Crafting Readers

Items

• Matchbox Crops / "Burn Our Bodies Down"
  My crafted object is a matchbox that I painted to show the night sky over Margot’s grandmother’s crops. I drew two matches on opposite sides of the matchbox to represent Margot and her family on opposing sides but left the rest of the sides unpainted. I also included the quotation “Keep a fire burning, a fire is what saves you” because it is repeated continuously throughout the novel. I used acrylic paint to paint the background; paint pens for the corn, moon, stars, lettering and grass; and then felt markers to outline. This process made me think about the physicality and symbolism of fire in Burn Our Bodies Down. Furthermore, I wanted to combine the symbols of fire (by using the quotation) and growth (by depicting the corn crops) to show how, as the novel suggests, destruction can be necessary to starting over. FERN HILL ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: For my final project, I painted a matchbox, using acrylic paint, markers, and paint pens to create a cornfield at night. On the two ends of the matchbox, I put a quotation that is repeated throughout the novel: “Keep a fire burning; a fire is what saves you” (Power 7). At first, I struggled to decide which crafting techniques I should use because there were so many different ones we tried in class, and I was unsure if I wanted to try something entirely different or bridge off one of our class techniques. Originally, I had thought about doing something with collage because it is a technique I often do for fun, but instead I decided to try painting, which is outside my comfort zone. I decided to experiment with a variety of acrylic paint, paint pens, and markers. I first painted the background, which I struggled a bit with because the matchbox logo kept showing through the acrylic paint. Next, I used paint pens to do details such the lettering, corn, moon, grass, and stars. Finally, I waited for the paint to dry and then used a marker to outline small details and add a small drawn match on parallel sides of the matchbox. In my crafting, I wanted to capture the eeriness of an empty cornfield at night because much of Burn Our Bodies Down takes place at night as Margot sneaks around to avoid being caught by her grandmother (Vera). Similarly, I wanted to show the uneasiness of having to sneak around in an unknown place in the dark where you do not know what is waiting in the shadows. Likewise, I drew two matches facing opposite sides of the matchbox to represent how Margot and her mother (Josephine) are genetically clones but have grown into separate beings from each other. Josephine and Margot are biologically the same, so they should be completely the same in character as well; however, they have become increasingly different individuals because of how they were raised. Though both women carry many of the same traits, such as being stubborn, Margot was able to break out of the cycle Vera started, but Josephine couldn’t. Some parts of the matchbox I chose to leave unpainted because I wanted them to speak for themselves. Specifically, I wanted the side that read “keep out of reach of children” to be visible because it felt relevant to how Josephine kept family secrets from Margot until she was a teenager and went looking for answers herself. Additionally, I left the matchbox empty inside to represent how Margot is looking to find her identity in her family history. Throughout the crafting process, I found myself thinking about Margot and how she explores the complexities in her family relationships. I wanted to depict a physical nod to Margot’s relationship with Josephine in my crafting, as in the parallel matches that I drew, because their mother-daughter relationship is what prompts Margot to find out what happened to the rest of her family without Josephine’s help. Burn Our Bodies Down was well received by readers and critics who were fans of Power’s first novel, Wilder Girls, and said her second novel was “full of twists and turns” (Schulz). Power is known for the eerie horror fiction she creates through her dynamic characters, intense personal relationships, and backdrops that make you feel as though you’re a part of the novel. Her rich world building “engulfs you,” which makes Power’s stories incredibly compelling and impossible to put down (Schulz). If you’re like me, you might even finish the entirety of Burn Our Bodies Down in about 2 days. Moreover, Burn Our Bodies Down was originally published in July 2020, right after the initial COVID-19 lockdown. The pandemic-induced lockdown is significant because it made many people have their workplaces shifted online and work from home. Due to people being in their homes and unable to socialize like they used to, countless people had time to return to new or old hobbies such as reading. This return to reading saw the increasing popularity of people sharing book recommendations on platforms such as TikTok and creating entire reading communities under hashtags like #BookTok. Power was one of the authors who benefited from reading’s increased popularity during the