Emory Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing Tiphanie Yanique released and read from her new novel, “Monster in the Middle" on Oct. 19.
The event was part of the Phillis Wheatley Reading series, an annual series hosted by the Creative Writing program, and took place in the Cox Hall Ballroom. It was co-sponsored by the department of Creative Writing and the department of African American studies.
Yanique’s previous publications include a novel “Land of Love and Drowning,” which won the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, short story collection “How to Escape from a Leper Colony” and poetry collection “Wife.”
“Monster in the Middle,” a work of literary fiction, tells the story of a young Black couple: Stella, a teacher, and Fly, a musician, who meet in modern day New York City. It explores themes such as race, identity, religion, desire and love. The novel examines the effect of family history and past generations on their relationship.
The plot shifts between different settings, including the U.S. and the Virgin Islands, and moves across decades.
Jericho Brown, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing, commenced the event with a brief overview of the schedule.
Poet and author Emily Pérez, who wrote “What Flies Want,” winner of the 2021 Iowa Prize, introduced Yanique. Their friendship goes back 18 years, when Yanique and Pérez met at their MFA program at the University of Houston. Pérez emphasized that the book was about stories, and the role they play in our lives. Its characters write their own stories, speaking directly to the reader, who is treated as another character.
“In a harrowing chapter set in NYC, during a protest of George Floyd’s murder, three white policemen invade Stella’s apartment while she and Fly make love,” Pérez said. “The two are stripped of privacy and power, and in that raw state they must figure out who they are to each other.”
Pérez also introduced the protagonists and central conflict, describing the book as being about love. While the relationship between Stella and Fly is already difficult, they are also affected by the relationships each of them had before their romance, some parent-centered and occurring before they were born.
Stella and Fly’s love story is not just their own. It is influenced greatly by their “inheritance,” or the history of their families and ancestors, who are responsible for their monsters — their causes of conflict.
“We learn that the monsters we possess are part of our deep inheritance, part of what we bring to the table on that first date,” Pérez said. “What ‘Monsters in the Middle’ shows us is that by seeing these monsters and accepting them, and even in loving them, maybe we can come to see and accept ourselves and each other.”
Yanique read a few sequential chapters from the novel, keeping the audience engaged through her voice modulation and expressions. She then invited the audience to ask questions about the book.
Elaborating on her inspiration for the work and her reason for using the hero’s journey structure in one chapter, Yanique questioned the universality of the writing format.
“It turns out that it’s a racist form actually, I think,” said Yanique. “It works really well for white, western masculinity but doesn’t work so well for Black masculinity or for girls. I wondered, OK, I’ll take on this form, and see what happens if I put it into a Black boy’s body. What is this form for? What does it do in the world? How does it help fiction?”
Having already written a novel with a linear structure and a short story collection, Yanique wondered what would happen if she combined the two forms. The novel consists of a collection of stories with an arc and a clear introduction. Every chapter is a self-contained short story but is connected to the one before and the one that follows, all leading to a conclusion.
“I’m interested in how religion can be a harbor for us,” Yanique said. “Especially knowing how hard it is to be Black or brown or queer or anything in the world, religion can be a safety net in many ways.”
Yanique reflected on wanting to challenge herself to understand the perspective of an African American boy, viewing it as a risk because of the difference of her Caribbean upbringing in the Virgin Islands.
Because Yanique spent 14 years writing the book, she said she hopes she made Fly “believable, real and relatable,” especially to young Black boys.
When talking about the writing process, Yanique stressed the importance of experimentation. The story opens with a letter and ends with a structure she invented — one that she created for political reasons.
Audience members noted that Yanique’s conversational tone and light-hearted jokes elicited laughter and nods of agreement among listeners.
“I just think her style of writing is amazing,” Nico Mestre (25C) said. “You could tell she really cares about sharing her work. The fact that she chose to read the section about the college student made it so relatable to us — the audience felt engaged.”
Advanced English students shared Mestre’s sentiments.
“The book is really funny and well-written,” said Angela Tharpe, a first-year English PhD candidate. “It’s easy to follow along and is engaging throughout; it feels like it’s happening in real-time, like on TV.”
“Monster in the Middle” challenged existing and accepted literary structures, and Yanique asked audience members to do the same: “What are some forms that we can create to serve us better? What forms can we dismantle?”
She also foreshadowed how she employed her creative process in writing the novel, saying, “I don’t believe in endings, as a fiction writer, but also as a person.”
