Brooke Shaffner’s debut novel Country of Under is the intertwining coming of age story of Pilar Salomé Reinfeld, raised by her undocumented father, a descendent of Bolivian Mennonites, in a Mexican-American community; and Carlos/Carla/Río Gomez, a gender fluid DREAMer raised by their grandmother in the same Texican border town. With deep compassion and striking beauty, this lyric novel sings the pain and wonder of being between identities. Between male and female. Citizen and immigrant. Fulfilled and empty. Outsider and insider. In choosing Country of Under as the winner of the 1729 Book Prize, Diane Zinna wrote, “This luminous novel of big heart and span is a wonder. The story has become part of my soul.” We are pleased to share this Q&A with the author.
Country of Under won the 1729 Book Prize, was the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction runner-up, and was shortlisted for Dzanc Books’ Prize for Fiction and Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize. An excerpt won the Asheville Writers’ Workshop Fiction Contest. Brooke’s work has appeared in The Hudson Review, Marie Claire, BOMB, Litmosphere, Lost and Found: Stories from New York, and The Lit Pub. Brook has received grants from the Arts & Science Council, United States Artists, and the Saltonstall Foundation and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the I-Park Foundation, and VCCA. Brooke is at work on a memoir, an excerpt of which won the 2023 Lit/South Award, judged by Melissa Febos. She grew up part Garza, part Shaffner in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and co-founded Freedom Tunnel Press with her partner Niteesh Elias to publish artivist books that straddle borders. She teaches and edits through her company Between the Lines. Read more at brookeshaffner.com.
What inspired you to write Country of Under?
Country of Under is a book that straddles borders, bringing together drag queens, nuns, activists, artists, and healers, because my identity straddles borders. I am bisexual and grew up in a biethnic family, part Garza, part Shaffner, in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley—a 10-minute drive from Mexico. My Garza grandfather was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and my Shaffner grandfather was raised Mennonite. Cheering on Kara Juarez in drag pageants in my town’s only gay bar in the late 90s was a seed of inspiration for this dual artist bildungsroman. Watching drag performers create themselves against the confines of a strongly machismo, Catholic small town, I felt what it was to be an artist—to throw open the borders of the known world.
Through my company Between the Lines, I’ve worked with Rio Grande Valley students for 14 years, helping them to powerfully tell their stories in college admissions and scholarship essays. Some of my students have been undocumented; almost all of them are from immigrant families. They keep me connected to Pilar and Río’s coming of age in the Rio Grande Valley and journeys as they leave for college in New York and L.A. They help me to remember that magical and terrifying time of creating yourself as you leave home.
Country of Under was also inspired by volunteer work with the New Sanctuary Coalition and Make the Road and the experience of organizing an immigrant artivist event at the Brooklyn Public Library with City University of New York DREAMers. An interview with subterranean explorer and artist Julia Solis for BOMB Magazine also shaped the story.
What’s the wildest research you did for Country of Under?
After interviewing subterranean explorer Julia Solis, I was inspired to do my own urban exploring-for-beginners. I walked the Freedom Tunnel, a 3-mile active train tunnel that runs under Manhattan’s Riverside Park and once served as an underground gallery for New York City’s most famous graffiti artists, seven times. You can read about my first experience of walking the tunnel and escaping through a car garage here.
If you were a character in one of your books, what kind of role would you play and how would you contribute to the story?
I’dprobably be one of the novel’s flawed mentor figures: Sister MJ, an Outward Bound leader turned conflicted activist nun who becomes a mentor to Pilar when she volunteers in a Carmelite monastery involved in immigrant advocacy. Or Dr. Yoon, a drag queen acupuncturist who melds Salpuri with Philip Glass and Pina Bausch and becomes a mentor to Río when they begin performing at Lucky Feng’s Drag Cabaret. Both characters are seekers. I’m an (irreverently reverent) seeker myself—someone who’s always trying to find the balance between contemplation and engagement, meaning and freedom. But like Sister MJ and Dr. Yoon, I certainly don’t have all of the answers. As Dr. Yoon says, “No one is pure, not me or anyone else.” These characters help Pilar and Río ask bigger questions. That’s the important thing—that we never stop asking ourselves questions; we never stop becoming.
What’s the most unusual writing ritual you have?
I make playlists for my characters at different points in their emotional journeys and run to them. This not only helps me to sink into my characters’ emotions, but helps me to work out plot details when I’m stuck. Scenes bloom like movies in my brain as I run to my characters’ soundtracks—their bodies and emotions inside mine. Phrases come to me as if from the air and I jot them down in my iPhone’s Notes app.
If you could co-write a book with any author, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Virginia Woolf, because I love how she intertwines the social and existential with a deep mining of her characters’ subconscious and creates emotional immediacy through lyricism.
Share one interesting fact about yourself that readers may not know.
I’ve lived with an autoimmune liver disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, which impacts my energy and wellness, for 24 years. I love what Ocean Vuong says about the need for “those of us who work slower and need time and space to think to recalibrate what progress means”. It took me ten years to write Country of Under, which is perhaps why author Barbara Fischkin wrote: “At its core, Country of Under is about time: The time it takes to understand oneself, others, the family you have—and the family you make. And, the time it takes to develop the patience to wait, as self-revelation unfolds.”
What was the most challenging section or chapter you wrote in Country of Under, and how did you overcome it?
In constructing the stories of Pilar’s father, Marin, an undocumented immigrant from Bolivia, and Flor, a Mayan refugee of Guatemala’s Civil War whom Pilar helps apply for asylum, I interviewed an immigration judge, two immigration lawyers, and a Catholic priest who represented thousands of immigrants in New York’s immigration courts. I filled legal pads with pages and pages of notes as I talked to lawyers, whose profession demands that they focus on the details, rather than the overarching narrative. Aligning the characters’ histories with the shifting chronology of immigration law felt like a grueling logic puzzle. After I’d ensured historical accuracy, I worked, in many subsequent drafts, on paring back my research to bring the characters’ stories forward.
Are there minor characters in Country of Under for whom you have a particular affection?
As mentioned, Pilar volunteers with a community of Carmelite nuns while she’s in college in L.A. A lot of the details of the Sisters’ secret rebellions came from my hilarious Tia Claris, who tried to become a nun—the activisty sort—when she was in her late 20s. Claris told me about sneaking margaritas and cigarettes with her novice friend and belting Sérgio Mendes while washing dishes in the convent kitchen: “Never gonna let you go / Gonna hold your body close to mine!” Claris is always the life of the party, leading Christmas carols with synchronized hand jives and gritos at Garza Christmas parties. The vow of silence and separation from family ultimately made her choose to live out her faith in the world. When she confessed to a priest about sneaking out of a 30-day silent retreat to ask her sister to pick her up, he said, “Claris, your prayer is people.” Prayer is people became an important refrain/motif in Country of Under.
If you had to choose a different career outside of writing, what would it be and why?
I’d write and direct intimate, immersive indie films. There’s nothing I love more than the out-of-body experience of losing myself in a beautiful movie, but creating and producing one is such a complicated, collaborative, massive financial gamble in comparison to the largely solitary, low-budget act of writing a novel. The last movie that made me cry—in the best of ways—was Past Lives.
How can we find out more about you and your book?
You can find more about County of Under and all of the people who inspired and helped me with the book at brookeshaffner.com. You can also sign up for my newsletter there, through which I’ll send news about book tour events, projects, and occasional thoughts on writing and life.
You can order Country of Under at https://masonjarpress.com/chapbooks-1/tz39v9wfk5lii9eiuxtd8qvz0hk6nf.