Interview
In Search of a Home: AN INTERVIEW WITH Sarah Fawn Montgomery
BY Ellie Cameron, Caitlin Hertzberg, Frank Penick & Amanda Smera
March 2023
Photo by Braydn Reynolds
Essayist and poet Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home, Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir and numerous other publications in multiple genres. Born in California, she currently resides in Massachusetts where she serves as an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University. Her latest essay collection, Halfway from Home, is a journey through time, place, and memory, exploring the complexity of home and human relationships. As she looks inward, she examines how external forces can disrupt our lives and the places we call “home.”
Glassworks Magazine (GM): Your debut nonfiction book Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir is described as a “blend of memoir and memoir with literary journalism.” You take on the great challenge of both telling your own history and America’s history of mental illness treatment, which is no small task. Why did you include other narratives alongside your own journey with mental illness? And how was the process of conducting external research for a project that is ultimately focused on your own personal story?
Sarah Fawn Montgomery (SFM): There is a lot of shame surrounding mental illness and much of this comes from the misconception that the sufferer is alone. I positioned my story within a larger conversation about mental illness in this country so readers could see that I am one of millions of Americans that struggles with mental health. Similarly, much of the stigma surrounding mental illness comes from blaming patients, so positioning my struggle alongside an analysis of America’s history of treatments was a way to reveal how difficult it is to treat mental illness despite many options.
Reflecting on the fact that America continues to have some of the highest rates of mental illness in the world suggests that it is not the fault of patients, but rather the result of larger systemic forces in this country. Conducting research was initially a way for me to understand my symptoms, but it eventually became a way to understand my story. I don’t think I would have had the courage to tell my story if I hadn’t also encountered the stories of many other mad women, many other patients experiencing medical sexism and racism and ableism. Nor would I have been able to write a cultural critique of medical care in this country if I hadn’t known America’s history of eugenics and abuse.
GM: In your essay “What’s Form Got to Do With It?: Finding Shape in Memoir Projects,” you talk about embracing the madness of mental illness when writing Quite Mad. When getting Quite Mad published, what was the biggest challenge you faced as a result of that madness and the stigma that surrounds mental illness?
SFM: The biggest challenge of publishing a mental illness memoir was rejecting the inspirational and recovery narratives that so many people expect from disability narratives. Many stories about mental illness involve some kind of healing: a magic pill or moment in the person’s life where they are suddenly cured. We see these narratives all the time in commercials for antidepressants, or in movies or memoirs where someone who has suffered suddenly figures it all out and lives happily ever after. In a way, our insistence on this narrative makes sense—mental illness is frightening and this narrative anesthetizes that fear. But it’s also not accurate. Many people with mental illness will struggle throughout their lives.
With Quite Mad, I wanted to write a narrative where the narrator is not cured, but finds happiness anyway. I wanted to write a narrative where there is no simple solution, but where the narrator learns to come to voice and love herself, not in spite of her illness, but perhaps because of her illness and the ways that it teaches empathy, patience, and gentleness in a world where these aren’t always valued.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery (SFM): There is a lot of shame surrounding mental illness and much of this comes from the misconception that the sufferer is alone. I positioned my story within a larger conversation about mental illness in this country so readers could see that I am one of millions of Americans that struggles with mental health. Similarly, much of the stigma surrounding mental illness comes from blaming patients, so positioning my struggle alongside an analysis of America’s history of treatments was a way to reveal how difficult it is to treat mental illness despite many options.
Reflecting on the fact that America continues to have some of the highest rates of mental illness in the world suggests that it is not the fault of patients, but rather the result of larger systemic forces in this country. Conducting research was initially a way for me to understand my symptoms, but it eventually became a way to understand my story. I don’t think I would have had the courage to tell my story if I hadn’t also encountered the stories of many other mad women, many other patients experiencing medical sexism and racism and ableism. Nor would I have been able to write a cultural critique of medical care in this country if I hadn’t known America’s history of eugenics and abuse.
