Interview With Gayle
Brandeis
By Jenna Glatzer
Gayle is a writer
and dancer living in Riverside, California, with her husband and their two
children. She holds a BA in "Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression,
Meditation, and Healing" from the University of Redlands, and an MFA in
Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University.
Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in dozens of magazines and
anthologies, and have received numerous awards, including the Quality Paperback
Book Club/Short Story Magazine Award, and a grant from the Barbara Deming
Memorial Fund.
Gayle has been exploring the connection between writing and the body for
well over a decade, and continues to be humbled and delighted by how much she
still has to learn.
How did you get your start as a writer?
I’ve been writing since I was four years old; my first poem was “Blow,
little wind/blow the trees, little wind/blow the seas, little wind/blow me until
I am free, little wind.” I somehow knew, even then, that writing would
always be a source of freedom for me. I wrote for many, many, years
without any thought of publishing; I wrote just for the joy and release of it.
Professors and friends encouraged me to send my work out, but I didn’t see the
need for that; I think I just wasn’t quite ready to make my writing more
public. At some point, I think it was 1991 or so, someone gave me a gift
subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine. I noticed all the
calls for submission listed in the back, and thought, hmmm, maybe I should start
sending some of my work out. So I did. It all kind of snowballed
from there.
I understand you created your own major at the
University of Redlands. How and why did you do this?
The University of Redlands has an alternative program within the university;
it’s now called the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, but while I was
there it was the Johnston Center for Individualized Learning (it started out as
Johnston College, an autonomous school, in the 60s.) It’s such a vibrant,
creative, learning community because students are able to create the kind of
education they truly want for themselves. Writing and dance have been the
two constant threads through my life, and I knew I wanted to study them as
deeply as possible and figure out the ways that they connect. By creating
a B.A. in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation, and Healing,"
I was able to explore the aspects of my craft that were most meaningful to me.
I know it sounds like a very airy-fairy, touchy-feely, program—and it
certainly is, in many ways—but it was also academically rigorous enough for me
to graduate Phi Beta Kappa.
Explain to me what you mean when you say writing is
connected with the body.
Our culture tends to see such a split between mind and body—the mind is like
the wizard behind the curtain, controlling everything; the body is just a dumb
machine, there to do the mind’s bidding. I see mind and body as being
more intricately, intimately, connected; I think the body has its own
intelligence, its own native wisdom. All of our stories are written in our
flesh—our cells remember every bit of our history, and when we write, we can
tap into this. Our bodies are where we live most fully, where we register
sensation and emotion most deeply. If we consciously bring the body into the act
of writing—the experience of writing as well as the content--our work can
become more grounded and alive.
While you were working on Fruitflesh, you heard
about another book coming out that tackled the connection between writing and
the body. Tell me about what happened.
When I first started writing this book, I called it "Writing from the Body."
I had written a substantial amount of it—maybe 150 pages—when I saw an ad
for a book with the same title written by a man named John Lee. I
literally felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach—I completely lost my
breath. I thought that there was no reason for me to continue with this
book, even though I had seen it as my life’s work, since it had already been
done. I felt rudderless for a while, bereft; eventually, I decided that
rather than continue to be upset, I should practice what I preach and write from
my own body as much as possible. I wrote poems, stories, nonfiction, and
found great satisfaction in this, but there was a part of me that still felt
like something was missing. Then I finally took a look at John Lee’s
book, and realized that even though he and I were exploring similar themes,
there was still room for my voice; his book didn’t cancel out the possibility
of my own. I returned to the project with renewed passion, deciding to
focus exclusively on women’s bodies, which is what I understand most
intimately, anyway.
Why do you feel this book is important for women?
Women often grow up hating their bodies. We are such an image-conscious
culture, and we learn early on to judge ourselves harshly, to care about our
appearance more than our inner life. We live our bodies from the outside
in rather than trusting them from the inside out. I hope that Fruitflesh
can help women break through that and access the real power and creativity of
our bodies, which is there no matter how we look. I would love for my book
to help our culture evolve past the beauty myth that we have lived under for so
long.
How did you sell it to HarperCollins?
