Astra

Author Cedar Bowers joins the podcast to discuss her 2021 debut novel Astra. The book follows the life of a young woman who is born on a B.C. commune from the perspective of 10 different people.  Cedar discusses life growing up in a remote community, the failed promise of the back-to-the land movement and if we can ever really know somebody.

Books and Resources discussed:

Astra by Cedar Bowers
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

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Transcript

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So, those are kind of my people, the people who are a little lost, patching together a life making lots of mistakes, they don't really have a plan from A to Z or how they want to get there. And I had wanted to see that more in novels. Like that was sort of what I'd always been looking for is like where's the last person that has nothing dramatic going on life? Hello, welcome back to the Red Fern book review. I am your host, Amy Mair. And today we are joined by the co author, Cedar Bowers, very excited. I have just finished her book. It came out a couple years ago, but it's excellent. It's called Astra and it was nominated for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. And it's about a young girl named Astra who grows up on a commune in British Columbia. And cedar herself divides her time between Galliano, Island and Victoria. So with that, I want to say hello, cedar. Hi, Amy, thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to meet you. Now, before we get started, I'm just so we're on video here. I see you've got a really beautiful looks like library in the back. So tell me about that. Because you know, on Instagram or you see all these kind of dream libraries, it sort of looks like that, like, looks like you've got a little place in the woods with like floor to ceiling books. Tell me Tell us about that. It is yeah, it's a wall of books that actually serves as behind it is one of my children's bedrooms. So it was a way to build a little room in the living room. So it's like sound insulates. And yeah. So that was like how we get a big bookshelf and a wall into a little little place. Yeah, I like that. Okay, so I have got a lot of questions for you. But the first thing I wanted to ask, I had known about this book, and it has has gotten great reviews. And obviously it was nominated for some prizes. But I kind of put it off mainly because to me it was you were looking at some topics that you often see in Canadian literature, like nature was a big part self identity. By looking at Astra it makes you contemplate social issues. And I don't know, it just seemed a bit serious. And I wasn't sure if I was in the mood. And so I I picked it up mainly because with this podcast, I like to explore a variety of things. And I just, I couldn't put it down. And I wanted to know, in your opinion, why do you think you? How were you able to write a book that on the face of it is a bit serious, but it has a lot of agency? And I think it's a page turner? So can you explain that? Yeah, I a lot of people have said it's a page turner? Well, I had described it at the beginning, which my agent quickly told me to stop doing but I'll do it now is very quiet. And like not much happens. It's not plot driven at all. It's a character driven novel. I agree with that. Yeah. So but I think that why you get that momentum and the page ternary type feeling is it leans a lot on kind of short story collections, you are getting a new voice each time you are you start to get the rhythm where you anticipate where you're going to see Astra next, and then what environments you're going to find her in and who she's going to be interacting with. And so that in itself gives you an urgency to get into the next chapter and see where she's landed and who she's dealing with and who she's loving and who's loving her or hating or whichever is happening. And so I think that gives it a momentum and let's not read too quiet or serious. Yeah, I think that I think that's what it is that makes it be a page turner. And how did you come up with this? And why did you come up with this structure? I mean, it was a mixture of a lot of things. I started deciding I was going to try to write and I wrote one short story. That was really bad. And it was about a man who basically was laying on To bridge and he's really high on magic mushrooms. And he was contemplating how much he didn't want to have a kid that this woman was in the middle of having. It was not a good story. And then I started another one that was about a girl who lived on a commune. And she was kind of being followed around by a boy. And then at a certain point, while writing that chapter, I was like, maybe this is the daughter of the man who was on the bridge. And then I started to think about, I've always, there's a lot of novels that I like that have a sort of a short story quality, where you're kind of piecing together an environment as a kind of a character of its own. Or you're getting a view of a certain family from different angles. And, but I've never really seen it about one person. So then I thought, well, what if I can keep doing this and writing about one person from different people's perspectives at different angles, then you'd sort of the reader, we get to build their own opinion of Astra, well, never really knowing her, and it would sort of mirror life. If you live in a small town, I grew up in a small town. And so you would like hear about certain characters on the island and use your tons of stories about them all these different people's