Maya Shanbhag Lang, WHAT WE CARRY
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[1:22]Maya Shan-Bag-Long is the author of What We Carry, a Memoir, and also the 16th of June,
[1:28]a novel. Langsworth has been featured in The New York Times, the observer of The Washington Post,
[1:33]the Philadelphia Enquirer, and InStyle, among others. The 16th of June was long-listed for
[1:37]the Center for Fiction for a Snuffle Prize, and was an audio award finalist for Best Audio Book.
[1:42]recipient of the 2017 Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction, Lang has received support from the
[1:47]the Reddit Jaffy Foundation and from Redloaf. Her short work has been nominated for a push-cart
[1:51]prize. After graduating, Magna Cum Laude from Swarthmore College, she earned her masters from
[1:56]New York University, and her PhD in Comparative Literature from Cindy Stoneybrook, a passionate teacher
[2:01]she loves working with aspiring writers, Lang is the daughter of Indian immigrants, and lives outside
[2:06]New York City. Thanks, Maya, for coming on mom's turn. Have time to read books.
[2:10]Thank you so much for having me today. It is an absolute pleasure to talk with you.
[2:15]Thank you, too, and I know when we did our Instagram live, I hadn't had a chance to finish
[2:19]your book yet, and I was like, I'm loving it so much. We have to continue this, so I'm glad
[2:23]I had time to read the whole book, and now here we are so we can have a proper conversation.
[2:28]And I'm so glad I did because it's so good. Your book is so good, and it started off great,
[2:33]and kept right on. Sometimes books, you know, they can start off great and then not continue on,
[2:37]but this was from start to finish such a pleasure. So congratulations on writing it and all the rest.
[2:43]Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So for people who might not be familiar with your
[2:48]book yet, can you please explain what what we carry is about and what inspired you to write it?
[2:55]Yeah, so what we carry is about my relationship with my mother, and I never intended to write a memoir.
[3:03]I was in the middle of working on my second novel when my mother was in need of emergency care,
[3:11]and I brought her home to live with me. And I started writing these Facebook posts because my life
[3:16]changed so dramatically overnight. You know, I was raising my young daughter, my mom, who had
[3:24]dementia was suddenly in my house. I was also trying to further my career as a writer, and it was
[3:31]a lot, and it was overwhelming, and I just didn't know when I was suddenly in the middle of,
[3:36]and being able to just write a little post about an anecdote or about an episode with her
[3:43]or a little conversation we'd had was just a way of wrapping my mind around my experience.
[3:50]I couldn't tell the whole story, but I could tell these little anecdotes that just gave me
[3:55]a couple of lines and made me feel like I had some sort of grip on my situation. And an editor
[4:01]happened to see my posts and reached out to my agent and said, I think there was a memoir here,
[4:07]and I thought, oh my god, I could never write a memoir, and that same day I wrote, I think,
[4:12]70 pages. Oh my gosh. So it was clear that I did have all the stuff sort of pent up in me that I
[4:22]needed to say. And I think I kind of hadn't given myself permission to really talk about it
[4:29]freely, and a lot of the material, as you know, is not so much about the day to day of caregiving,
[4:38]it really gets into who I thought she was versus who she turned out to be, and the illusions that
[4:47]I was carrying around in my head about her life and our relationship, and reconciling
[4:57]the past and the present. And it almost was like, as readers, we got to go through the process of
[5:06]your discovering all these things with you, because the way that you kind of slowly dropped in,
[5:11]your discoveries of some of the things that your mother hadn't told you were like just
[5:16]like huge shocks to us, and you could see like, I could read you being shocked, and then I was
[5:21]sitting there shocked, and it was like a little thing. But in the moment when some of these things
[5:27]were happening, and I don't want to give anything away, and some of them aren't like life
[5:32]altering major revelations, but just anything that you take us back to about your parent when it
[5:38]turns out or your own family, when it turns out not to be true, the whole, you know, the foundation
[5:42]kind of rattles a little bit. How did you deal with each one of these little things as it chipped
[5:47]away at you? How did you aside from writing about it? What were some of the things that you did
[5:52]to process those moments in your life? I mean, I think writing was the main thing to be honest.
