On Writing the Midwest with Lyz Lenz
"I want to be dirtbag Marilynne Robinson when I grow up. She's just down the road in Iowa City, and she has this reputation for just walking around like a God and nobody approaches her."
Hi, y’all!
I’d hoped to have a thoughtful essay for you this week about the geographic boundaries of the Midwest. (Thank you to everyone who has weighed in on our discussion thread!) But that is a more complicated — and interesting — question than I’d anticipated, so I need a little more time to write thoughtfully on the topic.
Instead, I’m bringing back and expanding an interview I did with Lyz Lenz last year.
Lenz writes the newsletter Men Yell At Me — and yes, men really do yell at her — a lot — because she writes about the intersection of the personal and political from her home in Iowa. Her book, God Land, went into the churches of the Midwest, seeking answers about faith, belonging, and how we build bridges in a divided America. She also went through a very public divorce when she realized a bridge couldn’t be built in her own marriage. And a very public firing from her columnist job at the Cedar Rapids Gazette for being, essentially, too opinionated.
I found Lyz through two essays. The first was “Hunting Season,” about how women are trapped and being hunted. It was too good to put down; I read it start to finish before I’d even had my morning coffee. And “The Cult of Casey’s: How Gas Stations Became Essential to American Culture,” about, well, the title says it all. It’s a 2,000-word love letter to gas stations and in-between spaces in the Midwest. For those of you not from the Midwest, this is a real thing. People have feels about their gas station snacks. You should read it all. But here’s a snippet:
After all, life in the Midwest is calculated in time and distance. We live far apart from the places we are going and there is a lack of effective public transportation systems. This means the divide between who drives and who doesn’t is a lot smaller than in larger cities. With so much open land, people spend a lot of time in their cars. Consequently, the places in between become essential not only to simple survival but as cultural hubs.
Lyz and I talk about that, how she’s really doing, her forthcoming book, This American Ex-Wife, finding your voice as a writer and so much more!
And for paid subscribers, there is a bonus section at the end featuring a special lightning round of “this or that” about everything from taco pizza vs. breakfast pizza to her dream supper club experience.
Enjoy!
Lyz, first I have to ask: How are you? In the past year, you were fired and have been really writing about your divorce. That’s a lot.
I'm doing great now. I feel kind of weird when I go out in the world and people be like, How are you? And I want to be like, Actually, I'm great. But that sounds awful, right? Like then it sounds braggy. To me, it just feels like the most Midwestern of conundrums, because, like nobody else would have a hard time being like, Hey, I'm doing great.
Because you don't want to be braggadocious?
I also don't want to let people off the hook. I don't want to pretend it's water under the bridge, which is also a Midwestern thing because it's like, No motherfuckers, I'm going to hold a grudge. Which is just true. I'm going to, and it's fine. But it's also a Midwestern thing. Like how do you communicate, Yes, I'm so great but I absolutely hate a lot of people?
You're a very public woman on the internet living in a small town and still speaking your truth. How did you choose to be brave?
You know, honestly, it just kind of happens by accident, right? You just rise to the challenge that presents itself. I didn't anticipate the first story that would piss people off, right? When I would talk to my therapist, she'd be like, Okay, we've gotta level up to this challenge. And that was the language she kept using. She'd be like, Okay, how can we level up to this?
Sometimes as a writer, you become not quite a person, right? You become a construct. And how do you keep those two things separate so that it protects you, but also how do you wear that like an armor? After I was fired, I was devastated. And I remember talking to some people about it and their response being like, Oh, well you're Lyz Lenz. You'll be fine. They did not mean that poorly, right? They did not mean that dismissively. But that's when I realized there is an idea of me out there that I don't have of me.
The public identity of Lyz Lenz versus your internal identity of yourself.
Right. At the time that felt oppressive. It felt like, Oh, I can't be upset because I have to be this person. But now I understand it as an armor. Like a shell that I can retreat into. So I can be a person. I can have the people and the therapists in my life to whom I am real. And then I can go back out and then occupy that space in that bravery.
