Heffner: I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome writer and author Joseph Earl Thomas.

He is the author of a new memoir Sink.

Joseph, thank you so much for your time today.

Thomas: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Heffner: It's a pleasure.

And just to start, I wanted to give you an open forum to talk about the creation of Sink.

You wrote essays that then became this great memoir, but if you could just expound on the creation of it for our audience.

What's excited you most in telling your story?

Thomas: Yeah, I think the most exciting part of it for me was to be able to kind of go back and kind of attempt to mind quite seriously what kinds of perspectives, ideas, ways of imagining and all that were most prominent to me as a child, and therefore to a lot of the folks that I had come up with.

And how those things had changed sometimes either dissipated or were get beaten out of us by the time that we become adults.

Heffner: And in summarizing, this was a particular poignant passage about, and you can view it on Joseph's website, Josephearlthomas.net and pick up the book there too: “Roaches fell indifferent from ceiling to cereal bowl as if taunting him for complaining about the fact that he was hungry In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas explores how a cycle of hostility permeated his environment while illuminating the vital reprieve into geek culture.

That's so great.

I mean, what a wonderful and true synopsis.

First of all, what is geek culture?

Thomas: That's a good question.

I think lots of people use this different terminology, whether they say geek or a neuro culture or something like that.

But for me, it wasn't necessarily just something as a reprieve or something that one goes into, but has to do with making in particular.

So thinking of culture as something that we all make that require labors of us.

But the kind of objects that I think of most prominently for my own kind of upbringing had to do with things like video games and animation that were becoming really prominent in the nineties, especially mid to late nineties.

And a lot of people around my age will remember this era where Nintendo gets really big Sega PlayStation, these video games as products become the most popular aesthetic forms, and they come to outweigh all of including movies, television, et cetera, in that kind of present day.

And this is in addition to things like anime coming over from Japan.

So this is the era where the internet is becoming popular or it's getting a little more affordable for folks.

So people are having internet in the house and downloading all of these different kinds of media.

Heffner: Are you also referring to geeks in the more traditional vein of readers?

People who read, whether it's the newspaper or books or comics or some combination?

Thomas: I think there's overlap there.

It's interesting to me because that the reading cultures that one would comprise us or call kind of geek or their cultures were not as prominent for me as a child.

And so I was always interested in that distinction.

I mean, I think the shorthand that we call people who are obsessed with something that is not mainstream enough, would it be a geek or nerd or whatever, whether that's magic, the gathering cards or uio, Pokemon, whatever, any of these kinds of things, some of which I did engage in as well when I was younger, were kind of all amalgamated prior to.

And sometimes during this era where those things have become mainstream now it is, or it has become more of a norm to be a reader or to be someone who plays video games, et cetera.

But for me, I came to those other things, reading, et cetera, a little bit later in life reading by when I mean paper books, there were other things that one was reading to include in video games, but those things became more congealed a little bit later for me.

Heffner: I'm looking at your sweatshirt, your hoodie right now, and thinking, are we not in a perilous moment in this country and in the culture when folks are talking more than they're reading?

And at the same time, we have politicians who are intent on banning books or disciplines of study.

Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

It's very, very grim in that sense.

And I do think that that's true and that that's a problem.

It's not one that I think is easily kind of circumvented.

What does give me a little bit of hope or I would say joy, but more so than hope, is the fact that in relation to these things becoming more mainstream, I think that book culture, reading culture has in some ways used things like internet technologies to amalgamator or find people.

So they're a lot more, and this is compared to when I was younger, despite the fact that there's all these books being banned specific antique or anti-black anti ethnic legislations going around, there are a lot more reading groups, there is a lot more excitement from people that I meet in the kind of every day about reading about trying to open bookstores, about supporting small bookstores, et cetera, and things like that.

So I think it's a complicated set of frustrations I think that are around the kind of broader global scale, or particularly in the United States where power is always trying to diminish one's possibility to read, to learn, to experience, and then all of these kind of smaller pockets of folks who are coming.

