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For more than a decade, I have been toying with the idea of writing a book around my supernatural connection to my husband’s late wife. I just couldn’t figure out which genre made sense. A novel? A memoir? A science fiction thriller? None of these approaches seemed quite right. So I set it aside… For years.
Then, a few months ago, I learned about speculative memoir—and I was hooked. It seems like the ideal way into a story that was once mind numbing. OK, I’ll be honest. It’s still mind numbing, but in a way that feels doable, even playful. As part of this effort, I’ve signed on with a book coach, Laraine Herring, who wrote the indescribable A Constellation of Ghosts (highly recommend!). As soon as I was a few chapters into her speculative memoir, I realized this was the genre for my story—one that allows room for my speculated take on Sherise’s perspective (she’s the late wife).
With speculative memoir, I can play with fictional elements that aren’t really fiction at all. I can speculate about what Sherise felt in the moments before her death, imagine her reaction to the situations that have unfolded since she passed, and make meaning out of her frequent appearance in my dreams. And in the process, maybe I can heal from the challenging family dynamics that resulted from her absence. That’s the kind of story that allows freedom and catharsis in the telling.
But let’s face it. I’m a newbie to speculative memoir, so I turned to Laraine to offer insight about what this genre is all about and how you, too, can dip your toes into the speculative.
AP: What is a speculative memoir?
LH: Speculative memoir is an umbrella genre in which the questions of the memoirist’s book are addressed through speculative elements, which may include ghosts, metaphors, what ifs, imaginative scenarios, and fantasies. It is a subset of memoir focused more on the possibilities of the internal world than the facts of the external world. This is the definition I came up with, but it’s by no means the only one.
AP: Can you explain how the speculative elements of memoir differ from fiction?
LH: I’ll bring in Cowlitz author Elissa Washuta to answer this question. She speaks to the vital question of who gets to define the terms? What is fiction to one person is direct lived experience to another. She says, “I reject the pitting of factuality against fantasy and question who defines the terms. All nonfiction is a fantasy of some kind, because fantasy is the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable, and what is nonfiction but the fantasy that we can represent reality through compression, selection, and subjective retelling? Only some of us are told that our imaginings are impossible. I choose to believe that my imaginings are not impossibilities. They are foundations.”
I think that we really need to pay attention to how we make assumptions about what is true and what is fiction. I think the borders are much blurrier, especially around lived experiences. In many cultures, conversing with the dead (and having them converse back) is not “fiction” or “speculative.” It just is. It’s integrated into a worldview. It can be so easy for Westerners, particularly white Westerners, to filter all other experiences through their lens. But one of the big gifts of memoir is being able to embody many different ways of being. It is not up to me to ever say whether what an author is experiencing is real or not.
AP: Tell me about your approach to speculative memoir in A Constellation of Ghosts.
LH: In my book, A Constellation of Ghosts, I used the talking Raven and the stage play format as an intentional device to tell parts of the story that were not able to be dramatized in my current existence because the parties were all dead. So I created a world in which these conversations could happen. Every piece of those sections is based on what I experienced with those people when they were living, and/or what I heard from others about them, and/or how, based on those lived experiences, I imagined they might have responded to something. But I did not go to an alternate plane and converse with ravens. I used the ravens as a speculative device.
AP: What should writers who are interested in playing with speculative memoir know about this genre?
LH: There are zillions of ways to use speculative elements. Sometimes it’s a device like I used, which is throughout the whole book. Sometimes, a writer might use it for a single scene when the emotional impact or trauma of the moment is too much or impossible to remember. We create metaphors then, and we explore how those metaphors interact within the text. Is a metaphor an untruth? Maybe. But also, it’s true. If I say “the sky is a blanket”, it’s maybe not a 50/50 cotton/poly blend, but also, it’s a blanket.
AP: What are some speculative memoirs that helped you find your way in this space?
I don’t recall reading any speculative memoirs prior to writing the book, though I must have. I think the phrase “speculative memoir” is relatively new in literary circles. Before, we just had, you know, books. But there are many speculative memoirs that I have found since writing A Constellation of Ghosts. Here’s a linkto a piece in The Rumpus about books I read while working on the book.
AP: Is there anything you want readers to know before they jump into the sandbox and start playing with the speculative?
LH: I think working with the speculative is a way in which we can find our voices. The more I talk about this way of storytelling, the more I hear from writers about how it’s freeing up parts of themselves they hid away. They were told what they were feeling/experiencing wasn’t real or worthy or fill-in-the-blank, and so they shut it away. Speculative is liberating. Truth is slippery. Speculative in memoir is, I think, primarily used as a way of dealing with inner landscapes. In fiction, we’d have speculative elements about everything from how humans (or whatever kind of organism is the protagonist) work to what year we’re in to what the mechanics of the world are and anything in between. In memoir, the speculative is a way to help the memoirist reach the unexplainable parts of their stories, which, not coincidentally, are the parts that make the story shimmer.
Don’t be afraid to play with it. As long as the writer is up front with the reader (so no tricks), I think the field is wide open. We need to respect our readers and let them know how the story is being told. Emotional truths are subjective, and there are as many ways to express them as there are people. I’d love to see labels go entirely away and we just share experiences with each other and have that be enough. Indeed, it’s all there is. |
