Intersecting Identities & Courageous Truth-Telling: An Interview with Wendy Besel Hahn

Author Wendy Besel Hahn

by Tessa Ann Stewart

I grew up joking about my four mothers. Teachers would tilt their heads and I’d have to explain my family structure: I had my mom, my nana, my two older sisters, my dad, and Abby the dog. “Even the dog is a girl!” they’d laugh and lament for my poor father. That reaction always confused me, and later angered me as I grew older. Why my poor father? Surrounded by five strong women? I couldn’t think of a place I’d rather call home.

It is through this female-centric and empowering family that I first learned to walk. Years later, it was these same hands that pushed my wheelchair, and taught me how to walk once more. This is the identity through which I carry myself in this world. So when I encountered “Receptacle” and the writing of Wendy Besel Hahn, I took a deep breath and let it whoosh out. I had found words I didn’t realize I was missing: I found a voice that spoke of sisterhood, motherhood, and sickness in an honest and multidimensional way.
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The vast anxieties of death and complexities of motherhood meet the mundane Arby’s fast food setting in “Receptacle.” This captivating piece in the Grace in Darkness anthology captures a small moment in time between Hahn, her sister, and their mother who is sick and helping them plan her funeral arrangements. “Receptacle” is actually an excerpt from Hahn’s memoir manuscript, Mom v. the Mormons, which uses humor to further explores these themes of familial tension, love, and faith.

I had the privilege to meet Hahn in-person and ask more about her intersecting identities, the courage it takes to tell these personal truths, and her art as advocacy. Our interview was certainly full of laughs, truths, and trade tips. At the end, she allowed me to share my own story and speak of my personal connections to her thematic works. Still in awe of her courageousness to write and publish a memoir, I asked her simply what advice she may have for a student still struggling to find the words to her own story. Her parting advice?

“You really have to tell your truth the way you know how to best.”

These words have played on-repeat in my head ever since, and I hope you find her wisdom and experiences as useful as I have in my own work. Read the full interview below.

Tessa Ann Stewart: “Receptacle” ends reflecting on the role of motherhood. Was this contemplation realized after the moment or did this feel “writeable” as it happened in Arby’s?

Wendy Besel Hahn: Both. As a writer there are weird moments where you know something bizarre is happening on a gut-level. You’re thinking, “oh my god, my mother is talking about her funeral plan,” but it also is the ability to have distance later. [By the way, my mother is alive and well, she was able to recover.] But to go back and revisit that situation allows you to understand all the different layers and appreciate how poignant it was. When I interviewed fellow memoirist Mike Scalise, author of  The Brand New Catastrophe, we spoke about having a foot in both worlds during these moments. It’s like being in two different bodies at the same time.

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There is no doubt that writing takes courage. But writing about your own life takes a different kind of bravery. What is the most challenging part of writing nonfiction?

I pretend like nobody is ever going to read it. You really have to give yourself permission to just write, and if I don’t feel like I want to share it after, then I don’t have to. First drafts are going to be terrible anyway. I often don’t know why I write about something, but I know when I’m writing it that it is important. Reflection later often gives it significance, and I will leave a piece on my computer for a long time.

Have you ever considered writing in a different genre?

I do have great plans for a novel, but every time I go to write something new, it is nonfiction. I am not like a Melissa Scholes Young, who sits at a coffee shop and thinks about other people’s lives and creates stories for them.

I recently read Betsey Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees, and am reminded of her idea that writers basically write the same story over and over again. Do you agree with that statement in your own writing?

I actually heard Steven Church talk about this at a conference – he is the editor of The Normal School lit mag – he says that the fun thing about writing on any subject is that it will eventually come back to the same theme. And that is true for me too, familial tension is something I come back to a lot in my writing, [in “Receptacle”] you see that I hint at religion, and I’ve also written about disability.

How do you consider audience when writing about very personal topics? Do you ever imagine, for example, your sister reading “Receptacle?” Do your drafts ever appear not in first person?

I naturally write in first person, but I have explored third person as a way to unpack more of the story. I wrote about a car accident that happened when I was six, my sister was three, and it was a pivotal moment in my family’s life. At one point, I tried to write it from the different points of view. Doing so was valuable because it elicited empathy for my parents. By and large, I am trapped inside of my own head, trying to sort things out.

