{"id":29725,"date":"2013-03-20T15:46:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T15:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=29725"},"modified":"2014-01-16T15:33:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T15:33:22","slug":"danzy-senna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=29725","title":{"rendered":"Danzy Senna"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danzy Senna<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Southeast Review<\/a>
\n2010-05-01<\/p>\n

The Southeast Review<\/em> is published by Florida State University\u2019s Creative Writing Program.<\/p>\n

Interviewed by Janeen Price<\/strong><\/p>\n

Danzy Senna<\/a><\/strong> is the author of two novels, a memoir, numerous essays and works of short fiction. Her debut novel, Caucasia<\/a><\/em>, a coming-of-age story, was named the Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. It also won the Book-of-the-Month Club\u2019s Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association\u2019s Alex Award. Her latest book, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History<\/em>, is a memoir of her journey to solve the enigma of her father\u2019s family history.<\/p>\n

Q: Where Did You Sleep Last Night?<\/em> is your first memoir. What compelled you to write and publish this personal narrative?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: I was intrigued by this mystery of my father\u2019s mother, a black woman from the South who was educated and ambitious in her youth down South, then gave it all up and became the modest, retiring woman we knew in Boston. There were so many gaps in her story\u2014so much mystery surrounding her. The book began as an investigation into her, and I didn\u2019t think of it as a memoir. But as it progressed, I realized that my relationship to my father\u2014the contradictions in it, the pain and also the love there\u2014was central to the story. So the personal material sort of snuck up on me as I tried to find and tell this other, more historically distant tale. I still consider myself first and foremost a fiction writer…<\/p>\n

…Q: You are biracial, the protagonists of your two novels are biracial, and issues of racial identity loom large in all three of your books. How has your exploration of racial identity evolved from one book to the next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: That\u2019s a good question, but not one I feel I can really answer. I think my readers could answer that better than I could. But it does lead me to another related thought. Readers have at times over the years asked me, \u201cAre you ever going to write about people who aren\u2019t mixed?\u201d I always feel there is an implicit criticism in the question\u2014as if maybe I should be writing about a white man, or a Chinese woman, to prove my universality. But I never hear white writers being asked, \u201cAre you ever going to write about characters that aren\u2019t white?\u201d And I don\u2019t even hear the question being thrown at black writers who write about black life and black characters. It has made me wonder if the question has more to do with a discomfort with my racial ambiguity. I think people are comfortable with black people writing about black people (and maybe uncomfortable with black people not writing about black people). And I think people assume the universality of white characters, especially if they are male. But they can\u2019t quite wrap their finger around what they see me as. Maybe they see me as white, because that\u2019s what my features read, and can\u2019t really understand why race and blackness would persist as a theme in my work.<\/p>\n

So for me I\u2019ve had to really ignore all those questions about subject matter and race, etc., because I think it doesn\u2019t really have to do with my work, the real issues I\u2019m writing about, which I hope are about more than racial identity. Racial identity is there, of course, but to me other questions loom larger. Did Raymond Carver write about white people? Yes, in a way, but in another way, no, that wasn\u2019t his subject. I write books set in multiracial worlds, and from the perspective of multiracial characters. Maybe I won\u2019t always write from that perspective, but I see nothing limiting about it. In writing, the universal is found in the specific. And I have learned that you really have to just write about your obsessions and from a place of truth, and ignore the rest…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Danzy Senna The Southeast Review 2010-05-01 The Southeast Review is published by Florida State University\u2019s Creative Writing Program. Interviewed by Janeen Price Danzy Senna is the author of two novels, a memoir, numerous essays and works of short fiction. Her debut novel, Caucasia, a coming-of-age story, was named the Los Angeles Times Best Book of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13743,8,20,25],"tags":[1340,14111,14113,14112],"class_list":["post-29725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-danzy-senna","tag-janeen-price","tag-southeast-review","tag-the-southeast-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}