THE SEEP: What it means to be human

Season 2, Episode 5 Transcript

(Note: Check out our list of other books by LGBTQIA+ authors at the end of this transcript, which you may purchase on The Lift Up’s shop on bookshop.org.)

T: Happy Wednesday! I’m Tamara Crawford, here with Vina Orden. And this is The Lift Up Podcast — inviting you to discover empowering reads by marginalized writers. In this episode #5, we will discuss the speculative novel The Seep by Chana Porter.

The Seep, published in 2020, has received starred reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Foreword Reviews, and Library Journal. It was an ABA Indie Next Pick for February 2020, An Open Letters Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Book of 2020, and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist.

The book centers on protagonist Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, a fifty-year-old trans woman who struggles with the social transformation brought about by an alien entity called The Seep, which seeks to eliminate all human suffering in exchange for information about what makes humans “human.” It’s a book about social conformity and the displacement of those who resist it. It’s about Trina mourning the loss of friends and even her wife Deeba to this utopia and finding a way to move on nonetheless.

In addition to being a debut novelist, Chana Porter is a playwright, teacher, and co-founder of the Octavia Project in Brooklyn, a program for teenage girls named after the sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, which blends creative writing, art, science, and technology to foster imagination, technical and leadership skills, and community.

So, without further ado, let’s get right to it …

T: Hey Vina! How are you? I can’t believe we have hit the half year point! The time has moved on so fast, and I am super excited to read and talk about this amazingly fun and thought provoking book, The Seep …

V: Hey, Tamara. Yea, time has moved so fast, and I think part of it is the urge to get out of this pandemic already. Actually, I’m a little worried about what that means. You know, are we going back to whatever the way things were, whatever “normal” was, or have we actually learned anything new in this pandemic that’ll change the way we live going forward?

In this context, it makes sense that I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversation we had after reading The City We Became and Friday Black for our sci-fi episode; I can’t believe that was last October already! Those stories — like many in this genre — are set in a kind of post-apocalyptic future. I remember telling you that I really appreciated these stories of futures that is simply an acceleration of the things we’re doing now and project the worst possible scenarios if we keep going the way we’re going. For me, sci-fi/post-apocalyptic reads — especially by writers from marginalized groups — I feel they put a magnifying glass on social issues and help us really understand what’s at stake if we don’t treat our world and each other better, with the dignity that we all deserve.

So in this book, The Seep is actually named after the alien entity that taints the water supply on Earth. It reminded me of The Enemy in The City We Became, a virus that heightens people’s fears and prejudices in an attempt to divide and conquer humanity. But it was a bit of a shock, I have to say, that The Seep isn’t evil — that their purpose is to actually take away human suffering and create some kind of violence-free, post-capitalist, post-racial, gender fluid, religiously agnostic, utopian future.

And actually, as an activist and someone who calls myself a progressive I think a lot about expanding basic rights for all people, developing more sustainable habits — including decentralizing work and moving away from these transactional relationships — I actually felt like I was being challenged by the premise of the book, which is that we aren’t human if we experience only peace, joy, and love without the pain and suffering.

And so it was interesting for me, as I kept reading, that I found that the character I related to the most wasn’t the idealist Deeba but instead her wife, the pessimistic, cynical, contrarian Trina. Trina resists taking The Seep in contrast to her friends, and so she often finds herself at odds with them, you know, when she says something critical about how society and culture has totally devolved when everyone’s high on The Seep, or when she insists on being old-fashioned and presenting as butch in her Old Levi’s, hoodie, leather boots, and jacket — people made fun of her clothing all the time — instead of just using a Seep wand to easily turn her from a trans to a cis person. Her friends keep joking that she would probably feel more at home in The Compound, where this faction of people choose to live and preserve the pre-Seep way of life.

And interestingly, through the course of the book, Trina starts to doubt herself; she says, “… maybe everyone else was right and she was wrong, Trina thought, her center lost and floating. She was a prude, a hack, stuck in her old life, unable to move on.”

