The award winning poet, writer and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s genius lies in making connections between the astonishments of the natural world and the particular wonders of her own — and all of our — lives. Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poems, including “Oceanic,” and her latest book, a bestselling collection of essays, is called “World of Wonders.” Nezhukumatathil is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi. She joined us in front of an audience of students at McDaniel High School on April 18, 2024.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller, coming to you in front of an audience of students from McDaniel and Woodburn High Schools. It is an hour with the poet and essayist, Aimee Nezhukumatathil [audience applause]. I wish you had seen our poet and essayist ramping up the audience with her hands. But she didn’t need to do that, because they are here for her.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil spent her childhood on the move, the daughter of a Filipino mother and a South Indian father. She was born in Chicago and then she pinged around to suburban Arizona and rural Kansas, to Ohio and Iowa and western New York State. Now she is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi. But her mind is still on the move, making connections between the astonishments of the natural world and the particular wonders of her own, of all of our lives. For me, she has written, “What a single firefly can do is this. It can light a memory I thought was long lost in roadsides overrun with Queen Anne’s lace and Goldenrod, a peach pie cooling in the window of a distant house.”
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poems, including “Oceanic.” Her latest book, a best selling collection of essays is “World of Wonders.” Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Thank you. So happy to be here with everybody.
Miller: I feel like we could spend the whole hour just on some words that you start your book with, that aren’t even your own words. It’s just a sentence from the Indian writer and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore: “The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.” What is it about that line that made you say, I’m gonna put it at the beginning of this book?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. Well, first of all, an Indian poet, I’ve just never seen in any nature book growing up. And I wanted that moment of slowing down. I think of those quotes at the beginning of a book, they’re called “The Epigraph.” I think of it as setting the tone or mood music or mood lighting for the book. So as a way to signify to the reader like, this is not your granddaddy’s nature writing. This is gonna have, feature Brown people, but also a closer look at the outside world featuring people who have crushes and who like makeup and also love their parents and actually like spending time with their children. It’s all of the above, it’s not just the one type of slowing down and maybe looking out your window, having a trust fund, and time to do this. It’s being able to carve a little bit of time out, to take notice of the things that kind of are fleeting and serve as foundations and memories for us all.
Miller: It’s not an unheard of bit of wisdom to say, pay attention, take time. What he’s saying, I think we’re all used to hearing it, but maybe it’s harder than ever at a time when our attention is commoditized and chopped up and people can make money from our not paying attention to something else. So how do we do it?
Nezhukumatathil: And that’s the million dollar question, right? And there’s nothing I could say in 10 minutes that will say, here it is, I have the solution, but what we could do is to start small. And what I mean by that is to remember the things that you loved as kids. I never have to teach kindergarteners how to have wonder or awe. They just have it. I mean, if you’ve spent any time with kids, you know that one of their first words or two is, “look, look, mommy, look daddy, look at the moon, look at this rock, look at this bug, look at this flower, look at this stone.” Something happens around middle school where we might have astonishment, but some of us get teased for exclaiming over the moon or being astonished at the particular color of the inside of a frog’s eye, of the inside corner of a frog’s eyelid.
So I guess I would say to start small and think back of what you’re curious about, what you wonder about, because we all had those moments of what I like to call keeping our pockets full. If you go on a walk with a child, say under 10, their pockets at the end of the walk are full of stones, pebbles, sometimes animals.
Miller: And sometimes your pockets as well.
Nezhukumatathil: Exactly. Shells, little bits. Going with grown ups on a walk is sometimes sad because there’s nothing in their pockets sometimes. And so I guess what I would say by that is, yes, it’s ideal. It’s easy to say slow down. But what I would also say is when you don’t notice these things, when you don’t know the names for things, it’s so easy to just feel like you are separate from nature or this bird doesn’t affect me. And there’s so many devices like phones that would do everything, it feels like we’re connected, but we’re actually isolated when our head is bent down towards our chins and looking at the world pass you by. That becomes an isolating moment, that kind of thing. And I’m not anti-screen. I love screens, except we also have to remember that moment of wonderment, that astonishment as well.
Miller: Let’s take a question from one of the students here. What’s your name? What’s your question?
Audience Member: Hi, I’m Olivia Oliver. And my question is, when writing “World of Wonders,” did you think of the natural element first or the anecdote or something entirely different?
Nezhukumatathil: That’s such a great question. I don’t have a pet answer for every essay, because they’re mostly different. But I would say I’d say 80%, I thought of the scene first, the little snippet from my life first. There’s a few essays that don’t have me in there at all, but I think that maybe there’s like two or three in the whole book – meaning so, that goes to a larger question. This was kind of an accidental book. I definitely did not sit down at a desk and say I will write about nature and plug my life in there. These are collected, revised, bedtime stories for my kids.
