*Photograph of Ashley Whitaker by JujuB*

Ashley Whitaker’s Bitter Texas Honey is a stellar debut. The novel is set in 2011 and centers on 23-year-old Joan, a former America-hating liberal with a drug addiction and aspirations of literary stardom. After the addiction got out of hand, she left college to move back home to Texas. When the reader first meets Joan, she’s living in Austin, interning at the Capitol, and has fully left her liberal views behind in favor of being a Mitt Romney-loving Republican. She’s become the type of person to start off each morning listening to conservative talk radio.

While she has chosen to be defined by conservative politics, what she really wants to be defined by is her writing. Joan wants to be a serious artist – the kind of author that is both beloved by the general public and wins prestigious awards. She goes as far as to date a guy she’s not that into for the sake of collecting subject material for her stories, all while pining after another aspiring writer, Roberto. But Joan’s writing ambitions are interrupted by her addiction getting out of hand again, as well as the mental health crisis of her beloved cousin, Wyatt.

Bitter Texas Honey is smart and satirical, funny and heart-wrenching, and wholly original. The character of Joan will both frustrate you and endear you as she tries to find her place in the world.

Below is my conversation with Ashley Whitaker about writing a Republican character, exploring her past experiences through writing Bitter Texas Honey, and needing to end the story on a hopeful note.

Bitter Texas Honey by Ashley Whitaker | book

Nikki: How did you come up with the idea for Bitter Texas Honey?

Ashley: I’ve been working on this book for a really long time. I first started writing little scenes about the family back in my early 20s, but in creative writing classes I kept getting the feedback that was like, ‘Who is this girl?’ or ‘She’s just an observer, she doesn’t have agency, she's not doing anything.” [The scenes] were more about all these other people that were interesting, like the father and the cousin climbing the billboard. Then, I was in an MFA program in 2016 when Trump was running and when he was elected – that’s when I got the idea to make her a Republican. A Mitt Romney Republican. And, once I started going there, the story took shape and she became a real character. It became her story and not just about her dysfunctional family. She had her own problems and issues. I was always a short story writer before. This book was actually just a lot of short stories, I hate to admit it, but it’s true. It was just a lot of short stories that I Frankenstein-ed into a novel.

Nikki: That makes sense, writing a novel is daunting.

Ashley: It really is. But yeah, I did have similar experiences to those in the book, growing up in the evangelical world and all of that. It’s something that I wanted to shine a light on.

Nikki: It's so fascinating reading from the point of view of a conservative character, especially right now.

Ashley: Yeah, I honestly never thought Trump would be elected again, so that was a shock and it’s been kind of hard with the book because, I think, a lot of people aren’t ready to laugh at anything right now.

Nikki: I’m curious about how you developed Joan as a character. You mentioned that a lot of her character started with her being a Republican. How did you build her up from there and figure out her most defining characteristics?

Ashley: Her defining characteristics are her addiction, her politics – which are also kind of more like a setting piece – and her ambition. [There’s also] her ego, like her overactive need for validation. They’re all tied together. Also, I’m an alcoholic; I stopped drinking 12 years ago. So when I was writing about this girl, it was really easy for me to write into someone who’s really struggling with substance abuse. She has this feeling that you need something in order to feel something or that you need to put something in to get something out. It’s a very exhausting way to live. I think, being sober, it was really natural for me to write Joan because I’ve been through all of that. It’s one of the worst ways to suffer. And I think there’s a lot of self delusion – she really cares about impressing the right people by achieving this one [thing], like, ‘Oh if I get published, things are gonna change.’ So I wanted it to be obvious that what she was looking for wasn’t what she needed and that was the point I was going for with the book. But a lot of people just hate her and I kind of get it because, in a way, as I was writing it, I kind of hated her too. But at the same time, I have a lot of empathy for people going through that.

Nikki: I was interested in how she aligns with her family members’ views and values in a lot of ways, except for two key things. One, she’s not religious – and has a lot of doubts about religion. And, two, she’s much more aware of and concerned about mental health – specifically, when it comes to Wyatt – in a way that her family members aren’t. Can you speak on why it was important for Joan to stand on her own two feet for these topics and how it connects to her overall arc?

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Ashley: I think she had to be an independent thinker at least in some ways. And that’s kind of the joke of it – any conservative thinks they’re smarter than the pack and that’s why they’re conservative. With the god thing, I think that just came from my own childhood traumas. Growing up in that kind of religion where you’re literally brought to Sunday school and told that everyone is going to hell if you don’t say your prayer in the right way. As a six year old, being told that, I just hate it. I think that was something that I wanted to connect with others on. And the mental health aspect, there was an issue in my family similar to that story. I think a big part of me pursuing [writing] the book had to do with that. I think that part of writing a book is trying to pursue truth as you see it, as an artist. Sometimes there are moments where it feels like you’re the crazy one, but sometimes it’s that everyone else is. It just reflects a time in my life when I felt like I was living in a mad world and I had to kind of step away. I got [a lot of writing] done when I moved to Michigan for a few years. I think stepping away from your world and then looking at it, you can kind of see it more clearly. So I came away from that experience [thinking], maybe I wasn't crazy, maybe they all were.

