Art & Culture - “World of Wonders” with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Shownotes:
Chris and Eddie are joined by Aimee Nezhukumatahil, author of Barnes and Noble’s 2020 Book of the Year, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. Whimsical and introspective, this book inspires the reader to look to the natural world for guidance, curiosity, and delight. Aimee’s work has been integrated into high school, college, and university curriculum as part of contemporary poetry, environmental studies, women’s studies, and Asian-American literature classes. Currently, Aimee teaches environmental literature and poetry writing in the MFA program of the University of Mississippi.
Aimee discusses the gift of attention as the highest form of prayer, her perception of wealth and privilege in relation to her upbringing, and what the diverse, multifaceted nature of creation says about each of us. She challenges listeners to carve out time for stillness and careful attention in order to recognize the beauty in everything. This conversation reveals the precious mysteries of God’s nature and the ways our love for God constantly prompts a response of awe and wonder.
Series Info:
Christians spend a lot of time talking about what is true or exploring goodness, but we do not spend as much time exploring beauty, aesthetics, and the arts. In a world full of content curated to our specific taste, we need more time and space to fill our souls with the kind of art that breaks open our curiosity and makes us come alive. Where does God meet us in the beauty of our imagination? How does art and culture shape our desires and longings?
In this series “Art and Culture,” we’ll talk about imagination, memory, culture making, and memoir writing. We will have three guests guide us through the relationship between art, faith, life, story, trauma, healing, place, and nature. We pray that these conversations allow breathing room for deeper introspection, greater awareness of the natural world, and space to explore the depths of the imagination.
Resources:
Check out Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s book World of Wonders here:
Follow Aimee on social media:
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 0:03
Today we have one of our good friends, Aimee Nezhukumatathil on the program with us.
Chris McAlilly 0:08
Yeah. Aimee teaches at the University of Mississippi in the MFA program. She came to Mississippi through a program at the university called the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence. And she and her husband Dustin loved it so much here that they have chosen to stick around and we are the beneficiaries.
Eddie Rester 0:27
She's an Ohio State fan stuck in Mississippi. She is an amazing writer and amazing poet. But her latest book, "World of Wonders," was the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year for 2020. It cracked the bestseller list for the New York Times. And it's...
Chris McAlilly 0:44
It was like Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and then Aimee.
Eddie Rester 0:50
Yeah, it was pretty amazing. But it's an amazing book that tells, really the story of her life through the world around her.
Chris McAlilly 1:00
There are several reasons why I love this book. One is we don't have a lot of Mississippi nature writers. And, you know, growing up... I love Mississippi, but it's the natural landscape... You know, folks in Mississippi, they go on vacation in the mountains or the beach. They go to other places to find natural beauty. She helped me see the world around me in a deeper way. And I think that, not just for Mississippi, I think she has a way of describing God's creation that offers a new way in and a new way to pay attention to the world around us.
Eddie Rester 1:40
Near the end of the book, she talks about how many of her college students in one class had never seen a firefly and I was flabbergasted. But it also kind of pushed me, in our conversation with her even, when's the last time I really sat around and waited for the fireflies to come out? When's the last time I really sat around and watched the birds in my backyard? When's the last time I really watched nature unfold around me? And I think in these days, where we're caught social media, we're looking at our screens all the time, she really helps us understand more of what God's doing in the world around us.
Chris McAlilly 2:18
To me it's even deeper than that, because I think what Amy is doing, and I think poetry and literature in general, what it does is it takes us out of a consumerist, economic world and it helps expose the ways in which our vision has been shaped and formed in ways that aren't often life giving.
Eddie Rester 2:41
Right.
Chris McAlilly 2:41
And what she does in this book, and I think you hear it even in this conversation, is she gives us a way to contemplate and meditate upon the good gifts of God in creation, in a way that for me, feels a little bit like prayer.
Eddie Rester 2:58
Well, we encourage you, one, to buy the book, but also to enjoy the episode. We hope that you'll share it with friends, maybe write a review on whichever podcast service... I don't know what that word is. I always forget that word.
Chris McAlilly 3:13
Yeah, wherever you listen. I think the other thing is go back and listen to other episodes. This is a thread in our podcast, art and culture, and go back and listen to the one James K.A. Smith. And let us know. Just join the conversation. Let us know what you think about it.
