then I press publish. You know, I still write the column now as a substack newsletter. It was born on the Internet, originally on The Rumpus. And, you know, all these years later, you know, it was always that kind of very organic kind of writing. Very often I write those columns, almost all of those columns, and the book has been reissued. There are some new columns in it. And, you know, I really write all of those columns, almost all of them within a day or two. And I don't know why that form in particular is more unfiltered or unedited than my other writing. But it is. It's just how it comes out.
Elena Passarello: What about the distance between when you receive the question and you compose the response? Is that also super brief, or do you sometimes have to ruminate or stew or think it through?
Cheryl Strayed: You know, I do all of that stuff. Like sometimes I'll get a letter and I'll think about it for months. Other times I'll get a letter and I'll realize this is going to be the letter I'm going to answer. And I, you know, I write it the next day. So it really it has to capture my imagination. I feel like I have to have something to say about it and a story to tell about it. I also look for range because I never wanted the Dear Sugar column to only be like a love, sex and romance column. I want to write about relationships of all varieties. I want to write about money and, you know, should I move to Cincinnati or stay living in Portland? You know, all of these different questions I want to include in Dear Sugar.
Luke Burbank: Do you ever second guess yourself?
Cheryl Strayed: All the time. Are you kidding me? I mean, and that's that is, I think, such a key piece of what Dear Sugar is, is the premise is I am not the wise one. Who knows? And you should just gather round and listen to me tell you what to do. Even though I absolutely love to do that, I don't try to do that in Dear Sugar, what I try to do is say, I don't know what you should do, but I am willing to go down there with you into all the corners and crevices and try to figure it out, grapple with these questions, illuminate maybe the question that sits beneath the question that you've asked me. I try to listen really closely to the language that people use to describe their struggle. And I very often the best advice is to say back to people what they said to me, you know, a lot of letters are I don't know what to do. And always in the letter they have said what they want to do. And my job is to say, you said this is what you really want. And so what the real problem isn't, you don't know what you want. The real problem is that you are afraid to want what you want. You're afraid to know what you know. And that is big stuff. So that's what I try to do in Dear Sugar is show people that.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Cheryl Strayed here on Live Wire about Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar. Obviously, the best questions, the most intriguing are going to be what make it into the book. But some of them are just so beautifully written that I wonder, are they exquisitely made up? And does that even matter? Like, do you think there's a percentage of questions that come in that are, you know, maybe somebody is just kind of wondering what it would be like to be in that situation? And again, does it really matter?
Cheryl Strayed: Oh, that's interesting. You know, I've never been asked that question— usually people think that I've made them up. You know, that I've written them, which is always fascinating to me because, you know what I think what happens is people know that this advice column is a more literary one. And so I think that the column attracts a lot of people who are either writers or just good writers. [Luke: Yes] And of course, I'm attracted to letters that are well-written. But yeah, I've never it's never occurred to me that somebody was presenting a problem or a question that wasn't true. But it probably doesn't matter. You know, if a few have gotten through that, it's like, No, you're not really in the situation. You're just wondering about it. But usually I know, because almost always the letter writers follow up with me. I've met, like, babies that were born because, you know, they read the column.
Luke Burbank: That is an awesome amount of power.
Luke Burbank: It's the power to create life.
Cheryl Strayed: But no, people sometimes come to me and say, Yeah, I read that column and I did this, you know?
Luke Burbank: So not even the people that had written the letter, but just the wider world of readers, of course.
Cheryl Strayed: Of course. [Luke: Yeah.] Because that, that too is the trick about Dear Sugar is, you know, one person might be wondering if they should have a baby or not. But a lot of people are wondering that same thing. And one person might be grieving the death of their father. But a lot of people are out there grieving the death of their father. So that's that's how Dear Sugar works. And I think all advice columns is that we go— we gravitate to them because we, those problems or struggles or secrets or sorrows we have, they're very universal. [Elena: Mm-hmm.]