So the world with these renewed interests in reading and thinking- Heffner: Now I'm going to ask you a rather introspective question and I don't want to spoil the memoir for those who want to pick it up.

It's been described, and I think it's accurate to say that there was an unceasing cruelty of the conditions of upbringing and you allude to lessons of toxic masculinity.

And the introspective question is this, Joseph, do you think that folks could read your memoir who are literate, but who have preconceived biases or angst, antagonism, whatever you want to call it, towards what we would say are marginalized groups that are now finding their voice, but in a moment where politics and politicians are exploiting people's fear, could people read about the cruelty and in a way that is not going to stigmatize the other?

Are you attempting to present it in a way that this could be wrapped- I know it's springtime now and summer, but this could be wrapped as a Christmas gift in a traditionally conservative household with those preconceived notions and folks could read it and still associate with it and maybe even open their mind or put the shoe on the other foot?

Thomas: That's a good, I mean, I like the framing of this question.

Cause that is so in some ways it's a kind of old question that in particular black intellectuals, especially in the 20th century, were grappling with and arguing with and trying to deal with.

And I don't think it's one that's completely solved.

What I will say is that I have tried my best to foreground or to enter a conversation that is about the way we think about the world itself being a problem.

That is right.

If we think about social and political power that we relatively have none of in a relative sense in the groups of folks that I'm most interested in, most akin to not necessarily being in and of ourselves villains, but responding to social conditions in every way, shape or form.

And figuring out how kind of interpersonally to deal with those social conditions that is considering the mistakes and the kind of good things that come out of struggle.

And the other end is something that was really important to me is thinking about foregrounding, the constructiveness of the memoir as a thing itself and not just a kind of raw exposition.

And part of that had to do with forming Joey, the character in the third person and having that that framework be something that is about trying to imagine or work through the external environment as much as it is trying to work through the internal one.

And this is true even up to and moving into the second person.

So for me, part of the labor that I am doing in the book and trying to get the reader to do is against the immediate ethnographic or anthropological reading like, oh, these people are bad.

I'm going to view them as bad, and that's what it's going to be.

And I think that that can be difficult.

But I think that for me, the work, the kind of literature that I enjoy the most is that kind of difficult literature that is making us work through or frustrating notions while also being as honest as possible about what the world does to people rather than pretending that people in and of ourselves with unlimited freedom are not responding to conditions of oppression and are instead inherently good or bad.

Heffner: I think you described it, but was there a singular moment when you decided to make this a third person account, which does offer that?

I know for reasons that are emotional, that might have just been the only way you could do it, and keep yourself mentally healthy, well.

But was there a particular moment that clicked for you when you said, I'm going to do this as a third person account?

Thomas: I think in my initial thinking about the construction of the memoir, I had imagined all kinds of fences, all kinds of perspectives.

And I think the third person, if we think of it in literature being defined as a kind of free indirect discourse where one is trying to be subjective and objective at the same time.

And if we think historically the best practitioners are probably the best in the world or of all time is someone like Toni Morrison who does this kind of work the best.

So us thinking about what that perspective can even offer at all.

And that is I wanted to create the sense of shifting, sometimes stable, sometimes unstable confusion in the mind of a young black person.

And the third person for me was the best at that.

I think that sometimes when we were writing in first person, there is more of a desire to explain on art or I'll say on my end as a writer, when I'm writing a first person, I have much more of a desire to explain.

And I think that sometimes when we read first person accounts, there tends to be much more of a desire to receive an explanation.

And I want it to flatten that out and say it's likely that there are no good explanations and there particularly aren't any that can be found here and now or that are easy.

And what does it take in that sense to try and move towards a set of explanations about the world and about one's kind of social situation that work.

So for me, I think writing in first person ended up being a kind of impossibility if I wanted to tell the story that I was telling in this particular sense.

