Queer Memoir + Rhizomes with Serena Chopra
Queer Memoir + Rhizomes
with Serena Chopra
"...when you approach something that you don’t quite understand, is your first reaction to put it into economies of meaning that you already know, to straighten it, or do you approach it with curiosity and allow it to shift you, as well?"
In preparing for and then having my latest podcast conversation, this time with Serena Chopra—a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, and visual and performance artist—I've done a lot of reading about rhizomes.
If you're not familiar with the word, you're likely familiar with some of its plants and foods: bamboo, ginger, turmeric. One of my favorite definitions so far comes from Biology Online, which says "Rhizomes are specialized forms of stems that can produce new shoots and roots while staying underground. These rhizomes store proteins, nutrients, starches, and glucose to help plants survive unfavorable environmental conditions."
So while they may partner with shoots above ground, they really grow under it, outside of our natural vision. There's no single "node" from which growth radiates, either; instead, they send out life from several branches, cooperating to stay alive when outside conditions get harsh.
This way of being—this way of surviving—is one familiar to queers and other marginalized folks. Collaboration, decentralized leadership, and mutual aid aren't political rhetoric so much as the most logical way to exist, given your environment.
And in these environments, which tend to flatten our narratives, we naturally seek out resonant, alternative metaphors, searching for echos of our own experience, hungry to know we're not alone. We want to witness the possibility of survival outside the binary. Or, in fact, evidence that we might even thrive in it. Thankfully, nature is abundant with alternative metaphors.
Rhizomes are just one of them.
But lest any of that be read as victim mentality, let me be clear: Queers and marginalized folks have a way of reclaiming the margins as a place of power, which is exactly what Serena and I discuss in this episode, including:
- How she sees contradictions as “the situation of life.”
- How queer narratives don’t have to be “legible” or easily consumable.
- The ways we repress our visionary intuitions in order to fit inside of institutions.
- "Arborescent” versions of intelligence vs. “rhizomatic” versions of intelligence.
- How poetry eventually helped her understand more “rhizomatic” ways of being.
- The best advice she’s ever had, which came from a dance teacher.
- And so much more.
Still, even if you don't identify with the word "queer," this conversation will resonate if you've ever felt like your own story simply didn't fit into whatever mold you've been told it should.
I hope you enjoy it.
Listen Now
EP 007
Queer Memoir + Rhizomes
with Serena Chopra
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Related Reading & Listening
In addition to the episode's show notes, including links to buy Serena's work, here are some great pieces that connect to our conversation, and they came directly from her—
- Cecilia Vicuña's "Language Is Migrant," which is so good that it prompted me to earnestly tweet about why I'm so grateful to be doing this podcast. Fittingly, I love this relevant quote from the piece: "Life regenerates in the dark. Maybe the dark will become the source of light. I see the poet/translator as the person who goes into the darkness, seeking the 'other' in ourselves, what we don't wish to see, as if this act could reveal what the larger world keeps hidden."
- H.D.’s Notes on Thought and Vision. The related book suggestions at that link also make me want to spend a lifetime reading "Writers Writing About Writing."
- And, Teresa Hak Kyung Cha's book, Dictée. Alexander Chee, of course, explains its relevance and beauty better than I can: "I love the way it remains as radical a text as it was when I first found it, daring to hold a space open somewhere in between several genres, and to let tensions remain unresolved, or ambiguous, to pursue if not the articulation of the inarticulate, then, to let the reader experience what is inarticulate within themselves still in a space that makes room for it or even values it."
Know of someone else connecting the seemingly un-connectable or talking about why it matters? Think I should interview them? Reply here and tell me!
Brandi Stanley
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