In ‘Thanks For This Riot,’ Janelle Bassett Gives Us Brilliant Observations of Rural Women

The debut short story collection is sadly funny, oddly dark, distinctly feminist, with a thrumming undercurrent of Christianity—it's giving a bit Flannery O'Connor.

By Chris Dennis | September 23, 2024 | 8:09am

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In ‘Thanks For This Riot,’ Janelle Bassett Gives Us Brilliant Observations of Rural Women

While reading Janelle Bassett’s debut story collection, Thanks For This Riot, I kept asking myself: Do these stories feel like they’re directed by Todd Haynes or Todd Solondz? I hate to even reference two male directors when talking about a book that is so consistently from the perspective of a very strange and powerful woman, but I couldn’t stop thinking, “Which of the Todds are being summoned?”

I should be referencing Lorrie Moore, or even Miranda July, or no one at all, because there is also something so idiosyncratic about this book, each story clearly born from the mind of an outsider mother from the Ozarks. I am thinking of the Todds though, because in the opening story, a teenage girl’s mother has instilled in her daughter an elaborate paranoia of being kidnapped by strangers. In this story, sitting alone at a local fun park, wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top for the first time, the girl requests two tissues from a woman pushing a stroller, and places the tissues on each of her bare shoulders, “For warmth. For protection.” she says. It’s this private, odd, often dark depiction of womanhood that calls to mind the Todds. I hear Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) in these stories, I hear Safe (1995). I also hear something very personal and brand new.

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Janelle’s book won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and, with its singular characters, inventiveness, and humanity, has all the beauty of a breakout collection. She’s an editor whose own work appears in The Offing, The Rumpus, and Smokelong Quarterly. She’s so good at sad humor, and a version of country feminism that reveals the complicated longing of rural women searching to free themselves from tradition. Each story offers a perverse view of pop culture from the perspective of someone who doesn’t quite have access to it, but there is also a loving profundity to the work.

There’s the story of a young woman who unexpectedly finds herself babysitting the daughter of two famous comedians. In another, a wife prepares for a medical procedure that will lower her expectations. In one of the final stories in the collection, “Full Stop,” a woman carpools to an abortion rights rally with a voice actress who may or may not be a conspiracy theorist. The whole book is laced with moments of unsettling irony, brilliant observations about the minds of modern Americans, and incredible compassion towards the misunderstood and marginal. Janelle and I talked about some of this, and where ideas for art come from.

Why do I feel like you grew up in a religious environment? I’m not just saying this because you’re from rural, southern Missouri, although there is something particularly Ozark about your point of view. There’s a sneaky undercurrent of Christianity in your stories. She’s giving a little Flannery O’Connor. What was the culture like there when you were growing up?

The culture was definitely Christian, conservative, and patriarchal, but I was not overly aware of this until I was a teenager—it was just the soup I was cooking in. As I got older, I sensed the hands of those confining values closing in around my neck. I felt judged, held back, reduced. I became sharp and angry. But I don’t think I could have articulated what, exactly, I was reacting to. It’s possible that a lot of the characters I write are the same. They are resisting the structures they’re inside and yet they wouldn’t be able to talk at length about what they’re up against. It’s more of a gut-level resistance than an intellectual one. Not a lot of rebuttals, just lots of sighing and grunting.

And I’m happy that I sound like an Ozarker!

Reading your book, I wondered, is this what they mean by “domestic fiction”? It’s awkward conversations. It’s a mismatched intimacy. It’s women washing dishes and thinking about suffering. Do you have a theme, as a writer, on purpose? Does any writer have a theme on purpose?

I don’t have the attention span to do anything on purpose! For me, each story was its own separate universe but once they were side-by-side in a book, I realized that, taken together, they were saying something bigger and more personal than I had intended. And there was a theme! It was like I fell down the stairs, landed on my feet, and then pretended I’d meant to do the whole thing.

That said, these stories were written while I had young children and spent a lot of my time at home, so it tracks that a common theme would be the monotonous but necessary actions that go along with taking care of people and homes. When I’m reading, it’s the domestic scenes that I’m most interested in. I want to know what’s going on behind closed doors, everything that’s none of my business. Do they leave food on the counter? Is the sink drain full of hair? Do they touch each other’s butts? Who’s crying?

