CANR
WORK TITLE: GODS WITH A LITTLE G
WORK NOTES:
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WEBSITE: http://tupelohassman.com/
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LAST VOLUME: CA 340
https://www.facebook.com/Tupelo.Hassman http://www.kenyonreview.org/2012/03/a-brief-interview-with-tupelo-hassman/ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/books/tupelo-hassmans-debut-novel-girlchild.html http://therumpus.net/2012/05/the-rumpus-interview-with-tupelo-hassman/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May 9, 1973; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Southern California; Columbia University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Santa Monica College, CA, instructor; California State University, East Bay, instructor.
AWARDS:London’s Literary Death Match, first American to win; Alex Award, American Library Association, for Girlchild; chapbook competition winner, Quiet Lightning, for Breast Milk; Silver Pen Award, Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and websites, including 100WordStory.org, Boston Globe, FiveChapters.com, Harper’s Bazaar, Independent, Invisible City Audio Tours, Portland Review Literary Journal, Sparkle & Blink, We Still Like, and ZYZZYVA.
SIDELIGHTS
Writer Tupelo Hassman studied social work at the University of Southern California and earned an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University. She has written articles and fiction for numerous publications and websites, including the Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, the London Independent, and the Portland Review Literary Journal.
In 2012 Hassman published Girlchild, a gritty story of poverty, ignorance, and abuse set in 1980s Reno, Nevada, in the Calle de Las Flores trailer park. Rory Dawn Hendrix is a young girl living with her mother and grandmother. Momma Johanna, who had four sons before she was twenty-one, calls her daughter “girlchild.” A bartender at a truck stop, she often staggers home drunk. Johanna lets teenage neighbor Carol watch Rory, but Carol’s father sexually abuses both his daughter and Rory. After her slot-machine-addicted grandmother Shirley tells her, “Someone’s got to make it [in this family] and it has to be you,” Rory finds comfort in the rules of duty and honor she reads about in a copy of the Girl Scout Handbook. In the world of selfishness, violence, and sexual abuse that she knows, “Nothing else makes promises like that around here,” she says of the handbook. She can relate to its chapters on “The Right Use of Your Body” and “Finding Your Way When Lost.”
Rory is good at school and wins spelling bees but is afraid her intelligence will alienate her from her mother. Despite her wisdom and sass, the prospects of a girl in her social environment getting out and making something of herself are dwindling. Hassman remarked in an interview with Nancy Smith on the Rumpus website, “Early on, I did have this idea of writing about how people are trapped in their culture of origin and how—even if you get out—you can never feel at home somewhere else. … In our culture, we over-rely on the idea that we have a choice, and it’s incredibly frustrating to me.”
Hassman sprinkles throughout the narrative word problems, social workers’ notes, arrest reports, newspaper clippings, old letters, a question from an aptitude test, and even blacked-out text from a report of incest. Explaining why she used this technique, Hassman said in an interview with Weston Cutter in the Kenyon Review: “ Girlchild does what stories about trauma do (written or not): it fractures … and goes squirreling off into corners, so we are left with all of these different pieces and all are important because the truth is hiding here and there. … In Rory Dawn’s case, she’s holding pieces of opinions from different folks … and before she can throw any out, she has to figure out what’s valuable.”
According to Michelle Quint in SFGate online, some of Hassman’s techniques of weaving excerpts and old letters into the narrative work but “can also feel forced and distracting. The real pleasure of the book comes from following the wisecracking, tough and sensitive Rory as she struggles to survive.” Megan Mayhew Bergman stated in the New York Times Book Review: “Although the novel is harrowing, Hassman’s imaginative prose helps the reading go easier. Trailer park epigrams … and moments of strange beauty enhance our sense of the Calle community.” Bergman suggested, “Though Girlchild is not a novel of easy triumph or opportunity seized, one imagines, even hopes, that Rory is capable of fulfilling her grandmother’s wish, despite the way both nature and nurture have failed her.”
