I’ve been dreading this month since November, but here we are, in January 2025. While I have so much fear and anxiety about what is to come, I’m clinging to art to get me through, and Freda Epum’s debut The Gloomy Girl Variety Show appears at a time it’s especially needed. (Is it too early to attest it will be one of the most important books published this year?) 

Brilliantly structured as a search for a home, i.e. a safe haven, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show is a hybrid work like no other. Combining poetry, prose, and visual art, as well as cultural criticism, the book examines Epum’s intersectional identities as a Black, disabled, first generation Nigerian American female. She makes so many smart craft choices, her sentences are razor sharp, and the accompanying images are in dialogue with the prose. It’s an inventive narrative dealing with mental illness, while also highlighting the urgent need for racial justice. 

I had the pleasure to talk to Epum over Zoom about mental health, the book’s inclusion of visual art, and her writing process. 

Rachel León (RL): I struggle with anxiety, which is not something I ever thought I’d begin an interview disclosing, but your book does a beautiful job showing the value of open and honest discussion of mental health. So I thought we could start there: Why be open about something many of us have been taught to be silent about?

Freda Epum (FE): Thank you for feeling comfortable disclosing that to me. That’s such a big thing to be able to disclose your own mental health issues—I only try to do that with people that I think would understand—so I really appreciate that. I’ve read a lot of family narratives recently, and I’m thinking about how different people within a family unit will navigate their own identity, struggles or situations of trauma, and the different paths that people take. Sometimes we can go on those paths alone. And I think oftentimes, people want you to be silent about mental health because it can be uncomfortable to think about someone in that level of pain and still going on with their day to day life. It might make us confront what is making that particular person feel that way? What it might say about our own situations or society. I was trying to think about the politics behind emotion, behind sadness. By being able to talk more about mental health, it leads to more people having a sense of liberation, both in their bodies and externally. I think it only helps us to keep talking vulnerably about the things that we all struggle with, rather than to stay silent.

RL: You write, “In writing, I often try to blend reality (nonfiction) with what I think of as hyper-reality (speculative nonfiction). If one is less inclined to listen to my real life pain, then why not allow an imaginary monster to speak for me?”” Could you talk about this blending of reality and hyper-reality, or speculative nonfiction?

FE: The process of working on this book was very exploratory. I started my creative work as a visual artist, then later found writing as a place of expression, so I was writing these weird essays that were nonfiction memoir, but then something imaginary would happen. I was doing that impulsively, not really knowing what genre this might be, or the lineage of writers that also do this type of thing, it was just something that my brain was moving towards. I sometimes use that as a form of escapism or a hyper-reality of what if it was possible to change this reality, to fix this reality, to mold it into something that would make me feel better, more safe, less anxious? And so I wanted to create that sense within the narrative of the book of being in and out of a sick person or depressed person’s mind, and trying to have a sense of escapism by thinking about what could be possible if someone wasn’t feeling that way in their body. I arrived at this particular passage towards the end of the process of writing the book, once it had already been acquired and I was doing my edits with my editor, because there really needed to be more of a sign post for the reader that this is what the overall mood of the memoir is trying to evoke.

Why aren’t we able to listen to folks within their realities, without trying to think about it as something more imaginary? Why is it that a monster might be more appealing to listen to than a sad Black woman or a sad immigrant person, a sad disabled person? Where do we go wrong with reality and not believing other people’s mental health issues?

RL: I love the texture the images add throughout the book, most are your own visual work. Were they always present?

