Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California (MCD, Jan.) is a story of grief told by a chorus of nonhuman narrators.
This is your first novel after two story collections, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl. Have the two forms always existed side by side for you?
They have not, and I don’t think they ever will. I know people love a novel, but for me a novel is just a big, saggy mess compared to a short story.
Really! As a writer or as a reader?
As a writer. Maybe a little bit as a reader but not as much because I’m very selective about the kinds of novels I subject myself to.
Could you talk about your novel’s three narrative strands? We have the story of Coral, whose brother, Jay, has died, plus the text of Coral’s graphic novel about lesbian assassins and a chorus of narrators discussing humanity.
There are three levels of consciousness that are all the same consciousness, and it’s a way for Coral to safely navigate this horror story of grief that she’s suddenly in. All three levels are her.
Did you always have the first-person plural POV?
Yes. I can’t start anything until I know the voice, and I knew that the hive consciousness was the consciousness.
Can you reveal what the narrators are?
I would describe them as artificial intelligence librarians of the future. They play out being human. They get a couple of things wrong, but they’re still amazed by it all. They have an appreciation for humanity.
An appreciative, benevolent hive mind AI is an interesting twist.
My whole goal was to remember that I like people. Even though some things really bother me about the world and our natures, I still think we’re kind of miraculous.
There’s a great line that describes Coral dealing with the burden of Jay’s death: “I’m not just some kind, gay nun with a credit card. I have shit to do.”
That line is truly personal. I lost both my parents, and even though I’m the baby out of all my siblings I’m the one who’s the most financially stable and emotionally regulated, so I dealt with it all myself. All the emotional labor, all the financial labor. My brothers had nothing to do with accomplishing this particular kind of life moment. Not just one time, but two times. I was angry and I channeled that energy during that line.
What are you working on now?
A novel about a poltergeist who has fallen in love with a ghoul. Both spirits have possessed the bodies of Black lesbians during the Reconstruction period in the American South. So, a double-layered love story.