Annie Bostrom stated in Booklist that Hassman “takes what could be trite or unbelievable in less talented hands and makes it entirely the opposite.” A writer in Publishers Weekly commented, “Despite a few jarring moments of moralizing, this debut possesses powerful writing and unflinching clarity.” According to a contributor to Kirkus Reviews, “With a compelling (if harrowing) story and a wise-child narrator, Hassman’s debut gives voice—and soul—to a world so often reduced to cliché. A darkly funny and frequently heartbreaking portrait.”
In Gods with a Little G, teenager Helen Dedleder lives a sheltered life with her conservative Christian father in a small town that has outlawed the internet. Her best friend is Winthrop “Win” Epsworthy, who eventually confesses his love for her, but Helen has eyes for a ne’er-do-well called Bird. Helen is also close with Rainbolene, a transgender teen who wants to leave town in order to make her transition complete. She works for her fortuneteller Aunt Bev, who may also be a prostitute. As the book progresses, Helen becomes more confident in her knowledge of her own desires and identity.
In an interview with Ericka McIntyre, contributor to the Writer’s Digest website, Hassman explained how she came to write the book. She stated: “I started Gods with a Little G in 2013. I was working on something else. And then I thought this was going to be one of those flings—where you start something else because you didn’t want to work on the thing you’re actually doing. I was so infatuated that I told my agent: ‘Oh, forget this other thing … there’s these teenagers,’ and it was really Win and Rain that came to my head first, and my heart. And my agent said: ‘Oh, I think that’s it. You’ve got to go with that.'” Hassman continued: “[At the time] I had a one-year-old baby and then I had another baby right after that. I just had little drips until I could find enough days to put together to focus.”
A Kirkus Reviews critic suggested: “Read as a collection of very short fictions … the book coalescences as a melancholy, triumphant, slightly magical coming-of-age tale.” The same critic described the volume as “weird and uncomfortable and glorious—just like adolescence.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2012, Annie Bostrom, review of Girlchild, p. 26.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2012, review of Girlchild; June 15, 2019, review of Gods with a Little G.
New York Times Book Review, February 19, 2012, Megan Mayhew Bergman, review of Girlchild, p. 7.
Publishers Weekly, December 12, 2011, review of Girlchild, p. 43.
ONLINE
Kenyon Review Online, http://www.kenyonreview.org/ (March 20, 2012), Weston Cutter, “A Brief Interview with Tupelo Hassman.”
One More Page …, http://www.onemorepage.co.uk/ (August 1, 2012), review of Girlchild.
Rumpus, http:// therumpus.net/ (May 7, 2012), Nancy Smith, “The Rumpus Interview with Tupelo Hassman.”
SFGate, http:// www.sfgate.com/ (March 4, 2012), Michelle Quint, review of Girlchild.
[TK] Review, http://www.thetkreview.com/ (February 12, 2012), Jennifer N. Kurdyla, review of Girlchild.
Tupelo Hassman website, http://tupelohassman.com (July 24, 2019).
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (May 28, 2019), Ericka McIntyre, author interview.
Tupelo Hassman's debut novel, girlchild, is the recipient of the American Library Association's ALEX Award. Her short fiction, Breast Milk, won Quiet Lightning's inaugural chapbook competition. She is the recipient of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award, the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, and is the first American to win London's Literary Death Match. Her second novel, gods with a little g, is forthcoming from FSG in August of 2019.
Tupelo’s work has been anthologized in 100WordStory's Nothing Short Of 100 (Outpost19) and in Drivel: Deliciously Bad Writing By Your Favorite Authors (TarcherPerigree). Her work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Harper's Bazaar, The Independent, The Portland Review, Imaginary Oklahoma, and ZYZZYVA, among others.
Tupelo teaches at Santa Monica College and California State University, East Bay, and lives in Charleston, SC with her husband and their two sons, Tupelo’s brother, Daniel, Blaschko the dog, Pekoe and Smokey the cats, and a 7-foot tall dancing wooden pig named Theo.
Tupelo Hassman
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Tupelo Hassman is an American author.
She has published stories and articles in publications including Harper's Bazaar,[1] The Independent,[2] The New York Times,[3] and The Paris Review Daily,[4] among others.