FE: I pulled them in later. The book was just text for the longest time. There was one image that was a drawing that I had done in a notebook. I just thought that particular drawing was very evocative, and I didn’t really feel like I could describe it in a written way—the feeling was enhanced by seeing the written and the visual. So there was just one image in the book, and I shared it with a mentor, Sunil Barnes, and she was encouraging the work to be more experiential and atmospheric, and having that sense of emotion built throughout. Because this book was such an artist memoir, or a portrait of someone who has had this creative sensibility for a long time, I thought it would be important to include the evolution of an artist’s artwork. I started to include more of the central images of the clouds, which is from a performance I did in my undergrad, trying to create a narrative within the pictures. In the first image of the cloud, the figure is facing away, and so there’s just a reflection of two clouds side by side. And later in the book, there’s discussions of double consciousness, about how two bodies can be doubled through illness or race. That is where the image of the cloud starts. And then towards the end of the book, there is the cloud figure looking at the viewer, which is followed by the essay that’s talking about being more of a meek black woman, someone who wasn’t very active in their voice. And so by the end, the figure looking back at the reader, there’s more of a dialog between the actual narrative on the page and what’s happening with the images.

RL: When I realized that you were a visual artist, I went back to the cover art—which is lovely—wondering if you created it. I was curious since you do have that visual art background if you were involved in the process?

FE: I was involved in the process. That cover is so beautiful. I’m really happy with it. I love that it’s mostly blue, it goes with the gloominess… I had been cataloging some images on Pinterest and Instagram, things that struck my eye. I was just dreaming. This was my visionary Pinterest of what would happen if I did get this book deal. I saved a lot of pictures of Black women crying that looked stylized—usually pretty tattoos, or other images of clouds, and later on more vintage theater posters for the variety show aspect. And so when it was time to work with the cover artist, I gave my visionary Pinterest to the cover designer and the Feminist Press team, and told them I’m looking for Black girl vibes, but in a vintage theater poster. They actually found Yasmin [Idris], who’s another amazing Nigerian artist, who did the cover, which is actually a painting. Then we worked with the cover designer who put together the text and the outlay for the cover itself, so it has the perfect blend of a figurative picture of a Black woman. Early in the process, before we decided on Yasmin for the cover image, I was going back and forth with images of Black women that were blue or green; they didn’t have brown skin. It became important that it was brown skin. As I was starting to do some touring for the book, I was seeing people’s reaction to the cover. That type of excitement, to me, feels like it’s in the brown skin of the image, how you can see yourself in it.

RL: I admire how you play with the narrative, using first, second, and third person. I could see exactly why each was the right narrative choice every time, but I was wondering if you had to play with it or if the POV choices came more instinctually?

FE: I don’t think I changed the POV for any of the essays in the book. Often I would change tenses and whether I wanted to situate it in the past. I wrote this book during my MFA, and a few years afterwards. I had the opportunity to be able to play around with my writing and try on different genres. I am geared towards more hybrid genre work that combines prose and poetry. And so my dilemma was trying to figure out, how does all of this random stuff that is circling the same ideas, go together? In the later edits for the book, I had so much material that it was kind of a carving, and thinking about how they related to each other, and how to make it obvious so the reader understands what the overall journey is for this character.

RL: The idea of safety is a central theme which you personify as a home, and the book is structured around a search for a house. I noticed some of these essays were previously published, which made me wonder about the process of putting together the book and finding this structure, which works so well.

FE: I started writing just a few essays here and there before I decided to pursue writing and go for my MFA. As I was in my program, I was working towards my thesis, which was roughly about themes around mental health, migration, and racial isolation in America. I had a lot of pieces circling around the same themes, maybe from different time periods or using a different narrative technique, or a different genre. One of my thesis advisors had some feedback, saying it seemed like a lot of this was about finding home. That was really the nugget that got me towards the overall structure of the book. When I started working with my agent, we were really focusing on the idea of home, dividing the book into sections, so the reader and the narrator are going on this house hunt. It’s both a narrative journey, and a speculative journey as well, you don’t necessarily feel like you’re reading a memoir. It feels like you’re reading a piece of fiction, but that’s just the container for the life story. With this particular book, it was a lot of honing on how to approach the central theme in the structure. I did a lot of throwing things at the wall and then shaping them so that they all fit together.

