by Lori M. Myers, Interviews Editor
Evangelical beliefs are somewhat a mystery, but not to Megan Hustad, author of More Than Conquerors: A Memoir of Lost Arguments. She spent her childhood moving from America to the Caribbean and then the Netherlands and back to America with parents who were struggling missionaries.
Hustad experienced her own struggles as a result – of not fitting in, of doubts of faith – and it’s these human trials along with the changing religious landscape as she moved from country to country that she relates to her readers.
This prolific writer (she also wrote How to be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work) also founded Wherewithal Press in 2005 which provides editing services to published and amateur writers.
Lori: Many say memoir should be written not only for the writer who writes it but also for the audience. Who did you discover was your audience for More Than Conquerors?
Megan: I’d say that’s true. Most memoir comes from some place of injury, real or perceived, so you sit down to type imagining there must be someone else out there who has felt similar pains, and perhaps your literary efforts will bring them some relief. That’s the hope, anyway. But that More Than Conquerors found a receptive audience amongst many devout Christians—who never strayed the way I have—was a real surprise to me. I mean…the book’s unsparing in some of its criticisms. I’ve also received letters from people who were raised atheist, who never understood the attractions of Christianity at all, and after having read this book, they understand the “why” of belief better. Not converted by any means. They’re just open to the possibility that not everyone who professes faith in God is a total idiot. For many readers, that’s a huge concession.
Although this is your story of growing up with an evangelical Christian family, how much actual research did you have to do? What areas of research did you have to delve into?
Midway through the first draft I started to panic that I didn’t know enough about two things—one, the beginnings of the use of broadcast media to evangelize, which would be the 1920s, roughly; and two, the political-cultural shift from the “Jesus freak,” lefty, progressive Christianity of the American 1970s to its near opposite, i.e. the era of Falwell’s Moral Majority and the ascendance of the religious right in the late ’80s. The differences were just so, so stark—not only in tone, style, and politics, but in fundamental theological understandings.
Anyhow, I had witnessed these tensions in person, but I also wanted to know how representative my parents’ experiences were. So I relied on historians’ work. Also on anthropologists’ work on Bonaire (the island where my family lived for five years). I had all these disjointed memories, records of what my parents thought and felt and understood at the time, but I wondered how much of it was accurate, particularly as regards local superstitions and syncretic rituals. I’m happy to say it mapped pretty well. And I have to give a shout-out to the New York Public Library’s research facilities here because the reach of their collection—on all of these fronts—was incredible.
What sort of residual effects/habits/routines have stuck with you after all those years of living abroad and the uncertainties of your childhood?
Oh goodness. I’ve been accused of being a commitment-phobe on numerous occasions. As a kid, you get used to leaving and being left, so it becomes easier than perhaps it should be. I retain traces of this odd mid-Atlantic accent. People ask where I’m from, I say “Minnesota,” but then I’m almost always met with this look of You’re joking, or You must be really pretentious, and I have to go into the speaking Dutch throughout my childhood thing, all that BBC World Service English at bedtime, etc. The upshot is that growing up with uncertainty equips you well for a creative life.
Your parents set few, if any, limits on what you could read. What has that done for you now as a writer?
Well, I should add that my parents didn’t have to do much policing. I did read The Catcher in the Rye well before I understood half of it, but the books available to us—in English—were mostly edifying, age-appropriate, sometimes extraordinarily fine. The Witch of Blackbird Pond, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, A Wrinkle in Time, the All of a Kind Family series, Anne of Green Gables. But more important to my development as a writer, I suppose, was the general message that books could be trusted. That sounds odd. Not that everything in books was true, or that all books were good, but that books were ultimately about expanding one’s sense of the possible and true. I was an unhappy kid, and books were comforting. Not just for the content, but in and of themselves.
When you’re not writing or living the writer’s life, what do you find yourself doing with your time? Hobbies? Travel? Activities?
Money goes to travel before it’s spent on many other things. I’d rather die having visited friends in Kenya than with a 401(K). I’m grossly irresponsible in that sense. But aside from taking huge risks when it comes to financial security I’m a boring, routine-bound person. I love mornings and get up early. I make myself coffee. I read and (attempt to) pray. I keep a clean house and find grocery shopping genuinely exciting. New York City also provides a lot of free, blown-in-on-the-wind entertainment. You just stumble into it. I realized not long ago that New York sidewalks are a recurring motif in my writing, almost another character, or moral presence. My boyfriend just bought me a beautiful Dutch-style bike, however. Cream-colored and shiny, with a rack for groceries, books and laptop on the back. So some of my walking time will be lost to cycling. I’m looking forward to that change.
You worked in the publishing arena and now help others with your Wherewithal Press. What services do you provide? Why did you decide to create this company?
Thank you for asking! Wherewithal Press provides freelance editorial services, essentially. Some of our clients have book contracts with big publishing houses but want more help than their in-house editor can provide. Others are self-publishing or seeking literary agents. I find myself not acting simply as line-editor, or even just developmental editor, but as writing coach, project manager, one-woman support system. So much of an editor’s work is psychological. If the goal is to help someone produce writing that represents their best and truest selves, that wrestles with important questions that are their questions—not just parroting of received opinions and trends—then just mechanical fixing of grammar and structure won’t be sufficient. A deeper understanding of what the writer is really after, plus a determination to help them get there, is required.
So that’s what Wherewithal Press tries to do. I started the business knowing that old school publishers used to allow editors and writers more leeway, more time, more freedom, to collaborate. I think once the dust settles from the rampant consolidation that’s been underway since I started in publishing, those productive editor-writer partnerships will be the norm once again. Editors, publicists, designers, distributors—all will be chosen independently, and come together in much the way a movie is produced. No crippling overhead, no b.s. office politics. It’s going to be fantastic.
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