Hassman has a Masters of Fine Arts from Columbia University.[5]
Works[edit]
Her debut novel Girlchild was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012.[6] The book is about a girl named Rory Dawn Hendrix who is growing up in a trailer park and reads the Girl Scout Handbook for advice.[7] It won an Alex Award in 2013.[8]
Hassman's second novel is gods with a little g (2019).[9]
Tupelo Hassman’s debut novel, Girlchild, was the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, Imaginary Oklahoma, The Independent, Portland Review, and ZYZZYVA, among other publications. She is the recipient of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award and the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, and is the first American to have won London’s Literary Death Match. She earned her MFA at Columbia University.
QUOTED: "I started Gods with a Little G in 2013. I was working on something else. And then I thought this was going to be one of those flings—where you start something else because you didn’t want to work on the thing you’re actually doing. I was so infatuated that I told my agent: 'Oh, forget this other thing … there’s these teenagers,' and it was really Win and Rain that came to my head first, and my heart. And my agent said: 'Oh, I think that’s it. You’ve got to go with that.'"
"[At the time] I had a one-year-old baby and then I had another baby right after that. I just had little drips until I could find enough days to put together to focus."
gods with a little g: 8 Questions With Author Tupelo Hassman
By: Ericka McIntyre | May 28, 2019
WD editor-in-chief Ericka McIntyre asked Tupelo Hassman about the importance of knowing your writing process, doing the work, and her forthcoming novel, gods with a little g.
Author photo: Melissa Toms
Tupelo Hassman has a fairly great life story. She was a high school dropout who ended up getting an MFA from Columbia. She tells fairly great stories, too. She’s written three books so far: Girlchild (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012); Breastmilk (Quiet Lightning, 2014); and the forthcoming gods with a little g (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August, 2019).
She has a knack for writing characters who feel so real and letting us so far into their minds, their hearts, their worlds that when we close the book, these people still feel real to us. We miss them, like we’d miss a flesh-and-blood friend. I remember the first time I read her debut, Girlchild; I actually shook the book a little bit, hoping somehow more pages would appear, more story would fall out of it.
That was seven years ago.
So when I heard that gods with a little g was forthcoming, I could not wait to get my hands on it. I used my power as editor-in-chief of WD (I am a merciful and just tyrant, I assure you) to score an advance copy. When I found out I could actually interview Hassman, let’s just say the book nerd in me let out a squeal.
gods with a little g was worth the wait. It follows scrappy teenager Helen and her two best friends, Winthrop and Rainbolene, as they navigate life in isolated Rosary, California. It’s hilarious, downright sad, and poignant. It tells so many stories, but all of them are really just one story: how love can carry us through anything; how love doesn’t always take the form we think it will.
How long did it take you to write gods with a little g and how did these characters and story come to you?
I started gods with a little g in 2013. I was working on something else. And then I thought this was going to be one of those flings—where you start something else because you didn’t want to work on the thing you’re actually doing. I was so infatuated that I told my agent, “Oh, forget this other thing … there’s these teenagers,” and it was really Win and Rain that came to my head first, and my heart. And my agent said, “Oh, I think that’s it. You’ve got to go with that.” [At the time] I had a one-year-old baby and then I had another baby right after that. I just had little drips until I could find enough days to put together to focus.
Helen, or “Hell,” is the second of your girl children in a manner of speaking. Rory, of course was the first in your debut Girlchild. You’ve said that that book took you forever to write. So how long is forever?
I started it in 2003 and … it came out in 2012.
How did you find your agent? How did you get your first book deal?
I got lucky finding my agent. I was in grad school at Columbia (I don’t think you have to go to grad school to be a writer but I wanted to) and I made like, two friends? I was a disaster! But I made two friends and one of them knew my agent Bill Clegg. They had a business relationship, and Bill had reached out to this friend and said, “Who do you like in your program?” And we were the two people writing somewhat nontraditionally. We stood out in that way. So I sent my pages to Bill. He said, “Send me what you have.” That’s another thing about the story that is unusual. We were told at Columbia, “Don’t send half of your first novel to an agent, they don’t have time for that.” And it’s not going to put you in your best light. But he said, “Send me the pages.” I think the other rule that supersedes that one is that you do what the agent says! So I sent it, and he took me.
