Passarella discusses being a ‘muddled mashup of everything’
Raised in a conservative corner of Memphis, Elizabeth Passarella now makes her home in New York City, and "Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York" tells her story: of moving to the city, getting married, becoming a Democrat and raising a family, all while maintaining her unquenchable Christian faith.
Employing a healthy dose of humor, Passarella has crafted a book that is sure to spark a laugh while cautioning readers against oversimplifying identity. Passarella’s is a passionate voice, never shrinking from the things she is devoted to — her family, her faith, thank-you notes, the city bus and the crowded apartment she calls home. But hers is also a welcoming voice, and readers will find much to connect with, even if they don’t share her beliefs. Her witty memoir attempts to bridge those gaps that threaten to divide us, insisting that we all have more in common than we may believe.
Passarella answered questions from Chapter 16 via email.
Chapter 16: You call yourself a Southern evangelical, even as you recognize the term has gotten muddy. Why embrace this “radioactive” label?
Passarella: It may have been an enormous mistake! Only time and book sales will tell! I hope that any barrier to entry the term evangelical may create for some readers is balanced by a curiosity stirred in others, especially since it’s clear that I am also a New Yorker, which many feel is antithetical to being a Christian. I considered putting the term Democrat in the subtitle, too, but I thought people’s heads would explode. That’s kind of the point, though — all of these terms are radioactive to some group, and yet, here I am, being this muddled mashup of everything.
Now, I certainly don’t walk the streets of Manhattan telling everyone I’m an evangelical Christian. I am a member of a Presbyterian church, and I don’t think evangelical is anywhere on the website. That said, as I was writing the introduction and reflecting on the evangelical culture I grew up in, I started digging around for an exact definition of what it truly meant, theologically. And when you strip away the political bedsharing, the tenets are still true for me. I don’t care about the label, but I do have a fairly conservative theology coupled with a liberal political side. I think that’s interesting to people. And I’ve gotten messages from a lot of atheists and Jewish readers who related to the book and enjoyed it, if anyone is on the fence.
Q: What’s your favorite part of parenting in a big city? What about your least favorite?
A: My kids are exposed to everything, good and bad, and I love that. I think sheltering kids is overrated. Walking everywhere and riding public transportation mean they interact with young, old, Black, white, differently abled, non-english speakers, homeless neighbors, and sometimes people who teach them terrible curse words. Occasionally, seeing something ugly or hard (we’ve been flashed more than once) leads to a really great conversation about sin or fairness or mental illness or injustice. I’m not sure I’d be pursuing some of those conversations if it weren’t in my face on the streets of the city, so I’m thankful it is. My least favorite part of parenting here is that people move. It’s a transient city. We have our parenting village like everyone else, but every few years, the village might turn over. I worry my kids won’t have the deep, lifelong friends that I had growing up.
Q: In every chapter, you use stories from your life to build a deeper narrative, one shaped by your faith. At one point, you describe storytelling as a way of “making sense of things that feel too big to just carry around inside our heads all day.” Why are stories so essential to the human experience?
A: Writing, for me, is like talking. In fact, I talk to myself all the time, usually working through a story that I’ll eventually write down — and, yes, people catch me telling stories to myself while walking down the street, and, yes, wearing a mask for the past year has saved me a lot of embarrassment. I like to compartmentalize, organize, and structure my feelings into stories with beginnings, middles and ends, because it helps me feel in control of them. Maybe this sounds selfish, but I initially write for myself. What I’ve found throughout my career, though, is that stories make us feel less alone. I’ll write about something absurd that I’ve experienced, that I find funny, in the hopes that it’ll make a reader laugh, and I’ll get an email from a stranger telling me how much she related to it or that she’s been through a similar situation or thought the same awful thought. We need stories to feel less weird. We’re not as different as we think, after all.
To read the full version of this interview — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.