Author Davin Malasarn drew inspiration for his debut novel The Outer Country from a personal experience involving a Buddhist exorcism performed on him as a child. The book, released today by One World, explores the event from four family perspectives. Malasarn recounts how his aunt arranged the ritual amid suspicions he was gay.
Davin Malasarn's novel The Outer Country, published today by One World, stems from a real-life Buddhist exorcism he endured. A monk visited his family's home one night while his mother was away. His aunt and father instructed him to follow the monk's directions, which involved chanting and blessed water, amid fears over his behavior, including dressing as a girl. Malasarn describes the fear he felt during the ritual, which his aunt arranged believing it would expel a feminine spirit from his body. Content warning: the story includes themes of homophobia and conversion therapy-like practices. (Content warning for homophobia and conversion therapy. The aunt—this character doesn’t think of herself as a villain. She does what she believes is right. She acts out of love. Seeing the events from that viewpoint made me much more sympathetic to her, despite the damage that she causes. It made me more sympathetic to my own aunt. I wrote that first draft of The Outer Country while I was working with the wonderful Jill McCorkle at the Bennington Writing Seminars. As a next step, she encouraged me to experiment, and so I wrote the story again, this time from the mother’s point of view. She didn’t know about the ceremony, but she saw that her son grew mysteriously ill in the days that followed. This caused a rift between the sisters, with one holding a secret and the other one left to deal with the aftermath. I was intrigued by this other dimension and the power of silence to push two people apart. I continued on, telling the story from the boy’s perspective and then from the father’s perspective. With each new version of my book, I realized how many different interpretations there were of what happened. I realized no one could claim to know everything, but by pulling each of these versions together, they could reveal a more complete picture. As Allen Ginsburg said, “I don’t think there is any truth. There are only points of view.” My debut novel, The Outer Country, is based on my true experience—or at least as much as I have been able to reconstruct of my true experience. But writing a first-person account of these events lacked the potential for discovery I need when I begin my work. To tell this family story, I had to step out of myself. I had to inhabit each of the characters. And if Ginsburg is right that there isn’t any truth, at least I could offer four different possibilities.) Initially, Malasarn wrote the story from his aunt's viewpoint, portraying her as acting out of love despite the harm caused. He found this perspective made him more sympathetic to her real-life counterpart. Jill McCorkle, his instructor at the Bennington Writing Seminars, encouraged him to experiment further, leading to versions from the mother's, boy's, and father's angles. The mother, unaware of the ceremony, noticed her son falling mysteriously ill afterward, straining relations with her sister. Malasarn notes that combining these viewpoints reveals a fuller picture, echoing Allen Ginsberg's idea that there are only points of view, not absolute truth.