'Gather Me' and 'Subculture Vulture' are memoirs told through books and subcultures
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Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. We talk about a lot of memoirs on this show, and I think what I'm finding is that the framing device a writer chooses for their memoir, how they go about organizing their life story in order to tell it, says just as much about the person as the memoir itself.

In a bit, we'll hear from comedian Moshe Kasher, whose memoir is divvied up into subcultures he found himself a part of. But first, Glory Edim is the founder of the literary community Well-Read Black Girl. So it's no surprise that her memoir, Gather Me, is told through the books that shaped her life. She spoke with Empire's Michelle Martin about how the very act of reading helped her reconnect with her own dad. That's coming up.

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Save on cold and flu prescriptions and more at goodrx.com book. I'm guessing most of us have a favorite book, and some of us might even say there's a book that changed our lives. Our next guest has many, enough of them to shape her memoir, Gather Me. Glory Edom is the founder of the well-read Black Girl Book Club and Literary Festival. Her third book tells her

poignant rollercoaster ride of a childhood, growing up as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants in search of their American dream. And she is with us now. Glory, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Well, thank you for that. But, you know, you have to admit a book about books is very meta. How did you realize that your relationship with books was its own story?

Well, you know, I wanted to share all the books I encountered throughout my life. And it became my own coming-of-age story because I knew I was finding my sense of self in stories. So whether I was reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I was always feeling my own transformation. And I understood that reading wasn't just a form of entertainment for me.

But what do you think it is that caused you to see in a very early age that books could be a guide to life? Well, I think because my parents and I had very different lived experiences and we were both in this new place of trying to figure out how to be, that my personal empowerment was so vital. And I think that empowerment becomes vital.

It's necessary when you're seeking knowledge. You know, all the unique power we have, it comes from our own seeking and curiosity. And we have that power in our hands every time we open a book. For a lot of times when I was reading, it became an act of self-love. It became an act of defiance sometimes when I disagreed with my teachers or even my parents and I was trying to figure out how to articulate that.

the things that I remember reading as a young person are who I am today. I can like pick a memory and pick a book and those things are so closely linked together. And that's why I get so frustrated when I hear people talking about banning books and limiting access to stories because what you're doing is silencing voices.

One of the things that this book talks about is the power of books to help you break through silences. Yes, yes. Silences that you may not even fully understand are silences until you've broken through them. Yes. And I don't want to give away some of the pivotal moments in the book, but I feel it's important to sort of point out that at one point your father, who you adored and who adored you, left the family. Right.

In a shocking way. And later, you found a trove of letters from him that made their way to you as an adult. Do you mind talking about that? Those letters were, I mean, they were heartbreaking for me because...

I had went through this period of thinking that my father didn't want me anymore, didn't love me, and I felt really dejected. And that wasn't the truth. And so when I discovered those letters, I became just so fascinated about how

how you can reconnect and rediscover yourself through, again, through words. Like reading his words on paper, just like it reinserted this self-compassion. It reconnected us in a beautiful way. And I was able to go find my father again and just tell him how much I loved him and missed him and make amends. And I...

I don't know what would have happened had I not found those letters. And it seemed to arrive just when I needed it. And that is what I was really trying to reflect upon, that this idea that like your story is long and you might think it's going one way, but one action, one book, one letter can really change things. Yeah.

There's one chapter in the book which is both hilarious and heartbreaking when you talk about the fact that you got absolutely the wrong message from some of the things you were reading. Yes. But having said that, do you have any sympathy for people who, that's exactly why they are trying to ban certain books, because they feel like, oh no, you know, kids are going to get the wrong message and therefore we should try to protect them from these works themselves.

Do you have any sympathy for that? Yeah, I did misread things, but that is like the crucial moment where we can, that's where the conversation comes in. We want young people to grow. So this idea of keeping them safe or hiding this information, it's not going to work out the way you want it to because young people are still going to find it and they're still going to be exposed to ideas. We want them to be able to come to us and say, what does this mean? How can we

connect around this conversation. And I really feel like banned books and, you know, it disrupts collective healing and it stifles conversations. I think we should be doing the opposite of really championing diverse voices and thinking of how we can deeply connect with one another.

