Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Interview With Grace Wells
Grace Wells is an acclaimed author of children's books. Her children's novel, Gyrlfalcon, won the Eilis Dillon Award in 2003 and was selected as an International White Raven's Choice. Wells also enjoyed a successful career as a television and music video producer based in London. Now living in Ireland, she has recently published her first collection of poetry, When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things. Her poetic voice in this collection recalls the works of such poets as Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison as she addresses such issues as home life, domestic violence, and the ties that bind in families and relationships. Wells recently agreed to do an interview with JuliusSpeaks. This is what transpired.
1.Tell us about your background and where you are from.
I’m from London, England, a mostly Anglo-Saxon background, with some Russian Jews from the 1890’s thrown in to spark thing up.
For some years in the late 1980’s I produced TV commercials and pop videos, but I’d always wanted to write, so once I’d come to Ireland in 1991, had children, and got those children into school, I was able to take up writing in a more full way. I also work in arts administration and facilitate creative-writing workshops.
2.Discuss the title of your book, When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things. What in particular is the significance of the title in light of the corresponding poem within the book?
The whole voyage of the book is to do with a sense of God being absent, and the terrible things that people do to one another while that sense of spiritual presence is far away. In fact, I could add, even while that presence is up close, because many truly terrible things have been done, and are being done, in the name of God.
But mostly the book is about a sense of isolation and the lack of a vivid Spiritual presence. There are poems about childhood and growing up, and poems about people living within difficult relationships or whose lives are challenged in other ways. The title poem is, I think, the first time that we see the narrator(me) acknowledge, and realize, that within all this craziness, there is an imprint of God’s presence.
I think the whole tension of the book is that the phrase means two things: one, that we are alone and isolated while God seems to be off doing great things elsewhere, and also, on the other hand, that right there, in our pain and our isolation, that’s where we really can see God manifest. Hafiz has written “No one can resist a Divine invitation/That narrows down all our choices /To just two:/We can come to God /Dressed for Dancing,/Or/Be carried on a stretcher/ To God's Ward.” These are pretty much poems about the stretcher ride.
3.Your poetry is filled with metaphor. Throughout your poems you reference animals, using them in metaphor-the fox, the horse, the wolf. What is the significance of these metaphors in your work?
I think we’ve been relating to our humanity via the animal world for a long time. A lot of our sayings, like ‘keeping the wolf from the door’, you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks’, show that humanity has never felt itself too far away from the animal world. Now the majority of us live in cities and the action that plays out on the screen of our lives, is not full of nature. But I haven’t lived in a city for more than twenty years. My life is informed by the countryside, it’s understandable that it should have come into my poems in a strong way. Neruda said “The sea, fish and birds have a material existence for me, I depend on them just as I depend on daylight”. I feel the same way. When I wrote in my poem ‘Pioneer’, “she is sung with fox bark and pheasant call./Creatures roost in her thoughts, her days/ are measured by the slink, the leap, the pounce,/ the pitched balance of wings breaking into flight”, I’m writing of the things that are crucial to me. The natural world is so jeopardized by human beings, that it’s vital people become more conscious of its central role in our lives—and very quickly. If I write a lot about nature, it’s because part of me is shouting about our need to protect all this, for our own survival. In the poetry the call for protection emerges in a more subtle way, but inside, I’m screaming.
4.Your poems speak to issues of domestic violence and the everyday strife of domesticity. Tell us of your personal experiences with these issues. How do your experiences inform this collection of poetry?
I didn’t exactly chose to write about domestic abuse. It came at me and that was the primary material I had beneath my hands, so that’s why those poems are there. I feel I’ve said enough in the poems about those issues without having to say more in a public forum. When I’m speaking directly with victims of abuse I’m more open about my own experiences. But in a way I don’t think it matters that the poems are about abuse, in essence they’re about struggle and overcoming that. Every life has struggle. I think it’s always good to read about people who have come through.
Traditionally women’s poetry was marginalized and derided because it often dealt with the domestic, and rather than veer away from the domestic because of that, I think I have an obtuse desire to really look at it. I feel it’s not what you write about, it’s how you write about it. I think these are good domestic poems. Besides, if we get the domestic right, then we’re in a position to write about the big stuff. As my collection progresses, and the domestic world becomes more sane and livable, the poetry moves its focus and expands to include things like poverty in Africa, and global warming.
5. Am I correct in identifying an abusive father and an abusive husband in the poems?
Well these two people don’t even belong in the same sentence. My father had been involved in the Second World War, he’d taught young men in the RAF, and seen hundreds of them go to their deaths. He was marked by the war, and like so many men of his generation, he couldn’t contain his grief and rage.
6. I find your poetic voice to be an interesting mix of Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison. In your collection, you also pay homage to Sylvia Plath. Can you draw connections between yourself, Rich, Allison, and Plath?
When I first read that question I was very flattered. I thought, well that’s amazing that someone is linking my name with Rich and Plath. I don’t know Allison’s work, and I haven’t been able to source any, so, sadly, I can’t comment on that. But actually, after the initial sense of compliment, I started to get concerned. I’ve never been drawn to Plath’s work, her love affair with death just doesn’t draw me in. I haven’t consciously paid homage to her, if I have, that’s accidental. I know I’ve paid homage to Raymond Carver. His work was very important to my own. His work is vital and life-saving. Plath’s is a downward spiral. That isn’t what I feel poetry should be about. For me poetry is the life-affirming guide-rope that leads us from trouble. Carver knew that, it was his legacy and his gift to us. Besides there have been so many wonderful women writers since Plath, before Plath even, that it distresses me greatly that she’s dominated the scene.
As for Rich, I’ve never felt comfortable with her work either. She’s on the dense, incomprehensible side. I believe poetry should be generous and open, certainly it should be language-driven and provocative, but not distressing to our own sense of ability to understand. Right now Rich’s work is on the secondary school syllabus here in Ireland. And though a number of students will love her, and be invited, through her, into the world of poetry, she’s actually going to make thousands more run from poetry and never pick up another book of poems. That’s not what I’d hope for my own work.
7. In reading your work, I immediately thought of Adrienne Rich and her commentary, through poetry and prose, on domestic life, particularly where issues of gender and gender equality are concerned. How do your observations and philosophy delivered in this collection mirror Rich’s commentary on domestic life? I specifically identify “ The Dress,” “The Only Medicine,” and “The Lone Parent Does Not Write” as speaking to Rich’s work.
Well, as I said before, I don’t feel my work and Rich’s resonate off one another—at least not directly. I like her line, “A thinking woman sleeps with monsters”, it was used as the title of a brilliant book by Rebecca Wilson, an anthology of work and conversations with Scottish and Irish women Poets published in 1990. That book was very important to me, and many of the writers in it were undoubtedly influenced by Rich, so I can see she’s been relevant to my work, in the way a grandmother might be, but women writers have come so far since then, that I feel it’s time we stopped gyring around those rather outdated forces.
8. Does the poem “Rescue” reference the 1970s film, Deep Throat? Alice Walker, bell hooks, and several other feminist writers have addressed this film in their work. What were your impressions of this film? If this poem is not about that film, could you speak to this tradition of misogyny in cinema and offer your perspective on it?
The reference is to a much later film, and it was just a fairly ordinary main-stream movie, one of many where human sensuality is miserably misrepresented. I’ve never seen Deep Throat and wouldn’t think to. Somewhere in the 60’s and 70’s the floodgates burst on sex in cinema. I’ve read it began in Europe, where attitudes were quite open compared to American cinema of the time. The result has been that some decades later we live in a pornographic culture.
Pornography has spilled into the everyday and we’re awash with it. So much so, that I don’t think there’s even an intelligent discussion about its presence in our midst. The bar keeps getting lower, nothing is protecting young people and children, especially girls, from the rampant sexualisation of their culture and thinking. While many women are able to move forward into more independent, fulfilling lives, the exact opposite is also true, we’re seeing the development of a vast sex-slave culture, where millions of women are trafficked into the West to lose their basic freedoms. At another level it is now normal for women to keep their thumbs in their beer bottles when they got out at night, so their drinks aren’t spiked. That this kind of behaviour as a normality shows us how deeply disturbed the culture is.
The World Health Organisation tells us that one in five women in the West live in abusive relationships, one in three in the Developing world. For me these issues are central; those figures are not marginal. Anyone who thinks feminism is redundant is wrong. The tensions and personal dramas women have faced for centuries are still with us, only they’ve mutated form. We haven’t moved as far as we think we have, we’re still fighting for our lives.
9. You write about moving from England to Ireland in your work. What impact has this transition had on your life? What are some of the changes you have found in your life as a result of the move?
I have a certain sense of displacement I suppose, I’m not an Irish poet, yet my whole working life has been here, so I’m not really an English poet either. Ireland has had a deeply formative influence on who I am as a person. Mostly for the good, but not in easy ways. Like anywhere, there are good and bad things about Ireland. As an English person, it can be difficult living here because of Ireland’s history. The terrible things that the British did down the centuries are alive and unforgiven. The Irish are still in a process of recovery. Though our islands are very close, we have entirely different pasts. Many elements make for a subtle but ever-present tension against the English, which can be hard to live with.
Mostly what I love about Ireland are the people. I have some really great friends here. They’re very earthed, very focused toward real concerns: our shared humanity, concern for the planet. I feel it’s because we have more space here, more of a sense of what needs to be saved. Ireland has provided me with a sense of nurture and Spirituality that I simply might not have found in England. The land here is very alive with resonance. People here talk about the veil between the worlds being thin. I always feel it’s because Ireland only has a small population, and you can still get away from them to hear the land speaking. The sense of place is very alive in Ireland, very vibrant.
Then there’s the language, Hiberno-English is a much richer form of language than London-English. I know it has found its way into my writing. I’m also immersed in the Irish poetry scene. It’s a small enough world, so you can really remain aware of who is writing what. I like that. If I were in England there’d be so many names and characters, and a kind of resultant chaos.
10. Looking at your life experiences and the issues that you address in this book, what is your personal philosophy on juggling issues of marriage, children, personal identity, and all of the inherent in those connections?
It’s a day by day thing. Even an hour by hour thing. Often I’ve been in a great space, I’ve worked at my desk for hours, I’ll emerge from my study a wise and profound being and, within minutes, have one of my children reduce me to a neurotic wreck. I don’t have a big philosophy, one is constantly juggling and seeking balance. The minute you have equanimity, it passes and you’re right in the middle of the next drama.
Beneath the glass-top on my desk there are a couple of messages I like to keep with me. One simply says “Faith & Courage”. Another says: “Our single purpose is to magnify that Light we share between us”. And the last is e.e cummings: “I thank you God, for most this amazing/day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees/and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything/which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.” I muddle along somewhere in that midst.
11. The last poem in the book, “Work,” speaks of catharsis. How has this collection served as your catharsis?
The process of poetry has been very important for many years as a form of catharsis. My work has been enmeshed in a process of transforming dark material into something worthwhile, something meaningful, and almost darkly beautiful. I haven’t wanted that destiny, but that’s what came towards me. So ultimately I have huge belief in the power of art to transform and heal. Art, darkness, sexuality and spirituality have been the big themes of my life. The great thing about this book is that it puts a lot of things to rest. It clears the air, empties the shelf space and allows for new work. C.S Lewis wrote, “we read to know we are not alone”. For me writing has always been about that, a sharing of our humanity. All along I doubted the sanity of publishing these poems, but I kept on because I knew there were women who needed to read them, women who needed to see a way out of abuse, or women who couldn’t recover from it. I kept saying to myself I was doing it for them, to help them heal. Now those women are coming forward and thanking me in person, I see that actually the whole process is also about my healing at a yet deeper level. They’re the ones who remind me how relevant my work is, how despite everything, I belong.
12. Thanks for this interview.
1.Tell us about your background and where you are from.
I’m from London, England, a mostly Anglo-Saxon background, with some Russian Jews from the 1890’s thrown in to spark thing up.
For some years in the late 1980’s I produced TV commercials and pop videos, but I’d always wanted to write, so once I’d come to Ireland in 1991, had children, and got those children into school, I was able to take up writing in a more full way. I also work in arts administration and facilitate creative-writing workshops.
2.Discuss the title of your book, When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things. What in particular is the significance of the title in light of the corresponding poem within the book?
The whole voyage of the book is to do with a sense of God being absent, and the terrible things that people do to one another while that sense of spiritual presence is far away. In fact, I could add, even while that presence is up close, because many truly terrible things have been done, and are being done, in the name of God.