GM: In your essay “What’s Form Got to Do With It?: Finding Shape in Memoir Projects,” you talk about embracing the madness of mental illness when writing Quite Mad. When getting Quite Mad published, what was the biggest challenge you faced as a result of that madness and the stigma that surrounds mental illness?
SFM: The biggest challenge of publishing a mental illness memoir was rejecting the inspirational and recovery narratives that so many people expect from disability narratives. Many stories about mental illness involve some kind of healing: a magic pill or moment in the person’s life where they are suddenly cured. We see these narratives all the time in commercials for antidepressants, or in movies or memoirs where someone who has suffered suddenly figures it all out and lives happily ever after. In a way, our insistence on this narrative makes sense—mental illness is frightening and this narrative anesthetizes that fear. But it’s also not accurate. Many people with mental illness will struggle throughout their lives.
With Quite Mad, I wanted to write a narrative where the narrator is not cured, but finds happiness anyway. I wanted to write a narrative where there is no simple solution, but where the narrator learns to come to voice and love herself, not in spite of her illness, but perhaps because of her illness and the ways that it teaches empathy, patience, and gentleness in a world where these aren’t always valued.
GM: Also in “What’s Form Got to Do With It?” you mention how the nontraditional form of Quite Mad influenced your recent essay collection Halfway from Home being a “lyric and strange” memoir with a blend of forms. How did you navigate the balance of the layers and forms you worked with in Halfway from Home?
SFM: This collection is about nostalgia, time, memory, and history, none of which are linear. Instead, the essays use artifacts, layers, repetition, all of which I replicated in forms and structures of the essays. One essay, for example, is structured using dig sites from my personal life in the same way archeologists unearth artifacts. Another is structured with sections titled after various rocks and gemstones, the same way we learn about place by examining the fossil record. Another is structured with sections titled after cardinal directions and map making terms. This allowed me to build theme through both topic and structure, and also allowed the collection itself to operate as a collage, gathering moments and memories across stretches of time and place.
SFM: This collection is about nostalgia, time, memory, and history, none of which are linear. Instead, the essays use artifacts, layers, repetition, all of which I replicated in forms and structures of the essays. One essay, for example, is structured using dig sites from my personal life in the same way archeologists unearth artifacts. Another is structured with sections titled after various rocks and gemstones, the same way we learn about place by examining the fossil record. Another is structured with sections titled after cardinal directions and map making terms. This allowed me to build theme through both topic and structure, and also allowed the collection itself to operate as a collage, gathering moments and memories across stretches of time and place.
"Much of the stigma surrounding mental illness comes from blaming patients, so positioning my struggle alongside an analysis of America’s history of treatments was a way to reveal how difficult it is to treat mental illness despite many options."
GM: When asked about your choice of telling your story in Quite Mad in a non-linear way, you explain it as the “memoir I needed to read.” Why did you choose a similar structure for Halfway From Home? Do you think the works would have the same effect if they were written chronologically instead of being presented in a non-linear collection of braided essays?
SFM: In Quite Mad, nonlinear form was essential in order to resist the triumphant recovery arc that is so often expected of disabled writers. I used form to render the experience of madness, which doesn’t operate linearly. It is instead full of setbacks and flashbacks, blank spaces and erasures. I use a similar form in Halfway from Home because the book is about memory and nostalgia, grief and healing, which do not operate linearly. Since these experiences are not governed by chronology, form is a way to replicate their fragmentation, repetition, and cyclical nature. By doing so, readers are not only engaging with these ideas as content, but are also engaging in the experience and the effects by the very act of reading.
GM: Who is the audience you envisioned for Halfway from Home? How does it compare to the one you envisioned for Quite Mad?
SFM: The audiences definitely overlap. Quite Mad is for anyone who has experienced mental illness and felt isolated as a result. I wanted that book to be a lifeline for people struggling to understand themselves in a world that says mental illness is shameful. Similarly, Halfway from Home explores collective trauma and grief, and the ways so many of us are searching for home during emotional and environmental collapse. It is my hope that readers who are feeling disconnected and full of sorrow will see themselves reflected in the book, and find a sense of connection in my explorations of nostalgia and the many places I’ve called home.
