An Interview with Patricia Powell

Author(s): Faith Smith and Patricia Powell

Source: Callaloo , Spring, 1996, Vol. 19, No. 2, Emerging Women Writers: A Special Issue
(Spring, 1996), pp. 324-329
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3299179

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 AN INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA POWELL

by Faith Smith

Thefollowing dialogue took place on paper in March, 1996: Faith Smith gave a list of questions
to Patricia Powell, and she wrote her responses and sent them to the editor of Callaloo.
Although not a "live' conversation, these questions and answers grew out of months of
discussing some of the issues that emerge in what follows.

FAITH SMITH: There is a great attention to detail in your fiction: I'm thinking of a
dog licking its snot in one of your short stories, for instance. In A Small Gathering of
Bones, as well as in your work-in-progress from which I recently heard you read, the
narrative suddenly breaks off at the point of momentous sexual awakening on the part
of the protagonists to meditate on a hen and her chickens, or on the appearance of
someone's shoes. Can you comment on this? Is this some sort of reluctance on the
characters' part (or yours, for that matter) to exteriorize their feelings? Are you
perhaps rejecting the idea of the all-knowing SELF who can fully account for every
experience, every sensation?

PATRICIA POWELL: I've been struggling for a while trying to figure out how to
write gay/lesbian sexuality so as to best illustrate the charged interactions that my
characters face. And by charged I mean the constant fear, or internalized hate, the
terror that's gnawing in the back of the subconscious. I didn't want to write it in the
conventional way, as a shared, wondrous, idyllic experience, because it was more
complicated than that for them. In A Small Gathering of Bones, Dale's anonymous
sexual encounter in the park is really a crucial moment for him, and it was important
to find a style that best reflected the turmoil of the moment. A devout Christian and
minister, he was leaving the church for he could no longer bear the hypocrisy and lies;
his best friend was dying in the hospital; he had just left a long term relationship and
was trying to begin another; it was his first anonymous encounter and his friend Ian
had already been beaten up here; etc. At the same time, then, that the scene arouses
the reader-and I overload the page with sensory details-the arousal is interrupted
by the character's constant reminder of the hostile world around him, and his own
fragile, vulnerable position. So there are the street sounds of people passing and of
laughter, but there is also the fear of beating or incarceration if found, the fear of
death-though the anonymity and the illicitness of the situation bring their own
charge. There is always the reminder that this intimate encounter is not a shared
idyllic experience, but rather an individual and pleasurable one.

Callaloo 19.2 (1996) 324-329

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 C A L L A L OO

There are similar intimate though frustrating confrontations in my new novel, The
Pagoda, about a Chinese woman passing as a male shopkeeper in 19th-century
Jamaica. One of the protagonist's customers who had been trying to seduce him/her
for a while finally seizes the moment and kisses Lowe. And I think Lowe is aroused.
For in his / her own way, s/ he had been going along with the seduction. But can you
imagine Lowe's terror? The fear of whether people will see, the woman's husband, the
villagers-hence Lowe's furtive glances at the world passing by outside, the incred-
ible attention to detail that occurs on the page at that very important moment. As if
time has slowed somehow. Or events have grown more profound. There is the fear
that the kiss could go further and his/her "true" identity be realized. Implicit too in
that kiss are the complications in terms of race and class and sexuality. Fear is at the
heart of all these intimate encounters, not just the character's fear of the body's
response to the situation, but the fear of other people knowing; and I think a kind of
separation occurs, where there is an emotional and physical split, where the physical
dominates, in terms of sensory details, and the emotional is subverted.

SMITH: For someone who's not yet 30, you've managed to amass an impressive array
of honors, besides which I'm always seeing your name, and sometimes even your face,
in the Boston papers-and you've been holding down a tenure-track position for
several years now. Is this the sort of life you envisioned for yourself at the beginning
of your 20s? What is your relationship to "Patricia Powell, novelist"-the face in the
newspaper photos or on the bookcovers, the public figure who's recognized in the
supermarket?