My eldest I said was a junior but when he was nine and my youngest was six, they had lots of questions about our new home in Mississippi at the time. And at night I wouldn’t say, well, I’m gonna teach you a lesson about loneliness, but they would have questions for me. And so they’d be like, “Mommy, did you ever feel alone?” Or “Mommy, why is someone saying build that wall?” I didn’t have the answers to these questions, but I could at least begin to say, that reminds me when I felt like this. But also narwhals are in a pod and they stick together and even if one gets lost, they circle around until they find that missing narwhal and they stay safe, things like that.
I just was typing these up to put aside later as, I don’t know, some sort of gift when they graduate from high school. It wasn’t until later my husband was like, you should, I think you have something here. Maybe try. So it was definitely answering the questions my sons had first. A close reader will see, oh, there’s a lot of friendliness and tenderness and kindness there. That’s me, speaking to my kids. But in revision, I’m imagining speaking to my best friend. So you’ll notice there’s no long lectures here. There’s no pontificating on, look at how much I know about narwhals and you don’t, that always goes back to, how are we all connected? How are we all a part of this world together?
Miller: You write an essay about vampire squid, and you tell us that they do what no other creature in the ocean does. They have a more dazzling way to disappear than any other ones when they feel threatened. Can you first just describe physically what they do?
Nezhukumatathil: Yes. So, for those on the radio, you can’t see me but when they get a little disturbed or scared, they put up their arms over their head in what’s called the pineapple pose. And so what’s underneath their arms are these little, they look like fangs. So that’s where they get the name of vampire squid and it’s just such an extraordinary sight in the animal world.
OK, this is where I’m just gonna nerd out. They have the largest eye to body ratio of any animal on the planet. And they’re still small but it’s like a floating eyeball in the ocean. But when they get scared, their arms come up, they squirt out these, it looks like green sequins, it’s iridescent green, it’s like a mucus of iridescent green sequins and then while you’re dazzled by this light, it’s gone, it’s long gone already. But yeah, it is a dazzling showcase.
Humans don’t really get to see because this is in the midnight zone. But they’ve been caught on camera. If you really want to see this, don’t take my word for it. You can go on YouTube and see what this looks like, but it’s my favorite cephalopod and if you don’t have a favorite cephalopod, you need to fix your life and get one. So, anyway, that’s the vampire squid.
Miller: Do you mind reading the part of the essay that follows, after you write about what the vampire squid does, you then connect it to your life. Do you mind reading that part?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. And I always feel a little sheepish, but also so glad to read this, especially in front of high school students. This is something that my dear friends from high school, who I’m still connected to today, some of them were in my wedding. They were like “Aimee, we didn’t know this happened until we read your book.” I mean, I hid it so well. So I’m gonna read a little selection here. This is just part of the chapter called “Vampire Squid.”
[Reading excerpt from “World of Wonders”] “I wished I was a vampire squid the most. When I was the new girl in high school, we had moved around for so much of my childhood, but the most difficult move I ever made was between my sophomore and junior years. I moved from a class of about 100 students in western New York to well over 500 in Beaver Creek, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. I went from sophomore class president to a little no one, a gal who tried out for the tennis team, not because I had any interest in the sport, but because at practice, at least I didn’t have to be alone.
“I ate lunch in the library. I ate lunch in a stairwell hardly anyone used. I ate lunch in the dark enclave of the only elevator hidden outside anyone’s eyesight except for the occasional student on crutches or in a wheelchair. Once I ate lunch, my sad peanut butter and jelly sandwich, while standing up in a scratched and marker-uped bathroom stall. To pass the hour, I read the often vulgar, sometimes funny graffiti scrawled on the stall door just so no one could see. I had no one to talk to.
“This was my cephalopod year, the closest I ever came to wanting to disappear or sneak away into the deep sea. I had never feared this first day of classes or meeting new people before and after tennis practice, when everyone else was making plans to meet up at the local pizza parlor, I made myself vanish. I don’t know if my teammates even noticed or wondered where I went.
“Oh, I didn’t finish high school like that, swimming in darkness. I did end up making friends, giggling with them in the back of a school bus. I joined a bunch of delightfully nerdy pals on the speech and debate team. And I eventually did make the varsity tennis team playing doubles at districts with my sister. There was no hiding anymore. People noticed when I had to leave parties early for my curfew. They didn’t want me to go. And I had a teacher, Miss Harding, who wanted me to shine. I know it sounds incredibly precious, but these friends made me believe the mantra, ‘If one of us does well, we all do well.’ They were generous with their support. Playing it cool was boring. They were my kinfolk, my people, many of whom I’m still friends with today, though we’ve scattered across the country, spilling out in different directions as fast as we could, once we tossed our graduation caps in the air.
