SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The writer Rachel Knox describes her home state like this...
RACHEL KNOX: (Reading) No one hears that you're from Florida and says in response, ooh, lucky. Your Florida provenance becomes your defining characteristic. Their eyes widen, or they chuckle, or they launch into a series of questions that are both nonsensical and revealing of the wide gulf between their understanding of the state and your own experience living there.
DETROW: ...But also like this.
KNOX: (Reading) I love it here because I hate it, too. I love it because someone has to. Many people already do, and they deserve champions and advocates and political allies and food banks.
DETROW: There was a point, Knox says, where she wanted more than anything else to escape Florida. She moved to New York. But she felt so drawn to her home state - the good and the bad - that she ultimately moved back. That love-hate relationship with her state is something she wrestles with in her new collection of essays called "Anywhere Else."
Rachel Knox, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
KNOX: Hi. Thanks for having me.
DETROW: What do you want people to understand about Florida after reading this book?
KNOX: Well, I hope that after reading the book, people have a better sense that Florida isn't just the things that they see in headlines or news stories, that there are actually real people who live here that like living here, even though there are definitely a lot of complicated feelings that come with being a Floridian. But mostly, I just hope that people have a more nuanced understanding of this place rather than just kind of the, like, joking or wacky perception of it that seems to be the kind of national stereotype of Florida.
DETROW: You use pop culture throughout the book as a vehicle to talk about the state. How did you get to that place? Why did you decide to lean into that?
KNOX: You know, I think that was actually the part that kind of came first to me. I'm obsessed with movies and TV, and that's always been the lens with which I kind of perceive the world, even when I was a kid. And so I kind of started thinking, like, what are the media representations of Florida that I feel do work or that I see some kinship with or that get it right in some way, as opposed to all these things that I feel like do not or perpetuate stereotypes?
So I felt like pop culture was a touchstone that I could use so that outsiders could also kind of see where I was going with this. Maybe they might be more familiar with these movies, with the "The X Files," with the story of Aileen Wuornos, you know, these kind of things I could use as an entry point into then telling, like, a really specific, individual story that might kind of get them over on my side and try to see more of that nuance.
DETROW: You mentioned "X Files." There's one essay that's nominally about a monster of the week "X Files" episode that takes place in Florida, but it's also about slowly trying to figure out a mystery of a close person in your life and what had happened to him while you were away. Can you tell us about that?
KNOX: Yeah. So the episode of "The X Files" that I write about is called "Agua Mala," which is Spanish for bad water. And it's about a creature that appears during a hurricane. Mulder and Scully are sent down there to investigate when someone goes missing. And I really felt like this idea of the monster kind of without a face felt like a perfect metaphor for the opioid crisis in general, that people know about it. They're afraid of it but don't necessarily see the human element of people that are suffering.
And in my case, it was kind of inescapable because someone I knew and loved was suffering and kind of just like in the episode had gone missing without a trace. And I kind of felt like I was on my own little investigation of what had happened. But I really was just so struck by, like, the personal connection, that in my own kind of search for this friend, I was confronted with a whole other beast, which was this crisis has its tentacles everywhere.
DETROW: This book's about Florida and living in Florida, but it's also about a lot of really personal stories in your life, like that one, like a few others. And it felt, to me, as a reader, like, some of the stories you were telling in public or even telling to your friends or family for the first time through this writing. Is that right?
KNOX: Yes. Definitely.
DETROW: What was that like?
KNOX: It's a little scary, even now, to be honest with you. There were some stories that I hadn't told anyone or maybe had only told one or two people that I really knew I wanted to try to confront on the page. I did definitely give my parents and siblings some advanced copies so they could kind of read and process those things ahead of time before the rest of the world. But I feel much better now that those stories are out in the world because I wrote them because I wanted to - I was looking for stories like that and couldn't find them, necessarily. So it felt important to me that even if it was kind of scary or nerve-racking to put them out into the world. So that maybe if someone else felt that way, they might read it and be like, OK, I'm not alone in this situation.
DETROW: After you wrote it and shared it, you did not regret sharing it with your family, with your close friends.
KNOX: No, not at all. In fact, it brought up some really great conversations with them that I don't think we would have been able to have otherwise.
DETROW: What do you think now, having come back to Florida, having written this book and thought really deeply about it - like, what do you think you were looking for when you tried to, quote, "escape," when it was like, I want to be anywhere but here?
KNOX: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is just typical teenager feeling. Like, I think, no matter where you're from, there is this kind of, like, I've got to get out of here, figure out who I am, like, possibility of moving elsewhere. But I also think that there's a real bubble here in some ways - that when you live in a place that is everyone else's vacation paradise, it's easy to adopt a mentality that your whole life is a vacation, that you don't really need to have goals or pursue something bigger or things don't really matter. Or 10 years can go by, and you're still kind of doing the same thing that you did working on the beach or, you know, whatever the case may be.
And I just knew that for the life that I wanted, the things that I wanted to do, I had to leave to try to live in a city and see people who are not from the same place that I was from and bump up against lots of other cultures and identities and be a different version of myself, at least for a little while, just to kind of see who I was if I wasn't a Floridian.
DETROW: I would love to end this interview with the way you end the book, with one of your lists of suggestions for tourists or transplants.
KNOX: (Laughter).
DETROW: Could you - would you be able to read the one that's about a bagel?
KNOX: (Laughter) Yes.
DETROW: Thank you.
KNOX: OK. (Reading) Stop looking for a good bagel. There aren't any, and that's OK. Instead, walk into the marbled, air conditioned oasis of any Publix. Wind your way to the deli and give yourself permission to order fried chicken tenders on a fluffy white sub roll, smothered in buffalo sauce, assembled lovingly, if at a glacial pace, by a woman with a Betty Boop tattoo. Grab a sweet tea and maybe a sprinkle cookie and find the nearest beach to be alone with your spoils.
DETROW: Great advice. That is writer Rachel Knox. Her book "Anywhere Else" is out now. Thank you so much for talking to us.
KNOX: Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
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