But, I actually think it’s admirable that Trina wants to hold on to the past, even if it’s full of really painful things, because she sees it as part of who she is. Part of the reason why she choses to remain trans, for instance, was to remember how much she labored for her body, how “She’d fought and kicked and clawed to have her insides match her outsides” vs. how “now people changed their faces as easily as getting a haircut.”

For Trina, The Seep taking away those painful memories “… wasn’t freedom, it was violence.” And you know, those words, “it was violence”, it reminds me of what scholar Saidiya Hartman refers to as the “violence of the archive,” about the stories that were never documented or that were destroyed, which leaves this gaping hole in our collective histories that have no hope of being filled. You and I, it’s actually something that we talk about time and time again on this podcast.

Toward the end of the book, Trina confronts The Seep, and I thought what she said was so powerful:

“My memories are who I am. You take away my memories, you erase me. Existence is memory. Do you understand? You’d kill me. You’d murder Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, daughter of Rita and Samuel, a child of love. Trans woman. Artist. Doctor. Healer. Native American. Jew. You erase my memories, and you erase my lineage of ancestors — their pain, their triumphs, their passions, their dreams. No matter if the memories bring me pain. It’s my pain! Let me have it.”

I do think that, in the end, Chana Porter is trying to say that of course hoping for a better future is important, but that hope doesn’t mean looking through rose-colored glasses and ignoring the reality that’s in front of us. I like how Porter puts it in an interview with the Chicago Review of Books:

I think we have to be incredibly, proactively hopeful. We have to recognize what is already lost and fiercely protect what we still have — which is a very beautiful planet that still has more than enough for everyone, if we decided to live that way.

T: Yea, no I actually, she is so right when she says that. You know, it is just really cool to be reading another fantasy / sci-fi novel, and as you know I am a huge fan of this genre especially as a member of “Team Escape”! I love how reading this book, just like reading The City We Became and Friday Black helped me to take a time out from this world even though it covered some pretty important social themes. So in the truest escapist fashion, I want to go back to the beginning of the novel, and I just really really loved the way Porter starts this book with the “Tips for throwing a dinner party at the end of the world.” Just that voice that came through the first part of the novel. It was just this playful, reassuring, almost flight attendant like voice; like, ‘get ready for this trip’ you know. It just really made me laugh, and I have to read a part of it just because I think our listeners are gonna just, really going to love the way she starts it. She says:

Relax. People may think they want to indulge, get too drunk, incapacitate themselves with weed, but really, they just want to appreciate this fragile moment while the outside world falls down. Your party should facilitate this easeful enjoyment, not lead loved ones to panic through overconsumption. Be present… Clean your apartment until it sparkles. Shower of course, and anoint your body with fragrant oils, but then wear your most beloved sweatpants. Make a wide selection of delicious food, high in protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Serve wine but also a lovely selection of herbal teas…Be Present. Eventually the conversation will flow to other things — typically, to The Past and How Great It Was, Even Though We Didn’t Know It at the Time, and The Future, that shimmering, mercurial beast, constantly breaking our hearts.

I mean, just the voice; like how calming is that voice?

V: You read it in a calming voice too.

T: But, I mean, it’s like make food that’s “high in protein complex carbohydrates and healthy fats!” It’s like ‘Okay!’ You want to be like ‘Yes, Ma’am!’ But just that call to be present. It’s just like ‘Hey, this is happening to you, so you just have to sit back and be comfy, exercise self care, and just let it happen’.

V: Yea, it’s just like and alien invasion, no biggie!

T: No biggie, just another day in your life! But really, I love this kind of gallows humour as it sets up the book, and you know, when read it, I just I knew I was going to fall in love with this novel.

But, you know, you bring up, going back, you bring up a very interesting point as well about The Seep. Because for some of us, on the surface, what they are offering looks like absolute happiness. I mean, sometimes who wouldn’t want to take away all the bad memories, all the bad experiences and live happy and carefree? And The Seep really do feel like this “cure” they are peddling is what human’s want. For me, they put it best when pleading with Trina a little bit later on in the book, to be allowed in - for her to take them in, and they say:

But The Seep stomped her feet and thrashed her arms like a child having a tantrum. “But you’re still so sad! You’re going to be sad for such a long time! Years and years and years — “ Then her eyes grew wide. “Let me take it away,” said the Seep. Let me take the memories away, and you’ll never know grief again.”

