Welcome to the Storyteller Series on Storybound Faith! Today, I am delighted to introduce you to fellow author Anna Rollins!
M: Anna, I’m so glad you’re joining me here today. For those who don’t know you already, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
A: I’m Anna Rollins, the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, which is a reported memoir that examines the rhyming scripts of evangelical purity culture and diet culture. I taught English in the university setting for almost fifteen years, and now I’m a freelance writer and coach raising three small children. I have lived in West Virginia my entire life, and I love it here. I love spending my time going on hikes and bike riding with my kids around our neighborhood. I’m an avid jump roper, I was born with three thumbs, and I probably know more about the Olsen twins than most people on the planet.
M: Three thumbs!!! AND super knowledge on the Olsen twins, haha. I love it! My Substack is titled Storybound Faith, because I love the idea of how Story is a primary way God engages with us. What is your favorite narrative passage of Scripture?
A: I’ve always loved the book of Esther. As a little girl, I was drawn to it because it was one of the two books of the Bible in the Protestant Bible that was named after a girl. And it was the story of a beauty pageant, which honestly felt very familiar to me as a young girl who grew up in religious spaces that often felt very obsessed with appearance and perfecting appearance as a way of demonstrating our belonging to God.
But I love how, as an adult, I’ve come to understand the book of Esther in a much fuller way. Her story and her ability to save her people were because she rebelled and broke some rules and trusted God and took a chance by being courageous and using her voice.
And so I love the book of Esther because my understanding of it has shifted as a Christian woman. What I felt like I was being told I needed to do as a Christian was to focus on surface and appearances. But as I’ve grown to understand what it means to be a follower of God, I realize that it often involves stepping out, taking a chance, and being willing to be seen.
M: YES. And, whew, being willing to be seen and diverge from compliance can be such a hurdle for many women raised in white American evangelicalism. And we put on those glasses, so to speak, and read right over the stories of courageous dissident women right on the pages of Scripture.
And your book does this in a way, right? You courageously tell your own story, allowing readers to see you in a really vulnerable narrative. Can you tell us a bit about the origin story for your book Famished?
A: I started writing Famished in my creative writing program in university over 15 years ago. And I realize now that what I was writing was world-building. I was writing a lot of the characters and the setting, but I was way too scared to put myself out there in my own story.
A lot of the feedback that I received in workshops was things like, these are interesting people and these are wild experiences, but where are you in these pieces? But I wasn’t really ready to confront who I was. I thought I was pretty boring and quiet, just this little girl sitting in the corner trying to figure out how she was going to exercise off her next meal. And that, to me, felt like this very trite thing to even consider writing about.
I let that writing sit for years and years. And it wasn’t until I became a mom that I had the courage to really start creatively writing again. I felt like I needed a place to play and create. My life felt very trapped and constricted, but the page gave me a place to play.
And then, during the pandemic, I had a number of personal trials I was going through. All of a sudden, I could see what my narrative was about. I didn’t have my pitch yet. I didn’t know that I was writing about the rhyming subcultures of purity culture and diet culture, but I knew that I was writing a book about my body, God, and faith.
At that point, I was just writing my personal story. Later, when I would try to sell my book, I realized that I needed to contextualize it and place my story within a more universal story. So that came later. But I’ve been working on Famished for years. I’ve really been wrestling with these questions of how a Christian woman can have an appetite and still glorify God.
M: Oh, wow, I so relate to the way motherhood kind of offers a clarion call to writers, like: it’s now or never. And 100% yes, writing and a creative outlet has been life-giving to me, too, especially in the intense parenting years I’ve come to think of as a little domestic cloister. What a grace.
And it isn’t just parenting that can be intense. Part of why we have connected online is a shared understanding of scrupulosity, also referred to as religious OCD. This is a piece of my own story and something you touch on in your book as well. So let’s talk more about Try Harder Christianity and the idea of Christian Excellence. If you could write a letter to your younger self on this topic, what might you say?
A: So I had never really heard the term “tryhard Christianity” until I heard you use it. And when you used it after reviewing my book on Instagram, I thought, yes, that’s exactly what I’m writing about.
It describes this sector of Christianity that is rooted in self-help. There’s a lot of self-help perfectionism in Christian publishing, and there’s this idea that we have to go all in for God. It’s a lot of messaging about giving up your desires, giving up your goals, your hopes, your dreams. It’s a lot of abstinence and austerity. And that was so much of what I absorbed in purity culture.