Chris McAlilly 3:29
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 3:36
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:40
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:47
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 3:59
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 4:14
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 4:17
I'm so excited about this conversation. I've been waiting for months, since I picked up the book. Today we have Aimee Nezhukumatathil, one of my favorite people in the world. And she has written a wonderful book, and it is called "World of Wonders." We are so excited to talk to you today, Aimee.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 4:36
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. This was written in glitter on my planner, so that means that's a good thing.
Eddie Rester 4:42
One of one of the joys for me, Aimee, reading the book, is that I get to, every time you talked about Dustin or the boys, I could see faces. And during the pandemic, it's been a long time since I've seen all of your faces, and so in a small, strange way that [was] just a lot of joy for me, reading the book on a, just a completely different level.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 5:05
Oh, good. I'm so glad. And you know, it is funny. I know, Dustin has mixed feelings about it, too, just with, you know, people that know him and stuff, you know, and I don't. You know, he sees everything that I write. I would never put anything in there that would, that he would... He's never asked me to take anything out, although I would if he felt that way. But it is funny, you know, we have limited contact with people as well. But, you know, people have been saying to him or writing to him, or you know, or leaving messages like, "Oh, I could totally see Dustin doing that!" or just picturing our first date, something like that. That was kind of like a semi-private moment, now being in thousands upon thousands of households. So it's been interesting. It's a whole different world than writing poems.
Chris McAlilly 5:59
Yeah, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about was, you are a poet and most of your published work up to this point is in the form of poetry. And this is more of a memoir and a kind of a nature essay, a series, a collection of nature essays. And it has kind of this tone of memoir, and I just wondered kind of what was it that pushed you, I guess, to break that, I guess that tight, structured, compressed poetic form for this kind of slightly more expansive form? How did you make that jump in this particular book? What led you in that direction?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 6:35
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think I have been, I teach environmental literature and nature writing here at the University of Mississippi. I think around 2016, 2015, I just found myself having a lot more questions about who gets to write about the outdoors, who gets studied, who gets taught. And I had questions about why nature has been a place of solace for me and not for some of my friends, you know, that kind of thing.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 7:12
And that was just a lot of... I start, I always say I start my poems with an image, but my essays, I just had questions. Questions that couldn't be answered for me in one poem, or even two poems, or a book of poems. And so I was using the essay form to kind of get to the bottom of that, to see why. Why, for me, nature was a source of joy and respite. But also there was some not-so-great moments as well, you know. And I hadn't seen a book like that ever before. I hadn't seen anyone looking like me had written about that before. And I just wanted to kind of tackle some of those questions head on.
Eddie Rester 7:56
One of the fun things in the book is that, for me, at least, it woke in me, just the power of memory. A lot of your stories pick up in childhood on walks with your dad or walks home from the bus or the different places that you lived. And one of the things I was thinking as I read is that you had this long appreciation or noticing of nature and the world around you. Is that something that your dad kind of gave, gifted to you? Or was that something that... How did that come about? Because it really, it's not something that you picked up in college, very obviously, from the book.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 8:38
Definitely, definitely. I was much more surrounded in concrete structures, like the horseshoe and indoor celebrations of football team in college, but, but yeah, no, actually, and that's absolutely 100% a gift from both my parents in their own different ways. That's just kind of who my parents are, you know.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 9:02
I observed them getting mocked by their thick accents. And I didn't have the language or the vocabulary and, frankly, I was also maybe a little bit embarrassed. I was a lot embarrassed, like, "Oh, why are we serving like noodles for a sleep over?" You know, "I just want pizza!" You know, things like that. And "Why doesn't my mom sound like everybody else's mom?" You know, that kind of thing. But the one place where we all just felt so much joy--I could feel them relax a little bit--was outside.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 9:41
And you know... it makes it sound like we didn't watch television. My sister and I watched a lot of television, trust me. But they also, I would always, always just be following them around in the garden or outside and their biggest joys would be like, "Look at this! Look this tomato variety!" You know, "It came through! We didn't know that this would happen on our porch here in Chicago. And it did!" You know, I mean, they would just have such exquisite joy. And I think at least initially, most kids want to be like their parents or emulate what their parents like, at least initially, you know. And I just saw that joy radiate from them at being able to recognize a bird call or a variety of orchid that they weren't sure about growing.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 10:30
And I also saw this as a place of confidence for them. Nobody--I mean, my parents are master gardeners, like nobody talked down to them about the outdoors. Nobody did the thing that I witnessed so many times where they would say to my mom, "Do you speak English?" You know, things like that. And my mom was, she's the most brilliant woman I know. She was the first doctor in her village, in her whole village in the Philippines. She went to med school at such a young age. And it was hard as a middle schooler seeing these idiots talk to my mom like that. But the outdoors was always a place of joy for us, for my family. Yeah,
Chris McAlilly 11:14
It seems like one of the one of the gifts that your parents gave you was the gift of attention. And there are two different quotations that came to mind as I was reading the book. One was from Marilynne Robinson, the novelist. There's a line in her novel, "Gilead." "This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it." And then also, Simone Weil talks about prayer as attention. She says, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Attention, taken to the highest degree is the same thing as prayer." And I as I was reading your book, I was just... you were teaching me how to pay attention to the natural world in a way. I was being disciplined. I felt like my attention was being disciplined to pay attention and to notice things in this almost kind of contemplative or meditative way that's just... I'm not accustomed to that way of looking.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 12:15
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 12:17
Yeah, I don't have a question.