perspectives. And maybe you'd never actually had a conversation with themselves, but you had this idea of who they were, and you're bringing in your own judgments, and what you've heard, and I kind of wanted to build a person that way so that the reader would be bringing in their judgments and their perceptions, while reading other people's judgments and perceptions. And really, it's just a mess where nobody knows who's right and who's wrong, just like life. So yeah, that was where the idea came from a bit of a mess and an accident. That turned into a plan. Well, and how did you decide on Astra if you had a few characters floating around? How did you decide she was going to be the center, the center of the book? Yeah, that's a good question. I guess because I did want to explore a person who'd grown up in this sort of counterculture movements. I wanted to back to the lander character, or a child that had lived through that to kind of examine the types of parenting or lack of parenting, guidance and lack of guidance that I was familiar with, that I grew up around that I'd seen. And especially for women who grew up in that environment where they were often put in precarious situations, unsafe situations weren't given much guidance, and then were left to go out into the world that was actually quite structured very differently than where they came from. So that she was always going to be I mean, is she the main character, she is the main character, I guess. But yeah, I wanted to focus the focal point to be on her and how people could misunderstand her and not know her history. And then She misunderstands other people and how the world works because of her history and that sort of playing off of each other throughout the whole novel and as she ages. So that I wanted to ask you about Galliano islands. So when I Your name is cedar, cedar Bowers, I've put Galliano Island, and then you wrote about this person back to the land person, I sort of just assumed until I read about you that maybe you'd spent time on a commune and you haven't. So what, tell me a little bit about a little more about what that was, like, I guess, assuming that you kind of went to school with some of these kids, or what interactions did you have with them? Or what were your perceptions? Yeah, like, I feel like I grew up at the tail end of everything. So Astra was born in 1970. And I was born in 1980. And so I wanted her to be one of the kids that actually went through the whole rise and the fall of this sort of utopian idealist sort of intentional community era. When I was born, my parents had lived in communes before me in Vancouver, and I won't get into that but in I was like the decision The responsible decision afterwards where they decided okay, we're going to be a nuclear family of three and move to Galliano Island, and but we still lived in tents. When my parents built their house, we had no power note, like I had a similar they weren't back to the landers, per se, we didn't grow all our own food, but they did everything themselves. We lived without power for years and had outhouses and it was pretty common here on the island. And then I had many friends who had grown up coming to the galley Anna, where there were many communes, that's how their parents had gotten here. So it was sort of like we were at the tail end of it all, but we knew older kids who kind of lived through it. And then I've always just been drawn to people ever since I feel like I can spot a woman who grew up in and that sort of environment from across the room. I actually have done it many times we will start talking and then we will. Yes, it's like some weird. Yeah, connection of I know you, I know where you came from. So yeah, I just wanted to talk about a woman who had lived in that sort of time and space. So even though I don't feel like I was, I often say that Astra is 5%. Me, I didn't have her experience, but I had enough similar experiences that I found children from this sort of environment interesting. So you were an observer just as a as a writer, as that kind of kind of goes together. So I wanted to talk about well, so in this book, as Sedaris said, it's told from, like a prism, each person that we encounter talks about astrak, but Astra is not speaking for herself until the end. And so my favorite chapter is early on, and there's a character named Kimmy. And she's a young girl, and they come in contact with each other. And see there's going to a reading around this. But I really liked her because I felt two things that she was a girl was a conventional upgrade. So she was a mirror. And then I also started to think, oh, maybe Astro is not so nice, which is always good and a character right? Because then you I also understood why she was making bad choices and a bit need to this girl in a bit possessive. Because she just didn't have the boundaries in our own life. But yeah, what Who's your favorite character? I have to ask. I mean, I do like all the characters, I had to like them to spend time with them. And there was characters who were there that I got rid of overtime. I often say that my favorite character is Doris. Because I kind of consider her to be like the mother of the book. And because she carries a certain weight and burden from starting celestial and kind of being pushed out and not being seen, and I think she's sort of the most loving, even though she's grumpily loving. She's sort of Yeah, the heart of the book in some ways for me, but I know that that isn't true for most readers, it'll be different characters like she's that's just a personal a personal connection that I have with