I remember hearing Vivian Gornick talk one time and she was talking about Fierce Attachments. She was like, I was not brave enough to tell that story until I found that narrative voice. I think about that all the time now, too, especially as I'm writing This American Ex-Wife, which I think tips over every sacred cow. I need to find the voice that's brave enough. And if that's not me, it doesn't have to be me.
Right.
It's the voice. It's like Beyonce being Sasha Fierce. I think where you find that bravery is…is finding that sense outside of yourself where you are still a person and you're still fallible, but on the page, you can be someone braver and smarter and wiser and edited.
And edited. I wrote a book in 2016 about Detroit and, and I've struggled so much with it as a newcomer. Why did I have a right to write about it? Should I even have a right to a voice?
My instinct, instead of leveling up as your therapist talked to you about, was to retreat from the precipice. I sort of lost my voice and didn't write for a while. So watching you with your bravery is really interesting to me.
I think it's interesting, right? Who gets to tell the stories of this place? Who gets to belong and who doesn't? I published this piece about the town where the Matchstick museum is in Iowa and there were a whole bunch of houses that were burning down. It was just a little slice of life piece, right? Here's what's happening in the middle of America: Towns are burning because the wiring is old and there's not a fire station nearby and it's ruining this place. And nobody seems to care.
But when the piece was published, I got so much hate from the people in the town. They were like, You didn't come here and you don't belong here. They were like this New York writer just came and was like making us look like dumb hicks. I was like, I live in Cedar Rapids; I'm not from New York. And they were like, Well, Cedar Rapids is a big city. But it was a lesson in who gets to belong and who doesn't, which has really informed how I write about the Midwest.
I think how I had erred wasn't factually, it was with empathy. When you're a place that is always left behind, where, you know, people come and document your decline and then leave.
Again and again and again.
And again. And nobody stays and nobody is invested in the community. You have to show people you're invested in the community. That you're not just here from on high to fix the problems. I think that's often the missing element.
I had noticed something this past year is that people now see me as one of them. And it took me being very publicly fired. It was humiliating, but it took that for people to see like, Oh no, she's not going anywhere. She's here. She's invested. She gave it her all. It’s the whole Midwestern thing, like, Well, whether we agree with her or not, she really did her best and she just said it like it was.
It also requires acknowledging who was stayed, right? In Detroit, we have a very strong African-American middle-class who never left, but they often get overlooked when people come and write about the city. How do you manage that aspect of the work?
The shitty part about writing is it's always transactional. So I think writers, if they write about their communities, they have to be thinking, Okay, but what am I giving back? Right? If I am getting this story, I'm taking this story, what am I giving back and how am I investing in this place?
Would you ever consider leaving Iowa? I mean, would it be easier?
I do sometimes think, What if I had an apartment in Brooklyn? What would that life be like? But also, I'll go out to New York and stay there a couple of days and be like, Get me back to Iowa immediately. I need to go back to my main tater tot hot dish and my dogs and my big backyard and the actual world where people just talk about normal things.
I know you've lived in Texas and South Dakota and Minnesota, and now Iowa. Where do you say that you're from?
That's so interesting because I don't know, but I've been in the Midwest longer now than I've been any other place. Sometimes I think I can identify as whatever I want. Like, I can say I belong; I can say a Midwesterner. And then literally every Midwesterner will be like, No, she isn't. A matter of identity isn't really your choice. But in the end, I think when I die, people will say she was a Midwesterner.
Do you have a place or have you ever had a place where you feel like you belong?
I think for the longest time church was that place, but the pandemic really upended that for me. It's really made me rethink the focus of community and church in my life.
I am in this house that I love. When I wake up in the morning and I get my cup of coffee and I try to read a book before I look at the internet, which is hit or miss some days. Or when I sit at my dining room table and watch the sun come up over my little plants. Or I sit at night on my couch and listen to records. I just think, This is it. I'm so happy. It's the first physical space where I felt like this belongs to me. And I'm 39 and it's taken me this long to get here, you know?
I grew up very evangelical. I learned not to become attached to the things of this world, right? Physical space is just like an illusion and what matters is family and God. But I think maybe it's in the past couple years, living in this town, I’ve realized physical spaces are important. Geography is important. And location is important. The wall color on your home is important. These things matter. And they matter in a way that makes you feel like you belong.