That same ideology was what I was applying to food and my body. There was never anything that was quite good enough. I was always a beat behind. I could never quite get there. I was always missing the mark.
If I could talk to my younger self, I would try to encourage her to find resources and to think about how God delights in us—what He loves about us, what is good about us—and how we don’t always have to improve ourselves. That’s not the main way, or the main means, by which we glorify God.
I would want to point her toward people who really emphasize the way God delights in us, in the same way that a good mother or father delights in their children.
M: This is so good. Yes. The idea of delight, along with the idea of God-given appetite, hunger, satiety, etc., are absent in the almost-robotic: put-off, put-on pressure cooker that some people absorb. And even if that way of trying hard appears to “work” for awhile, it really leaves us soul-famished, doesn’t it? I love how your memoir shows-not-tells a number of these things in powerful ways.
Writing-wise, what surprised (or challenged or was super fun) you most about the creative process?
A: My favorite part of writing is when I don’t go to the page with an explicit plan. I have an idea of what I’m trying to accomplish, but when I don’t try to rigidly control the outcome, my brain starts making connections between images or events that end up being really meaningful. And it’s not something I could have done if I had tried to tightly control it.
Creating on the page in this way—and being delighted by something I open myself up to rather than something I try to rigidly manage—has taught me a lot about how I can live more freely in my body and in the world.
For a long time, I felt like if I didn’t rigidly control myself, my body would fall apart. It would decay. I would fall into sin if there wasn’t this tight-fisted clenching down.
But writing has taught me that the most amazing outcomes often occur when we least expect them—when we’re open, when we play, when we’re present, and when we allow surprise.
Seeing that happen on the page has helped me rethink how I exist in the rest of my life and in my body. And so that has been the most wonderful part of writing Famished. It’s taught me a better way to live in the rest of my life.
M: This is so beautiful. I really resonate with the idea of re-learning to “play” and let go of that rigid grasp for control. I think many people can relate to this, particularly if they group in a similar subculture. What would you say to them?
A: I hope that women who grew up evangelical, no matter where they are in their faith journey now, are able to read my book and find permission to be human.
I hope that people who have equated discipline and restraint and minimalism—and not wanting too much—with being godly will see how expansive God’s love and grace can be, and how part of living into God’s design can involve pursuing the desires God has given us.
M: Love this! Thank you so much for joining me today, Anna! Readers, you can find Famished wherever books are sold and follow Anna Rollins here on Substack or across social media.
"It’s a lot of messaging about giving up your desires, giving up your goals, your hopes, your dreams."
I heard this a lot, too, along with variations on "if it's hard, then God's calling you to do it." I never had words to push back, but it always seemed idiotic to me.
"Hey, did you know that God made you just like God wanted you to be? You are special and unique and God made you that way. Unless, of course, you are more of a thinker than a talker. Then you need to learn to talk in a way that is socially expected so that God will use you. God gave you talents and skills and wants you to use them to serve God. But also, if something is outside of your talents and natural inclinations, then that is 100% God calling you. Unless of course, you enjoy public speaking and are interested in the pastorate or missions. Then what is easy for you is what God is calling you to do."
I appreciated this read. Trying to broaden my understanding of different people’s experiences, and this was helpful to me. I’m going to look into the book as a potential resource for parishioners. Thanks!
"It’s a lot of messaging about giving up your desires, giving up your goals, your hopes, your dreams."
I heard this a lot, too, along with variations on "if it's hard, then God's calling you to do it." I never had words to push back, but it always seemed idiotic to me.
"Hey, did you know that God made you just like God wanted you to be? You are special and unique and God made you that way. Unless, of course, you are more of a thinker than a talker. Then you need to learn to talk in a way that is socially expected so that God will use you. God gave you talents and skills and wants you to use them to serve God. But also, if something is outside of your talents and natural inclinations, then that is 100% God calling you. Unless of course, you enjoy public speaking and are interested in the pastorate or missions. Then what is easy for you is what God is calling you to do."
I appreciated this read. Trying to broaden my understanding of different people’s experiences, and this was helpful to me. I’m going to look into the book as a potential resource for parishioners. Thanks!