`The Weight' of isolation
They're White, he's Black. They're West Coast, he's Midwestern. Novelist Jeff Boyd digs into his protagonist and his own experience.
Julian Strickland, the hero of Jeff Boyd's debut novel, “The Weight,” isn't having the best year.
Julian is living in Portland, Oregon, where he plays drums for an indie rock band. He feels out of place as a Black man in the city's largely White population, and as someone raised as an evangelical Christian who's since fallen away from the faith, he's struggling with a feeling of spiritual rootlessness after his brief marriage fell apart.
When he meets an artist, a Black woman named Ida, things start to look up — until they don't. His band is falling apart, his best friend suddenly becomes cold and hostile, and a fire destroys his house.
Boyd was born in San Jose and raised there and in the suburbs of Chicago. He worked as an English and language arts teacher in Portland and Chicago before getting his master's degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. He answered questions about “The Weight” from Brooklyn, where he now lives. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Q
Julian is such a fascinating character. How did he come to you?
AI started writing this book when I was still in Portland and I was a teacher. I had this idea to write a third-person novel with six different characters. One of the characters was Julian, who was the only Black character in the book. And I just decided that was the person I was going to focus on.
QJulian has this feeling of not belonging. He was home-schooled and raised as an evangelical, and he's living in Portland where there might be a disconnect between his background and other people. It must have been interesting to explore that dynamic.
AIt was, and it came from my own experience, to an extent. I liked the idea that he was a character who felt alienated for multiple reasons. It wasn't just that he was Black, it wasn't just that he was an exhome-schooler and Christian, but also the fact that he was an indie rock musician, and a lot of those people feel out of place. They don't feel like they fit the mainstream, either. They all feel a little bit like they're scrambling to find something they can hold on to and believe in, even if it's not for the same reasons that Julian has. For him, moving there from the Midwest, where it's very conservative and Christian, the spiritual question was always the big thing. It was always like, if you're not a Christian, what are you then? Then he moves to Portland, where people are like, “I was born an atheist.” And that's a big change.
QJulian has fallen away from the church and his belief. Do you think music is a way to fill the void that religion played in his life?
AI think it would be hard to separate. Sometimes you just find yourself in a situation and you realize that that's the thing. That's how I've always felt about music. For him, he grew up playing music in the church, and a lot of his big spiritual feelings and epiphanies came from music. So it's like an anchor to him that he can still have this almost spiritual connection with music, the same way he had in church. It's like a continuation of this exploration that he had started when he picked up the drums in the first place.
QOne of the epigraphs to your book is a since-repealed section from the Oregon Constitution that prohibited Black people from moving into the state, owning real estate and doing business there. Do you think people outside of Oregon are surprised when they learn of its White supremacist history, since it has a reputation as being blue and progressive?
AI do think it's probably surprising to some people who just know Portland from the headlines of the past 20 years and think it's kind of a liberal haven. When you're living there too, it's kind of surprising when you finally start realizing the history of it. I think Black people couldn't own property in Oregon until the 1920s; that was when the last law was repealed. So even the historically Black neighborhoods of Portland are very small and aren't that established, because they haven't had that much time to develop.
QThere's a passage in the book where Julian says, “Everywhere I went, I was the Black guy.” What kind of effect does that kind of isolation, that feeling of being out of place, have on Julian?
AI think it depends on the situation. Sometimes he doesn't really think about it, and sometimes it's just so striking that you can't help but notice it. Even if it's not necessarily that he's having a bad time, or someone's being racist or rude to him, it's just human nature to notice it. Sometimes it's in his face and it's upfront, like with the cops, but other times it's just a feeling of loneliness. When he's feeling lonely, he doesn't need to look that far to start putting together why that is.
QHe's lonely when he meets Ida. What does she mean to him?
AHe feels like they have a mutual understanding of things that he doesn't need to say that she can understand. When he tells her about being pulled over by the cops, he doesn't need to explain to her why it was such a big deal, why he felt that fear, because she understands it. Also, she's kind of a searcher, like he is. She has a lot of the same interests as him, which is important. And she is Black, which is refreshing to him, and that's also important. She's also someone who seems to be able to focus on the things that she cares about and loves above all else, and Julian wants that as well. He has a respect for the way she's been able to live her life and practice her art, and he wants to be able to do the same thing.