“But there wasn’t one specific turning point where I stopped trying to disappear. I don’t know how I wiggled out of that solitude, how I made it through the darkest and loneliest year of my youth. No more of those half-eaten hot lunches hurriedly tossed into the trash. No more make-believe research I pretended to do so the librarian would just let me read in peace. Instead, I began scribbling in notebooks and notebooks trying to write my way into being since I never saw anyone who looked like me in books, movies or videos.
“None of this writing was what I would remotely call poetry. But I know it had a lyric register. I was teaching myself and badly copying metaphor. I was figuring out the delight and pop of music and the electricity on my tongue when I read out loud. I was at the surface again. I was once more the girl who had begged my parents and principal to let me start school a whole year early and I was hungry. I emerged from my cephalopod year, exited my midnight zone.
“But I’m grateful for my time there. If not for that shadow year, how would I know to search the faces of my own students or to drop everything and check in, really check in with each of my sons when they come home from school, to make sure they are having a good time and feel safe. If not for that year where no one talked to me on the school bus, where I had no Valentines, no dates, I wouldn’t know what to say to my student with the greasy backpack who sits in the corner by herself and doesn’t make eye contact, who never talks in her other classes and never once spoke in my class unless called upon. I wouldn’t know how to tell if her solitude is voluntary or if it covers up a hunger to be seen, to glow with friendship, like I had every other year. I secretly love the audacity of the student’s tousled hair, stacked into a giant sloppy bun on the top of her head, this student who constantly shuffles in late and is the last to leave, but always, always reads further on the syllabus. The one who tells me after I come back from being out sick with the flu for a whole week, I missed you. I am so, so glad you were here today. Me too. I say, and I mean it.”
[audience applause]
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Miller: That is the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Her latest book is “World of Wonders,” that was, she was just reading from. Let’s take another question from our audience. What’s your name and what’s your question?
Audience Member: Hi. My name is Flora. I recognize that you’re writing from “World of Wonders” and your new book ties it to self discovery, especially through nature. What are some of the things you were doing at my age that helped lead you to where you are with yourself right now?
Nezhukumatathil: Oh, my gosh. I love that question! Nobody’s ever, ever asked me that before. And I’ve been in front of thousands and thousands of high school students. Thank you for that question. The easy answer is I never thought I would be a poet. I never thought I’d be a writer because, as great of a high school as I went to and I took all the AP things you can think of, we were never exposed to any living writers. So I guess I just thought of them as writers, like as the people who make the little ends of your shoelaces or they’re out there somewhere, but I’ve never known anybody who makes them, it just didn’t even seem possible. And so I’m so grateful to librarians who did actually present me with other offerings. They still weren’t living authors, but they at least gave me a bigger variety.
Reading, I would say is one, and I’ll give you the secret is I did not read a whole lot of literature actually, as much as I loved my literature classes. Young adult literature was so different in the seventies and eighties and I’m dating myself here, but a lot of the time it would be like, ‘Jane went to find a cake. Jane lost her cake. Let’s find Jane a new cake.’ And I remember being like, Jane sounds like a moron. What is this? Where the action was, was in the science world. I loved reading about the hunt for the giant squid. Oh, I just loved rocks and minerals, I was such a rock nerd. I loved studying about stars and shells. I mean, that was where the action was, but I also was grumbling, I definitely want to keep it real.
My parents would take us on these long arduous… I look back now so fondly, but when I was in high school, I was not thrilled to be going to caves. We would go to different National Parks, Mammoth Cave National Park. And my South Asian father would be like, “Aimee, we are going to look at stalactites.” And I was like, but everyone’s going to Florida or somewhere cool. And, but actually it was the best gift that my parents gave me. It was to give me this vocabulary, no matter where I was, I was outside and they gave me, “This is the name for this type of cactus. This is what a magnolia tree looks like. This is how to find the Pleiades if you’re in Ohio, this is how you find the Pleiades if you’re in Phoenix.” They gave me vocabulary about the outdoors. So even though I felt lonely one year of my entire high school life, I never truly did because I could look up and find Pleiades. I could look up and see a Catalpa tree, things like that. So I was outside a lot.
But I wish I had access to teachers who encouraged me to write. It just wasn’t a thing. So I bow down to your teachers here, for showing you that living writers are around and exist, and things like that. But the secret is to read more than one thing. So, if you like cars, read about bumblebees. If you like bumblebees, read about the origins of, where do you get cinnamon, things like that. You should be just a curious person. You should be just curious. Yeah, yeah.
