{"id":54735,"date":"2017-08-05T21:19:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T21:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54735"},"modified":"2017-08-05T21:19:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T21:19:52","slug":"author-danzy-senna-on-finding-inspiration-after-leaving-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54735","title":{"rendered":"Author Danzy Senna on Finding Inspiration After Leaving Brooklyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author Danzy Senna on Finding Inspiration After Leaving Brooklyn<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Vulture<\/a>
\n2017-07-27<\/p>\n

Joy Press<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nPhoto: Lauren Tamaki<\/small><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are writing a novel, you are always trying to submerge yourself in a dream state, and New York<\/a> was constantly waking me up from that state,\u201d says Danzy Senna<\/a>. She\u2019s sitting outdoors at a shady caf\u00e9 in South Pasadena, California<\/a>, roughly 2,400 miles from Brooklyn<\/a>, where she once lived and from which she drew inspiration for her propulsive new novel, New People<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

South Pasadena, the sweet and sleepy town where we both currently reside, is not Brooklyn \u2014 it\u2019s more like a Southern California <\/a>hallucination of Mayberry<\/a>. Its leafy streets and Craftsman houses<\/a> regularly stand in for a middle-American idyll in movies, TV shows, and commercials. (The swaying palm trees reliably get cropped out of the frame.) Suburban L.A.\u2019s low-stimulus environment has proved far more conducive to Senna\u2019s writing than the boho<\/a> hyperactivity of New York. Senna is the 46-year-old author of five books, including her celebrated 1998 debut novel, Caucasia<\/em><\/a>, and all of her work explores the nuances of being mixed race in America with stinging humor and acuity. But, in some ways, \u201cthe central identity conflict in my life has been New York versus L.A.<\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cI became an author in New York, but it was like a book party that never ended. I became someone who had written something once. In Brooklyn, I\u2019d walk out my door and bump into someone at seven in the morning at the dog park who would tell me about their six-figure book advance.\u201d Los Angeles<\/a>, by comparison, she jokes, is \u201cso boring that your imagination becomes your life.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWhen you are writing a novel, you are always trying to submerge yourself in a dream state, and New York was constantly waking me up from that state,\u201d says Danzy Senna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,8,20],"tags":[1340,27410,12972,20879],"class_list":["post-54735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-danzy-senna","tag-joy-press","tag-new-york-magazine","tag-vulture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54735","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=54735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54736,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54735\/revisions\/54736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}