POWELL: I don't know what I envisioned for my life when I completed Me Dying Trial
back in 1988 for my honors thesis at Wellesley College. I just remember really wishing
that it would be accepted somewhere for publication, but that didn't happen until five
years later. After Wellesley, I worked for a while, here and there, and applied to
graduate programs in English. I didn't necessarily think of myself as a writer. Some
friends, however, encouraged me to pursue the MFA program at Brown, and while
there I wrote A Small Gathering of Bones. The program at Brown lasts only two years;
and by the beginning of the second year, I had to start dealing with my future, very
seriously. So like the rest of my graduate buddies, I started applying for jobs all over
the country. I figured I could live anywhere, and, though I had two manuscripts with
tugs from editors, there were no real bites until Heinemann. I ended up back in Boston
with a tenure-track job. I was twenty-four, and many of my students that first year at
UMass were older. Eventually, the novels were published. One in 1993, the other in
1994, then my face started appearing in places and people started inviting me to do
interviews, conferences, to apply for jobs. It's still pretty unbelievable. I keep holding
my breath waiting for my luck to run out. It's scary and rewarding, too. I especially
like reading criticism of my work by Caribbean critics, because they really contextualize
it, and then I feel like my work has a home.

SMITH: Much of your work seems to me to be about masculinity-men standing

around in shops trying to figure out the world. Their postures and their dreams.

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 C CALLALOO-

Could you talk about this? The protagonist of your work-in-progress is a woman who
lives as a man. What's the relationship between your female and male characters (i.e.,
in terms of your interest in them as people)?

POWELL: While growing up in Jamaica, I spent a lot of time with my great aunt who
owned a shop which was always full up of men: old men, young men, drunken and
sober men, married and unmarried men, men of sound morals, upstanding men, men
who beat their wives and violated their daughters, hardworking and religious men.
And all day all night, they stayed there in the shop, talking about their broken, frail
lives, their frustrations, their frozen dreams, their successes. Without even realizing
it, I absorbed their stories. Their gestures, their ways of expression, their lonesome-
ness left indelible marks on my mind. Again and again, in all my novels, I go back to
the shop and to their stories; I try to imagine the world as they'd see it. There were few
women who came to the shop to hang out-they had things to do; they were busy
making a decent life for these men and for themselves and their children. It was purely
a male space, but my great aunt and I had access to it. I have images of my great aunt,
like a great swooping bird, breaking up fights and throwing out the drunkards; she
was family counselor, too, advising them regarding their wives and children. She
drank as much and as hard as any of those men, and I'd never seen her drunk or
incoherent. She roared just as boisterously as they, and she argued just as vehemently,
and as passionately. She was a shrewd businesswoman and could be tough and mean,
and yet she cried a lot. I think my images of her may have influenced the way I write
women characters, some of whom tend to be larger-than-life figures: women with the
incredible power to not only give life but to take it away, women who love with
tremendous fervor and hate with as much intensity. Women who struggle at mother-
hood.
When I started The Pagoda, my intention was to have an ordinary female protago-
nist. But while doing the research, I found out in one article that Chinese laws did not
permit women to emigrate until later than the time I had anticipated for my charac-
ters; and because I still wanted a female protagonist, I decided to have her cross dress.
I couldn't figure out how else she could have slipped by Chinese authorities, how else
she could have escaped being ravished by a ship full up of sailors and contracted male
Chinese laborers enroute to the West Indies. But she is the ideal protagonist, for she
has a foot in both a masculine and feminine world. She is privy to both spheres and
must take on the complications of each. She cannot be one thing or another, but at all
times must wear myriad costumes and masks. Myriad selves.