Miller: We have another question. What’s your name? What’s your question?
Audience Member: Hi, I’m George. If you could give one piece of advice to your high school senior yourself, what would it be?
Nezhukumatathil: Oh, my gosh. I love that question. In honor of the Taylor Swift release tonight, I would say don’t spend a second on any boy who doesn’t want to see you shine or ignores you, like it’s just high school. Life is too short to do that. And that goes for anybody that you have a crush on. If they don’t see you, like, move on. I was an honor student again in all the AP classes and I spent way too much time obsessing about that situation right there. And that’s OK. But boy, it’s one of those things you look back on. I don’t know if I would have listened, if someone told me that but nobody ever did, so I guess I would just give that answer. Don’t spend time on people who don’t recognize your greatness.
If you have a friend, even, who doesn’t want you to shine, that’s not your friend. They should be excited about whatever you’re excited about. Even if they don’t get your exuberance over the moon or rocks or squid, they should be encouraging that. And if anyone puts you down, pro tip, that’s not your friend, that kind of thing. So that’s what I would give.
Miller: Is there an adult writer’s analog to that? I mean, because what you ended up with was, don’t spend time with people who don’t recognize your greatness. So, I mean, does that translate at all to the way you think about living your life now?
Nezhukumatathil: I guess I would just say - oh, that’s such a great question - and I don’t want to say… and I also want to put it out there, I’m not saying like, oh, greatness in that like, oh, I was 100% perfect, but I know what you’re saying.
Miller: But you know who you are, who doesn’t appreciate you.
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. I guess I would say too, and there’s a different answer for everybody, but I love that word, nourishment. Find who and what nourishes you and that gives you a sense of home, because I know not everybody’s home life is great or welcoming, but you can always go to a chosen family. Maybe there’s an aunt or uncle, maybe it’s your mom. Maybe it’s a sibling. Yeah, I think that would be just a life lesson as to whoever nourishes you. That’s a way to find home even when you feel a little displaced, that kind of thing. And that goes on, especially those of you who are going off to college soon. I would encourage that, to find what nourishes you in this new location, on this new campus.
Miller: We have another question. What’s your name? What’s your question?
Audience Member: I’m Jay. Do you believe that newer generations will develop the same love for nature as older ones? And how do you think that will happen?
Nezhukumatathil: Gosh, that is such a good question. I sure hope so. I sure hope that we’re not looking at, like a picture of what the ocean was in a holograph. I hope that we can actually visit an ocean.
Miller: If I may just interject a note of sadness that comes from your book, I mean, you end it by saying that you taught, I think it was a classroom of kindergartners?
Nezhukumatathil: No, it was high school, actually.
Miller: High schoolers who had never seen fireflies and this isn’t a place… I mean, there are no fireflies in Oregon, which is a deep sadness to me. And that’s not because of climate change or pesticides, it’s because they just don’t live here. But this was a place where they did exist.
Nezhukumatathil: Absolutely.
Miller: And you talk about screens as one reason you were assuming that they hadn’t been outside.
Nezhukumatathil: They hadn’t been outside.
Miller: You did write that as a note of concern.
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. And, I think absolutely with this book, there’s a saying in the South, “You catch more flies with honey.” So I definitely didn’t want to be finger pointing and be like, we all need to be recycling or we’re not going to have an ocean. There’s plenty of books that do that. That’s just not me. So I think for me, where I take out my wallet or where I want to become an activist or where I want to stand up and change my behavior is when someone tells me about something that they love, like fireflies, and I’m hoping that it makes you lean in and be like, gosh, I wanna protect the fireflies too or I didn’t realize these exist, I’m gonna go to a place where I could see them and then do everything I can to make sure that their forests aren’t destroyed, and things like that.
Gosh, that’s such a lovely question. I don’t have the full-on answer but I would say, what doesn’t bode well…and April is National Poetry Month and I visit elementary schools all the way up to senior citizens. What I notice is more and more times in the elementary schools – not that I’m staring at anyone’s knees, but in Mississippi you could wear shorts right now, you could wear shorts in February, who am I kidding? – there is a lack of skinned knees. And what I mean by that is – and actually, we did an exercise for my college students – there’s something wrong when I have to teach a good half of my college students how to climb a tree, because they just seriously don’t, they wouldn’t even know where to begin to climb a tree.
I’m not a super outdoors woman, let me just put it that way. I like a good heel. I like wearing dresses, but I know how to climb a tree and I mean, you couldn’t go to school in Arizona where I was from without skinned knees from bike rides, falling out of trees, whatever. It’s utter smoothness and more than that, people don’t know the texture of what it is to hold a ladybug in their hand. They were frightened. Does this bite? Does this bite? Some things that I took for granted, we were always holding ladybugs in our hand, holding fireflies in our hand, gently letting them go. But still knowing that sensation. Finding roadkill and just being in awe and staring at it, just as having this connection. It doesn’t all have to be pretty, but just having that connection with the outside.