[5:58]My way of processing any experience has always been through writing, and what I think is maybe
[6:05]unique about this memoir is that I wrote it in real time. You know, it's not as though I had
[6:11]years later and was that kind of removed from the experience and looked back and reflected.
[6:17]So I think if it has the kind of feel of like a, you know, suspenseful story or detective story,
[6:24]you know, like I think that's because I was sort of piecing together my life and these
[6:30]realizations as they were unfolding. And, you know, my other kind of coping mechanism besides
[6:38]writing was of all things weightlifting, which I talked about in the book. I needed some sort
[6:47]of outlet because I knew that if I didn't give that to myself, I would just succumb to the pressure
[6:55]and it would, you know, I wouldn't be able to be there for my daughter or for my mom. So I began
[7:03]weightlifting and I basically just, you know, fitness was completely missing from my life. I had
[7:09]like no relationship to my body at all. My whole world was just like in my head between my ears.
[7:16]And I went to the gym and I just decided that I didn't want the experience of fitness to be
[7:24]a negative one. I didn't want it to be about weight loss or punishment or oh, you know, I was bad
[7:32]the other day when I ate a brownie. So I have to make up for it now. I didn't want any of that. I
[7:36]wanted something that just felt like a complete release and weightlifting gave that to me. And it
[7:43]ended up becoming this real metaphor for all that I was carrying around. And, you know, weightlifting
[7:51]for me became this sort of exercise not in picking up heavyweights, but in finally setting them
[7:58]down and giving myself permission to do that. And so I found it and continue, although in quarantine
[8:07]of course I'm not going to the gym, but it has become a nearly spiritual practice for me,
[8:13]I would say. Now you're just like lifting up your sofa. I'm going to walk around, you know,
[8:19]little like side tables go up in the air and say we are Skyfina.
[8:23]Nothing's heavy enough. You're lifting like hundreds of pads. I've got to get a piano in there,
[8:30]isn't it? But I loved your relationship with your trainer in the book too. What it, it's Todd
[8:36]Ism's Jay, was it his name is Todd or did I mess it up? His name is Louis. Louis ism, sorry.
[8:42]Louis ism's and how he had all these expressions that you took to heart and had like 500 meanings
[8:49]in one. And we're also about life. And then how at the end you realize you're mine to do
[8:53]so much of your dad, which that one I kind of did see coming. But even though the book was mostly
[8:59]about your mom, I felt like a lot of it was about sorting out your feelings about your relationship
[9:04]with your dad. At the same time, do you want to talk a little about if you don't mind? I know it
[9:09]was a very difficult relationship for you, but how writing the book helped you sort through
[9:14]what happened with him? Yeah, so my father was just a difficult person. He was controlling
[9:23]and rigid. He had a lot of ideas about women and girls and our place in life. And he would say
[9:33]these things to me from a very young age about how I was worthless and girls, you know, aren't meant
[9:39]to contribute to society. And he just was very matter-of-fact about it. Like he wasn't, it wasn't
[9:44]some like hidden thing that seeped out subtly. It was very open. And yeah, specifically he was very
[9:53]controlling when it came to my body. So he didn't want me to be an athlete.
[10:00]Fleet, when I was a child, he, when I started physically maturing, he would, you know, rip
[10:06]up my leggings or anything that he thought was tight, and he would get upset with me and
[10:13]punish me if, you know, someone gave me attention, like a stranger on the street whistled
[10:19]at me, he would punish me.
[10:22]So it was interesting.
[10:23]When I was writing the memoir, I remember this moment when my editor said to me, you
[10:27]you know, we need a little bit about your dad.
[10:30]And I was so scared to write about him, and any time that I tried to, this will sound
[10:37]so bizarre, but I would literally break out into hives when I went to write about him.
[10:43]And specifically, I would get hives across my feet.
[10:48]And I thought, what is this?
[10:49]And the minute I stopped trying to write about him, you know, the hives would disappear.
[10:52]So it was very related to that act.
[10:58]One day, as I was sitting at my laptop, just like sitting with my discomfort, I had this
[11:03]flashback where I remembered being very young, and my father had found a crayon of mine
[11:10]under the couch, and he turned livid, and he sent me out to our driveway in the summer.
[11:19]It was July, and he told me to stand barefoot on the driveway, and I wasn't allowed
[11:25]to hop between feet or go on the grass.
