Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Please note that this conversation contains intimate recollections and fictional reconstructions of disordered eating and traumatic events that may be triggering for some listeners.
Michael Collina: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Michael Collina, and today I'm speaking with Josh Galarza about his young adult debut, . Welcome, Josh.
Josh Galarza: Hi, thanks for having me.
MC: Thanks so much for being here. So, before we really jump in, I wanted to ask, how does it feel to have your debut novel out in the world?
JG: It feels incredibly surreal, actually. I've been writing for over 15 years and my very first writing instructor told me, "This is about paying your dues. And it's going to take some time." It was just a lot of persistence. There was a point where I thought, "Well, this isn't going to happen." And then here I am. So, yeah, it's wonderful, and it's wonderful to see how well the book has been received by critics and readers alike. It's been really wonderful.
MC: That's so great to hear. I cannot wait for listeners to hear The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky. So, in your own words, can you tell us a bit about the story?
JG: Yeah, so this book is about a 16-year-old male protagonist and he is struggling with the fear, particularly the fear around his adoptive mother's cancer diagnosis. And because he hasn't really developed a lot of healthy coping mechanisms, he's sort of funneling his grief and his anxieties into an escalating eating disorder. At first, he's very much refusing to even accept that that's what's going on. Eventually, he'll meet a character at school, Mallory, who seems to know a lot more about his issues than he does, and she kind of takes him under her wing. And in the process, he's learning a lot about diet culture and its roots in white supremacy and patriarchy. And so there's this incredible amount of consciousness-raising that happens in his story. Brett is his name. Brett's story. And through that, he may be able to learn how to face the most unfathomable loss bravely.
MC: I was first drawn to this story for its representations of male mental health and disordered eating, both of which I feel are issues that really aren't often discussed with young men and boys in mind. And you start off the audiobook with a really personal author's note that shares some resources, a note about potential triggers, and a little bit about your own experiences with mental health and disordered eating. So, what was it like revisiting those topics that have been so close to your own life and healing journey?
JG: I think this book was a part of the healing journey. I think my eating disorder probably began around the same age as Brett, around 14, 15, 16. And of course I didn't know what was going on at all. It was morphing throughout the years and it didn't look the way eating disorders looked in pop culture, which was primarily anorexia and bulimia. And those had very clear definitions and signs. They were easy to tell what they were. But binge eating disorder, which is probably what I was experiencing then, that wasn't even a diagnosis yet.
The primary form my disorder took, especially into my twenties, was orthorexia, and that's extreme healthism. You're basically creating so many food rules and restricting so intensely, all for reasons of health, that you're in essence in an anorexic state, or like a low-key anorexic state. If your eating disorder looks like, "I'm just a healthy person. I just love the gym. I just love to eat clean,” all of these things that are actually supported in diet culture and in the messaging in the world, there's a righteousness about what you're doing. So, you can't recognize it as self-destruction, actually. So, for me, it was years of that escalating, morphing as I aged and starting to have a real effect on my relationships and my career. It had to escalate to the point where I was starting to have bulimic ideology before I started to recognize that maybe something wasn't right in my relationship with food.
"In the beginning, I didn't even know if Brett could overcome his eating disorder. Because I didn't know if I could."
As luck would have it, my life kind of shifted in a major way when I decided to go back to college and finish my BA. I had been a Montessori teacher for years. And so this was like a big shakeup and I stumbled upon counseling services, and I just had this little moment in my head where I was like, "You know what you're doing and you know that there's something not right. Maybe try this out." So, immediately got into treatment. While at the same time, here I am getting an English degree in writing, and at that point, things had escalated. I didn't even want to write anymore. I was kind of miserable in my artist practice, but I had to turn in pages. So, here I am, I'm in treatment and I start writing this story at the same time. And in the beginning, I didn't even know if Brett could overcome his eating disorder. Because I didn't know if I could. I kind of thought, "This is all about learning to somehow manage this horrible thing that's happening in my life." And sure enough, here I am in treatment learning, "Oh, actually a person can completely overcome these things, and that's not going to be easy, but it can be done."
