A Word from Jewelle Gomez
As a group, we had the pleasure of corresponding with Gomez for the purpose of this project. We asked her a variety of questions pertaining to the themes we pulled out of this collection and she provided us with responses that are quoted throughout this site. Jewelle's responses are in red.
Interview Questions:
In our presentation of Don’t Explain, we began by asking our class how they felt while reading the book, considering the erotic nature of the collection. Response from individuals included:
In the use of the erotic in your writing, what is your intention in reader response? Do you expect certain reactions? Do the responses we described surprise you? It is obvious in our class response that your writing had an impact, is that the ultimate intention? What is your purpose if using the erotics?
When I published my vampire novel THE GILDA STORIES and did readings several times people commented that they thought there would be more sex. Maybe because my character is a lesbian they thought sex would be more central, but the book wasn't about that, it was about her coming of age over two hundred years. So when I decided to put some of my stories together and write some new ones I wanted to include some that did have more explicit sexual content. I don't write that many erotic stories, it's a very particular genre...that I don't read on public transportation either! As a feminist I have worked hard for women to regain our sense of sexual self apart from the dominant culture's objectification and exploitation. Women have been and continue to be portrayed as simply objects of male pleasure. Female pleasure is always secondary or made to seem scandalous. I wanted to portray some women characters who were enjoying their sexual lives in a healthy way. The US is an erotophobic culture at its Puritan core so we get either hypersexualized portrayals in media or unrealistically chaste fades to black. Reading sexual material naturally elicits a visceral response, that would be part of the point and it's also meant to tell you something about the characters...kind of 'you are what you eat'. And of course not every one enjoys the same type of erotica just as not every one enjoys the same type of sex. Maybe that it was lesbian sex put the readers off? Only the readers can examine that for themselves. Actually feeling something when reading explicit sexual writing is a good thing I'd say. The 'ick' response may be nature's way of saying you're not ready for this.
Acceptance is a theme running through some stories in Don’t Explain. Where do you think Black lesbians have to seek acceptance from? The white community? The Black community? Other races? The LGBT community? Is acceptance a continuing issue that arises for those that identify as Black lesbians? Where is acceptance lacking the most for Black lesbians? Do you feel that this is relevant to the themes found in Don’t Explain?
I believe we all must first seek acceptance within ourselves. This is true whether you are a lesbian of color, an Irish heterosexual, a Russian bi sexual, whatever. Learning who you are, what is important to you, what your values are, what you will contribute to the world...these are the most important things at your core. Then we seek family or community. Few humans want to be totally alone in the world so we look to others to create that community with us and acceptance...ours of others and theirs of us...means we have family. I don't seek acceptance from white people or any other group. I look for my legal and social rights and hope people will mind their manners around me.
“In essence, to be completely ‘normal,’ one must be White, masculine, and heterosexual, the core hegemonic White masculinity. This mythical norm is hard to see because it is so taken-for-granted. Its antithesis, its Other, would be Black, female, and lesbian, a fact that Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde pointed out some time ago.” (Black Sexual Politics, Collins 96)
What is your view on this? How does it impact your writing? Are your books used as a response to this?
I don't like to talk in terms of polar opposites much. It leaves so many people out of the equation and perpetuates the paradigm of black vs white which obscures the myriad of other issues in that discussion such as class. That stark polarization also dismisses the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic lives so many Americans (meaning now those in the US) lead. My own life has been a navigation through Cape Verdean, Wampanoag, Ioway roots, each group with its own relationship to the dominant European culture. There is no monolithic black. Patricia's statement, though, does highlight the work that women in general and women of color have. Becoming visible,emerging from the shadow cast by white, patriarchal culture is not easy and I do know that I write in response to that need to emerge. And at the same time I write knowing two other important things: the specifics of my cultural and personal experience make a story interesting (which is true for every writer) and that ultimately we are all writing about the same things.
We read previous statements that you have made about the use of speculative fiction in writing. In an interview, you reference a quote by Sara Lefanu which states, “For women, [speculative fiction] can be seen as allowing the expression of wish fulfillment”(1988, 76). You write, “For Black lesbians the wishes are a lot larger and richer than most people have been able to imagine. In our speculations about the future the vision of the struggle is often quite brutal, but the vision of the triumph is equally fantastic”. Could you please elaborate on how you use speculative fiction in Lynx and Strand & Houston? Does speculative fiction provide a triumph for those that identify as a Black lesbian?