GM: In your article “Finding Time: Writing Your Book in a Busy World” you say, “Thinking and remembering were all part of the important work of writing a memoir, yet I so often failed to ‘count’ these towards my goals. Now talking to my parents or sister on the phone counted as writing.” Can you tell us more about how the act of thinking as writing impacts the balance between work and life when the two are so intertwined?
SFM: We often talk about writing as a product, which puts an awful lot of pressure on the end result. Today’s hustle culture privileges the finished publication, thereby ignoring the hard work—and the pleasures!—writers experience to get there. Writing is only accomplished because of the process, yet we so often fail to appreciate this. Learning to value the various parts of my writing process—thinking, researching, brainstorming, drafting, and yes, even relaxing in order to get inspired—has reshaped how I see my work.
My job is not to produce. My job is to process. It is as much about sifting through memory, gathering facts, and talking to loved ones as it is about sitting down to write. Instead of feeling guilty for not writing enough, I now consider much of what I do to be a part of writing, so I feel more connected to my work and more confident when I do have time to sit with the page.
GM: The imperfect nature of memory is a period you explore throughout the collection. For example, when you discuss how your father tricked you about finding buried treasure as a child and how the realization as an adult affected you. How do you navigate the use of memory and how it can often be imperfect?
SFM: In Quite Mad, nonlinear form was essential in order to resist the triumphant recovery arc that is so often expected of disabled writers. I used form to render the experience of madness, which doesn’t operate linearly. It is instead full of setbacks and flashbacks, blank spaces and erasures. I use a similar form in Halfway from Home because the book is about memory and nostalgia, grief and healing, which do not operate linearly. Since these experiences are not governed by chronology, form is a way to replicate their fragmentation, repetition, and cyclical nature. By doing so, readers are not only engaging with these ideas as content, but are also engaging in the experience and the effects by the very act of reading.
GM: Who is the audience you envisioned for Halfway from Home? How does it compare to the one you envisioned for Quite Mad?
SFM: The audiences definitely overlap. Quite Mad is for anyone who has experienced mental illness and felt isolated as a result. I wanted that book to be a lifeline for people struggling to understand themselves in a world that says mental illness is shameful. Similarly, Halfway from Home explores collective trauma and grief, and the ways so many of us are searching for home during emotional and environmental collapse. It is my hope that readers who are feeling disconnected and full of sorrow will see themselves reflected in the book, and find a sense of connection in my explorations of nostalgia and the many places I’ve called home.
GM: In your article “Finding Time: Writing Your Book in a Busy World” you say, “Thinking and remembering were all part of the important work of writing a memoir, yet I so often failed to ‘count’ these towards my goals. Now talking to my parents or sister on the phone counted as writing.” Can you tell us more about how the act of thinking as writing impacts the balance between work and life when the two are so intertwined?
SFM: We often talk about writing as a product, which puts an awful lot of pressure on the end result. Today’s hustle culture privileges the finished publication, thereby ignoring the hard work—and the pleasures!—writers experience to get there. Writing is only accomplished because of the process, yet we so often fail to appreciate this. Learning to value the various parts of my writing process—thinking, researching, brainstorming, drafting, and yes, even relaxing in order to get inspired—has reshaped how I see my work.
My job is not to produce. My job is to process. It is as much about sifting through memory, gathering facts, and talking to loved ones as it is about sitting down to write. Instead of feeling guilty for not writing enough, I now consider much of what I do to be a part of writing, so I feel more connected to my work and more confident when I do have time to sit with the page.
GM: The imperfect nature of memory is a period you explore throughout the collection. For example, when you discuss how your father tricked you about finding buried treasure as a child and how the realization as an adult affected you. How do you navigate the use of memory and how it can often be imperfect?
