Interviews

Press Interview

Q: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

A: No, I always wanted to be the girl with the most cake.

Q: So what happened?

A: My life as an earnest, experimental dance performer ended, and I had to find another way to sell my soul.

Q: The main character in your novel, CRASHING AMERICA, is a young street punk. Is she based on your life experiences?

A: We both left home early, got arrested for "Being Beyond Parental Control," and ended up relying on our own inner resources.

Q: Does it bother you that readers always want to know whether your characters are based on real-life?

A: No. I understand. As a fiction writer, though, I can't help but be more entranced with my make-believe world than my actual past. As a reader, I find myself, just like everybody, wondering what parts of a story are "real." Does an author have the authority to write about her content?

Q: Do you think you have the authority to write about a 17 year-old street punk?

A: Somehow, yes. I know her better than I know myself, perhaps because I'm basing her on memories of what it felt like to be her age and younger. I've got a lot of distance from that time so I can see her more objectively than I can see my current self. Although I had a "normal" childhood, I started leaving home whenever I could at about age 13. What I remember is that I wanted to connect and become close to every person and every place I went.

I lived in a world of intensity in which I continually reached out for new experience. Going to the next place or next person or next interesting event and spinning around in a kind of exciting yet isolated way.

Q: Would you call your main character, Girl, innocent?

A: Maybe. I didn't want to write about a cynical, ironic hipster. I wanted a character who felt deeply, who saw the beauty in the world, and yet was incredibly at sea as to how to be a responsible human being.

Q: For example, she steals. . .

A: Yes, I've observed how many people who come from hard backgrounds feel that the world owes them stuff. There are these holes inside and stealing something is a small way to try to get back what you've never had. In Girl's case, it's also a way to connect with the people she meets. Other people are not reliable sources of attention for her; she knows that people will leave her life as quickly as they came in. So she wants to take some token from them while she can.

Q: Did you have a lot of crazy on-the-street experiences?

A: Yes. Lots of crazy stuff. I was just thinking last night about an old friend —hiding with her on the staircase of a flea-bag hotel on Mission. We must have been about 13. We were stranded at 3 am with no money. When a woman left the hotel with her date, she saw us and offered us her room for the night. I remember her kindness, her voice. . .

Q: That reminds me of Girl's list of truths. She says,"Always talk to strangers. They will be the ones who will help you in the end."

A: Yes.

Q: One of her other seven truths is, "Love dreams will choke you with tighter hands than loneliness." What's that about?

A: I remember a time when I had no understanding that love could be a consistent, steady thing. That's what I think is true about Girl. Girl makes do, without believing she needs much from anybody. I felt the same way, was much tougher as a kid than I am now. But it occurs to me as I say this, that maybe I was fooling myself, just like Girl.

You know, this was the most difficult thing about writing from Girl’s point-of-view. Consciously she never wants to admit vulnerability, so her needs and desires only came out in the story in sudden flares. And when that happened, I would be so relieved to finally see it, and yet it would kill me because it was so raw.

Q: So much for Girl's character, what about the theme of the book. . . ?

A: Character comes first! Just like when I was writing the book, I started with character and only gradually learned with the theme was about.

Q: It's place, isn't it? The theme seems to be about how the places we live do or don't represent who we are as people.

A: That's one way to see it!

Q: There are so many opposites that come together in the book: blue state VS red state, runaway VS farmer, queer desire VS stable marriage, god VS punk.

A: The media has divided the country into red and blue camps, but we are more interesting than that. We may be fractured as a country, but the interesting thing is how we are fractured on the inside. I wonder if we all contain the same broken pieces and longings.