Shastri Akella, THE SEA ELEPHANTS
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Shastri Akhala is the author of The Sea Elephants, a novel.
[1:07]His work has appeared in Guernica, Fairy Tail Review, The Master's Review, Electric Literature,
[1:11]Craft, and Elsewhere.
[1:12]He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University
[1:16]of Massachusetts Amherst.
[1:18]He's an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Michigan State University.
[1:22]Welcome Shastri.
[1:23]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:24]My moms don't have time to read books or we're going to discuss your debut novel, The
[1:28]Sea Elephants.
[1:29]Look at this gorgeous cover, by the way.
[1:30]Oh my gosh.
[1:31]It's so amazing.
[1:33]I really lucked out.
[1:34]Oh my gosh.
[1:35]For those listening, how would you even describe this?
[1:38]Navy blue background of a painted face looking, you know, red and yellow and white.
[1:44]Anyway, I'm doing a terrible job.
[1:46]It's really gorgeous.
[1:47]It's the mask of one of the characters in the story.
[1:53]Yeah.
[1:54]It's perfect.
[1:55]Okay.
[1:56]Why don't you tell a sinner's white?
[1:57]Your book is about.
[1:58]The coincidence is a queer coming of fake novels set in 90s India.
[2:02]I started writing this book about a character who leaves home seeking intimacy out
[2:08]in the world.
[2:09]But I also wanted to add nuance to what intimacy means because we typically think of intimacy
[2:15]as romantic, but the other kinds in this book explores that the intimacy that exists between
[2:20]friends and found family, between storytellers and listeners and so the character finds
[2:27]all this, but ultimately he also falls in love with himself.
[2:30]So this journey we close out seeking intimacy, but falls in love with himself.
[2:34]No.
[2:35]It's wonderful.
[2:37]I was really taken from the very beginning of this book when his dad, what is this?
[2:44]When his dad returns, right, he's 16 years old and his, he's just lost his twin sisters,
[2:49]which you explain several chapters in how it happened, which is so harrowing.
[2:55]You know, partially his fault, he feels totally responsible, of course.
[2:58]And then his dad, who he's never met, comes home after the loss of his sisters and his
[3:03]horrific and violent.
[3:05]And I mean, I was literally like reading and I had to like grab my daughter and she's like,
[3:10]what, what?
[3:11]I was like, oh my gosh, his dad just anyway.
[3:13]So there's a lot of feeling like from the beginning where wrapped up in emotion of pain and
[3:19]uncertainty and loss.
[3:22]You know, it's, it's this like amazing introduction to, to every sense, honestly, tell me about,
[3:29]you know, even starting to write this book, why you want to write this book, all of it, like,
[3:35]and how you, how you pack so much in, in such a graceful kind of way as an introduction for the
[3:42]first part, even.
[3:43]Thank you.
[3:43]I think a lot of times as somebody who is queer and a lot of my extended family is very home
[3:50]of Quebec and I, as long as I lived in India, I thought I was asexual, I had not come out
[3:56]until I came to the U.S. and actually started writing this book when I workshop this novel,
[4:01]my professor, Sabina Marie said, this is going to be a gay love story, why don't you let
[4:06]it be one and Mark was his friend in those early drafts and she was very empathetic in the way
[4:13]she pointed to specific elements of the subtext where it was clear that Charlotte and
[4:17]desires Mark. So I took therapy and I came out on the last day of her workshop and she hosted
[4:23]this potluck at her place. And so then I had to rewrite this whole book as a queer love story and
[4:28]then my own coming out at just had a lot of problems with some members of my biological family and
[4:35]a lot of my extended family. And in some ways my family, family in the U.S., other queer friends
[4:40]was so supportive and helped me embrace myself and be comfortable in my skin.
[4:46]Since those personal experiences really shaped the next worth enough this story,
[4:51]so even if the Shabbin moves from that sort of space of violence, he finds Saya and Ru and
[4:57]Sue and all these friends and Mark is boyfriend, they sort of help him be comfortable with
[5:02]who he is. So I think for me, I just wanted to talk about how it is like an anxiety-inducing
[5:08]experience being queer, especially when you come from communities that that
[5:12]homophobic but there is always a way out and that's why I wanted this book to be about.
[5:17]So it starts in that very difficult place but moves into a place of hope.