But I do believe Trina is right to hold steadfast, that taking away our memories takes away our existence and kills the person we have become either because of or in spite of our histories and our experiences. And it is important to hold onto it in order to keep moving forward. And it is clear that the Seep, even though it wants to learn about humans, is unable to fully understand them. This also reminds me of another point in the novel where Horizon Line, once an old friend of Trina’s but estranged due to his behaviour and nonchalance in stealing another person’s identity, starts to manipulate The Seep for his own purposes, and the Seep is now experiencing just a fraction of what the humans they themselves have manipulated to feel:

The little voice manifested as hot breath in her ear. Trina listened closer and was surprised to find it was not one voice, but what sounded like dozens of quiet voices speaking in unison. “We don’t know what is happening. We are not all We, We are not unified as We have been since there was Time. It’s almost as if… As if Horizon has harnessed a little bit of The Seep for his own purposes.” The little voices grew dreamy. “Who are we, now that we are not ourselves? Who are we, if we are not the sum of all of our parts.”

And I found this section interesting, especially when they say “Who are we, now that we are not ourselves” because once the people ingested The Seep, they were no longer themselves, at least, not in a way that seemingly allowed full free will. And I think the concept of free will is a complicated one that kind of sort of pops up through the book, right? Is it free will to ingest The Seep or not? What elements of free will still exist if this is an invasion? And it definitely makes for a very interesting and complex conversation.

V: Oh yea, definitely. And I think it’s really interesting how Porter explores this concept of free will through the character of Pina, the cook at a restaurant that serves Jewish comfort food called The Shtetl … Pina also happens to be a bear, like the animal. And she sings this song at the end of the book about a bear cub rolling on her back in the middle of the forest, and then gives this speech toward the end of the book to YD, the restaurant owner who took her in after The Seep invasion. And, I’m just going to read a bit from this section:

I have learned that humans call a group of bears a “sloth” of bears. That is such a thing that humans would do, make up these silly names for groups of animals they don’t even know. “Sloth” is a way of calling someone lazy. But sloths … use their slowness to protect themselves. Before I came to The Shtetl, I was sad about the changes The Seep made in me. I could speak and think about life in a way that was not useful to me. I was no longer really a bear, but I was also not a human. I felt alone. I needed to move slowly in this new time. You gave me a home and a purpose. You never tried to change me. You gave me the protection of your slowness.” Pina raised her glass. “We were sloth, together. And you are always my family …”

What Pina says about finding herself in circumstances that are not of her own making and having to adapt because she was no longer a bear, but forever suspended in this in-between space because she’s not human either, I mean, this is going to sound weird, but it oddly resonated with me as an immigrant. The experience of being an immigrant is kind of strangely similar, especially this in-betweeness.

And I thought, it was interesting, when you first walk into the restaurant, you have to pass a sign that says, “Your homeland doesn’t exist anymore! So get over it, babe!” It makes sense in the context of the novel, but then we also learn that part of Porter’s family came from this part of Russia, that’s now Lithuania, called Pale of Settlement. It’s a place where the Jewish culture once thrived, but it’s a place that literally doesn’t exist anymore. In this way, The Shtetl is significant in this book, just like The Compound is significant, in that it and restaurant owner YD stubbornly try to preserve Jewish culture in this kind of post-religious world of The Seep.

Porter talks about how she was interested in exploring this in the book, “what happens when a place loses its memory?” She says: “My character YD explores this idea further. But everyone is grappling with something that was meaningful to them which is now gone.” I think this is especially relevant with the current escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine. And just to be clear so our listeners have a sense of where Porter is on this very very fraught issue, on her Twitter bio, Porter describes herself as “Jew for a Free Palestine.”

