CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Marika Guthrie

Rappahannock Review Nonfiction Editors: In “If You Could Convince Me to Talk About Bellingham,” we love how the double-stuffed Oreos tie the piece together. Can we ask why those Oreos stood out in particular? Do you find that after all this time, they still have meaning for you?

Marika Guthrie: I find that often when a story feels too big to write about, it helps me to find some small, tangible thing to bring the narrative into focus. In this essay, the Oreos were that small, tangible thing with which I could anchor myself while writing about my experience. When I talk about Bellingham, a benign version of the Oreo story inevitably comes up in the conversation. I present it as an example of how impoverished I was as a college student and, in a humorous way, I embarrassingly admit to eating an entire bag of Oreos in a single sitting, due to hunger. I’ve never told anyone the real Oreo story until I wrote about it in “If You Could Convince Me to Talk About Bellingham.” It was a sort of breaking point in my mind. Looking back on the process of writing this piece, I can see that I was hyping myself up to tell the actual Oreo story. I danced around it in a way that became a thread that actually tied the entire essay together. It’s been decades since I sat in the tiny kitchen of that little blue house on Maplewood Ave, broken and weeping, with an empty package of Oreos in my lap, marking the end of something within myself. Yet it doesn’t feel distant or remote to me, and those Oreos are as significant to me now as the day I put that box of Cream of Wheat back on the shelf, opting for more calories for the buck.

RR: This work does a great job of taking the reader through multiple scenes of varying intensity. Was it difficult to choose which scenes to include?

MG: When I was approaching “If You Could Get Me to Talk About Bellingham,” I was initially overwhelmed—not so much with a flood of memories, but an odd blankness. I knew that these things had happened to me, but I had underestimated the depths my mind had gone to protect myself. Like many people who survive abuse, I didn’t seek any proper therapy after the fact, and instead developed my own coping mechanisms. As I tried to coax my memories onto the page, I found I was fighting more with myself than the writing. The really intense scenes were like blind spots in my mind. I knew they were there, but couldn’t write them. So I decided to start with more mundane things, like my job at the Italian restaurant. Once I was able to write those aspects of the story, the rest kind of just started falling into place organically, and a pattern of escalating intensity emerged in the narrative.

RR: We find that while this piece covers a dark and personal topic, there are relatively lighthearted parts that give the reader a reprieve from its heavier aspects. How did you go about balancing the narrative tones?

MG: Life naturally provides a balance of levity to counter the gravity of emotionally challenging times, and if you are observant enough to notice those opportunities, it can really benefit your writing. There is a difference between sharing an experience with a reader and burdening them with it. Balancing some light to that dark makes the work approachable and engaging, but it’s important to always be aware of tone when working in humor or lightness. There is certainly humor in this piece, but I try to stay true to the overall mood of the work and the stylistics of the writing, so that those more lighthearted moments don’t take the reader out of the work. Instead, it’s more like adding a place to breathe before taking another plunge.

RR: Has the way you think about Bellingham changed at all as a result of writing this piece?

MG: Bellingham is a place of unimaginable beauty and complexity, especially for a girl who grew up in the desert. While I lived there, I was in awe of the life that grew and devoured itself without discrimination. The cedar trees by the college had branches so large it would take three people to link arms around them to fully encircle their width. In the many wild city parks, I saw flowers the size of dust particles blooming in moss forests. Once when mushroom hunting, I found a specimen whose cap was black velvet, with an underside as lacy and red as a saloon girl’s petticoat. The air was always thick with water and ocean; the skies were usually so low with clouds it felt natural to duck your head when walking. It was like living in some macabre gothic dream, which predictably became a nightmare, and I felt like I was in love with myself in this place. “If You Could Get Me to Talk About Bellingham” is the first time I have ever really written about my year spent in Bellingham. Revisiting it was like writing about a breakup, not from a person, but from a future vision I had for myself. I think that I will always see Bellingham as the one that got away. Painful to talk about, but impossible to ever really be free from.

RR: Do you have any advice for readers who might be in a similar situation to yours or writers who may want to write about an experience like this?

MG: I wish I had advice for those who feel trapped in abusive relationships that didn’t feel like a regurgitated line from a self-help book. Hindsight is 20/20, as the saying goes, and when I look back, I see all the ways I could have helped myself. I see all the people who were trying to help me. But while I was in the thick of it, I couldn’t see it, and I think that is true for so many people. Clarity and self-worth have to come from somewhere within, and there is no formula for that process. 

As far as writers wanting to write about trauma, I will share a couple of practices that have helped me as a developing writer. First, don’t try to tell your whole experience in one go. Your story is actually ten thousand small, intimate, painful, beautiful stories. Give them the attention they deserve by singling them out and crafting them carefully. Don’t focus on only the big events because the tension of these stories are actually built on the little everyday fears. Sometimes writing about those as the main theme with the major devastations as background can be more impactful. Choose a tangible thing to anchor yourself and your narrative. In my essay I chose Oreos as my anchor. That tangible thing gave me a returning point, direction, and structure to a wildly chaotic story. Try to not get in the way of your story by over-explaining it. Trust your reader enough to know that you can show them your story, like a scene from a movie, and they will be moved. Don’t try to oversell it. Don’t tell the reader what they should be feeling; when you tell someone how to feel you remove their authentic connection to the piece that is created through the experience. Lastly, with all forms of creative writing, be intentional with your craft choices, pay attention to your language choices, and always read your writing aloud as you work.