INTERVIEW : Tara Campbell by Lauren C. Johnson
Cabinet of Wrath:
A Doll Collection /
Tara Campbell /
Aqueduct Press
Interview by
Lauren C. Johnson
I’ve never really outgrown my stuffed animal collection. Back at my childhood home in Florida, containers of toys crowd my old bedroom closet. For years, my parents have asked me to sort through my Beanie Babies, My Little Ponies, and the menagerie of animals to decide who’s still fit to donate and what, sadly, must get chucked. And with a childlike resistance inappropriate for a 36-year-old, I can’t make myself do it.
Growing up with no siblings and working parents meant I spent a lot of time alone, but in the company of toys. Like so many children, I gave my dolls and plush animals life through the stories I made up about them. That spark of life—rather, the memories, people, and love—I associate with my playthings is what makes them so hard to part with. That’s also why I adore stories about inanimate objects that come to life on their own accord.
Make no mistake, Tara Campbell’s Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection from Aqueduct Press, is a collection of fabulist horror stories. Far from The Velveteen Rabbit or Toy Story—or anything else I’ve read about living poppets—the characters that populate these nightmarish pieces feel and act on full-throttle rage. Like “Spencer,” a neglected novelty ring that steals his once-loving owner’s hands, or the impregnated toys trapped by Mother Holly—a doll that’s eerily reminiscent of Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale—in “The Box.”
Each of the nine stories in Cabinet of Wrath made me think about value. In our capitalistic society, we sure get mighty attached to things—and people—that we perceive as valuable, but for a set amount of time. Haunted and enchanted, I reached out to Campbell for an interview about the inspiration behind this collection, bodily autonomy, the critical roles comedy and grief play in horror writing, building one’s own writing community, and so much more.
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Lauren C. Johnson: Something I absolutely love about each of these stories is the way you balance humor with horror and the uncanny. Here’s a passage from “Midge”—in which the decapitated heads of Barbie and her sisters escape from a junk drawer—that gave me the chuckles:
Something hard and heavy grazes my cheek as it falls into our drawer.
Then, as quickly as the light blinded me, I’m jostled and plunged
into darkness again.
“That bitch!” says the new arrival. The voice is deep. Masculine.
“Holy shit,” someone blurts out. “It’s Ken!”
Striking the right balance between humor and ick is no easy feat! How do you know when you’ve struck the right chord? And do you see humor as a literary device that can help make the body horror a bit more palatable?
Tara Campbell: I’m very fortunate in that I grew up in a loving, creative household. I think my family has a great sense of humor—not a rapid-fire, joke-a-minute humor, but more about observing and taking note of the absurdity going on all around us. In conversation, a bit of compassionate, perhaps self-deprecating humor can be a great way to smooth tension and open the door to difficult topics; humor can work that way in a story too. At least for me, as a writer, it lets me examine the horrible things we do to one another without sinking completely into despair. Plus, if my siblings and I were ever trapped in a haunted house, at least we’d go out laughing.
LCJ: For me, stories like “Becky,” “The Box,” and “Pino” are among the most unsettling because they explicitly deal with themes around sexual and reproductive autonomy. These themes remind me a lot of the pieces in your recent chapbook, Political AF: A Rage Collection. Do you also feel Cabinet of Wrath is in conversation with Political AF?
TC: I’d say both books are in conversation with me, and I find myself in an almost continual state of outrage over the ways in which governments are curtailing or outlawing the right of a woman to decide what goes on inside her own body. Anger of this magnitude manifests in many forms.
LCJ: I see an undercurrent of grief in all these stories, especially in “Becky” and “Spencer.” Ben’s truly creepy relationship with a “MySize Becky” doll seems to stem from grieving a wife he lost to cancer. In “Spencer,” a limb-and-digit stealing novelty ring seems to be grieving the time it spent being loved and worn by its owner. How do you see grief complicating the more unsettling aspects—and characters—in these stories?
TC: As many people have said before (I looked this quote up intending to credit it, which is how I know that many people have said it before), we are all the heroes of our own story. Very few people set out to be explicitly evil—even supervillains have their backstories and motivations. So, the idea that what might seem reasonable to one person is inexcusable to the next is an intriguing dynamic to explore. And of course, grief clouds our thinking, so when we’re dealing with loss, our definitions of reasonable behavior may become a bit—let’s say “expansive.” When someone who seems to be a good person does horrible things, it’s harder to write it off as some kind of distant evil we can take clear steps to avoid. We begin to question how and why we trust people and what it means to be a “good person.” And maybe we even begin to question ourselves, which of course makes everything even squirmier.
LCJ: Speaking of unsettling, man, some of the passages in “Becky” gave me the chills, like this one:
It wouldn’t hurt, he told her. And I think you’d like it. You’d know what it feels like for
a real woman.