After looking through writers’ guides, like Writer’s Market and Writer’s
Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents, I had targeted
HarperSanFrancisco as a good home for the book early on. My first agent
sent an early draft to them at my request. They liked the book, but
ultimately turned it down; they were concerned that readers wouldn’t be able
to connect to it personally because it was so much about my own experience.
I had rewritten the book this way after being told by an editor at another
house that there wasn’t enough of me in the book, so this advice was pretty
confusing! At this point, I hadn’t brought fruit into the process of the
book yet; the title "Fruitflesh" came from a single chapter that
explored my penultimate experience with a strawberry, but the rest of the book
was fruit-less. My agent became ill and had to stop working, so I was on
my own for a while. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the book, so I
set it aside and worked on other things. Then I had an epiphany about
fruit after I bought a print of a goddess surrounded by watermelon. A
draft poured out of me pretty quickly. I wrote to the editor at
HarperSanFrancisco who had liked the earlier version and told her that I had
done a radical revision of the book. She asked to see it; the rest is
history. It took a long time to get to this point—I had started writing
the book over 10 years before—but I am so deeply grateful for how everything
turned out. I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful editor, a more
supportive publisher.
How does fruit symbolize a woman's body?
Our bodies are so fruitful—we are brimming with creative possibility.
Fruits hold seeds inside them for future birth, future growth—so do we!
Plus women’s bodies are so luscious and juicy.
Let's say I have a very negative body image. Does this
necessarily mean my writing will suffer?
I don’t think having a negative body image will necessarily hurt a person’s
writing, but I think it could possibly limit the scope of that person’s
expression. I think negative body image is often born of fear—fear of
not living up to the cultural ideal of how our bodies should look, of not
measuring up to other people’s expectations, etc.—and those same fears can
put a huge damper on our creative life. Writing and self-acceptance both
require a lot of courage. I know I’m not always up to the task,
myself—even though I’ve written this book, even though I understand how
silly the beauty myth truly is, I sometimes fall into the trap of it and begin
to feel cringes about my thighs, etc. It is usually during those times
that I have the most serious doubts about my writing. I know that when I
feel most at home in my own skin, I also feel most at home in my writing.
Why is it important for writers to be in touch with all
of their senses, and how can we practice this?
When we write with our senses open and engaged, our writing becomes so much more
vivid and vibrant. I think readers can get more fully into a story or poem
if it grabs the senses—if we can smell the jasmine blooming outside the window
or taste the fear on someone’s tongue or feel the way a waistband digs into a
character’s belly. I think it’s important for writers to take the time
to slow down and be fully present, to experience the world around them as openly
as possible. We can do this at any moment; just try to quiet the mind and
ask yourself—what do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell,
taste, touch? Can you describe these things as fully as possible? As
I mention in the prologue of the book, strawberries are great for sensory
practice—take five minutes to explore a strawberry without tasting it; look at
it as if you’ve never seen a strawberry before in your life. Smell it,
rub it against your cheek, notice the way the flesh swoops under each seed.
Then take five minutes to eat it; note each texture in your mouth, each
strata of flavor. Taking the time for these practices can enrich our writing
immeasurably.
What do you hope people will take away from this book?
I hope people will come away with a sense of wonder—wonder in our bodies, in
our senses, in the amazing possibilities of language, the limitlessness of our
creative potential. I hope people will find it a juicy source of
inspiration, one they can return to whenever they need a little jumpstart.
What's something that surprised you about the
publishing process?
I was happily surprised by how human it was. I had heard such horror
stories about difficult editors, impersonal publicists, etc., but my experience
was completely opposite. I feel so incredibly lucky to be surrounded by
such talented, warm, wonderful, people. Many, many hands ultimately went
into the creation of this book and I am grateful for all of them.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I am really not comfortable with tooting my own horn, but I should mention that
my novel, The Book of Dead Birds, recently won the 2002 Bellwether Prize
in Support of a Literature of Social Change established by Barbara Kingsolver.
The judges were Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Terry Karten, the
Executive Editor of HarperCollins. It will be published next May. I
am still in a state of astonishment. It is really beyond anything I could have
dreamed for. I want to use the experience as a reminder for others to keep
writing, keep following your heart, your fruitflesh, your bliss, with your work.
I wish all the writers out there the very best.
ORDER
FRUITFLESH BY CLICKING HERE.