But mostly the book is about a sense of isolation and the lack of a vivid Spiritual presence. There are poems about childhood and growing up, and poems about people living within difficult relationships or whose lives are challenged in other ways. The title poem is, I think, the first time that we see the narrator(me) acknowledge, and realize, that within all this craziness, there is an imprint of God’s presence.
I think the whole tension of the book is that the phrase means two things: one, that we are alone and isolated while God seems to be off doing great things elsewhere, and also, on the other hand, that right there, in our pain and our isolation, that’s where we really can see God manifest. Hafiz has written “No one can resist a Divine invitation/That narrows down all our choices /To just two:/We can come to God /Dressed for Dancing,/Or/Be carried on a stretcher/ To God's Ward.” These are pretty much poems about the stretcher ride.
3.Your poetry is filled with metaphor. Throughout your poems you reference animals, using them in metaphor-the fox, the horse, the wolf. What is the significance of these metaphors in your work?
I think we’ve been relating to our humanity via the animal world for a long time. A lot of our sayings, like ‘keeping the wolf from the door’, you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks’, show that humanity has never felt itself too far away from the animal world. Now the majority of us live in cities and the action that plays out on the screen of our lives, is not full of nature. But I haven’t lived in a city for more than twenty years. My life is informed by the countryside, it’s understandable that it should have come into my poems in a strong way. Neruda said “The sea, fish and birds have a material existence for me, I depend on them just as I depend on daylight”. I feel the same way. When I wrote in my poem ‘Pioneer’, “she is sung with fox bark and pheasant call./Creatures roost in her thoughts, her days/ are measured by the slink, the leap, the pounce,/ the pitched balance of wings breaking into flight”, I’m writing of the things that are crucial to me. The natural world is so jeopardized by human beings, that it’s vital people become more conscious of its central role in our lives—and very quickly. If I write a lot about nature, it’s because part of me is shouting about our need to protect all this, for our own survival. In the poetry the call for protection emerges in a more subtle way, but inside, I’m screaming.
4.Your poems speak to issues of domestic violence and the everyday strife of domesticity. Tell us of your personal experiences with these issues. How do your experiences inform this collection of poetry?
I didn’t exactly chose to write about domestic abuse. It came at me and that was the primary material I had beneath my hands, so that’s why those poems are there. I feel I’ve said enough in the poems about those issues without having to say more in a public forum. When I’m speaking directly with victims of abuse I’m more open about my own experiences. But in a way I don’t think it matters that the poems are about abuse, in essence they’re about struggle and overcoming that. Every life has struggle. I think it’s always good to read about people who have come through.
Traditionally women’s poetry was marginalized and derided because it often dealt with the domestic, and rather than veer away from the domestic because of that, I think I have an obtuse desire to really look at it. I feel it’s not what you write about, it’s how you write about it. I think these are good domestic poems. Besides, if we get the domestic right, then we’re in a position to write about the big stuff. As my collection progresses, and the domestic world becomes more sane and livable, the poetry moves its focus and expands to include things like poverty in Africa, and global warming.
5. Am I correct in identifying an abusive father and an abusive husband in the poems?
Well these two people don’t even belong in the same sentence. My father had been involved in the Second World War, he’d taught young men in the RAF, and seen hundreds of them go to their deaths. He was marked by the war, and like so many men of his generation, he couldn’t contain his grief and rage.
6. I find your poetic voice to be an interesting mix of Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison. In your collection, you also pay homage to Sylvia Plath. Can you draw connections between yourself, Rich, Allison, and Plath?
When I first read that question I was very flattered. I thought, well that’s amazing that someone is linking my name with Rich and Plath. I don’t know Allison’s work, and I haven’t been able to source any, so, sadly, I can’t comment on that. But actually, after the initial sense of compliment, I started to get concerned. I’ve never been drawn to Plath’s work, her love affair with death just doesn’t draw me in. I haven’t consciously paid homage to her, if I have, that’s accidental. I know I’ve paid homage to Raymond Carver. His work was very important to my own. His work is vital and life-saving. Plath’s is a downward spiral. That isn’t what I feel poetry should be about. For me poetry is the life-affirming guide-rope that leads us from trouble. Carver knew that, it was his legacy and his gift to us. Besides there have been so many wonderful women writers since Plath, before Plath even, that it distresses me greatly that she’s dominated the scene.
As for Rich, I’ve never felt comfortable with her work either. She’s on the dense, incomprehensible side. I believe poetry should be generous and open, certainly it should be language-driven and provocative, but not distressing to our own sense of ability to understand. Right now Rich’s work is on the secondary school syllabus here in Ireland. And though a number of students will love her, and be invited, through her, into the world of poetry, she’s actually going to make thousands more run from poetry and never pick up another book of poems. That’s not what I’d hope for my own work.
7. In reading your work, I immediately thought of Adrienne Rich and her commentary, through poetry and prose, on domestic life, particularly where issues of gender and gender equality are concerned. How do your observations and philosophy delivered in this collection mirror Rich’s commentary on domestic life? I specifically identify “ The Dress,” “The Only Medicine,” and “The Lone Parent Does Not Write” as speaking to Rich’s work.
Well, as I said before, I don’t feel my work and Rich’s resonate off one another—at least not directly. I like her line, “A thinking woman sleeps with monsters”, it was used as the title of a brilliant book by Rebecca Wilson, an anthology of work and conversations with Scottish and Irish women Poets published in 1990. That book was very important to me, and many of the writers in it were undoubtedly influenced by Rich, so I can see she’s been relevant to my work, in the way a grandmother might be, but women writers have come so far since then, that I feel it’s time we stopped gyring around those rather outdated forces.
8. Does the poem “Rescue” reference the 1970s film, Deep Throat? Alice Walker, bell hooks, and several other feminist writers have addressed this film in their work. What were your impressions of this film? If this poem is not about that film, could you speak to this tradition of misogyny in cinema and offer your perspective on it?
The reference is to a much later film, and it was just a fairly ordinary main-stream movie, one of many where human sensuality is miserably misrepresented. I’ve never seen Deep Throat and wouldn’t think to. Somewhere in the 60’s and 70’s the floodgates burst on sex in cinema. I’ve read it began in Europe, where attitudes were quite open compared to American cinema of the time. The result has been that some decades later we live in a pornographic culture.
Pornography has spilled into the everyday and we’re awash with it. So much so, that I don’t think there’s even an intelligent discussion about its presence in our midst. The bar keeps getting lower, nothing is protecting young people and children, especially girls, from the rampant sexualisation of their culture and thinking. While many women are able to move forward into more independent, fulfilling lives, the exact opposite is also true, we’re seeing the development of a vast sex-slave culture, where millions of women are trafficked into the West to lose their basic freedoms. At another level it is now normal for women to keep their thumbs in their beer bottles when they got out at night, so their drinks aren’t spiked. That this kind of behaviour as a normality shows us how deeply disturbed the culture is.
The World Health Organisation tells us that one in five women in the West live in abusive relationships, one in three in the Developing world. For me these issues are central; those figures are not marginal. Anyone who thinks feminism is redundant is wrong. The tensions and personal dramas women have faced for centuries are still with us, only they’ve mutated form. We haven’t moved as far as we think we have, we’re still fighting for our lives.
9. You write about moving from England to Ireland in your work. What impact has this transition had on your life? What are some of the changes you have found in your life as a result of the move?
I have a certain sense of displacement I suppose, I’m not an Irish poet, yet my whole working life has been here, so I’m not really an English poet either. Ireland has had a deeply formative influence on who I am as a person. Mostly for the good, but not in easy ways. Like anywhere, there are good and bad things about Ireland. As an English person, it can be difficult living here because of Ireland’s history. The terrible things that the British did down the centuries are alive and unforgiven. The Irish are still in a process of recovery. Though our islands are very close, we have entirely different pasts. Many elements make for a subtle but ever-present tension against the English, which can be hard to live with.
Mostly what I love about Ireland are the people. I have some really great friends here. They’re very earthed, very focused toward real concerns: our shared humanity, concern for the planet. I feel it’s because we have more space here, more of a sense of what needs to be saved. Ireland has provided me with a sense of nurture and Spirituality that I simply might not have found in England. The land here is very alive with resonance. People here talk about the veil between the worlds being thin. I always feel it’s because Ireland only has a small population, and you can still get away from them to hear the land speaking. The sense of place is very alive in Ireland, very vibrant.
Then there’s the language, Hiberno-English is a much richer form of language than London-English. I know it has found its way into my writing. I’m also immersed in the Irish poetry scene. It’s a small enough world, so you can really remain aware of who is writing what. I like that. If I were in England there’d be so many names and characters, and a kind of resultant chaos.
10. Looking at your life experiences and the issues that you address in this book, what is your personal philosophy on juggling issues of marriage, children, personal identity, and all of the inherent in those connections?
It’s a day by day thing. Even an hour by hour thing. Often I’ve been in a great space, I’ve worked at my desk for hours, I’ll emerge from my study a wise and profound being and, within minutes, have one of my children reduce me to a neurotic wreck. I don’t have a big philosophy, one is constantly juggling and seeking balance. The minute you have equanimity, it passes and you’re right in the middle of the next drama.
Beneath the glass-top on my desk there are a couple of messages I like to keep with me. One simply says “Faith & Courage”. Another says: “Our single purpose is to magnify that Light we share between us”. And the last is e.e cummings: “I thank you God, for most this amazing/day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees/and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything/which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.” I muddle along somewhere in that midst.
11. The last poem in the book, “Work,” speaks of catharsis. How has this collection served as your catharsis?
The process of poetry has been very important for many years as a form of catharsis. My work has been enmeshed in a process of transforming dark material into something worthwhile, something meaningful, and almost darkly beautiful. I haven’t wanted that destiny, but that’s what came towards me. So ultimately I have huge belief in the power of art to transform and heal. Art, darkness, sexuality and spirituality have been the big themes of my life. The great thing about this book is that it puts a lot of things to rest. It clears the air, empties the shelf space and allows for new work. C.S Lewis wrote, “we read to know we are not alone”. For me writing has always been about that, a sharing of our humanity. All along I doubted the sanity of publishing these poems, but I kept on because I knew there were women who needed to read them, women who needed to see a way out of abuse, or women who couldn’t recover from it. I kept saying to myself I was doing it for them, to help them heal. Now those women are coming forward and thanking me in person, I see that actually the whole process is also about my healing at a yet deeper level. They’re the ones who remind me how relevant my work is, how despite everything, I belong.
12. Thanks for this interview.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Interview with Stefhen Bryan, Author of Black Passenger, Yellow Cabs
Author Stefhen Bryan was thirty-six years old with nothing in terms of a solid foundation. His roots were in Jamaica and he lived as an expatriate in the United States. In 2001, he made the decision to move to Japan. Stefhen did not base this decision on any lofty goals or ambitions he wished to fulfill. Instead, Stefhen was totally motivated by his attraction to Asian women and his fully developed sex addiction. Between 2001 and 2008, Stefhen had sex with thousands of women, many of these affairs being random encounters. In 2008, Stefhen compiled all of these experiences into what is at once a case study of Japan, a memoir, and a piece of erotica entitled, Black Passenger, Yellow Cabs. Recently, I sat down and had a long conversation with Stefhen, via telephone, during which I interviewed him about his book. This is what transpired.
1. Do you have a background in psychology or sociology? What is your educational background?
I do have a background in sociology and psychology. In the 8 years it took me to get my BA, psych and sociology were two of my many majors. When I discovered social psychology at UCLA, I found it so interesting and wanted to study more. Hence, I would like to do a PhD in social psychology.
2. It seems that Jamaican and Japanese culture are both very conservative. How are they similar? How are they different?
They differ in that Jamaica is super disorganized and ad hoc, while Japan is the exact opposite. They are meticulous about everything in Japan. Even trivial things. There are some similarities between Jamaican patois and Japanese. And both Jamaican and Japanese societies place great emphasis on education.
3. Did you consciously decide to create a book that was at once a case study and erotica as well as memoir? How did that come about?
Yes, it was most certainly a conscious decision. I'm passionate about sex and I'm passionate about social observation, so I put the two together. Had I written erotica only, I would’ve just been some black guy, the stereotype, talking about how much punaunie he gets. I wouldn’t have been taken seriously. Had I written a case study on japan, it would’ve been immediately dismissed, as I was not a celebrity. The same if I had written just a memoir. No one would’ve wanted to read the memoir of some insignificant Negro. So I put the three genres together. It was a conscious decision, though some said it wouldn’t have worked, as it had not been done before.
4. How has this book been received? What has been the feedback from sociologists and other academics?
So far,the few in academia who have been brave enough to touch it are very supportive. The overall response has been overwhelmingly positive. Thirty two 5 and 4 star reviews on Amazon so far.
5. When I was at Purdue University, I noticed a huge pattern of white male fixation on Japanese culture. What do you make of the growing American—and particularly white male fixation on Japanese culture? Do you think that some aspects of colonialism are present in that phenomenon?
It is true that Japanese women can be easily dominated. A good example is mayumi, - whom I know personally, by the way - the balloon woman, who let her husband influence her into participating in that hoax about balloon floating around with the kid. Incidentally, that docile and passive personality is one of the characteristics I despise in Japanese women. I work hard to transform my wife into someone assertive, with an opinion. She's gotten much better. But many insecure white men (especially in Japan), intimidated by powerful women, have told me directly that, they like the spinelessness of Japanese women. I hate it. Man, even how they are in bed.
6. You seem to have a lot of animosity aimed at Japanese men. Why is that?
Very simply, they treat women like shit. The Japanese patriarchy defecates on women.
7. How did you find your statistics and do your research for this book? What was your research process?
I was waiting for this question from someone. There was no process. I was simply living my life. Since my childhood I had been an avid newspaper reader, cutting out articles and saving them for absolutely no reason. Upon moving to japan, I became paranoid of losing my mother tongue, so I read the newspapers with even greater voracity, sometimes reading three different newspapers a day. And of course, cutting out articles I found interesting. It is purely coincidental that a great deal of the dynamics I had observed socially in Japan, I would later read about them in the newspapers or visa versa. So when I began to write, I had a whole box full of newspaper articles I had cut out. There was no science, I was simply living my life and doing what I liked doing. That old obsession with cutting out newspaper articles paid off.
8. You have declared yourself a feminist.How would you define feminism and how would you define yourself as one?
One who is deeply concerned about the issues faced by women. I am one such person.
9. What led you to write this book? Was it to relay your sexual experiences or was it to investigate sexual trauma amongst Japanese women? If the latter, how do you reconcile that aim with the highly sexualized nature of this book?
I think time was the single greatest contributing factor to writing this book. I had loads of time. I worked about 12-18hrs a week, 25 weeks a year. And even when I was working (as an assistant language teacher) I had a great deal of time at work. Many days I would teach only one or two classes, but had to stay at school until 430. The first 100 pages of this book were written at Senrioka junior high school in Osaka. Secondly, as a sex addict, I did write the book to relay my sexual experiences. I found the sexual dynamic in Japan unfathomable and couldn’t believe no one had written about his own personal experiences. So I did.
10. Did you do research concerning sexual trauma and Japanese women? What was your research process?
Well, I was just being inquisitive with the women I was with. That’s all. Once one told me about her childhood sexual trauma, without my asking. I thought to ask the others. They opened up to me because I was a foreigner.
11. Are you familiar with Jean Genet? I would very much put your book in the tradition of his work. That said, how would you define your book along the lines of the sexual, the criminal, the perverse?
No,I'm not familiar with Jean Genet. In fact, I am not very well read. Many people are comparing my work to several authors, of whom I do not know. I can only read non-fiction. I love reading textbooks and science journals, and of course the newspaper.
12. In any given moment in the book, you are giving facts and statistics on abortion and child abuse in Japan. In the next moment, you are detailing one of your many sexual conquests. The infusion of erotica into what would otherwise be a sociological study makes this work stand out. Was it your conscious decision to write this book this way?
I would like to interpret it as the infusion of sociological study into what would be otherwise erotica. I wanted the reader to understand the social dynamics which permits and promotes the sexual dynamic. So yes, the structure of the book was intentional. It is an erotic, ethnographic memoir.
13. This book is meticulously documented in terms of the sources you cite. Was this a thesis? What prompted you to provide a work cited and end notes?
Another question I've been waiting on. It was never a thesis, haven’t got my masters yet. But will be attending Sophia University in Tokyo to do a masters in Japanese studies. The reason I provide end notes and cited works was simple. I am a high school dropout. And as such, I would have been immediately dismissed without end notes. People, especially in academia would’ve asked, “who the hell is this black guy from out of nowhere writing this profound stuff?” Oh, in fact, a junior agent at a major New York agency said just that. Well, not the black guy part, but he did imply that he was skeptical about the validity of my observations given that I am not in academia.
14. You attest to the rampant dysfunction present in Japanese society-in terms of immaturity, sexual dysfunction, etc. Have you found any studies that have been done that validate your observations?
Yes,Ive found the writings of a few Japanese psychologists to validate my observations. Can’t recall their names now, but I mentioned them in the book.
15. What has been the reception of this book among Japanese women? Among women in general?
Some Japanese women are angry, that’s normal. Their feelings are hurt that their social dirty laundry is being hung out in the international community. Other, more rational ones laud the work and its honesty, even though it’s a hard pill for them to swallow. So far, the book has been well received by western women, black and white.
16. If you had one central thesis in terms of your observations concerning Japanese women-what would that be?
Not just Japanese women, but Japanese society is traumatic to its subjects.
17. Do you think that adhering to traditional concepts and definitions of virginity is in line with feminist approaches to sexuality?
Can't speak to that issue. Maybe I don’t understand the question. Virginity is an absolute, whether from a feminist or non-feminist perspective.
18. What has been the response of feminist critics to this book?
I think there has been a great deal of knee jerk reactions. But once they get over it, and read the book, they get it.
19. What is your response to those who might call you a rogue?
Au, I, am a rogue. That’s pretty obvious.
20. You speak a lot about the sexual trauma experienced by the women you encountered in Japan early in their lives. You said that you could read the presence of trauma on their faces before speaking to them. Have you ever experienced sexual trauma?
I didn’t interpret it as trauma, but I was sexualized at seven by two teenage girls. I guess the answer to your question is no, Ive never had sexual trauma. I quite liked it at seven.
21. How much do you think the infantile behavior you observed in Japanese culture is a result of efforts to please Western powers? I recall that at one point in Japanese history, women were encouraged to mate with white men in order to create a superior mulatticized race.
Cant speak to ‘mulatticized’ or more appropriately, hybridized phenomenon in historical japan. I didn’t know about that. Will have to research that one. But I don’t think that Japan’s infantile characteristics has anything to do with pleasing the west. It is an integral part of Japanese society and culture since way back.
22. There is a surge in popularity of anime and other Japanese cultural exports in the U.S. Do you think that this in some way speaks to a rise in infantilism in the U.S.? Can you speak on the presence of infantilism in the U.S.?
Oh man, I would love to answer that question, but it would take several pages. Long story short, having left the West for almost a decade, I was shocked by America’s wide spread, (or the west’s widespread) embrace of Japanese childishness. I didn’t see it coming. But I have a whole dissertation to write about that.
23. I found your discussion of infantilism in the Japanese military and the Japanese police to be quite intriguing. Do you think that this is the result of the demands that Japan demilitarize after World War II?
As Ive stated previously, infantilism and puerility are entrenched in Japanese society. I don’t think it has anything to do with a demilitarized japan. I will do some research on that in my Japanese studies program.
24. You give testimony to the prevalence of depression in Japanese society. You also recall your own battles with depression. What would you say were the sources of your depression?
I was born and raised in a prison like Christian cult, in a very ugly ghetto in Kingston Jamaica.
25. How long have you been in therapy?
I sought psychotherapy from 23 years old to 36 years old, which is when I moved to Japan. I would’ve loved to continue in Japan, but psychology is in the embryonic stages in Japan.
26. Did you ever seek help for your sex addiction? Moving back to Jamaica-and especially while constantly engaging in masturbation to photos sent to you by your girlfriends doesn’t seem to be an effective cure.
I went to some 12 step meetings but was laughed at. Everyone else was addicted to alcohol, and cocaine, etc. And they all thought that sex addiction was a good addiction to have. I went to Jamaica for 6 months for detox. I wasn’t cured as yet then.
27. So how can you say that you are cured now, as you claim in the book? There are sex rehab centers, such as the one Tiger Woods is in now. Do you think you might still need treatment for your addiction?
I don't need any treatment. My libido has gone way down and its quite welcomed. In a year and a half of marriage, though my wife permits it, I have had an extramarital sexual encounter once. And yes, my wife knows about it. As I wrote in my book, living in japan where sex is ubiquitously available, I overdid it and it became cloying. Like the sweetened condensed milk analogy,that was exactly what a needed: to go buck wild and get it out of my system. Now it's like, been there done that, and I can focus on other things. As I've said, had I not been cured, I wouldn't have been able to write almost everyday, for up to seventeen hours a day for a year and ten months.
28. Do you see your previous lifestyle as being in any way misogynistic or at least phallocentric?
Phallocentric maybe, but by no means misogynistic. I taught many women many things and most are glad they met me. I'm still in contact with most. We are still friends and they thank me regularly.
29. I sense a lot of hostility towards Japanese society in this book. Is your yellow fever still there?
Yes, I still have a preference for yellow. Any westerner living in Japan will have a love hate relationship with the country. That being said, Japan is my home and I am terribly homesick after being in the US for a year and a half. But I return home this year.
30. In discussing your upbringing, Blacks and the African Diaspora, you define Jamaica as a “failed state.” What would you define as a successful one?
I described Jamaica as a near failed state. Haiti is a failed state, even before the earthquake. A successful state? In the Caribbean? Barbados.
31. How has life been since your time in Japan?
Oh man, heavenly, peaceful and drama free. I love living in Japan. I get pissed off with their problems sometimes, but I can always leave and take a breaks.
1. Do you have a background in psychology or sociology? What is your educational background?
I do have a background in sociology and psychology. In the 8 years it took me to get my BA, psych and sociology were two of my many majors. When I discovered social psychology at UCLA, I found it so interesting and wanted to study more. Hence, I would like to do a PhD in social psychology.
2. It seems that Jamaican and Japanese culture are both very conservative. How are they similar? How are they different?
They differ in that Jamaica is super disorganized and ad hoc, while Japan is the exact opposite. They are meticulous about everything in Japan. Even trivial things. There are some similarities between Jamaican patois and Japanese. And both Jamaican and Japanese societies place great emphasis on education.
3. Did you consciously decide to create a book that was at once a case study and erotica as well as memoir? How did that come about?
Yes, it was most certainly a conscious decision. I'm passionate about sex and I'm passionate about social observation, so I put the two together. Had I written erotica only, I would’ve just been some black guy, the stereotype, talking about how much punaunie he gets. I wouldn’t have been taken seriously. Had I written a case study on japan, it would’ve been immediately dismissed, as I was not a celebrity. The same if I had written just a memoir. No one would’ve wanted to read the memoir of some insignificant Negro. So I put the three genres together. It was a conscious decision, though some said it wouldn’t have worked, as it had not been done before.
4. How has this book been received? What has been the feedback from sociologists and other academics?
So far,the few in academia who have been brave enough to touch it are very supportive. The overall response has been overwhelmingly positive. Thirty two 5 and 4 star reviews on Amazon so far.
5. When I was at Purdue University, I noticed a huge pattern of white male fixation on Japanese culture. What do you make of the growing American—and particularly white male fixation on Japanese culture? Do you think that some aspects of colonialism are present in that phenomenon?
It is true that Japanese women can be easily dominated. A good example is mayumi, - whom I know personally, by the way - the balloon woman, who let her husband influence her into participating in that hoax about balloon floating around with the kid. Incidentally, that docile and passive personality is one of the characteristics I despise in Japanese women. I work hard to transform my wife into someone assertive, with an opinion. She's gotten much better. But many insecure white men (especially in Japan), intimidated by powerful women, have told me directly that, they like the spinelessness of Japanese women. I hate it. Man, even how they are in bed.
6. You seem to have a lot of animosity aimed at Japanese men. Why is that?
Very simply, they treat women like shit. The Japanese patriarchy defecates on women.
7. How did you find your statistics and do your research for this book? What was your research process?
I was waiting for this question from someone. There was no process. I was simply living my life. Since my childhood I had been an avid newspaper reader, cutting out articles and saving them for absolutely no reason. Upon moving to japan, I became paranoid of losing my mother tongue, so I read the newspapers with even greater voracity, sometimes reading three different newspapers a day. And of course, cutting out articles I found interesting. It is purely coincidental that a great deal of the dynamics I had observed socially in Japan, I would later read about them in the newspapers or visa versa. So when I began to write, I had a whole box full of newspaper articles I had cut out. There was no science, I was simply living my life and doing what I liked doing. That old obsession with cutting out newspaper articles paid off.
