Review: Where Did You Sleep Last Night? by Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna subtitles her latest book, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, as a "personal history" rather than a memoir. The difference between the two terms is subtle but important--the book is as much a chronicle of her ancestors and a racially-divided world as it is a story of her own life.

Outwardly, the book hinges on the relationship between Senna's parents: Fannie Howe, a writer from the prominent white Boston upper-crust, and Carl Senna, a black intellectual from fuzzy Southern origins. The unlikely couple married in 1968, full of hope and revolutionary zeal, only to divorce in 1975, their union a victim of alcoholism, domestic abuse, and the social pressures of an inter-racial marriage on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement. More significant, however, is the relationship between Senna and her father. At the book's core is the author's dogged search for information regarding her father's roots--an often exhausting and heart-wrenching search that propels her on a journey through the South.

I found myself completely wrapped in the tangled threads of Senna's family history, eager for her to solve the mystery of her heritage. However, there was something keeping me from becoming completely involved in the story--something in her tone that's always bothered me. Senna was a visiting writer where I attended college and I took a creative writing seminar with her my last semester of senior year. I don't remember much about her--only about the writing prompts she gave us, the circles we would form for peer review. I think it's because she never seemed fully present or fully invested in our development as writers. Something about her kept us at a distance, even when we were surrounding her at a long table.

Given that I had taken a writing course with her, I read the book on multiple levels. On one of those levels, I wondered if her multi-racial identity grants her writing an authenticity and depth that would be somehow lacking in my own. All of her books (two novels and this memoir) focus on this idea of racial duality--of the constant struggle for identity when there isn't just one constant. But what does it mean when you're just...white?

While reading the book, I couldn't help feeling like without some element of another ethnicity to add dimension and significance to our experience, we racially plain people are one-dimensional, flat, without substance. There is an underlying tone of scorn for her mother's side of the family, described at one point as "a crowd of screaming red Irish faces, or a room of tight-lipped dismissive Wasps who assume their own significance and wit and intelligence as if they were still central, despite the evidence to the contrary." It was frustrating to feel like our ethnicity alone defines us and how we feel, see, and think about the world around us. Perhaps this is because my experiences have never hinged on my race--a luxury I certainly don't take for granted; however, I would like to believe that it is the totality of our life experiences that define us--not just our DNA.

On Keeping A Notebook

"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself."--Joan Didion, from the essay, "On Keeping a Notebook"

My first notebook came to me as a Christmas gift from my sister when I was six. She had made it in a crafts class at the junior high, and it was pink, with multicolored paper pages and the word "diary" stamped in gold on the front cover. Though I wrote in it sporadically, I didn't start keeping a faithful journal until the winter of my freshman year of high school. Writing in a notebook is a practice I've kept up with, more or less regularly, since starting that random February day. I keep twelve years' worth of notebooks in a large red storage bin in my closet here in Boston. About once a year, on some rainy Saturday, I'll pull one out and start reading. Half-forgotten memories can pull me in, sometimes for hours at a time, but mostly I tire of myself quickly and put it all away in disgust. But I would never throw them away.

In her essay, Didion says she doesn't keep a notebook as any kind of attempt to record the facts of her daily life or to fossilize the events of the world around her. So then, why? Why bother writing random snatches of thoughts, imagined encounters and half-remembered lines of dialogue? "Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point...our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implaceable 'I.'"

I had never questioned why I keep a notebook before reading this essay several weeks ago. It's just something I've always done, for better or worse. A compulsion to write things down, as Joan calls it. Though I now write for several blogs, once kept a livejournal, and can type faster than I can write, it's always been a notebook and pen that I come back to. Something about having a physical record gives me comfort.

It always surprises me to learn that some writers don't keep personal notebooks or diaries. There's nothing much of note or interest in my notebooks, except to me, but writing there helps me sort out my thoughts and get out my angst.

How many of you keep journals or notebooks? Do you have a routine or schedule?

But I’m a writer.

Recently, at work, my position as copywriter has morphed into something ugly: Social media pimp. Or social media whore. Maybe both.