You write about your faith being such a key part of your community and identity, but it seems like you've been ostracized a little bit from that faith community since God's Land and the divorce. What has that been like?
I'll say, I wasn't and I wasn't. When I left the church that I was going to with my ex-husband, those were the first and only friends I lost. My therapist who’s twice divorced in this town, she's like, Yeah, people get over it, and we move on. Everybody's a mess here. And if you live together long enough and know each other's business, it all sorts out.
There’s a wonderful person who goes to one of those churches and was really excited about my book and who read it and really thought about it. But he told me when he went to the pastor of his church, who features prominently in the book, and was like, Hey, should we talk about some of this stuff? That person was like, We don't talk about this. We will never talk about this. She was just a troublemaker. And that just kind of sucks a little bit because I was a part of this and I have a right to talk about it.
But in so many ways, researching God’s Land was really healing because while I was part of faith communities that were being exclusive and exclusionary and judgmental, I was seeing other places that are open and trying so hard to get it right and to love everyone. And doing so in a really radical – not always perfect – way. But at least trying.
So I do still feel connected with the faith communities, but all that said, I do not currently consider myself a person of faith.
That’s a big journey for you. Do you have faith in anything or how are you thinking about faith?
I do believe that there is something bigger than me. I believe in a bigger purpose. I don't know what that is.
I do think there are ideas of community and working together. Especially in this pandemic, it’s been made clear how much we need to care for one another and how exhausting but necessary that work is. So I guess at this point, that's what I believe in. I believe in doing work that tries to be bigger than myself. That reaches out as opposed to reaching in. And I think that that's just the best I can do. And how do we live lives of purpose and meaning and tell stories that make the world better.
Maybe in a couple of years I'll change my mind, but that's a great part of life. You can always change and grow and discover something new.
What does that look like for you? Like what do you hope for in this new identity and belonging? What do you seek?
You know, all these books and relationship advice columns and everything tell women how to change and how to be different to accommodate the world. And we never expect the world to accommodate women. And so that's what I'm trying to figure out. How do I live a life that no longer accommodates people? How do I live a life where I just force people to accommodate me? I want to be dirtbag Marilynne Robinson when I grow up. She's just down the road in Iowa City, and she has this reputation for just walking around like a God and nobody approaches her. And I’m like, I want that. I want to be that. But, like, the shitty version of that.
I'm writing this book and it's a book about divorce, but it's not really. It's a book about saying you should be allowed to take up space and you should be allowed to make the world accommodate you and stop accommodating everyone else. I’m in the last couple of chapters and this is what I'm writing about. How hard it is to create a life on your own terms and how great it is. And that’s why I really love Iowa. Because it gave me this space.
I have this vision of you in my head, you're driving through the Iowa night. Your car is overflowing with hot sauce packets. Maybe Delilah is on the radio and you're just rushing towards those in-between places. You often report from, like a Casey's gas station or a local bar. I love how you've embraced these liminal spaces and bring that into your writing.
Oh. Thank you. Yeah, I think if my books have anything in common, it is, Okay, what does this in-between space mean?
How did you come to the idea of the in-between space?
Well, first of all, if you’re raised as a woman, there’s that. You're in-between; you’ve got to be either smart or pretty. You can't be both. So you gotta be either like the good one or the hot one.
I thought the solution growing up was to be a Playboy model.
Yeah. Oh my God. At least you thought you could do it. I never, I was never under any suspicion that I could.
Oh, I don't know if I thought I could. I just thought they seemed to have power and I would like to have power.
Yeah. I grew up homeschooled where the rhetoric was very much: The world outside is bad and the good Christian world is here and you serve the Christian world. So it automatically sets up a dichotomy between who you are, what you believe in and the rest of those people out there, right? That automatically creates a liminal space, an in-between space. And, you know, that's the places where you breathe. It's always been attractive to be in a place where you can just breathe, even if it's ghostly.
This or That?: A Lightning Round with Lyz Lenz
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First question: Casey’s taco pizza or breakfast pizza?
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