BCC Shines A Light On: Amy Barnes

BCC Shines a Light On:

Amy Barnes

Name of the piece published by BCC:

The Short Life of Bessie Taylor

When/where was it originally published:

The New Southern Fugitives

What is the background of the piece? What led you to write it? What’s your process?

My first car purchase required several trips to the u-pull-it scrapyard for various parts and pieces. When I was there, I felt an odd emotional tug toward all the cars and metal objects being crushed. This included an avocado green refrigerator. And – Bessie was born. It wasn’t a huge process jump and I imagined myself with an attachment to an object like Bessie the refrigerator.

I do have a refrigerator memory that also inspires this story in part. My grandfather had one of the fridges with a bottle opener on the side. We didn’t get soda often and he kept glass bottle Dr. Peppers in there. When we visited, I always got one so that fridge is a strong object representation of him and the special connection. 

How did you feel when it was first published and how have your thoughts or feelings on the piece changed from then to now?

The New Southern Fugitives is closed down now but was one of my favorite places to submit quirky, Southern lit. Their tagline was “tell a million tales of y’all means all.” After not writing literary fiction for many years, they were one of my first forays back into submitting my short stories.

It wasn’t the first fiction I had ever had published so I knew better, but I definitely went for the closing paragraph twist gimmick. It felt like it worked at the time but sometimes I wonder if it was too heavy-handed. I did some editing before it went up at Bulb Culture to tighten the story.

Is there a specific message you’d like readers to take away from reading this piece?

I think the message is that family matters but it also looks at how objects and people often define our childhood and adulthood. There is a bit of subtext that the narrator is struggling – with their own self- esteem but also with family issues. The mother quickly replaces the refrigerator that was a sort of= mother figure and the father takes her to the fridge’s funeral. These are childhood memories that even the narrator mentions influencing her adulthood. Maybe a message about how we tie our lives to objects that are happy or sad as much as we do to the people?

Where can readers find more of your work? (Website/social media, etc)

I’m on Twitter at @amygcb.