KIMBERLY KING PARSONS’S WE WERE THE UNIVERSE BOOK TOUR
Skylight Books
Los Angeles
May 16, 2024
The cosmos keep bringing me back to Kimberly King Parsons. During undergrad, I studied her short story collection Black Light (2019), long-listed for the National Book Award. Last March, I introduced her at Storyfort, where she read an excerpt from her debut novel We Were the Universe (2024). It was only a matter of time before she ended up in Los Angeles — indeed, her book tour included a stop at Skylight Books in Los Feliz last week. I wouldn’t have braved the abysmal parking situation on Vermont Avenue for any old reading, but the universe was calling me to this one.
Parsons kicked off the event by cracking open a bright pink hardcover copy of the novel and introducing us to Kit, a mother who fantasizes about forbidden rendezvous with the local “cool mom” and wistfully recalls past drug trips, all while happily cohabiting with her husband and young daughter. At a tight six minutes, the passage was long enough to bring Kit to life — I would babysit her little Gilda just to chill with her — and short enough to leave us wanting more. Kit narrates the vicissitudes of motherhood with both a sense of humor and a stirring eye for detail. She jokes about her daughter’s dinosaur obsession (somehow, dinos seemed “different” when she was a kid) and remarks on her changing perceptions of breast milk (which no longer strikes her as a miraculous substance akin to liquid gold).
The reading was followed by a conversation with Los Angeles – based author Jean Kyoung Frazier. (The pairing was auspicious: Frazier’s 2020 novel Pizza Girl also features mom-for-mom pining.) Parsons began, fittingly, by explaining how the novel was conceived: sitting by the Boiling River in Wyoming, she found herself “weirdly irritated by everyone else’s Zen” and realized that being away from her children made all the thoughts she had tried to suppress bubble to the surface. She drew upon this experience while writing the book’s opening scene, in which Kit “astrally hurls herself back” to college while watching Gilda run around at the playground. The discussion turned to the ways in which mothers are expected to curtail any desires that aren’t related to nurturing and homemaking, and how bumping up against those desires can create internal tension. Parsons described a scene in which Kit, reminiscing over single life, pulls up porn and finds herself distracted by concerns for the actors’ well-being: They look like kids! Are they staying hydrated?
Parsons then talked about subverting readers’ expectations for characters. She noted that although Kit is a queer mother grappling with conflicted thoughts in a straight-presenting relationship, her husband isn’t the “villain” of the story — she was intent on representing “a queer woman married to a straight dude in a happy monogamous relationship that is working for both of them.” She also shared an insight from scrolling through Goodreads: apparently, a number of readers found it difficult to finish the book because they were afraid that Kit would do drugs and endanger Gilda’s life in the process. Although Parsons didn’t set out to scare her fellow moms, she was excited that her work could provide a space for audiences to reckon with thoughts that might feel untoward or dangerous.
Parsons concluded with a personal anecdote: during a tender moment, her son told her, “I just want to spend eternity with you.” Parsons was touched, but also curious about where he had picked up the language he had used. The musing drew forth chuckles and thoughtful “hmms” from the crowd, diverse in gender as well as age. Not only had Parsons provided us all with a window into motherhood; she had also illuminated the wonders of vicarious discovery, a process that underscores parenting and fiction-writing alike.
