Although I remember summer ending this way, I think this was the last day of July:
I knew I looked beautiful in Misti’s swimsuit, because I was only 108 pounds. I knew this because I weighed myself every day. I knew I looked beautiful because A. and Misti both kept staring at me and debating whether we should skinny-dip. I felt like shit because the night before, A. and I took mushrooms at 1 a.m. and I only got one hour of sleep before getting up for work. While Misti stripped down and A. went over to her, I floated on my back with my ears underwater and stared into the purple sky turning dusk blue. They used to date and lived together for a while before Misti kicked him out because of his temper. I could feel little fish feeding on my feet. Misti swam closer to me, saying, You know, Jenny, I really want to fuck you—do you ever sweat?
Sometime in August:
My best friend and college roommate of three years moved into an apartment about ten minutes away. I see her again there. Where is your Buddha? she asks. She named my stomach Buddha once when I was high and laughing and rolling about the floor. Are you eating? she asks. Yes, I say. She says, I’ll be back. When she returns, she lays a huge German chocolate cake on the table in front of me. Eat it all, she says. I can’t, I say, I’m nauseated. You’re nauseated because you don’t eat, she says. I stare into the cake’s coconut flaked icing: a million anemones, waving in the sea, reaching out to me.
Although this should have happened sooner, this was toward the end:
All these art books, they say that I need to keep, at all times, a tube of Payne’s Grey. Why Payne’s Grey? this sad customer is asking me. I dream of my answer: because it is the grey of ghosts, like something haunted, a memory mixed with the blue of dusk to invoke sadness and, as always when there is sadness in memory, regret; think of every vase you could paint that way—in Payne’s Grey—dreaming of flowers to fill it.
On the EEO Genre Sheet
On interviewing
When I was on the job market, I was asked repeatedly to define nonfiction. I knew I could venture into one of two courses: I could give the traditional textbook definition, or I could say what I really felt. If I said what I really felt, then I knew I wouldn’t get a campus visit; I wouldn’t get the job. If I gave the textbook definition, it would make the interviewers feel that I was on their side, that I was a safe candidate, that I would be someone the chair and dean approved of. Because I have a natural inclination to be rebellious, I always chose to go the road of the untraditional. The interviews then became centered less on my qualifications and more on my transgressions. Some interviewers felt that I was misguided, that I needed counseling, and they would use the space of the interview to do just that. You see, they aimed to tame me, and it became their goal to do that before the next candidate arrived. It wasn’t about what I could offer but rather about what they could fix.
On former students
One of my goals as a teacher of nonfiction is to totally destroy every held belief a student has about essays and nonfiction. I expect my students to essay fiercely and obsessively. I want to see, truly, what new thing they will unleash into the universe. One student wrote quite beautifully. She wrote so poetically, but what she wrote wasn’t verse. It was essaying; it was essayistic; it was an essay. Many of my students did this over the years, but this one did it quickly and passionately. I met her later, randomly, on a street corner in the West Village. She said that she was depressed; her new teacher wouldn’t let her write; her new teacher told her she was writing poetry and the class wasn’t a poetry class. She asked her teacher if a prose poem could be nonfiction, and the teacher said no. I told her, why don’t you quite discreetly slip her a copy of Pope’s “An Essay on Man”?
I kept thinking about my former student and all her talent being crushed by a teacher who could have been in the room interviewing me, asking for my definition of nonfiction.
On being mixed
Once, when I was twenty-two, I worked in a mall in Roanoke, Virginia. I worked at several stores in the mall. I needed the money. I could go from part-time shift to part-time shift and not even have to leave the mall. One day, on break, a local came up to me and asked if I was “mixed.”
On being mixed 2
So, it seems that I am mixed. I am quite mixed. I am more mixed than many, many people I know. My father grew up knowing only that he was half Cherokee, half white. We’ve never known where his white ancestors came from; he became a ward of the state when he was eight, and so much of his history was lost. My mother is Thai, but she has curly hair, as do I, which leads me to think there must be something else lurking in there.
In terms of what I write, it seems that my writing is also mixed. I am sometimes called a poet, sometimes an essayist, sometimes a lyric essayist, sometimes a prose poet. My second book was published under the guise of fiction/poetry/essay.
I find these categorizations odd: I have never felt anything other than whole.
It seems to me that the inability to accept a mixed piece of writing is akin to literary discrimination. I think of the Equal
