In the illustrator’s debut novel, When the Tides Held the Moon (Erewhon, Apr.), Benny, a blacksmith in 1910s New York City, lands a wondrous and secret job: building a Coney Island tank to hold a handsome merman he comes to know as Río, who was kidnapped out of the East River. Kelley, who also illustrated the cover and whose artwork appears throughout the book, spoke with PW about the joys of performing underwater and the challenges of living between two worlds.
What draws Benny to the merman?
As a queer Boricuan, Benny recognizes in Río the same duality that he feels, a biological expression of his feelings. Each lives neither here nor there, neither this nor that. Benny is a Puerto Rican migrant before Puerto Rico was part of the US. People coming from the island were leaving for all manner of reasons, but that experience was very disruptive to identity. Benny has a toe in two worlds. He finds family and self-actualization among the crew members of Coney Island’s Luna Park. Also, Benny has asthma, and sometimes he can’t breathe, over or under the water.
How do you research a book about merpeople?
I went to the annual MerMagic convention, in Silver Spring, Md. It was incredible to meet the performers. They have gorgeous costumes and their own language—they tell each other they look “mermazing” and greet one another with “shello!” There’s an element of conservation at the convention—preserving fresh water and freshwater fish, planting coral. They visit schools to teach about the importance of freshwater conservation. I met one nonbinary merperson, whose mersona is Mermaid Echo, who’s a marine biologist in real life. There’s something anticapitalist about the business of being a merperson: it’s resistant to patriarchal norms, and the men are showing their strength with a graceful, majestic presentation. We know mermaids’ voices to be dangerous, dragging humans to the depths. I tried to invert that in the book, showing the selves they need to protect. It’s not unlike the experience of being a marginalized person.
What fascinated you about merperson performers?
Merpeople are their own community, and I’d had zero experience of it before I went to the convention. They perform at Renaissance festivals and all over the place. I felt like a fish out of water because they leaned so far into it. They learn how to free dive; they get into the water with no scuba gear. They have to control their anxiety and keep the CO2 levels steady in their blood while they’re underwater. It gets meditative—they make contact and hold on to each other underwater. It requires a real mastery over their bodies, a communion with the deep, and gives them, especially the trans and nonbinary performers, something sacred in the current political climate. You feel superhuman; you’re graceful and fast. So of course I got myself a tail and learned how to swim. You have to commit to the bit or you’re going to drown.
