Pam Houston is the author of the memoir “Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country,” “Cowboys Are My Weakness” and “Air Mail.” Houston teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing MFA program, is a Professor of English at the University of California-Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. She lives in Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Pam Houston: The editor of Torrey House Press, Kirstin Johanna Allen and I, were at an event for a book THP did in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Gila Wilderness, called “First and Wildest.” We were waiting for our turn to go on stage—the Dobbs decision had just come down.
I said, “You know what is crazy? I got my first period the same month Roe v. Wade was ratified, and I am only just now fully in menopause at the time of its demise. Roe v. Wade corresponded precisely with my entire reproductive life.” Kirsten said, “You want to write a book about that? For the 2024 election?” I said, “Yeah. Maybe I do.”
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Houston: The book is made up of 60 mini chapters, one for each year of my life. Some of them are researched passages on the history of abortion in America and the fallout since Roe went down. Some of them are my personal history with abortion. Some are from my childhood, and how in the absence of real parenting, I let myself be parented by the Earth.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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Some are extended metaphors that feel related. This is a sampling of how the book moves, from chapter to chapter to give you an idea of the voice as well as the juxtapositions. They appear in the same order in the book as they do here, but in the book there are a lot of other chapters in between.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Houston: Like many people, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 changed my relationship with my country forever. I am an educator and the demographic I work with most often are women and men and non-binaries between the ages of about 18 and 35.
While there are a million ways Trump and the people who run him have hurt them, have hurt all of us, have hurt the Earth, and all our global relationships, there is something so basic about having the right to one’s own body. I have heard it said it is the first human right, the one from which all other rights stem.
The end of Roe v. Wade, at the hands of corrupt judges handpicked by a known rapist, was just too much for me, and dovetailed too perfectly not only with the timing of my reproductive life, but also with my abuse history. And then there are the beautiful, powerful young women who I enumerate near the book’s end, the ones who will continue the fight after my generation is gone. The ones who are going to elect Kamala. They influenced and informed the project as they influence and inform my life every day.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Houston: I learned even more about how this country consistently has failed women. I did not, for example, know before I wrote the book that the U.S. is 61st in the world for maternal mortality, even though we individually spent more on pre- and post-natal care than any other nation in the world.
“Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom”
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This will get far, far worse as more and more clinics and practitioners leave states where abortion is banned or restricted. And yet, we take the choice away from women who do not wish to risk their life this way, or do not have the means and/or the desire to care for the baby after it is born. As one title in my book posits, “that is some sick shit.”
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Houston: Honestly, I enjoyed writing this book, once I found the form. I felt empowered to rage a little (often in good humor), which is always a happy thing for a woman my age. The most serious challenge in writing the book was how fast the news cycle moves, in general and on this subject in particular.
Articles fell into my inbox every day, the landscape was changing at lightning speed, but at a certain point we had to go to press. There was a feeling that I couldn’t keep the world still long enough to finish the book, but of course I don’t ever want the world to be still—I want it to move forward—so I got over it.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing – a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Houston: I don’t ever think a reader should do anything but think for themselves, and feel the things a book makes them feel. If you were to ask me what I hope for the book? I hope it gets people (of all genders) out to vote. I hope it starts conversations that friends have been afraid to have with each other about their own experiences with abortion. I hope it makes some readers have mercy on themselves. I hope it makes some readers feel free.
SunLit: Was it hard to reveal such personal details about your own experience with abortion?
Houston: Not really. It was embarrassing to realize I wasn’t at first sure whether I had had two or three abortions, but then I wrote my way through it by putting that uncertainty on the page. However hard writing it, it is a total walk in the park compared to waking up every morning understanding that I am not, according to the laws of this nation, in control of what happens inside my body. Women and girls kill themselves because of this fact every single day.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Houston: I am writing a collection of essays that primarily deal with the “more than human” world. Animals, in most cases, Icelandic Horses and Sub-Saharan creatures of all kinds and my good dog Henry, the Mexican Grey Wolves, and the sheep I have raised for 20 years. Also, the youngest island in the world off the coast of Greenland, the desert-adapted species in the Namib desert and something yet to be determined about the Galapagos.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Houston: Editing, By far. Writing is like jumping off a cliff into a deep dark pool of water, editing is flipping over and backstroking to shore.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Houston: In junior high I wrote a story about being a roadie for the Rolling Stones. I’m sure it was absolutely terrible, but I thought I was pretty cool.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Houston: James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Houston: The metaphor knows more than you do. (I’m afraid I am quoting myself here.)
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Houston: I just gave 3,000 books to the New Mexico State Penitentiary. What I kept would be a fairly accurate portrait. Lots of short story collections and poetry, lots of horses and dogs.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Houston: Either silence or Sigur Rós
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
Houston: So many. Wilco, The Jerry Cans, Michael McDonald, Paul Simon, Margo Cilker, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, Natalie Maines.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Houston: When I was in 8th grade, I got to be an exchange student in Wales. It was the best year of my childhood by far. My Welsh family took me to see “Henry V” in Stratford, with Kenneth Branagh playing Henry, giving the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from a three-step stool to an empty stage. Not a horse or a suit of armor or a dead body in sight. It blew my head off, the power of language.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Houston: Being boring.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
Houston: Nailing a scene. Any scene. Or even just that feeling when you think you have nailed the scene, even when you turn out to be wrong the next morning.