J. Nicole Jones, LOW COUNTRY
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[0:38]Chain Nicole Jones is the author of Low Country, a memoir.
[0:41]She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University in 2012,
[0:46]and has held editorial positions at Bice Magazine and Vanity Fair.com.
[0:50]Her essays and writing have appeared in Bice Vanity Fair.com,
[0:54]the Harper's Magazine website, The Less Angelus Review of Books, Salon, The Paris Review Daily,
[0:59]and Elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and Tennessee, with her dog, Juneau. This is her first book.
[1:05]Welcome to COOL. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books,
[1:09]to discuss Low Country by, technically by Jane Nicole Jones, but we're calling you to COOL, though.
[1:15]Oh, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so excited to be here. I love this podcast.
[1:20]Oh, it's so good. Thanks for listening.
[1:23]Low Country, a Southern memoir. Can you please tell listeners what your book is about
[1:29]and what inspired you to write a memoir to begin with? Yeah.
[1:32]Well, my book is about growing up, about my life growing up in South Carolina,
[1:38]but I feel like my family is more the main character and the place itself and the history I hope in.
[1:45]Yeah, I have always loved memoirs. I'm reading anything, but I heard you call yourself
[1:56]a memoir addict with Jill Stade in another of yours and I was like, me too, that's me.
[2:01]So yeah, so I think we often tend to read a lot of what maybe we are thinking about,
[2:09]kind of always turning into something bigger, you know, like little stories.
[2:15]And so I, yeah, I was just kind of grew up, I think surrounded by people telling stories all
[2:23]the time. My dad is a songwriter and kind of often was turning a little, just anything in our day
[2:30]into songs and then, you know, trying to make bigger stories into, you know, something memorable.
[2:37]And then South Carolina itself has such an interesting and rich and often dark history.
[2:45]And I, I felt like a lot of things that you sort of know are around always, especially in
[2:51]the land and the history of the land. You learn about it and then are not talked about or
[2:55]kind of know that there's like a lot of hidden violence around all the time down there is how it
[3:01]fucked me growing up. And especially in my family, I saw my grandfather kind of be violent with
[3:07]my grandmother. And I think I was always sort of sorting out what was okay to talk about and what
[3:15]was not okay to talk about. And then you get older and you kind of think, well, what was actually
[3:23]happening and why shouldn't I have been talking about that? And that's what we need to be talking
[3:28]about. And so I think I just, yeah, reading lots of memoirs and, you know, essays and, you know,
[3:36]novels of course to, you just sort of start to organize things in your head and say, oh, yes,
[3:42]well, that's what was happening here or no, no, this is, you know, something else is going on
[3:46]with that. And so I think I just, yeah, kind of started putting my own stories together having
[3:53]kind of grown up in that framework of connection. So awesome. Well, tell me a little about
[4:01]your, so your dad, there was a scene in the book where you're listening to a song on the radio with
[4:06]your dad. And then you have a sort of fast forward years ahead when your dad has now written a song
[4:13]performed by the son of the artist who had been listening to, I'm not telling the story,
[4:19]you didn't beautifully in like a sentence and I just messed it up, but explain that whole thing
[4:24]and how you, because in the book, we kind of go along the journey of your dad trying to make it
[4:29]right over and over and then you give us this little sneak peek into the fact that he does sell
[4:36]a song and it is exciting. You know, so tell me a little bit about that part and even the
[4:40]effective on you of having, of watching your dad's repeated, you know, trips to Memphis and trying
[4:46]to, you know, trying to make it and going along with the success when it eventually comes. So
[4:52]tell me a little more about that if you don't mind. Yeah. I mean, music was always country music,
[4:58]he's a country music singer, a songwriter kind of always, always around, you know, the radio is
[5:03]always on and he had turned our garage when I was growing up into like a makeshift recording studio.
[5:11]And yeah, we would listen, you know, it would always, you know, listen to Elvis and this is,
[5:15]you know, the hang of the, you know, George Jones and, you know, those were very much in our
[5:20]vocabulary growing up as kids, you know, when, you know, you're not in charge of the radio,
[5:25]you just have to listen to what's on. And yeah, my, we grew up on the Coaster South Carolina
[5:31]in Myrtle Beach to where he grew up and, but he would take periodic trips to Nashville, Tennessee,
[5:37]which is, you know, along, you know, way away. And yeah, I knew it wasn't Memphis. Did I say Memphis?
