'It’s not perfect people who make others feel strong.'

5 questions for writer, daughter, and future ghost, Samantha Hunt

I devoured Dark Dark, Samantha Hunt’s short story collection, a few years back alongside a little cabal of other new mothers and we had a riotous, sanity-saving group text about it. I’ve never forgotten the moment where a cute guy is hitting on a mother trying to get her groove back at the bar, or so she thinks, and then he asks if she has snacks. She does, of course. I felt so seen.

Hunt’s writing strikes me as supernatural, untamed, erudite, and unapologetically emotional. Which is why I was so excited to encounter her in a new genre and on a new topic. The Unwritten Book is an act of resurrection. She uses the unfinished manuscript of her dead father as a jumping off point to explore death, grief, memory, and so much more.

I was honored to do this Q&A with such an imaginative, fearless writer, daughter, mother, and person.

Courtney E. Martin: You write, “What better site of desire than the hole left by the dead? What better way to know ourselves than to look into that place, to dig into the place where the dead went?” What do you think you learned about yourself by looking at the hole left by your dead father in this book? 

Samantha Hunt: If I change the language about death, I can shift the way I feel. Shaking off some of the fear and hurt death causes me by considering instead the tremendous mystery that lies ahead and the ultimate unity present in the first law of thermodynamics: no energy is ever created or destroyed. The dead don’t go anywhere, everything is forever. Our parts will go back into this earth, fill that hole and become dirt. That’s the greatest, kindest gift the earth gives us, a true home.

I don’t like thinking that the dead fly off to a removed and remote heaven. That, to me, is terror. I love it here. I never want to leave, even when I am a dead thing.

Your father’s unfinished manuscript was, in part, about people who are allegedly able to fly--to transcend our physical limitations and, I would imagine, the mess below. But so much of what you seem to be interested in is very loamy and human and unorganized--our bodies, our feelings, our little, sacred, weird daily lives. What do you make of that difference? 

He was raised in a big sky Midwest. I come from the black soil of New York and Vermont. There’s also a way to think about the sky as male, as dead; while the dirt is female and alive--but the most important thing about my dad’s book being unfinished is that it proves binaries are foolish. His book is complete and it isn’t complete. I love the sky and I love the dirt. My dad linked sobriety to flying, a place of daring, danger, insecurity and freedom. That’s a beautiful, joyful metaphor that helped him out of addiction.

Do you still feel “in conversation” with your dad? A lot of people talk about having a continued relationship with their dead, and you are interested in ghosts, but I couldn’t tell whether you feel still connected to him in a sort of dialogue beyond the pages you footnoted. 

I read about a person who uses they/them pronouns because they feel like a plurality. They keep their ancestors with them. While I identify as she/her, I also know I am a plurality of cells, gut bacteria, and my dead. A friend told me, “My dad’s been gone twenty-three years and I still talk to him every day.”

I wouldn’t say I’m in conversation with my dad, partly because he was a quiet man. Still, he’s present in my life. My kids look like him, and so many books around here make me think of him. Also, we say he’s a cardinal now. A happier story for death. Then I keep my bird feeders full of black sunflower seeds. Some days I’ll see ten or twelve cardinals. That a lot of dads.  

Your grandmother told you, “If you have a problem with the word ‘god’ replace it with the word love.” You write: “Now God often looks like her, a tiny feather of a woman dressed in bright colors and costume jewelry, a god who knows the names of small flowers and birds even if she created the words herself, a god who is insecure not from lack of loving but because she is full of mistakes, broken and open to all. She is without protection, feeling everything, fear, sorrow, and love. My God.” How do you converse with Her or get close to Her when you need comfort or wisdom these days? 

She’s one ghost who always feels close. I think that’s because she gave off such huge vibrations of love while alive, that I’m still rippling in the aftershocks. And it’s important to know that she had faults and insecurities but loved past these challenges, through them, always drawing my attention to mystery and the wonder of the world.

It’s not perfect people who make others feel strong.  

Samantha hiding behind her granny’s fake grapes.

It’s fifty years from now. You’re a ghost. What are you up to? 

First of all, fifty years from now, I hope I’m still alive! My grannies were both centenarians. I’d like that too. But, say, 70 years from now? Maybe I’ll preen my feathers on a high branch before taking flight, or else haunt up a nice old library and finally find enough time to read all these books.

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Buy Samantha’s latest here. We will be donating to the Grace Smith House in honor of Samantha’s labor. Who are your ghosts and how do they return to you?