Eddie Rester 12:18
As I think about you and your your sons, taking them into the world, and then the conversations in the book about your students as well, you definitely see that there are different ways that we are brought up in terms of our attention to the world around us. And...
Chris McAlilly 12:38
It's something that parents offer. I mean, parents can look in the right direction and give language to the thing that is seen. And I think that you're doing that in the book as well. I mean, I think, you know, there are so many interesting creatures, you know. I mean, the catalpa tree, I mean, as a Mississippian, for me, just having... There's not a lot... I mean, I think of other places being beautiful, but I think one of the gifts that you're offering to Mississippi is, you know, you guys chose this place. I was just born here, and I've not always seen the beauty of this place in the way that I've seen it, you know, in the more majestic terrain of the Western Rocky Mountains or other parts of the country. So it was really, really wonderful to have some solid nature writing about Mississippi and the catalpa tree just here on campus at the University of Mississippi, and on and on. I think you described the summers here. Typically, I think of them as oppressive and terrible. But the way you described it, it was like "Oh, yes, this is wonderful. The heat of August is just so fantastic."
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 13:42
[LAUGHTER] Oh my gosh.
Eddie Rester 13:43
She didn't make me feel bad about the heat in August. So,
Chris McAlilly 13:47
But there's so many... Talk about the structure of the book, because there's a catalpa tree. There's the firefly, the peacock...
Eddie Rester 13:55
The narwhal.
Chris McAlilly 13:56
Yeah, the cactus wren, and on and on, the well shark the potoo. How did you come to... There's like this range of natural phenomena and creatures that you're bringing forward. How did you make those choices? Why did you choose to structure the book in that way?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 14:16
Yeah, you know, I had a bet. Well, first of all, thank you so much, because that's the best thing. And I hear that a lot from Mississippians, that, "You made me look at Mississippi in a different way." And I just want to say I have so much to learn about Mississippi. In fact, I'm on my fellowship research leave right now, and it was supposed to be traveling all over Mississippi to the national parks along the Natchez trail, and I've been so sad to not be doing that, you know.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 14:48
So I have much, much, much to learn about the foliage and the animals here, but I just love how green it is here. I just, I love the heat, so on a day like today I'm wishing so bad for that August, oppressive sun, that people call it, you know, and stuff like that. And maybe it's because our first day we moved here, it was exactly 101 degrees on our minivan's thermometer. Exactly. And, you know, we were unpacking at the Grisham house at 101 degrees. And we were just... I just remember looking over at Dustin, and we were just so sweaty, and we were so happy to have this space, this heat.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 15:32
And I don't know, you're talking to two people who came from Buffalo, New York. So we're still in that honeymoon phase of just loving the green that Mississippi gets. And anyway, but, you know, I had, to answer your question, I had a list of 200, there was over 200 plants and animals that I just love, love, love. And I did not want to... It would have been like an encyclopedia. And I did not want that. I wanted the opposite. I wanted it to be... I pared it down from 200-something to 30 of the plants and animals that I could be an entertaining dinner guest over, not a boring dinner guest over.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 16:12
So what are the things that I could just go on and on--as a friend--about the narwhal or about the comb jelly or about the cassowary, and not bore myself or hopefully bore others? And so that was my own litmus test of like, "Could I get tired talking about this type of frog? Okay, this goes in the no pile," you know. And so that's, just on a craft level, that's how I kind of narrowed it down to, "How do I get the 30 most..." Those are the ones I wanted to just be on fire for, to talk about. And, you know, I mean, I didn't have "Oh, I need to have five of them where I talk about my family, five where I talk about race, five where I talk about the Eastern Seaboard." I didn't have any plans like that I just wanted it to be the 30 animals and plants that kind of just make me swoon and to be grateful that I'm alive and share the same planet with.
