Rooted Book Club: WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU OPENS YOUR HEART by Max Hipp

Our November 2024 Book Club Selection

Are you, too, filled with existential dread at the uncertainty of what comes after Tuesday, November 5th? It’s times like these when American Democracy feels like a nation-sized nightmare of a group project. So much of the national agenda is beyond our control, and yet so much depends on our collective action.

What is in our control? Well, voting for one, especially filling in those down-ballot bubbles, where our votes make the most difference. But what’s also in our control are the words, images, sound bites, and “content” we consume on a daily basis. I hope Rooted feels not so much like an escape from the onslaught of breaking news, weird campaign texts, and social media hot takes, but more a space of affirmation and solace that you’re not shaking your fist alone at the sky. We are shaking our fists together, and that matters.

I launched the Rooted Book Club at the start of 2024 with the intention of bringing together folks who care about the South to talks about books that complicate our ideas and understanding of the South. For me, this collective reading experience has been an opportunity to slow down amid a system determined to fragment our time and attention. For one hour each month, readers and authors gather in an intimate virtual space to talk about books. It is an hour of joyful, rapt attention. This is no small feat.

Today I’m inviting you to read and discuss our last book club book of the year. Max Hipp’s debut collection of stories, What Doesn’t Kill You Opens Your Heart, shook me to my core in the best way. Max is a writer and teacher of creative writing at the University of Mississippi; he’s also a wildly talented musician and former Mississippi teen metalhead. Lee Durkee calls this collection “Unapologetically grotesque, delightfully craven, derangedly horny, and unforgivably honest.” I mean, what more could you ask for in a book?? I can’t wait to discuss it with you all.

Here’s the official book description:

The characters in Max Hipp’s debut story collection howl with loneliness. They've reached the ends of their coping mechanisms and bank accounts and are making terrible life choices and trying to recover in the wake of them. We've got folks who can’t let go of the past, folks obsessed with sex and music, lovers stuck in dismal relationships, and clueless romantics who probably need their asses whipped. Heartbreak piles up like car crashes in the fog, and everybody just has to carry on like everything’s fine. These stories keep hitting the funny/sad notes, and with his scalpel-tip sentences, Hipp marches readers through the wringer, with great compassion for the lost and searching.

Max Hipp is a teacher, writer, and musician from Oxford, Mississippi. His work has appeared in, among others, Southern Humanities Review, Cheap Pop, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Black Warrior Review. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Mississippi.

How are you coping with election anxiety? What are you reading and/or what content are you avoiding? And, importantly, how do you feel about reading short stories? (Personally, I love them!) Share your thoughts in the comments.