ON SUNDAYS, SHE PICKED FLOWERS: LINER NOTES, UNABRIDGED

Thought it was time to share with the class!

Apr 11, 2025

There is no such thing as art without inspiration. We are a visual and sensual people, likely to draw influence and ideas from the most benign of experiences. A piece of music, a photograph, a painting— you cannot get through the process of writing without having had something guide your aesthetics.

On Sundays, She Picked Flowers is a culmination of eight years of watching, listening, and observing. It is the end result of my being raised in the Black baptist church, of generational violence and trauma, of my lived experiences as a very lonely, and a little touched, Black lesbian. You can't separate these truths from the novel. I am Black, so my characters are Black and do Black things and have Black thoughts, Black experiences. I'm a lesbian and so my characters tend to be lesbians, tend to see the world through pink-white-orange lenses, even if they don't have the language we have now in 2024.

Finally, after all these years of watching and listening and observing, I can show off my non-exhaustive list of inspirations and influences for On Sundays, She Picked Flowers. Likely, there will be more— I still have plans for showing off the three playlists I made— but for now, there are these movies, videos, books and a few articles that have informed the novel.

BOOKS ( + Articles )

The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, for its lessons on healing and the weight placed on Black MaGe activists. I saw a lot of Jude in Minnie Ransom, but also in Velma Henry. it also helps that the book is set in Georgia and mentions our gorgeous red clay.

Beloved by Toni Morrison, and it's no secret that this book is like a bible to me. Every time I read it, I discover more and more ties that bind Jude to Sethe and Nemoira to Beloved herself. If I had to choose just three things that have been the most impactful to me and most influencial to On Sundays, it would be Sethe's relationship to her angry, mournful, spiteful house; the way trauma and mother-pain are woven all throughout the narrative; and Sethe's connection to Beloved.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, for its use of music and the gorgeous prose.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, for its portrayal of a lonely and touched girl in love with her solitude and her strangeness. Also, one of the few books to make me cry.

Jawbone by Monica Ojeda, for the total insanity that's possible when girls get obsessed with one another. The imagery of the albino alligator, the girls creating their own god. It's perfect, it's wonderful.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which, much like Beloved, has informed so much of my love for terror over horror and brought me another sickened house. In the original drafts and the self-published version of On Sundays, I have Jude read this book and directly compare herself to Eleanor Vance. Like Eleanor, she has vague ESP connections and a power to manifest strange events, a haunted house that loves her, wants her.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, for the way it sharpened my thinking on violence within same-sex / intra-LGBT relationships, specifically in the sense of not wanting to 'damage the community' by speaking out against abuse.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, for yet another isolated and complicated woman who mortifies her body and has a mother who should've never been a mother. You see a lot of Adora Cain in the aunts and in Jude's Ma'am herself, and you see a lot of Camille in Jude.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, for the fantastical oddity of Area X. The woods and field were informed by those twisted lands from beyond the Border, and Jude has much in common with the biologist in terms of transformation and change.

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Torro and Daniel Kraus, for the passionate care between two creatures deemed less than human by a narrow-minded society. There's never too big of a leap between a woman and a fish-man, and a woman and a shapeshifting embodiment of the forest.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca, for the sheer nastiness and ugliness and delicious ickiness of lesbian obsessed. I especially found great use for the concept of someone pushing someone to become something darker and being outdone in terms of cruelty. A case of not being able to match someone's freak.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, for Janey's freedom and for Janey being the first time I read about a Black woman unafraid to live life on her own terms.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, for the isolation and the use of witchy magic, and the sisters' disconnection from the town, their odd house.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, for yet another woman in her own mind, with her own heart and feelings. Very much a blueprint for Jude.

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, for the isolation and the choice to abandon a society that has abandoned her

The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and I know she's a horrible person. Even so, the relationship between Celie and Shug Avery has been thee thing for me, as well as how abuse and race shapes people.

Sula by Toni Morrison, for the bond between Sula and Nel, the way Sula is her own person and refuses to be shamed or changed by the people around her.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, for her frank honesty about the abuse she faced as well as her complicated and oft times contradictory feelings regarding her mother. So, so real.

Honorable Mentions

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
The Doloriad by Missouri Williams

MOVIES

Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki), for the lush greenery; No-Face's connected with Chihiro; and oddly enough, the final scene where Chihiro looks back after having crossed through the tunnel, where you feel the weight of having been through something indescribable and personal that'll follow you forever
Carrie (dir. Brian DePalma), for the religious and abusive mother, for the child curling into herself and becoming her own person through violence and vengeance. Also, telekinesis.
Beloved (dir. Johnathan Demme)
AMC's Interview With the Vampire, for the way it literally rearranged my brain. There are elements of Lestat and Armand in Nemoira, and Jude is a mirror of Louis, the way race and trauma and abuse have shaped him into this twitchy, complex creature of the night. AH! And please, so much of Claudia is in Jude too, it's really so important.
Eve's Bayou (dir. Kacey Lemmons), for the unreliability of children and the southern Gothic sensibilities
Ganja & Hess (dir. Bill Gunn), for bringing me the concept of Black vampires and showing them to me bloody and obsessive and erotic. Scenes of Ganja running through the fields in that white dress... life-changing
Indecent (dir. Rebecca Taichman), for the passion of the lesbians in and out of the narrative of the play, the way some loves and experiences are erased as indecent
Creep 1 & Creep 2 (dir. Patrick Brice), for a serial killer and, in the case of the second film, someone who can match his freak
Say Amen Somebody (dir. George T. Nierenberg), for the view of Black Christianity and the Black church, and the use of gospel music/importance of gospel music