[11:29]And that memory came back to me.
[11:33]You know, it had been in my body, which is why I was getting those hives.
[11:39]And so writing about that was so cathartic and freeing, and it helped me process these memories
[11:50]that I didn't even know I was carrying around inside of me.
[11:54]And you know, as kids, we just grow up in whatever soil we have, whatever environment
[12:01]we have.
[12:02]We don't really think about it.
[12:03]And I think kids are remarkable and miraculous for this reason, as we just find ways
[12:09]to thrive, like flowers between the cracks in the sidewalk, you know.
[12:16]And so I had never thought of myself as having a particularly rough childhood.
[12:20]Like I went to great schools, I was really close with my mom.
[12:24]And so I certainly never thought of myself as having been abused at all.
[12:30]So to have that vantage point as a grown-up and as a parent myself, to be able to look
[12:37]back and say, oh, that happened, and I never gave it thought.
[12:43]And now I can, you know, that was really powerful.
[12:46]I think for a lot of people who have grown up in dysfunctional homes or with difficult
[12:51]parents, and a lot of times what we tell ourselves is, oh, whatever happened wasn't that
[12:56]bad.
[12:57]Other people have so much worth, other kids have it so much worth.
[13:00]And I think to come out of that stance and instead of trying to kind of put him on a spectrum
[13:06]of, well, how bad was he?
[13:09]To instead just kind of claim my story and say, this is what happened, that freed me from
[13:15]being under a spell.
[13:16]Wow.
[13:17]So much power and just being able to retell the story, like to yourself, to us.
[13:22]I mean, all those nights when he would take you and make you run and work, I mean, your
[13:27]whole relationship to the fact that you're such an athlete and how he would make you
[13:33]run and run and run and you get stress fractures.
[13:36]And I mean, it was, I mean, reading it, it was sort of horrifying.
[13:40]I mean, my daughter would kill me if I touched her favorite leggings.
[13:43]Like, that's like the littlest, you know, I mean, like I have it almost 13 year old.
[13:47]It's like, that's like the tiniest piece.
[13:50]But even that, you know, I could see their ripples of let alone all the physical stuff.
[13:55]And anyway, I'm so glad it helped you to get that out of your system.
[14:00]I mean, imagine if you hadn't have written about it, what if you had just kept going
[14:03]with your novel?
[14:04]Right.
[14:05]Exactly.
[14:06]And, you know, so I think the two things for me, writing was incredibly cathartic.
[14:10]And yet in a strange way, going to the gym and working out with Lewis, who is roughly,
[14:19]you know, not too far from my father's age.
[14:22]So to work out with someone who was in a position of authority and whose older than
[14:27]I am, who encouraged me and never had a negative word to say, that I think accomplished
[14:35]more than therapy, because it put me back in my body in an empowering way.
[14:43]And that was so healing.
[14:44]Wow.
[14:45]This whole journey, I feel like I got to like, perch on your shoulder as you completely
[14:49]like rehabilitate yourself in this book, including, by the way, just all the terrible stuff
[14:57]that people go through when they have new babies.
[14:59]I mean, you wrote so beautifully about postpartum depression.
[15:03]And that just, oh, that not only the despair, but that once you got medication and you woke
[15:08]up one morning and it was just, you were like, oh, I'm me again, like, even that part
[15:13]of your story was so powerful.
[15:14]And the fact that you were holding yourself up to a standard that you didn't even realize
[15:18]was unattainable until later, right, against your mother, I don't know, it's a lot.
[15:24]Oh, like I got in there.
[15:27]It's a lot.
[15:29]And the funny thing is, you know, we talk about all this and it sounds so heavy.
[15:33]You know, when your book gets published and you receive it one day, like it shows about
[15:37]your doorstep and you have it in a hard cover and you flip through it, I was kind of looking
[15:41]through it thinking like, oh, it's funny that there's such short section.
[15:47]And I think part of what it is is that like, even though I was writing about these big,
[15:50]heavy things, I was in crisis as I was writing it, you know, because I was caring for
[15:56]my mother around the clock, I was trying to be there for my daughter.
[15:59]So I wrote this book literally, I would like take 15 minutes and like hide in my bedroom
[16:05]closet or if like, and just try and get one little chapter done, and then come back.