Luke Burbank: This is a question that when I thought of it, I thought it was profound. But then I reflected on it and realized it's probably the number one question you get asked about this, which is do you find yourself better at giving advice to other people than giving yourself advice or living out these principles that you're sort of describing?
Cheryl Strayed: Oh, of course. Of course. I mean, I can't even imagine how insufferable I'd be if I if I managed to, like, actually live out and take all of my best advice. You know, I mean, that's just— but, you know, I will say, however, you know, being Sugar has made me a better person.
Luke Burbank: Hmm.
Cheryl Strayed: Because so often in, you know, the—my advice is, you know, this is what it would look like if you evolved. This is what it would look like if you were courageous. This is what it would look like if you were compassionate to others and to yourself. [Elena:Mm-hmm.] And essentially, I'm saying here's a vision of the best version of you. And so when I tried to help people see that in themselves, I'm forced to see it in myself to how could I evolve? You know, so I'm always again, I always think of this advice as horizontal. It's not you know, I'm the wise person saying what you should do, but I am the person sitting next to you saying, I don't know either, but let's see what we can do.
Luke Burbank: This has been adapted into a Hulu Original series where I guess you'll be portrayed by the wonderful Kathryn Hahn, who is a national treasure. Yes. Are you just used to at this point, seeing yourself at various stages of your life, represented by awesome actors like Reese Witherspoon and Kathryn Hahn?
Cheryl Strayed: I know it is, for sure, the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. I mean, I never I was never one of those people, you know, when they're like, Well, who would play you in a movie or a TV show? Like, I never was one of those people had an answer for that. So I don't know how I have stumbled into this reality. But yes, indeed, Kathryn Hahn is playing Sugar. The show will be out on April 7th. All eight episodes are going to be dumped at once. You can just sit there and binge it. [Luke: thank you for that]
Elena Passarello: Yes. Yes.
Luke Burbank: I have lost whatever part of my brain was dedicated to being patient about television series [Cheryl: Me too.] has atrophied. I need that. [Cheryl: Me too.] Daddy needs that right away. All the episodes.
Elena Passarello: That seems like a Dear Sugar issue. You could write in. Yeah.
Cheryl Strayed: I refuse to watch a show that is doled out week by week. I just cannot take it. Yeah, but. So Kathryn Hahn is absolutely a genius, and we needed somebody who could really be very funny, but also very dramatic and deep. I mean, the show is going to make you cry as often as it makes you laugh. And she plays Sugar. She doesn't play. You know, she's a sort of fictional iteration of me. The showrunner, Liz Tigelaar, likes to say this Sugar in our show, it's like Cheryl, if she hadn't hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, which is a long way of saying she's a lot more messed up than me. So, yeah, well, thank goodness. You know, I get to have a little separation here. Here was the premise, really. We were like, okay, this is a fictional character who's kind of got some things and, you know, she's kind of like me. And her past is like mine. So when she remembers her past and we see these these flashback scenes, the wonderful actress Sarah Pidgeon plays the young Claire. Now, the things that she's acting out are very much more from my actual life because I said, listen, she's got to have in order to tell the stories I tell in the column, she has to have a dead mother. She has to have gotten married and divorced young. She has to have grown up poor and working class. She has to have, you know, always wanted to be a writer. So those big parts of the strands essentially, that made me are behind her. And then in the present day, in the form of Kathryn Hahn, we just got to let loose and let it be really fictional, which I absolutely loved. And so I didn't have to feel, I guess, this sense of, wait a minute, that's not how it really was. I got to just really let it go. And I was a writer on the show. I'm an executive producer on the show. So I was really able to be very involved creatively and also feel a sense of, you know, what serves the story. Not not what's a reflection of my actual life.
Luke Burbank: Now, you being a writer on the show, though, there's got to be a writers room, right? Yeah, but who outranks Sugar in the writer's room of the Hulu original series about you? Like, I mean, doesn't everyone at some point has to go, Well, I mean, Cheryl, I guess Cheryl wins the argument again.