Eddie Rester 17:14
One of the things that I loved is what you're talking about there, you were able to connect your experience and your wonder, your attention of nature, to life. To life as is, to life as you hope it would be. And one of the chapters that really, for me, grabbed me was the touch-me-nots chapter. I remember those as a child growing up. And so you explained why they work. I've never known why they worked. When I started reading the chapter, I didn't know that I was going to get that gift.
Eddie Rester 17:46
But in the chapter, you said, "How I wish I could fold inward and shut down and check off predators with one touch. What a skill. What a thrill that could be." Just that kind of connection to help you think about, nature really does speak to us if we're willing to let it speak to us and where we are. It speaks to our hopes sometimes. As I was thinking about scripture, and its conversation about nature and creation, Psalm 19, one of my favorites: "The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork." I know, you know, you're Methodist, a person of faith. As you have encountered all of creation all over the world, really, and that's part of what you share in the book, are there moments where you begin to capture glimpses of the God of creation and the way God is moving, maybe in ways we fail to notice sometimes?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 18:54
Yeah, you know, I think... I love that question so, so much, you know, and it reminds me of this quote. I have my students keep a commonplace book. I keep a commonplace book. A commonplace book is basically like a blank notebook where we can kind of... It's like a collage. You put quotes from books that you're reading in there. If you, I don't know, if there's a napkin from a restaurant that has a great memory, you post it in there. You know, things like that. There's one of my pages that's just one quote, and I won't write anything else on it, because I just come back to it again and again. It's actually from Bob Goff, where he says, "When joy is a habit, love is the reflex."
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 19:41
And I love that so much. Not only just in my life, that's actually something that I try to model for my kids all the time. But I absolutely see that in my experience with the outdoors is that when I'm noticing things outside, when I take time to notice just I don't know, the way a Carolina wren is, it's twitching its white eyebrow, I just feel such a tenderness towards that wren. And I don't want anything to happen to that family of wrens. The wrens are building a nest right now as I speak.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 20:19
And I will, as a funny side note from Mississippi... Maybe I shouldn't even go into this. Let me just say, I am in a heated battle with Dustin as the vice president of our HOA because there are cats and sprays that are being used that are harming these sweet Carolina wrens, you know, and my hope is... That's a whole nother podcast, dealing with HOAs, but I just... It floors me that people don't have a tenderness towards these native birds. It floors me. I don't understand that because I just feel such tenderness. If you even just watch them for 10 seconds, how could you want these things to die?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 21:06
And it's... My hope is that if we can soften our hearts to something outside, the shape of a cloud, or the way the light is just dancing on Lake Sardis, or something, that if we can soften our hearts to animals and plants that we may have never seen like a cassowary. I made sure to include plants and animals that I hadn't seen also, so that it doesn't become like, "Oh, well, if I don't have experience with this, why should I care? If I haven't seen a Carolina wren, why should I care? If I haven't seen that touch-me-not plant, why should I care?" No, our goal is that we soften our hearts to each other, even if you don't have experience having a conversation with that person. If you have not had the privilege of watching this bird, you know, that kind of thing. I just think love is the reflex, when you just take that time to let to see God's creation call to you. I think it is a call to you. If you just listen, and you don't have to do anything. It doesn't cost money either. You just have to just be still for a little bit.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 21:06
I think that nature would call to you, to me is one of the things that I picked up as a thread in the book. You know, we talked to an ethicist, the conversation was about politics, but he referenced a political scientist who made an economic argument about kind of the way we see the world today, a lot of people will talk about it as if it's disenchanted. But it's the argument that this particular political scientist made was that the problem is that the world has been enchanted by kind of market economics, so that when we look at the world, you know, what the capitalist sees is, it's inert, and we impose value upon it. It's there for our consumption.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 22:17
Yeah. Yes.
