Cheryl Strayed went flat on the floor of her hotel room when she realized that the person calling from an unfamiliar number on her cell phone really was Oprah Winfrey.
“I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t sit up,” the Minnesota-raised writer recalls. She was on a book tour this spring for “Wild,” her harrowing, inspiring memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and her life had already become stranger than reality. The book (her second — her first is the novel “Torch”) debuted at No. 6 on the New York Times Best Seller list [it’s now at No. 1], and on her tour, readers kept coming up to her and telling her that her work had changed their lives. But Oprah’s call pushed things up another notch.
“She said, ‘Hi, this is Oprah.’ Then she just launched into telling me how much she loved “Wild,” and that she’d like to restart her book club for “Wild.” A few days later, I was at her house in Santa Barbara just hanging out,” said Strayed in a telephone interview. “She’s great. She’s amazing. But when I was talking to her about “Wild,” it was like talking to any reader about the book.”
Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 takes readers on a multimedia tour of Strayed’s work over several weeks, with a series of video interviews, a photo gallery, and opportunities for readers to interact with Strayed.
It takes some kind of good book to pull Oprah out of retirement, and “Wild” is that. Strayed recounts her walk in the woods, an intense, several-months solo tramp of some of the most difficult and beautiful terrain on the West Coast. Along the way, she meets many interesting (and a few awful) people, loses several toenails and a boot, has some incredible experiences, and becomes a different person. Or perhaps became herself.
Although her early years in McGregor, Minn., were shaped by abuse, poverty, an early marriage and divorce, and addiction, those experiences were balanced by her mother’s fierce love and her Minnesota education.
“I was really, really influenced by the wonderful writers in the schools program in Minnesota, and honestly, I lived for those weeks the writer would come to the school in McGregor and teach poetry and writing. It was so valuable to have someone there saying, ‘This is how I made my life, through writing.’ ” She attended St. Thomas and the U of M. Grieving her mother’s early death in the early 1990s, Strayed spotted a guidebook to the Pacific Crest Trail at REI. In 1995 she hiked it, and when she was done, she began a new life in Portland, Ore.
“But Minnesota is the home of my heart,” Strayed says. “I actually came back to work on the book. I stayed at a cabin in Aitken County to write the terrible scene of my brother and I putting down our mother’s horse, a dozen miles from where it actually took place. I needed to be in Minnesota to write it.”
The journey Strayed describes is remarkable on every level, and it’s easy to see why Oprah loves it: Starting from a place of pain and cluelessness, Strayed ends her hike strong, smart and self-assured.
Those qualities are in full power in her work as “Dear Sugar,” an advice column Strayed writes (anonymously until this spring) for the Rumpus.net. She doesn’t just give good advice. People write in with the most wrenching personal problems, and receive generous, seriously motivating inspiration to move on and do better.
The Dear Sugar columns, which take the form of long, thoughtful essays, are available in print as “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar,” released today. Dear Sugar is a rare hideout from the prevailing meanness of the Internet. She calls her readers Sweet Peas, shares stunningly intimate stories about her life, and writes with true warmth and kindness. And it’s not an act.
“She’s me, although me after a glass and a half of wine,” Strayed said. “She’s a little sassier, and, not that I’m laced up, but Sugar has a little more of a persona. Some of that is born out of the form, the direct address, I’m writing someone a letter.
“[Dear Sugar] is a unique voice on the Internet, because people aren’t getting kindness elsewhere. Snark rules online. So I was nervous about being sincere. I thought people might make fun of me,” says Strayed, who writes the column without pay. “Much to my surprise, people responded so positively, and a kind community arose. The comments section on Dear Sugar isn’t like anywhere else on the Internet. Usually the comments section is where people become their worst selves. But not here.”
Strayed aims to help not just the people whose letters she answers, but the wider audience who reads the exchanges. Her responses are direct and personal, but peppered with universal messages that cut to the heart of many situations, such as:
“Don’t be strategic and coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word ‘love’ to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will. We’re all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.”
“People come up to me all the time and say, ‘You changed my life,’ about Sugar and “Wild.” It’s very gratifying that something I wrote helped someone. A lot of books have helped me, too. I am part of this wonderful circle that literature makes in the world.”