Cheryl Strayed: Well, you know, I occupied a very specific position, I think, in the room, because, first of all, the showrunner, Liz Tigelaar, is just an absolute wonderful person. And she really from the beginning welcomed me. And I said to her, listen, I'm not a TV writer. This is my first time in the room. I'm an apprentice to the craft. I am not coming in as you know, the diva or the one who's going to insist on anything. I really want to be in this room. And it was Liz and I and seven other writers. And what I did is I, I contributed what I what they wanted from me, which was a lot of the essentially the meaning and story of what is what is the meaning of the Dear Sugar column. And some of those scenes from my, you know, young life. But I also really listened to them and I learned a lot. And that has been I think it's the advice I would give to any writer at any stage of their career is always be an apprentice. Never go in thinking that you are the the the one who knows. Be that— sit always in that horizontal chair that you get to sit across from people and learn from what they have to say. And so it was an amazing experience.
Luke Burbank: The book is Tiny Beautiful Things. Look for the original series on Hulu. Cheryl Strayed, thank you as always for coming on Live Wire. That was the one and only Cheryl Strayed right here on Live Wire. You can read the 10th anniversary edition of Tiny Beautiful Things. And you can go watch the series starring Kathryn Hahn on Hulu. It's streaming right now. This is Live Wire as we like to do each week, we asked our listeners a question. We asked, What advice would you give yourself ten years ago? Of course, ten years ago, as around the time that Cheryl Strayed started writing as Dear Sugar. Folks sent in their responses to that Elena has been collecting them up. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: This one from Chloe is really good. Don't fall for the thin eyebrow trend. Don't wax them, don't over pluck. Leave them alone. I don't think anybody ever told me—I mean, this is not a problem that I have. I'm like a Groucho Marx level of eyebrows. But I did—I didn't know that if you pluck your eyebrows, they might not grow back. So there are all these people who can't cash in on the nineties full Brooke Shields trend because they just eradicated their eyebrows in the oozies.
Luke Burbank: I always wondered why when I was a little kid, there's a number of women kind of maybe on the more sort of elderly side who worked at the pharmacy across the street. And that was my first experience with someone who's just straight up drawing their eyebrows on. [Elena: Yeah.] And I remember thinking, that's an interesting choice, but it's got to be because maybe those things don't grow back. So no, so heartily. What's something else? The piece of advice that a listener would give their self from ten years ago.
Elena Passarello: Oh, my God. This one from Ariel. Listen, everybody listen to Ariel. Stretch. Oh, if I would have stretched more ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I would—there would be so many aches and pains that I know would not be present. But, you know, I'm supposed to stretch now and I'm not doing it.
Luke Burbank: Is it? What is it? Just that the time commitment? Is it that you're just busy with other things? What? What what would stop you from doing this thing that you know will make your life better in ten years?
Elena Passarello: I don't like being told what to do, even when I tell myself what to do, you know?
Luke Burbank: Yeah, I know. It's just amazing. And boy, this is turning into a real geriatric segment for us. But it's there's so many things like stretching and eyebrow maintenance. It's just it's just a different world when you get into your, you know, your middle age where I am. So, [Elena: It's true.] I should probably take a hint, too, and and do some stretching as well. Okay. Some other advice that someone would be giving themselves from ten years ago.
Elena Passarello: What do you think about this one from Derek? Derek would like to advise his earlier self. No one cares and that's a good thing.
Luke Burbank: Oh, right. That's kind of very stoic, right? Like, if you think about the fact that sort of none of this matters.
Elena Passarello: Mm.
Luke Burbank: You could take that as something that would make you feel kind of bummed out, but you could also take it as something that means anything that happens is okay because none of it matters. [Elena:Yeah] Nobody cares. So why are we ever giving ourselves a hard time?
Elena Passarello: Right. I'm sure people care like they're empathetic, but like, in terms of, like, people judging you honestly, like, you're not taking up that much space in other people's experiences. And that's good.