RL: I loved how you blend in the artwork of other poets, writers, and more throughout the book, it adds an element of cultural criticism, which is such a smart craft choice for a book that deals with intersecting identities and the heavy feelings that come from living in a country where these identities are not only marginalized, but under constant attack. Is that something you had to dial up or down in revision?

FE: I really love cultural criticism. That’s a natural impulse I have: to think about my own life in relation to a wider world, which is what a lot of memoirs that I like do. There was a lot of dialing up and dialing it down, depending on the essay. I tried to make it so there was an even balance to make it accessible for the reader. I don’t necessarily want all of my readers to be folks that have MFAs or PhDs. They really want my target audience to be wider, to be able to be someone’s Nigerian auntie for someone who wants to take a chance on a book like this.

RL: I was really struck by your description and the photo of Keith A. Wallace’s “playing dead” demonstrations. As naïve as it sounds, I think a lot about art as a tool to potentially change hearts and minds regarding urgent social justice issues. But your book made me consider that some can simply refuse to engage, like the tourists in Philadelphia who posed in front of the body. We can’t force engagement with our art, no matter how powerful our message.

FE: I love Keith A. Wallace’s work. I was in Philadelphia that same summer, which drew me to this piece; I was doing an artist residency, and I read about it at that time. I think this was 2014—so coming off of Trayvon Martin—there was a lot for me, a 20-something, stepping into political ideology, and caring about social justice. I was having my own awakening to this idea: wow, sometimes people really don’t care about you or your art. You have to make sure that your message is reaching people that would find it life-giving. That’s what I’ve just been trying to focus on recently, especially with so many discussions about writers and the attention economy and trying to make sure people get noticed on Blue Sky or Instagram. I’m more interested in being specific with the people that I’m trying to reach and the people that I think my work would resonate with as a means of focusing on their liberation, rather than trying to convince someone else.

RL: You tackle some heavy topics, including as you put it: how in this country, Black bodies are marked for death, as well as your mental health journey. I really appreciated the blank space as a reader, how powerful lines are often followed by blank space. It allows for reflection, so it’s helpful for the reader, but I wondered if it was also helpful to you as the writer since these are extremely painful realities to be writing about?

FE: The book didn’t initially have that much white space. Eventually I started to break apart some passages with spaces that I felt was a moment to take a breath. It’s a very heavy book, and it could be easy to digest it quickly because it’s so short. But I wanted the weight of the words to be able to exist on the page by themselves, so there was an intentional pause before you move on to the next page. I’ve always been drawn to books like Bluets and Citizen by Claudia Rankine because that was the effect that it had on me as a reader, and so I wanted to create that for others. I have a tendency in my own writing to break away from a painful memory, and move on to the next memory in a way that is more episodic—jumping from scene to scene. That was another effect I was trying to create in the book: to sit in the scene. I like having those moments in books. What felt more true to my experience was the associative memory I was able to have between present and past, or what’s actually happening versus what’s imagined, or what is how it relates to society at large.

RL: The ending is gorgeous with an image that I thought would be nice for our conversation to land: home as a safe place. In a country where certain identities—BIPOC, queer, immigrant, disabled—are threatened, our homes feel especially sacred. [Can you talk about that?]

FE: In the ending of Gloomy Girl I write about bell hooks’ concept of ‘homeplace’ as a site of resistance. I think for myself and many loved ones who share these identities home is often transient and fleeting. One may recall the places of origin that make up their homeplace but also maybe the scents of Maggi seasoning cubes, the shower chair outside the bathtub for tough mobility days, or the queer crochet night at their local coffee shop. I wanted to speak to this sense of home as an amalgamation of scenes and situations. In our current political climate where Black women are killed in their beds, Haitian immigrants are targeted in their new neighborhoods, where disabled people fear calling the police in times of crisis, I hope that this book will shine a light on the politics of belonging and safety and that this book will be the start of another marginalized person’s search for home. I hope this book will reach decision-makers in the public health and narrative medicine sectors and other researchers and stakeholders to influence material change: more culturally competent therapists and doctors to support the mental health of the most marginalized.