Fantasy allows us to escape the harshness of reality, either illuminating unseen truths or shrouding it beneath a thick haze.
Two new releases from Spokane-based authors — Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir by Alexandra Teague and out takes/ glove box by Maya Jewell Zeller — explore themes of motherhood, mental health, and the beauty and dangers of fantasy through autobiographical lenses.
Zeller's out takes/ glove box, which was awarded the New American Poetry Prize by poet Eduardo Corral, is a collection of poems divided into five sections, beginning with the narrator pulling an old reel of film out from the glovebox of a junked car.
"The book is like a cabinet of curiosities, it keeps trying to show you a fractured self through different means," Zeller says. "It gives a string of images that create an imagistic narrative through outtakes or what would be left on the cutting room floor after the making of a documentary."
Zeller's poems incorporate themes of myth and fantasy, something particularly evident in the third section that's told through the voice of a woman who used to be a mermaid. This character, she says, is an expression of the "struggle of trying to voice oneself in a world where we don't believe women."
"Mothers are always trying to tell our stories, and because we're forced into the Madonna-whore complex in America, once you have children, you're discarded," Zeller says. "You may as well be a mermaid because that's not real either."
The subsequent section is presented as a collection of spells seeking to balance the narrator's work and domestic life, while navigating social systems that inhibit her ability to have both a family and career.
"Our systems in America are just set up against anyone with a uterus," Zeller says. "If you have a uterus and you want to use it to birth a child, you don't have a clear path forward in your career, and this book shows what happens when a person tries that."
Finally, the narrator returns to the original documentary of outtakes, and in the last poem Zeller writes, "being a mother made me feel like a myth."
"It kind of is a treatise against women not being believed, a treatise against trying to function fully in late capitalism as a mother in America," says Zeller. "It's telling a story that patriarchy doesn't want to tell."
Meanwhile, Teague's Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir is a memoir composed of nine prose essays about Teague and her family's stories, escaping reality via the fantasy genre and struggles with mental health.
The project began from a poem Teague was attempting to write as a response to her nephew committing suicide in 2015, but she felt it wasn't a medium that allowed her to deep dive into the trauma and undiagnosed mental health issues experienced within her family.
Spinning Tea Cups begins with stories of the author's mother's possible visions and psychic abilities, delves into stories of loved ones battling undiagnosed mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, and Teague's own mental health experiences. More broadly, the collection focuses on her family's history of dysfunction and grief while also highlighting the creativity and love that coexisted with it.
"I wanted it to be nonfiction because a lot of what I wanted to do with it was question the stories that I had been raised with, and also the stories that weren't getting told in my family that maybe could and should have been," she says.
Teague says that the stigmas surrounding mental health issues and suicide create barriers that prevent many from receiving help, and that American culture places an emphasis on productivity over emotional well-being.
"I don't think that there's enough space often for grief either," Teague says. "Inhabiting grief allows us to then heal from it gradually and move on to other emotions."
"In different ways, I hope that the book makes space for people to feel less ashamed to talk about their own difficult stories, and also the things that they found beautiful within it," she adds.
Both Teague and Zeller are reading from and leading discussions about their books during a joint release party at Spark Central, with special guests and fellow Inland Northwest writers Laura Read and Kate Lebo.
Spinning Tea Cups, released on Oct. 15, and out takes/ glove box, which comes out on Nov. 1, will both be available for purchase from Auntie's Bookstore at the event.
"I hope this helps them feel permission to speak or to share their art, their truth or their justice in the way that they need to share it." says Zeller. ♦
Spinning Out: Motherhood, Myths, & Madness • Thu, Nov. 2 at 7 pm • Free • Spark Central • 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. • spark-central.org • 509-279-0299