In so many ways the book was an expression, especially emotionally. It's a very emotional book. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that all of these emotions that I had been suppressing were like coming up and out, and years and years of trauma that had been repressed. All of these were the roots of this disorder and I had to root them out and I had to bring them into the light and I had to deal with those emotions. And the book really, really helped me to do that. Primarily, it helped me to do that because it helped me to be compassionate toward myself. I was hard on myself. I was beating myself up. But this character, this 16-year-old kid experiencing those same emotions, the shame and the guilt and self-loathing feelings, I couldn't feel anything but compassion for him. And in a way, it was a way to teach myself how to re-embrace compassion for myself in that situation.
MC: Well, I really want to thank you for really dealing with all of these difficult subjects and tackling it in this book and just being open and vulnerable with audiences and listeners. Because it is such an important story, dealing with these really heavy, difficult, but still important topics. So, really just thank you for telling this story and doing it in such an incredibly passionate and engaging way, because it really is remarkable.
JG: Thanks, I appreciate that. I learned early on in my writing career that the practice manuscripts I was writing all those years, I started to recognize right away that this is one avenue in my life where vulnerability is my top priority. And, of course, in hindsight, I can recognize that as a man who was socialized away from vulnerability, some desperate part of me needed to be able to express myself. And writing was the way that I did that. So, that had always been this like central part of my writing practice, whether that was writing in a journal that no one was ever going to see, whether that was starting to get brave enough to maybe put something in an essay that was going to be turned in in a writing class and suddenly people are seeing parts of you that you normally would hide.
So, by the time I was ready to write this book, I recognize that that aspect of it came so naturally. That's partly why treatment was so successful for me, because I needed to be able to do that with my therapist, with my doctor, with my dietician, with a substance abuse counselor. Like, all of these people who were helping me, I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere if I couldn't access that. But the writer in me, he was like, "Oh, I get it. I get what I'm supposed to do when I show up to my therapist's office. I can do that.” Then eventually that just broadens, right? Because you write a chapter, so you turn it in in class and all of a sudden, you're like, "Well, okay. That's out there. And I'm still here. I'm fine. I'm fine." And people admire it. People aren't negatively judging me. Instead, people find it like a brave move, which feels strange as a person who didn't feel brave in the least, you know?
MC: And on top of this story being so emotional and so vulnerable, you also write Brett with this certain bro-y-ness that feels really relatable and really approachable, especially for a younger male audience. Why was it important for you to use those bro-isms, as they're called, to tackle such emotionally heavy and complex topics?
JG: Yeah, of course it occurred to me right away that we don't see these types of stories for boys. I think much of the media that is sold to boys and men is perpetuating patriarchal mores, almost always. And it occurred to me that, “Okay, so here's this audience who's being underserved, that is maybe not having the kind of stories that could possibly give them permission to express vulnerability with their buddies. What if vulnerability and intimacy in our male friendships doesn't have to be about sexuality? It doesn't need to be gay.”
And I'm gay, so obviously I don't think there's anything wrong with gay interaction among men and those relationships. But it occurred to me that, culturally, women are socialized to have these really intimate, really supportive relationships with each other from a very young age. And so when times are hard, when they're struggling, when they're suffering, they always have this net around them of people lifting them up. And men kind of don't have that, because at a pretty young age, around those tween years, other boys become the competition, women become conquests. So, they have very few avenues through which to really express their deepest sort of most intimate needs or desires or hurts and feelings.
It occurred to me that I could very mindfully, because I care about this stuff and I taught kids for years, and I know because I taught very young kids. I was a Montessori teacher. I know that boys are often far more emotional than girls and all of that is just being stripped away from them. It's policed away. It's conditioned away. So, I thought, "Well, what if I just try to move that needle just a little bit?" So, here we have straight boys, and that was an intentional choice, and most just look like straight boys and act like your sort of typical bro-y straight boys. Even to the point of objectifying girls around them, which is really uncomfortable to write. But I wanted them to feel real, not some sort of idealized, aspirational version of a boy. But like just a real teenage boy.
First of all, I showed them some avenues of learning and especially through girls and women, who I've been mentored by women my whole life, in my Montessori career, as an artist, as a writer. And I think any man should be so lucky to have that level of influence. And I wanted to create a story where here I've got this boy who's just got all of these blind spots. And what would happen if a girl who recognizes some things and understands some things because of her life experience, were to choose to make him her special project? Would he be open to that and would he be willing to learn?