It started innocently enough. After a few weeks on the job, wanting to prove myself, I suggested including a blog on our Web site. My boss loved the idea. They had been wanting to “do more” with the site for ages, she told me, but no one had the time. Enter Julie.

So I set up our blog. Then our Twitter page. Then our blog feed. Now, I spend my mornings trolling the Web for other blogs related to what we do. I read post after post about the use of online networking and then blog about those posts. My tweets are links to other blogs and online articles. I’m blogging and linking and Twittering, reading and referring, commenting and responding.

And I have to say, though I’m using words to do these things, it doesn’t always feel like writing.

Granted, I’m not complaining. I have a job that I enjoy in a suicide-worthy economy. My co-workers are great, and my boss treats us to lunch most days.

But. Some days I long for the kind of writing you can sink your teeth into. You know, paragraphs without links. Thoughts and sentences longer than 140 words. While I know that social media is the writing train of the future and we all have to get on board, I still have my old-lady moments — moments in which I want to slow it down and take stock of what we’re missing, and losing. Because sometimes it feels like a lot.

Perhaps that can be my new Facebook status.

Happy National Poetry Month!

NaPoWriMo has arrived! April is National Poetry Month, and Read Write Poem is celebrating with a thirty poems in thirty days challenge. Here's my angle: write all the poems on a theme and have a draft for a chapbook. Yes, some days I might miss a poem, and on other days everything I write might frankly stink. That's what good friends and revision are for. But that won't be the case every day, and getting a few gems out of NaPoWriMo will be worth joining this big alliterative orgy of clever slant rhymes, puns, hypertexts, wit, and sharp social criticism.

An excellent place to look for inspiration is Poets.org's Poem A Day e-mail list, which is also archived on the website. I could list my favorite online places to read poems, but I think it's more fun to find your own. Start with the great work on Fringe and start following links. I always arrive to something cool, most recently Hit and Run Magazine.

Still not fired up? Read Charles Bernstein's satirical Against National Poetry Month. He's right perhaps about what the aim of the corporate sponsorship of NaPoMo is about, but that's no reason to ignore perfectly good free poems a day, and if you're inspired to write anti-poems sometimes, that's good, too.

Get your muse on

Are you a Calliope fan? Get down with Melpomene? Or does Urania do it for you? Not sure what I’m talking about? All the more reason to find your muse at Grub Street’s eighth annual The Muse & The Marketplace April 25-26 in Boston. Expect a weekend jammed with networking opportunities with literary agents and editors, workshops, lectures for veteran and newbie writers, and—for an additional fee—the chance to park your keister and manuscript down with an agent at Manuscript Mart for a twenty-minute critique. For a bit extra, you can also have lunch with Grub National Book Prize Winners. Don’t forget breakfast and lunch are included with registration! (One can't learn and schmooze on an empty stomach, right?) This year’s keynote speaker is Ann Patchett, among a slew of participating authors (30!).

Strapped for cash and not sure you can make it both days? A friend who went last year recommends going Sunday for the keynote speaker and said that one day of workshops should do the trick. Keep in mind that the “casual” lunch with the GNBP Winners is on Saturday. For more info visit museandthemarketplace.com.

REJECTED!

What to do with all those rejection slips? I know—bathroom wallpaper, bird nest offering, papier-mâché craftastic something-or-other, ugh. Or, you could send ANY 10 of those hoarded rejections (I know you're saving them for some sadistic reason because I am too) to Marginalia with $1 and receive an (almost free!) issue of Marginalia Magazine for your perusal. It's like positive publishing karma. Thanks to Brevity for the tip.


For your Sad Bastard discount send (10) rejections and $1 to:
Sad Bastard
Marginalia
P.O. Box 258
Pitkin, CO 81241

Midnight Bus Poetry

Over at Slog they're keeping the spirit of poetry alive by publishing bus-related poems written by their faithful readers in a new column called, Midnight Bus Poetry. Check out posts by Paul Constant for poems—which may not be highbrow but certainly are highly amusing!—about the bus riding experience. And if you're inspired, why not submit your own? Poems need to be 50 words or less and should be emailed to poetryonbuses@thestranger.com. Winners appear here and on the Slog Blog. Enjoy!