I thought it was also interesting that Porter’s character Trina is Jewish but also part Mohegan and so she carries Oneka as one of her surnames. In an interview with Books Beyond Binaries — and I love this indirect connection with our podcast — Porter talks about a lecture that the author of The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin, gave her students one summer at The Octavia Project, “where she described how when the European colonizers came to our shores, the diseases and violence that they brought to Indigenous peoples were the equivalent of an apocalypse. She cautioned our teens that when writing about apocalypse, don’t lose sight that many groups of people have experienced something similar already,” So Deep. And Porter goes on to say, “I think this is also true when writing about utopia, particularly because The Seep wishes to heal all wounds. We must witness and value past trauma. We also must acknowledge and celebrate what was here before, and is still here.” And I really love that!

In the Books Beyond Binaries interview, Porter was also asked about her thoughts on gender in creating the character of Trina, specifically the way people “expand their gender conceptualization and gender expression that exist sort of outside of these labels that get thrown around all the time.” And I love what Porter says about this:

I’m very compelled by an all encompassing gender, a totality of gender. Most people I am attracted to are gender outlaws in some form or fashion. When I feel too pinned down to one identity, I feel trapped … I love the feminine, and I wish to enlarge and embrace it, rather than belittle or reject it. Did I identify with male characters more as a young reader because they were written to be witty, mysterious, and interesting? If I had Trina to read as a younger person, I think I would have fantasized about being this swaggering butch. Not being Jordan Catalano or Brandon Walsh, which I did instead.

And you know, this is something that came up in our discussion about the book Breasts and Eggs as well, where the three main characters, the sisters Natsuko and Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko, feel trapped by traditional gender roles and expectations and actively question and resist them. We’ve also talked about this in similar experiences of growing up in tradition-oriented cultures, Pilipino and Jamaican respectively, and having to push back against things like the label of “tomboy” for being interested in sports; and when I think about it, having that same experience as a younger reader of being drawn to male characters who were more “witty, mysterious, and interesting.” Even today, I am more likely to pick up GQ for what I find is its really compelling, well-researched, and written features than I am about so-called “women’s interest” magazines. So I do love this really healthy idea of enlarging our notions of what being a woman or “feminine” means, and also what being male or masculine means, because we know how toxic masculinity hurts men as much as it does women and trans people.

T: Indeed, definitely, and you raised some really interesting points there about gender — identity, roles and expectations — and it’s really interesting in how they intersect with the points we’ve raised in previous episodes. I also think the point around the Shtetl is also interesting and the question around what happens when a place loses it’s memory is such an important point, especially in the context of the situation with Palestine and Israel. And I do find it is great to have a view of Porter’s thoughts, because even with out knowing that until we started writing what we wanted to talk about, you know, there were some loose linkages I made in the book, just by being aware of the events going in, just thinking about how it related to displacement, the creating of the Compound, the way the Seep can evict you from your home because theoretically nothing belongs to you anymore specifically… So many things you can dig into there. I also think there are some additional interesting points that the book is making about the consumption of knowledge and experiences, and this reminds me of a point in the beginning when Trina and Deeba hold a dinner party with their friends, and they are discussing between them the Compound and the people cut off from The Seep, and they say:

“Just think about our poor friend in the Compound, cut off from it all.”

Trina snorted. “You can learn things from books, too. Not like anyone reads anymore.”

“Yes, that’s exactly my point,” said Peaton. “Why would you passively read a book, when you can join with the Seep and experience the world on the most visceral and connected level?”

And that brought up two points for me — one was the importance, the necessity of books, and two, going back to the conversation we started earlier on free will, the thought about whose world are you actually experiencing through The Seep? Again, is it the real world and a real experience, or is it an experience fully influenced by the lens of The Seep, sanitized so that the one experiencing it will always have a pleasant, Seep infused experience. I love how these various points in the book prompt such existential questions. Also reminds me of how we had to read Jean Paul Sartre in Upper School French! Ha! But just going back to this point, it made me think of the influence of social media, and even if that may or may not be Porter’s point, I took away from it the idea of being fed an experience (which can be incredibly helpful when there are barriers to actually being able to experience it —that’s another topic for another day!) versus actually experiencing it for one’s self. Again, this is another interesting and complex tangent one can derive from this novel.

