Between the lines, p.15
Between the Lines, page 15
14th Street–Union Square station
Manhattan, 2019
Naz Riahi
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
I always wonder why we ask kids about their favorite color, but not adults. Maybe we associate colors and vibrancy with childhood. I was raised in Iran until I was ten, and I remember the colorfulness of the natural world, starting with our small orchard. We had cherries, peaches, and other kinds of fruit trees. Inside, my mother hung green drapes and our white couches had green leaves on the upholstery. I had sheets with rainbow hearts on them. But black was the chicest color in Iran.
It’s a blue day. You hold Bluets in your hands.
This is my favorite Maggie Nelson book. It’s a memoir about a man she was madly in love with and her love for the color blue, which has come to represent him. It’s some of the most stunning, breathtaking prose. I fell in love with someone a few years ago the way Maggie fell in love with this man, and I try to envision him as a color now, but I really can’t. One of my favorite sentences in Bluets is “Perhaps in time, I will also stop missing you.” It’s so simple and it runs through my mind over and over again. I did stop missing him. I think. Most of the time. But there is so much else I miss. I miss Iran, that colorful orchard, our house, and everything else that’s gone. There’s such sadness in no longer missing something you once loved.
Lafayette Avenue station
Brooklyn, 2020
Molly Beth Young
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
This book reminds me of people who smoke cigarettes and need a pack in all of their favorite places. One in the glove compartment, one on the desk, one on the bedside table. I have multiple copies of Mrs. Bridge all over the place and I have reread it every year since 2012. It’s about a suburban matron in Kansas City who struggles with a sense of futility and frustration. She represents a particular, somewhat lost, middle-class, Midwestern person who seems entirely unrelatable, and yet her experiences and feelings are so beautifully, tangibly represented. It makes me think of the time I found a cheap ticket and went to Iceland. There was a cafe in Reykjavík that sold rye bread ice cream and I was like, “That sounds disgusting. I’ll have two.” It was amazing! This book is composed of ingredients that don’t sound promising, and yet when combined they form an unforgettable artifact.
It is immediately apparent that you are a person who really loves words.
Yes [laughs], and as a crossword puzzle writer I should really keep a list of words I love. I’m curious if they have anything in common phonetically or letter-wise. My younger brother has synesthesia. It’s a condition where different senses overlap. For him, each letter in the alphabet is associated with a specific color and when he opens a book every word is colorful. He told me that M is magenta. Vladimir Nabokov and Mary J. Blige have synesthesia, according to Wikipedia. I feel like I have the much less sexy version of it, where I have a concrete sensory affiliation with words. Reading gives me a physical sensation that I’m drawn to, like eating or sleeping. That makes me sound like such a pervert. [Laughs.]
You make crossword puzzles. You are definitely a perv.
It’s so satisfying to make one! It’s like baking a beautiful cake or what I imagine giving birth to a human is like, although less sublime. You get to create something that is a perfect, self-contained entity, works in every direction, has 180-degree rotational symmetry, and can be enjoyed by other people. Like a baby, a crossword puzzle is very satisfying.
Marcy Avenue station
Brooklyn, 2019
Saraciea Fennell
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
I was a total nerd in high school. I definitely rode the train holding a basketball while reading a book. [Laughs.] I remember getting off at this station after I had just joined the basketball team at Jane Addams Vocational High School. I played my sophomore and junior year and I wasn’t any good, but it was tons of fun. I remember losing a major game the same day my family had moved from the South Bronx to the North Bronx. I was in my feelings because we lost and also about this new chapter in my life—I hadn’t even decorated my room yet.
It sounds like you got the best of both worlds in terms of the location.
Definitely. I feel like both places have taught me to be a resilient young Black Latina woman. People see the Bronx as the underdog, but the Bronx has a deep history. We have the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Stan Lee went to high school here, Mark Twain lived here for a little bit, and James Baldwin grew up in Harlem, but he would cross the bridge to buy stale bread for his siblings in the Bronx. We have some literary gold mines here. That’s why I started The Bronx is Reading, a book festival that honors our literary ancestors and future literary legends.
Speaking of literary ancestors, tell me about the book you’re reading.
Shadowshaper is amazing. I have big, bushy, wild curls and this was the first cover I saw with a beautiful Black woman on it who has a head full of hair. The story melts together activism and art while tackling anti-Blackness in the Latinx community. I have a lot of conversations about this with my immediate family because we all have different shades of brown skin and some of us are white passing. There’s a part in the book where the aunt of the main character, Sierra, tells her to not go in the sun and that she should strive to be the color of the bottom of her foot. But Sierra doesn’t care. I’m a bold person, but I wish I had as much confidence as Sierra when I was a teen. She stands up and says, “I love the person I am.”
Do you have thoughts on what it means to belong to a place?