[16:12]And so I think because I was in it while writing it, I didn't have the emotional bandwidth
[16:20]or capacity to write a long narrative, you know, I sort of had to take it one little
[16:29]piece at a time.
[16:31]So I think that helped me through the writing.
[16:34]But it helped through the reading too.
[16:35]I mean, so many of your sessions, like that's how people are consuming books these days
[16:42]anyway, right?
[16:43]Where are the ones running off to the closet to read for two minutes or 10 minutes?
[16:47]I thought the short chapters were part of what made the book so effective.
[16:51]There were like scenes, like you're in a, it's like, it was very visual too, like
[16:55]you're in a scene, you're in the doctors, you're with your brother, and you go back
[16:59]and forth.
[17:00]I don't know.
[17:01]I thought it was really neat.
[17:02]How does this type of writing?
[17:03]I haven't read your novel.
[17:04]How does this type of writing compare to your novel or if you're going back to that other
[17:08]one, your next novel, do you write in the same way or is it, how would you compare it?
[17:14]It's so different.
[17:15]It's such an interesting question.
[17:17]I think part of it is that when I was writing fiction, without realizing it, I had always
[17:23]been really writing about these things.
[17:27]You know, the father whose love is unavailable, the mother who is mythic, and I'd been circling
[17:36]these themes.
[17:37]I just didn't know it.
[17:38]I didn't realize that I was revealing myself through my fiction.
[17:44]And one difference, I will say, is that when you're writing fiction, you have to kind
[17:51]of give yourself over to the artifice of it.
[17:56]You know, you are creating this whole alternate universe with characters and setting, and
[18:03]your goal as a writer is to kind of erase yourself out of the picture and just put the
[18:07]readers into that world.
[18:10]And with memoir, the interesting thing is that you can reflect as you're writing on the
[18:17]process as you're doing it.
[18:19]So I think knowing now what that's like, I mean, that requires a lot more vulnerability
[18:25]and it's scarier to do.
[18:29]It also just allowed me and enabled me to kind of get real in a way that I really hadn't
[18:37]done before.
[18:38]So it was much more difficult, I think, but also having experienced that.
[18:43]I don't know that I could go back to writing fiction just soon.
[18:46]Yeah.
[18:47]Because I think to tap into your heart and really go there.
[18:53]I think that's where we can offer so much value to ourselves and to the reader and just
[18:59]to the writing process in terms of like what we're trying to accomplish to really kind
[19:04]of get at the truth of thing with them.
[19:06]And yet the problem is that sometimes what we want to write about in our hearts involves
[19:10]other people, like, yes, your mother had passed away when this came out, but maybe she
[19:17]didn't pass out.
[19:18]She's still alive.
[19:19]Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
[19:20]I made that mistake.
[19:21]No, no, no.
[19:22]It's okay.
[19:23]One of the things I think about a lot is that I think with Alzheimer's, there's kind of
[19:25]of a double grief.
[19:26]Do you lose the person through the disease because they slowly, you know, as their sense
[19:34]of self fades away, as their memories fade away, you're left with this kind of shell
[19:37]of a person.
[19:38]So there's Zachary.
[19:40]And then later when the person actually passes away, of course, there's the second
[19:43]race.
[19:44]So yeah, my mother is still alive, but I often refer to her in the past tense.
[19:48]So anyone listening to me, you know, it's completely understandable to like think, but
[19:54]she has passed away, because in my mind, when I talk about her, I'm always talking
[19:59]about who.
[20:00]She was to me in some ways the person I go and, well,
[20:06]of course right now I can't go and visit her during quarantine
[20:09]but the person I would visit and now the person I talked
[20:13]to on the phone is an imposter.
[20:16]It's not her at all.
[20:17]Wow.
[20:18]And in the book, you know, I reflect on this
[20:21]but I still kind of don't know how to talk about her.
[20:24]I don't know if I should use past tense verbs
[20:28]or present tense verbs.
[20:30]It's this awkward sort of in limbo purgatory of being
[20:35]where on one hand she's alive
[20:38]but even saying that feels kind of inaccurate
[20:41]because she's not really herself.
[20:43]She's not really alive as she would have
[20:46]wanted to do to alive.