her. Okay, so why don't you do a reading about Kimmy? Sure. So as you said, Kimmy is the person who's telling this chapter about Astra and she's seven and she lives next door to celestial farmer Astra grows up. And her mother, her mother's really nervous and really strict. And so every afternoon she has to spend two hours in her bedroom having quiet time while her baby sister is sleeping. So this is the end through this time, she's bored. She's looking out the window and she kind of meets a girl through her window, and she decides that she's going to sneak her in. So this is the moment that she sneaks this girl in through her window. Hi, Kimmy whispers breathless. You can come in but you've got to be very, very quiet. The girl grins shimmies over the windowsill and then drops silently to the carpet. She's wearing the same brown corduroy dress she had on yesterday, and Kimmy notices that her legs are covered in bruises and bug bites, and her raggin hair looks as if it had been sheared with a bread knife. When she talks a chunk of his near black ball behind her ear. Kimmy really notices her scars, the tissue tight and shimmery. She's like a character from a book like Gretel, or Tinkerbell or Little Red Riding Hood. brave, courageous. This girl wouldn't blink if she ran into a wild animal or a witch or worse. She isn't scared of strangers and Kimmy can help it. She already loves everything about her. The girl walks around camis room inspecting her toys and tracing her fingers along her shelves. Her filthy bare feet leaving prints of silver and gold on the carpet like fairy dust. Remembering her mother in the next room. Can we quickly pushes her desk chair against her bedroom door and then whispers I'm Kimmy. What's your name? The girl cocked her head and squints quizzically, but remain silent. What's your name? Kimmy asks again. Taking a step closer. The girl plucks a Raggedy Ann doll off the shelf and sniffs its hair before she finally answers. Astra she says as her mouth splits into a grin that exposes two missing front teeth. Oh, that's a nice name Kimmy says shyly remembering to give a compliment just as her mother has taught her to do when I She's introduced to someone new. But you have to be quiet if you want to stay. I didn't tell my mom about you. And she never lets me play with anyone before meeting their parents. Raymond, who's Raymond Kimmy asks, he's just Raymond Astro takes a seat on the edge of the bed and bounces a little on her bum. Kimmy wonders if Raymond is a fairy tale character to you know, I really liked your house. Astra says it's kind of weird and super white. Kimmy smiles and hoping to impress her some more, takes down her backpack from the top shelf in her closet and dumps the contents out onto the bed. Astra fans through one of the notebooks, what's all this stuff for school silly? Oh, I don't go to school. Raymond doesn't believe in it. He thinks kids should learn real skills. He says school only teaches you to be a sheep. Okay, so that I want to ask. I asked you kind of a lot of questions about me move down to the end. about kind of what Astro is about. And so each chapter we can keep talking about this as you hear a totally different viewpoint. And it started to make me wonder, is this even about Astra? Is this about or is this about other people's projections? And are you playing with that? Or are you? Yeah, what's the? That's my first question. Yeah, that is a good question. I mean, there was a funny part. When I first wrote the book, it was called the DECA hedron, which is a dice that Astra carries around with her. It's sort of this talisman that her father gives her a 10 sided dice that she can roll and ask questions. It's sort of like his belief system, and she leans on it in times of struggle. And so that, and there's 10 different perspectives of chat of Astra in the book. So it kind of was a way to the focus was a little bit different when it was not called Astra, when was not called the DECA hedron. But my brilliant agent and editor said it that sounded like a difficult math. Yeah, but ever want to read. So we changed it to which, which I think was the very right decision. But it does turn the focus because I think there is two ways you can look at the book. It's either a book that is about Astra or it's a book about people's perceptions about a person and the like mistakes one could make while judging while thinking you know, about somebody else when you don't about not asking questions about trying to turn somebody love into somebody you want them to be rather than let them be who they are. So I was playing with all of that at the same time. Often while writing, I tried to like imagine that Aster was a real person, and that she receives the book, and then she'd read in, and she'd like, disagree with pretty much everything that was in it. Because I'd be I think sometimes about some of the people who spoke about her maybe she would have forgotten she even met them at all, or they barely mattered to her, or that situation wasn't how she remembered it. So it was always this kind of play in my mind as I was thinking about it as would Astra remember this moment? Would she care? would she tell the story this way? Yeah, so it's both. I'm gonna go with both. That's my answer. Okay, and then further that she does appear to be a chameleon. And it can be the things that you just spoke about. But is that also I'm wondering, partially maybe a survival skill from having a difficult upbringing. She's got to figure things out quickly and get things from people or figure in so is she intentionally a chameleon, do you think? Yeah, I