[5:43]I knew it wasn't Memphis. I'm sorry. Okay. No, no, no. Sorry. Yeah. And yeah, trying to sell songs
[5:51]to music houses and back then I think you, you've made cassettes like demo cassettes and left them
[5:58]and baskets on music grow all the publishing houses where in these old old houses. And that's
[6:04]not how I do it anymore, but I guess. So yeah, so, you know, you know, the bartender often in the
[6:10]evenings and weighed tables and in the morning sometimes. And in the daytime, he was home with
[6:15]us a lot and would write, you know, he'd be kind of working on a turn phrase or, you know,
[6:21]something on his guitar and, you know, would be like, oh, like, listen to this and what you do
[6:25]like better and, you know, bring me the rhyming dictionary that the sore is, you know. And so,
[6:31]yes, it's a big moment. I think to realize that someone that you've really idolized, you know,
[6:37]or someone who was a big deal, you know, I think was a big deal in country music. And then
[6:42]he meant to get too much away. But yeah, he goes to Nashville repeatedly and ends up there
[6:48]when I'm an adult and kind of makes it and sells a song to William's Jr. And that ends up on the
[6:55]radio. And yeah, we kind of have a relationship that's sort of on and off in the book. And
[7:01]yeah, it's it's very interesting to hear kind of tidbits of your life and and songs, you know,
[7:07]like, I know that, you know, you're supposed to be thinking about my mom right now or I remember when
[7:13]that happened or that's the, you know, the truck that is, you know, in that verse. So it's very,
[7:18]that's kind of funny. First of all, yeah, no need. I've never spoken to anyone who that's
[7:24]happened to it before. So that's very neat. Nick experience. You also talk a lot or not a lot,
[7:31]but you you introduce us to you in the book and explain how you had been in Myrtle Beach. And
[7:37]then you end up at this more prestigious prep school. And so your life takes on a different
[7:42]trajectory than a lot of your original classmates who some of them have ended up in prison or
[7:47]still in Myrtle Beach and all the rest. So tell me a little bit about sort of that fork in the road
[7:52]and how your life veered to a different towards a different direction when you moved to Charlotte.
[7:58]Yeah, man, you know, about my whole life. Yeah, we moved from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte when I was
[8:05]starting high school. And I decided that I wanted to kind of, you know, I really go to kind of a
[8:13]college prep school and like from my middle school and Myrtle Beach wrote an ask for all these
[8:19]applications and materials and things. And then I actually started to get in and, you know, it was
[8:24]one of those double-edged things. I was very excited and very, very lucky and of women's privileged
[8:31]to be able to do that. And I was surrounded by, you know, books. I had wonderful teachers who,
[8:35]you know, gave us, I think I was very aware that South Carolina, I was, you know, starting to feel like
[8:42]I was not being taught things that I wanted to be aware of where I was aware that there was more
[8:49]that I wanted to know. And so I was very lucky to be able to go to like a fancy school that,
[8:56]you know, I feel like I don't belong here kind of the first experience of, well, I sound different.
[9:03]And I think I look different in my, you know, closer different. And there's a lot of catching,
[9:10]catching up to do. But I think that was my first real introduction to kind of class differences.
[9:17]That, you know, like a nice kid, you don't realize, are there, you know, I was just like,
[9:21]I'm going to go read, read what people who love books to, you know, and then there's a lot of,
[9:27]yeah, we don't wear overalls here or, you know, your accent is thicker than ours. And so, yeah.
[9:37]Tell me a little more about what the writing process did for you, especially as you describe it
[9:44]with going through some of the secrets and your families, you know, I would say, I want to say
[9:49]treasure chest. So that's the wrong analogy. The things you keep under wraps that you explore in the book
[9:54]and what it felt like to write about it and to get it out there into the world now.
[10:00]Yeah, it's something that I've been writing for, I mean, sort of my whole life, I think,
[10:05]just listening to, you know, people tell stories, but especially the women in my life tell stories,
[10:12]my grandmother in particular. And so I, you know, was always writing down things that she was saying
[10:21]or stories that felt, you know, that I couldn't believe had happened to her, you know, like
[10:26]at one point she decided, she decides to leave my violent grandfather and she gets, you
[10:31]know, as far as if you are as a way and she gets stopped for no reason in her car and
[10:36]police officer tells her she's going home and follows her all the way back to, you know, her house.