I think it becomes dangerous and creepy when we don’t because again, it’s easy to say, well, that’s outside, that’s there. That doesn’t affect me, who orders my groceries from Instacart. That doesn’t affect me where I can order anything and have it come to my house without leaving. And then translating that to humans, that becomes dangerous, because if we don’t know the names or if we can’t empathize and be curious about humans, then it’s easier to make violence on them. And that’s what so many people in power like to do, is to separate us, dehumanize us so that we can be, oh, well, that was collateral. But that’s a person, that is a living, beating human heart, that kind of thing.
So it’s a beautiful question. I don’t have an answer, but I know that the communities where there’s a lot of people who are familiar with what it’s like to be outside, who get a sunburn once in a while, they’re the ones also who are the most compassionate. It’s not 100%, but they’re the ones who are not willing to just be mean terrible people. I think there’s a direct correlation there. I don’t have the science behind it, but just in my anecdotes, there’s a correlation between people who have empathy with humans…they’re also the people who also have a connection to the outdoors.
Miller: Let’s take one more question.
Audience Member: Hello. My name is Justin. More than a question. It’s more like an idea, a recommendation. I don’t know if you remember when you talk about the dragon fruit, one of the last pages when you describe how to do like alcohol drink, I kind of love that part because you use some special grinding part to describe how to do it. And it came with the idea, I was like, what if she makes a whole book with recipes, fruit, literature at the same time?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. Yeah, that’s so great. Oh my gosh, that sounds great. I have to ponder that one. My next book is on food but it only has one recipe. I like to say,
I need to, but I love that. I might have to co-author it with you or something like that. Thank you. Thank you.
Miller: Let’s take another question from one of the students here. What’s your name and what’s your question?
Audience Member: My name is Shelby. And I’d like to ask you this question as a fellow Filipino American. How has your experience as an Asian American author affected your confidence in becoming successful?
Nezhukumatathil: Oh my goodness. That’s such a beautiful question. And yay, Filipinos in the house. I don’t know, in some ways I’m qualified, very qualified to answer, in some ways I’m not, because it would be like asking the publishing world, how that is. I will say this is what I can answer for that incredible question. I will say when I first came to the world of poetry, it’s not that there weren’t any Filipino Americans writing. In fact, I was very upset to know that there were so many people writing. The publishing world, for whatever reason, was not giving as much access or time or page space to many writers who are not just Filipino American, but South Asian, which I also am, but writers who are disabled, writers who are from the LGBTQ community.
The publishing world has come a long way, I will say that, in making sure that books reflect the kind of world that we actually live in, not that I want to live in, we actually live in a diverse planet. But it was strange that the contemporary American poetry or publishing scene did not reflect that very well. And that’s not that long ago, in the nineties. We’ve come a long way, there’s still plenty of way to go. I would say that it affected me only kind of really in the beginning, only, this is where I’m gonna sound like a dinosaur – I did not have YouTube in high school. And so if it wasn’t in my library, I didn’t know it existed, and I read voraciously, but now you guys can look at poems and poets and writers on YouTube and have access to their work online without ever leaving your seat. So I felt very lonesome and like a weirdo for wanting to write, because the Filipino Americans I saw, if I saw them at all, were doctors or, I don’t know, opera singers. “Les Miserables” was going on and the lead singer of “Les Miserables” was a Filipino American, and I did not have either of those talents. So it just made me feel like a weirdo, for a long time.
And then once I knew that, oh, my gosh, there’s so many of us out there writing and starting to publish or have been publishing. But New York City publishing had not taken notice. Then it felt very freeing to know it’s out there. But really, I will say, do you know the movie or the mini series, I don’t know if it’s a mini series on Netflix, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” or “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” either of those. I cried when I saw those, because that’s the first time I saw an Asian American girl have a crush on somebody and it was not like a focus on being Filipino or Korean or anything. That was definitely a part of it, but that wasn’t the outsider, she was just a girl going to high school. So I would have died to have a show like that, and I did not. But I would say it made me nervous in the beginning but other than that now, I think of it as a superpower and a strength. I love dropping words like Lumpia and Pencit in writing, and if people don’t know what those foods are, it’s OK, they could look it up the way I looked up famous paintings that I didn’t know, that kind of thing. But I love the question. Thank you.
Miller: Let’s take another question from the audience. Go ahead.