[20:47]So that's just, you know, it's an interesting place.
[20:51]I almost sent you and then I was like,
[20:53]how can I send you an article?
[20:54]You're like such an amazing author yourself
[20:55]but there was an op-ed I feel like in the New York Times
[20:58]this weekend by somebody whose mother had just passed
[21:01]away from Alzheimer's and she's described it
[21:03]exactly the way you did.
[21:04]I'm gonna find it and send it to you.
[21:05]I'll put it in the show.
[21:06]Please do.
[21:07]But it's exactly that and how she wasn't,
[21:09]she didn't know how to describe
[21:11]and the person isn't alive anymore.
[21:13]And yet, anyway, so, but now I feel terrible.
[21:17]I'm sorry, I'm glad.
[21:18]I mean, anyway, sorry for the misunderstanding.
[21:21]No, not at all, not at all.
[21:24]So if you don't think you can go back to fiction,
[21:26]are you working on anything new
[21:28]or are you just like deep into the virtual promotion
[21:31]of this book, which you should be, you know,
[21:33]enjoying and taking your time doing.
[21:35]So no pressure by this question, but just wondering.
[21:39]Yeah, I'm a little bit of a, at a crossroads
[21:41]in terms of what to do next writing live.
[21:45]You know, definitely my life has not been the same
[21:48]since writing this memoir.
[21:50]I think anyone who writes a memoir,
[21:52]you really hold up not just any mirror to your life,
[21:56]but like a 360 degree mirror to your life.
[22:00]And your life can change quite dramatically
[22:04]as, you know, as a result of that.
[22:08]So yeah, it could be that there are essays
[22:12]or another nonfiction book in my future,
[22:15]but I'm not quite sure.
[22:17]I know you had posted on an Instagram post
[22:19]that I had said when I was feeling very sad,
[22:21]when my kids were with their dad,
[22:23]because I'm divorced and remarried,
[22:25]but I still five years later have trouble
[22:28]when they go to their dad sometimes.
[22:30]And I just, you know, get so sad.
[22:31]And you responded that you had been,
[22:33]you were separated as well.
[22:34]And I was sort of sad to hear that,
[22:35]especially having read the book as I don't know.
[22:38]So has that affected anything with the release
[22:43]or your time now or how you see the writing process of it
[22:47]or anything?
[22:49]Yeah, so, you know, it's interesting.
[22:51]I will say that separating was the best thing
[22:56]to have done.
[22:57]And I'm so proud of myself for having done it.
[23:00]And my life now is 100 times better.
[23:03]So I say that partly to anyone listening
[23:07]because I remember when I was in my marriage
[23:10]and I was thinking about separating,
[23:12]it just seemed terrifying.
[23:14]And I thought, oh my gosh, what would my life be like?
[23:17]And I sort of imagined myself miserable and struggling.
[23:21]And I didn't know that I would emerge on the other side
[23:25]and be thriving.
[23:26]So it's a happy ending in that sense.
[23:29]Part of what I talk about in the memoir is that with my mother,
[23:35]I had always described her growing up and through college.
[23:40]And you know, in my 20s, I described her as the perfect mother.
[23:44]And I was a wonderful person.
[23:46]And she and I were so close.
[23:49]And later, I realized that because I had such an awful father,
[23:55]I kind of needed my mother to make up for him.
[23:58]So I was deeply invested in her being this fabulous parent
[24:03]even though I had to do quite a bit of like
[24:07]twisting of logic and facts to see her that way.
[24:11]So I would always describe her as this wonderful parent
[24:13]even though she didn't necessarily always do things
[24:15]to warrant that.
[24:17]And even when she could be quite sort of absent and negligent,
[24:21]I always found ways to think of her choices
[24:26]as being in my best interest,
[24:28]but really it was this illusion.
[24:30]And it was a similar thing I did with my husband
[24:36]where in the book I described him as being wonderful
[24:39]and supportive, even though one thing my editor kept saying
[24:44]to me when she was reading this,
[24:46]she would say, well, where's your husband in all of this?
[24:48]Like you seem so alone as you're dealing with motherhood
[24:53]and postpartum depression and your mother's Alzheimer's disease.
[24:57]And you know, you sound so isolated.