[10:42]So just things like that that you hear and you think that can't, how can that happen? And so I
[10:47]just started, you know, at some point writing things like that down. And yeah, I actually wrote a whole
[10:54]draft of this book and had it stolen from my car a couple of years ago. What? I know, yeah.
[11:03]From, yeah, I went into an Ikea for like 20 minutes and our car was broken into when we got back
[11:09]in my computer and my, you know, legal pads, notebooks were all gone. And so I kind of stopped
[11:15]writing for a few months. And you didn't have a backup for a copy, nothing. No. Oh my gosh,
[11:23]did that break your heart? I, what did you handle that? That's like back of your work.
[11:28]Yes. Not a drill. So it was devastating. Yeah, I stopped writing for, you know, months. I,
[11:38]you know, felt like I was really, really close. And then, you know, had nothing and then my
[11:43]grandmother died kind of suddenly. And then I just found myself writing and writing and writing and
[11:48]and it was just like, I need to get her voice down. And I need to get these things down that I
[11:53]remember. And I had little, you know, snippets, you know, I had, you know, things that I had written
[11:58]in grad school that somewhere in my Gmail and some were not. And, you know, it was a lot of
[12:03]piecing together, very, very old things and starting over from there. So I thought I would let the
[12:09]book go for a long time. And then I lost her and just really needed to hear her voice again.
[12:17]And so I started writing just to remember her stories and her voice really in this world
[12:25]that, you know, doesn't exist anymore. And so I think that was the real, yeah, kind of turning
[12:31]point and thinking that this book is going to be how it is now. And I need to actually get it,
[12:38]get it out there and save everything in the cloud and, you know, back up hard drive all of that.
[12:46]Yeah. Well, I guess in a way, getting the chance to rewrite history literally can be a bonus,
[12:53]right? You could experiment with the material and then remember what you really want to include.
[12:57]And I don't know. It's like a tough, tough love writing exercise or something.
[13:02]I don't recommend it. No. But yeah, I think it really helped me to figure out why I was telling
[13:13]the story. You know, I think I grew up with these fantastical tales that felt very close to me.
[13:19]You know, my family has a lot of interesting, weird, unusual experiences and then
[13:26]growing up in South Carolina that where you are surrounded by, you know, like, well, this is where,
[13:31]you know, this pirate landed or, you know, I think things feel history, feels very
[13:37]near, but also very hushed up sometimes. And so you're not sure what is, what is real sometimes
[13:44]and what is just a story. And, you know, what part of a story might have been real and what might
[13:50]have been kind of made up or altered just through people telling things over and over again.
[13:57]So I think I had always been writing those down because it was interesting to me and
[14:03]fun for me to, as a reader, to think of those things. And then when I had to start over,
[14:09]it really was, like you said, like, I'm choosing to rewrite some of this history. And I
[14:16]felt really focused on why I was writing. I guess that's one piece of advice is, you know, really
[14:25]well, back up. But, you know, sort through the material of your life and figure out what gets
[14:31]through the strainer at twice, if you will, so many times. Tell me about your publication journey,
[14:39]how did this sell and what was that like for you? It took, it took a while, you know, I, it took
[14:45]a while to find the right agents and I was sending, you know, once I had a draft that, you know,
[14:52]I had rewritten and felt kind of more strongly about or like, I just need, like, I just had this,
[14:58]like, you need to get to get it out there to share and have people telling me what, what means,
[15:06]you know, fixing or so I started sending it out and I got such wonderful notes from from agents who
[15:13]who didn't, you know, who, you know, didn't feel it was right for them to take on. But I mean,
[15:18]I can't say enough nice things about how kind and generous people, you know, that you don't know
[15:23]that you're just cold emailing where, you know, with me in this book. And so, you know, it took me
[15:31]about a year and a half to find the right agent. And so, you know, that's really hard even if you're
[15:36]getting nice kind words back from people who don't have to send you anything at all. And so,
[15:43]my agent and I went through and she's very hands-on and wonderful and did not edit and sent that out.