Audience Member: Hi, my name is Valeria. And I wanted to ask you, how do you manage to blend the difficult, painful and sometimes violent experiences that you’ve endured with the tranquility and beauty of nature in your writing?
Nezhukumatathil: Oh my goodness, you all are rocking these questions. Where are the English teachers here? I just want to give a shout out to the English teachers. Oh my gosh, I would have died to have any of you as my English teachers. I know these questions don’t happen without just the fostering and modeling from English teachers and librarians here. So shout out to the teachers. That’s such a beautiful question. I think there’s definitely a time and place for kind of recalling those sadnesses or bits of injustice. And there’s other authors who did that. I definitely did not want to make a “La la la, I’m traipsing through the forest” book because that’s not my reality either. But I didn’t want to focus on it. I had a collection of 200 plants and animals, I whittled it down to 28. So that was very carefully crafted. These were not my favorite, necessarily, plants and animals, but they were the ones that had the most questions and they were chosen specifically on like, what part of my life did I want to showcase?
So I definitely included parts where I messed up. I go in there and talk about how I accidentally killed an octopus because I was so astonished and so excited about it. I kept it up out of the water and I’m so devastated. Anybody who meets me for two seconds knows that I was devastated. I was so forlorn, my son who’s a junior now still has not forgiven me. But I never saw anybody in all the nature books that I read. Never once did they admit that they made a mistake and they want to do better. It was, “I’m gonna conquer this mountain. Nothing bad has ever happened to me. And I’ve left my kids with my wife, but by the way, I’m going to have an affair with my helper-explorer.” Like, what? I just think our book should reflect 2024 and not 1954.
And I want to begin and end in love, not in despair or like look at what’s happened to me, I can’t move on. I really wanted to showcase that I’m always fighting for the light. It’s not always easy, but I always want to fight for the light. And to say, hey, I exist here too. The table for nature writing is so broad. Let’s bring other voices to the table. Again, the table of contents of a nature anthology should not look like it was put together in 1954. And so, yeah, so that includes mentioning ‘80s pop, that includes dating mishaps, that kind of thing, but also a reverence for the outdoors. Also missing your parents when you’re a grown up, that kind of thing.
Someone said, do you want to be the next Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau? And I said, “no, not in the slightest!” First of all, Thoreau had his pencil sharpened by his mother and his mother was doing his laundry. And also didn’t seem to have any sort of built in community or didn’t write about people that he loved or things like that. And that wasn’t me. So Thoreau did his thing. I learned from Thoreau, but I wanna do my own thing too. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question.
Miller: I mentioned in my intro that the atlas of states that you bounced around in when you were growing up – Kansas and Phoenix and Ohio and Iowa and New York State.
How do you think that affected the way you think about what home is? I mean, what home is now?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That’s a whole nother essay question there. I love it. These questions are so expansive and so inviting. I mean, how could it not affect me, right? I mean, I would say that as much as I have put down a space for my family and built a nest for my family in Mississippi, we live on an acre of just green garden area and a place that we have a zip line that my boys can just zip through in the backyard and they’re always threatening to change it, so they zipline over fire or something and I’m like, stop, don’t even ask me.
I also know that it’s fleeting and any physical space could be taken or uprooted out of necessity or anything like that. So, as much as I love the outdoors and spaces and places, I know that it’s not those buildings that make my home, it’s the people and, and it’s, it’s the community that I’ve built around those spaces as well.
Miller: But partly out of self preservation, you don’t put the roots down deep enough. But you also seem like a person who you’ve articulated so deeply that you want to have meaningful human connections in addition to experiencing the outer world. I mean, they seem in opposition on some level, knowing I might leave and also knowing it matters to be connected to people now.
Nezhukumatathil: Absolutely. Well, I guess I should say, I don’t put roots down in buildings or material things, that kind of thing, but in my relationships. For example, last night somebody from my college years joined me with her family. Tonight at my event with Literary Arts, I have people from my high school, that cephalopod year, who will be joining me. So, those connections don’t just happen overnight. Those have been cultivated and grown. I have my very first… I mean, she, we were pen pals before email or anything like that. We could not be two more different people. We’ve been writing letters since we were in second grade to each other and we’re still in communication, as almost 50-year old women, and we’ve had letters throughout the years. Suddenly, there’s “Oh, here’s a new man in my life.” Now we’ve got kids but we would send each other our first second grade picture, third grade picture, things like that.
I guess I would say cultivating human connections is of utmost importance. And which is why too, during things like the pandemic, when you can only see each other on screens and things like that, it was hard. But finding that time to reach out to people, I don’t know, that’s just kind of who I am in some ways. I don’t know how else to be. I like to say that I love hard and unabashedly and that may not be for everybody, but that’s who I am.