But then also, on top of all of that, what if these boys could feel that uncomfortable feeling of being intimate or vulnerable and just push through it, right? So that they'd have these scenes and these moments where they are supporting each other and they can touch each other. At one point, one of the characters even reaches out and holds Brett's hand in a minute when he needs some support. And I just thought, "Is this gonna work? Are people gonna buy it?" And by and large, they do. And by and large, especially men, especially men who have read this book, tell me, "Gosh, I wish I had a Reed." Reed is the best friend character. "I wish I had a Reed in my life" or "My favorite person is the Reed in my life."
So, I recognized that there was a craving, and then my assertion is, well, don't boys deserve it? Don't men deserve that? And ultimately, if men can liberate themselves to that degree, that is going to be better for women and fem people, queer identities.
MC: Yeah, absolutely. The patriarchy affects everyone, men, women, boys, girls, all at varying degrees and in different ways. But it affects us all. In addition to touching on issues of mental health, body positivity, and toxic masculinity, you also take some time exploring Mestizo identities and the work of in particular. How did her work shape the story overall?
JG: I love this question, because I'm obsessed with Gloria Anzaldúa. Part of going back to college in your thirties is thinking you're an adult and you've arrived, and in some ways, I was an adult. And yes, my life was kind of falling to pieces around me at that time. I always say rock bottom's a good place to rebuild. It's a pretty sturdy foundation. But you're suddenly thrust into these classes where you're reading an incredible amount of theory, and I had never read some of these authors before. And it makes sense in a life—where outside of academia might you stumble upon some of these readings? or , for instance, who are also big influences on me.
"I always say rock bottom's a good place to rebuild. It's a pretty sturdy foundation."
And so, the first time I was assigned to read a piece from Gloria Anzaldúa, I was just absolutely blown away. I am Mestizo. My grandfather on my dad's side is Maya. And my grandmother is Mestiza. But I didn't know that word. I didn't even know that term, right? And so, throughout a lot of my life, I was raised primarily by the white side of my family, and so you'd be filling out forms, for instance, and it's like, “Oh, race. You got to put in race.” And it's like, "Well, I don't know. I guess white is the thing that makes the most sense." But of course, does that make sense, right? Is that your real lived experience and is that honoring where you come from and who you come from?
So, reading a lot of her work, but also work by other Chicano theorists, it felt really good to be able to adopt that term as like, "Oh, I'm Mestizo and that's my race. That helps me understand myself better." And Brett, I wanted his situation as a person of color to be somewhat similar to my own. I didn't want to try to go and write a Latino boy who is expert in being a Latino boy, as if such a thing exists, but someone who is really deeply entrenched in that Mexican American culture. Because I didn't grow up that way. And so it was really important to me that the authenticity of that be real.
Brett had been adopted by a white mother and so a lot of the things that I had to learn about myself and my identity are exactly the things that I put on the page for him to learn about. He's learning it at a much younger age than I did. And can I build in a situation where Brett would be exposed to Gloria Anzaldúa, and how? Who's the type of person who would see that need in Brett and expose him to a woman whose work is of that caliber? That was sort of the part of the book I was working on right up until the end, because there was a little bit of that going on when I signed with my agent. And he gave me great feedback and I infused some more of Brett's Mestizo identity into the work. And then when I was working with my editor at Holt, Jess Harold, she asked the most incredible questions. And it allowed me to sort of push that part of the story into the stratosphere.
The only chapter I think that was written kind of after the fact, when she had given me her notes, was a chapter towards the end that deals with Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. And all of that was sort of like a little bit of a stroke of luck, because I love Tucson, I'd lived in Tucson. And Tucson loves Day of the Dead. It's sort of the biggest festival of the year. And then I even looked at the calendar and where the story was unfolding on the calendar, and I was like, "Wait, Day of the Dead's right there." It was almost like the universe was giving me a gift, like these pieces will come together and you can use Day of the Dead as this really concrete way to sort of wrap up the big emotional arc dealing with his grief.