Chris McAlilly 22:53
And what struck me about what you're doing with the book is that there's a kind of a re-enchantment of the natural world. It feels magical and electric under your pen. And again, it comes back to this kind of attention, this kind of contemplative, prayerful noticing of the Carolina wren, or the catalpa tree or, you know, these dimensions of creation... Perhaps, you know, we're on the other side of the world or under the surface of the sea, that you'll never see. That changes the way... It's a habit, you know, joy is a habit, right? Love becomes a reflex, that there's a kind of tenderness towards all of creation that is created but it's habitual.
Chris McAlilly 23:43
Within scripture, you know, part of that wisdom tradition, the heart is something that has to be... You don't, it's almost like you don't have a heart and the heart has to be shaped by habits of prayer and noticing and contemplation. And if you, you know... I think that to me is one of the things that if you take the time to kind of listen to the book or--it's beautifully read also by [you]. The audio book is also just amazing. I listened to it and I listened to you read it as I kind of had the words there just so I could get kind of your dimension that you offer as well. And I just think that that noticing is... I just keep coming back to that. That you have to kind of have the habit of attention and joy with creation that changes the way that you interact with the natural world.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 24:32
Yeah, yeah. Oh, go ahead, Eddie.
Eddie Rester 24:34
I was just gonna say a brief commercial here. Cody Hickman, who's our producer, actually recorded the audio book because you couldn't travel to go somewhere else and record it. So I just want to give that shout out to our producer, Cody Hickman.,
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 24:47
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, Chris that that's all Cody. He was just so infinitely patient anytime I wanted to just do five takes on something, he would let me until I felt like I got it right. And I think it's so special that I have people listening to it in the UK and in, you know, in Maine, in Alaska actually, and to know that it was recorded right here in Oxford. It was so special at the church. I love it.
Eddie Rester 25:14
One of the parts of the book that really, at the end, I can quote the statistic you taught a class where 17 of 22 of your students had never seen a firefly.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 25:28
Mm hm. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 25:33
What was, when you took the vote in class, what was your immediate response to not just the majority, but the vast majority of your kids missing out on what I consider one of the highest joys of my childhood?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 25:46
Yes, absolutely. Right. I mean, it takes your breath away. It took my breath away, first of all, and then I see on their faces. It's actually, I mean, it's forever etched in my mind, I could see on the faces, they were looking to me, and I thought I could do one of two things: I can make fun and be like, "What are you guys doing?" You know, disparage them a little bit, you know, that kind of thing. Or I could, you know, or I could say "Let me encourage you to let this not happen next summer." You know, that kind of thing. You know, and I chose, thankfully, the latter, because my initial reaction was being horrified and also wanting to judge them you know, like, "What are you doing? You're wasting your summers indoors!"
Eddie Rester 26:35
You're a better person than me because I judged. Yeah.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 26:40
But you know, when you look at their faces, and that's a shame, that's why I miss being in the classroom so much. I love that dynamic with the students and seeing like, what a privilege it is to be able to shape and give validation and give encouragement to them. I miss that so, so much, because many of them I could absolutely see on their faces have never had a conversation like this in their lives. Or even in the ones that did, I could see they don't have a whole lot of grownups that they could chat with and not be made fun of, you know, like, "Oh, I do like fireflies." or "I do kind of like being alone and catching fireflies on my own. And I'm not weird, you know, cuz someone else--my teacher did that, too, when she was little." You know, or "little," let's be honest, I did that last summer.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 27:30
And so I miss being able to model that. But it's never purposeful. It's just, that's kind of who I am. And it's why I love being a teacher. But my thing was to say, look at the magic that you're missing out on. Don't you want to not miss out on this magic next summer? It's not too late. It's not too late. And it's free. And it means just one day. I'm not saying you need to switch up your whole summer, just one evening, just give it a shot and see what happens. You know, if you stay outside, you know, till dusk and a little bit after. You know, see if you can make it through one day without playing video games. And they were... That was shocking. There was a shocking suggestion.