8. You have declared yourself a feminist.How would you define feminism and how would you define yourself as one?
One who is deeply concerned about the issues faced by women. I am one such person.
9. What led you to write this book? Was it to relay your sexual experiences or was it to investigate sexual trauma amongst Japanese women? If the latter, how do you reconcile that aim with the highly sexualized nature of this book?
I think time was the single greatest contributing factor to writing this book. I had loads of time. I worked about 12-18hrs a week, 25 weeks a year. And even when I was working (as an assistant language teacher) I had a great deal of time at work. Many days I would teach only one or two classes, but had to stay at school until 430. The first 100 pages of this book were written at Senrioka junior high school in Osaka. Secondly, as a sex addict, I did write the book to relay my sexual experiences. I found the sexual dynamic in Japan unfathomable and couldn’t believe no one had written about his own personal experiences. So I did.
10. Did you do research concerning sexual trauma and Japanese women? What was your research process?
Well, I was just being inquisitive with the women I was with. That’s all. Once one told me about her childhood sexual trauma, without my asking. I thought to ask the others. They opened up to me because I was a foreigner.
11. Are you familiar with Jean Genet? I would very much put your book in the tradition of his work. That said, how would you define your book along the lines of the sexual, the criminal, the perverse?
No,I'm not familiar with Jean Genet. In fact, I am not very well read. Many people are comparing my work to several authors, of whom I do not know. I can only read non-fiction. I love reading textbooks and science journals, and of course the newspaper.
12. In any given moment in the book, you are giving facts and statistics on abortion and child abuse in Japan. In the next moment, you are detailing one of your many sexual conquests. The infusion of erotica into what would otherwise be a sociological study makes this work stand out. Was it your conscious decision to write this book this way?
I would like to interpret it as the infusion of sociological study into what would be otherwise erotica. I wanted the reader to understand the social dynamics which permits and promotes the sexual dynamic. So yes, the structure of the book was intentional. It is an erotic, ethnographic memoir.
13. This book is meticulously documented in terms of the sources you cite. Was this a thesis? What prompted you to provide a work cited and end notes?
Another question I've been waiting on. It was never a thesis, haven’t got my masters yet. But will be attending Sophia University in Tokyo to do a masters in Japanese studies. The reason I provide end notes and cited works was simple. I am a high school dropout. And as such, I would have been immediately dismissed without end notes. People, especially in academia would’ve asked, “who the hell is this black guy from out of nowhere writing this profound stuff?” Oh, in fact, a junior agent at a major New York agency said just that. Well, not the black guy part, but he did imply that he was skeptical about the validity of my observations given that I am not in academia.
14. You attest to the rampant dysfunction present in Japanese society-in terms of immaturity, sexual dysfunction, etc. Have you found any studies that have been done that validate your observations?
Yes,Ive found the writings of a few Japanese psychologists to validate my observations. Can’t recall their names now, but I mentioned them in the book.
15. What has been the reception of this book among Japanese women? Among women in general?
Some Japanese women are angry, that’s normal. Their feelings are hurt that their social dirty laundry is being hung out in the international community. Other, more rational ones laud the work and its honesty, even though it’s a hard pill for them to swallow. So far, the book has been well received by western women, black and white.
16. If you had one central thesis in terms of your observations concerning Japanese women-what would that be?
Not just Japanese women, but Japanese society is traumatic to its subjects.
17. Do you think that adhering to traditional concepts and definitions of virginity is in line with feminist approaches to sexuality?
Can't speak to that issue. Maybe I don’t understand the question. Virginity is an absolute, whether from a feminist or non-feminist perspective.
18. What has been the response of feminist critics to this book?
I think there has been a great deal of knee jerk reactions. But once they get over it, and read the book, they get it.
19. What is your response to those who might call you a rogue?
Au, I, am a rogue. That’s pretty obvious.
20. You speak a lot about the sexual trauma experienced by the women you encountered in Japan early in their lives. You said that you could read the presence of trauma on their faces before speaking to them. Have you ever experienced sexual trauma?
I didn’t interpret it as trauma, but I was sexualized at seven by two teenage girls. I guess the answer to your question is no, Ive never had sexual trauma. I quite liked it at seven.
21. How much do you think the infantile behavior you observed in Japanese culture is a result of efforts to please Western powers? I recall that at one point in Japanese history, women were encouraged to mate with white men in order to create a superior mulatticized race.
Cant speak to ‘mulatticized’ or more appropriately, hybridized phenomenon in historical japan. I didn’t know about that. Will have to research that one. But I don’t think that Japan’s infantile characteristics has anything to do with pleasing the west. It is an integral part of Japanese society and culture since way back.
22. There is a surge in popularity of anime and other Japanese cultural exports in the U.S. Do you think that this in some way speaks to a rise in infantilism in the U.S.? Can you speak on the presence of infantilism in the U.S.?
Oh man, I would love to answer that question, but it would take several pages. Long story short, having left the West for almost a decade, I was shocked by America’s wide spread, (or the west’s widespread) embrace of Japanese childishness. I didn’t see it coming. But I have a whole dissertation to write about that.
23. I found your discussion of infantilism in the Japanese military and the Japanese police to be quite intriguing. Do you think that this is the result of the demands that Japan demilitarize after World War II?
As Ive stated previously, infantilism and puerility are entrenched in Japanese society. I don’t think it has anything to do with a demilitarized japan. I will do some research on that in my Japanese studies program.
24. You give testimony to the prevalence of depression in Japanese society. You also recall your own battles with depression. What would you say were the sources of your depression?
I was born and raised in a prison like Christian cult, in a very ugly ghetto in Kingston Jamaica.
25. How long have you been in therapy?
I sought psychotherapy from 23 years old to 36 years old, which is when I moved to Japan. I would’ve loved to continue in Japan, but psychology is in the embryonic stages in Japan.
26. Did you ever seek help for your sex addiction? Moving back to Jamaica-and especially while constantly engaging in masturbation to photos sent to you by your girlfriends doesn’t seem to be an effective cure.
I went to some 12 step meetings but was laughed at. Everyone else was addicted to alcohol, and cocaine, etc. And they all thought that sex addiction was a good addiction to have. I went to Jamaica for 6 months for detox. I wasn’t cured as yet then.
27. So how can you say that you are cured now, as you claim in the book? There are sex rehab centers, such as the one Tiger Woods is in now. Do you think you might still need treatment for your addiction?
I don't need any treatment. My libido has gone way down and its quite welcomed. In a year and a half of marriage, though my wife permits it, I have had an extramarital sexual encounter once. And yes, my wife knows about it. As I wrote in my book, living in japan where sex is ubiquitously available, I overdid it and it became cloying. Like the sweetened condensed milk analogy,that was exactly what a needed: to go buck wild and get it out of my system. Now it's like, been there done that, and I can focus on other things. As I've said, had I not been cured, I wouldn't have been able to write almost everyday, for up to seventeen hours a day for a year and ten months.
28. Do you see your previous lifestyle as being in any way misogynistic or at least phallocentric?
Phallocentric maybe, but by no means misogynistic. I taught many women many things and most are glad they met me. I'm still in contact with most. We are still friends and they thank me regularly.
29. I sense a lot of hostility towards Japanese society in this book. Is your yellow fever still there?
Yes, I still have a preference for yellow. Any westerner living in Japan will have a love hate relationship with the country. That being said, Japan is my home and I am terribly homesick after being in the US for a year and a half. But I return home this year.
30. In discussing your upbringing, Blacks and the African Diaspora, you define Jamaica as a “failed state.” What would you define as a successful one?
I described Jamaica as a near failed state. Haiti is a failed state, even before the earthquake. A successful state? In the Caribbean? Barbados.
31. How has life been since your time in Japan?
Oh man, heavenly, peaceful and drama free. I love living in Japan. I get pissed off with their problems sometimes, but I can always leave and take a breaks.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Interview With Author, Delvon Johnson
I recently became acquainted with first time, self-published author Delvon Johnson who has just come out with his first book Love Yourself First. I read the entire book in the course of a weekend and decided that I'd like to interview him about his book. Here is what transpired.
1. What was your inspiration for writing this book?
My first inspiration is E. Lynn Harris.I was reading one of his books and I thought to myself,“ I can write a book!” Almost a year later,Love Yourself First was released.
2. How long have you been writing?
I’ve enjoyed writing for a long time,but Love Yourself First was born in January 2008 and was completed in June 2008.
3. How did you decide to self-publish?
I went online and did the research, and found out about Authorhouse. They provided everything I needed to complete a well polished book and since they financed,I was happy to work with them
4. In your book, you portray your characters in such a way that there are no clear heroes or villains. Did you plan it this way?
No. My ideas came to me as I wrote them. It was a wonderful experience because it just depended on what direction I wanted to take the book in at that particular moment.
5. Your book deals with the entire DL phenomenon. What are your thoughts on the DL phenomenon?
I think it’s a very dangerous game to play. There are a lot of lies and deception involved, which could lead to a lot of heartache on everybody’s part,including children in certain situations. On the contrary though, I think it’s our society that makes these men behave this way. By coming out, it could jeopardize their jobs, family relationships and list of other things. It also has to do with men having sexual desires that their wives can’t fufill, and the fantasies that their wives or girlfriends might be able to achieve, they would be way too embarrassed to communicate those feelings because of what their wives may think after they have expressed them. So, it is easier for them to go find another man to fill those fantasies and keep those fantasies buried deep within.
6. Have you had experience with men on the DL?
Yes, I have dated men that have been on the DL, and it is a very shady thing to deal with. Most of the time, guys like me date men on the DL because they are attracted to the masculinity of the man. It is also taboo, and anything that is considered off limits always looks more enticing. I don’t deal with men on the DL anymore because usually, it’s just sexual. As I have gotten older, sex has become a small priority with the men I am involved with. That factor alone eliminates me dealing with them anymore because that’s all that is really involved. As for being in a relationship, it won’t ever happen because usually these guys are lying to themselves and others and fooling people into believing that they are heterosexual when they are really bisexual. Needless to say,these men sleep with other men and don't consider themselves gay or bisexual.
7. Discuss the title of your book, Love Yourself First. How did you come up with this title?
Well, I had recently got out of relationship that had taken quite a toll on me and I was so frustrated that I didn’t know what to do, which was why I started the book. The title Love Yourself First was instantly created because I promised myself after that relationship that took me through so much, that I would make sure I loved myself a whole lot more before I decided to share that love with another person.
8. How do you interpret the idea of loving yourself first?
You just have to put yourself first and take care of yourself before you get into a relationship. There are so many people out there trying to be in a relationship without loving themselves first. Loving yourself first will prevent plenty of relationship issues because it’s much easier to love others when you love yourself first!
9. Where do you go from here? Are you writing anything else?
Yes, the second book is completed. It is called Follow Your Dreams to The stars, and book three is currently under creation. It’s called Under Cover Lover. Love Yourself First is also being turned into a screenplay for TV.
10. What are your aspirations as far as writing?
It’s my calling. I found something that I love to do and it is going to take me to the top. I really don’t think I would have went as far if it weren’t for E. Lynn Harris. He made me believe I could do it.
11. What would you like the public to know about either you or your book?
It is a great read. It can be picked up at Amazon.com or Barnes & Nobles.com. However, it is cheaper on my publisher's website which is www.authorhouse.com. Just type the title in the search engine.
12. Thanks for agreeing to this interview.
1. What was your inspiration for writing this book?
My first inspiration is E. Lynn Harris.I was reading one of his books and I thought to myself,“ I can write a book!” Almost a year later,Love Yourself First was released.
2. How long have you been writing?
I’ve enjoyed writing for a long time,but Love Yourself First was born in January 2008 and was completed in June 2008.
3. How did you decide to self-publish?
I went online and did the research, and found out about Authorhouse. They provided everything I needed to complete a well polished book and since they financed,I was happy to work with them
4. In your book, you portray your characters in such a way that there are no clear heroes or villains. Did you plan it this way?
No. My ideas came to me as I wrote them. It was a wonderful experience because it just depended on what direction I wanted to take the book in at that particular moment.
5. Your book deals with the entire DL phenomenon. What are your thoughts on the DL phenomenon?
I think it’s a very dangerous game to play. There are a lot of lies and deception involved, which could lead to a lot of heartache on everybody’s part,including children in certain situations. On the contrary though, I think it’s our society that makes these men behave this way. By coming out, it could jeopardize their jobs, family relationships and list of other things. It also has to do with men having sexual desires that their wives can’t fufill, and the fantasies that their wives or girlfriends might be able to achieve, they would be way too embarrassed to communicate those feelings because of what their wives may think after they have expressed them. So, it is easier for them to go find another man to fill those fantasies and keep those fantasies buried deep within.