Miller: We’ve talked about some of the serious issues that are threaded throughout these essays, but I don’t think [we’ve] talked yet about the humor that’s in them and the humor that’s in a lot of your poetry as well.
Nezhukumatathil: Thank you.
Miller: You may have a different idea about this, but one of the senses I get is that in American culture now, there’s a sense that poetry is literature and literature is serious, and serious is not funny. But especially for poetry, it seems like you have a different approach to that. I mean, you’re not afraid of being funny. Why not?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. Well, basically, kind of the answer is to that, and first of all, thank you so much, I take that as a big, big compliment. But the answer to that is I’m kind of just a big dork with no pretense. I could never be those people wearing all black at a New York City…schmoozing agents and editors and things like that. That’s just gives me hives thinking about it.
I love to poke fun at myself. I think life is funny and I find humor in so many situations and it would be unnatural for me to not have that in my books. That’s not the case for everybody and that’s OK, but that’s why there’s so much room for different voices. But absolutely, I like to bring up the humor when I can and sometimes I don’t realize it’s super funny until I’m actually at my notebook realizing, oh my gosh, that was kind of ridiculous that I dressed up like a beaver in high school, for example, or as a mascot. I wanna say, not just for fun but as a mascot. And at the time I didn’t think anything of it, but now I think it’s pretty darn funny.
Miller: Let’s take some more questions from the audience. What’s your name and what’s your question?
Audience Member: Hi. My name is Sureka. So I’m a third generation Indian immigrant. My grandparents are immigrants and reading this, because you also grew up in the United States, right?
Nezhukumatathil: Yes. My cousin’s name is Reka. So I love meeting new Rekas.
Audience Member: You write about your culture so much. I was wondering if you ever felt insecure or you couldn’t talk about it as fully as someone who might have grown up in those countries?
Nezhukumatathil: A little bit. And such a lovely question. A little bit. But I think it goes back if I’m dishing out that advice where I say, if anyone’s making you feel lesser than, stay away from them. I think I encountered that every once in a while. I’ll meet someone who’s South Asian and [they will] be like, well, you’re not real South Asian or… It happens more, I’d have to say, on the South Asian side. Filipinos almost never, actually, I don’t think have ever said that.
Miller: You’ve had people explicitly say that, not just hint at it?
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. Oh, explicitly. Absolutely. Actually this is college-level different, ethnic, like a student association. It was very weird, like, “Oh, Aimee, this isn’t for you because you’re half.” And I’m like, “This is the Indian American Student Association” and I will just call them out, at Ohio State. But, that’s so few and far between and I’m just not even associated with anything like that before, or any more.
Miller: Talk about not getting nourishment.
Nezhukumatathil: Yeah. It’s just like that’s not helpful for anything. I guess it’s, gosh, I’m just gobsmacked by the question. I would say that whenever I get a question of, why are you writing about this? Can’t you just write about frogs? This is what happened, when I was in second grade, I was called the N-word for the first time. I didn’t actually even know what it was, I just knew that it was bad. When I was in fourth grade, someone asked me about the Kama Sutra, which if you don’t know what that is, don’t even, it’s just eye rolling. Well, I’ll just say it, this is high school. It’s an ancient text filled with some rated R descriptions of sexual love. I know I’m trying to think. I know I’m trying to choose my words carefully, we’re on radio here, of sexual love. It’s a fairly explicit text, ancient text. Fourth grade Aimee was collecting stickers and roller skating, that kind of thing.
When I was older, people would say “Namaste” to me when I was just walking down the street or at the post office. So when I get answers, like, why are you writing about race? And it’s usually from a white person. It’s like, you guys made it about race. I’m just walking to the post office or roller skating, or being called the N-word. You guys are the ones that are doing it. I never get a Person of Color asking me, why are you writing about race? So it’s kind of weird in that way.
I also, that’s my experience and I grew up seeing my incredibly… gosh, when I just think of my parents who risked everything to come to America. They met in Chicago. They were both Elvis Presley fans and so one of their first dates was one of the last times Elvis Presley played in Chicago. I love saying that because then we had that resurgence of the “Elvis” movie and things like that. I just think they were so amazing to just take that leap of faith and find each other. That’s who I am and it just would be weird and creepy to just scissor that out of my life, like take that out of my life.
And what I found is that Walt Whitman says, “do I contain multitudes?” Very very well, I do contain multitudes. It’s weird when anybody from the publishing world or anybody else says, oh, you can’t write about that or take out the stuff about pop music, or anything. Don’t mention pop music when you’re talking about nature writing. Like, why? Like, yeah.
Miller: Let’s take another question from the audience.
