Ivy Pochoda: My Current Favorite Author
It’s bittersweet, the way some books pull a reader in and beg to be devoured in a day or two. Those books don’t come along every day.
Within the first few pages, most books and I come to an understanding. The conversation often goes something like this:
Look, I know you’re busy. You have a job and responsibilities and it’s all so mundane. Well, I’m here to transport you from your everyday life. Let’s meet daily for a reasonable amount of time over the course of a week. Maybe ten days. Let’s say, bedtime on week nights. Saturday and Sunday afternoon, too. I promise you’ll find me interesting and thought-provoking. Between our meetings, you will think about me with a satisfied curiosity. And with each meeting, I will deliver. Same time tomorrow night?
That sounds lovely, dear Book. Thank you. See you in bed!
But Ivy Pochoda’s books haven’t bothered to extend me such formalities and niceties. Her novels have grabbed hold and demanded uninterrupted chunks time, mostly over the course of a single weekend. When I read “Visitation Street” in June, I was so immersed I could barely force myself to come up for air. Set the book down, I told myself. Your legs are stiff. Stand up and acknowledge the physical world in which you exist. You have to pace yourself because this book is too beautiful to tear through so quickly.
After “Visitation Street” I read “Wonder Valley” and “These Women” in July and August. Each one lasted me only a few days.
In addition to a writing style that is so readable, Pochoda’s characters feel real. Many belong to complex subcultures that get overlooked in our greater society. Take Feelia, a sex worker in “These Women.”
“Hell, you might not like what I do, might not understand it. But at least I get to be outside. At least I get to walk, to choose my streets, to take it all in — smell the goddamn flowers, which is more than I can say for most folks around here. They don’t stop to smell, just cruise on by in their cars, windows up. Me, I smell.”
Feelia has a point.
I drive a reliable SUV that gets me from Point A to Point B. Point A: my suburban home. Point B: the homeless shelter where I work. Like the people Feelia describes, I cruise on by, windows up. Not really seeing the very community I’m supposed to be helping.
Like the mass of rush hour commuters in “Wonder Valley,” I am encapsulated and oblivious. As I near the shelter, I pass the regulars making their way to our shared destination. They are on foot and on bicycle. A few push shopping carts overflowing with trash-turned-treasure.
Unlike many fictitious depictions of homeless people, Pochoda’s characters are not helpless objects of pity. I recently watched a sitcom episode in which the main characters showed up, unannounced, at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. I was embarrassed and irritated by how the experience was portrayed totally through the lens of people who know nothing of homelessness. Had the makers of that show ever visited a soup kitchen and gotten to know its clients on a first-name basis? I wondered.
Pochoda’s homeless people and sex workers, on the other hand, are as real and as complex as any other human with history, choices, hopes, and regrets. Making a life on the streets requires a skillset that many of us have never had the opportunity to explore. Like the people living on Skid Row in “Wonder Valley,” many chronically homeless people have built their own communities with unique social structures and rules that many of us can’t really imagine. People living on the fringes are living their lives, however different those lives may be.
Had I come across Pochoda’s novels at any other point in my life, her street characters might not have grabbed me in the same way. But I found her work at this particular time, when I happen to be spending much of my time interacting with people experiencing homelessness. Picking up “Visitation Street” in June was a beautiful coincidence. “Wonder Valley” made me a true fan.
For portraying overlooked members of society so respectfully and honestly, Pochoda has my admiration. And for that feeling of wanting to crawl inside and pitch a tent inside the pages of her novels, she has my loyalty. For the time being, Ivy Pochoda is my favorite author.