6. Have you had experience with men on the DL?
Yes, I have dated men that have been on the DL, and it is a very shady thing to deal with. Most of the time, guys like me date men on the DL because they are attracted to the masculinity of the man. It is also taboo, and anything that is considered off limits always looks more enticing. I don’t deal with men on the DL anymore because usually, it’s just sexual. As I have gotten older, sex has become a small priority with the men I am involved with. That factor alone eliminates me dealing with them anymore because that’s all that is really involved. As for being in a relationship, it won’t ever happen because usually these guys are lying to themselves and others and fooling people into believing that they are heterosexual when they are really bisexual. Needless to say,these men sleep with other men and don't consider themselves gay or bisexual.
7. Discuss the title of your book, Love Yourself First. How did you come up with this title?
Well, I had recently got out of relationship that had taken quite a toll on me and I was so frustrated that I didn’t know what to do, which was why I started the book. The title Love Yourself First was instantly created because I promised myself after that relationship that took me through so much, that I would make sure I loved myself a whole lot more before I decided to share that love with another person.
8. How do you interpret the idea of loving yourself first?
You just have to put yourself first and take care of yourself before you get into a relationship. There are so many people out there trying to be in a relationship without loving themselves first. Loving yourself first will prevent plenty of relationship issues because it’s much easier to love others when you love yourself first!
9. Where do you go from here? Are you writing anything else?
Yes, the second book is completed. It is called Follow Your Dreams to The stars, and book three is currently under creation. It’s called Under Cover Lover. Love Yourself First is also being turned into a screenplay for TV.
10. What are your aspirations as far as writing?
It’s my calling. I found something that I love to do and it is going to take me to the top. I really don’t think I would have went as far if it weren’t for E. Lynn Harris. He made me believe I could do it.
11. What would you like the public to know about either you or your book?
It is a great read. It can be picked up at Amazon.com or Barnes & Nobles.com. However, it is cheaper on my publisher's website which is www.authorhouse.com. Just type the title in the search engine.
12. Thanks for agreeing to this interview.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Interview With Shaindel Beers, Author of A Brief History in Time
With the recent publication of her first book of poetry,A Brief History in Time, I had the opportunity to interview author, Shaindel Beers, a former classmate of mine at Huntingdon College. Here is what transpired.
1. Your poetry is filled with some very astute perceptions along the lines of race, gender, and class. What is your background? Where are you from? What is your family like? What do they do?
I’m from a very small rural town in northern Indiana, called Argos, which, at least in the 2000 census, had a population of 1,613. It might seem unusual to someone that you can grow up somewhere that is 98% white and be so impacted by race, but I moved from Argos to Montgomery, Alabama, to go to Huntingdon College, and it was like another planet. I’d heard racist comments in Indiana, but they were the sort of things one “expects” from people of a certain generation. Like, my grandpa would say something and change the channel if he walked in and I was watching The Cosby Show. But I think there was a lot of jealousy in this. If you remember, on The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby’s character was a doctor, and the wife was a lawyer, and here’s my grandfather who has a sixth grade education and has had a hard life—farming (which always depends on the weather), factory closings (which depends on the whims of the wealthy, or the economy), all sorts of things. I think a lot of people from his generation in the same position probably felt the same way. It isn’t right, but you can understand where it comes from.
When I got to Alabama, the racism was much more real. First of all, there were people of other races—at least then in Alabama, Whites and Blacks. And, to me, it felt like the Civil Rights movement had barely happened. When I met one of my first college friends and wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy some dorm supplies, she started driving the opposite way I thought we should be going. When I asked why we weren’t going to the Wal-Mart next to the college, she said, “Oh, that’s the Black Wal-Mart,” like it was the most common thing in the world. I heard other such gems such as a wealthy woman who said, “Of course, we’re not racist; all our maids have always been Black” and the one that appears in my poem, “Branching.”
For me, at least, gender and social class are so intertwined. I think that there is much more hope of social mobility for men than for women. There’s a book I haven’t read yet but want to called Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. I remember when I was in high school and things were rough, my mom would say things like, “Maybe some nice boy will marry you.” That really seemed to be the answer she had for everything. She bought me a subscription to Brides Magazine when I was around fifteen and seemed fine when my high school boyfriend at that time just assumed we were getting married and gave me a ring.
I think a lot of women my age were raised without the skills we really needed because our parents still expected us to move from their house to a husband’s. And that really seems to surprise a lot of people, but I think small towns are socially a generation behind other places.
As far as my family, they are sort of a “mad genius” family. That’s probably saying enough.
2. What is your ethnic makeup?
On my father’s side, I’m Russian-Jewish, maybe with a few other Eastern European countries thrown in. On my mother’s side, it’s pretty much everything from the British Isles. I can look up family tartans in Scottish museums and things like that.
3. Do you have a great interest in Greek mythology? Your knowledge of it seems to be very expansive. Does it inspire you?
I absolutely love all mythologies, but I know more about Greek mythology than others, probably because it was required in eighth grade. We had to memorize who was the god or goddess of what and read The Odyssey. I’m always fascinated by rewritings of myths and fairy tales for a few reasons. First, there’s less work for the author because the reader already knows the basic story, and secondly, because there is a wealth of the human condition for the reader to connect to. For instance, in Louise Glück’s Meadowlands, she uses the figures of Odysseus and Penelope to explore the breakdown of (presumably) her own marriage. Most of us know the story of The Odyssey, and most of us have suffered broken hearts, so putting these elements together creates something between the author and the reader that is greater than the sum of the parts. For my creative writing MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, part of my graduation requirement included giving a lecture on a specific topic in creative writing, and I did mine on “Feminist Revision of Myth and Fairy Tale.” If any readers are interested in it, they can let me know, and I’ll email them the lecture.
4. You seem to have lived a very interesting life--from the mundaneness of rural Indiana to the cosmopolitan life of the city. Give us a rundown of your life from birth to present. Where have you lived? What has marked you?
First of all, I don’t see how rural Indiana is any more mundane than living in a city. Wherever you are is your reality, and you can have a boring or an exciting life in either. I was born in South Bend, Indiana, which is where Kenneth Rexroth was born. (Maybe it will eventually be a city known for poets?) I lived in Argos until I moved away to Montgomery, Alabama, for college, then I moved to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago for graduate school, and after that, I kept moving further and further out to the suburbs, for jobs. (And I would do my graduate residencies in Vermont in the summers and winters from 2003-2005.) Eventually, I got a full-time college teaching position in Florida. I just wasn’t a Florida person and had to get somewhere where it would snow before I died of depression (or drank myself to death), and I ended up in Eastern Oregon. So far, it’s the best place I’ve lived. I have fantasies of a cabin in Montana or Alaska or somewhere more remote than this with bigger mountains, but this is pretty phenomenal for now. It’s also a great teaching position. It’s a rural mountain community college, and there are only three full-timers in the English department (myself included), so in addition to the regular Composition sequence, I get to teach Shakespeare, British literature, Fiction writing, Poetry writing, and Poetry as Literature. It’s nice to get to use my graduate degrees in both British literature and Creative Writing. Anywhere else, I’d most likely have to choose one or the other.
A lot has marked me. A. Lot. I’ll let people read my poetry collection and decide that.
5. You seem to have had a lot of experiences in terms of love and loss. What is the greatest lesson you have learned?
I’m still learning, but I think I’m discovering that you can survive anything if you have to. I’m also learning to value myself and not to mould myself into whatever will make other people happy, but it’s definitely a process.
6. Who are your greatest influences as a writer?
I’m just going to start listing here. As far as poets: Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, Richard Jackson, Eavan Boland. Fiction writers: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Antonya Nelson, Ellen Gilchrist. I’m sure there are at least a hundred others, but I’m hoping readers will look up everyone on this list if they’re not already familiar with them.
7. What's next for you?
So far, I feel really fortunate to be booking readings since the publication of A Brief History of Time since it’s my first full-length book. I hope to keep giving readings and to keep up with my radio show, Translated By, on www.blogtalkradio.com . In June of 2010, I’ll be teaching at Writing Away Retreats http://writingawayretreats.com/ , which I’m really excited about.
I have a two book deal with Salt Publishing, which is just amazing. I’ve never even heard of another poet getting a two book deal! For my second book I’m working on, tentatively titled The Children’s War, I’m looking at children’s art drawn during war-time from the Spanish Civil War to the current time and writing an ekphrastic poem on each one that inspires me.
I have what amounts to maybe half of a short story collection so far, and one novel in progress that I wish was more in progress. And I always have stories and poems going on in my head.
Next stop on Shaindel Beers' Virtual Book Tour Kate Evans:Being and Writing.
1. Your poetry is filled with some very astute perceptions along the lines of race, gender, and class. What is your background? Where are you from? What is your family like? What do they do?
I’m from a very small rural town in northern Indiana, called Argos, which, at least in the 2000 census, had a population of 1,613. It might seem unusual to someone that you can grow up somewhere that is 98% white and be so impacted by race, but I moved from Argos to Montgomery, Alabama, to go to Huntingdon College, and it was like another planet. I’d heard racist comments in Indiana, but they were the sort of things one “expects” from people of a certain generation. Like, my grandpa would say something and change the channel if he walked in and I was watching The Cosby Show. But I think there was a lot of jealousy in this. If you remember, on The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby’s character was a doctor, and the wife was a lawyer, and here’s my grandfather who has a sixth grade education and has had a hard life—farming (which always depends on the weather), factory closings (which depends on the whims of the wealthy, or the economy), all sorts of things. I think a lot of people from his generation in the same position probably felt the same way. It isn’t right, but you can understand where it comes from.
When I got to Alabama, the racism was much more real. First of all, there were people of other races—at least then in Alabama, Whites and Blacks. And, to me, it felt like the Civil Rights movement had barely happened. When I met one of my first college friends and wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy some dorm supplies, she started driving the opposite way I thought we should be going. When I asked why we weren’t going to the Wal-Mart next to the college, she said, “Oh, that’s the Black Wal-Mart,” like it was the most common thing in the world. I heard other such gems such as a wealthy woman who said, “Of course, we’re not racist; all our maids have always been Black” and the one that appears in my poem, “Branching.”
For me, at least, gender and social class are so intertwined. I think that there is much more hope of social mobility for men than for women. There’s a book I haven’t read yet but want to called Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. I remember when I was in high school and things were rough, my mom would say things like, “Maybe some nice boy will marry you.” That really seemed to be the answer she had for everything. She bought me a subscription to Brides Magazine when I was around fifteen and seemed fine when my high school boyfriend at that time just assumed we were getting married and gave me a ring.
I think a lot of women my age were raised without the skills we really needed because our parents still expected us to move from their house to a husband’s. And that really seems to surprise a lot of people, but I think small towns are socially a generation behind other places.
As far as my family, they are sort of a “mad genius” family. That’s probably saying enough.
2. What is your ethnic makeup?
On my father’s side, I’m Russian-Jewish, maybe with a few other Eastern European countries thrown in. On my mother’s side, it’s pretty much everything from the British Isles. I can look up family tartans in Scottish museums and things like that.
3. Do you have a great interest in Greek mythology? Your knowledge of it seems to be very expansive. Does it inspire you?
I absolutely love all mythologies, but I know more about Greek mythology than others, probably because it was required in eighth grade. We had to memorize who was the god or goddess of what and read The Odyssey. I’m always fascinated by rewritings of myths and fairy tales for a few reasons. First, there’s less work for the author because the reader already knows the basic story, and secondly, because there is a wealth of the human condition for the reader to connect to. For instance, in Louise Glück’s Meadowlands, she uses the figures of Odysseus and Penelope to explore the breakdown of (presumably) her own marriage. Most of us know the story of The Odyssey, and most of us have suffered broken hearts, so putting these elements together creates something between the author and the reader that is greater than the sum of the parts. For my creative writing MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, part of my graduation requirement included giving a lecture on a specific topic in creative writing, and I did mine on “Feminist Revision of Myth and Fairy Tale.” If any readers are interested in it, they can let me know, and I’ll email them the lecture.
4. You seem to have lived a very interesting life--from the mundaneness of rural Indiana to the cosmopolitan life of the city. Give us a rundown of your life from birth to present. Where have you lived? What has marked you?