SMITH: Your second novel, A Small Gathering of Bones, is one of very few anglophone
Caribbean novels to deal with homosexuality and AIDS. Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff,
Makeda Silvera, Shani Mootoo, as well as Richard Fung the film-maker, come to mind
as others who've tried to explore the relationship between lesbian and gay identities
and Caribbean identities. Why did you decide to write this novel? Can you say
something about the reception of this novel in various geographical spaces? Would
you, for instance, read this novel (or, I should specify, "transgressive" portions of it)

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 C A L L A L OG

in the Caribbean? Does the fact that you might be able to read these portions without
incident in selected spaces in the U.S. necessarily indicate a more affirming environ-
ment here?

POWELL: I'm glad you use the term "selected," for it suggests that not all spaces in
the U.S. are created equal, which is true. I wouldn't read this everywhere, but my
readings so far have been without incident. I'm always very conscious of people's dis-
ease. And in my head, I say, good, and I read even louder and slow down the pace even
more, but I also wait, expecting that someone will leave or interrupt.
A Small Gathering of Bones is written in memory of a Jamaican friend who lived in
New York and who contracted HIV and died. When I began the work, I didn't know
I would end up writing a novel about gay male life in Jamaica during the 1970s, about
sexual identity and coming out, about night clubs and pick up spots, about the
hardships and pressures of homophobia and how it affects the private life, about
AIDS and destroyed bodies, about failed relationships, about mothers and their gay
sons, about rejection and hypocrisy and strong and lasting friendships, about homo-
sexuality and religion, about forgiveness and love. All I knew then was that
since I couldn't have attended his funeral, to share the grief of his passing, I would
figure out a way to transform that grief. To speak out about what had really killed him.
For the most part the novel has received exceptional reception. I read portions of
it in London, at a Caribbean gay/lesbian organization, and I was quite pleased with
the responses to it because the book was really trying to address some of their
experiences and concerns. The book was about gay lives. Listeners in general tend to
be aroused by the "transgressive" portions, and I'm glad. I worked hard on that novel,
and on that scene in particular. I wanted it to be poignant. Last year, I was invited to
The Bookshop in Kingston, Jamaica, to read. I didn't go. I was completely terrified. All
I could think of was that gay march back in the summer of 1992 when I was there
researching The Pagoda, and reading about the protesters blocking the roads and
wielding weapons. And then there were the rabid homophobic articles that spilled
out of the newspapers daily. I thought there was no way I could be strong or coherent
or calm enough if someone in the audience wanted to be nasty. But now I could go and
read there, I think. I feel distanced from that novel. I am not as vulnerable. I could
probably separate the work from aggressive comments and fare okay. And I imagine,
too, that the person inviting me would try to make the space safe, and perhaps the only
people who'd attend would be those interested in the subject or in hearing me read,
and therefore wouldn't be too unnerved by the topic.

SMITH: Last year at the Caribbean Women Writers Conference at Wellesley College
you told a group of Caribbean scholars and others about a trip to Jamaica in 1992
during which an announcement by gay Jamaicans that they would march publicly
was greeted with irate machete- and bottle-bearing people threatening to attack them.
I was not present at the conference, but I've since heard about the reactions-
whispered as well as strident-which greeted your presentation. Would you care to
comment both on the 1992 trip and the conference?

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 C A CALLALOO-

POWELL: Well, as you probably know, I broke down in the middle of reading my
paper at the Wellesley Conference, and another woman on the panel had to finish up.
At the end of the evening, so many people came up to me and thanked me for writing
the novel, for voicing what they considered to be the unspeakable. A few people
thought that I was portraying Jamaicans as incredibly homophobic, and how could I
fairly assess the situation if I lived abroad? I think the most important aspect of that
portion of the Wellesley Conference is that we began a dialogue. And I hope it
continues. There is still a lot of work to be done in that area, for both writers and critics.

SMITH: Your first novel about a family which migrates from Jamaica to the U.S. and
your work-in-progress about a 19th-century Chinese woman who travels to Jamaica
both tackle themes of displacement and belonging which might be said to" define" the
Caribbean novel. Do you place yourself within any sort of tradition of Caribbean
writing? Are there writers to whom you have an affinity?