When you belong to a place, you should treat it like you treat your body. You own all of the deepest parts of yourself, you know what you like, you know what you don’t like. When you belong to a community, you have to know what’s good, what’s bad, and then figure out how to enrich it. Nine times out of ten, people from this area didn’t like it here, so they left. I’m trying to live up to the ideals that I’m fighting for, and I’m trying to lift up others as I climb. It may take me longer to get to the top, but there will be thousands of my people right behind me.
Allerton Avenue station
Bronx, 2020
Jad Abumrad
The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz
Every block is its own universe in New York City and every subway train has a special feeling. I spent the first ten years of my life waiting for the G train. Hearing it leave the station before you got there was the sound of life passing you by—you knew you were stuck in that tunnel for another thirty to forty minutes. One time, I had just swiped my MetroCard, I heard the train pulling in, and I started sprinting—I’m talking a full sprint—down the steps, skipping every third step, running toward the train as it slowly pulled away. I happened to have a grapefruit in my hand, and I was so upset, I hurled the grapefruit at the G train. It went splat, right on the conductor’s window. He looked at me with a smile on his face as he pulled away and disappeared into the darkness. I think he understood. After that I shifted my allegiance to the C train, which, too, has done nothing for me, but I love it. I think it might be its blue color.
There must be some kind of color theory at play.
I’ve never thought about it, but I definitely have strong feelings about the red line. If you ever end up on the 1 train, just pray for a bolt of lightning to take you out of your misery. It stops so often you’re better off walking. The B, D, F, M trains look a bit burnt and like they have bleak futures—that’s what the orange says to me. I love the Q train most. As a new dad, I’d take my kids on the Q train and we’d ride it one way and back. It never stops and suddenly you’re in Connecticut, it’s amazing. [Laughs.] My kids love the subway and its chicken-size rats.
The book you have with you looks like one children would love.
If no one had ever told me it was a kids’ book, I still would have enjoyed it deeply without question. It’s set in France during the Dark Ages and about an inquisitor who is looking for stories. One by one, people show up at this inn and tell him about three kids who seem to be saints. One of them is a little girl who has seizures and visions of the future, another is a giant Muslim boy from North Africa with superhuman strength, and the third is a young Jewish kid who can heal people. During the pandemic shutdowns, New York felt like it had survived an apocalypse. There were wall-to-wall sirens all day and night long while I reported on the pandemic for Radiolab. I was up to my eyeballs in this new plague that seemed so horrible and dark. It was really good to sit with my son at night and read about another dark time that was still full of life and energy.
I immediately think of you as the inquisitor, given your work.
It’s true. My job is very much like being the guy at the inn who says, “Come sit at the table and tell me a story.” I think the act of reading the story aloud did make me identify with the most flawed character in the book, the inquisitor. His voice was so intoxicating and so fun to read. He wants to know everything about these kids, but we don’t know why. All we know is that he has bad intentions. But when he starts to engage with the kids, he falls under their spell because they are so pure, unpolluted by dogma and belief. He is reformed by their very presence.
Appreciation of presence is what we need!
I think the antidote to everything wrong in the world is having curiosity about one another. If we shut ourselves off from the questions that allow us to get even a little bit closer to one another, we become trapped in our solitude. What will heal society is asking: “What is it like to be you?” And then we have to keep asking weird and awkward questions, the kind that make you clamp your hand over your mouth like you’re a little kid. Those questions will get us there.
Fulton Street station
Brooklyn, 2020
Céline Semaan
The Politics of Dispossession by Edward W. Said
Oftentimes asking questions is seen as nosy or rude. I’ve always asked a lot of questions. Every child asks, “Why, why, why?” until they are satisfied with the answer, but we tend to brush them aside. Instead, we could say, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” That gesture fosters and nourishes the mind. As a designer, it’s my job to ask a lot of questions because without understanding what we are designing, there’s no point to it.
We also have to ask ourselves how we want to live.
Absolutely. I work at the intersection of human rights and environmental justice as the executive director and cofounder of Slow Factory, where we offer free programs for unlearning. Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I encourage us to acknowledge that this country was founded on stolen land that belonged to Indigenous people since the beginning of time and that it was built with the forced labor of Indigenous Africans who were enslaved by European settlers. Millions of Native people lived here before the Europeans arrived. Meanwhile, Indigenous knowledge allows us to coexist on this planet with harmony, yet how we address climate change and the environment is very much rooted in the idea of colonialism and land dispossession.
Is there a book that connects you to this land?
Growing up as a refugee, I have always struggled with the notion of home and belonging. It was only when I arrived in New York that I felt like I found my place. I think in a way, New York can belong to everyone. The author that really connects me to this city is Edward W. Said, a scholar, polymath, and literary critic. He taught at Columbia University and died in New York at age sixty-seven. He wrote several books that helped define postcolonialism and the anti-colonial mindset. The Politics of Dispossession asks the question, “Where do you come from?”