Luke Burbank: Yes. All right. Thanks to everyone who sent in a response to our listener question. We've got another one for next week's show, which we will reveal at the end of this program. So stick around for that. In the meantime, we should welcome our next guest to the program. The New York Times called his new book a remarkable debut and an extraordinary memoir of a Black American Boyhood. The book is called Sink. And in it, he investigates his hazardous upbringing and the way that geek culture really saved him. He's also an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the director of programs at Blue Stoop, which is a literary hub for writers from Philly. Joseph Earl Thomas joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater to talk about his memoir. Take a listen to this. Joseph, welcome to the show.
Joseph Earl Thomas: Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank: Can you start by just kind of describing your family structure as you lay it out in this book? You're growing up in Philly in the kind of mid and late nineties, and you're in a home with your mother who's there kind of intermittently, and then you've got sort of a grandmother and grandfather character. But like what was the scene for you growing up?
Joseph Earl Thomas: Yeah, so it was, you know, kind of a mixed family. My mother had her own kind of problems as she was dealing with, like primary with addiction and kind of the way that the world generally treats Black women and all these different kinds of ways. Right. Of course. And then my grandmother, who was her mother, was also there with us, but also didn't really have the capacity to care for folks. Right. And so a man that she married, my grandfather, he was the one who kind of in some ways right in the way that like the kind of old school kind of man. Capital M takes care of the house. He was the person who did that. So it's like a kind of toggling back and forth with a lot of adults who are in difficult situations, who are also trying to take care of not just me, one child, but my brother and my sister, etc..
Luke Burbank: One of the things that you do that's really interesting in this book is you write about yourself in the third person a lot. You write about Joey. When did you decide that that was going to be an approach you were going to take to describing this?
Joseph Earl Thomas: It took a while. I will say that, you know, right. Of course, when you read a memoir, one expects it to be in the first person. That is the kind of most popular deployment of like interiority in that way. But, you know, as far as like writing goes, that's not the most common convention, right? The most common convention is third person or this thing that we think of as like free, indirect discourse. Right. Everything about like literature, people, you know, the exemplar of that form being someone like Toni Morrison. Right. Who is so good at doing this kind of simultaneously objective, subjective thing that you don't even notice that she's doing it all the time with a bunch of different characters and a bunch of different settings, etc.. And, you know, for me, I went around, it was in Second person who was the first person, the third person. I was doing a lot of different stuff. And, you know, there are friends like early readers, some of which I'll never forget. You know, one of my friends, she's like, What are you doing? You know, this is just [Luke: everybody needs that friend] Yeah, yeah exactly.
Luke Burbank: You don't need 5 of that friend.
Luke Burbank: Because that's too much.
Joseph Earl Thomas: You'll never get anything done if you have five of them. Yeah. And, you know, she's like, Oh, this. She's like, I think you're a good writer. I think you kind of know what you are doing. Why are you trying to play all these games? And she's like, I'm sure this is a lot of fun for you. I'm like, Yes, it is a lot of fun. You know, that kind of playing with form thing that you do as a writer. But ultimately you need to build in some kind of coherence. And so I settled primarily on third. It does also go into second. I settled on that and thinking about like what the difficulties of becoming like an I or like self-contained person who can refer to oneself as like this is I me person versus like what the world is giving you or forcing you to kind of contend with, right? So it gets kind of closer and closer, but never really turns into like an I by the end.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Joseph Earl Thomas. His new memoir is Sink. One of the things you write about is the stuff that you were really interested in was often not the stuff the kids you went to school with or other kids you hung out with were really into like the No Doubt song Don't Speak.
Joseph Earl Thomas: Yeah, yeah. That was a that was a sticking point as well. Right. So you know, a lot of like my—the things I was interested in with regards to music had to do with like my aunt, for example, who was the person I was closest with growing up. And a lot of that was like hip hop and R&B, more R&B, right? This is like 90s, R&B, heyday, like really kind of overpowering emotion, kind of kind of R&B music. And then, you know, there was other stuff, too, right? So I was interested in like anime and video games in a way that like now it's kind of commonplace that, you know, if you ask any person, you know, under the age of like 25-ish, they're going to be like, what is one of the main things they do. They play video games, watch anime almost like continuously.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, people very much like to embrace the term geek now.