Spinning plates vs. eating ashes: the joy and the anguish

Ah, the rollercoaster world of The Writer; perilous, torturous, and (hopefully) gifted with the occasional smattering of giddy, sentence-spinning glee.

Being a hideously lazy waste of space, I'm not, nor ever will be, a 'writer'. At best, I'm 'someone who sometimes writes things that I don't have to'. Every now and then I'll wonder how I managed to spend all of Saturday's glorious daylight hours in front of my computer, churning out what only amounts to a couple of pages worth of shite, but most of the time I'm engaged in far less noble endeavours, like, I dunno, reading the paper, or the back of a cereal packet (good god, that’s a lotta sugar).

Today I stumbled across yet another fascinating Guardian piece (they should probably start paying me for all this unsolicited promo): 'Writing for a living: a joy or a chore?' and thought it might be nice to share it with you all, just in case anyone else out there might feel vaguely heartened that it's okay not be overwhelmed with frantic ecstasy with every word they type.

Here's someone else saying what I was trying to say, only with a lot more eloquence and authority:

"I get great pleasure from writing, but not always, or even usually. Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline – trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out. Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like Sisyphus; ending sometimes comes with the disappointment that this finite collection of words is all that remains of your infinitely rich idea. Along the way, there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you've nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting. But when you're in the zone, spinning words like plates, there's a deep sense of satisfaction and, yes, enjoyment…" (Hari Kunzru)

Even McEwan drops the occasional literary log

Since you Fringers seem to quite like your writing and your writers, I'd thought I'd share a piece of my Gurdian-centred perusing with you all:

'The trusted friends who steer novelists away from cliche'

Holding on

I recently started a new job. It’s the exact opposite of my previous job: creative, collaborative, lots of work to do, friendly people. Hell, I’m not even in a cubicle, and the walls, they’re not tan. I spend my days feeling challenged and inspired and motivated. Granted, it’s only been two weeks, but so far, I kind of love it.

And yet. Every time I begin something new, every time I commit to doing something that isn’t The Exact Thing I Want to Be Doing With My Life (writing full-time, and for myself), whether I find myself enjoying it or not, I worry that instead of helping me, it will take me further away from my ultimate goal.

What if I love copywriting so much that my unfinished book continues to collect dust? What if “I’ll work on it next month when I have more time and energy” becomes next year becomes next decade becomes never? Liking my job has the potential to become an excuse, a way to justify complacency, a reason to not take the risks I need to take.

Ultimately, whenever I confront the practical vs. the meaningful, I always run smack into the same question: If you’re not currently doing something to work toward achieving your life’s goal, how can you still hold onto it?

Perhaps asking myself this question over and over again is my way of holding on.

Down but not out

When a friend told me that John Updike had passed away, I surprised him with the gravity of my response. “It’s been a tough year for the literary world,” I said, sighing.

I was thinking, of course, of another profound loss last September.

While most industries are nothing but gloom and doom these days, the literary field has taken quite a few beatings as of late. There’s the demise of the publishing industry; the technological take-over of books; the ongoing crisis of the short attention span; the destruction of quality literature; the downsizing of newspapers and columns; the influx of dirty, lying memoirists; and the harmful deluge of more creative writing MFA programs. Hell, even Toni Morrison’s latest book was met with little to no excitement and so-so reviews.

By all accounts, it’s a terrible time to be a writer. The great ones are dying off in record number, and the new ones can’t compete with snappy blogs, clever tweets, and celebrity tell-alls.

The way I see it, in times such as these, writers have three options: (1) Drink yourself into oblivion to numb the pain caused by the demolition of your dreams, (2) Throw in the towel and finagle your way into an industry that isn’t dying, like, say, fundraising, or (3) Use the pain to fuel your writing, and write your fucking hands off.

I intend to try to do the latter. Despite all evidence to the contrary, writers may be down, but as history has shown us, we’re never out. According to Updike, “The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.”

So I say pick yourself up and keep at it. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always option #1.

Writing Under Stress

Several weeks ago, two days before my twenty-fifth birthday, I was struck by a case of appendicitis and had to undergo an emergency appendectomy at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. I had never been hospitalized before, had never even broken a bone before (though I suffered a nasty sprain resulting from a too-spirited game of Wii Tennis).