First of all, I don’t see how rural Indiana is any more mundane than living in a city. Wherever you are is your reality, and you can have a boring or an exciting life in either. I was born in South Bend, Indiana, which is where Kenneth Rexroth was born. (Maybe it will eventually be a city known for poets?) I lived in Argos until I moved away to Montgomery, Alabama, for college, then I moved to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago for graduate school, and after that, I kept moving further and further out to the suburbs, for jobs. (And I would do my graduate residencies in Vermont in the summers and winters from 2003-2005.) Eventually, I got a full-time college teaching position in Florida. I just wasn’t a Florida person and had to get somewhere where it would snow before I died of depression (or drank myself to death), and I ended up in Eastern Oregon. So far, it’s the best place I’ve lived. I have fantasies of a cabin in Montana or Alaska or somewhere more remote than this with bigger mountains, but this is pretty phenomenal for now. It’s also a great teaching position. It’s a rural mountain community college, and there are only three full-timers in the English department (myself included), so in addition to the regular Composition sequence, I get to teach Shakespeare, British literature, Fiction writing, Poetry writing, and Poetry as Literature. It’s nice to get to use my graduate degrees in both British literature and Creative Writing. Anywhere else, I’d most likely have to choose one or the other.
A lot has marked me. A. Lot. I’ll let people read my poetry collection and decide that.
5. You seem to have had a lot of experiences in terms of love and loss. What is the greatest lesson you have learned?
I’m still learning, but I think I’m discovering that you can survive anything if you have to. I’m also learning to value myself and not to mould myself into whatever will make other people happy, but it’s definitely a process.
6. Who are your greatest influences as a writer?
I’m just going to start listing here. As far as poets: Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, Richard Jackson, Eavan Boland. Fiction writers: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Antonya Nelson, Ellen Gilchrist. I’m sure there are at least a hundred others, but I’m hoping readers will look up everyone on this list if they’re not already familiar with them.
7. What's next for you?
So far, I feel really fortunate to be booking readings since the publication of A Brief History of Time since it’s my first full-length book. I hope to keep giving readings and to keep up with my radio show, Translated By, on www.blogtalkradio.com . In June of 2010, I’ll be teaching at Writing Away Retreats http://writingawayretreats.com/ , which I’m really excited about.
I have a two book deal with Salt Publishing, which is just amazing. I’ve never even heard of another poet getting a two book deal! For my second book I’m working on, tentatively titled The Children’s War, I’m looking at children’s art drawn during war-time from the Spanish Civil War to the current time and writing an ekphrastic poem on each one that inspires me.
I have what amounts to maybe half of a short story collection so far, and one novel in progress that I wish was more in progress. And I always have stories and poems going on in my head.
Next stop on Shaindel Beers' Virtual Book Tour Kate Evans:Being and Writing.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Interview with Betty DeRamus
I am quite thrilled and delighted that my cousin, the Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist Betty DeRamus, agreed to let me interview her. Here is what transpired:
1. Where did you grow up?
I was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but grew up in Detroit.
2. What inspired you to become a journalist?
Since I've devoured books all my life, I suppose it was inevitable that I would want to be like the authors whom I read. I began writing short stories when I was seven or eight years old, primarily because it gave me a way to work out (on paper) some of the tensions in my family. In the best of all possible worlds, I would have gone abroad after college and tried to write novels. However, my father died when I was 22 and my mother needed help. So I became a working author---a journalist.
3. What values and beliefs do you carry from your upbringing into your work?
As a reporter, I simply did whatever stories I was assigned. Once I became an editorial writer and, later, a columnist, I could express my own beliefs and values. I have always had a deep and abiding concern for the welfare of children and for underdogs in general. After I was an adult, I discovered that the person I'd always called my mother was actually my stepmother. I was my father's child "love child" by a woman who was not his wife. This had a profound effect on the way I view family. I never tried to find my biological mother because I thought it was more important to embrace my "real" mother, the one who raised me. Since I have no siblings (that I know of), I've created a family of friends over the years.
4. What has been the most rewarding thing about being a writer?
As a journalist, I've been an eyewitness to history many times. I toured refugee camps in Central Africa 10 years before genocide in Rwanda made the news. I was outside Victor Verster prison when Nelson Mandela walked out and I followed him around the U.S. later that year. A few years ago, someone told me about a black youngster who was collecting pencils for a school in the Gambia. He was 12 years old. He had visited a school in Gambia and noticed that the students had only one pencil and were passed it from hand to hand. I wrote three columns about his quest and asked my readers to send him a pencil. He and his teacher wound up more with more than 150,000 pencils and other school supplies and free airfare back to the Gambia. At the airport, officials became suspicious, thinking he and his teacher were running some kind of scam and would be selling the pencils. She showed them my articles and they decided to let him in. In my entire career, I've never written a more rewarding series of stories than this one. His name, by the way, is also Brandon and he's now in college.
5. You just recently published a book. How often do you branch out into genres other than journalism?
I plan to spend the rest of my life writing books, especially books that shine a spotlight on the neglected or forgotten history of Africans in America. I'm now writing my second one. I'm no longer a full-time journalist, just an occasional free-lancer.
6. Is there anything left you'd like to accomplish in your life's work?
You always have to keep a fresh dream in your back pocket. I've accomplished a lot but I'm just beginning to pursue my original dream of writing books. It's tough, but nothing worth doing is easy.
Betty DeRamus is the author of Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad, true stories about slave couples who took extraordinary steps to stay together
1. Where did you grow up?
I was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but grew up in Detroit.
2. What inspired you to become a journalist?
Since I've devoured books all my life, I suppose it was inevitable that I would want to be like the authors whom I read. I began writing short stories when I was seven or eight years old, primarily because it gave me a way to work out (on paper) some of the tensions in my family. In the best of all possible worlds, I would have gone abroad after college and tried to write novels. However, my father died when I was 22 and my mother needed help. So I became a working author---a journalist.
3. What values and beliefs do you carry from your upbringing into your work?
As a reporter, I simply did whatever stories I was assigned. Once I became an editorial writer and, later, a columnist, I could express my own beliefs and values. I have always had a deep and abiding concern for the welfare of children and for underdogs in general. After I was an adult, I discovered that the person I'd always called my mother was actually my stepmother. I was my father's child "love child" by a woman who was not his wife. This had a profound effect on the way I view family. I never tried to find my biological mother because I thought it was more important to embrace my "real" mother, the one who raised me. Since I have no siblings (that I know of), I've created a family of friends over the years.
4. What has been the most rewarding thing about being a writer?
As a journalist, I've been an eyewitness to history many times. I toured refugee camps in Central Africa 10 years before genocide in Rwanda made the news. I was outside Victor Verster prison when Nelson Mandela walked out and I followed him around the U.S. later that year. A few years ago, someone told me about a black youngster who was collecting pencils for a school in the Gambia. He was 12 years old. He had visited a school in Gambia and noticed that the students had only one pencil and were passed it from hand to hand. I wrote three columns about his quest and asked my readers to send him a pencil. He and his teacher wound up more with more than 150,000 pencils and other school supplies and free airfare back to the Gambia. At the airport, officials became suspicious, thinking he and his teacher were running some kind of scam and would be selling the pencils. She showed them my articles and they decided to let him in. In my entire career, I've never written a more rewarding series of stories than this one. His name, by the way, is also Brandon and he's now in college.
5. You just recently published a book. How often do you branch out into genres other than journalism?
I plan to spend the rest of my life writing books, especially books that shine a spotlight on the neglected or forgotten history of Africans in America. I'm now writing my second one. I'm no longer a full-time journalist, just an occasional free-lancer.
6. Is there anything left you'd like to accomplish in your life's work?
You always have to keep a fresh dream in your back pocket. I've accomplished a lot but I'm just beginning to pursue my original dream of writing books. It's tough, but nothing worth doing is easy.
Betty DeRamus is the author of Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad, true stories about slave couples who took extraordinary steps to stay together
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Maya Angelou's Interview with Cousin Betty
In the interview that Maya Angelou conducted with my cousin Betty Deramus, there was something very profound said that really sticks to me and is something to consider. Cousin Betty said that when she was in South Africa during the time when they were struggling to end apartheid, she asked a white south african whether or not he was afraid of the violence that would consume the country. He replied that he was not afraid because his house was well-insulated, well-padded and locked, etc. Cousin Betty's thought to this was that those who work to imprison someone else also imprison themselves....It is something to think about. Maya Angelou followed this with discussing the example of a person trying to keep someone pushed down to the ground--the one pushing down is also keeping him or herself down and exerts a negative force while the one pushing up exerts a positive force...a liberatory force. This was a very intriguing dialogue and powerful thoughts.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
This is a Great Interview with the Poet Ai
It felt very inclusive, I think, for a lot of people.
Yeah. And for Native Americans and Indians -- well, we just call ourselves Indians here; I'm vice president of the Native American faculty, too, so I have a lot of duties now here -- so it was another win for them, too, and for Oklahoma, which is a state that's had a lot of problems, like the Oklahoma City bombing. You know, that's the thing about minority faculty that I don't know if people understand: you are not simply filling one role; you don't go to a school just as a faculty member. You have duties. Like I am standing in for Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians at my school, generally, because I'm the only minority faculty in the English Department.
Seriously?
Yeah. There's a man from India, but that's it.
Is that something that you choose?
What? To help? To stand in?
To be there, as opposed to someplace where you would...
Oh! Well, I was here as a visitor, just for a year, and then when I won the Book Award, they offered me tenure starting in January. So I won the Book Award in November, and they offered me a full professorship with tenure in January. And I was like, "Well, Ai, a bird in the hand, you know... this is a really good offer." So I thought, well, I'll just take it. So I sort of ... they made it so fast, I sort of didn't think about it. And I'm here doing research on my Indian family. I'm not done with my research, and they gave me a lot of money, too, so you know, it's a good deal! There are probably other places I'd like. I wouldn't mind being in Arizona, but Arizona didn't make me an offer! And I'm doin' okay. I don't know. Oklahoma certainly has its share of bigotry, which I feel I have certainly experienced. I haven't talked to the powers-that-be about it, but I certainly feel that there's some out there, and I'm not used to the kinds of encounter here, and some of it has been anti-Indian. [laughs] So I'm gettin' it from everywhere! I talked to this taxi driver about it, 'cause she's trying to find her Cherokee grandmother. She said, "Oh, they're very prejudiced towards Indians here." And I said, "Well, why?" And she said, "Well, they think they have everything." I said, "Well, they lost everything!" So there's definitely some of that in my area of Oklahoma.
The resentment?
Oh yeah, I've heard that. Well, I've certainly had some problems; let's just put it like that. Some racial, and some sexual. It's a mix, when you're minority faculty and a woman, because it's race and sex. I'm not trouble-free.
Do you feel that from the other side, too, where you get exoticized as a woman of color, and given all sorts of exotic praise or put up as window dressing?
Oh, I'm sure it happens. I don't think I'm getting that here actually, which I guess is a compliment to the place. But I have sometimes wondered about the amount of praise I was getting. Slightly. [laughs] But it always happens, when you're a minority. I don't think I've been over-praised; I write good poems. I just think of it like that. I don't question it too much.
I never think of myself as a token. Anytime people try to make me one, I just reject it. I never really capitalized on my minority status. I didn't really want to do that. There were instances when I was younger when I certainly could have done that. I'm not an enrolled tribe member now, but I'd mentioned it in a magazine somewhere, and Indian people wrote me and stuff, but it seemed like I have so many mixtures, it wasn't right of me to capitalize on my Indian blood. And that might have been skewed, you know, I might have been wrong, but it's been proved to me since I moved here that it's not too late, and it's your family, so you have a right. I have a right to go in there and say, "I have this and that Indian blood."
It's real interesting here, 'cause my experience with the family background is not uncommon here; things that happened in my family are rather common here, and that's been good for me to see. Like, for instance, some of the Indian women married with whites and didn't get on the rolls, because they didn't want to be on the rolls. They wanted to be safe, didn't want to be Indian. And you would think, like when I was in Arizona, my opinion would have been, "Oh, that's bad; they were ashamed." But since I moved to Oklahoma and I can understand the historical circumstances, I understand that, and I'm not judging people for what they did then. They were trying to survive. But it raises interesting moral questions, and in some of my research I have to get the case files, and one family said they had a Choctaw mother, so they rushed out to Mississippi when they were doing the final rolls, and they tried to get on them. And the Choctaw/Chickasaw people questioned them over and over again. They would say, "Well, how does she look?" They got real down to it. They would say, "Was her hair kinky or straight?" I mean, it was totally naked. Over and over again, they'd describe her. She sounded Indian to me, but they went as far as to forge a letter from a Chief, saying she was Indian. They did bad things, and a lot of the names were similar to my family names. [laughs] I said, "Oh, they're pretty under-handed here; hmmmm, they could be family!" Two of the sons were in the Confederate Army, okay? So that would have been something. In the end, not enough names matched up, so they weren't my family, but they were denied tribal membership. But how would I have dealt with that? Two sons in the Confederate Army, for god's sake!
