If the Dead Belong Here - Carson Faust
Season 11 Episode 9 | 2m 4sVideo has Closed Captions
Carson Faust talks with Jeremy Finley about his book IF THE DEAD BELONG HERE.
Inspired by tribal folklore and the ghost stories of his grandmother, Carson Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe, explores intergenerational trauma, grief, and violence in his novel IF THE DEAD BELONG HERE. Faust tells the story of a family broken by the disappearance of a young girl, and how her family is left to deal with the aftermath, uncovering secrets along the way.
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A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT
If the Dead Belong Here - Carson Faust
Season 11 Episode 9 | 2m 4sVideo has Closed Captions
Inspired by tribal folklore and the ghost stories of his grandmother, Carson Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe, explores intergenerational trauma, grief, and violence in his novel IF THE DEAD BELONG HERE. Faust tells the story of a family broken by the disappearance of a young girl, and how her family is left to deal with the aftermath, uncovering secrets along the way.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(lighthearted music) (typewriter clicking) (typewriter dings) - [Carson] I'm Carson Faust, and this is "If the Dead Belong Here."
The novel itself is about how ghosts and folklore from your people follow you no matter where you go.
Like a lot of times, ghosts are haunting a specific place, but in this case, the ghosts are very much tied to bloodline and folklore and tradition.
- If readers are looking for anybody to blame for the first terrifying chapter of this book, I guess they can blame your grandmother.
- They sure can.
(laughs) - So tell us how she told you about the legends that really sparked this book.
- I think there's stories directly from her in this book where, when she first moved in with the partner she lived with for 30 or 40 years, his parents, despite being dead, didn't like her very much, so they would stomp up and down the stairs, they would, like, go ham in the rocking chair upstairs.
And eventually, she, like, took them out to the front yard and was like, "Listen, you gotta go!"
(gentle music) - This book has been described as "Native American Southern Gothic."
- Yeah.
- I wonder what drew you to write in that vein?
- How this book kinda began for me was, like, doing research on my own family.
And I often found myself, you know, sometimes there weren't folks to talk to who would have this knowledge.
So I'm like, okay, like, what if I could, like, you know, go back a couple generations of the folks who've passed on and chat with them?
You can't have that kind of communication unless you invite the dead in.
That's where kind of the Gothic sensibility came in, was just the acknowledgement that sometimes you need to chat through scientific death to figure stuff out.
- Yeah.
It's a remarkable book.
I so appreciate you being here.
- Thank you.
- And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."
I'm Jeremy Finley.
Remember, keep reading.
(typewriter dings) - [Carson] I grew up being a mall goth, (laughs) listening to, like, Evanescence, AFI, My Chemical Romance.
- [Jeremy] You've explained everything just with that, that's it.
- I mean, listen, listen.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I am insufferable and I can't help it.
(Jeremy chuckles)
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A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT