麻豆影院

In newly published story collection The Rupture Files, CU 麻豆影院鈥檚 Nathan Alexander Moore explores identity and community in dystopian worlds

Nathan Alexander Moore was thinking about the end of the world鈥攏ot how to survive the apocalypse or overcome it, necessarily, or even how to fix it, but rather the decisions we make when the world collapses around us.

鈥淲ho do you become?鈥� asks Moore, an assistant professor in the 麻豆影院 Department of Women and Gender Studies. 鈥淲hat choices do we make in this new world? How do we understand ourselves, and understand ourselves in community, in the larger context of a world that is ending or starting anew?

鈥淔or me, as someone who loves all things speculative fiction, dystopias are so interesting because these worlds become dystopic because of who the events are happening to. And the largest impacts, in fiction and real life, often happen to people who are marginalized. Dystopia largely impacts people who are Black or Brown, in places that are underdeveloped and underfunded.鈥�

From that end鈥攐r beginning鈥攐f the world was born , Moore鈥檚 newly published story collection. Touted by publisher Hajar Press as 鈥渟upernatural stories of life in the fissures of disaster,鈥� Moore鈥檚 tales actually plunge deeper into the ruined Earth, with Black and queer and trans characters exploring who they are and who they might become.

鈥淚鈥檓 very aware of all of the history and the many cultural representations that have shaped Black people, and specifically Black queer people,鈥� Moore explains. 鈥淚 feel so much in our culture and in representations in film and television and literature, that Black characters and Black queer characters either become paragons or, on the opposite end, they鈥檙e kind of the worst of the worst, the villains, the despicable ones.

鈥淔or me, it鈥檚 about telling a story about a person who is nuanced. Some will see them as the hero, some as the villain, but at the core they are a person who is learning and growing and struggling. I want to show them鈥攖o show us鈥攁s beautiful, nuanced, complex characters, and that whatever their experience is, it鈥檚 a real experience. To try to be universal would strip us of what makes it interesting.鈥�

Becoming a writer

Moore, who identifies as Black and trans, was a reader before she was a writer, finding motivation to finish her homework so she could crack open an Anne Rice novel. One of the first stories she wrote and shared with other people was called 鈥淢idnight and Nocturnes鈥濃�斺�淚 was using big words,鈥� Moore recalls, 鈥淚 thought I was so cute in high school鈥濃�攁bout a vampire who was turned in ancient Egypt.

The vampire wakes at dusk 鈥渁nd she鈥檚 like, 鈥業鈥檓 gonna go eat some people, I鈥檓 hungry.鈥� Then she runs into a vampire hunter, and for the first time she pauses at killing because he has the exact eyes of someone she knew in life. She says, 鈥業 remember when I was human, I loved you. You broke my heart, and I loved you鈥� and it ends with her making a big choice whether she鈥檚 going to live or die.鈥�

Moore wrote it when she was 16 or 17 and submitted to a contest on Facebook and ended up winning third place. 鈥淚t was the first story where I very much remember writing it and thinking, 鈥極K, I think I鈥檓 writing, I think I might be a writer.鈥� And then when I came in third, I was like, 鈥極h, she鈥檚 on her way!鈥� It also helped that I wrote that story when Twilight/True Blood/Vampire Diaries was of the moment, and I was reading all of those books.鈥�

Through graduate school, she focused on creative writing and Black literature and cultures, delving deeper into speculative fiction through a lens of feminism and collective memory. , earned at the University of Texas at Austin, focused on contingency and Black temporal imaginations, and included a chapter titled 鈥淔rom Catastrophe to the Cataclysm: Black Speculations on the Limits of the Anthropocene & the Temporality of Disasters.鈥�

In fact, writing The Rupture Files wasn鈥檛 completely Moore's idea. An editor at Hajar Press saw about writing Black geopolitics through speculative fiction and asked Moore if she wrote her own speculative fiction.

As it happened, there were some people she鈥檇 been living with for a while鈥�

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鈥楾he world we鈥檙e living in鈥�

鈥淭he first story (in The Rupture Files) is called 鈥楽equela,鈥� and it鈥檚 about this far-future dystopia where the world is mostly ocean and everything is transient,鈥� Moore says. 鈥淭here were portions (of that story) I had written as series of prose poems, and they had been kind of living in my head. With the other stories, I had characters who weren鈥檛 fully realized鈥擨 had a snapshot, a photograph, they were peering over the fence and I was like, 鈥楬mm, what are you doing?鈥� For a long time, they were thought experiments, and in writing them they became real.鈥�

The story 鈥淪equela鈥� is about a woman named Shalomar, who lives in one of a series of stations in this new ocean world鈥斺�淚 imagine the stations like metallic squids, though I never said it in the story, and they kind of hunker on land and then jump around,鈥� Moore explains鈥攁nd whose job is station archivist. Whatever the station pulls out of the ocean, it鈥檚 her job to analyze it and think about its historical value. As a Black woman, Shalomar had been trying to document Black history before the apocalypse, and after it she discovered that the water wanted her to tell a different story, as did the mermaids.

In a story called 鈥淎shes for Your Beauty,鈥� Moore tells the story of a woman who is the consort (read: food source) of a vampire in a bombed-out, post-nuclear world, who discovers that she has power, and she can make power. 鈥淪o, she has to decide, 鈥楢m I going to stay in this life that鈥檚 very scary and terrible but stable, or burn shit down?鈥欌�� Moore says.

Writing the four stories in The Rupture Files was a different experience from the novel manuscript Moore wrote while earning her master鈥檚.

鈥淚 was thinking about narrative arcs, about character development, who is the main person, whose perspective feels the most interesting,鈥� Moore says. 鈥淚 was balancing the expansiveness of living in a brand-new world that even I didn鈥檛 know all the rules of and also making it containable in short form. It was a steep learning curve but really fun.鈥�

It also, she says, allowed her to more deeply consider the world as it currently is: 鈥淲hat鈥檚 always interesting about dystopias is they are projected as far futures, but any time someone鈥檚 writing a dystopia, they鈥檙e writing about the present鈥攅xpanded and intensified, but the present. Dystopic writing is really about looking out at the world we鈥檙e living in today.鈥�

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