[5:22]Wow, oh my gosh, I can't believe that writing that your teacher is the one who could pick up on
[5:27]that and I mean what a workshop, I mean that's amazing. What was it like though and how is it now
[5:36]with your family who is so unsupported have you cut ties with them and did they accuse you
[5:42]of being gay back then and you denied it or like what was what was the difficulty between you
[5:48]and your family like before and how is it now? It was I think it all came up because I was
[5:54]refusing to have an arranged marriage as the Indian match. Yeah, that's a huge part of the
[6:00]Hindu culture in India and I kept pushing back against it and it came into the US and I
[6:06]because I was posting publicly gay writing, short stories that I published online and essays
[6:14]it was out there so one of my uncles found out and then one of my cousins found out and they told
[6:20]my parents and it just became a very explosive situation and I remember there was one year I was in
[6:27]a student recently and I had to get it extended because I went into a PhD program after my
[6:32]masters I did not feel safe going back in India to India so I ended up going to Canada to get
[6:39]maybe extended that year so it was like a difficult five years but eventually even if not a full
[6:46]budget acceptance it's gone to the point where you're fine as long as you don't talk about it directly
[6:52]to us but on the end of the positive side in my sister one of my sisters her kids were born and
[6:59]raised here and they're very open-minded especially my niece and my niece actually read my novel and
[7:05]the last time I visited my sister's family she had questions about the book that she
[7:10]very specifically are questions about the book so it was nice to sort of get to the point
[7:14]for my niece who's in college now she and I could she's my first family member who's read the
[7:19]book so I think there are like those openings and because of her children my sister sort of
[7:25]come to a point of acceptance because I think she realized for kids are born and raised here and
[7:30]she has to in some ways open her ideas of what is acceptable and to her credit she's really done
[7:36]that was it's a she and my niece are two members the family have sort of come to accepting it
[7:41]my niece more so in a more open way well and in this explosive time was there violence against you
[7:49]the way it happened in the book or things like that like I'm not that extent there was a definite
[7:54]threat of violence which is why I didn't go back that was how I found out about conversion
[8:00]therapy because there was this threat that certain family member explicitly said that you
[8:05]we're going to send you to this conversion therapy there's this holy man he's going to fix you
[8:10]and then you'll get married and have a kid and I until then did not know that in the conversion
[8:14]therapy exists and you would exist in the Christian framework because of why he raised and
[8:21]a member so once it became safe I went back and threw my queer community and I ended up talking
[8:26]to men who were forced into conversion therapy and I am just so grateful I escaped it by
[8:33]having the privilege of living in the US and being able to go to Canada because of that didn't
[8:38]happen I would be there today and back you're talking to you oh my gosh and tell listeners a little
[8:44]bit more about what that means conversion therapy and how it plays out in India it's the different
[8:50]branches of Hindus and that each depending on the kind of god they worship they sort of
[8:55]and it is so horrible because the original Hindu men sister Bob talks about there is so
[9:00]over upcoming of in celebratory of queer identities but conversion therapy takes a very
[9:05]watered-down conservative view that is sort of being perpetuated in India now so like in the book
[9:10]there is this one godman who worships Shiva and it's this idea of we're going to get you to the
[9:15]point we'll be possessed by the symbol god and he's sort of celebrated as an icon of masculinity
[9:22]just as Haluman who's in the book is and these gods will possess you and make you real men
[9:27]and that involves like sort of like something which almost borders and black magic but it's
[9:31]this idea of like listening to these chants striking you physically with sacred gritty sacred ash
[9:38]and then getting you to sort of reorient your thought process in a way that you find women in
[9:43]fact if and not unattractive and some of these places also as you know described in the book
[9:49]there they get you to watch straight porn because the idea is looking to look at straight porn
[9:55]after the you know you go through this sacred ceremony in the morning and then in the afternoon
[10:00]quite straightforward. It just feels the irony of it is so lost in the people who set these systems up
[10:06]and you and in the test to make sure that you are fully converted. Some places are not as extreme
[10:12]but some are where they literally force you to have sex with a woman and then if you're not able
[10:18]to do it then you have to go through the whole process again. It's just to me it's just the cruelty
[10:25]that exists is mind-boggling. All these things are happening while we go about our days you know
[10:34]it's just awful so awful. Yeah and the the whole same sex marriage debate that's happening in
[10:41]India right now there is like such a huge push to make it happen and some are hopeful it will happen
[10:46]but society, society, it's a long way away from getting anywhere close to exceptions
[10:52]because there are people public figures are openly saying well is the next thing your promote is
[10:58]marriage but being men and their dogs and it gets that kind of rhetoric is being perpetuated
[11:03]as a foser so close. I know. Oh my goodness. Although I do love my dog.
