Reading and writing about Florida women

After reading Kristen Arnett's recent New York Times essay, "Florida women are no joke. I should know," I wanted to go out and buy or borrow all the books she referenced. There are a lot of them. Our excellent library stocks two of them: Arnett's novel "Mostly Dead Things" and Lauren Groff's "Florida." I read Groff's stories about Gainesville and environs and its inhabitants. "Dogs Go Wolf" is a wondrous story about two young sisters (four and seven) stranded on an island. Spooky but funny, too, told with great wit. Arnett mentions this story in her NYT piece because her subject is not just Florida but its women.

Arnett writes about new books and TV series about Florida women. One of those is her debut novel,
“Mostly Dead Things, which I'm reading now:

The protagonist, Jessa-Lynn Morton, works in taxidermy, at a family business based in Central Florida. The story concerns grief and loss and love, but also how death and birth feel intrinsically linked in the Sunshine State. 

Here are three others that get right the "details and nuances" of being a woman in Florida.

Earlier this year came T Kira Madden’s memoir, “Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” which takes a specific look at young queer girlhood in Boca Raton. Last year, in the story collection “Florida,” Lauren Groff wrote about a Central Florida that focuses more deeply on Ocala and Gainesville, places that have a deep tradition of life lived in the natural environment. Jaquira Diaz’s “Ordinary Girls,” a memoir of growing up in Miami and Puerto Rico, drops this fall.

Arnett also talks about the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston who grew up and wrote about Florida long before Disney arrived. Hurston grew up in the little town of Eatonville, now surrounded by housing developments. Hurston interviewed African-Americans around Florida when collecting traditional folk tales and slave narratives. Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is considered a classic.

My sister Eileen, who lives a few miles from Eatonville in Winter Park, sent me a copy of Hurston's "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.' " It's the author's account of interviewing Cudjo Lewis, the lone survivor of the slaver Clotilda, the last known slave ship to dock in the U.S. in 1860. A barracoon was a barracks where slaves were held on the African coast before shipment to America. Many died waiting, but Cudjo did not. Hurston, a writer, folklorist and anthropologist, tracked down Lewis in the 1920s and wrote the book about the experience. She couldn't find a publisher in her lifetime. The first edition was issued last year by the Amistad Imprint of HarperCollins.

Why does this writer who lives in Wyoming care about Florida? I spent my formative years in Central Florida. Our father moved us to Florida in 1964, when I was 13, and I moved to Denver in 1978, when I was 27. Fourteen years in one state gives me some perspective on the place. I lived there when all my senses and sensibilities were sharp. Lessons learned (or not) experience gained (or not) remain with me.

I go there now for funerals and weddings and reunions, as my six surviving siblings live there. The Florida in 2019 is vastly different from the Florida I moved to before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and the Disneyfication of Orlando. I spent hundreds of hours on Volusia County beaches and roamed the coast between St. Augustine and Cocoa. My high school basketball team played in every cracker town from Oviedo near Orlando to Callahan north of Jacksonville. I canoed lakes and creeks and springs and hiked the back country. In Florida, the back country is wooded areas away from settled places. Ocala National Forest, for instance, or the forests that used to crowd the Tomoka and Little Tomoka rivers back before the Florida boom that goes on and on and on....

On the relationship front, I dated Florida natives and recent arrivals from Massachusetts and Ohio. I married a woman from Ormond Beach whose parents came from Brooklyn and then traveled the world as an army family before landing in Florida. I have stories to tell about them all. I've published stories about Florida women. I have written from a woman's POV. I count on the women around me, including those in my writers' critique group, to let me know if I'm on the right track.

In my published book of short stories, four of the 12 stories are set in Florida. They feature Florida women who don't fit easily into the scrappy female survivors described by Arnett. One of my stories centers on just such a person, a young New Jersey woman who finds herself pregnant and isolated in Wyoming. The story, "The Problem with Mrs. P," was also included in the Coffee House Press anthology, "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams."

I thought about Arnett's essay as I read "Mostly Dead Things." I also remembered a big debate I had during a Wyoming Arts Council board meeting about whether taxidermy is an art or a craft. I came down on the craft side while our board member from Ten Sleep described it as an art.

As I'm finding out in Arnett's book, we were both right -- taxidermy is an art and a craft. And if you are queasy about the details of taxidermy, you may not get past chapter one. I'm in chapter three and still reading.

Excuse me while I get back to the book.