Heffner: Now, if I'm correct, according to the one Book Wards page, you indicated that your service was about 13 years, right?

Thomas: Yeah.

I was in the Army for about 13 years.

Heffner: And that I see reference to you being deployed as a medic and EMT in Baghdad.

And so as you think of that relationship between yourself and the contemporary reader, it is an experience like that I think makes people perhaps less likely to otherize to see your patriotism, your valor.

And you were doing it as you explain out of a certain financial necessity.

But regardless, it doesn't matter why you were doing it, it is most relatable in thinking about people at the heart and core of this country who want to defend each other and save people's lives, really.

Thomas: Yeah, I mean, think- so, it's an interesting thing.

I myself and I know a great deal of my friends who joined the Army or Army National Guard or Army Air Guard or whatever, any of those things around the same time as me were primarily right.

It was like an employment opportunity, and it wasn't an immediate ideal or interest in patriotism.

And yet, while I was in, I did meet a great deal of people of course as one does, who were more interested in being patriots or in that way.

And I think that those things are kind of complicated.

I think sometimes we separate the military as a job or a profession from other jobs and professions that certain groups of people are more likely to enter.

So if you are from particular my neighborhood or my high school, I knew large swaths of people who entered the military because that was the best job for them.

That was the way to get healthcare, that was the way to pay for college, et cetera.

And a lot of what I'm writing about now is about those questions.

And it has to do with the military, it has to do with hair or caring for people.

Because I was a medic for so long because I was an e EMT for so long because I was a patient care tech, d n a, et cetera, for all those years that is kind of at the forefront of my mind.

And that to me as a kind of broader scope of thinking is probably the thing that is the least othering because you're forced into so many scenarios with people who are very, very different from you in often life or death situations.

And that with a bunch of different folks' lives over such a long time that I think it changes the way you think, feel, the way you get used to being.

And for me, the way that I constructed sentences even.

Right.

On a more formal scale.

Heffner: What I'm plainly trying to ask is in the current free speech debates, if you were to survey most of your colleagues, people you cared for people who cared for you and help keep you alive through that experience, they would see debates about wokeism or any of the cultural debate and just be like, “You can say what you want, just say what you want, feel what you want.

If you're not threatening anyone's physical health, that that is why we were in the military, or at least the notion of our distinctive patriotism.

” And I'm just wondering if you were to survey some of your family of friends and colleagues from that period, if they would have that attitude of “Why would we think of banning a book?

We're looking out for each other and want each other to be well and healthy.

This book is not going to going to prevent someone from being well or healthy.

” Thomas: I mean, we have to always think about the specifics.

What books are being banned, what fields of study are being forced out of our organized practices of education in particular?

And we know that a lot of those books, especially right now, are books by, about, relating to black folks, queer folks, trans folks, and the, I'm assuming you mean military peers in this sense.

Heffner: Right.

Thomas: It's interesting because I think that a lot of them, so there's a whole group of folks who would be like, I'm not reading any books, I don't care about any of this at all under any circumstances.

There's that whole group of folks, there's a lot of the folks who were also medics or doctors who are the folks that I was closest with, I think who would say, who are usually further left in this comparison, who would be like, yeah, it, it's utterly ridiculous that would a lot of whom came home and were like, now they are teachers, nurses, doctors, whatever, who would say that it's utterly ridiculous and it's a continuation of kind of racism or anti LGBTQ practices that one would ban these sets of books, these sets of books, these educational practices, etcetera.

And then there is another group of folks, of course, I think this is the way that people think of a stereotypical military patriot who might say like these things are wrong because they are preordained by whatever other kind of epistemology or way of thought being thinking that one pre-ascribes or one is born into whether that is a very strict set of religious practices, whether that is like a very dogmatic form of American history, et cetera.

So I mean, that is to say that I think it would be hard for me to separate those groups of people because they were all existing in that same space or did all exist in those same spaces, some of whom to more argumentative or troubling or problematic effect than others.

