Em J. Parsley, who uses they/he pronouns, is a poet, writer, gardener, and environmentalist from rural Kentucky. You, From Below is their first published novella, and it’s short enough to be read in one sitting. At first sight, it looks like a cute little chapbook, even, but it is definitely bigger on the inside, since there is a lot to unpack.
The cover illustration shows a mountainscape, upside down and at a dizzying angle, caught in a beige space somewhere between greyscale and sepia, suggesting that the world as we know it (or as the protagonist used to) has been thrown off kilter, and possibly even out of time. A quick look at the blurb tells me that the story starts “when an Appalachian holler town is suddenly swallowed into the earth.” Not being American, I have questions even before I open the book, so I go online for a bit. A holler, as Redditor crosleyxj posts in r/Appalachia, is “a dead-end valley, usually with a road going into the hills. If you’re goin’ up the holler, you better have some business up there.”
Suitably warned, I open the booklet. There is a dedication:
TO YOUR HOME. MAY YOU HELP IT FLOURISH AND FLOURISH WITHIN IT IN RETURN.
I’m not sure whether to read this as a benediction or something more sinister or foreboding. The vibe I’m getting is a jumble of folk horror memories: The Wicker Man, Midsommar, Apostle. What am I getting into here? I’ll have to go in to find out.
The story turns out to be a second-person narration, which makes it feel like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but without any of the choices. The narrative technique forces the reader into the role of protagonist but simultaneously keeps them prisoner, restricts them to the part of passive observer, as if they are trapped in a dream that they cannot control.
And, just as in a dream, “you” are dropped straight into the action, with implicit knowledge about your situation: You are climbing a mountain because your home has been swallowed up by the earth, by a giant sinkhole. The tone of the narrative is casual and chatty, and this stark contrast contributes even more to the floating, dream-like feeling. Are you imagining all this? Are you in shock? It all reads very much like an internal monologue at this point. Are you talking to yourself? It’s not just me, the reader, wondering: At first the narrative goes into a lot of imaginary tangents, lots of rhetorical questions, what-ifs that evoke vivid images, lots of interesting similes and metaphors, but it never reaches any conclusions, any facts. We, I, “you” are being denied any worldbuilding, any answers, any way to rationalise the situation.
Many repetitions of the phrase “you are climbing a mountain” occur, really hammering in the notion of effort: the work, the strain, that this is the only thing (left) to do—climb the mountain, deliver the letter you are carrying (from whom? to whom?).
“You are climbing a mountain”: This is the only thing we can be sure of.
Any description of the protagonist we get comes in little snippets, asides, puzzle pieces hidden in phrases that are not about them: “You” are a person who wears glasses, had a mother, had a first love, smokes cigarettes (p.2); you had a friend named Danny who is referred to as “they” (p. 4); you had a Gran (p. 10) and a “first and only partner,” Annie (p. 23). You wear a jacket and boots (p. 25), you are kind, alone (p. 27), miserable (p. 29), loved and lonely (p. 32). Between the lines it is implied: You are quiet, aimless, still quite young. This is all we know. You are evidently profoundly human, and I (the reader) am now wearing you like a coat, because Em J. Parsley tells me to.
You are walking. You watch yourself without agency, descriptions of the landscape marking your outward progress, while internally you are revisiting flashbacks and memories of the protagonist, maybe on the search for something to hold on to, some meaning, some purpose. This is both an outward journey and an inward journey. You are walking up the mountain (a letter in your pocket), and you are travelling deep into your mind and your self, investigating memories, thoughts, fears, questions, challenges. This outer- and inner-space travel works through symbolic images and encounters, like the Tarot, like dreams.
The novella is divided into stations, and each stop marks an encounter that includes a task or challenge, much like a fairy tale. In traditional German folk tales (like the ones I grew up with), these encounters often reveal the protagonist’s personality. Positive traits, especially compassion and a readiness to take on hard work, are rewarded. Negative traits, like laziness, selfishness, and envy, lead to punishments (often very gruesome ones).
The first encounter is with a beekeeper, whose face you never get to see. They are always referred to as they—not like your childhood friend Danny, who is described as a nonbinary or genderqueer kid, but by necessity, since they always remain anonymous, almost abstract, more of a function than a person. The beekeeper invites (but actually forces) you to join a bizarre game of “tea-time,” which mimics domestic rituals but remains a farce, a caricature of domesticity and conservatism. What you are being shown and told is capitalism as insanity (and the insanity of and behind capitalism). You hear a tale of workers killing themselves (metaphorically), never taking a day off, losing their jobs over small things that should be their right(!). This story, ostensibly about the beekeper’s past, mirrors the beekeeper’s current actions: not valuing the bees’ work, not rewarding them for their labour, taking their product while not needing it for themself, squandering it (not eating but mimicking eating). There is no brain, no logic behind it all; it is just a senseless power game. A game of oppression.