[11:11]Oh my gosh. She's right behind me. But anyway so tell me a little bit about the writing process of this
[11:19]book and what went into that for you and when you came up at the idea and where you were when
[11:25]you wrote it all and like tell me all that good stuff. Well I started thinking about the book I was
[11:30]working for Google because like a lot of South patients did malogrite with him compared a sign and
[11:34]so I was unsatisfied with it and then I found this treat to a troop and I just wanted to travel
[11:39]with them and write for them something about that fascinated me. I said to Katri Maan leave from
[11:44]Google and loss of pay and as you can imagine my dad was not super pleased. He said street performers
[11:50]like those people who go around performing in small places and collect money in a hat. I said you
[11:57]took loss of pay with Google to do that. He was horrified but I did it and they travel on the
[12:03]ganges from you know the point where they're of a mergers with the ocean to the point of origin.
[12:08]So spending those nearly two and a half months with them just traveling watching them perform
[12:13]watching them do their makeup rituals and writing for them and the traveling itself you would
[12:18]travel the main theory chief would drive this truck and the actors would sleep in the back the
[12:23]bed of the truck as we traveled. So just having that close experience for these actors and their
[12:29]lives was just such a powerful experience of transforming ways that I wasn't prepared for
[12:36]and I knew that's what I wanted this character to be an actor with a street performing group.
[12:41]So that was the origin of the story and then there was Mark who at that early draft was just an
[12:45]American tourist with no historical association with India. Then I came out in my professor's workshop
[12:53]and then I basically discarded about 80% of the book and wrote it from scratch again
[13:00]because I had to change what the starting point was. I had to change everything because
[13:04]the character looks at the world through the slims of queer existence at this point.
[13:08]I was up as a major rewrite and in that part the other is that the queer desires sort of
[13:14]becomes a lens with which you look at the world. The idea of safety has changed at that point
[13:19]and then I did several dresses from a masters at a PhD and I never really
[13:25]with an undergraduate and computer science didn't know what academic writing was like.
[13:28]I took a shot break from my book to sort of acclimatize and picked it up again.
[13:34]The later drafts really focused a lot on the pros and the writing at a sentence level
[13:39]but once also I knew that it was a queer love story. I wanted Mark to have a history rooted in
[13:44]the India. So started looking at the history of migrations doing and I was discovered the history
[13:49]of Jewish migrations, the three big waves that came to India. One a very long time back.
[13:55]One of the 16th or 17th century and then of course during World War II and the Southern
[14:00]Indian town of Kochin where Mark's family is from in the book. I went there. I got a research
[14:05]grant and spent three weeks there and the community was incredibly welcoming and very excited
[14:10]that I was training a story set there. So that research experience was very helpful because then
[14:15]I could really give Mark a history. Not all of it made it into the book but just writing from
[14:20]the space of knowing was very helpful. One fun fact about this book was the MFA draft. So it was
[14:27]MFA thesis, this novel, a novel diversity of it and it was 180,000 words and close to 850 pages.
[14:35]Oh my gosh. And now it's of course almost half that length but I remember when I went to my
[14:40]thesis defense I didn't want my committee to know it was that long. So I reduced the font size,
[14:45]I reduced the margin and the paragraph spacing. And to Sabina, my proud friend, she was my
[14:51]thesis chair but she walked into this meeting. She waved my manuscript and said this is not,
[14:56]like this is much more than 550 pages because that's what it condensed to. And I basically broke
[15:02]my MFA system because after I graduated, I put a page length and they all specified all the
[15:07]criteria for writing it has to be doubles based on 12.5. So I told Sabina, wonder how that happens.