How do you lean into and write through unsettling moments instead of flinching?
TC: For me, this also relates to the idea that we’re all the heroes of our own stories. Some of the most intractable and compelling conflicts are those in which each side thinks they have very good reasons for doing what they’re doing, and it’s the other side that just doesn’t understand. And sometimes, rather than question their own motives, they seek to convince the other side, or cast aspersions on them for not feeling the same way.
For me, it’s all about plumbing those questions of motivation, and I only tend to describe as much of the physical horror as is necessary to understand the effects of this kind of thinking. That’s why it still surprises me sometimes when one of my stories pops up in the “horror” category—I mean, it’s obvious when I see it there, but writing “scary” usually isn’t even my motive. I’ll be writing with human nature in mind, a character either under duress or truly unleashed, and it winds up being horror—which, I suppose, is scary in its own way.
LCJ: In this collection, were you interested in exploring the ways in which people—especially the privileged—tend to value and love our playthings and baubles only for a certain amount of time? Are the headless Barbie Doll and childhood teddy bear stuffed in the bottom of the closet something to mourn?
TC: My motivation was much less intellectual and contemplative than that. I dedicated the book to my late mother because she was basically the inspiration for it. She held onto so many of our old playthings, even things from my older brothers’ childhoods in the 1950s. She would keep these creepy-ass dolls around her sitting area/bedroom—I mean to her, they weren’t creepy; they were just her children’s toys.
They were everywhere you looked: a faceless plush doll in a prairie dress lurking next to the TV, a Hawaiian doll with tangled hair leaning in a dark corner, a dingy baby lying doll next to the curio cabinet, the thigh-high mechanical monkey creaking around on plastic roller skates, yellow hat in his hand (literally, you can still put a coin on the metal elements in his hat and he SKATES!).
We would tease her about these dolls, but she didn’t mind because they meant something different to her than to anyone else who just looked at them, and I think that’s what fueled the stories—because they all really do have their own stories.
LCJ: There’s a long and wonderful literary tradition of weaving stories about dolls that come to life. Why do you think sentient dolls and playthings continue to enchant and horrify us?
TC: There’s a lot to be said for the creep-factor of the “uncanny valley,” that weird place in the spectrum between cartoonish and realistic depictions of people that just gives us the willies—even if we can’t stop looking at it. You normally hear about this problem in animation, but it’s a thing in the doll world too.
I think there’s an element of power and safety at play too (no pun intended). When we’re young, toys are mainly a source of comfort and a catalyst for our imagination. Then we get older and begin to comprehend the lack of true control we actually have in life, and maybe we channel this anxiety into our playthings—like, we thought we had complete power over what our dolls said and did, but what if we didn’t? I’m sure there’s some deep-seated discomfort with our lack of agency that fuels our fascination with the idea of dolls bursting out of our grasp to follow their own agendas.
LCJ: Are you another proper grown up who has a favorite doll or stuffed animal?
TC: Anyone who’s connected to me on social media knows of my weakness for toy dinosaurs. It’s a relatively new obsession—the first little guys came to me in 2013 perched on the rim of some cocktails, kind of like a Jurassic version of the tiny umbrella, and I’ve been adding to the menagerie ever since.
I also have a little three-eyed mutant stuffed mouse I picked up at the Mutter Museum in Philly. His name is George, and he gets along pretty well with my husband. The closest thing I have to the classic creepy doll in my place is a quartet of vintage Pelham Puppets that have been in the family since the 1950s. I hung Mitzi (see photo) up in my office as inspiration while I was writing some of the stories in this book, but they mostly stay in the boxes—as far as I’m aware!
LCJ: Finally, as both a prolific writer and teacher, you’ve contributed to literary communities in so many ways. What do you think are the best ways for other writers to be good citizens of their workshop groups and writing circles?
TC: For me, building community was a long-term, organic pursuit of the things that excited me: taking writing classes, going to local readings, trying different critique groups to find the right fit for me. My community built up over time, which I think frustrates some folks, particularly if they’re looking at things in a transactional manner—by which I mean focusing on finding a beta reader or marketing their book. Once you’ve built a community, those things are easier to find because you’ve been there for other writers and they’re genuinely happy to return the favor. So, I would simply say it takes patience. You may not be able to see the growth happening, but if you keep doing things that make you feel motivated, each layer you add will strengthen the foundation.
Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She received her MFA from American University. Previous publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Booth, Strange Horizons, CRAFT Literary, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising. She's the author of a novel, TreeVolution, and four collections: Circe's Bicycle, Midnight at the Organporium, Political AF: A Rage Collection, and Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection.
Lauren C. Johnson is a writer living in San Francisco.