[25:01]And I think there are actually a lot of women
[25:04]who feel that way in their marriages
[25:06]where you're with someone and on paper
[25:09]you have a partner.
[25:11]And you know, for me at least,
[25:12]especially compared to how my father had been,
[25:15]my husband did seem incredibly supportive and wonderful
[25:19]because by the yardstick, I was accustomed to,
[25:24]you know, like the absence of violence,
[25:28]the absence of a temper, the absence of verbal
[25:33]and emotional abuse, I just thought, oh, this is great.
[25:37]This is support.
[25:38]So yeah, really, you know, writing the memoir
[25:45]really caused me to read them and not just my marriage,
[25:48]but a lot of my relationships and patterns
[25:51]in ways that are ultimately very healthy now,
[25:54]you know, like I gained so much,
[25:56]it's just a difficult process.
[25:59]You were gonna have like the best next five to 10 years.
[26:02]I feel like you are gonna do a complete 360
[26:05]on everything in your life.
[26:07]And I am like, you know, I hope you continue to write about it.
[26:10]So people who, you know, are not in your inner circle
[26:13]can watch because like, it's like,
[26:16]you just finally like took off this whole protective layer.
[26:19]And now you're like, yeah, it will be fun
[26:21]if you can write about it to be a bystander and watch as you take off.
[26:28]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[26:31]Now that we're nearing the end of our little chat here.
[26:34]Yeah, I mean, I think the thing I would say is first of all,
[26:37]the most important thing with writing is to just write.
[26:41]And we find so many reasons and so many ways to not write
[26:45]because we tell ourselves that we are not good enough
[26:48]or what has happened in our lives
[26:52]to warrant, you know, writing about.
[26:55]So I kind of think I almost imagine writing
[27:00]as like a chariot with two horses in front.
[27:03]Plato had this whole theory about the human soul
[27:06]being a chariot with two horses.
[27:08]So there's like the horse that should be the weaker horse,
[27:14]but it's actually the stronger one,
[27:16]which is self-criticism.
[27:18]And then there's the other horse,
[27:20]which should be the stronger one,
[27:21]but it's the weaker one, which is our instincts as writers.
[27:25]And so I think if you can find ways to like recalibrate
[27:28]the horses to tame the self-critic
[27:32]that it doesn't take over and to feed your instincts
[27:36]to bring them more to the forefront,
[27:38]that's how the writing moves forward.
[27:41]And I think when you hear that voice pop up that says,
[27:45]who do you think you are to be trying to write
[27:48]or, you know, what do you think you're playing at?
[27:50]However, that voice speaks to you to just recognize it
[27:53]and say, oh, that's that horse taking over
[27:55]when it doesn't deserve to
[27:57]and sort of put it in its place.
[27:59]And then when like the little voice speaks up inside
[28:02]that says, like, oh, I wonder if I could write about that.
[28:06]To really like give that all of the carrots and feed it
[28:09]and yield to that.
[28:11]I think that's how the writing actually comes out
[28:15]onto the page.
[28:17]And to any writer out there, I would say, you know,
[28:20]I never got an MFA.
[28:22]I had zero connections in the publishing world.
[28:25]You have a PhD in comparison literature.
[28:28]Yeah, but all the people I was studying were all dead.
[28:31]Yeah, it counts, I think that counts, but okay fine.
[28:35]I knew how to read novels,
[28:37]but I didn't really think I could write one.
[28:39]And yeah, I think to just go for it,
[28:42]just keep finding, even if it's only 10 minutes
[28:45]in your bedroom closet, but to keep finding little islands
[28:49]of time where you just get stuff on paper,
[28:51]that's the most important thing.
[28:53]That's great.
[28:54]Well, thank you Maya.
[28:55]Thanks so much for coming on Mom's Don't Time Treat books
[28:57]and for sharing your story with all of us.
[28:59]I can't wait to see what happens next for you.
[29:01]Well, thank you so much for being, it's been a pleasure.
[29:04]Okay, you too.
[29:05]Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[29:08]Moms don't have time to read books.
[29:09]If you liked this episode, please follow me on Instagram
[29:13]at Zippy Owens and at Moms don't have time to read books
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[29:41]Thanks for listening.
[29:42]You can always email me at Zippy at Zippy Owens.com.