Nikki: It was so frustrating to see Joan be the only one aware of how bad Wyatt’s mental health is, while everyone else is either denying it or not seeing it.

Ashley: It's just a painful thing. There’s a lot of people who go through mental illness or who have someone mentally ill in their family. And no one knows how to deal with it, but the way to deal with it is definitely not to sweep it under the rug [and pretend] everything is fine. I feel like that’s a pervasive habit in America. It's like, we’re not gonna talk about it, we’re just gonna pretend everything is okay. I was just trying to poke at that.

Nikki: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Ashley: It's funny, I really didn’t. I had really low self-esteem. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh I really wanted to be a writer ever since I was a kid.’ But I had low self-esteem as a child. When I went to college, I took an intro to creative writing class and I was probably 19 and the teacher, he was a very inspiring figure. He saw something in my work and was encouraging of it. And it was just the first time that I thought, oh I have a talent, so maybe I should try to pursue it. Because, honestly, I’m quite a lazy person and working on this book took me so long. But I think it was that little bit of encouragement that I needed because I felt directionless. So then, I started reading other books after taking that class and I started getting really interested in literature and reading. I just [started thinking], this art form is really cool. It’s not like movies – you can just do it alone, in your pajamas, in your bed. It’s a way to make art on your own terms.

Nikki: I was also really fascinated by Joan's writerly life and the way that so much of her seeing herself as a writer is tied to her fantasies of being famous. Even though she does seem to have some talent, she doesn’t want to put the work in – she doesn’t take revision notes from her mentors, she sends her story off to the Paris Review thinking she’s a shoe-in. How did you want her desire to be a writer to reflect who she is as a person?

Ashley: It’s like me looking back at my younger artist self – this paradox of [having] this desperation to be seen as an artist but being completely unable to live in a way that you could actually create any meaningful art. I don’t know, before getting sober, I don't think I had the ability to create art because I wasn't really living life on life’s terms. [I wasn’t] able to see the world in that way because I was so self-centered. So I think that’s what I’m trying to get at with her – she’s very self absorbed and unable to see truth. I think I was just making fun of how I view my younger self – just results without any of the work, not wanting to actually sit still and experience a difficult emotion, but still wanting to move others.

Nikki: Yeah, I think she has so much naivety in life and a lot of that naivety comes through in how she views writing and what it means to be a writer.

Ashley: For sure. And also, she’s drunk so [often] and on so many drugs that it’s really easy for her not to have to reflect on anything. But to create a novel, you have to understand the human experience and be able to reflect emotion. But if you’re avoiding that at all costs, then I don't see how you can create a story.

Nikki: The book deals with a lot of heavy, tough subjects – addiction, grief, and so on – but there’s still so much humor in the novel. How did you find the right balance between heavy and light?

Ashley: I think the humor is kind of a coping mechanism. I think life can just be so profoundly and overwhelmingly sad and humor is how I get through my day to day, it’s the way I can bring lightness into my own day. So I kind of see [humor] everywhere. I think, as I'm telling a story, the humor is woven into how I see anything. When I pick up a book and it has no humor, I kind of don’t want to read it anymore. I think there’s just different types of people in the world and some people don’t care about humor in books and, for me, it just has to be there.

Nikki: Joan reads so many books that she thinks she should read, so I’m curious what you think her actual favorite books are?

Ashley: I feel like she doesn’t actually read very much. That’s a good question and I'm trying to answer it without just saying books that I like. I just read Perfume and Pain [by Anna Dorn]. When I read that book, I was shocked I hadn't read it yet because I was like, I think that main character and Joan would be friends in a weird way. But anyway, I think Joan reads like the classics, in terms of what’s on the syllabus in, like, creative writing 101. I think she’s a short story reader and I would say she genuinely likes Junot Diaz. That’s one of her favorite writers, I think that’s honest.

Nikki: Joan’s story, at least within the novel, ends on a hopeful note. Did you always know you wanted to end it that way?

Ashley: Honestly, as a sober person, I always wanted there to be hope at the end of the story. Jesus’ Son [by Denis Johnson] is one of my favorite books about addicts and books like that meant a lot to me. I just don't like ultra downer endings. To me, I'm like, what was the point? I do think that there’s hope in life, so if I’m gonna put something out there like this, I really felt strongly about ending on a note of measured hope.

Nikki: What are some other books you’ve read lately that you loved?

Ashley: Yeah, I loved [Perfume and Pain]. I read We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons recently and loved it. I just picked up Colored Television [by Danzy Senna] and started that because I'm going to be on a panel with her – I read New People [by Senna] and I liked it a lot too. I love Sigred Nunez, I've read several of her books, but I just picked up The Vulnerables and started reading that. I really like her because she’s very auto-fiction-y and voice driven.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.