At the same time, another agent had reached out to the same friend, because he already had a book out. He also sent me to her and I sent her and Bill the same pages. And she said how much she liked it and asked if I could make it much more linear. I was so full of myself, (and I hadn’t heard from Bill) but I just said, “No, I can’t.” I still think about that. I was really young, and I don’t think I was wrong, but it was sure bold! I thought I’d never hear from Bill, but then he said OK.
The instructive part is that after I had an agent and after I had a book-shaped object (it was probably only half as big when I first signed with him) … there was a year before it was sold; and many revisions. Once I had an editor, it wasn’t ready, and she was so kind and worked me as hard as I would work, but it wasn’t until I got really humble and just did the work that the book was finished. So all of the other luck and nothing mattered until I sat down and wrote, just like they tell you.
How do you structure your writing work to get it all done?
It’s so important for people to know what their process is. I’m a scheduler but I’m not really an outliner. I let it take its own shape, and then I might make a to-do list after that. And like all those people with their systems, I feel a little suspicious about mine, I don’t know why. I think, because it never turns out that way, but I guess it’s like any other thing, you have to have some kind of map. My map is, how many workdays are there, and what do I need to accomplish in those days, and what is the most important? It’s tedious … just like anything else. And then I just hope, I think it was Flannery O’Connor or somebody who said, you have to hope that the magic shows up when you are also there.
Becoming a parent (I can’t imagine any parent not saying this), made such a difference for me, too, in just valuing a minute. Maybe that’s the kind of person I am; I needed that kick in the ass that motherhood gave me to value minutes like I should. Finishing Girlchild, it was that same humility, I would say, to be really frank, (I don’t know if this matters) but I got sober the year that I finished Girlchild. For me, I needed to reposition myself in the chain of command, and children do that for me, too. I suppose there are parents that don’t, but I really valued getting the reminder of what’s really important. Perfectionism is the enemy. Parents get to kill perfectionism in a lot of ways.
You have written a lot of short fiction in addition to your novels. How does your process for short fiction differ from the process for novels? How do you know whether an idea is a short story or novel and do you prefer one form over the other?
I never know. I think everything’s a novel. I’m one of those people. I know that’s common. Then I’ll get to writing it and I’m like, “Oh, it’s done. Oh, that was eight pages.”
Lately I have written a lot of essays, and that has helped me because I can definitely see the start and end, because it’s my own head or life. That has helped me see the shape better. So now, just recently this year when I’m thinking about short stories, I’m more apt to know that something is a short story. I can see the shape better. I’m kind of a slow learner, but that can be part of someone’s process, right?
Speaking of process, with Girlchild, my editor was the best. I really wasn’t ready, and my editor would send me these pages … 10-page letters with her notes. I would get them and read them, and then I would be so upset, not because she was wrong, but because I couldn’t see how to handle it. Then I got sober, and then I just did the work. But at one of these points, there was a handful of these times I called a dear friend of mine and I said, “I got this letter, oh, I don’t know how I’m going to do it!” I mean really that dramatic. And she said this brilliant thing, that I use every day, she said, “Oh well no, this is great because this is what you do every time.” And she was really loving. She was like, “This what you do every time, you get her feedback, and then you get upset and then you do the work. This is your process.” And I was like, “Huh, how dare you!” But that was amazing! Then the next time, and now every time … nobody likes criticism, but now it’s shrunk. I have a second of kickback and then I go, “OK, now I’m going to do the work.” It’s because I could name that and not resist it. Whatever someone’s process is; if you sit down at your desk, and then you need to clean it for 20 minutes, fine. If you need to alphabetize the socks or whatever it is we do, know that that’s your process, instead of being mean to yourself. It’s a gift to just know.
I teach rhetoric and comp and I try to talk to my students about that, too. If your process is to procrastinate then just work with that, do your best to make it so you have everything you need at the eleventh hour or whatever it is you have to do.
