Identity Theory
What Becomes of Our Writing: An Interview With Kristina Moriconi, author of What Becomes of a Body
Kristina Moriconi’s What Becomes of a Body is a lyrical and fragmented exploration of how we recover after a serious physical trauma—hers specifically is about a car accident that took years to recover from and that still, in fragmented ways, can haunt her at times. The text is about reckoning with what was and accepting what is. It’s about the ways in which trauma can rule our lives, yet we can find our own path towards healing as we gain voice for our experience. I was nervous to write about this book—its composition is so stellar that I was intimidated to write for a while. Moriconi’s language is lush with poetic phrases and fragments of thought. I had a conversation with Moriconi about her book, and her answers prove that What Becomes of a Body digs deeper than our traumas and discovers how we navigate our way towards not just surviving but thriving—and how writing can become a way in which we see ourselves through the trauma.
Chelsey Clammer: When people ask you what your book is about, what are the few words you provide to describe it?
Kristina Moriconi: Silence, first. Then, finding a voice.
CC: Ooh, that’s a stellar description. I think the book is both full of silence and, by the end, a strong voice for your experience. Trauma is such a hard situation to write about. So, what initially made you want to write this book?
KM: When I finally spoke of the things that happened to me, I heard myself for the first time, and I knew staying silent was no longer possible.
CC: That’s super powerful and I imagine hard to do. How did you approach writing it?
KM: Initially, I wrote it as individual essays—long, narrative pieces that become my MFA thesis. While they held together cohesively, I found so much to be lacking as I reread them years later, especially regarding sound. Revision consumed me and I lost count, at some point, of how many times I’d drafted and redrafted the original work. Honestly, in frustration, I began turning some of the essays into poems. This helped me to dissect the language, to consider what felt necessary. But the poem eventually felt too restrictive a form for the content. So I began searching for some other structure, one I ended up building along the way, one to hold both the music and the magnitude of everything I had to say.
CC: That is quite the process. I love how when we write, we find different ways to approach a story. But sometimes stories can be super overwhelming to write. What was difficult when writing about trauma and what felt easy or natural to you?
KM: By the time I reached the point of writing a series of final revisions, I’d worked through the trauma and done the work of healing with a therapist. So, by then, writing about trauma had become more of an examination for me, focused closely on how to craft lightness into what felt unbearably heavy.