To start with the end in mind can be a good idea.
Well, if we want to look at the way nature functions, nothing really ends or dies. Everything is regenerated. If a leaf falls on the ground, it gets absorbed by the soil and turns into nutrients. The environment’s cycle is nonlinear. The opposite idea can be traced back to white supremacy and to the concept of sitting on top of a triangle, where the world is at your service and everything can be used and discarded. Sustainability is a culture. It’s not something you can buy or borrow. It’s very much about how you decide to live.
Phone interview, 2020
Ron Sese
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
A lot of people think that the hood is a dangerous place, and while that may be true, there is also a lot of culture and beauty in our community. It’s taken me a long time to realize that and now I appreciate it deeply. I grew up in East Los Angeles, in a town called La Fuente that was a gang-run Chicano barrio. It wasn’t always easy. I’m queer and my dad didn’t agree with that. He felt like it was a choice. In retrospect, I can say that if someone thinks sexuality is a choice, they probably feel that way because they haven’t asked themselves the right questions about their own sexuality and might be hiding their true self.
Do you feel like you know your true self?
I do. Both parents who raised me are Filipino, and you could say that I’m the product of pro-life propaganda because my dad is not my biological dad. My mom was assaulted at a party and as a result of that I was brought into the world. When my mom first told me, I became really curious about doing a DNA test—you could not have convinced me that I wasn’t only Filipino and Chicano. [Laughs.] My DNA results came back on my thirtieth birthday, and I entered a new decade with a new set of information. Turns out that I’m also Lebanese and Syrian! I think it’s really beautiful that there are entirely new cultures I get to explore.
Ron, that’s wild. And hard. And amazing.
Isn’t it? I’ve always felt strongly about learning my personal history and choosing my family. Before New York, I moved to San Francisco and worked at an HIV clinic, where I met my late adoptive mother. She was a boisterous, Native Hawaiian trans woman who adopted me informally in the hānai tradition. I was nineteen, alone, and couldn’t make ends meet. She would invite me over to eat with her and her husband. They tethered me and satisfied a deep desire within me. There’s a tradition of queer people looking out for other queer people and I think it’s because of the amount of strife that trans people, queer people, and drag queens experience. It gives us compassion and empathy—especially toward each other.
Life is all about bringing awareness to our responsibility for each other.
Yes, make an effort to check yourself. I highly recommend Trick Mirror for that—Jia, if you’re listening, I really love your book! It’s a dissection of the personas and presentations we curate that are not our realized self. As millennials, we’ve been given the tools and are taught to capitalize on those personas. 2019 was toxic for me because I became obsessed with my engagement and posting content all the time. I was fighting social media algorithms and shadowbanned for the queer and body focused content I was creating. It was a mess.
Not all algorithms are created equal.
Put that on a shirt. [Laughs.] Trick Mirror helped me exercise the necessity of contemplating my social media use. It reminded me that online action doesn’t equal offline action. This book really offers checks and balances and reminds us to take action in real life.
Did it prompt you to take action in real life?
It did! I started a queer flea market with two friends, Angus and Andy. Hey girl, hey! We’ve done it in multiple cities nationwide and it’s queer-run, with queer vendors. The thing I love so much is that the flea market gives the queer artists a space to meet fans, to have fun, and to create an autonomous financial future. You can’t find your chosen family if you don’t understand that they are real people out there who are probably looking for you, too.
Sterling Street station
Brooklyn, 2020
Adam Eli
Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis
I’m a queer activist, I live in Greenwich Village, this is my subway stop, and it’s my belief that queer people anywhere are responsible for queer people everywhere.
What can someone do who’s not queer?
The best way to be supportive if you’re not queer is to vote and be informed about who and what you’re voting for. I absolutely love this book. It’s about Édouard Louis’s father, who lived well below the poverty line in rural France—we’re talking really dire poverty. Édouard creates a timeline and shows us how government policies directly impact his father. He writes, “I realized when I went to live in Paris, far away from you, that the ruling class may complain about the left-wing government, they may complain about the right-wing government, but no government ever breaks their backs.” Then it says, “For the ruling class in general, politics is a question of aesthetics. For us, it was life or death.” Certain bodies are more affected by government decisions than others. I think we sometimes fail to see that people’s lives are not a news cycle.
Astor Place station
Manhattan, 2019
Verena von Pfetten
No One Tells You This: A Memoir by Glynnis MacNicol
This book is such a treat. It allows you to see possible paths outside “the norm”—whatever that is. [Laughs.] The author, Glynnis MacNicol, turns forty and decides to pursue a life without having children or getting married. It’s so heartwarming to read her story. I’m thirty-six and I’m not sure if I want to have kids. A lot of people say, “Oh, just do it. One day you’ll regret it.” But I don’t live my life based on the possibility of a future negative. I think in some ways it’s easier to just want what everyone else wants instead of asking yourself what you want.