think it's both. I mean, that when I say that, I feel like I'm 5% Astra. I feel like I'm a I've been a little bit of a chameleon myself. There's a couple of things in the book that were similar to my life, like I left as soon as I finished school or sort of finished school, I moved to Calgary and worked in a mall and a guy's clothing store. That was my education. So I there's things I kind of borrowed from life, which is kind of making decisions by the seat of your pants and not really having a plan. So and I've known many, many people like that, like, those are kind of my people, the people who are a little lost, patching together alive, making lots of mistakes, they don't really have a plan from A to Z or how they want to get there. And I had wanted to see that more in novels. I like that was sort of what I'd always been looking for is like where's the last person that has nothing dramatic going on in their life? So that was a goal of mine. had to kind of get that out there in an interesting way, just kind of watching her. But I think you're right that it is a survival skill too. And there's other women in the books, like claudia, who's sort of another older mother figure, who have to bounce around, often on by having boyfriends or having people who will house them. And because they don't have housing security can't make enough money or taking care of children are often having to put themselves in these positions and change for the men in their lives. So that was another thing I want to explore too. Okay, another question in going in a different direction. I listened to an interview, and you said school wasn't really your thing, especially writing and spelling. So that does that mean that I can write a novel one day? How did you? How on earth do you go from not being strong student to writing writing this book? Yeah, I mean, I still am really bad at it. Like, if you're looking for rules, like grammar, I can't tell you, I will ask my children sometimes what a grammar term means because they all know better than I do. I, my brain does not retain rules very well. I've kind of I used to be insecure about it. And now I've taken a different approach. And I look at it, like musician. So there's musicians who learn by studying, they've gone through theory, they know all they know how to read music, they can, they can create by this knowledge, they understand the science of it. And then there are musicians who never have learned how to read music at all, they jam. And they're just as incredibly, you could probably divide the musicians out there, half and half will go each way. So I learned to write by ear. That's how I think of it not by school or being good at spelling or grammar, because I'm still not. Luckily, there's spellcheck. And I read things out loud. I don't know the rules of hat or sentence structure, but I can hear it. And so a lot of my writing process is reading aloud to myself is even recording myself while I read I listened back and that it's the rhythm I understand, but not the rule. So I do believe that anybody could write a book, you don't have to actually know. Yeah, that much about the English language. If you're writing in English. Maybe that's maybe that goes back to why this book seems like a page turner, because maybe you didn't feel bound by specific rules. I don't know. But. Okay, so I have some other questions. Oh, you talk a lot about as Astro moves. So we follow her from the beginning of her Well, early beginning of her life until when middle aged or how old was she? 65 was kind of hard. So then there are a lot of parent and child relationships in the book, but they're not very conventional. So what that's a big theme there, what were you kind of wanting to look at there? Um, I guess I just think that there's lots of unconventional upbringings everywhere, and I've kind of grew up around them. And though mine was more conventional, I have a brother like, I, it's complicated. And I know a lot of people who were raised by people who weren't there, like biological parents, and yeah, I just, it's common to me, that's the part that to me, this world and where she grew up is normal to me. So I explored it. Yeah, but it's, and I knew it's interesting to people. But it was every family that I spent time with every all my best friends had some sort of unconventional family structure or barely parenting, or, you know, it was, it was it was this this was normal to me. So it was easy to write about. Yeah, you have a you have a quote or you say a character says the people you wake up every morning worry about and worry about is your family. Something along those lines? So yeah, that's Doris. And she, because she's trying to figure out how she loves Astra and who Astra is to her. And so and as she considers this, since Astra drives her a little bit bonkers and she kind of can't stand being around her so much. She kind of processes that and realizing that maybe Astra is in fact her family because she's the person that she wakes up worrying about. And I love that because I think that that's kind of true is that if you who you're thinking about when you wake up in the morning is the person who means the most to you, even if you're not thinking positively about them. Okay, another question I have you, we, I don't know how you wrote the book. But it's everybody is writing about their feelings about Astra and then she emerges in the final chapter. So if you wrote it in order, you would have had time to think about her. And I'm sure you mapped out a little bit about who you thought she was. But then when you wrote her, was she the same as