Before you get all freakily concerned, I'm fine. Appendectomies are like the bean burrito of surgeries: you can't really mess one up, and the professionals have probably done thousands of them in their careers. Going under the knife (or rather, the tiny little instrument they now use) didn't bother me as much as the fact that everything was taking place, in my mind, in sort of an abstract sense.

I experienced it not as, I think, a normal person should experience an illness. Or maybe it is and I just never had a chance to find out before now. But my mind was stuck seeing things as if I was jotting down mental notes for Chapter Five of a best-selling memoir. I couldn't remember for the life of me what the name of my nurse was or who I had given my insurance card to or where I'd dropped my blood-soaked backpack (an IV needle went badly during admittance). I could only remember really, really good imagery and symbolism, metaphors and morbid jokes.

I recall vividly the old woman, stuck in the ER hallway with me, beating the metal railing of her hospital bed with her red velvet slipper and shouting "I need help! I have a terrible pain!" over and over while everyone ignored her.

I remember drifting off to sleep while waiting for a CAT scan, only to be woken up by an old man vomiting blood into a small blue plastic tupperware at my elbow.

I know for sure that before I went under, the surgeon said to me, "Boston, huh? Just think: if it'd only been a few months earlier, you might be getting this surgery at Harvard. But now you're at Maimonides!" He seemed to think was fantastically bad planning on my part. (It is a testament to the amount of pain I was in, I guess, that I didn't bother to point out the nonexistence of The Harvard Hospital.)

But I can't remember what my last thought was before they snuffed me out, or who was with me when I woke up, or what they had dressed me in and at what point. Important, applicable facts escape me. I was only interested in writing my memoirs.

After a miraculous recovery that I attribute to my relatives force-feeding me bacon and cream-based soups, I can't help but wonder if all the things I'm experiencing in my life are viewed through this delusional lens of Writer. Historian. The Hero of Our Tale. What arrogance is this, that I refuse to remember what plan my health insurance is, but I expect my rendering of a red velvet slipper smacking against metal to somehow be of importance to someone else?

As with most of my existential crises, this one was solved in a homosexual way. I had volunteered with SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders), and they've decided to put me to work on a project, along with tons of fantastic and talented writers, to collect my elders' life stories and write them up in a book. It's an exciting project that could go in many different directions, and it serves to remind me that I am not my own best character. I am not the hero of this memoir (that doesn't exist and probably wouldn't get published if it did). The best characters are the people around me, and I need to be concentrating on their stories.

I guess this post has a moral? I am sorry about that. Here, have a picture of a cute kitten.

Delegation or diplomacy?

Beat the slush pile! It’s every unpublished writer’s dream, no? The world is changing: get ready to wake up to your new reality...

We’ve all heard the horror stories of bored work-experience kids being handed your masterpiece – what if they overlook your skill? What if they’re so overwhelmed and overburdened that everything they read disintegrates into mediocrity, or, even worse, utter shite? Well, in this wonderful age the aloof and inaccessible world of publishing is opening its iron doors and letting everyone pitch in. Thomas Nelson started gifting books to bloggers willing to write a review, and now, Harper Collins have created their very own online slush pile, available to anyone willing to create an account whore out their wares.

The premise is simple: upload your novel and let the masses decide whether it’s worth printing. This is more than delegation, my friends; this is a community. Never feel alone and unloved again; build up a snazzy fan base; get people talking, bask in the buzz.

So will it work? If the public get to play an active role, I suppose it’s publishing gold; after all, the people get what they want, and the publishers get their money. I’m not sure why I’m not thrilled by Authonomy (in spite of its nifty name). The discerning eye is not gifted out to everyone; this is a public (in the UK at least) who lap up shoddy celebrity memoirs, power of the human spirit mush and other titbits of cultural decay. I’ve always been a snob about such things, so perhaps I’m being too harsh... what do you guys think? Is anyone rushing to upload their novel? Or are you more inclined towards the (mildly more empowering) issuu approach? Or is anyone out there a reclusive Salinger type, penning secret wonderworks for your own pleasure?