SFM: Memory is a fantastic, fickle thing. It is both concrete and a construct. Memory changes with time, with repetition and our reasons for revisiting. And just as revisiting pleasant memories can reshape them, we can also block out painful memories or rewrite them entirely. As a memoirist, I rely on memory to tell stories, but I’m just as interested in what my reliance on or avoidance of certain memories says about me or my family or my world. I’m also interested in other kinds of memory, like human artifacts and records, and natural and geological history. Memoir is as much about how memory is preserved as it is about memories themselves.
"Memory is a fantastic, fickle thing. It is both concrete and a construct. Memory changes with time, with repetition and our reasons for revisiting."
GM: Halfway from Home explores a variety of themes that you align with your own personal journey. How did you decide on which themes to ultimately include in each essay?
SFM: I wrote much of Halfway from Home during the early months of the pandemic. Like many, I was struggling to focus, struggling to find purpose and connection when the world seemed so chaotic and fragmented. As a result, I told myself that I wasn’t going to try and write a new book. Instead, I was going to write essays about anything that came to mind and brought me solace or helped me work through sorrow. I wrote about nostalgia—childhood adventures with my father, picking berries with my family, collecting stones and shells on the California shore. I also wrote about my fears—the fires and storms ravaging the many places I’d called home, declining moth populations, America’s cruel political climate and pandemic response. Each essay brought about its own topic and theme, but I found myself repeating images and themes. Images of flames, grass roots, and barren branches, and themes of time, longing, and restlessness came up over and over until I realized the essays were part of a cohesive collection.
GM: Halfway from Home touches on the different places you’ve lived and how you’ve felt a certain restlessness. When deciding on what to include in the book, how did the different places factor into your decisions?
SFM: Like many millennials, I was taught that moving away from home was part of making a life for yourself. I grew up in California, but went to graduate school in Nebraska, and eventually accepted a job as a professor in Massachusetts. Though I built a home in each region, I always knew these homes were temporary, that making my way in the world meant abandoning each of these places if and when better opportunities came along. It was important for me to represent these places in Halfway from Home and to explore this misconception that home is permanent. This is also a book about collective loneliness and grief, so collaged memories across place show that despite our current social, political, and environmental climates, we are unified across the many regions of this country in our desire for home and hope.
SFM: I wrote much of Halfway from Home during the early months of the pandemic. Like many, I was struggling to focus, struggling to find purpose and connection when the world seemed so chaotic and fragmented. As a result, I told myself that I wasn’t going to try and write a new book. Instead, I was going to write essays about anything that came to mind and brought me solace or helped me work through sorrow. I wrote about nostalgia—childhood adventures with my father, picking berries with my family, collecting stones and shells on the California shore. I also wrote about my fears—the fires and storms ravaging the many places I’d called home, declining moth populations, America’s cruel political climate and pandemic response. Each essay brought about its own topic and theme, but I found myself repeating images and themes. Images of flames, grass roots, and barren branches, and themes of time, longing, and restlessness came up over and over until I realized the essays were part of a cohesive collection.
GM: Halfway from Home touches on the different places you’ve lived and how you’ve felt a certain restlessness. When deciding on what to include in the book, how did the different places factor into your decisions?
SFM: Like many millennials, I was taught that moving away from home was part of making a life for yourself. I grew up in California, but went to graduate school in Nebraska, and eventually accepted a job as a professor in Massachusetts. Though I built a home in each region, I always knew these homes were temporary, that making my way in the world meant abandoning each of these places if and when better opportunities came along. It was important for me to represent these places in Halfway from Home and to explore this misconception that home is permanent. This is also a book about collective loneliness and grief, so collaged memories across place show that despite our current social, political, and environmental climates, we are unified across the many regions of this country in our desire for home and hope.
Follow Montgomery on Twitter @SF_Montgomery
Find out more about Montgomery on her website: https://www.sarahfawnmontgomery.com/
Read our review of Halfway from Home by Nonfiction Editor Frank Penick
Find out more about Montgomery on her website: https://www.sarahfawnmontgomery.com/
Read our review of Halfway from Home by Nonfiction Editor Frank Penick
