Self-Expansion as a "Genre"
“Self-expansion means creating the space for one’s physical and mental liberation. We focus so much on creating mental prisons that contain us that we forget we also have the power to break free of them. Once we liberate ourselves from this inner oppression we are able to make space for and get to know all of the pieces of who we are.” - I.T., Parea author
“Self-expansion is what happens when you look yourself in the eye and say ‘I’ve got you. I’ll give you exactly what you want and need so that you can bloom.’ It’s what happens when you recognize that what you see as the most beautiful is already within you, looking back at you. It’s bringing influences, stories, and people into your life that are at such an unimaginable level of goodness, you could almost die from the overwhelm. It’s knowing that you, and your life, are your art. It’s your magic. Act accordingly” - J.M., Parea author
—
The following conversation took place in a hotel room in Portland, hours before the welcome party for a wedding that I joined as a good friend’s plus one:
Me: “Do you know a lot of the people coming to the wedding?”
Him: “A few. A really nice engineer who recently built a camper van, a girl who lives up in Canada, another girl who does some coaching. Oh, and this British designer who’s written a couple of books. I think you’ll get along with him.”
Someone who loves books enough to write one? Yes, odds are we’ll have a few things to say to each other.
A few hours later I was nursing a beer and talking to the aforementioned Canadian girl about the Northern Lights when my friend pulled me away from the conversation. The British author had arrived. Lacking in demure social skills, I immediately asked him about his books. I found out he spent 18 months living in dictionaries, piecing together an entire book of stories compiled from the sentences that dictionaries use to define words. I asked if he’d been to Powell’s (Portland’s famous bookstore) yet and he hadn’t. We set a time to meet the next morning and walk among the books.
Our journey through the bookstore was a highlight of the weekend.* I thought it would be fun to dive into his mind through his reading preferences, and I was right. He led me to a brilliant Scottish author, Ali Smith, to a “sapphic time travel fantasy love story”, to a book about finding delight in the everyday, and several more in between. I sensed that he enjoys books that make you feel, authors who pay close attention to syntax and aren’t afraid to experiment with form, and worlds that exist just slightly outside the current realm of what’s possible. Beyond having a blast with him, I realized that his understanding of the world and his unique life experience had been shaped by these books. They opened up more corners of his own existence and by introducing me to the same stories, he gave me the ability to exist with him in these corners.
In How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren eloquently define the art of reading as the following: “the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more.”
I started reading one of the books that we got at Powell’s: The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay. The premise is simple—the author wrote each day for a year about something that delighted him. The result is a collection of very short essays that shine a positive light on mundane events. This book is not filled with facts. It does not follow a narrative arc of an underdog who navigates through a series of extraordinary circumstances to become a hero. It does not take place in an unusual destination that I’ve never been to. It does two things: first, it makes you realize that someone else can view the exact same things that happen in your own life in a totally different way; second, it inspires and encourages you to find delight in quotidian events. It urges you to look at the same things differently and reminds you that other people have different interpretations of life. I almost messaged the British author to ask if he wanted to exchange stories of daily delight, but I didn’t want to make him regret his recommendation.
Books have the unique power to expand your mind, your understanding, your perspective, your entire way of looking at the world. When I first started thinking about the kind of books I want to publish, the word “self-expansion” (two words?) effortlessly landed in my brain. It’s exactly what I want Parea’s books to accomplish, and I have a hunch that it’s what people are looking for from a reading experience. They want to go from understanding less to understanding more.
This is also why I’ve never much cared for traditional notions of genre—what do you know about a book by knowing that it’s fiction? Just that the story didn’t happen? And from non-fiction? You know that it’ll be “true”? Is that what you look for when you walk into a bookstore? Something that’s true, or something that isn’t? Would it actually matter if The Book of Delights was a fictional diary of a fictional character if it accomplished the same end result of inspiring joy in your own life? Would it matter if the best business book you’ve ever read was completely made up, so long as you took away some key learnings and applied those to grow your own business? When you’re dealing with unrelenting grief, is reading a self-help book about healing trauma the only way you’ll feel better? I don’t think so.
Traditional genres are a reductive and industry-oriented way of categorizing books and don’t allow for the fact that a book is an experience that’s equally about the journey and the destination. It’s not about what a book is, it’s about how it makes you feel, what it makes you think.
Parea’s “genre” is self-expansion. This includes poetry, memoirs, self-help, narrative non-fiction, guidebooks, and more. Our only criteria is that the books are written in a way that’s enjoyable to read and that they uncover new ways of relating to the world. The “experiences” we’re offering are categorized by feeling, learning, and escaping. The promise we’re making is that you’ll walk away from each of our books having increased your understanding of yourself and the people around you, having evolved the way you think about at least one aspect of your life. Our books are not made to be either massive traditional commercial successes or winners of prestigious literary prizes. They’re made for you, the reader. To give you a way of elevating your mind by the power of its own operations. To enable you to invite others into your new existence, the way the intriguing British author welcomed me into his.
—
*I have to mention the other part of this memorable bookstore trip. We stumbled on a section of the store labeled “Male Specific” and it contained such titles as Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, and What Does She Want From Me Anyway?. (The adjacent section was labeled “Anger”, which felt like the merchandiser’s way of apologizing for the Male Specific category.) Now if you’re feeling particularly saucy, I recommend picking up The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire. The chapters include “Women Are Not Liars”, “Turn Your Lust Into Gifts”, and “Each Woman Has a ‘Temperature’ That Can Heal or Irritate You”. I wish I was kidding! We spent close to an hour reading incredulously about “human women” and their fickle feminine qualities. Never have I laughed so hard at a book that wasn’t trying to be funny. The publisher of this book is “Sounds True”, which sounds right. You are welcome.