POWELL: I think my work is very much Caribbean. Certainly regarding the use of
language in the first two novels, and in all three, The Pagoda included, definitely in
terms of setting and nuances, in terms of themes. However, as writers continue to
open up the boundaries of style and language and thematics, I can't imagine how we'll
continue to define the Caribbean novel, though, except maybe in terms of its refusal
to be easily defined.
Michelle Cliff is one of my favorite authors, and I admire the very layered way she
writes history and her use of fragmentation. I have been thinking, too, about writers
such as V.S. Naipaul and Richard Fung, among others who deal with issues of
otherness, especially as I write this third novel about the Chinese in Jamaica. I've been
thinking about the racial / ethnic / political / social spaces that those Jamaicans who are
neither of African nor European descent occupy. About the space they occupy in the
minds of the dominant racial group. In researching the history of the Chinese in
Jamaica, I've had to reflect on the images of the Chinese that are portrayed in
Caribbean literature and culture, and the racial fears and stereotypes of the Chinese
I absorbed while growing up in Jamaica. It's been making me think, too, about the East
Indians and the other non-white/black groups and their experiences of exile and
displacement, their experiences of otherness and of home, there on the island.

SMITH: To what extent is your work autobiographical? Do you see yourself writing
about the U.S. in the future?

POWELL: My work is completely autobiographical. Even if the shell or the plot of the
work doesn't match up with my own experiences, the underlying emotions in many
of the scenarios are ones that I've lived through and which have affected me in the
most profound ways. By the time I began writing A Small Gathering of Bones, I had a
sense of how to use a more effective style that would allow me to lay bare the suffering
of characters yet mask their trauma at the same time. I've learned the power of
subtlety and detail and repetition. I didn't know how to do that in Me Dying Trial, and

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 C CALLALOO-

I think of that novel always as completely raw and vulnerable, with all its insides
spilling and exposed. Sometimes I think of The Pagoda as a double of Me Dying Trial,
for it examines many of the same themes of motherhood and estrangement and
sexuality and identity and immigration and displacement, but it is definitely a more
sophisticated and luminous and exaggerated work, a more kaleidoscopic version of
the duo.
I've always thought that I could only write about the U.S. if I no longer lived here.
But there are fragments of a new work stirring in my head, and that novel is set both
in the U.S. and in Spain, I think. I'm afraid I don't have much else to say about that
project at the moment.

SMITH: Who are the writers that you like to read, and that you teach?

POWELL: I am very admiring of writers whose works push the boundaries, not only
of genre but also of language and of style. I'd like to begin to explore alternative styles
in my own work. I teach an Experimental Fiction course, and we read Maso, Duras,
Lamming, Rushdie, Ducornet, Coover, Hawkes, Cliff, Ondaatje, Rulfo, Calvino,
Coetzee, Braithwaite, among others. I also try to keep up with and read as much new
writing from the Caribbean as I can. Someone just handed me Be I Whole by Gita
Brown, which is about the Ki people. I haven't read it yet.

SMITH: Finally, would you care to comment on the dynamics of the "space" which
someone like you occupies today in the American university and on the publishing
scene?

POWELL: In terms of publishing, I think it depends on what I'm writing at the

moment. With Me Dying Trial, I was simply a young Caribbean writer with a strong
new voice and readers were curious and expectant of what would come next. With the
publication of A Small Gathering of Bones, one critic deemed me "a major voice in
Caribbean Literature," and my book was added to the list of titles for courses on Cross
Cultural Sexualities and Queer Literature. I was invited to participate on panels that
discussed AIDS Literature, Writing and Sexuality, Alternative Voices in Gay and
Lesbian Studies, etc. I can't imagine what space I'll occupy with the publication of The
Pagoda. In any event, it won't be so easy to simply classify me or my work as one thing
or another, which is probably quite a good thing.

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