There’s a lot of comedy in the way you write; not just situational comedy, but the comedy of language and metaphor. Where does that come from? Are you a humorist?

I’m flattered, but I doubt it. “Humorist” feels so high-brow. I feel more like an unfortunate clown lady. And in my mind, humorists set out to tell funny stories, which is never my initial intention. When I have an idea for a story the idea is usually angry or sad or odd, but then the perspective and the characters end up being somewhat comic because absurdity is my worldview, my coping mechanism.

I think the humor comes from the fact that I’m legit scared of being boring. If anyone is paying any attention to me at all, I would like to keep their attention, so I use what I have. And I come from funny people, I think. Showboaters, blowhards, toe-tappers. People who wink.

In one of your stories, “Enviable Levels,” a woman is considering a medical procedure that will lower her expectations. There’s a statistic in the story that women are more likely to receive this procedure than men. I couldn’t help but read it as a parable about anti-feminism and the rise of artificial intelligence. Where did the idea for this story come from?

“Enviable Levels” is the oldest story in the collection and actually one of the first stories I ever wrote. This was 2017, so I didn’t know about AI. I just knew about me.

The idea came from an annoying email I sent Colin, my husband. I found the email, so I’ll quote it:

How can I lower my expectations, permanently? Is there a surgery, like the one that gives you eyeliner forever? Where can I put all the energy that wakes me? Is there a dump pile I can add to, maybe with yours? Do you think your dumped energy can co-mingle with mine, communicate with gasps, and write a movie about young love? Do you think it would end on a vintage couch, the final scene is there’s no place for their heads to rest?”

For context, I had recently purchased a rad but uncomfortable orange sofa. I was also coming into all this creative energy that I’d never tried to harness before. I had so many ideas and for the first time I was taking those ideas seriously—climbing on them and riding them around—but, frustratingly, I had no time for wild riding because I had a 2-year-old and kindergartener. I felt excited and buzzy but also thwarted and held back. I thought maybe it would be better for everyone if I could want less and be less.

Colin wrote back and said I should write a story about the lowered expectations surgery and since I’m often sitting around waiting for the slightest encouragement, that was all I needed.

Your book is called Thanks For This Riot and it’s split into three sections about different kinds of riots. What’s going on here? In this wild political moment (or are we always in a political moment since the dawn of time) with so much protest and call for action, what are you up to?

I am mostly up to throwing little fits, Chris! There’s definitely an undercurrent of political commentary in these stories (and more overtly in “Full Stop,” my story about abortion bans), but most of my riots are about a more personal kind of unrest. I like it when the feelings bubbling under the surface pop out unexpectedly in a way that means they have to be dealt with. I like the tension of failing to contain something ugly or bad or wrong. I like it when the status quo cannot stand.

When it comes to the title story, “Thanks for This Riot,” that was referencing a laugh riot. We talked about humor earlier. It’s possible that sometimes I am funny on purpose and sometimes I am funny in an unintentional way that comes from a frayed wire in my soul or a quirk in my brain. So being a laugh riot can be a choice or an achievement, but it can also be a “bless her heart” type of deal.

There’s so much about family and familial love in your stories. Does your family read your work? What do they say about it?

My family of origin, you mean? I’m scared to ask them! I think they read some of my stories, but they probably also have an awareness that they’re not necessarily my intended audience. And perhaps my writing feels a bit uncomfortable to them because I am processing a life that they’ve witnessed from the outside and they’re learning things about me that I’ve never quite shown them.

In terms of the family I currently live with, Colin reads everything but only offers editorial comments when I ask. We learned that the hard way. He’s my best and most trusted editor but once, after reading a new story, he went right into a couple things I should fix and I was like, “Actually what I need from you right now is a fist bump or a kindly pat on the head.”

My kids haven’t been subjected to my writing yet, but I like the idea that these stories written when they were little will become messages to them in the future. They know me now, of course, but maybe my writing will help them know a fuller me. Or despise a fuller me—their choice!