Audience Member: Hi. My name is Belen and I’m here from Woodward High School. In your peacock essay, you kind of talk about how that experience had created a lot of insecurity about your culture. And I guess my question is how or when did you rediscover or reconnect with that love that you have for your culture? And how do you manage to stay authentic to yourself and your roots?
Nezhukumatathil: Oh, that’s so beautiful. Actually, that’s a great answer to your question too, that peacock essay, some people said maybe I should cut that out, leave it out. It’s a little too sad or something, but I was like, but it also happened to me. And so without giving too much away on it, it was a white teacher I had who was like, peacocks, you shouldn’t be drawing peacocks, that’s not American enough, basically. And so she held me back from recess and made me do over. And so I was like, American birds, I had seen them, in Florida and everywhere. I just was like, well, I’ll double down. I didn’t know what the word, like being salty or shade was, but I was third grade Aimee. I was, I’m gonna do this. I doubled down and just drew an American bald eagle. I was like, you want an American bird? I’ll draw an American bird.
And then to my horror, I won the contest. I was doing it to be petty. But then I won the school contest. It was just such a dumb drawing. I had an American flag in the nest. But I’m not gonna lie, I was humiliated in front of the whole class. I mean, this teacher called me out and said, “Aimee, we only draw American birds in this class,” things like that. I still can remember. It’s just, first of all, why? Even if that is the case and two, peacocks are in America anyway.
I don’t have an answer of when I stopped caring, but I also know that hiding that part of me that loved the peacock…which those of you who don’t know, that’s the national bird of India. I grew up with a lot of peacock decor all over the house. That would be the cool of someone growing up with a lot of American bald eagle stuff in your house. But to me, it was a source of pride and I just kind of just one day it was like, this is dumb. Why am I embarrassed at something that I think is so gorgeous, so beautiful? They’re a little scary to listen to, they don’t have the prettiest bird call, but that’s besides the point. And also they were one of the animals that is around where my grandparents lived in South India. So I just equate them with magical beings. There’s no blue that is more brilliant than the blue of a peacock feather.
And I was like, this is dumb. Why did one teacher make me ashamed of peacocks or afraid to say I like anything from India. So it didn’t happen overnight. But I think just at one moment, I just was like, I’m done, I’m over. If people are shaming me for liking peacocks, then that’s not my people or my teachers, really? But I definitely wanted to include it there because I definitely did not want to create a book that implies that I get out of bed each morning like Snow White, tra la la through the forest and finding wonder everywhere. It’s been a lifetime of making sure that wonder is a practice, making sure that curiosity is a practice and not letting people who try to tamp down that shine wind, that kind of thing. It’s been a lifetime of learning that.
Miller: You dedicated your book to your parents. And at the end of your acknowledgements, you thanked them for taking you to the library and most of all, you say, for “letting you play and wander outside.” I was struck by that word “wander,” because it’s so similar to the word in the title, “Wonder.” What’s the connection for you? And we have two minutes left.
Nezhukumatathil: OK. I see, time flies when you’re having so much fun with all these dazzling questions here that make me think and make me want to cry out of joy too. Being able to daydream, being able to wander, I would say that that goes back to one of the earlier questions. What can we do, a lot yourself… I tell this to my college students too. It doesn’t mean that everybody in this room has to be writers, but whatever it is, allow yourself some time to daydream and wander in that space and time. Curiosity begets curiosity and in that time of wandering and wondering, how do rainbows appear? Why is this cloud formation forming over Portland? Maybe you start thinking, gosh, that looks like my grandmother’s hair. And maybe you think back, when was the last time I actually spoke to my grandmother? Maybe that actually makes you Facetime your grandmother. So see, I’m not anti-screen.
But it gives you a time to let your mind wander naturally and make what Robert Bly calls leaps, that’s leaps in writing. But I think it’s important for humans to have leaps in your own thoughts, so that you’re not microscheduled and micromanaged ‘till every minute of the day is taken up. Artistry and art and creativity comes from having time to daydream. So whatever it is you do, I know that’s hard to do in April when you’re about to graduate, but see if you can make time to daydream and find time to let your mind wander too.
Miller: Aimee, thank you.
Nezhukumatathil: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
[audience applause]
Thanks all. Thank you. Thank you.
Miller: Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s latest book is the essay collection “World of Wonders.” Thanks so much to our big audience of students here. It’s a true pleasure to be able to do these conversations with groups of engaged and interested and curious young people. So, thank you. Thanks also to librarian Nancy Sullivan and teachers, Gene Brunak and Daniel Fredgant at McDaniel High School and Charles Sanderson at Woodburn and to Olivia Jones-Hall of Literary Arts.
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