Before we let you go, Glory, your book club, Well-Read Black Girl, grew from a small gathering to now you have book festivals, literary festivals, and a whole bunch of things. A lot of people would like to belong to a book club, but sometimes people find it unsatisfying or it just devolves into just getting together to drink wine or whatever. And do you have any tips on how to run a great book club?

Oh, okay. My tip for running a great book club really starts with having a clear vision and a shared purpose. We started with this really clear mission about helping and supporting Black women writers, especially in the beginning of their careers. And I

I think when you have a book club or a community where members are united by a common goal and you really have guidelines on how you engage with one another and respect one another and you know what your –

What you're seeking, that is what makes a beautiful community. And with Well-Word Black Girl, we make sure that our vision is both inspiring and actionable. So yes, we're talking about books, but we're also talking about civic engagement. We're connecting with young people. So it's a unique space that I know has taken on a life beyond just me. It just has taken on a life of its own, and I'm so proud of it.

Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot. Do you ever kick anybody out of a book club because they don't read the book, actually, and they just want to come and drink the wine? Tell the truth.

Tell the truth. No, no, we don't kick them out. No, we don't kick them out. Listen, everyone plays a role. So maybe you're just passing the glasses around. It's okay. Glory Edda is the author of Gather Me, a memoir in praise of the books that saved me. Glory, thank you so much for talking with us. Oh my goodness. Thank you for having me. This has been awesome. Thank you.

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I think we underestimate just how impactful being part of a subculture can be. Being part of a music scene, a dance scene, a party scene, whatever, can be just as influential in your life as religion. I get the sense that Moshe Kasher would agree. His memoir is titled Subculture Vulture, and he spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin about how his Judaism intersects with going to Burning Man. Here's Rachel. Maybe you know someone like this.

That person who seems to have had a hundred different lives. And when they regale you with stories of these lives, part of you is envious because you too want to have sucked the marrow out of life while dancing half-naked in the desert. But that envy evaporates pretty fast when they tell you about the other lives that included a whole lot of suffering and loneliness. Moshe Kasher is that guy. But he doesn't want your pity. He doesn't want your envy.

More than anything else, he wants to make you laugh. And he does so very well in his new memoir, Subculture Vulture, which is about six subcultures that he's inhabited throughout his life. One of them is the world of Burning Man, hence Dancing Naked in the Desert.

We talked a lot about how he found healing there. But as I said, this guy's had a lot of lives. So he also writes about being the child of deaf parents and fitting into the world of Alcoholics Anonymous and conservative Judaism and comedy and the rave scene. And while he's learned to see harmony in all these identities, as a kid, his world was anything but harmonious.

I had deaf parents, an identity crisis where I would fly back home six weeks a year to cosplay as a Hasidic Jew. I was in Oakland public schools, sort of socially isolated. I mean, everything was so chaotic. And that was the void that when I found a group of bad boys who said, why don't you join us at the back of the portables and we can smoke cigarettes and we can get loaded together. It was like,

a molecular reconfiguration. It was like, I have found people that, that, uh, accept me. I have found people that will love me warts and all because they have warts too. And so by the time I was three years into hanging out with those kids, uh, I was in a lot of trouble. I had slid down the ladder very quickly. And I said to myself, if I keep living like this, it's I'm going nowhere or, or I'm going to, I'm going to perdition. Um,

And that's when I got sober. And that's when I, you know, I just, you know, the thing that happens when you get sober is the void you were trying to fill with drugs and alcohol is it's raw. It's like a raw wound, you know, and the way that I healed that wound in so many ways was by

finding these worlds where I could be, I could find that same feeling of like, these are my people, but that wouldn't destroy me, would build me up. How does that, so Burning Man, huge festival in the deserts,

alternative cultures, an anarchist bent. I don't know. You say other words that fill in the blanks. Well, I can say words, but the words depend really on when you're talking about it. You know, I started attending Burning Man in 1996 when I was 16 years old.