Chris McAlilly 28:17
I saw, it was several years back now, but in the New Yorker magazine, there was a "Just in time for spring!" magical you know... It was like a consumer experience called "Going Outside" for like, three-dimensional experience, fully immersive experience. Totally free, any day. Just go outside.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 28:45
Exactly. And you know, and I say this, I want to be very clear, because I have seen, unfortunately, some... I've read reviews and stuff like that. And I know that there's people out there like, "Oh, what a privileged childhood you had," or I had, "to be able to do that. Some of us had to work," and dadadada. You know, as with any book, I would just ask the people who think that I'm just doing nothing but dancing around in a field of fireflies that, be rest assured, that like most teenagers, I had to get a job. I was selling perfume. I was working a perfume counter, and it was not glamorous in the slightest. But I also did this.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 29:34
I mean, I think that's the beauty of a book like this is that, you know, as Walt Whitman says, I contain multitudes. I loved watching MTV and being glued to MTV, but I also loved tromping around and trying to catch crayfish. You know, I can do many things. And the point of me writing a book like this is to showcase that you don't have to be one or the other. Just because you love nature doesn't mean you're outside all the time and you have no other interests. And just because you, whatever, are into books doesn't mean you go outside.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 30:08
You can do multiple things, you know, and you can be into fashion and wanting to... I remember just wanting to emulate the fashion of Flashdance and Madonna, and also being dead seriously wanting to read about volcanoes and things like that. So you can do both. But the problem is, at least in the 80s and 90s, you never saw teenagers depicted multifaceted. They were always into one thing. And that's not how it is in real life. You know, I was in, as a teenager, I was into sports and nature and books and being alone and being in crowds, you know. So anyway, I wanted to put a mention that it's not like I was just a wandering around my teenage years with nothing to do.
Eddie Rester 30:53
Wandering out in the woods.
Chris McAlilly 30:59
I wanted to bring up the 1980s because I do think that and 90s that there's this homogenizing... The homogeneity of American culture comes through in the book over against this just vast exploration of biodiversity. And it's almost like the biodiversity gives space. It's almost like this landscape of the soul or souls. I mean, it's like, populating your imagination with the idea that it's not just that there are varieties of people, but there are just... That creature, the creaturely world is far more expansive, and interesting and beautiful.
Chris McAlilly 31:37
And I can see you doing this kind of movement. You're kind of remembering this journey where you're kind of dealing with the these homogenizing forces that are trying to kind of mols you in certain ways. Even I think about the peacock story over against the eagle as a kind of this homogenizing force within a classroom that would kind of mold you into one kind of way. And I think it's interesting that you're trying to offer, you mentioned growing up as a brown girl in these a lot of majority white spaces, but you populate the world as such a vast array of creatures and it's almost like it gives you permission and it gives us permission to delight in just the sheer diversity of people and creatures in a way that I think is so effective. It's one of the, I think, just the undercurrent in the book. I wonder if you would talk a little bit about that.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 32:38
Yeah, you know, thank you so much. Um, yeah, that's my whole I mean, I will be honest there. I think I mentioned last time we chatted as well, like, especially during those middle school years, the last thing I wanted to do was to hang out with my dad and watch fireflies. And I remember being so disgruntled, like, why are we not in Florida or something? Like, why are we doing like a science-based Spring Break trip? You know, we were in the Ozarks. I remember like watching fireflies instead of going to Daytona Beach or something, you know. And I was just mortified. I didn't want to hang out with my parents in middle school.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 33:20
And I think it's important for me to say that, because I'm also so grateful that my kids even remotely want to spend time with us. But I will say though, that I never... It's rare. And this was also another thing where people, some reviewers said like, "She has a very privileged life where her parents gave her all the attention she wanted," and like, my parents would be the first person to laugh at that. And they would be the first people to say, "Aimee is the artist that she is because we left her alone so many times."