I am an optimist by nature so tend to write stories which envision the possibility of people finding themselves and finding each other. That's why on the story Houston, Gilda tries to avoid killing the hunter and is able to bond with Houston. The idea is that they can see each other for who they are inside...that core again. In the novella Lynx and Strand, I started just wanting to tell the story of a woman getting an extreme tattoo. It came to me as I was getting one of my tattoos (not extreme but no butterflies either). And as I worked I thought about the belief that what you have tattooed on your body becomes part of you. Then I started thinking about a relationship between two people so opposite as to be painful. The tattoo of one onto the other is one of the most 'extreme' plot things I've ever done and it served the story well as a metaphor for how we dig down inside to find what we need to make ourselves whole.
Based on this quote we found from persistenceanthology.tumblr.com:
If you could give your younger self one book to read, what would it be?
“I wish I’d had my own novel, The Gilda Stories, when I was younger. It postulates so many ways of being human without judgment that I would have learned my own power much earlier.”
Since this time, have you found other literature that tackles the same topics as you do? Are there any pieces of literature that you would deem worthy to compare with the type of space you create in your literature?
There are so many books I wish I'd had as a young person: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Lisa See's Snowflower and the Secret Fan, Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. But I did read James Baldwin's Another Country as a teenager and felt it spoke to me about a larger world of emotion that too often goes unspoken or suppressed for young people.
Have there been any moments or movements in society that have affected the way your write or the purpose for which you write? Specifically for Don’t Explain?
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement taught me that the creative arts are an important part of any social activism. Culture and activism are entwined. Everyone is writing from some political perspective whether knowingly or not...from the first book of the Bible or even before that in the Egyptian scrolls, to the latest NY Times best seller. So I write as a lesbian feminist of color always. It shapes what I want to write about and what I want to say. Just as being a middle-class Irishman shaped what James Joyce wrote about or being a suburban Democrat in Maine shapes what Stephen King writes about. We just don't generally identify that 'white' and 'straight' writers create from a particular movement but it's important to see their context as much as to see mine. That's one way to begin to break down that idea of a 'mythical norm' that Patricia talked about.
Are you currently working on anything? If not, do you have plans for any future projects?
I'm working on several things. My new play 'Waiting for Giovanni' had its world premier in San Francisco this past fall and I'm doing rewrites and trying to bring it to New York and Los Angeles. It's about a moment I imagine in the life of James Baldwin and it's part of a play cycle I'm doing. I've started on the next play in the cycle which is about Alberta Hunter, the singer and composer who wrote Bessie Smith's first big hit. I'm also working on the next Gilda novel, The Alternate Decades. I have about five of the eight chapters written. I love coming back to Gilda, she's like an old friend.
Interview Questions:
In our presentation of Don’t Explain, we began by asking our class how they felt while reading the book, considering the erotic nature of the collection. Response from individuals included:
- “I started reading it on the bus and had to stop because I felt uncomfortable reading it in a public setting.”
- “I thought it was gross.”
- “I skipped over certain parts because I couldn’t handle reading it.”
In the use of the erotic in your writing, what is your intention in reader response? Do you expect certain reactions? Do the responses we described surprise you? It is obvious in our class response that your writing had an impact, is that the ultimate intention? What is your purpose if using the erotics?
When I published my vampire novel THE GILDA STORIES and did readings several times people commented that they thought there would be more sex. Maybe because my character is a lesbian they thought sex would be more central, but the book wasn't about that, it was about her coming of age over two hundred years. So when I decided to put some of my stories together and write some new ones I wanted to include some that did have more explicit sexual content. I don't write that many erotic stories, it's a very particular genre...that I don't read on public transportation either! As a feminist I have worked hard for women to regain our sense of sexual self apart from the dominant culture's objectification and exploitation. Women have been and continue to be portrayed as simply objects of male pleasure. Female pleasure is always secondary or made to seem scandalous. I wanted to portray some women characters who were enjoying their sexual lives in a healthy way. The US is an erotophobic culture at its Puritan core so we get either hypersexualized portrayals in media or unrealistically chaste fades to black. Reading sexual material naturally elicits a visceral response, that would be part of the point and it's also meant to tell you something about the characters...kind of 'you are what you eat'. And of course not every one enjoys the same type of erotica just as not every one enjoys the same type of sex. Maybe that it was lesbian sex put the readers off? Only the readers can examine that for themselves. Actually feeling something when reading explicit sexual writing is a good thing I'd say. The 'ick' response may be nature's way of saying you're not ready for this.
Acceptance is a theme running through some stories in Don’t Explain. Where do you think Black lesbians have to seek acceptance from? The white community? The Black community? Other races? The LGBT community? Is acceptance a continuing issue that arises for those that identify as Black lesbians? Where is acceptance lacking the most for Black lesbians? Do you feel that this is relevant to the themes found in Don’t Explain?