you initially thought, we're going to present her. That chapter came at the very end, it was like that, originally, I wasn't going to have her speak at all. So which, you know, I think it's funny, having had readers experience something like a wish she had never spoken that kind of like, you know, and then I'm so glad we finally got to hear from her. So it was, you know, it was a decision, I was torn for a while. But then I also knew that Astrid doesn't know this book has been written about her. And so she couldn't exactly. We couldn't hear from her and have her dispute. All the stuff that happened before or her argue against, it had to be a very standalone, just glimpse of her in a moment of time. And so in that way, when a lot of readers struggle with or like this, how do we even know Astra at all question? Do we ever really get to know who she is? Which is sort of question of the entire book? Do we ever get to really know anybody? If that we love? Does anybody really know who we are? I had to have her to stand alone and have a day. And I still don't feel like I know her all that well. I know her in that moment. I know what she's going through with her dad. I know that she has a new neighbor, friend. But I don't know how she feels about all these people that came before. I don't know how she feels about her life. I just know where she is at that moment. Um, okay, so I want to ask you more about the here and now. First of all, what are you what are you reading right now? Are there any books you're really excited about for this year, or that you've read recently in the last year that you could recommend? Yes, I've been on a bit of a West Coast B C kick lately, which has been really awesome. So was it it was over New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day, I read a minor chorus by Billy Ray Belcourt. And it was so incredible. And he's so emotionally intellectual, that I often had to put the book down and stare at the wall and just like decide I should never write again, it was one of those books where it made me really want to quit because it's the exact kind of book I would want to write but can't. So I really enjoyed that. I've been recommending that to everybody. And then I read the island of forgetting BY JASMINE Seeley. Which is like the story it's in Barbados. And it's a story of a hotel and family of this kind of you follow a family after an event. And through years, their life and different generations and I was so well written and so well crafted. I could not put that book down it was beautiful bowl. And then right now I'm reading we measure the earth with our bodies by tears during Yazoo Allama llama. And it is I'm only like a third of the way into it. And I know we're gonna get to follow this family through generations. And it is just gorgeous. I love it to those. Yeah, those are my three most recent rates. And what are you working on now? Like, do you have a project on the go right now? Are you thinking about what you're going to write next? I know, that's a hard question for authors. No, I am. I think I'm nearing finishing another novel. It's good to see that I'm putting it together behind the computer. It's all stacked out in papers. Yeah, I'm writing another novel, which is about two families and friendship between these two families and sort of a friendship triangle and a love triangle. And yeah, that's what I've attempted. So they can be set. And yeah, it's mostly Vancouver, but a little bit in California, a little bit in England. And it takes place in the late 50s, early 60s. It's like my grandmother's generation. And that's Yeah, and it's kind of about the patriarchal effects of on women on in the mental health system and doctors and control over women's bodies and these two women and their kind of way of trying to survive in their two relationships. Okay, Oh yeah, well um I think that's about those are about all my questions and I just wanted to highly recommend the book and I had Jen said Quan Li on last week we talked talked about superfan if you read superfan yet not wait, I'm so excited about it. It's really good. And I love that she Yeah, it's it's excellent. But she said that she's compared you and she's told you this to Margaret Lawrence's stone Angel. That's what she compares Astra to. Which for those listening not in Canada, that's a classic Canadian bucks. So that's, that's very high praise. I think. So anyway, thank you so much. I know your bear is very, very high praise when she told me that I still couldn't believe she read my book. Even just Jen. Oh, seriously. Oh, yeah. No, she, yeah. She loved your book, because I told her you're coming on. She was like, Oh my gosh. Anyway, thank you so much theater for joining. And I had a lot of time. Had a lot of fun spending time with you today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. That was really fun. It was nice to chat with Esther with you. Okay, thank you. Bye, I. Have voicemail, and I would love it if you sent me a note. So you can access my voicemail from my website at Redfern book review.com And you'll see a little black and white icon that says voicemail. So just click on that and follow the prompts. And I've even downloaded a little old fashioned voicemail sound effect. So I'm planning for those of you who send me messages, I will respond and I will put some of them on air. So I would love that because podcasting is really a one way medium. And I would like to open it up and find out what maybe you'd like to hear on a future episode what you thought of an episode or just say hi. So some, you know, okay, I'll talk to you later. Bye