Hannah Gersen - Home Field

The Stories of John Cheever , by John Cheever

I discovered these stories when I was in my early teens and have been reading them ever since. My favorites are “The Country Husband,” “The Death of Justina,” and “Goodbye, My Brother”—a story I read pretty much every year. I love Cheever’s sensibility: his jokes; his vocabulary; his feeling for landscape, mood, childhood, color, and light. His narrators are melancholy, dissatisfied, and ashamed, but they love life, and that mix of sadness and delight is what always brings me back to Cheever. I think of scenes from his fiction every time I go to the beach, take a walk in Manhattan, or board a train on the Hudson line.

The Autobiography of My Mother , by Jamaica Kincaid

I first read this at age nineteen and it floored me. It’s the story of Xuela, a motherless child who grows up on the small Caribbean island of Dominica. Xuela is a survivor, a woman who finds her way in the world on her own terms, rejecting motherhood, daughterhood, siblinghood, and all kinds of inherited identity. At the same time, there’s an embrace of the natural and material world that gives Xuela’s writing an incredible vitality.

Sweet Talk , by Stephanie Vaughn

This is one of my favorite short story collections, simply because the stories are so full of emotion and evocative of childhood. My favorite story is “Dog Heaven.” I still can’t get through it without crying — and I’m not even a dog person.

A Home at the End of the World , by Michael Cunningham

I love the title of this book, I love the characters in this book, I love the warmth and elegance of the prose in this book, and I even love the movie adaptation of this book, which introduced me to the wonderful actor Dallas Roberts, whose performance I admired so much that I went to see him in a revival of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story . So, just read this book: it will enrich your life in unexpected ways.

Far from the Tree , by Andrew Solomon

As part of my research for this novel, I read Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression , which is an excellent and intensely personal nonfiction book about the history and treatment of depression. Around the time I finished The Noonday Demon , Solomon’s next book, Far from the Tree , was published. It addresses what happens to families when a child turns out to be very different from his or her parents; for example, a deaf child born to hearing parents, a child prodigy born to parents of ordinary intelligence, or a transgender child born to cisgendered parents, to give just a few examples. Once I started this book I couldn’t stop reading it. Every chapter brings a new family portrait, a new set of complications. It’s like a series of linked novellas, except they are all founded in an extraordinary amount of reporting and research. Solomon’s compassion radiates off the pages as he interviews families about their fears, joys, disappointments, and triumphs as parents of the children that they never expected to have.

Fun Home , by Alison Bechdel

I’ve been a fan of Alison Bechdel since the 1990s, when I started reading her syndicated cartoon, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” But it wasn’t until I read Fun Home that I truly appreciated her depth as a writer. Fun Home is a memoir, telling the story of Bechdel’s complicated relationship with her late father, a closeted gay man who taught English and ran a funeral home, which was also the house Bechdel grew up in. Bechdel’s childhood is strange, bookish, morbid, and haunted by her father’s tormented identity. It isn’t until she leaves home that she is able to come out as a lesbian; around the same time, her father dies suddenly in a possible suicide, leaving Bechdel with even more mysteries to unravel. Somehow, this is a very funny book, and also full of literary allusions and quick, sensitive pieces of literary criticism.

Americanah , by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book showed me how to write the voice of Stephanie. I wanted her to be genuinely naive and lacking in experience, but I didn’t want to condescend to her. Americanah follows two high school sweethearts, Ifemelu and Obinze, Nigerian students who are separated by war and by economic and social forces beyond their control. Ifemelu ends up in America, where she struggles with what it means to be black and African in a new country, while Obinze barely gets by in London on an illegal work visa. Both are unprepared for what life throws at them, and Adichie depicts their naïveté as well as their bravery and strength. It’s a full, sympathetic portrait of youth and young love, and in general this novel is so full of life, so overflowing with observations, jokes, and dialogue, that I couldn’t help feeling as if Adichie poured everything she knew into this book. That’s always the kind of novel I like best.

Playlist

“Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam,” by Nirvana

Which Nirvana song to pick for a book set in the 1990s? This is the one that immediately came to mind, even though it’s not my favorite Nirvana song and isn’t actually a Nirvana song — it was originally written and recorded by The Vaselines. But I like it for this story because it’s a parody of Christian children’s songs, the kind of music that Stephanie would have learned as a kid and rebelled against as a teenager.

“Violet,” by Hole

At the beginning of the novel, Dean spots Missy wearing a Hole T-shirt and has no idea what it means. I probably never would have heard of this band if my older sister hadn’t been living in Olympia, Washington, at the time and sending me mixtape dispatches. (My sister also got me a subscription to Sassy magazine — why, oh why didn’t I keep the one with Kurt and Courtney on the cover? Why didn’t I keep all of them?)

“Feel the Pain,” by Dinosaur Jr.

I can’t listen to this song without picturing the album cover, that sad-looking animal in a red jacket. I didn’t even own this album; I didn’t have to, because everyone I knew had it and this song played nonstop on the alternative stations.

“Basket Case,” by Green Day

I was recently talking to my fifteen-year-old nephew about what music he likes and was surprised — and then not surprised — when he said Green Day. Their songs are so durable and catchy and unexpectedly timeless. As Stephanie observes, they’re the one band that seemed to transcend all clique lines in her high school. That was certainly the case at my high school, which was divided between country music lovers, indie rock nerds, and hip-hop/pop fans. But everyone listened to Green Day.

“Walk This World,” by Heather Nova

In college I had a mixtape with this song and a bunch of other Lilith Fair types. My work-study job in college was in the dish room and there was an old beat-up stereo where you could play your tapes while you worked. I remember bringing my Lilith mix one Sunday morning, slightly worried that my coworker, a guy I didn’t know that well, would hate it. As it turned out, he loved Heather Nova in particular and said her voice reminded him of Laura Nyro, who I had never heard of. He ended up introducing me to a bunch of other female singers with gorgeous voices.

“The Bends,” by Radiohead

I chose this song for the lyric “I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen.” There’s no better description of what it feels like to be a teenager, especially a teenager in a small town.