Correa-Maynard

I recently came across an interview that Synne Rifbjerg had with author Zadie Smith at the Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark in 2017. I’m fascinated by Zadie Smith’s ability to understand the human psyche; I chose this interview because I think there is a pretty significant crossover between shame, writing, and publishing. 

The first question that Rifbjerg asks is “What is shame?” to which Smith replies that shame “gets a bad rep these days.” Smith otherwise implies that shame has a negative connotation where the debilitating aspects of shame outweigh the potential for shame to allow you to “propel you on to something.” 

In listening to how Shameless Hussy Press was founded in 1969, I was interested in how Alta settled on the name. She mentions that along with other writers, she had incredible difficulty in getting published. Originally, the press company was supposed to be titled Sisters in Struggle (supposedly to highlight the press company as an alternative for women who were trying to get their work published). However, Alta later changed the name of the press to Shameless Hussy. To me, it seems that Alta was more focused on transforming the “struggle” into an action which, in a way, reclaims the shame surrounding marginalized people who wanted to put their work to print but weren’t given the opportunity to. This is consistent with Smith’s interview where she mentions that there is a “Shame of not being understood, or not being able to make yourself understood is kind of a corrosive type of shame.” Alta suggests that the shame of not being understood challenged her to make her own publishing company, where she was allowed to be shameless. 

Furthermore, alternative publishing companies were motivated by the corrosive types of shame that can debilitate writers and began to organize publishing companies that were shameless. This Bridge Called My Back is certainly another example of the intersection between shame, writing and third world feminism. 

Yet, Alta mentions later in the interview that women destroyed her machinery and burned all of her books. In response, both Alta’s daughter Lorelai, and the interviewer Remi concur that women were threatened by a feminist press. What’s evident to me is the duality of shame, particularly the duality of being shameless. In this case, these women who destroyed the collective works of these authors, writers, and poets were entirely shameless. In fact, the act of destroying and burning books is reminiscent of when Nazis burnt books as a form of religious, and cultural censorship. According to Zadie Smith, “to be shameless is to be very very dangerous.” In turn, Alta and Shameless Hussy Press were able to internalize the shame imposed on them by women and continue to create work that threatened the status quo. That too, is dangerous, considering the fact that their physical being was being threatened. 

In conclusion, shame and being shameless, can both help and hurt depending on the situation. I find that Smith’s words allow shame to come to the forefront of emotions that are associated with writing rather than just a deeply internalized feeling. 

The copy of This Bridge Called My Back that I have currently, is actually my mother’s (I say “is” because my mother refuses to let me completely own it out of fear that I will break it). Regardless of my ownership rights, I was particularly amused and later intrigued by the constant markups that my mother made in the margins of the poems. I included scans of one poem that my mom annotated with her reaction to Aurora Morales’s, “…And Even Fidel Can’t Change That!”. 

The conversation that we had on Thursday’s class, October 31st, involved the concept of legacy as a result of conscious and unconscious actions taken through writing. When I looked up the definition of legacy in the dictionary there were two definitions: 1) a gift by will especially of money or other personal property and two; something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past. 

This issue of legacy is further complicated by digital media and technology that pushes physical copies of books, magazines, and anthologies out of our main consumption habits. Both Cassius Adar and Lisa Nakamura address the consequences of digitally produced copies of This Bridge in “The Digital Afterlives of This Bridge Called My Back: Woman of Color Feminism, Digital Labor, and Networked Pedagogy”. Critical to their argument is understanding that, according to them, pedagogy is deeply interpersonal where “instruction flows from person to person, group to group” (Adar 259-60). Even though digitally pirated copies of This Bridge attempted to literally bridge marginalized communities and the academic world, it exploits the labor of these writers to create an inclusive anthology and furthermore, risks eliminating any of the interpersonal and intimacy associated with physical printed copies. 

Therefore, according to Adar and Nakamura’s standards, I am incredibly privileged to have access to a printed copy of This Bridge. Furthermore, the effects of the “construction and maintenance of a social network” were directly felt upon reading the poem, and my mother’s handwritten comments in the margins. In reading these comments I inherited the legacy of Morales’s “separation” from internationalism in Latin America. Perhaps – although I’m not quite sure if I’m ready to ask her this yet – my mother (and Abuela) also experienced a similar form of separation. 

I find that part 13 beautifully summates legacy as it applies to the definition provided by Merriam Webster and our conversation in class this past Thursday. “The relationship between mother and daughter stands at the center of what I fear most in our culture. Heal that wound and we change the world” (Morales 56). My mother never wrote in that last section of Morales’s essay, but I feel as though that was a conscious decision my mother made in determining the legacy of her words as she applied it to my separation from internationalism in Latin America. And while I completely understand the need for digital copies for accessibility reasons, I know that my understanding of legacy would be difficult to interpret had she had a digital copy. 

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In part one of Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, the story is broken up by recipes to fix various different ailments and afflictions. Immediately, upon reading this I was reminded of a similar form of narration expressed in Laura Esquivel’s book-turned-movie, “Como Agua Para Chocolate” which translates to “Like Water for Chocolate”. 

The narrative in “Como Agua Para Chocolate” follows the story of Tita, the youngest daughter of three, who is forbidden to marry until her mother’s death, but has a mutual longing for her childhood love, Pedro. Tita turns to cooking as her primary skill of controlling the emotions within the household that she shares with her mother and two older sisters. I’ve included the movie clip from one of the most famous scenes where Tita makes quail dipped into a rose petal sauce and serves it to everyone in her family, including Pedro. Through her recipe, she seduces everyone and transforms them into incredibly sensual beings.  Read More

“Loneliness, unshared grief, and guilt often led to prolonged melancholy or mental breakdown.

If the frontier…

offered (some) women

a greater equality and independence, and the

chance

to break out of more traditional roles, it also, ironically, deprived many of the emotional support and intimacy of female community; it

tore them from their mothers.”

I rearranged a portion of the extensive paragraph Rich wrote in “Of Woman Born” with the intention of allowing openness to a culture of mothers, who would not have been previously allowed to share in the loneliness and grief because of Rich’s original white European perspective. I intentionally chose to break up lines from the paragraph, such as “if the frontier” to show that the frontier is borderless and can extend to other mothers and other cultures. Additionally, I decided to leave “tore them from their mothers” as the final line because of the literal and figurative implications of the phrase. Where do we see that through our own experiences, but also where have we seen that throughout history? Essentially, I felt that this version serves as a historical reference, but also an openness to contemporary motherhood.

I was particularly struck by this quote from Adrienne Rich’s “Of Woman Born: Motherhood and Daughterhood” not only because of what it stated, but also because of what it did not state. I was able to resonate with Rich’s opening words regarding the adoration she had for her mother’s body as a sort of mirroring of her own. However, Rich speaks from a white, mostly European cultural connection toward motherhood – one that I, as an Afro-Latina, do not connect to. I found that this cultural disconnect was apparent, particularly on page 234 when Rich describes the immigrant European diaspora mother experience as one riddled with loneliness and isolation.

I understand Rich’s contributions to feminist theory were radical at the time – considering the fact that she came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s – but I feel as though the diaspora of non-European cultures is non-existent. What about the narratives of motherhood that existed during the slave trade? What about the narrative of motherhood that existed during mass genocides, essentially eradicating generations of motherly history? What about the narratives of mothers who were born without ever knowing their mothers?