Something that Looks Like a Story: A Conversation with Selena Anderson

In this new monthly column, writer and Catapult instructor Jessica Wilbanks sits down with a diverse range of contemporary writers to take a close look at the craft choices they made while writing a single short story, essay, or poem.

The full text of each piece discussed in the column is available online. This month’s interview focuses on Selena’s short story “Godmother Tea,” which appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Oxford American.

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Jessica: What was the first glimmer of the story that later became “Godmother Tea?” 

Selena: When I started writing, I was thinking about Joy and the furniture in her apartment, about what it looks like when she’s alone in there. I was also thinking about how objects tend to take on the personality of the person who uses them. I imagined her standing in front of this huge mirror with a gold edge and these little feet on it. And then when I had the mirror, I had the godmother.

Jessica: That makes a lot of sense—by getting specific about the exact type of mirror that Joy’s mom brought her that day, the story opened up for you. I’ve had that experience too. So much of the time you can’t get a story to take off until you get really precise and concrete about the objects in it.

Definitely. You have to commit. You have to be deliberate even though you’re just starting to get your footing.

Jessica: It feels like your main character, Joy, is going through something similar. She’s flirting with commitment, but she’s not really there yet. She has all this baggage from her family—literally, because her mother keeps bringing her furniture.

I thought that was a funny problem to have. She can’t refuse a gift because it’s rude. Manners mean a lot to Joy. Also, she’s not really in any position to refuse help. Ha! Her life is a mess and here her mama comes with a mirror.

Jessica: So, once you had the main character, the mirror, and the grandmother, what happened next in your writing process?

Once I had the mirror and put it in scene with Joy, everything started happening. I understood what she was going to do, how she felt about herself, the way she talked to herself. I could see her sizing herself up.

When you look in a mirror you see yourself, but you also see an assemblage of all the other people who came before you. You see the people who made you who you are. You are reconciling yourself in a long line of other folks.

The Godmother is sort of an extension of what Joy’s seeing and not seeing, I guess. But she’s also a real presence. I also wanted to play with this idea of being your ancestors greatest dream. I keep seeing t-shirts that say this. But when you’re young and struggling, you’re more likely to think they’re disappointed. So, the godmother was directly conjured up from that. It felt like she was the ultimate matriarchy, connecting Joy with what came before, shaping her and guiding her. And also calling bullshit on her at times.

Jessica: Joy is such a perfectly drawn character. She’s so funny, so sardonic. I loved her narrative voice, how she tries to “scold someone with looks,” how she describes her ex-boyfriend as “almost hopeful for carjackers” when they’re sitting in the car together.

She’s trying to be cool, but she’s onto herself. I think she’s fair though. She’s not any sharper with other folks than she is with herself. She wants to be liked, but she also very deeply wants to be left alone. Ha!

Jessica: Part of the reason your ending works so well is because Joy has that deep reservoir of cynicism. She doesn’t suffer fools lightly. If she was a more sentimental person, that ending might have fallen flat.

Joy was definitely her most desperate at this point. It felt risky to have someone pray at the end of a story, but it seemed like something she would do. It seemed inevitable for Joy in her desperation to look to heaven. It was also embarrassing to write, because it felt true. I think that’s a good sign—you’re not risking anything if you don’t feel a little bit exposed.

Jessica: At times, it feels like you have an element of magic realism in your work. For instance, that scene at the party when people start stealing whole bottles of wine, or that amazing scene in which Joy asks her ex, André, to give her the shirt off his new girlfriend’s back.

She wants to win so bad! She’s in this whole secret competition with a girl who’s completely indifferent towards her. And when she gets the shirt, she wears it for days. She plans to wear it in her driver’s license picture. Absurd. But that’s the state of mind she’s in.

I think I do write about things that could happen, but probably don’t happen in quite this way. It’s our world, but slightly different, a little stranger, a little funnier. I like it when things get a little strange, when you take a character to their extreme point and see how the world starts to bend around them.

That wine thing really happened though.

Jessica: Do you tend to write in a messy way in the beginning and then go through an intensive revision process as you figure out the story, or do you write with care and precision all the way through a draft?

It’s hard for me to start with nothing. If I have jacked-up sentences in the first draft, it’s hard to go back and work on it. I need to see something there that looks like a story. I need to have a concrete image from the beginning. I need a scene, or even a paragraph that sounds like the final thing. I wish I was one of those writers that could start out messy, but I have to begin with something that I could share. As soon as I have a paragraph, I read it out loud to my husband.

Jessica: It makes sense to me that you’d want to read your work out loud to someone right away—you have so many killer lines in here, lines that seem to demand an audience. And there’s such a verbal quality to them.

Something that feels connected to that, which really struck me when I was reading this story, was how many times you totally nail all these similes and metaphors. For instance, comparing bottles of rosé wine to an anemic blood bank, or talking about a roll-top desk that “wore a pair of pink soft-grip dumbbells like a tiara.” Or the guy at the party who smells “like a group gift for the Messiah.” I’m wondering if that quality is something that comes naturally to you, or if it’s something you craft more intentionally.

I think it comes naturally. People in my family have a really colorful way of speaking. I grew up around folks who are just hilarious in their descriptions.

And anyway, this feels like a story about how you sound, how you talk to yourself and to other people. The main character is speaking from all these intersections in her life. The references come from her family background, her educational background, all those different communities.

Jessica: Last question: did you have any surprises or unexpected turns in the revision process?

Yeah, the sex scene. I think it’s in the car in this version. Sometimes when you’re writing you’re just willing things into place. I took several swings at that scene. It was just too real and too sad to leave out. It was an important moment in Joy’s relationship with André, and the story would be missing something if you just had the conversation and then her calling him at the end.

The other thing was the scene at the very beginning with Joy’s mom. When I wrote the story the first time the mom wasn’t it in at all. It was just Joy looking in the mirror and then the godmother shows up. But I thought having the mom at the beginning was important, because she comes in with the first outside criticism of Joy. She introduces all this good conflict as moms tend to do.

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What stands out to you about “The Godmother”? If you’re a Catapult student, log into your account and post your thoughts below!

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Selena Anderson’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Oxford American, The Georgia Review, Bomb, Callaloo, and Fence. She is an assistant professor at San José State University, where she also directs a reading series. She is working on a novel.