Exclusive Interview with Jacob Orlando

 

Years ago, Jacob Orlando’s mentor, novelist Katharine Noel, gave him the advice to write what feels hot. According to Orlando, that advice has been a ‘north star’ for his writing.  As a member of a generation that grew up with mass shootings in schools, a hot topic for some of Orlando’s writing has been gun violence and mass shootings. 

“I grew up in a generation of increasingly normalized school shootings in particular and gun violence in general,” said Orlando. “Gun violence and mass shootings at schools and other places inflict so much trauma on this country and I think writers can help shine a light on why that’s happening and how it might happen less. We need to push back against the idea that this is something that we just have to live with.”

In Grasshopper Gut Punch, Orlando tells the story of two young men who’ve been at odds with one another but also are connected through their complicated relationship. After a boy named Cody Willis has died, the narrator reflects on his past with Cody and explains a prank he pulled on Cody by filling his truck cab with grasshoppers on the night of homecoming. Throughout the story we see two boys trying to figure out their feelings for each other.

It’s not until the very end that we realize the narrator’s reflection has been a way for him to mourn the loss of Cody, who died in a school shooting the same night of the narrator’s prank. It appears the narrator hadn’t fully understood his feelings for Cody and now regretted he would never find out.

“I hope that the sleight of hand in the opening gives the reader more power to draw their own conclusion about the actions and motivations of the narrator,” said Orlando. “I guess this can reflect that we don’t usually understand why a perpetrator makes his choices in these cases. Oftentimes we just get a news story, we get some numbers. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s closer to home than others. Maybe we know or have some connection to the community or the people who are affected directly. Maybe we are on the scene.” 

While the narrator went to elaborate lengths to fill Cody’s truck with grasshoppers as an act of aggression, a school shooter was the one successful in hurting Cody in a way that the narrator never dreamed.

“What I set out to do was show in sharp relief a more unthinkable act of perpetrating a shooting — taking the life of one or many people in a really violent, shocking, and painful way,” said Orlando. “To say to a potential perpetrator – go for the grasshoppers, not the gun.”  

Grasshopper Gut Punch could have just been a story about two young men figuring out their place in the world and how they fit into each other’s world, but instead, Orlando chose to follow what felt hot and show that while the grasshopper prank and the school shooting are both acts of aggression, the consequences of crossing that very clear between the two have dire and tragic consequences. 

“I hope that their complicated relationship gets at the trauma behind the numbers of dead and injured at these mass shootings,” said Orlando. “Everyone means something to someone, and relationships can be complicated and tangled and messy, even between two guys. That can include passion, envy, competition, anger, rage, and it can still be so meaningful to a person’s life and their personhood, and it can be so terrible to lose.”

Orlando has two other published pieces that include the topic of gun violence. Molten won last year’s New Millennium Writings Award for Flash Fiction. This piece focused largely on gun violence. Down too Many, was published in The Q&A Queerzine. Like Grasshopper Gut Punch, this piece had an incident of gun violence at the end, defining the story.

According to Orlando, he is just trying to tell human stories about people struggling with the consequences of their own actions and sometimes the actions of others. Gun violence isn’t the only thing he’s trying to work through on the page.

“I’m queer and interested in complicating, challenging my understanding of queerness and what that means for me and what it means for how I move through the world,” said Orlando. 

Orlando writes poetry, flash fiction and fiction. He is especially drawn to fiction and works that he says, ‘complicates our understanding of queerness.’ 

“I like fiction because it leaves a lot of space for nuance,” said Orlando. “I think there is so much room to express my thoughts about something. To conduct thought experiments with these made-up people and settings.”

Orlando has taken the advice from his former mentor about following the heat in his writing. He has been able to use his writing for his own understanding of his place in the world, but also as a platform against issues such as gun violence. 

Under the surface of his writing is a call to people to deepen their relationships, talk to the guy no one talks to, and help change the ending to a story such as Grasshopper Gut Punch.  

“There are lots of issues and I don’t think this is the only thing that I will feel that heat in,” said Orlando. “But I was a part of that generation for which gun violence was normalized and I feel that I can’t just sit back and say, ‘it is what it is, this is America.’”

Thank you, Jacob, for spending extra time with us on this interview. We are grateful for your passion for writing, the intention and care evident in your piece and your answers, and your willingness to take on such complex issues. We wish you the best.

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Jacob Orlando’s story, Grasshopper Gut Punch, can be found in Issue #15 ~ Spring 2024.