S4 Ep. 12: WTF, Texas?: Lacy M. Johnson and Natalia Sylvester on Surviving the Recent Storm and Unraveling the Whitewashed Myth of Texas

fiction/non/fiction

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by author Lacy M. Johnson and novelist Natalia Sylvester. First, Johnson recalls her personal experience through the recent storm, and talks about the ongoing debate over deregulation and privatization of the Texas energy grid. Then, Sylvester unravels the whitewashed, exceptionalist myth of Texas, elevates its Mexican, Black and Indigenous history, and talks about what it means for her, a Latinx, Peruvian immigrant woman, to be a “Texas writer.” Johnson reads from the forthcoming edited volume, More City Than Water: A Houston Flood Atlas; Sylvester reads from her new YA novel, Running.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.

This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.

Selected readings:

Lacy M. Johnson

• More City Than Water: A Houston Flood Atlas (forthcoming, University of Texas Press)
• The Reckonings: Essays
• The Other Side: A Memoir
• Trespasses: A Memoir

Natalia Sylvester

• Running
• Everyone Knows You Go Home
• Chasing the Sun

Others:

• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Cite Design Alliance
• Cormac McCarthy
• Dear Twin by Addie Tsai
• Donald Barthelme
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Documentary
• ERCOT
• "‘Frozen Windmills’ aren’t to blame for Texas’s power failure" by Salvador Rizzo
• "Houston is a cheap place to live - if you don’t count the trauma tax" by Raj Mankad
• How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang
• James A. Michener
• Katherine Anne Porter
• Lonesome Dove: A Novel by Larry McMurtry
• Lot and Memorial by Bryan Washington
• Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe
• Outlawed by Anna North
• "Perry says Texans willing to suffer blackouts to keep feds out of power market" by James Osborne
• Public Utilities Commission of Texas Memo
• Red Salmon Arts by Raúl Salinas
• Refusing To Forget Project by Benjamin Johnson, John Morán Gonzalez, and Sonia Hernández
• Tarfia Faizullah
• "Texas Won’t Reduce $16 Billion In Electricity Charges From Winter Storm" by Matthew S. Schwartz
• The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi
• The President’s Daughter by Ellen Emerson White
• The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
• The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
• Treme

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