[15:15]I wonder how that happens. So yeah, quite a quite intense journey and I feel like me taking this journey
[15:22]of working on this book has changed me significantly. It's changed my closest friendships for the best
[15:28]in the best possible way. And almost all the characters in this book are fictional with the exception
[15:34]of Sue, the best friend. She's based on my best friend who's also called Sue and she was my first
[15:41]friend that came out too. And she was just completely embracing me without any questions and
[15:46]any judgment. So yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, what a story. And tell me why you decided to get a PhD.
[15:54]Part of it was I was working in tech and a Google had given me a three year sabbatical and this
[15:59]said I could finish my MFA and come back but I really loved teaching. And so I decided to not do
[16:05]that in stay in academia and I realized a PhD would really help me stay in academia but also stay
[16:12]in the US with an F1 student research. So when I was in the master's program I started sitting in
[16:17]on various classes in the humanities and I was drawn to this one class in comparative literature
[16:24]which is a class on refugee studies and I really liked the professor of Moira and you're very
[16:29]and I ended up deciding I knew I took a class I knew that's what I wanted to focus on.
[16:35]So when I went and told my first in doing a PhD program she introduced me to multiple lenses
[16:40]in which you can look at the issues that refugees face migrating into the country and I discovered
[16:46]refugee art, the art that refugees have migrated from east to the west to use that sort of post
[16:52]colonial language and then I knew that would be my dissertation topic I've given before I started my
[16:58]PhD. So I think it was this more it started with the intent of wanting to stay in the US and teach
[17:03]because I love teaching and then when I discovered this project about contemporary refugee art I
[17:09]just knew that's what I wanted to work with. Well and so now do you teach classes on refugee art?
[17:15]I do and eventually once it was to the end of my PhD program Moira my prof and now we
[17:21]co-taught a class in migration in the communities at farms because oftentimes we look at migration
[17:27]refugees especially in the believing old communities but they also forest new communities in their
[17:32]new country so that class focuses on literature and art that talks about that and I will be
[17:39]was teaching in Providence until this fall but starting spring I just got a job at Michigan State
[17:45]where we're teaching creative writing and filming a definitely in ten-bring game refugee writing
[17:50]into those classes. Wow that's wonderful. Wow. Busy, you have a book coming out, new jobs, great,
[17:57]very exciting. And what are the plans for bringing the book into the world? Are you touring everywhere
[18:02]or how are you? What are you excited about? Yeah I have my book launch even at the book is coming
[18:07]out in July 11th and there's a book launch even from July 14th at Boxer Magic which I'm so
[18:12]excited about because it's one of my favorite bookstores. I remember when the bookshop opened
[18:17]I went from I was in Annher's Massachusetts in a wench to Boxer Magic exclusively to
[18:22]I went to Brooklyn just to go to that bookshop which is like the nerdiest thing to do
[18:26]but that's what it did. Emma's from the writer who owns that bookshop
[18:31]she just cycled into the bookshop and I just like completely fan-boiled and I said I made this trip
[18:36]only for this bookshop and she was very sweet because she sent me home with a bunch of
[18:40]free books and a free tour pack so it feels like a full circle at my first event.
[18:46]So I'm doing that and then I'm doing an even in Providence town with the Providence town bookstore
[18:52]and then I'm doing something in the Cambridge in July 24th. I'm doing an event at the Harvard
[18:55]bookstore there. So it was only my summer east coast and then one in now the Mark Twain house in
[19:01]Hartford and that would bring this summer to be in the fall I'll be working more in
[19:06]I'll be doing a few events in the Midwest since I'll be based out of Michigan and then hopefully
[19:11]the winter in the spring we'll look at the west coast that hopefully the book does well and I
[19:15]can still do those events. Wonderful that's great. Flatiron books has been so wonderful to me
[19:20]they've just been so supportive and like really excited. My editor Karen Bleak from the time
[19:25]she picked up the book. Do now she's just been such a great champion for the book and my public
[19:30]sisters where I was queer and write to be a staff and early champions queer stories. So it's been
[19:35]such a dream come true for me as a debut novelist to work with such a wonderful team.
[19:41]Yeah that's great. I love hearing stories like that. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[19:46]I think something that discovered it's important to be receptive to feedback and at the same time
[19:51]while you receive feedback also be clear about your vision for the story. So it's maintaining
[19:56]the delicate balance of having clarity of your what you want
[20:00]just to be what are the core values of your writing.
[20:03]Because that, if you end up getting feedback
[20:04]that doesn't align with your core values,
[20:07]you need not like embrace it.