I feel like some of that started intentionally early on. A lot of it was fate. A lot of it was fate saying, in a white supremacist world that has taught you it's better to just write a white protagonist—and you could do that, you could write a white protagonist—in that world, pushing back against that and saying, "No, let me honor who I am and who my family is and where I come from." It's almost like the universe was like pushing me and nudging me in that way, because all of those pieces just sort of fell so easily into place.
MC: And they really did fall together beautifully. I think all of that culminates in this really touching, really authentic-feeling story. So, you did a great job with it. And in addition to being a writer, you and Brett are also artists in another sense. Brett's creation of the Kid Condor comic book series plays a pretty integral part of his growth throughout this novel. So, what were some of the inspirations behind that Kid Condor mythology and the role that it plays in Brett's life?
JG: Yeah, this kind of goes back to what I mentioned earlier about how writing for me was an avenue into my own vulnerability and kind of learning how to express myself. I was looking for maybe a means to do that in a way that felt so age appropriate. Surprisingly, I wasn't even a comic book nerd when I was a teen. But what I appreciated about it, and I think probably the reason that it ended up being so important to Brett, is comic books are a medium that brings together my two favorite mediums of storytelling. So, you have imagery, you have art, you know, visual artistry. And you have words. And you're bringing these things together in a way that is just sort of fun and allows for an incredible amount of creativity and sort of outrageousness. I realized I was writing a book that's got really heavy, challenging themes. But the magic trick of making that palatable is, what if the book could be fun? What if it could be a fun book about grief? Is that even possible? I see Brett as a kid who is maybe suffering. But if you took away all that suffering, what he really is, is really fun-loving, really creative, he's clever, very clever.
So, I found if I give him this comic book world that he could be developing, that's a way to bring some more fun into the book, but it's also a way to really concretely illustrate some of the trauma in his background. I learned early on, my very first writing mentor, Marilee Swirczek was her name, she was an amazing woman. She from day one was instilling in me this idea that the concrete is where the magic is happening in our storytelling, right? There's nothing wrong with telling, but obviously showing is more impactful. And if Brett, like most boys, is struggling to simply say, "This horrible thing happened to me when I was a little kid" or "This horrible thing has been something that I'm afraid of. I don't even know how to deal with." If he can't express himself in that way, then his artistry sort of becomes a language for that.
"I realized I was writing a book that's got really heavy, challenging themes. But the magic trick of making that palatable is, what if the book could be fun? What if it could be a fun book about grief?"
So, readers will notice as they go through and start to learn more and more about Kid Condor and Captain Condor and that mythology, that there are these parts and pieces. Each part and piece of that relates specifically to his real life and people in his real life, in his real world. Of course, by the end of the book, Brett is expressing himself in really concrete ways and really clear ways and he's using emotion words all over the place. He's really labeling those things. He's adopting that ability. But throughout the book, we're getting little hints about, "Oh, something went terribly wrong when he was really young." I can drop these breadcrumbs through the mythology, which is kind of a cool way to do it.
MC: Yeah, totally. And plus, it really speaks to that kind of healing power of art for you, for Brett, and I think for everyone. And since we were just speaking about art and artistry and words, I really loved Robb Moreira's performance throughout this story. I think he did such an incredible job with each of the different characters, both real and imagined in Brett's life, including all of those Kid Condor characters that make appearances throughout. So, what was it about Robb that made him the right narrator for this story?
JG: Oh, my gosh, Robb. I can't even describe how grateful I am for him and his incredible talent. My audiobook producer, Elishia Merricks, she had a few names in mind. I didn't have a lot of names in mind. And so she said, "Okay, I'm going to send you a few little audition clips where they read just a few pages of one of the scenes." And they were all good, but Robb's blew my mind so much. You know what he understood? He really understood that thing I said earlier about the fact that while Brett may really be suffering, and while there's a lot of heavy content and subject matter in this book, Brett, at his heart, he's an incredibly fun-loving kid. And he's always up for an adventure or at least being the sidekick to his best friend, Reed, in an adventure. The section that they read for the audition was a scene that's set in Brett's school library, where Brett calls it “covert comic booking,” where they're sneaking into the library to hide editions of his comic book around the library. And Robb's pacing and his tone, he just understood these kids are having fun, this is a crazy adventure to them.
