Finding Community in Isolation

I STARTED READING Kate Zambreno’s incandescent new book The Light Room a month before its publication date during a camping trip with my ten year old at Bear Mountain State Park under a sky gone hazy and orange from the smoke of Canadian wildfires. We wore masks heldover from the pandemic to keep the particulate matter out of our lungs because the air was so toxic. The horizon was indistinct. The air smelled like a campfire. My kid said the smoke was making the world wavy. We went out in kayaks on Breakneck Pond when the air quality index dropped from hazardous to moderate. I had to weigh the safety risks of taking him outdoors in that miasma against my maternal desire to make magic for him, and to find solace in nature. (Now we know it was the worst wildfire related pollution event in recorded U.S. history.) It seemed a fitting situation to dive into Zambreno’s ninth book, which is about parenting a toddler and an infant in central Brooklyn during the pandemic. The tension between crisis and joy resonated with me on a deep level as a parent, a writer, and a reader, as did the attention to the fine art of caretaking. I spoke with the author about the book’s themes after getting back home to New York City from my camping trip.