pandemic because her first novel, Wilder Girls, had been published in July 2019. Readers became hooked on her writing and ended up reading her new novel, Burn Our Bodies Down. Burn Our Bodies Down focuses on “taking something familiar and twisting it just enough to tell you something is wrong,” which made me think of how matchboxes are everyday objects that have the potential to be dangerous if the user decides to make them so (source ). I believe the matchbox and matches emphasize how a fire can bring warmth and cook food for you to eat and survive on but can also bring immense destruction and death. Likewise, Margot learns the truth about why Josephine hid Vera from her but at the cost of losing her relationship with both of them. Margot learns about where she comes from, makes a best friend for the first time, and discovers how strong she is on her own. However, Margot also goes through immense turmoil as she discovers that Vera is manipulative and cruel, her best friend is murdered, and she is forced to burn down Vera’s farm to break the cycle of cloning and abuse in her family. Comparably, Margot’s journey is related to how a match can start a fire and help you survive. For Margot, fire is what “saves” her but at the cost of using its destruction to start anew (Power 7). Margot using fire to put an end to her suffering is a crucial full-circle moment in the novel because it is what caused Margot and Josephine to have one of their most vicious fights in the past when she accidentally let a candle burn out yet fire is also what saves her from Vera and Josephine’s manipulation. Last, this project taught me a lot about the connection between crafting and literary analysis. Through taking the time to sit with Burn Our Bodies Down over the course of a semester and making my matchbox, I gained a deeper connection to my text. If I had not done the Crafting Literacies course, I wouldn’t have noticed the multiple ways in which fire is a continuous symbol throughout the novel. Before doing this crafting project, I read and enjoyed Burn Our Bodies Down; however , I finished reading it in a very short amount of time. Since I finished reading the novel so quickly, I didn’t absorb the symbolism nearly as much. By doing this project, I re-read my novel and picked up on foreshadowing, the repeated symbolism of fire, and many details about Josephine and Vera that I hadn’t noticed the first time around. Furthermore, I believe this project has given me a new way to analyze literary texts that will continue to expand my knowledge in the future.
• Three Cups of Tea / "Under the Whispering Door"
  I combined both letterpress and linocut techniques to create this piece. Both art forms use ink and paper to create impressions. My final piece relied on formatting the quotation’s text on the letterpress first. I chose 24-point Tiffany font for the quotation because it first appears in the novel handwritten on a chalkboard (Klune 44). Located above the quotation is an image of my hand-carved linocut of a teacup on a plate decorated with intricate leaves. On the teacup is an elk’s outline, which is a symbol used throughout Under the Whispering Door to represent death. Using an ink roller, I applied black ink to the surface of the linoleum block then carefully laid the paper down onto the inked surface and applied direct pressure. This piece is meant to reflect the careful attention to detail that Klune practiced when developing character relationships within his novel. KYRA HETHERINGTON ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: In T.J. Klune’s fifth standalone novel, Under the Whispering Door, the author explores concepts of death and grief while reflecting on what it means to be human. The protagonist, Wallace, is initially depicted as a coldhearted “monster” (9), and his ex-wife describes him at his funeral as a man who was “obstinate, foolhardy, and cared only for himself” (19). When Wallace arrives at a teashop that acts as a waypoint for “those who have left one life in preparation for another” (55), he notices a chalkboard that reads: The first time you share tea, you are a stranger. The second time you share tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share tea, you are family. (44) This quotation outlines Wallace’s growth throughout the novel and defines the quality of the relationships he fosters because “when you take tea with someone, it’s intimate and quiet” (326). The quotation in my print is an anchor point for Wallace’s character growth. However, it is essential to note that the quote does not originate from this novel. Frequently, it is attributed to Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time (2006), which was partially the inspiration for the title of this print. In Under the Whispering Door, Hugo, the ferryman, informs Wallace that it is “a Balti quote” (Klune 326). It is difficult to find an origin source for this Pakistani proverb; it serves as a reminder of the importance of slowing down to prioritize relationships and others. It is not solely about drinking tea. Instead, offering tea is important for those with few