Nafissa Thompson-Spires was born in San Diego, California and studied creative writing as a graduate student at the University of Illinois and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her debut short-story collection, Heads of the Colored People, which portrays the lives of contemporary African Americans, was described by Booker prize winner George Saunders as “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart and verbally inventive”. The collection has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burn prize.
The title of your collection comes from the 19th-century abolitionist James McCune Smith and his sketches Heads of the Colored People. What led you to engage with his work?
My husband is a professor of literature and he writes a lot about McCune Smith and other 19th-century writers who were publishing sketches in [abolitionist] Frederick Douglass’s newspapers – he would come downstairs excited and talk about this research. Much of it is dealing with the same issues we’re dealing with today – and now we have a president who is very vocal about his racism. I wanted to think about what it means to be a black person today but also respond to what James McCune Smith was theorising almost 200 years ago.
What else motivates your writing?
I want to read more about people who have had experiences similar to my own. I’d grown up feeling like I was the only black person like myself, though of course that wasn’t the case. I wanted to see more stories about awkward, nerdy black people, and black people who were the only ones in a particular space, and what it meant to navigate the many different kinds of identity construct. You write what you want to read. You’re reshaping an ongoing conversation.
The stories also explore aspects of physicality...
I didn’t set out to write a book about the body – I think that was all subconscious stuff that was trying to come out of me, that I was fighting against. I’ve always been deeply afraid of bodies. As a child, I would scare myself looking at the pictures in medical books. But I ended up thinking about heads more generally. In phrenology – there’s a head injury in one of the stories – and heads in psychology too; a lot of the characters are dealing with acute mental issues. Several of the central characters are suffering from emotional trauma.
The body may look very well, but you don’t know what’s going on inside it. Fatima is dealing with endometriosis, Marjorie is dealing with trauma from child abuse and probably has borderline personality disorder, but the story doesn’t diagnose her. She’s seeking therapy to figure out why she has these rage issues.
In a Paris Review essay you say: “It means something to me to be able to produce when something is daily trying to take me out.” Could you tell us more about that?
My own pain was pressing and I couldn’t get away from it [Thompson-Spires was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2015]. I’m also writing about it in the novel I’m currently working on. I’ve had the best year of my life professionally in many ways but, in terms of my [health], it’s been extremely difficult and the tour was very gruelling. It has been a learning curve, and made me more empathetic to other people who are struggling. Many of my friends have been sick – with Crohn’s disease, colitis, depression, migraine – and that was on my mind. I was asking: “Why are we all so sick and what is it a response to?” Probably the conditions under which we live.
Do you think it’s important that writers should tackle areas that may be taboo?
Absolutely. I think the goal of a writer should be to tell the truth in some way, even if it’s to tell it slant – or to imagine a better version of the truth. We have to find ways to confront difficult subjects.
What appeals to you about using humour to tackle bleak topics?
Humour is my coping mechanism in life – it’s a way I publicly deal with trauma. In a story humour can be helpful to disarm the reader, to think it’s not going to get as dark as it does. It’s a way to get to those dark places.
The story Belles Lettres is told in letters between two mothers, and the collection shows how language and storytelling play a role in identity…
In a way the book is about what it means to name something, it’s a highly meta book which is really about writing and storytelling – I wanted to explore who gets to tell certain stories, who gets access to stories, who gets stories told about them.
What books inspired or influenced you?
Ishmael Reed’s work in general – Flight to Canada was hugely influential to me as a grad student, to read it and realise you could do certain things with structure.
What books are on your bedside table?
We’re moving house soon, so everything’s packed up. I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I’m listening to Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn as an audiobook.
Who are the writers you most admire?
Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Mat Johnson, Colson Whitehead, Paul Beatty and so many great black short story writers. I’m into Caitlin Moran too – I can’t wait for her new book, the sequel to How to Build a Girl.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
I read everything voraciously. I had more book friends than human friends. I was really into Judy Blume. And I loved Sweet Valley Twins and The Baby-Sitters Club.
Did you always want to be a writer?
Yes. My mom was always putting pen and paper into my hand and encouraging me to write. I learned that I loved writing very young, and I’m grateful to those who helped me.
Do you have a writing routine?
I have OCD, literally, so I’m very disciplined with my writing in general. I have dedicated writing days and try and treat writing as a nine-to-five, but I don’t get up that early so it’s more like one-to-five.
• Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires is published by Vintage (£8.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