And I had heard that there was a rave in the desert. And at that time, that was all that I needed to pack a car and drive eight hours east and figure out what was waiting for me there. And when I got there, it was not a... I don't know what it... I didn't know what it was, but it was not a rave. It was some other thing. It was a dangerous, wild, artistic, culture jamming, fractalated, just mind bending experience. And I was clean and sober, 16 years old. And it...

Right. That's the part I sort of don't get. I will fess up to never having been to Burning Man. But friends of mine who have gone and things I have read make it seem that being sober would be like a strange experience to be there as someone in recovery in particular. Because isn't it –

Well, that's the part that is I didn't want to be some buttoned up recovery boy for the all of my late teens and 20s. I wanted to feel like I could have a life that was exciting and fun and filled with experiences and just like fun.

packed full of life. And I know that both Burning Man and the rave scene both elicit kind of an eye roll from people that are cynical about those things. But both of them were as healing a therapeutic elixir as the 12 steps in AA was. It was as spiritual an experience as the Torah was for me in Judaism. Can you say more about what that means? Who were you when you were there? In the

In the Jewish religion, every fall there is our high holidays, the days of awe, you know, where you start to take stock of yourself throughout the year. You wrote Rosh Hashanah is when that begins. You start to consider the mistakes you've made, the steps that you wish you'd taken instead. And then Yom Kippur, you're sort of cleansed. And I really like that about Judaism, that every year you just start fresh.

But I've incorporated Burning Man into that. And I hope this doesn't elicit an eye roll, but it's just the truth that my days of awe. I don't eye roll. You're not an eye roller. No, you're an open person. But I do think when I go, now I have incorporated the burning of the man into the Jewish days of awe. I can just feel somebody going, give me a break. But that is, I have synthesized it.

If the burning of the man has any actual meaning for me, it really, you know, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Just an excuse to party in the desert. It's a weird Silicon Valley drug-fueled corporate retreat. But for me...

When I see the man burn, what it means to me is that we are all a man or a woman or a person about to catch fire. We are impermanent. And so that's where my days of awe start. When I see the man burn, I go, I am dying. I will die. I will be gone. What have I done in the last year that I enjoyed? And what would I like to do in the next year to pack more experiences into this life?

Is that your opening line when you go on stage to do a set? I am dying. No, that's what I say at the... You are too. No, that's what I say in the middle of the set when it's not going well. Okay, I am dying. This is not what I wish would happen. But you know what? Life is impermanent. We are all about to catch fire.

So, I mean, this is how you pay your rent. You're a stand-up comic. This is yet another subculture that you inhabit. If some young up-and-comer whippersnapper comic came up to you and asked what your philosophy of comedy is...

What would you say? Make people laugh. I think that, you know, a lot of the writing in this book about comedy is my reckoning and the reckoning that everybody in comedy is having with like what the responsibility of the comedian is. And what I offer as my closest thing to a philosophy I have about comedy is that the job of the comedian is to make the audience laugh. Yeah.

I know that that sounds reductive, but I think that it's the truth that and that there is value just in that, that there is value in people watching something that makes them have joy for an hour pack full of fun and joy for one hour. Now, sometimes that joy comes from somebody speaking truth to power.

you know, George Carlin. And sometimes that joy comes from somebody just watching a guy being silly, Steve Martin. And I don't think that one is the more righteous version of comedy. I think that comedy is for people to laugh and that sometimes that includes philosophy and sometimes that includes ridiculousness, but there is spiritual and there is philosophical value in bringing people that experience. ♪

Moshe Kasher, comedian and writer. His most recent book is called Subculture Vulture, a memoir in six scenes. Moshe, thank you so much. This was so fun. My pleasure. I had a great time. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you.

And that's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think. You can write to us at bookofthedayatnpr.org. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The podcast is produced by Danica Panetta and Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Adriana Gallardo, Ana Perez, Lee Hale, Melissa Gray, Gabe O'Connor, Julia Corcoran, and Michael Scotto. Beth Donovan is our managing editor. Thanks for listening. ♪

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