Writing Louisville: An Interview With Kristen Gentry

Writing Louisville: An Interview with Kristen Gentry by Keyona Hughes

The linked stories in Kristen Gentry’s debut collection, Mama Said, new in 2023 from West Virginia University Press, are set in Louisville, Kentucky, and follow JayLynn and her cousins Zaria and Angel, as they come of age while struggling against their mothers’ drug addictions. As a journal based in Louisville, Miracle Monocle has a special interest in exploring a collection of stories set in the context of the city’s rich (and complex) history.

Gentry’s award-winning fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Electric Literature, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She’s a VONA and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference alumna, the former Director of Creative Writing at SUNY Geneseo, and a member of the inaugural Poets & Writers publicity incubator for debut writers. She lives and writes in her hometown of Louisville. Mama Said has been long-listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.

I had the good fortune of corresponding recently with Gentry about the title story in her collection. (To read an excerpt of the story, click here.) The following is a transcription of our conversation, edited lightly for clarity.

Keyona Hughes: Did the setting of Louisville, and specifically the West End, inspire how you went about writing this piece?

Kristen Gentry: I would say yes, for sure. When I was growing up, my grandmother lived right on 45th and Broadway, right across from Shawnee Park. A lot of our days would be spent sitting on the porch. And so when Derby came, people would go cruising up and down on Broadway and they would loop through Shawnee Park, and go around. So we would be there watching everything go down, and so thinking about that definitely inspired “Animal Kingdom.” Thinking about that block also inspired “In Her Image,” wherein Claudia and her husband end up moving there as well. So yeah, it did.

KH: What made you want to go with the second-person point of view with the first story of the book, as opposed to the first person POV you employ throughout the collection?

KG: When I started writing the story, I wasn’t even aware that I was writing in second person. To be perfectly honest with you, I was just writing. The story went through many drafts and then I recognized what I was doing, that it was in second person.

Initially, I think the instinct was to choose second person without me even thinking about craft. I think it was just because the conflict in the story was “very close to the bones” as the writer Crystal Wilkinson would say. And so, JayLynn’s conflict with her mother, telling her she wishes that she could just drive off the bridge, is something that I've heard my mother say before.

The other events in the story are fictionalized, but that’s the nugget of truth that the fiction and the rest of the story surround. And I think that was still very white-hot and tender to me, while I was writing it. To me, instinctually, writing that story in that way was a way of seeking the distance that the second-person offers.

KH: Do you think it was important for the main character’s identity to be juxtaposed with her college roommate’s?

KG: I think that JayLynn and Melissa come from two different worlds. And I think that it's important for them to be juxtaposed because we see JayLynn watching Melissa with her mother and wishing she had that sort of relationship with her mother.

Melissa's mother is prepared and together, meanwhile, Claudia’s mother is in the way and so emotional; she can’t really help. All of these things. So, I think it's important to juxtapose them because Jalen sees Melissa and desires that mother. Still, in spite of having a mother like that, Melissa is a wreck. She’s also very emotionally weak and suffering from depression in the same way that Claudia does.

Melissa even makes that point. Like, just because you have the ideal mother or something like that, doesn’t shield you from the world's woes. It doesn’t solve your problems and so, I think that was an important juxtaposition to show. And even though I think that JayLynn suffers as a result of being a salve and comfort to other people, it also speaks to the way that Jaylen’s mother Claudia isn’t everything she's wanted her to be. By JayLynn having to deal with Claudia, and growing up with the mother who wasn’t always there for her in the way that she wanted, she's learning different sorts of coping strategies—for better or for worse.

KH: It’s a bit of an unspoken rule in the Black community to not speak on mental health matters. How do you think this impacted your main character and how she went about dealing with her own mental health?

KG: I don’t know if she (JayLynn) thinks about the stigma. For her there may be a reluctance to admit the way shouldering the burden of her mother has affected her. I think, for her, it’s more about not wanting to make her mother feel guilty, rather than facing a stigma of like “oh we don’t talk about these things because it’s our business and we keep it in here.”

For her, it was like, “I don’t want my mother to feel that again, and if I let my mother know that I’m sad, I don’t want my sadness to make her sad.” Her silence is more about trying to protect Claudia.

KH: Do you ever feel pressure to speak on “Black” issues to be seen as a credible writer?

KG: I don’t think I feel the pressure to write about Black issues because these issues are always swirling in my head anyway. We don’t always get our stories told and it’s important. But I don't feel that pressure because they’re always pressing on me.