[20:08]But if you're open-minded, you will get feedback
[20:11]that completely changes your story as it did in my case.
[20:14]I mean, sometimes I've had like really
[20:15]unhelpful feedback, exambity, red,
[20:18]my story, other job to, you know,
[20:20]the scene where Shagminens is having food
[20:22]with his parents and the kitchen floor,
[20:24]he just lashed out at me and said,
[20:26]why do you have to exoticize your own culture?
[20:28]Why do you have to show people
[20:29]sitting on the floor and eating with their hands
[20:32]by trying to show like Indians going to offices
[20:34]and standing around the water fountain and talking?
[20:37]And I said, well, those are not mutually exclusive realities.
[20:40]This is not exotic, like even now when I go back to idiots.
[20:43]Such a question of conflict,
[20:45]my mom and I still sit on the floor and eat
[20:46]because it feels familiar, it's intimate.
[20:49]And then I was working for Google
[20:51]and then get up and go and stand at the water fountain
[20:53]and talk to my colleagues.
[20:54]So I think just making sure that you borrow
[20:58]into feedback, but also know what your core values are
[21:01]and keeping feedback that works for you
[21:03]and letting the rest go.
[21:05]Excellent, that's excellent advice.
[21:07]Wonderful.
[21:08]And do you think there'll be more books in your future?
[21:10]Short stories, books?
[21:11]What do you have to do?
[21:12]Yeah, I mean, my agent, Chris,
[21:14]he's right now trying to place a few of my short stories
[21:17]and definitely three journals, but I am working on my second novel
[21:21]because it's as it's sort of hitting the world.
[21:23]I'm doing everything I can to make sure
[21:25]that, you know, it reaches as many readers as possible,
[21:28]but there's only so much control I have
[21:30]and I don't know to obsess over it.
[21:31]It's that very good, this ideology of do the work
[21:34]and then let go, which I'm trying to embrace
[21:36]and something that's helping me with that
[21:38]is working on a completely different project
[21:40]because I think for me, longer projects
[21:42]that I work on every single day,
[21:44]allowing me to have that emotional relationship
[21:46]with the work that I can go back to every morning and ride.
[21:49]So I'm working on my second novel now.
[21:52]Good for you.
[21:53]Can you share anything about it
[21:54]or not really?
[21:55]Oh, I can, because I've already pitched it
[21:58]to my agent like that.
[21:59]It's very different from this book,
[22:01]but it has the same theme as a fan family and community,
[22:05]but it's set in this future,
[22:07]it's a fantasy novel where it's set in this future
[22:09]where America's white population has become the minority.
[22:13]So there's a right-wing government to the power at that point
[22:17]and so to fix that,
[22:19]the decide to offer political asylum to vampires.
[22:23]So the vampires are coming into Ellis Island
[22:26]and they're being injected with this anti-war,
[22:28]the serum, which takes away their hunting instinct.
[22:31]So it follows this one Irish vampire to begin with
[22:34]and then they're at these blood markets
[22:36]that open up their vampires can go by blood.
[22:38]And it also has the perspective of the sky
[22:41]who becomes his boyfriend who's a Kashmiri doctor.
[22:44]And at this point in the future,
[22:46]Kashmir has fallen, so a lot of Kashmir refugees in the US
[22:50]and the US is not giving them refugee
[22:52]and asylum status is just undocumented.
[22:55]So it just follows these two communities,
[22:57]the undocumented Kashmiris and the vampires
[23:01]who are now immigrating in the kind of friendships
[23:03]and tensions that are forged between them.
[23:05]Wow, oh gosh, vampire blood market.
[23:09]You know, what's gonna come out of people's mouths?
[23:11]You know, people's minds, people's fingertips,
[23:14]it's amazing.
[23:15]Well, good luck with that and congratulations
[23:18]on your book, Sea Elephants.
[23:20]Beautiful, so amazing, congratulations.
[23:23]And wishing you all the best.
[23:24]Thank you so much and thank you for talking to me.
[23:26]This was amazing.
[23:27]Okay, no, it's a joy, thank you.
[23:29]All right, have a great day, bye-bye.
[23:32]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[23:34]Don't have time to read books.
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[23:47]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[23:50]for the Sound Editing.
[23:51]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:53]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.