Joseph Earl Thomas: Yes, it's very popular now—
Luke Burbank: But it was different in Philly in like '97.
Joseph Earl Thomas: I think it was different everywhere, like in like '95, '96, '97, you know, But it became more, you know, more acceptable and kind of grew to have a broader following. Or in other words, like people recognized that it was like a kind of goofy moniker to be like, these are the people who I don't like or I do like or whatever right? It's like no longer like a subculture. And now it's a thing that a bunch of people do are interested in.
Luke Burbank: But how big of a deal was it for you because you're living in a household where you know there's violence and where there's people struggling with addiction and you're also being bullied a lot when you're out in the world and you're just constantly trying to not get your ass kicked, basically. [Joseph Earl Thomas: Basically.] How big—like what role then does like Dragon Ball Z and anime and things like that take on in your life more than just a way to pass the time, but maybe a way to feel differently about your world.
Joseph Earl Thomas: So, you know, one of the things that one gets asked, especially when they write a book, is like, oh, did you come up reading or were you that, like, little quiet kid sitting in the corner, you know, reading the book or whatever? And I wasn't. My immediate family, like, no one really read, right? Like, no one, you know, cared about school. But I played video games. And at the time, of course, these weren't voiced in the way that they are now. Right. So you would sit there reading for like seven or 8 hours, you know, a day trying to get through this game. And it was like your progress was dependent upon your being able to interpret what was going on in the story or the satisfaction that you could get from it. So that became important or like a way of thinking about the world too.
Luke Burbank: You also were, as you write in the book, very interested in animals. You—there was this place Birds, Birds, Birds on the street. What do they sell there?
Joseph Earl Thomas: It's a very apt name. It's a very good name for a pet store. If you ever open a pet store, name it Birds, Birds, Birds.
Luke Burbank: But like you had a lot of adventures there, like getting things that sadly mostly didn't have, maybe didn't make it that long. But the thing that was really wild was you bought an alligator.
Joseph Earl Thomas: I did, yeah. So I didn't know this until a friend of mine brought it up the other day. And like, a different interview, he was like, Why do people in Philly love animals so much? And I was like, What do you even mean? He's like, I'm driving on the expressway and I'm getting on the on the ramp and there's somebody with like an iguana or whatever, like trying to sell me the iguana and like homemade ice tea, like when you're getting 76. And I was like, Oh, I didn't know that that's only here. And then I thought about it. I was like, Oh, that doesn't happen everywhere.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, no.
Joseph Earl Thomas: And it was winter, right? That's the crazy part, right? Like it's an iguana anyway, so. So that's a problem—
Luke Burbank: So that's actually something that's, that's a fairly regular thing to kind of get animals that are maybe not, let's say native to Philly. [Joseph Earl Thomas: No.] Like an alligator.
Joseph Earl Thomas: Hermit crabs, you know, like iguanas like green. And I don't know, we could go forever down the list of animals, but I did get this alligator because I was like [ Luke: Rex?] what is— yes Rex. Which I thought was like a really good alligator name [Luke: This is a good alligator name.] Yeah. I'm like, What's a better alligator name than that? That's not [Luke: It's good.] It can't be. Yeah. You used to be able to just buy them from, from pet shops, or at least the pet shop near me and birds.
Elena Passarello: Birds, bird birds birds.
Luke Burbank: comma, alligator.
Joseph Earl Thomas: For a context, it's not there anymore. Yeah, right. Yeah. Which is important I think, for the story. And, and I, for me, I was like, oh, this is the coolest pet that you could get, right? I'm a I was a kid who, well, you know, amongst other things, I was watching like Steve Irwin on, like Animal Planet.
Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, it's you don't have to have a Ph.D. in psychology to identify a young person who's just really craving connection. It made me want to, like, go give you a hug.
Joseph Earl Thomas: I hugged a lot of those animals, and they didn't make it so I.
Joseph Earl Thomas: Don't really.
