I was honored to speak with The Kenyon Review about my essay, "Disembodied," which is an excerpt of my unpublished manuscript, Fracture.
From the interview:
What was your original impetus for writing “Disembodied”?
“Disembodied” is an excerpt from my manuscript, “Fracture.” It started as a twelve-page essay in graduate school, and I wrote it because I was taking a writing workshop and a class called Environmental Justice Issues and Solutions. In the workshop, I wanted to finally tell my story about my marriage and the domestic violence I experienced. It had been five years since my divorce and I was finally ready to write about what happened. And in the Environmental Justice class, I wanted to focus on an issue that was close to home for me, which was Mora County, New Mexico, taking a stand against SWEPI Ltd.—a subsidiary of Shell Oil. I chose this topic because I initially knew very little about it and was so inspired that a tiny community near my hometown had taken on an oil company. It was, in my mind, a wonderful David versus Goliath story. What I discovered as I conducted research and interviews, however, is that the story was far more complex and that the legal battles were eerily similar to my own legal battles following my divorce. As a result, my writing and research for both classes began to dovetail. “Disembodied” doesn’t contain much of the Mora County narrative, but the full story is in the manuscript, “Fracture.” Seeing the parallels between the stories made me realize how much domestic violence and extractive industries like fracking have in common.
Read the rest online at The Kenyon Review.