So there's a lot of interesting stuff in Oklahoma. They had slaves, too, you know, the "five civilized tribes," so there's all the different roles and mixtures, and it's just fascinating. So there is a rhyme or reason for my being here. I almost feel my great-grandfather, like the ghosts are out there. There are still things being hashed over today that began back when, on the Trail of Tears, for instance. If you tap into your ancestors, if you tap into the ghosts of these ancestors, they are still doing things. They are still saying, "Granddaughter, I want you to look into this for me." That's the way I feel about my great-grandfather, sometimes. He's saying, "You know, I want you to check on this; check on these mineral rights to this land that we have." So I'm looking for a deed, 'cause they sold the land, but they kept the mineral rights. It's all kinds of stuff here; it's just totally rich.
Sounds a little like the stuff that you touched on in "Passing Through."
Yeah, although I fictionalized it, so it's a woman who's half White. But yeah, that poem was sort of opening the door to what I'm actually working on for a memoir, for my own history. But, as far as I can tell, there wasn't any rape involved in what went on with my family's mixing; they willingly went to the other side or whatever, so that's interesting, too. But I don't know all the details. I have to track everything. I don't know whether I'll ever learn everything, but I'm trying to track some things down.
One woman here is Creek, and her grandmother was at Indian school when a White man married her when she was 12, and it was to get her land, see. So it's possible that my great-great-grandmother may not have even been married to this man, but she had a child with him. But it may have been that he had another wife; that's what I'm trying to zero in on. A White wife, see. Some of them had two and three families. One of the White men I looked at, he had several Choctaw wives. [laughs] He divorced one, and they said, "Why did you divorce?" He said, "I wanna get me another one!" It was weird like that. It was weird stuff! And then the last letter in his file is from one of the Choctaw wives, and they said, "Well, we understand he's a fugitive from justice." And I said, "Oh, could be my family; it's so wild!" It was really wild, you know.
These are your people?
[laughs] These are people I was hopin' might be my relatives! No, I haven't found them. You know, I'm lookin' up family names and a lot of times you get one name that's the same, and you don't know until you send for the case file from the national archives. Then you have all the information. So one name might be a family name, but then when you look at all the other wives, sons and daughters, they don't match up, right, so it's not your family.
And this will be your first novel?
Well, memoir. I wrote that novel, but it hasn't come out. I haven't dealt with my family history at all yet, so it'll all be in the memoir. It's so fascinating and interesting, it's kind of a riveting tale. I think it will be. It'll be part history, part memoir. There's not a whole lot out there about mixed-race people in the Old West in this area, so I thought I'd touch on a lot of things.
How will it be to have yourself as your subject for the first time?
It'll be okay. I sort of am a fictionalized subject in my novel, actually. I'm a character, and so is my mother, and my grandmother, my ancestors. But I don't know what's going to happen with that, because my editor keeps telling me it's not ready, and I don't want to do a re-write, so it's just in limbo. [laughs] I sold it, but I collected half the advance.
You don't care whether it's published?
Well, yeah, but I had to sort of let it go. I was upset for a while; I was real upset. But now, it's been so long since I sold it -- I think I sold it in '94 -- but it wasn't finished. It was only half-way through, I think. In '97, when I was in Boulder, I sent what I considered to be my final draft, and then she told me it wasn't ready, and then I was mad, and I didn't do anything for two years. Then after I won the Book Award, I had interest from other publishers, see, and then I told my editor, and she said, "Well, let me read it again." Then she thought it still needs works. It's at an agency, but I haven't signed with the agency, and they thought they could piggy-back with the memoir, so they were waiting for the memoir. So anyway, I don't know I'll do. Oh well. [laughs] It has interracial sex in it, so I wonder if that might be a problem. It shouldn't, but, you know.
Not anymore, though. The interracial movement is very strong now.
Well, that's what I'm dealing with. The novel is called Black Blood, and it turns on how much Black blood these people have, in the novel. [laughs] So how did they get mixed? By having sex with somebody in another race; that's how! But I think my memoir is really gonna be good. [laughs] If she ever finishes her research! I could go on and on; I guess you could tell. [laughs] It's weird because the past is living for me. I was brought up short in Austin, because I mentioned a rancher my great-grandfather used to work for in Texas, and a woman came up after and said, "I haven't heard those names in years!" He was one of those cattle kings, right, and the day of the cattle king is over, but to me it's living. I hadn't really thought about how much in the past that is. To me it's like it was yesterday.
Is that part of what you've described as "psychohistory"?
Well, no, psychohistory is more like ascribing some kind of psychological reason for an historical event. At least, that's how I think of it. But in the end, I might actually touch on some of that in my work -- maybe by saying, "Why did a relative not get on the rolls" or whatever. So anyway, I probably deviated from your question. And you're not payin' me for this interview, either!
No, ma'am!
Well, let's wrap it up, honey; it's almost 5! [laughs] What else did you want to ask?
Just a couple of questions. What do you see as the relation between history and poetry, or between poet and historian?
Well, I guess I sort of touched on that in the last conversation, right? The Greeks used to take a poet to battle with them, so the poet would stand on a hill or something and record the battle. And I do think of that as sort of my role sometimes. You know, we are observers sometimes, rather than participants. But other times we're participants/observers. I felt that way in Austin. I almost hated to leave. I went down for this book festival which is chaired by Laura Bush, so it was fascinating to be there and to have protests going on -- the festival was at the capital. At that time, I really did feel like it was almost Grecian, in that I was a poet and I was observing, and who knows, I might write something, sometime.
That was a remarkable event.
You know, I was supposed to have an interview with her; she was interviewing four writers, and it was going to be on an NBC affiliate. And that morning, as they drove off to the ranch, I thought, "Well, I guess there'll be no interview." And I thought maybe she wanted to interview me because I was born Texas, but I did win the Book Award -- that's how I haven't quite absorbed how big a prize that was. That was a really major award, and I'm sort of a representative of poetry now, in a way that I hadn't been before.
You were. But now there's larger recognition.
Yeah, definitely. I got so much press, you know. I went to the ceremony, week before last in New York, when Lucille Clifton won, and it was nothing like the year before. The press were everywhere for that 50th anniversary. There were press at this one, but they seemed to be everywhere the year before. I imagine Oprah being there had something to do with it, too, but we got a lot more attention I think last year. Plus, the press were all involved in the election this year. So that really was the year to win, for me anyway. It was a great year to win.
What do you think about Lucille Clifton winning this year?
Oh, I think it was great for her to win. I feel like she really has given a lot to poetry.
It's the first time two women of color have won, back to back.
I know! I was thinking about that, and I was saying, "Next year, that probably won't happen." [laughs] 'Cause someone somewhere is probably fussin' about it. You know they are. Well, Lucille Clifton is well-liked in poetry, she really is. She writes good poems, and she's a really nice person. It was great to see her win; it really was. We still didn't know, when we were sitting at our little table waiting for them to announce the winner, any prize you really don't know. I guessed; right before, my friend said, "Who do you think will win?" and I said, "Lucille." But until that moment, I wasn't sure, 'cause you don't know. Some people, I guess it's obvious, and others it isn't. Sometimes, when I'm judging things, you pick your finalists, and then, if it's close, then it's really tough. You have to keep reading and reading and reading. Sometimes that's really hard; sometimes when I judge I wish I could give more than one.
What do you consider the most important relationships between teaching and writing? You know, a lot of people say writing can't be taught.
Well, you certainly can teach students what makes a good poem and what makes a bad poem, and you can teach them how to write a good poem. It can be taught. For your gifted students, that's a whole other thing. But it can be argued that the raw talent is already there. You can teach somebody how to construct a good poem; you can teach someone how to read a poem; and how to tell if what they're reading qualifies as good or bad or mediocre. So there are definitely things that can be taught. And it also teaches discipline. I feel like the discipline that you learn in being able to sit down and concentrate on one subject and craft something can be carried over into other areas of your life. And that's what I try to teach my beginning students, many of whom are not going to be writers. Our beginning writing here is a Humanities course, so we often have many students who are just taking writing as a one-time deal. I really do think some things can be taught.
Your poem "Pentecost" ends with the lines, "If you suffer from the grave/ you can kill from it." This is the only published poem you've dedicated to yourself. Why?
[laughs] Oh, yeah, well, I was younger then! I guess I was into this Zapata thing back when. I got into Mexican history and I was reading a lot, and I was remembering that movie from years ago. To me, he was a hero. See, it was more like, not the reality, but the character I created that I was into. Now this is so old I don't know that I even remember exactly what was going on at the time, in my mind. It was just a long time ago.
You've never dedicated another poem to yourself.
No, I wouldn't today, I don't think.
Out of humility, or what?
Oh, I don't know. I guess I would, if I wanted to. Maybe I thought that was the be-all and end-all for Ai at the time, but I certainly don't think there's a be-all and end-all now.
To be a revolutionary?
No, it wasn't literal at all.
Iconographically.
Maybe. I don't know what I meant. Sorry! I can't help you! It was thirty... how many years ago was that? '78? '77? There's a lot of water under that bridge. A lot of poverty-stricken summers for Ai.
Really?
Yeah! I was pretty broke, before I got this job. I was so broke, they sent a grad student to get me, [laughs] and I had to use his credit card; I had to buy stuff on his credit card. The dean lent me a thousand dollars, when I got here, so I could rent an apartment. I was totally broke.
Last year!?
Yeah! I hadn't taught since Colorado. I couldn't get a job.
Get out.
No, I'm not kidding you; it was horrible.
And you went from that to winning the National Book Award.
Yeah. [laughs] But I had to sell my whole poetry collection to survive. I have hardly any books of poetry left. I would have to buy someone else's collection. I called this guy I sold them to, and I think he sold my stuff. So I have to begin again. And many of them were old, signed copies. It's really sad, but I guess it's okay.
So that's what you meant when you said that you'd worked off all your bad karma.
Yeah, I guess I have! I mean, it was horrible. I had a horrible time, beginning in Boulder, the second year. I couldn't afford the rent. I had to get out of there and go to Arizona. It's really a fuckin' nightmare. But Baby Ai can pay it now!
Isn't that strange - to go from a position of not being able to negotiate for yourself, to being able to get what you need done.
Yeah! I would say some guardian angel somewhere was lookin' down on Baby Ai.
Yeah. And for Native Americans and Indians -- well, we just call ourselves Indians here; I'm vice president of the Native American faculty, too, so I have a lot of duties now here -- so it was another win for them, too, and for Oklahoma, which is a state that's had a lot of problems, like the Oklahoma City bombing. You know, that's the thing about minority faculty that I don't know if people understand: you are not simply filling one role; you don't go to a school just as a faculty member. You have duties. Like I am standing in for Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians at my school, generally, because I'm the only minority faculty in the English Department.
Seriously?
Yeah. There's a man from India, but that's it.
Is that something that you choose?
What? To help? To stand in?
To be there, as opposed to someplace where you would...
Oh! Well, I was here as a visitor, just for a year, and then when I won the Book Award, they offered me tenure starting in January. So I won the Book Award in November, and they offered me a full professorship with tenure in January. And I was like, "Well, Ai, a bird in the hand, you know... this is a really good offer." So I thought, well, I'll just take it. So I sort of ... they made it so fast, I sort of didn't think about it. And I'm here doing research on my Indian family. I'm not done with my research, and they gave me a lot of money, too, so you know, it's a good deal! There are probably other places I'd like. I wouldn't mind being in Arizona, but Arizona didn't make me an offer! And I'm doin' okay. I don't know. Oklahoma certainly has its share of bigotry, which I feel I have certainly experienced. I haven't talked to the powers-that-be about it, but I certainly feel that there's some out there, and I'm not used to the kinds of encounter here, and some of it has been anti-Indian. [laughs] So I'm gettin' it from everywhere! I talked to this taxi driver about it, 'cause she's trying to find her Cherokee grandmother. She said, "Oh, they're very prejudiced towards Indians here." And I said, "Well, why?" And she said, "Well, they think they have everything." I said, "Well, they lost everything!" So there's definitely some of that in my area of Oklahoma.
The resentment?
Oh yeah, I've heard that. Well, I've certainly had some problems; let's just put it like that. Some racial, and some sexual. It's a mix, when you're minority faculty and a woman, because it's race and sex. I'm not trouble-free.