Soon it becomes clear that all the stations are investigations of various interpretations of “home.” Every one of them is revealed as a trap—an illusion of safety and stability, of healing and nurturing, which contains a hidden purpose: to limit you, to make you small, to take away your agency, your freedom. These traps include capitalism, patriarchy, and religion.
We learn that the protagonist grew up in a trailer, or maybe a house behind a trailer park (reality seems to be unstable). Multiple references to trailers conjure up a picture of a “mobile home” that isn’t mobile. The journey here, too—the possibility to leave and see more of the world—is just an illusion, a lie, joining the series of other lies in other concepts of “home.” Then again, there is potential: In the cataclysmic event that precedes the narrative, all lies and traps are removed before the story even begins, and the only agency that remains (for now) is Nature’s. The protagonist, and their (outer and inner) world, is in a state of flux. Everything is shifting—but what shape will it settle in?
Other stations along the way reveal more concepts that need to be investigated and experienced, but are then revealed as prisons, as shackles to tie the protagonist down, and are turned away from. A fascinating kudzu woman offers maternal love that turns out to be symbolised by the strangling vine. In the guise of protection and safety, a mother’s love can be nurturing but also choking. (“When the vines get to your mouth, it occurs to you that you don’t want to be held” [p. 14].) Here, the protagonist discovers the importance of consent. In all relationships and at all times, you are allowed to change your mind. This must be respected.
A house on stilts, an empty nest, highlights the theme of impermanence and loss. The woman in the house, whose life has been infinitely prolonged, observes decay in life, as she is forced to watch everyone else die. Here, the protagonist learns about community, companionship—and the lack of it. They almost stay, but then they don’t—they have a letter to deliver.
The landscape and the seasons change along with the interior landscapes and memories to which they are connected. Suddenly, snow covers everything. The protagonist walks through a world of silence and deletion. What follows is a study of absence(s). “You” come face to face with isolation, memories, loneliness. Memories of loneliness. Once the protagonist has had a good look inside, feelings of self-blame start to surface. They feel responsible for their town’s collapse. After the vanishing of everything that made up their history, after the dissolution of their roots, the only thing they have is the envelope, the hidden message they are carrying.
At the last stop, the protagonist encounters “the man with the vulture head.” For me this figure carries heavy echoes of Max Ernst, one of my favourite visual artists. In Ernst’s surrealist landscapes, there are no moral values. As in dreams, the observer only sees what they bring inside themself. The protagonist gives the message to the man with the vulture head, and the man with the vulture head says: “It’s for you, darlin’” (p. 36).
It turns out that the protagonist is the sort of person who doesn’t believe, if they are on a journey, a mission (in fact that’s the name of their lost home town: Mission), that the precious message they are carrying could be for them. They don’t think of themself as a hero:ine. And we (the readers) don’t get to know the contents. Just that they don’t make much sense. This isn’t our message, this isn’t our life. Everyone has to figure out their own life, their own mission, for themself
Stuff just happens. Things stop, things go on. Accept loss.
Survival is dependent on the ability to adjust. (p. 37)
There is responsibility in our movement. Breath comes with the duty to help others breathe. (p. 37)
You sit, and you watch, and you wait. (p. 39)
As the protagonist sees their reflection in water, it’s a coyote head (p. 38). We (the readers) are not informed whether this is a new transformation. But the man with the vulture head mentions something about a succession of selves, then turns into a vulture and dies, then decays, fast (p. 39).
In the aftermath of all that has transpired, both protagonist and reader are left pondering the ongoing journey and the constant transformation of everything: impermanence, imperfection, incompleteness, flux. Becoming and dissolving, in cyclical time. This means that there is no “nothingness”; seemingly empty space is an interim, an interstitial space/time full of potential. A feeling of calm envelops all of us (the place, the protagonist, the reader) as we stop trying to make sense of things and accept Nature.
Once I started writing about this book (not just reading the words but working through them, walking the inner journey as in Tarot or a Shamanic path and putting the experience into my own words), I realised I was getting more and more confused about pronouns. Not in a silly way of struggling with what people identify as—learning those concepts and words is as easy as asking for a person’s name. Instead, I was experiencing an increasing and dizzying difficulty differentiating between individual identities. What is me, what is you, what is an external factor? How do I talk about them? And is it necessary to talk about them, or is it enough to just be? If Em J. Parsley—the poet, the gardener—set out to make the reader one with the experienced world, inside as well as outside, and to really make tangible the fragile yet persistent connection between all living things, I say: hats off, well done. I’m looking forward to more of their work.