Erica Frederick is a queer, Haitian-American writer and an MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. She writes about being brought up by immigrants, brought up in brotherhood, brought up while being big in all the ways there are to be big—in body, in vitriol, in Blackness in Florida suburbia. She is an alum of the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers Week and the 2019 VIDA Fellow for the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival. She’s a child of the internet and ran a quasi-successful fan blog in her teens.
Q&A
Give us a brief synopsis about this piece.
Fight in the Night is about the sole sister to five brothers & the only daughter to Haitian immigrants fighting for a way into herself. She falls for the girl friend who believes in days and daylight, she fights for and by and with her brothers—all as she grows into a big body that just might be woman.
What inspired you to write it?
I was actually inspired after attending the Hurston/Wright Summer Writers Week in 2018. I got to work with Mitchell S. Jackson, and he talked a lot about John Edgar Wideman’s essay, “The Language of Home.” He talked about taking the most of our upcoming, taking a risk, and being the most ourselves on the page. I think he said, “no one can beat that.” I wanted to write this story that radiated with the joyful and thrilling and heartbreaking chaos of my youth. I wanted to write about all the deep-felt feelings I’ve held about my body, race, sexuality, and family. This is that story. This is myself on the page.
Tell us about your journey as a writer.
Sure, I was a kid novelist or whatever. But, the most pivotal part of my journey was finally believing I could be a serious writer, which happened when I attended Florida State. I always think of all the luck that allowed me to be placed into SJ Sindu’s class, “fiction technique.” I was still just a teenager, and it meant so much to me to be in a space helmed by a queer person of color and to have that person say I had a knack for writing. I think working with Ravi Howard (who introduced me to Hurston/Wright!) at the end of my time at FSU also renewed my desire to tell Black stories and Black stories only. I will always send my full gratitude to the Black and brown writers who helped me realize there is a place for me in this literary world.
Is there someone whose writing style influences you?
I love Justin Torres, specifically We the Animals. He captures this story about these three ravenous boys in these vignette-like chapters. He distills heat and hunger and chaos into such a small space. I’ve definitely been inspired by the intensity of Torres’s prose as well as the collective voice he gives to siblinghood. We the Animals is actually his only novel and it came out ten years ago as of 2021. Torres, if you are reading this: please bless us all a second novel to devour.
Are there books you return to when thinking about craft?
I honestly hadn’t until I very recently read Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. It was reinvigorating to me as a writer. It made me think about how certain craft choices are taught simply because most of our creative writing professors have lauded a very old and very white canon. I would love it if more of us could admit that the canon is just not all that. There indeed exists plot structures outside of the hero’s journey. There are ways in which we tell stories that are true to our culture and really belong to us. These stories are good stories.
What does it mean to be a writer during a global crisis? Has your writing life or your work been affected or influenced by the events of the last 15 months?
I hope I don’t sound too hokey saying this, but we need hope now more than ever. Living through a global pandemic has held a torch light to the multitude of disparities Black people are facing in this country. It’s been disheartening, it’s been traumatic. Writing through this pandemic has made me realize that, yes, writing about the reality of our struggles is necessary and important, but we also have to write about our joy. I want to write about joy. I want to write us into happy endings. I do say this while acknowledging that a real-life happy ending can only come from a complete systematic upheaval. But I believe that being able to imagine a world in which we are no longer oppressed is a radical act. I believe that our joy is a tool for our liberation.
What advice would you give aspiring writers?
Write the story that’s been living in your head all your life—just get it out. Write the story that you worry is too niche, too out there, too intimate. People are aching to read it. Just don’t forget to sprinkle in that hope and a healthy dose of Black joy.
“Fight in the Night”
By Erica Frederick
an excerpt
There was a time in all the boys’ lives when they took to ass-beating Okenn toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow like he was the final boss in Mortal Kombat. The only battle I actually witnessed was Benji’s. It was the time of the night when outside just seemed to be screaming. I was up late playing computer games in the family room and maybe it was all my fault because I was watching Benji and his boy through a slit in the blinds. I felt ain’t-shit, like I was watching a porno, even though it wasn’t anything nasty like that. They were just swinging pinkies and bumping kneecaps. So while I was feeling bad for feeling bad, Okenn ran up on me in his pajamas and nearly ripped the blinds off to see. When Okenn started undoing the front door locks I started banging on the window. My nigga’s nigga ran, fast.
Benji had always been one for talking, but on that night, when Okenn started talking some real foul shit, he just swung. I watched through the window, Okenn looked like an old man who looked just like Benji once. Who had dreams of a son who might hug love into him but instead, had a legacy of niggas. And that night, when Okenn was really getting his shit rocked, I knew my brother had been holding back on all of us. That if I’d ever actually been properly jumped I would’ve seen those quick feet or hard-ass blows coming from those skinny-ass arms. I ran outside and heard Benji’s voice collapsing worse than when he was in puberty: Get the fuck off me. I tried to pry him and Okenn apart but the beating shook and echoed and all I did was pull them down onto me and driveway oil stains. I could see how round Okenn’s belly had gotten, noticed Benji had a belly button ring. And my brother, who always saw me, didn’t. And I don’t know if he saw Okenn, or himself, but I could feel it when one hit belly piercing, the other hit soft belly. Someone in our white suburbia called the cops and they came to put them both in jail for a night. Before they left, Benji clenched his jaw and Okenn tried to smooth and sweet talk. The round white cop said: Shut the fuck up, and I realized Okenn didn’t have a single friend in this world. And I wondered how I ever let him tell me anything, or how he was anybody at all.