Eddie Rester 33:57
Somebody says that they don't know what childhood in the 80s was like.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 34:00
Yeah, I mean, it was like I was... When they were present, they were absolutely present, for sure. But I would that means they're also not reading the book. I was a latchkey kid since I was 10 years old. And you know, to the point where even my own children are horrified. They think it's almost like a sign of neglect, that I was capable of getting my own snacks and doing my own, you know, and doing all the things that a 10-year-old in the 80s was able to do. And I never once felt like my parents were not spending enough time with me. And you know, in the summers, in the 80s, we had I mean, after breakfast, we were outside on our bikes the minute we could and we'd come back for meals, and that's really it.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 34:50
I remember, can count on one hand the times I'd be just chewed out by my parents because I wasn't home by sundown or whatever. They couldn't see where I was. They had no idea where I was. This is before cell phones and I was a few blocks over and not in any trouble. I just did not come home by sunset. And so I remember that was a big no-no in my parents eyes. But I was gone. It's not like they were doing crafts with me. It's not like they were, you know, having book club sessions with me. My sister and I were absolutely responsible for own entertainment.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 35:23
So I'm just saying that when they did their time--And also my parents were in the medical field, so they didn't have something called winter break or summer vacation the way we'd--my sister and I--did. So the few times they did get vacation, we would go on these family vacations and they were... I remember, like, going, my mom was adamant that we stayed in very--what I would say--modest hotels. They were not resorts. I'm talking I knew the difference between Motel... what is it? Motel 6 and there was like something called like Hotel Seven, even, in the Midwest. You know, very, very basic kind of lodgings. Humble lodgings, I'll say, so that we could spend our money doing these like cave trips, or let's look at these rocks, you know, rock mines or I don't even know geode digging expeditions.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 36:23
I didn't see a whole lot of kids my age doing that. They were either all adults are all little kids. So I am very grateful that my parents didn't. They either ignored or pressed on when they'd see my younger sister and I roll our eyes there, especially during those junior high years. 'Cause I didn't want to be there with them, you know, but they persisted. And it just became a reflex. That was how we spent time together as a family. We didn't have, we didn't even have books on tape. We had to have conversations in the car. We talked, we daydreamed, we fought, my sister and I in the backseat, and that's how we got through life, you know.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 37:11
But I didn't see a whole... You're right. I mean, in the 80s, I think some of my, friends' parents were getting divorced, or they didn't go on family vacations. So I can't speak to all of that. All I know is I'm so grateful for it. I didn't see that part represented. I didn't see Asian American families represented in other books. And I didn't see when we were out in the mountains, I never saw, like, an Indian man out there besides my dad, you know, so I thought that was super special. And I don't think it should be extraordinary, you know, that kind of thing.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 37:44
That should be, more families should be out there of all different backgrounds and all different abilities as well. You know, I mean, I have several Black friends who said them and their parents and their parents before them have never felt safe, being alone enough in a hiking situation in a forest or, and that's absolutely legit. And that's absolutely a sadness in their lives as well. And I want to respect that as well. So I don't look around being like, look how privileged I am when I'm staying in a motel, or
Eddie Rester 38:17
a Super 8 or a Hotel Seven. Yeah.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 38:20
And my friends who are going to these glamorous Daytona trips, you know, that kind of thing. And here, I get a geode as my souvenir for Spring Break. But you know what? Now, I mean, I'd say there's nothing wrong with it. I just know when I was in junior high, I was mortified, you know, to be doing that thing. And yet, now in my 40s, I am so grateful. Oh my goodness, I'm so grateful we didn't do those, the other, what I thought were the cooler trips. I'm so glad I still have those geodes. I still have little patches from my backpack of different state parks, you know, and stuff.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 38:57
And more importantly, I have this conversations with my immigrant parents that I... Oh, I'm going to tear up here... that I just miss having, you know, now that they're so far away now that we're in the middle of a pandemic. Like I had this childhood conversations. So for that, yes, I'm privileged that I had that time with my parents. But overall, it was basically if I said I was bored, my parents would be like, "Only boring people are bored." That was on me. That was a saying that I heard all the time. And now I hear myself saying that to my own kids. Only boring people are bored.
Eddie Rester 38:57
But what a gift, because, I mean, it gave you this sense of, I don't want to say entrepreneurial looking. I'm not sure what to call it, but the sense that okay, if I'm feeling bored, what is there in the world around me? One of the...
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 39:56
Yes.