I believe we all must first seek acceptance within ourselves. This is true whether you are a lesbian of color, an Irish heterosexual, a Russian bi sexual, whatever. Learning who you are, what is important to you, what your values are, what you will contribute to the world...these are the most important things at your core. Then we seek family or community. Few humans want to be totally alone in the world so we look to others to create that community with us and acceptance...ours of others and theirs of us...means we have family. I don't seek acceptance from white people or any other group. I look for my legal and social rights and hope people will mind their manners around me.
“In essence, to be completely ‘normal,’ one must be White, masculine, and heterosexual, the core hegemonic White masculinity. This mythical norm is hard to see because it is so taken-for-granted. Its antithesis, its Other, would be Black, female, and lesbian, a fact that Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde pointed out some time ago.” (Black Sexual Politics, Collins 96)
What is your view on this? How does it impact your writing? Are your books used as a response to this?
I don't like to talk in terms of polar opposites much. It leaves so many people out of the equation and perpetuates the paradigm of black vs white which obscures the myriad of other issues in that discussion such as class. That stark polarization also dismisses the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic lives so many Americans (meaning now those in the US) lead. My own life has been a navigation through Cape Verdean, Wampanoag, Ioway roots, each group with its own relationship to the dominant European culture. There is no monolithic black. Patricia's statement, though, does highlight the work that women in general and women of color have. Becoming visible,emerging from the shadow cast by white, patriarchal culture is not easy and I do know that I write in response to that need to emerge. And at the same time I write knowing two other important things: the specifics of my cultural and personal experience make a story interesting (which is true for every writer) and that ultimately we are all writing about the same things.
We read previous statements that you have made about the use of speculative fiction in writing. In an interview, you reference a quote by Sara Lefanu which states, “For women, [speculative fiction] can be seen as allowing the expression of wish fulfillment”(1988, 76). You write, “For Black lesbians the wishes are a lot larger and richer than most people have been able to imagine. In our speculations about the future the vision of the struggle is often quite brutal, but the vision of the triumph is equally fantastic”. Could you please elaborate on how you use speculative fiction in Lynx and Strand & Houston? Does speculative fiction provide a triumph for those that identify as a Black lesbian?
I am an optimist by nature so tend to write stories which envision the possibility of people finding themselves and finding each other. That's why on the story Houston, Gilda tries to avoid killing the hunter and is able to bond with Houston. The idea is that they can see each other for who they are inside...that core again. In the novella Lynx and Strand, I started just wanting to tell the story of a woman getting an extreme tattoo. It came to me as I was getting one of my tattoos (not extreme but no butterflies either). And as I worked I thought about the belief that what you have tattooed on your body becomes part of you. Then I started thinking about a relationship between two people so opposite as to be painful. The tattoo of one onto the other is one of the most 'extreme' plot things I've ever done and it served the story well as a metaphor for how we dig down inside to find what we need to make ourselves whole.
Based on this quote we found from persistenceanthology.tumblr.com:
If you could give your younger self one book to read, what would it be?
“I wish I’d had my own novel, The Gilda Stories, when I was younger. It postulates so many ways of being human without judgment that I would have learned my own power much earlier.”
Since this time, have you found other literature that tackles the same topics as you do? Are there any pieces of literature that you would deem worthy to compare with the type of space you create in your literature?
There are so many books I wish I'd had as a young person: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Lisa See's Snowflower and the Secret Fan, Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. But I did read James Baldwin's Another Country as a teenager and felt it spoke to me about a larger world of emotion that too often goes unspoken or suppressed for young people.
Have there been any moments or movements in society that have affected the way your write or the purpose for which you write? Specifically for Don’t Explain?
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement taught me that the creative arts are an important part of any social activism. Culture and activism are entwined. Everyone is writing from some political perspective whether knowingly or not...from the first book of the Bible or even before that in the Egyptian scrolls, to the latest NY Times best seller. So I write as a lesbian feminist of color always. It shapes what I want to write about and what I want to say. Just as being a middle-class Irishman shaped what James Joyce wrote about or being a suburban Democrat in Maine shapes what Stephen King writes about. We just don't generally identify that 'white' and 'straight' writers create from a particular movement but it's important to see their context as much as to see mine. That's one way to begin to break down that idea of a 'mythical norm' that Patricia talked about.
Are you currently working on anything? If not, do you have plans for any future projects?
I'm working on several things. My new play 'Waiting for Giovanni' had its world premier in San Francisco this past fall and I'm doing rewrites and trying to bring it to New York and Los Angeles. It's about a moment I imagine in the life of James Baldwin and it's part of a play cycle I'm doing. I've started on the next play in the cycle which is about Alberta Hunter, the singer and composer who wrote Bessie Smith's first big hit. I'm also working on the next Gilda novel, The Alternate Decades. I have about five of the eight chapters written. I love coming back to Gilda, she's like an old friend.