How has your teaching shaped your writing and your writing shaped your teaching?
Teaching helps free me up for writing mainly because, in teaching comp I generally choose what we’re going to talk about. I push us toward different political conversations and I think that helps me to relax a little bit creatively. I’m so bothered and so want to fix the system and the endemic badness in our culture. Getting to have a place to talk about that, and feeling like maybe I’m doing something good is helpful. Not to say that art is not another way to do good, I don’t mean that at all. But that helps me feel freer and more relaxed, because if I’m mad, what I’m going to write is probably going to be crappy.
Earlier you mentioned walking away from a project in favor of gods with a little g. How do you deal with that as a writer? How do you learn to walk away from something?
It’s humility. Being able to take orders wherever they come from for you, you have to be able to do it. And if the order you’re hearing is that this project that doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground needs to be finished, then that’s the order. But finding a way to listen to what really needs to happen is the key, to do the next right thing. That’s what has to happen. And so when I knew this thing about Winthrop and Rainbolene, and said it aloud to Bill, and he agreed with me, then I wanted to unknow it. We just have to do the simple thing of finding that that quiet place within ourselves where we listen to our inner wisdom. And sometimes we get it wrong.
I save everything. There is a part of gods with a little g … that was one of the first short stories that I ever wrote. There’s a scene on the beach with crabs. But the rest of that story was so bad. But there was just a little bit in there that was useful.
Another professor I had was Alan Ziegler. He published a book a couple of years ago and his message was, “Never throw anything away.” And we should never think of our time as wasted.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
A great one is, and this is also a hated one, but you know how that works, so often good advice is also what makes you say, “Goddarn it!” … I think it was Aimee Bender who said, “If you feel like it needs to come out for even a second, a tiny second … then you have to take it out. That is the rule.” And it’s so horrible. And every single time I’m writing, when I have a feeling, and I try to pretend I didn’t … but then I find that if I take it out, it’s always better. And it’s horrible and true. If it bothers you, there’s a reason.
QUOTED: "Read as a collection of very short fictions ... the book coalescences as a melancholy, triumphant, slightly magical coming-of-age tale."
"weird and uncomfortable and glorious—just like adolescence."
Hassman, Tupelo: GODS WITH A LITTLE G
Kirkus Reviews. (June 15, 2019):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hassman, Tupelo GODS WITH A LITTLE G Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Adult Fiction) $26.00 8, 13 ISBN: 978-0-374-16446-1
More misfits from the author of Girlchild (2012).
Being a teen is tough on everyone, but Helen Dedleder has it particularly hard. She lives in Rosary, California, a tiny refinery town so conservative that internet access is circumscribed. What knowledge she has of the outside world comes via radio broadcasts from Sky, a nearby city. She lives with her devoutly evangelical father, but she works at the shop where her Aunt Bev tells fortunes and offers other, more intimate, services. She is infatuated with Bird Doncaster, a classic bad boy who also happens to be her potential stepbrother. She is best friends with Winthrop Epsworthy, until Win falls in love with her. At every turn, Helen is pulled between irreconcilable opposites. Sometimes this tension propels her to make bad decisions. Sometimes she makes bad decisions without any help at all. It is, perhaps, easier to appreciate this novel by not thinking of it as a novel. It's written in the first person, there's a lot more telling than showing, and there are vast narrative territories that are barely explored. Read as a collection of very short fictions, though, the book coalescences as a melancholy, triumphant, slightly magical coming-of-age tale. Hassman creates a world that seems to be defined through stark dualities, but the story tends toward chaos in the sense that no certainty, no opposition, goes unquestioned. Things fall apart. Insiders and outsiders trade places. The powerful become powerless. At the same time, the story--the collection of stories--moves toward unity, self-actualization, and transcendence. Helen learns who she is and what she wants. She lets the people who love her help her. And she and her loser friends become something much more than the sum of their parts.
Weird and uncomfortable and glorious--just like adolescence.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hassman, Tupelo: GODS WITH A LITTLE G." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2019. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A588726929/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f54d14ad. Accessed 11 July 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A588726929