Sarah Kendzior is a writer, journalist, and researcher who has studied authoritarian states in Central Asia. She is a former columnist for Al Jazeera English and is credited with being one of the first to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. She is currently an op-ed columnist for the Globe and Mail and she was named by Foreign Policy as one of the “100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events.” Her new book is The View From Flyover Country and she recently agreed to be interviewed by Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What inspired you to gather your essays into a collection? Did you consider writing a new, book-length piece that covered similar territory?
By 2015, I had received a lot of requests from my readers to put the essays into a collection, so they could read them in one place. So I sorted the essays thematically, self-published, and to my surprise, the book was a hit. I did consider writing additional books – both about the economic themes and institutional collapse I discuss in The View From Flyover Country, and also a book about St. Louis after Ferguson.
But I feel like we live in a very urgent time. We are dealing with constant crises, and my heart is with covering those crises in order to increase public understanding of the structural issues behind them. Book publishing is very slow, and the news cycle is incredibly fast. My priority now is to cover what’s happening as it happens, because that’s more beneficial to the public.
But I would like to do another essay collection of the work I’ve written over the past two years, and eventually, if things ever settle down, delve deep into one topic and write a book. I would love the luxury of time, but it’s hard right now to imagine getting it.
From your website, it seems clear that you have written many more essays than are included in The View From Flyover Country. How did you determine which essays would be included and which ones would be left out? Are there any essays or subjects that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
I chose the ones I felt were the best and the ones which had resonated most with my audience. I tried to select essays that would stand up over of time. As it turned out, I chose correctly, which is in some ways unfortunate, as the subject matter can be pretty grim. It would be nice if some of my work got outdated!
I have friends and family that are from Missouri and they almost universally dislike and/or disavow the term “flyover country.” What are your feelings about the term, especially since it is used in the title of your collection?
It’s a derogatory term, so I inverted it. The people who call it “flyover country” do so because they are, literally and figuratively, looking down on us. We’re not supposed to look back at them. We’re not supposed to have our own point of view. They forget that real people live here, which becomes clear when something “newsworthy” happens – Ferguson or the election for example – and parachute reporters descend and cover our region in superficial and demeaning ways.
But I live here – this is my home, this is my perspective. My coverage of America is informed by living in St. Louis, which is in many ways a more typical American city than the expensive coastal cities where most writers live. I don’t mean this in the sense of St Louis being “the real America” –I don’t believe in “real” or “fake” Americas; we’re all America – but because the political, social and economic crises that are engulfing the country arrived in St Louis long ago. I love St. Louis and don’t want to live anywhere else. At the same time, St Louis will break your heart.
If there is one thing you wish you could impress upon those who live on either coast about St. Louis (or anywhere else in “flyover country”) that might lead to a better understanding of what life is like there and/or how it is different, what would it be?
We are diverse – demographically, racially, culturally, ideologically. There is no representative sample; there is no one way of life. A small town in Missouri is very different from a big city like St. Louis; Missouri is very different from Illinois or Wisconsin or other Midwestern states. It’s ridiculous that all these places are lumped together – within St. Louis alone there are more subcultures than I could count. St. Louis is a complex place that’s often portrayed in a very simplistic way.
The only thing that really ties “flyover country” together as a region is that it’s ignored by national politicians and coastal reporters until they want something from us. The heartland also tends to be worse off economically than the coasts – as I discuss in the book, that disparity increased dramatically over the past decade. But while economic despair and being a target of coastal derision may bind us together, this region is incredibly diverse, and each place has its own unique history. I never get bored. There are a lot of untold stories that you learn just driving around and talking to people. Honestly, that’s true of anywhere, but people tend to be surprised it’s true about the middle of the country too.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
Catching Fire, the second book of The Hunger Games series. I’m reading it with my ten-year-old daughter to prepare her for the next few years of the Trump administration. Kidding! Sort of…
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
A Wrinkle in Time. This is still my all-time favorite book. I read it when I was seven years old and it had a huge impact on how I view the world. I have a battered paperback copy autographed by Madeleine L’Engle that I cherish. After the election, I was contacted by Madeleine L’Engle’s grand-daughter, who liked an essay I wrote about authoritarianism and thought that her grandmother would have liked it too, and that made me happy.
A Wrinkle in Time prompted my interest in authoritarian states and social injustice. As I grew older and studied history and current events, the themes of that book influenced how I saw things. It all stayed with me — Camazotz, the Man with the Red Eyes, IT. That Meg won with her faults, and with love. People keep asking me what to read in the Trump era, and that’s still my main recommendation, especially if you have children. Read A Wrinkle in Time.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
It’s really hard to do a top five! My tastes are all over the map. Madeline L’Engle, obviously. Stephen King – I’m a huge Stephen King fan; I started reading him when I was 11 and blazed through everything he wrote. The opening paragraph of The Body is my favorite paragraph of any book. And since the election, I’ve been escaping into childhood favorites, which means rereading King: The Stand, IT, The Dead Zone, and so on. It’s therapeutic. I like horror and sci-fi; Peter Straub, Ray Bradbury, and William Gibson are other favorites.
I like to read poetry – my favorite English-language poet is Langston Hughes, but I also spent a lot of graduate school translating political poetry from Uzbekistan. (Coincidentally, Langston Hughes was the first American poet to be translated into Uzbek.) Most of the Uzbek poets I like don’t have their work available in English, unfortunately, so I don’t have much to recommend to you, other than learn Uzbek!
In terms of more popular stuff, I like Gillian Flynn. She’s a brilliant, scathing author, and her work is very Missouri – Gone Girl is best known as a thriller but it’s the most apt social commentary on the recession I’ve read. Reading that, I was like, I know this river town, I’ve walked in that dead mall. I can’t wait for her next book.
I also read a lot of history – as a PhD student, I focused on the history of the Soviet Union and its successor states, but I like to read US history too. I’m always trying to fill in gaps in my knowledge. The best history book I’ve read is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. I think our country would be better off if everyone read that.
I encourage any aspiring writer to read broadly and read for fun; don’t box yourself in.
What is a book you've faked reading?
I am sure that in grad school I faked reading some incredibly boring academic text in order to pass a seminar but it’s so boring I can’t remember it.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
David Lee Roth, Crazy From the Heat. Not for the cover, exactly, but because I saw David Lee Roth on the cover of a book, which meant David Lee Roth had written an autobiography, which meant I could finally find out the truth about Van Halen and the M&Ms. So yeah, kids, that’s what life was like before the internet.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Like I said, A Wrinkle in Time.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
Like I said, The Warmth of Other Suns!
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
Anything with a good plot twist, but I get more satisfaction out of re-reading something I love.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
Road trip with my husband and kids. I’m never happier than when I’m on the road with my family, exploring interesting and unusual places, and especially if we get to drive across a big swath of the country. We’re too poor to fly so we always drive. Over the last few years we’ve gone on trips to South Dakota, Texas, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Wisconsin, and we’ve driven all over Missouri and Illinois. My favorite thing to visit is caves – Missouri is very pretty but the best scenery is underground. The Ozarks are loaded with caves; I have a “Caves of Missouri and Arkansas” map and I cross them off as we go. We visit caves in other states too when we happen to be near one, but Missouri’s are the best. So a perfect day would be me and my family, in a cave.
What are you working on now?
By the time you read this, the answer will have changed.
BOOK REVIEW: The View From Flyover Country