{"id":47913,"date":"2016-06-23T23:33:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T23:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47913"},"modified":"2016-06-24T00:49:33","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T00:49:33","slug":"journey-into-speech-a-writer-between-two-worlds-an-interview-with-michelle-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47913","title":{"rendered":"Journey into Speech-A Writer between Two Worlds: An Interview with Michelle Cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Journey into Speech-A Writer between Two Worlds: An Interview with Michelle Cliff<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

African American Review<\/a>
\nVolume 28, Number 2, Black Women’s Culture Issue<\/a> (Summer, 1994)
\npages 273-281
\nDOI: 10.2307\/3041999<\/a><\/p>\n

Opal Palmer Adisa<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Creative Writing
\nCalifornia College of the Arts<\/em><\/p>\n

Among the subjects Jamaican born writer Michelle Cliff<\/a> explores in her writings are ancestry, the impact of colonization on the Caribbean<\/a>, the relationships among and interconnection of African people in the diaspora, racism, and the often erroneous way in which the history of black people is recorded. In\u00a0her latest novel, Free Enterprise<\/em> (1993), Cliff attempt: to rewrite the\u00a0story of Mary Ellen Pleasant<\/a>, the African American woman who\u00a0supplied money with which John Brown<\/a> bought arms for the raid\u00a0at Harper\u2019s Ferry<\/a>. Her other two novels, No Telephone to Heaven<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(1987) and Abeng<\/em><\/a> (1984), are semi-autobiographical and explore\u00a0the life of Clare Savage, fair-skinned girl raised between\u00a0Jamaica<\/a> and North America<\/a>, who must reconcile her mixed\u00a0heritage in a changing society. Other works by Cliff include\u00a0Bodies of Water<\/em> (1990), The Land of Look Behind<\/em> (1985), and Claiming\u00a0an Identity They Taught Me to Despise<\/em> (1980).<\/p>\n

The following text is based on two separate interviews: one\u00a0done in person in Albany, California<\/a>, in December 1989, and the\u00a0other conducted over the telephone in September 1993.<\/p>\n

Adlsa<\/strong>: When did you find your voice, when did you decide that\u00a0you wanted to be a writer?<\/p>\n

Cliff<\/strong>: I always wanted to write. Actually there was a terrible incident. I don\u2019t know if I should tell you, but I will. When I was at\u00a0Saint Andrews I was keeping a diary. I had been very in\ufb02uenced by The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em><\/a>, and as a result of seeing the\u00a0movie<\/a> and reading her diary, I got a diary of my own. I wasn\u2019t\u00a0living with my mother and father at this time; I was living with\u00a0my aunt in Kingston<\/a> [Jamaica] and going to Saint Andrews. This\u00a0aunt also had a house in Saint Ann<\/a>, where we used to stay on the\u00a0weekends. Anyway, my parents broke into my bedroom in\u00a0Kingston when we were not at the house. They went into my\u00a0room, broke open my drawer, took out and broke the lock on my\u00a0diary, and read it. Then they arrived at the other house. My father\u00a0and mother had my diary in their hands and sat down and read it\u00a0out loud in front of me, my aunt, and everybody else. My sister\u00a0was there. There were very intimate details; there were a lot of\u00a0things about leaving school and not going to class and playing\u00a0hookey<\/a>, but there was also the experience of the \ufb01rst time I\u00a0menstruated, and I remember just being shattered. My father\u00a0read it, and my mother was in total collaboration. (Pause.)\u00a0Anyway I remember just crying and being sad and whatnot. I\u00a0spoke to my sister about it once, and she remembered, even\u00a0though she was seven at the time. And she said, “Don’t you\u00a0remember screaming and saying, ‘Don’t I have any rights?'”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journey into Speech-A Writer between Two Worlds: An Interview with Michelle Cliff African American Review Volume 28, Number 2, Black Women’s Culture Issue (Summer, 1994) pages 273-281 DOI: 10.2307\/3041999 Opal Palmer Adisa, Professor of Creative Writing California College of the Arts Among the subjects Jamaican born writer Michelle Cliff explores in her writings are ancestry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,21,13743,8],"tags":[2758,80,24247,2755,24276,24275],"class_list":["post-47913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-latincarib","category-interviews","category-media-archive","tag-african-american-review","tag-jamaica","tag-michelle-carla-cliff","tag-michelle-cliff","tag-opal-adisa","tag-opal-palmer-adisa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47913","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=47913"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47924,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47913\/revisions\/47924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}