REVIEW of Erin Mizrahi's To What End:
Plus FIVE QUESTIONS with the author!
WHAT’S HAPPENING
To What End: by Erin Mizrahi is a collection of fictional emails between the writer and Nancy Pelosi. This epistolary call-and-response morphs into a pseudo-relationship between the two. Nancy’s political emails devolve into extremity and hysteria while Erin’s emails reveal a deep postpartum loneliness and growing angst.
This collection is part poetry, part prose. Speculative, and yet so very real. The letters are at once earnest and ridiculous; philosophical and satirical. The emails escalate and combine brilliantly, sharpening into a cutting commentary on the surreality of the current American political landscape and modern life in general.
WHAT WE LOVE
Mizrahi’s voice is pitch-perfect. Her Pelosi feels both apt and fantastical, and her portrait of a new mother at sea in her current circumstance feels relevant to readers at any stage of life. Nothing escapes Mizrahi’s poetic lens as she marshals all her tools—punctuation, lexicon, sentence structure—to immerse her reader in this closed-loop interchange between a political actor and constituent, both struggling to make their voice heard, to communicate past the bubble of their everyday.
The reader will not be surprised that picking “Favorite Quotes” was extremely difficult; Mizrahi’s work produces nonstop bangers. If you’re awash in political email and find yourself desperately wanting to scream primarily into the night, this chapbook is for you.
FAVORITE QUOTES
Nancy:
“The bad guys have more money than we do. They are throwing it from the moon roofs of their private jets.”
“You need to know that the bad guys are on TikTok and people are listening. The bad guys are wearing tiny suits and people are clapping.”
“Let me lay out the stakes again. Let me garner an abundance of stakes. I’ve seen True Blood, I’ve seen how we can lose sight of the plot over time.”
Erin:
“remember when music would totally fuck you up when you were young & how the world disappeared & it was just you & the song that changed everything & how teenagers consumed music the way they consumed each other, without holding back &, nance, when did we start holding back?”
“goals are so funny. regrets are less funny.”
“oh nance, i fear i am too tired for revolution & riding tonight. when can i grow winter melon & tulips in my raised beds?”
BOOK DETAILS
To What End: can be purchased here.
Published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. The volume is 6.5”x 8” and comprises 40 pages, including acknowledgements. The book is handmade with a hand-stitched binding and features cover art by the author herself.
FIVE QUESTIONS WITH ERIN MIZRAHI
This chapbook is hilarious yet reflective and philosophical. How did this project
get started? Was it as simple as one too many political emails?
This began as a postpartum project. I was living on O‘ahu with my husband and new
baby during the pandemic, tucked inside that new-family cocoon but feeling isolated and
lonely for community. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi was emailing me almost daily, and I
started writing little replies as a way to cope and keep up a writing practice. For the
project, I kept the original subject lines from her emails as well as some key language
from each email, then improvised the rest. Once I started, it took on a life of its own.
Almost all of the subject lines in the chapbook are real except “The Crystals Don’t Lie”
and “To What End.”
*
The Erin of this collection shouts brilliantly into the void (aka Nancy Pelosi’s
inbox). We learn so much about her as the email exchanges progress. Motherhood is
mentioned several times, giving the impression that this Erin is enmeshed in the care of
a young child. How do you see that theme shaping this narrative?
Motherhood is the backdrop of the whole project. Erin is sleep-deprived and exhausted,
which fuels the more surreal moments, but she’s also hyper-attuned to wonder and
beauty. Isolation also sparks reflection, so there’s a lot of looking back, recalling
moments and memories from her youth. I think the care and nurturing of motherhood
also spills over into the strange relationship between Erin and Nancy. It’s a relationship
Erin really needs and feels compelled to sustain.
*
The Nancy Pelosi of this collection is fascinating. Desperate for cash to fight the
bad guys, but also on a bit of a soul quest. How did you think about crafting her as a
character for this book?
When I started, I thought about researching the real Nancy Pelosi, but I quickly realized
the less I knew, the better. The Nancy in the book is more of a hallucination, a figure
shaped by Erin’s loneliness and sleeplessness rather than a real person.
*
What are you working on; what’s holding your interest now?
I’ve started my first novel, which grew largely out of this chapbook. I usually write poetry
and flash fiction, so the chapbook was the first time I developed characters across a
narrative. The novel is pretty weird, it’s speculative fiction so I’m totally immersed in the
worldbuilding of this project at the moment which is really fun. The story is loosely about
academia, immortality and the wellness industry.
*
The masthead of Cobra Milk, the phenomenal journal you run, lists you as
“Scorpio-in-chief.” Do you feel like you get more Scorpio over time, or have you noticed
other signs influencing you as you age?
I’m Scorpio to the core but the other dominant sign in my chart is Sagittarius, and I do
think I might be leaning more Sag these days. As I get older, and especially after having
kids, I’ve learned not to take myself so seriously. I’m embracing my inner wanderer
much more and even letting that shape some new directions I’m going with my writing.
***
BIO
Erin Mizrahi is a writer, teacher, curator, and collaborator based in Los Angeles. More at erinmizrahi.com.
OTHER BOOKS
I'm Doing My Best to Make Everything Holy (Faint Line Press) (forthcoming)
If We Break, Where We Break, How We Break (Ghost City Press)(with Jason Lipeles)
SOCIAL MEDIA
Bluesky: @erinmizrahi
Instagram: @wildsojourn