And I also write in such a way, the best way I can describe it is like emotional whiplash. I've done this since day one, 15 or so years ago, and I recognized it pretty early on, where it's like, we're laughing, it's fun, hilarious, okay? And then all the sudden there'll be a turn. And this'll happen in a personal essay, in a scene I'm writing, and I noticed it pretty consistently. And to this day, it's a hallmark of my work. And so there'll be this turn emotionally, and Robb just understood the pacing of that and the tone of that, where like fun, fun, fun, and then all the sudden a really painful emotion rises right up to the surface.
And his pace, he would just slow down and he would just take a breath and take the time he needed to impart that emotion. In a book where I've got a character crying quite a lot, he handled that incredibly well. I felt like when I first listened to the audiobook, I almost felt like, "Okay. Here I've read these scenes a thousand times, and I feel like I'm listening and seeing these scenes for the first time." I'm feeling these emotions for the first time, because he's just caught on to them so well.
MC: Yeah, that's exactly what we love about audio. It's those really great performances from these incredible narrators. And now that Brett's story is out in the world, what do you think you're going to be working on next?
JG: So, I'm about halfway through a new manuscript. It's also young adult. It's set in the very late ’90s, and it's characteristically ambitious. Another type of book where I'm saying to myself A) can I pull it off? And B) will the publishing world look at it and say, "Okay. Yeah, I think we can sell this to consumers." It's a gay conversion therapy narrative, so it deals with some sexual trauma and it deals with internalized homophobia. I have two protagonists, and one is obsessed with musicals and believes his life is a musical. Probably the most absurd aspect of the book is that the characters are at times—and this character against his will because he's also kind of repressed—are breaking into song. And how absurd to do that in a novel where no one's hearing the music and seeing the stage and the production or whatever. But I thought, if there's one category that will tolerate my quirkiness and my silliness, it is young adult, right? It is children's literature.
And then this other protagonist, who is Mestizo, his story deals a lot with Machismo culture, being gay in Machismo culture, and how is he navigating that and how is he finding his way? Since my books are primarily about healing always, I think, and self-actualization, how will he find his way out and through that or through and out of that? And he fancies himself an action hero, because life is an action movie. And so you've got these two really disparate genres that are just clashing and bumping up against each other with these two characters.
And as their two stories converge—I haven't written some of those scenes yet—but what I have envisioned, I'm like, this is going to be so outrageous and hopefully fun, right? Again, it's a book that deals with a lot of trauma and grief, but it is also so much meant to be a book that is fun and creative and ultimately really supportive of readers, any of whom may be experiencing some of these difficulties of internalized homophobia, or any sort of trauma around sex and sexuality, and just rejecting what patriarchy is asking of them. Simply put, it's a lot [laughs].
MC: But as a former musical theater kid in high school and a gay man, it sounds right up my alley.
JG: Oh, good. Yeah, so glad to hear it. So far, it's getting a lot of really positive feedback and rave reviews from everybody in my grad school workshops who are seeing it.
MC: Well, before we wrap today, is there anything else that you want to tell listeners about The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky that we haven't already talked about today?
JG: Yeah, and I don't know how relevant this is to a reader's experience of the book, but I think it can be really relevant to just a reader's life experience. And that is one of the bigger epiphanies maybe I had when I was working on this was, as a person who was suffering and literally quite sick for a lot of my adult life and just desperately relying on my ego to try to get through that and survive, it took such a long time for my artist practice and my writing to take off. And that was because I understand now that I was writing from a place of festering toxicity. And with Dorito, this book, it was the first time in my life where I was writing from a place of healing and about healing. And it completely changed my relationship with my artist practice and it made me so open to going in new directions. Young adult even, for instance, I hadn't anticipated, but that was just the direction that opened up to me once I sort of was able to move past the things that were holding me back.
So, I guess what I'm saying there is, if anybody out there who's reading that book, if any of it resonates and if they, too, feel like maybe there's a healing journey that they need to undertake, I'd just encourage that, and especially for boys and men, all of whom I think have healing to do from their patriarchal conditioning, for sure.
MC: Absolutely. I could not have said it better myself. Well, Josh, thank you again for taking the time to talk today. And listeners, you can find The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky by Josh Galarza on Audible now.
JG: Thank you. I really appreciate it.