V: That’s an interesting connection that you make between The Seep and social media. I haven’t seen it discussed in her interviews (and maybe we should reach out to Porter and ask her!), but maybe we’re already on The Seep! When you think about something like Instagram, which is often filled with images of people smiling and living out their best lives, or you’ve probably seen it, like all these quotes that are life-affirming …

T: I better stop drinking this water!

V: Or, sometimes, you also see the opposite extreme of people bearing their souls to the public the way they’d do in a therapy session. It reminds me of a scene in The Seep where Trina observes that “everyone expected you to talk about your feelings,” from “Joe Shmoe on the street (who) wanted to show you his dream journal” to listening to a “random woman’s latest past life regression while shelving cans of chickpeas” during her last volunteer shift at the food co-op. As Trina points out, in the before-The Seep times, it did take a lot of work to process your own emotions and your childhood traumas before you could even get to the point of sharing it with someone else, let alone strangers. And maybe there is some value in being able to receive affirmations on social media from perfect strangers, but I can also see how that can turn into an addiction and might actually even prevent you from getting the help you need to get at the root causes of whatever issues you’re dealing with.

I do think that Instagram has evolved, especially in the last few years when activists and community organizers have been using it more to get information out and to encourage others to get involved in something else beyond themselves. But even if you follow these activist accounts, you can develop a false sense that you’re changing the world just by liking, reposting, and maybe from time to time signing a petition or donating to a particular cause or issue. But how many of us actually take the time to learn about what those issues are and stay engaged in it for more than a hot second before moving on to the next thing?

I was devastated to learn that people no longer read in The Seep times, and I find it ironic that her friend Peaton thinks reading is passive. I can just see Marshall McCluhan rolling in his grave! It made me think about that saying of his, “the medium is the message,” and the difference between a “hot” medium like a printed book, which demands your full attention — or as Pina the Bear says, a slowing down — in order to get value and meaning out of it; versus a “cool” medium like TV, and perhaps by extension Instagram feeds, which you can passively consume without fully investing yourself in it.

And just going back to the book, just like you loved the beginning, I also loved the ending, “Tips for Attending a Dinner Party When Your World Has Ended and Another World Is Just Beginning.” And I’m just going to read a little bit from that section:

Put your fork down between bites and actually listen to the conversation bubbling around you … Enjoy the flavor of these intimate kitchen conversations. Ask more questions than you provide answers … Right now, you have a body, a mind, and a memory that extends backward through time’s infinite doorways. You are an everyday miracle. Enjoy life. Because even with the promise of forever, nothing lasts.

Not only is “being present” a perfect bookend to the way the story began, it’s also a good takeaway for all of us as we try and figure out how to come out of this pandemic and to move beyond it a day at a time.

T: I know! That was such an amazing way to open and close the book, and I too noticed those points around being present. I feel like towards that ending, you no longer had to say “Be Present”, as a reminder. So once again, such an amazing read — The Seep by Chana Porter. And to close out, we do want to let you all know that we are taking a wee break for July, but we will be back in August, we’ll be talking about The Mermaid of the Black Conch by Monique Roffey. You can purchase that book as well as The Seep, along with all the other books we’ve discussed on the show on bookshop.org/shop/theliftuppod. Again we are huge supporters of local and independent book shops, which is the reason why we like bookshop.org and this is not an ad, we just really want to share it.

Feel free to send us questions or suggestions through our Instagram page, again @theliftuppod, and thank you so much again for listening to us here at The Lift Up Podcast.

Books we also recommend checking out:

• Fiebre Tropical by Juliana Delgado Lopera
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang
• If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar
• Lot by Bryan Washington
• Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
• Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
• Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
• You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
• The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Listen to The Lift Up on anchor.fm. Or better yet, never miss an episode … Follow/subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop the first Wednesday of every month.