Would you say you try to write in a vacuum?

​You could say that. I just think: what do I want to write about? Rather than: what do others want to read?

In your writing, you identify as a mother, daughter, sister, wife, teacher, Westerner, “Gentile,” and so many more. Everyone has intersecting identities, and I know that my own writing has helped me discover which I feel most connected to… Can you elaborate on which most compel you to write and how you explore some of these intersecting identities in your work?

Writing my memoir, Mom v. the Mormons, gave me the chance to explore so many of those identities. The story begins in 2012 with my discovery of an invitation to an event for Mormon girls lurking inside my daughter’s backpack. After the prologue, part one captures what it was like to grow up as a non-Mormon in Utah with a mother who saw Mormons as a threat to my soul. Part two brings me back to the role of mother and Westerner living along the East coast where I am raising children to respect and celebrate diversity. Part three introduces a conflict between my roles as mother and daughter. I am hopeful that my memoir about grappling with identity will speak to others who try to redefine themselves as parents.

​“My identity is wrapped up in being an outsider. That
identity, it isn’t just a place, it is also a person.”

Your work exhibits strong ties to landscape and geographical location, but also explores dynamic relationships. Put simply, if you had to choose: people or place?

I have to cheat and say a little bit of both. I identify as growing up in the West, but I have been here [in the DMV] 19 years now. Still, I never just think of myself as being from this area. My identity is wrapped up in being an outsider. That identity, it isn’t just a place, it is also a person.

Your memoir, which “Receptacle” is an excerpt from, focuses on faith and family. Is there one particular moment from your childhood that you feel shaped you as a writer today?

I would have to go back to that car accident that we had when I was six. I was alone in the backseat. The rest of my family went to the hospital together in an ambulance, but I was pawned off on a close family friend. It was the first time I felt so separated from my family. I think it was also the first time I realized that people had different versions of the same story. That scene is central in my memoir.

I have a chronic illness. And watching “Sick Mama,” which speaks to your experience as a mother with rheumatoid arthritis, reminded me of how writing can connect others across so many barriers, like age and time.

That was actually a fabulous experience, because there was an audience and a couple of people who came up afterward and said they could really connect with that piece. Chronic illness does impact a lot of people and there is a lot of education on it today, but it still is something that most people will not understand unless they’ve dealt with it personally. The scarier part about that piece was having friends who knew me well in the audience say, “wow, I never realized that.” You know, as a culture we are taught to not complain, to not be forthcoming on those things. This [subject] for my essay was a complete surprise. I thought first of the audience, which is not normal for me.  I knew I was going to audition for the show, and I thought, what is really unique about my experience as a mother, what sets me apart? Until I wrote that piece, I never really let myself go there. Then, I became less fearful of writing about it, I wrote another piece called “The Adventures of a Steroid Mom” and that was a time when I alluded to my health in a more comic way – a freeing way, too.

I would consider some of your pieces art as advocacy. Do you? If so, what are your goals in using writing as this form?

Yeah, I would say that, especially more recently, it would be a good kind of motto. I think my advocacy goals are multi-pronged. I’m really interested in religion and how it shapes people and causes conflict. I also am interested in destroying the myth of motherhood. As a high school teacher, I would have my juniors read a piece called “Motherhood: Who Needs It?” Now, several of those students are in their thirties without children, so I think I may have scared them off, but that was not my goal. In my own writing, I want to say that motherhood is difficult and rewarding, but not in clichéd ways. I don’t want to be revered because I am a mother. More recently, I have started speaking out against the racism that has always been an undercurrent, but has resurfaced in more overt ways since the election. One of the things I’ve started doing is reviewing other writers’ work, and I see that as a bit of advocacy. I just reviewed a marvelous novel written by a gay man, John Copenhaver, set in post-WWII and two of the major characters are gay. He is trying to explore historical perspective attitudes towards homosexuality through fiction. Part of my job as a writer is to help elevate those voices and voices of persons of color.


Lastly, if a reader knew just one fact and nothing else about you, what would you want it to be?

I sometimes feel like a nesting doll. There are so many different iterations of me, so you don’t always get what you think you’re getting. For example, I am not dressed in suburban mom stuff today…