resources because it is a small sacrifice made to show hospitality to strangers and honour to friends. I attributed the quote to T.J. Klune in the “Three Cups of Tea” print to focus on the quotation’s physical appearance in the novel. The quotation “written in spiky and slanted letters” (44) on the chalkboard in the teashop appears in a different font in the physical text of the novel. My chosen font emulates the description of the letters as they appear handwritten, with a slanting, scratchy quality. By selecting the Tiffany letterpress font, I hoped that my print of the quotation would embody a personal, handwritten quality. The teacup block print above the quotation incorporates the whimsical quality of the hand-drawn “little deer and squirrels and birds on the chalkboard in green and blue chalk” (43) surrounding the quotation. The linocut image also serves as a reference to the broader theme of death in the novel, featuring a stag in the center to represent “the manager,” a character who appears in the form of a large stag with “flowers hanging from the antlers, their roots embedded into the velvet, blossoms in shades of ochre and fuchsia, cerulean and scarlet, canary and magenta” (261). This character is a “grand thing that oversees life and death, delegating the responsibilities to others” (267) and serves as a tool for forward momentum in the novel. The initial success of Under the Whispering Door was partially due to the popularity of T.J. Klune’s previous works and his ability as a queer author to portray positive queer stories accurately. The novel was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and featured on “Buzzfeed’s Best Books of 2022” due to its later release in September 2021. Regarding critical reception, this novel tends to fly under the radar. The novel appears to have a small but passionate fanbase admiring that it “is a tender story that nimbly touches on the many facets and stages of grief without feeling too saccharine” (Quinn 2023). However, it is considered one of Klune’s lesser-known works. As a contemporary fantasy novel, Under the Whispering Door is didactic, and the story’s moral is transparent. The characters’ interactions provide a humorous respite from otherwise complex subjects (grief and death), and, overall, the novel offers a straightforward message about the value of life and time. The final form of the linocut block and letterpress print reflects the novel’s characteristic simplicity while concurrently representing the time and energy required to produce art—in any format. “Letterpress is the oldest of the traditional printing techniques” (Britannica) and the foundation for the modern-day digital printing presses that produced the physical copies of Under the Whispering Door. To print the quotation on paper, I needed to assemble the text letter by letter, line by line, with small lead pieces to create an ink-bearing surface. In practice, this process is like writing a novel, where each word is thoughtfully written, carefully checked, and evaluated before going to print. Producing a contemporary quotation through a 15th-century art form highlights the consistent nature of human progress that still relies on previous technologies and understandings. Without the practice of the letterpress, there would be no modern novel as we know it. Making the linocut block portion of the print image was similar to process of letterpress printing. Artists began using linoleum as a medium to produce relief prints starting in the 1890s (Fowler). Before this time, artists used wood blocks or stone, but the mediums were unwieldy and difficult to carve. I used a smooth, flexible linoleum and the necessary carving tools, which I easily ordered from Amazon, to create the image. Carving the linoleum still takes time and effort, but the accessibility of the craft makes the process much smoother (and safer) than in earlier eras. The design of the final inked image is deceptively simple, but the process of creating it from start to finish took upwards of four hours. This time included drawing, carving, and quick touch-ups to avoid transferring unwanted ink portions onto the page. Through the creation of my “Three Cups of Tea” print, I reflected on how similar the processes of writing a novel, carving linoleum, and assembling letters can be. All three crafts require an intense dedication to detail and demand time, patience, and effort from the artist. All three art forms appear deceptively simple, and it can be easy to disregard the work required to produce them. The final print version of “Three Cups of Tea” took me 10 hours of active work to complete and could be read and understood in a handful of minutes. Similarly, novels take countless hours to create and finish (including editing and printing time). Creating this print helped me connect the character development in Klune’s novel to my understanding of contemporary forms. While the final product can make the process seem deceptively simple, there is typically a tremendous amount of physical and mental energy required to produce something that leaves a lasting impression.