[15:51]Yeah, and it ended up with catapults and my editor, Megha, I mentioned her, who is herself like a
[15:58]star novelist too. So, and I can't say enough nice things about catapults and Megha and just how
[16:08]generous people have been in the publishing world. You know, it's just been lots and lots of really
[16:14]kind people who like books and have been so helpful. So, yeah, I mean, it felt like it's taking a
[16:20]long time, you know, when you're in it and you're like, I want this to happen. But I guess if I could
[16:26]go back in time, that would be something I would tell myself, you know, as a grad student writing,
[16:32]you know, a thesis that was like sort of this, you know, I would say that, you know, takes the time
[16:38]that it takes and I'm really happy that I didn't sell something right out of school, you know,
[16:44]I think that with memoir in particular, I think time might be better to really kind of get that
[16:51]perspective and not even, I don't know, people talk a lot about like the double perspective with
[16:56]memoir. You like talk about what's happening and then reflect on, you know, what it means or why or
[17:01]the consequences. And I mean, there's so many more. There's so many meanings, you know, it's more than
[17:07]just two. So, I'm very, very glad that the book took the journey that it did to publication.
[17:13]And you mentioned how much you love reading memoir. Are there one or two or three that you
[17:18]have as like your favorite memoirs or that you're reading now or something like that with you?
[17:23]Oh my gosh. I mean, there's so many. I mean, I could just listen to lists. I mean, from like the past
[17:28]year, cash, the dragons giant, the women, the way to more book is just, I mean, like, wow,
[17:36]and yeah, wandering in strange lands. I read thinking about my book and the history and,
[17:43]I mean, it's just beautiful and just and Taylor has a memoir last year called writing with the
[17:49]ghosts that was just wonderful. And I mean, in terms of favorites, I read the woman warrior
[17:56]that Maxine Hunkinson won a lot. I give that a lot is gift. I hand that out a lot. Yeah,
[18:02]she'll straighten, you know, like, such a classic. Yeah, so, so many my father and myself,
[18:08]the JR at Ackerly book that's like the New Yorker youth classics put that out, you know,
[18:13]about a decade ago and that's wonderful. Yeah, something like that. Awesome. So any parting advice
[18:20]for aspiring authors, and are you already included a bunch? But I mean, keep going, I think,
[18:25]like, really just keep going. Like, sometimes you, it's the time in your life to have
[18:30]a day job and to just kind of take care of yourself and just know that it's always there and to,
[18:37]you know, carve out that 20 minutes in the morning or, you know, or don't or if you need to take
[18:43]more time and just really come back to something that I'm more focused period, then that's fine
[18:49]to you. I think every book takes the right journey that it's supposed to have maybe to
[18:55]where it ends up. So yeah, don't give up, but also back up your work. Number one lesson.
[19:05]Awesome. Do you have memoirs that you've been reading that have really stayed with you lately?
[19:10]Oh my gosh. So many lately. I don't know. I mean, I always reference Danny Shapiro because I
[19:16]love her as like one of the best memoirs. I just love how she writes. And I don't know. I hate to
[19:22]even pick now. I know that's a cop out of an answer, but, you know, I am actually reading now this
[19:27]other book because I'm about to interview her, but it's called You're Leaving Wind Adventures in
[19:31]Downward Mobility by Annabelle Gerwich. And it's hilarious, although almost sad. And I think right
[19:37]now I'm just in the mood for some funny stuff as well. Right. I like to mix in sort of sad and
[19:43]deep and emotional with some lighter. You know, I just appreciate a sense of humor as well. So
[19:49]that one's a very, it's a funny look at a sad situation, I guess how I would say it. I've been
[19:55]reading her books for a long time. So I'm just excited that she had anyone coming out. So I guess I'd
[19:59]say that.
[20:00]Anyway, thank you so much for coming on, Mom's and I'm time to read books. Thank you. I'm excited for your publication journey with low country to come to, you know, the finish line where it actually starts over with a new journey. So congratulations.
[20:16]Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. You know, I feel like I've been listening to you a lot in the pandemic. So I feel like you've been sort of in the zone already here with me.
[20:26]It's my pleasure. All right. Take care, Nicole. Bye bye.
[20:36]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's. Don't have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at Mom's. Don't have time to read books.
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[20:52]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.