‘Cyclettes’ Author Tree Abraham Has Written a Cycling Book Like No Other

Part memoir, part meditation, Cyclettes by Tree Abraham is like no other book about cycling. Abraham started her writing project as a simple list of all the bicycles she had ever owned. Abraham grew up in Ottawa, Ontario and now lives in New York City, where she works as an artist and graphic designer in the publishing industry. At the height of the pandemic, Abraham radically expanded on her bike-centric reflections: She wrote about childhood rides in the suburbs, about cycling in far-flung places like Oxford and Bangladesh, and about pedaling through lockdown-emptied streets in Brooklyn. Cyclettes weaves archival photographs and Abraham’s own artwork into an experimental narrative about family, movement, and personal evolution.

We recently chatted with Tree Abraham about her first book and her deeply personal relationship with bicycles.

I know that Cyclettes started as a list of all the bikes you’ve ever owned, but why did you start the list?

I remember the morning it started. I was lying in bed, and oftentimes I get thunderclap ideas in the first waking moments. Sometimes they are related to an art project, and I make a lot of lists. I have a list of all the rainbows I saw last year. I almost was going to make a little booklet on all of my experiences with Nutella-like spreads. I’m lucky that I went with the bicycle route, because that was a little more appealing to other people.

I’m assuming you didn’t intend to write a 200-page book when you started, but when did you know it was going to turn into something more like that?

I had been writing another manuscript – my book that’s coming out next year – and I thought, maybe in the interim, I should do a chapbook or a zine, a little project I could get out there. Then the pandemic hit, and [the project] just got too long to be accepted in that format. Eight months into having written it, I shared it with a friend who is an agent, and I was like, “Is this a book? What do you think?” And she was like, “Yeah, it’s a book.” It was very helpful for someone to be like, “This has value beyond your own diaristic tendencies.” I’m still kind of confused as to why it’s deserving of that. It’s always interesting to hear people respond well to it, because it feels very niche. The publisher had a hard time believing that there would be an intersection of people who loved cycling and also loved more experimental literature. Those seemed like two very small subgroups.

Not to play “what if,” but had there been no pandemic, do you think Cyclettes would have turned into a manuscript of this length?

I really feel like I came in touch with my cycling identity during the pandemic. I loved riding bikes, but I wasn’t a full-time bike user for my everyday life. Then the pandemic happened and I literally – as a mental health exercise – would wake up with the sun and leave, for like two hours, and bike to different parts of the city. Weird parts of the city that I would never return to now. If the streets had been full, it would have been unsuccessful. It was like a ghost town. It was a lucky combination of having so much to see on a bike ride, but not having to deal with traffic and dangers. What if? Probably, maybe not. (Laughs).

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tree Abraham (@treexthree)

Cyclettes has a lyrical style that seems to mimic the act of cycling. Is that the way you normally write?

I think it’s how I think and experience the world. I don’t know if that’s related to being a designer. I do book cover design, and you have to make odd connections when you’re coming up with covers. You have this whole book – that is words – and you have to make it into pictures, but pictures that are bridging the authenticity of the book with what the stereotypical iconography is for the average person walking by the book. You have to think about metaphor, think about making feelings into visuals and then back into words. I’m someone who is always looking for synchronicity, and I love the constellation of random things. I’m someone who always gathers piecemeal, random stuff. I think it is a reflection of how my brain works, seeking out further connections. All my writing is like this, but with “Cyclettes,” because it imitated the sensation of being on a bike, I got away with there not being a certain cohesion and arc and pacing that I have to force upon my other projects. Most people say they like “Cyclettes” because they don’t have to read it for very long. One of my friends recently had a stroke, and she was like, “This book is perfect, because your paragraphs are so dense and hard that I can just go in for one and then take a break for a day.”

Cyclettes has an arc, where you start from home, then there’s this epic series of travels, and then you end up back at home, a new home. Did you think that’s where you would end up?

Well, all of my books start with a question that has been nagging at me for a while, that I haven’t been able to close out the spiral on. This was a question that was a theme of a decade of my life. You reach a point where you’re like, “I need some resolution on this. I need to take stock of what’s happened and figure out where I stand, make amends with the spiral.” The pandemic happened to line up perfectly with me exploring these themes, and then suddenly the whole world – or at least the privileged world – also had to grapple with these ideas of novelty versus community. I think through the process of writing, because it’s sort of like this intensive therapy session for me, how it’s forcing me to observe acutely everything that’s happening for the duration of those years that I’m writing, by the end of it, I had come to terms with who I am as a person in relation to the question. I really didn’t think I was going to end up where I ended up, necessarily. Definitely, by the time the book came out, I was like, “Oh, this is no longer a question for me.”

How has the reaction to the book been?

Every couple months, someone reaches out and sends me a really nice email inviting me to bike with them in their town. They’ll post something online about how much they enjoyed it. I met a new friend, someone who read the book and loved it and lives in Brooklyn, and now we try to do regular beach rides. I’ve had a positive experience with it. I’ve been unaware of its impression on the world, and I think that’s a healthy distance to have with your art, after you’re done with it.

You live in New York, which is like the go-to location for not having to drive. But it’s never been a place where people are like, “I can’t wait to bike in New York.” As a Canadian native, how has it been treating you as a cyclist?

This is kind of like talking about the weather in New York. I can strike up this conversation with anyone here, and we all have the same things to say about it. I am bad with cars. I do live here for my job, but I also live here because I don’t really know how I would be an independent person in a car-dependent city. The problem with everywhere in Canada is that you would never get an 11-month cycling season. You at some point have to shift your whole routine for several months. I love New York because it’s truly, a hundred percent possible to do everything with only your bike. Everything. I can go anywhere. Most things I need to transport, I can do by bike. But it is also very dangerous. I’m one of the few people I know who hasn’t had some physical altercation with a car. Cars have backed up into me. I’ve had cars graze me on the side. I have a near-death experience at least once a week. On every bike ride, one-to-five times, I’m like, “This was a close call.” I think you have to be smart and aware and have good reflexes and be lucky. But so far, it’s been wonderful. I feel such a great sense of freedom and agency, to just get on my bike and run all of my errands and see my friends and get a workout in. For all the people who rank most-bikeable-cities and put New York really down the list, I would say, yes, it needs improvement from a legal perspective, from an infrastructure perspective, from an education perspective. It’s failing in all the categories – other than the fact that it still works. Barely, but it works.