Do you feel that from the other side, too, where you get exoticized as a woman of color, and given all sorts of exotic praise or put up as window dressing?
Oh, I'm sure it happens. I don't think I'm getting that here actually, which I guess is a compliment to the place. But I have sometimes wondered about the amount of praise I was getting. Slightly. [laughs] But it always happens, when you're a minority. I don't think I've been over-praised; I write good poems. I just think of it like that. I don't question it too much.
I never think of myself as a token. Anytime people try to make me one, I just reject it. I never really capitalized on my minority status. I didn't really want to do that. There were instances when I was younger when I certainly could have done that. I'm not an enrolled tribe member now, but I'd mentioned it in a magazine somewhere, and Indian people wrote me and stuff, but it seemed like I have so many mixtures, it wasn't right of me to capitalize on my Indian blood. And that might have been skewed, you know, I might have been wrong, but it's been proved to me since I moved here that it's not too late, and it's your family, so you have a right. I have a right to go in there and say, "I have this and that Indian blood."
It's real interesting here, 'cause my experience with the family background is not uncommon here; things that happened in my family are rather common here, and that's been good for me to see. Like, for instance, some of the Indian women married with whites and didn't get on the rolls, because they didn't want to be on the rolls. They wanted to be safe, didn't want to be Indian. And you would think, like when I was in Arizona, my opinion would have been, "Oh, that's bad; they were ashamed." But since I moved to Oklahoma and I can understand the historical circumstances, I understand that, and I'm not judging people for what they did then. They were trying to survive. But it raises interesting moral questions, and in some of my research I have to get the case files, and one family said they had a Choctaw mother, so they rushed out to Mississippi when they were doing the final rolls, and they tried to get on them. And the Choctaw/Chickasaw people questioned them over and over again. They would say, "Well, how does she look?" They got real down to it. They would say, "Was her hair kinky or straight?" I mean, it was totally naked. Over and over again, they'd describe her. She sounded Indian to me, but they went as far as to forge a letter from a Chief, saying she was Indian. They did bad things, and a lot of the names were similar to my family names. [laughs] I said, "Oh, they're pretty under-handed here; hmmmm, they could be family!" Two of the sons were in the Confederate Army, okay? So that would have been something. In the end, not enough names matched up, so they weren't my family, but they were denied tribal membership. But how would I have dealt with that? Two sons in the Confederate Army, for god's sake!
So there's a lot of interesting stuff in Oklahoma. They had slaves, too, you know, the "five civilized tribes," so there's all the different roles and mixtures, and it's just fascinating. So there is a rhyme or reason for my being here. I almost feel my great-grandfather, like the ghosts are out there. There are still things being hashed over today that began back when, on the Trail of Tears, for instance. If you tap into your ancestors, if you tap into the ghosts of these ancestors, they are still doing things. They are still saying, "Granddaughter, I want you to look into this for me." That's the way I feel about my great-grandfather, sometimes. He's saying, "You know, I want you to check on this; check on these mineral rights to this land that we have." So I'm looking for a deed, 'cause they sold the land, but they kept the mineral rights. It's all kinds of stuff here; it's just totally rich.
Sounds a little like the stuff that you touched on in "Passing Through."
Yeah, although I fictionalized it, so it's a woman who's half White. But yeah, that poem was sort of opening the door to what I'm actually working on for a memoir, for my own history. But, as far as I can tell, there wasn't any rape involved in what went on with my family's mixing; they willingly went to the other side or whatever, so that's interesting, too. But I don't know all the details. I have to track everything. I don't know whether I'll ever learn everything, but I'm trying to track some things down.
One woman here is Creek, and her grandmother was at Indian school when a White man married her when she was 12, and it was to get her land, see. So it's possible that my great-great-grandmother may not have even been married to this man, but she had a child with him. But it may have been that he had another wife; that's what I'm trying to zero in on. A White wife, see. Some of them had two and three families. One of the White men I looked at, he had several Choctaw wives. [laughs] He divorced one, and they said, "Why did you divorce?" He said, "I wanna get me another one!" It was weird like that. It was weird stuff! And then the last letter in his file is from one of the Choctaw wives, and they said, "Well, we understand he's a fugitive from justice." And I said, "Oh, could be my family; it's so wild!" It was really wild, you know.
These are your people?
[laughs] These are people I was hopin' might be my relatives! No, I haven't found them. You know, I'm lookin' up family names and a lot of times you get one name that's the same, and you don't know until you send for the case file from the national archives. Then you have all the information. So one name might be a family name, but then when you look at all the other wives, sons and daughters, they don't match up, right, so it's not your family.
And this will be your first novel?
Well, memoir. I wrote that novel, but it hasn't come out. I haven't dealt with my family history at all yet, so it'll all be in the memoir. It's so fascinating and interesting, it's kind of a riveting tale. I think it will be. It'll be part history, part memoir. There's not a whole lot out there about mixed-race people in the Old West in this area, so I thought I'd touch on a lot of things.
How will it be to have yourself as your subject for the first time?
It'll be okay. I sort of am a fictionalized subject in my novel, actually. I'm a character, and so is my mother, and my grandmother, my ancestors. But I don't know what's going to happen with that, because my editor keeps telling me it's not ready, and I don't want to do a re-write, so it's just in limbo. [laughs] I sold it, but I collected half the advance.
You don't care whether it's published?
Well, yeah, but I had to sort of let it go. I was upset for a while; I was real upset. But now, it's been so long since I sold it -- I think I sold it in '94 -- but it wasn't finished. It was only half-way through, I think. In '97, when I was in Boulder, I sent what I considered to be my final draft, and then she told me it wasn't ready, and then I was mad, and I didn't do anything for two years. Then after I won the Book Award, I had interest from other publishers, see, and then I told my editor, and she said, "Well, let me read it again." Then she thought it still needs works. It's at an agency, but I haven't signed with the agency, and they thought they could piggy-back with the memoir, so they were waiting for the memoir. So anyway, I don't know I'll do. Oh well. [laughs] It has interracial sex in it, so I wonder if that might be a problem. It shouldn't, but, you know.
Not anymore, though. The interracial movement is very strong now.
Well, that's what I'm dealing with. The novel is called Black Blood, and it turns on how much Black blood these people have, in the novel. [laughs] So how did they get mixed? By having sex with somebody in another race; that's how! But I think my memoir is really gonna be good. [laughs] If she ever finishes her research! I could go on and on; I guess you could tell. [laughs] It's weird because the past is living for me. I was brought up short in Austin, because I mentioned a rancher my great-grandfather used to work for in Texas, and a woman came up after and said, "I haven't heard those names in years!" He was one of those cattle kings, right, and the day of the cattle king is over, but to me it's living. I hadn't really thought about how much in the past that is. To me it's like it was yesterday.
Is that part of what you've described as "psychohistory"?
Well, no, psychohistory is more like ascribing some kind of psychological reason for an historical event. At least, that's how I think of it. But in the end, I might actually touch on some of that in my work -- maybe by saying, "Why did a relative not get on the rolls" or whatever. So anyway, I probably deviated from your question. And you're not payin' me for this interview, either!
No, ma'am!
Well, let's wrap it up, honey; it's almost 5! [laughs] What else did you want to ask?
Just a couple of questions. What do you see as the relation between history and poetry, or between poet and historian?
Well, I guess I sort of touched on that in the last conversation, right? The Greeks used to take a poet to battle with them, so the poet would stand on a hill or something and record the battle. And I do think of that as sort of my role sometimes. You know, we are observers sometimes, rather than participants. But other times we're participants/observers. I felt that way in Austin. I almost hated to leave. I went down for this book festival which is chaired by Laura Bush, so it was fascinating to be there and to have protests going on -- the festival was at the capital. At that time, I really did feel like it was almost Grecian, in that I was a poet and I was observing, and who knows, I might write something, sometime.
That was a remarkable event.
You know, I was supposed to have an interview with her; she was interviewing four writers, and it was going to be on an NBC affiliate. And that morning, as they drove off to the ranch, I thought, "Well, I guess there'll be no interview." And I thought maybe she wanted to interview me because I was born Texas, but I did win the Book Award -- that's how I haven't quite absorbed how big a prize that was. That was a really major award, and I'm sort of a representative of poetry now, in a way that I hadn't been before.
You were. But now there's larger recognition.
Yeah, definitely. I got so much press, you know. I went to the ceremony, week before last in New York, when Lucille Clifton won, and it was nothing like the year before. The press were everywhere for that 50th anniversary. There were press at this one, but they seemed to be everywhere the year before. I imagine Oprah being there had something to do with it, too, but we got a lot more attention I think last year. Plus, the press were all involved in the election this year. So that really was the year to win, for me anyway. It was a great year to win.
What do you think about Lucille Clifton winning this year?
Oh, I think it was great for her to win. I feel like she really has given a lot to poetry.
It's the first time two women of color have won, back to back.
I know! I was thinking about that, and I was saying, "Next year, that probably won't happen." [laughs] 'Cause someone somewhere is probably fussin' about it. You know they are. Well, Lucille Clifton is well-liked in poetry, she really is. She writes good poems, and she's a really nice person. It was great to see her win; it really was. We still didn't know, when we were sitting at our little table waiting for them to announce the winner, any prize you really don't know. I guessed; right before, my friend said, "Who do you think will win?" and I said, "Lucille." But until that moment, I wasn't sure, 'cause you don't know. Some people, I guess it's obvious, and others it isn't. Sometimes, when I'm judging things, you pick your finalists, and then, if it's close, then it's really tough. You have to keep reading and reading and reading. Sometimes that's really hard; sometimes when I judge I wish I could give more than one.
What do you consider the most important relationships between teaching and writing? You know, a lot of people say writing can't be taught.
Well, you certainly can teach students what makes a good poem and what makes a bad poem, and you can teach them how to write a good poem. It can be taught. For your gifted students, that's a whole other thing. But it can be argued that the raw talent is already there. You can teach somebody how to construct a good poem; you can teach someone how to read a poem; and how to tell if what they're reading qualifies as good or bad or mediocre. So there are definitely things that can be taught. And it also teaches discipline. I feel like the discipline that you learn in being able to sit down and concentrate on one subject and craft something can be carried over into other areas of your life. And that's what I try to teach my beginning students, many of whom are not going to be writers. Our beginning writing here is a Humanities course, so we often have many students who are just taking writing as a one-time deal. I really do think some things can be taught.
Your poem "Pentecost" ends with the lines, "If you suffer from the grave/ you can kill from it." This is the only published poem you've dedicated to yourself. Why?
[laughs] Oh, yeah, well, I was younger then! I guess I was into this Zapata thing back when. I got into Mexican history and I was reading a lot, and I was remembering that movie from years ago. To me, he was a hero. See, it was more like, not the reality, but the character I created that I was into. Now this is so old I don't know that I even remember exactly what was going on at the time, in my mind. It was just a long time ago.
You've never dedicated another poem to yourself.
No, I wouldn't today, I don't think.
Out of humility, or what?
Oh, I don't know. I guess I would, if I wanted to. Maybe I thought that was the be-all and end-all for Ai at the time, but I certainly don't think there's a be-all and end-all now.
To be a revolutionary?
No, it wasn't literal at all.
Iconographically.
Maybe. I don't know what I meant. Sorry! I can't help you! It was thirty... how many years ago was that? '78? '77? There's a lot of water under that bridge. A lot of poverty-stricken summers for Ai.
Really?
Yeah! I was pretty broke, before I got this job. I was so broke, they sent a grad student to get me, [laughs] and I had to use his credit card; I had to buy stuff on his credit card. The dean lent me a thousand dollars, when I got here, so I could rent an apartment. I was totally broke.
Last year!?
Yeah! I hadn't taught since Colorado. I couldn't get a job.
Get out.
No, I'm not kidding you; it was horrible.
And you went from that to winning the National Book Award.
Yeah. [laughs] But I had to sell my whole poetry collection to survive. I have hardly any books of poetry left. I would have to buy someone else's collection. I called this guy I sold them to, and I think he sold my stuff. So I have to begin again. And many of them were old, signed copies. It's really sad, but I guess it's okay.
So that's what you meant when you said that you'd worked off all your bad karma.
Yeah, I guess I have! I mean, it was horrible. I had a horrible time, beginning in Boulder, the second year. I couldn't afford the rent. I had to get out of there and go to Arizona. It's really a fuckin' nightmare. But Baby Ai can pay it now!
Isn't that strange - to go from a position of not being able to negotiate for yourself, to being able to get what you need done.
Yeah! I would say some guardian angel somewhere was lookin' down on Baby Ai.
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