Our Author Interview: Ren Cedar Fuller takes us deeper with Bigger
By Jennifer Cloer
Ren Cedar Fuller’s debut collection of essays, Bigger, explores immigration, disability, neurodivergence, gender identity, and the ethics around lying. These themes couldn’t be more timely, which is one of the many reasons we chose her book as our October Book Club Selection. Ren said that when she wrote these essays, it was during the pandemic and society had moved towards a celebration and acceptance of our differences - - but when they were about to be published in 2025, she had a difficult conversation with her publisher.
“I got very scared,” she said. “More than a third of my essays discuss my child being transgender. I talked to my publisher after the inauguration about holding the book or not publishing it at all. But then I talked to my kid, who I felt got to make the call, and they wanted the book in the world.”
I’m so grateful for Ren and her child Indigo’s courage, because I know firsthand how stories change culture. As a longtime educator, Ren intimately understands how stories help us learn and be more empathetic. “People don’t learn by being pounded over the head with didactic instruction,” she said. “We’ve been learning from stories since we sat at the feet of our elders and through song. No one cares about the facts of the event. It has to mean something.”
Ren Cedar Fuller
Indeed, we read books, write essays, produce films, and create art in all kinds of mediums to find meaning in our lives and the world around us. These acts are investigations that open us up to new ways of thinking and seeing things. That’s why book banning is such a threat. It’s not just about intellectual freedom; it’s also about empathy and care and understanding for ourselves and each other.
Ren’s collection of essays in Bigger takes us through an exploration of events in her own life that created interesting questions.
“I wrote essays about the things that fascinated me. There was a conversation with my sisters about how our dad was so weird that led me to explore why. Someone accused me of being too ‘rah-rah’ when my child came out as transgender. It made me curious. When I told a friend that my disability prevented me from crying, she asked if I felt emotions.”
“We’ve been learning from stories since we sat at the feet of our elders and through song. No one cares about the facts of the event. It has to mean something.”
One of my favorite pieces in the collection is “Naming My Father,” a braided essay that brings together narrative and history to paint a beautiful picture of differences and love.
“There were four of us girls, and we were very close in age. We had to sit by our color cups at dinner, mine was green, so he could tell us apart,” said Ren. “He would quiz us each night at the dinner table about the map that hung on the wall, but not only about the mountain ranges or the countries. He was quizzing us on the colors of the countries, as if that held equal importance.”
By the end of the essay, Ren said she became aware of something.
“I went in thinking I had a father who didn’t love me. He didn’t know my name or ask me questions except to quiz us. Finally I get to the end and think about all these things that happened in our relationship, and I remember when he drove up to San Francisco where I was working right after college and we would sit in a restaurant and he would recite facts about San Francisco history to me. I realize now that he had researched this in advance in order to connect with me. That was his version of love, and I just couldn’t see that then.”
Through this essay and so many of the others in her collection, Ren finds deep meaning for herself and for the rest of us.
When we asked her what books were inspiring her at the moment, she told us she just finished re-reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “Shelley is fearless in her ability to imagine a brand new world,” she told us.
Isn’t that the meaning we’re all looking for?
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