Eddie Rester 39:56
Near the end of the book, I think it's the last chapter, you wrote, "It's this way with wonder. It takes a bit of patience and it takes putting yourself in the right place at the right time. It requires that we be curious enough to forego our small distractions in order to find the world." And I think for me, what I would add to that, or what it sparked to me was the opening story of creation. In Genesis one, we get this kind of lineup of this happens, and that happens, but the end of every bit of it, the response is, "and it was good." And I think without that kind of curiosity, we forget how good creation is around us. And if you, as you think about writing this book, and it's been on the New York Times bestseller list this year, it's been a great gift for folks. That's what it did for me, what did you hope when you wrote it? What did you hope that it would offer to people or challenge them to do or to be about?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 41:08
You know, my hope is that, I guess, you know... I deliberately wanted to include animals that I thought people would have some passing familiarity with, like a monarch butterfly, for example. But I also wanted to include things like a cassowary, that's only, you know, on the opposite end of the earth from where we are, and I've never seen an in person. I was supposed to see one at the Atlanta Zoo this summer, and it actually passed away in June. So there's only one more in North America, and that's in the San Diego Zoo. And I don't know when I'll be able to visit San Diego.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 41:44
So my hope is that, you know, going back to what you were saying about kind of doing anything as a practice, prayer, having wonderment, that when you do it, you actually feel less alone. When wonder or when prayer is a practice, and it's something... I don't wake up on a cloudy, rainy, icy day, like today and say, "I'm going to feel wonder today," you know, I mean, I actually, there's plenty of days where I just want to stay in bed and just wish, I wish the laundry could do itself, and you know, whatever. I wish I could cancel all my zoom meetings, you know, things like that.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 42:21
It is an absolute practice. I do have to put myself in the way of being open to that. And that requires vulnerability and humility. You have to be able to feel humble, like maybe there is something to learn today. Maybe there is something to be curious about today. But I feel like once you have wonder or prayer as a practice, you feel less alone, because you realize we're also connected. And I think that's whenever I feel unsettled, or a little bit lost, or just kind of in a bad mood, I realize, "oh, have I been in the Word?" Oh, surprise. No, I haven't opened my Bible in about a week, you know, whatever. Or have I been outside? Have I've been not just tromping through on a jog or something like that. But to actually walk and notice things? Oh, no. And it never fails me. It's like the simplest thing, and yet, it's almost one of the most difficult to keep in a daily practice, that when you make these noticings and this quiet time, as a practice, you feel less alone. You feel less unsettled. Because you realize you're not alone, and you realize we're so connected, whether it be a higher power, but we're connected to the living things on this planet.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 43:42
And so I just wanted to you know, this book was coming out at a time of so much kind of division and violence and just sad news, you know, whenever you turn it on, and I guess my response is even though I did not know the book would be released during this time, you know, I didn't know that we'd be in a pandemic. Ultimately, I remember those times when I when I hit the send, you know, hit the send button to send this off to the printers. I wanted to have a work that helps us start...
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 44:18
I wanted to start and end with love. And that's love for each other love for the creatures on this planet. And I think I didn't want to be too preachy about it. I didn't want to be too pedantic about it. But just to say if you do this as a practice, love is the reflex. You want to spread it. You want to be enthusiastic. You can't help but want to share the goodness with other people. Like, look at this cassowary's eyeball! Or look at what the vampire squid does to get away. It shoots out green sequins. I mean, like how can you not. I want to share that with so many people. I want to share that with students. I want to share the goodness of God's creation with others. It doesn't make me feel alone, even when we're in a pandemic. It makes me want to be connected to other people. And to find out what in my life can I do to feel more connected to people?
Chris McAlilly 45:13
Joy is the habit. Love is a reflex. I love it. That's great. Fantastic. Aimee, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for just being friends with us and inviting us into some of your story. And not only us, but through this book, kind of you've opened up your heart and your imagination to us, and you've helped us, I think, re-engage the natural world in a way that, you know, has been really meaningful to me. So I'm really, really grateful for the book and for the conversation today. Thank you. Thank you for being with us.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 45:48
Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad. Thank you so much, Chris and Eddie. This has been such a joy. I love chatting with you anyway, with both of you anyway, but I can tell you did your homework. And it's just so nice to see people who who get it and who also had to open up themselves to say like, "What can I?" You know, and it's a vulnerable spot that we're all in, anytime you put a book out there, I'm vulnerable. I ask the readers to be vulnerable, that maybe just maybe I might have something to share with you. And maybe, maybe you share something back with me in return. So that's just been best case scenario with this book. I'm so grateful to be able to chat with both of you especially. Thank you so much.
Eddie Rester 46:31
Well, tell your family we said hello.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil 46:33
We will. We will. They're I think of zooming in their own little corner, so we always get together at about five o'clock. So that'll be good.
Eddie Rester 46:39
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 46:44
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 46:56
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com [END OUTRO]