Luke Burbank: All right. I guess I'm I guess I'm glad I wasn't around for that.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Joseph.
Joseph Earl Thomas: To be complicated.
Luke Burbank: By the way, we're talking to Joseph Earl Thomas about his new book, Sink, which is a memoir. This book is getting really, really rapturous reviews, including a review in The New York Times that was just extremely positive about about how well the book is executed in your story. I'm wondering what that feels like for you, because this book is intense and it's very vivid and very real to your life growing up. And there's a lot of trauma and pain in the book. And then you have people being like, Congrats, The New York Times likes your trauma. Like, how does that feel? By the way, I congratulated you for the review before the show. So I'm that person. Yeah, that's me.
Luke Burbank: The Metatextual moment was coming in like 2 seconds. If it wasn't. No, I mean, one of the things I think about a lot and in the book and in my own life, right, is like the relationship between, you know, privacy and what is public. And I think that to a certain extent, you need some kind of privacy in order to feel the shock of something being public later on. And because for myself and for a lot of folks that I have known and grew up with, privacy wasn't always an option. These were kind of like open, you know, not hardly even open secrets, right? Like every other day, I talk to my sister and my friends, you know, etc., about things that have happened. So it's just kind of to me, it's like out in the ether, everyone knows it's obvious, etc.. Like my discomfort when I walk in the room of like upper middle class folks is like, palpable to me. So I'm like, Oh yeah, everybody knows it's fine, whatever. And so it doesn't feel that strange to me because of that I think. Because of the fact that I had always just assumed that it was so that these things were so obvious and also right, I again, I didn't grow up alienated in that way, right. Like everyone else I knew was having the same experiences. So it's less about me and more about thinking about a set of experiences that are becoming increasingly common, especially for for Black kids that I grew up with.
Luke Burbank: That review in The New York Times mentioned that, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but they thought that you could have maybe chosen to amplify your stories as a matter of factness about some of this stuff that's really intense. You could have amplified it so as to make it sort of more identifiable to a largely white readership as far as these tropes and things that we might be used to reading about the Black experience. This is what the reviewer said, but that wouldn't be honest. They wrote that would be honest to what your experience appears to be. Do you agree with that take, and was that something you were thinking about? And also follow up? Sorry. How do you think about Black Joy and wanting to write your real experience but not wanting to sleep on this very real vivid thing that is Black joy in America?
Luke Burbank: So so I agree with with that. I think that's super important. You know, there's like a whole kind of like lexicon, especially like throughout the 20th century of Black writers thinking about this problem of like, is this thing like overdetermined by like sociology that is like white sociology that attempts to say that, like, all Black people are inherently wrong, right? Whether it's like biologically, intellectually, whatever. Right. And then this other conversation about, like, what are the like, individual possibilities of like making things in culture and making itself and all that. And I think, you know, there's always some of both in every and every honest conversation that you attempt to have. Right. And I think that that's true about whether we're talking about like trauma, the like exemplification of it. And this is like a trope in literature more broadly, especially like literature is about or thinking through like, you know, heroism or coming of age, right? It's always like a special person who does really special things for special reasons overcomes adversity. You need obstacles, right? It's like the boss in the video game. I didn't want to do that. I was really, really trying to be conscious about not suggesting that that was a way that there's something special about me and that you got to like, you know, you're like rose from the concrete kind of person or whatever. And that's related to the joy thing too, because I think that sometimes, you know, in every one of these moments, I try to be honest about the fact that, oh, there is something pleasurable, there's something bad, and sometimes the pleasurable stuff is bad for other people is the problem right or feels bad to other people? And that's the kind of complicated thing I wanted to live in for most of the most of the book, right? Every hurt person who is not you is like a victory, right, is like a thing that I'm thinking about in this.