And so I think that there would be folks all across the spectrum in that way.

And that sometimes belies who I've kept in contact with, who I have not kept in contact with, who has, and I will say also because of the level of intimacy in places like this, it's one of few places where I have actually seen people change their minds, which is not, I don't think, a norm when it comes to, let's say, deeply held sets of ideological beliefs that get talked about from afar or on a camera on the internet or you.

Heffner: As you were talking, I was thinking about the soldier from A Few Good Men, and when he's trying to explain the concept of Unit Core God Country, and he says it very quickly and has to repeat it himself.

The nature of the question is, I guess opening up is up speech at this juncture, so that basically you could have a universal rule of thumb where these books that are on the chopping block now often by black or trans authors ought not be.

But there should be, I think about it in the context of the pandemic alternative theories, which may, well, in terms of the origin of the pandemic not be, alternative theory might be a fact if it ultimately proven, but also the anti-vaxxers anti-mask wearing that the people who are advocating chopping these books often wanted spaces for those alternatives.

But where do you see the future of speech as the way to respond to the banning of these particular books?

Is it inviting books that might actually be morally questionable or problematic if we think of the contemporary American life as the Allies, but there were the Axis Powers and we know what they were engaged in, specifically the Holocaust.

So mean is what's the best move right now to try to address why it's wrong to ban these books?

Is it inviting more books even if they're morally dubious or questionable?

Thomas: Yeah, I, so I can't see myself being in favor of banning any form of literature.

I think whether or not we decide to institutionalize, let's say, books that teach violent or harmful practices in our kind of public institutions, I think is a different question than what are the kind of practices surrounding our possibility to have or relate to or to do anything with these books.

But I also think that like, of course, the project of banning, of course, let's say texts or work by, or fields of study regarding oppressed peoples is there's a historical precedent for those kinds of attempts that use the language of harm or violence in ways that are a little clearly dishonest that don't work for anyone that I think rely on preconceived kinds of ideological or strongly held ideological beliefs.

Right.

So I think it's a difference.

For me, it's hardly even entering into a debate because nothing, there has been no viable claim as to why one should ban, for example, Toni Morrison or something like that.

The idea that is a text that should be banned I have not heard as of yet any argument that for me would rise to the level of debate or any statement, let's say, because it's not an argument yet that would rise to the level of debate that I have been able to take seriously or plausible as a set of reasonings.

And I'm not saying that there is no such thing as a claim that one could have about why, what we shouldn't read and read Mein Kampf or some [BEEP } like that or whatever.

That's perfectly reasonable.

But as far as the current state of book bands goes, right, and I'm thinking particularly the kind of banning's or attempted eradication of literature or thinking about oppressed folks from all of our ways of thinking, I had to just not heard any valuable arguments for why that could be the case Heffner: In the minute we have left, what I hear you're saying is that there is zero equivalency, I mean.

Thomas: Yeah.

Heffner: So folks are asking to ban books that in many cases don't have any morally dubious or questionable qualities that would not incite violence or genocide or hate.

Thomas: Interestingly, the claims to these morally dubious or these morally dubious qualities are actually things that we claim are happening in the text are actually there are things that the nation is perpetuating.

Right?

Over and over again in a material sense, on one hand from a position of power and on the other hand saying like, oh, we can't read these books because these books are dubious or these books are wrong, and it's one of these kinds of bait and switch maneuvers.

That again, right there is tons historical precedent for.

Heffner: Well, I want to thank you for your service, the artistry of your prose and also your contributions to American life.

And you got into some traumatic, hairy situations overseas that deserve our recognition, and I want to do that.

And so thank you, Joseph, for your time today, for your insight, for your book Sink: A Memoir, please check it out at your local book seller or visit Joseph's website.

Thank you for your time today, Joseph Earl Thomas.

Thomas: Thank you.

Heffner: Please visit The Open Mind website at thirteen.org/openmind to view this program online or to access over 1500 other interviews.

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