Luke Burbank: Well, this this book of yours, this memoir, it goes up 'till around the age of 13 for you or like middle school. So I look very forward to reading the stuff you write in the future about the next chapters of your life. This book is really incredible. It's Sink. Joseph Earl Thomas, thanks for coming on Live Wire. [Joseph Earl Thomas: Thank you. ] That was Joseph Earl Thomas right here on Live Wire, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. His memoir, Sink, is available now. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello right over there. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we are going to hear a song from singer songwriter Stephanie Anne Johnson, which they wrote with the help of some schoolchildren. But it's actually good. No offense, school children, you want to stick around for it. It's going to happen right after this quick break. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay. Before we get to our musical guest, a little preview of what is coming up next week on the show. We are going to be talking to comedian, writer and actor Aparna Nancherla. She might be best known for her comedy specials on Netflix and Comedy Central. She's also been on lots of late night shows and she's got a new book out of personal essays. It's called Unreliable Narrator. She talks about her shyness, how her mother enrolled her in a public speaking course when she was a child and would make her order pizza over the phone to try to make her more outgoing. We'll find out if that worked or not. Also, she has named her depression. She's named it Brenda. But she says in the book, if your name is Brenda, you can name your depression Aparna. So it's kind of a fair trade. We're also going to talk to podcaster Avery Trufelman who has maybe, I think, pound for pound, the best podcast going in America. It's called Articles of Interest. It is technically about what we wear, but it's really about a lot more than that. And then lastly, but definitely not leastly, we are going to hear some music from a Live Wire favorite, No-No Boy. And as always, we are going to be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena, what are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want to know, what is your most cherished article of clothing?
Luke Burbank: I think for me it is this Mr. Rogers sweater that I'm wearing as we record this, even though I recently met with some friends and when I got out of the cab, they audibly laughed at me. I don't care. I love the sweater.
Elena Passarello: Why would they —I think it's very fetching. I mean, I can only see from the collar up, but that looks great.
Luke Burbank: I love it. And I don't care who laughs at me. Robert and Mike. Anyway, if you have an answer, call them out right here on the show. If you got an answer to our listener question, go ahead and hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio pretty much everywhere. Sometimes checking your email, let's be honest, can be a little stressful, but we want to change that over here at Live Wire, where we want to make checking your email more joyful with our weekly newsletter, which is only good news. That's all we do over here at the Live Wire newsletter. We got sneak peeks and deep dives on upcoming events, details on where you can join us live. New episode drops. And even more than that, getting this drop of joy. It's super easy to head over to Livewire Radio dot org and you click Keep in touch. It takes like 30 seconds, 25 if you're speedy. So help us help you have a little more fun in your inbox with the latest from the Live ire newsletter. This is Live Wire from PRX. Our musical guest this week can bring a crowded dive bar to a collective hush with their voice, which also wowed the judges on The Voice, like the TV show singing competition. They've also opened for acts including Mavis Staples, Chaka Khan, Ani DiFranco, and maybe most surprisingly, Bernie Sanders. Take a listen to this. It's Stephanie Anne Johnson, who joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. What song are we going to hear?
Stephanie Anne Johnson: So this song is called The Day That You Begin. I was asked to do it by this group called Style in that Seattle area. They they give somebody like me a children's book, and I read the book and then I go to the kid's school and I read the book to children, and then I play them the song that we wrote and then we write a song together, and then it gets put on the Internet and it's a lot of fun. It's about making friends. It's hard for adults, too, you know that. I know you know that.
Stephanie Anne Johnson: You ready, Jeff? All right, let's do it.
Stephanie Anne Johnson plays The Day That You Begin
Luke Burbank: That was Stephanie Anne Johnson right here on Live Wire. Their new album, Jewels is out now. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests Cheryl Strayed, Joseph Earl Thomas and Stephanie Anne Johnson.
Elena: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Molly Pettit is our technical director. And our House Sound is by D. Neil Blake. Tre Hester is our assistant editor, our marketing and production manager is Karen Pan. Rosa Garcia is our operations associate. Jackie Ibarra is our production fellow and Ant Diaz is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Molly Pettit and Tre Hester.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff this week. We'd like to thank member Martin MacLennan of Portland, Oregon for more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot com. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
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