Interviewed by Chelsea Laine Wells
In her latest novel, Sister Golden Hair, Darcey Steinke investigates, as she says, ‘…how hard it is to be a girl.’ Steinke excels at the deep exploration of adolescence and how we survive it, our quests for love and acceptance and survival. Sister Golden Hair encompasses all of these themes and more, following Jesse through one uncertain, grasping, hope-filled phase after another as she clings to those nearest her in a search for self.
CLW: I would interpret Sister Golden Hair as a coming-of-age story told in sections, each section focused through the lens of a different person with whom the main character, Jesse, is obsessed. So obsession is one of the themes that plays a role in this story, as well as religion, femininity, depression, love, and the kaleidoscope of emotions that is adolescence. Of these themes, and many unnamed others, what do you feel is most central? What were you most trying to express through Jesse?
DS: My book is about how hard it is to be a girl. And also how hard it is if your mother has her own problems and can’t really guide you. Jesse is trying to figure out how to be a woman. She is confused with what she sees around her about Women’s lives. They seem limited to her. Not as expansive as what she hopes for herself. Also the book takes place in the 70’s in the south when the cult of femininity was still pretty fierce, so she comes up against this, as well. I wanted to write about that time, both the 70’s and also girlhood (13-16) in a raw way.
CLW: I’m also intrigued by the title. Could you talk a little bit about your inspiration for the title?
DS: It’s the name of a song by America. I thought it fit as the book is about Jesse but also about all these other girls too, the idea of that liminal time of girlhood. Also Sister Golden Hair is a sort of prequel to Suicide Blonde, so I like that they are both about Hair. I thought it fit. I hope someday, though who knows when, to push Jesse into the future into middle age or even old age and write a book about her at that point in her life, so there will be a third book.
CLW: Place seems to play an incredibly important role in your books – almost its own character, setting the tone for everything, and remaining constant amid changes in the characters’ lives. Specifically I’m thinking of Bent Tree in Sister Golden Hair, but also the island in Up Through the Water and the suburbs in Jesus Saves. With this in mind, can you talk some about how and in what order your inspiration comes together – place, storyline, characters, and so on?
DS: I find place really important. Unless I know where the book is going to be set and what the exteriors and interiors will look like I have trouble even starting. This is something I fought some as a younger writer, but the older I get I believe more and more, that both place and history need to be in play in the story, these things cannot really be separate from the characters. I like a lush atmosphere to work out of. But that does not mean I need a traditionally lush place like Italy or something, I can make things rich and lush, like the duplexes in Bent Tree.
CLW: The issue of womanhood – what it means to be a woman, how to become one, how to be the right kind and the consequences if you’re not – seems to be central and beautifully explored in all of your work. Is this intentional or organic? What has writing about it taught you?
DS: Wow this is a great question. The idea of how to be a women is a question that never really ends. I mean there is that whole idea of gender being a construct which I do think is true. But also I just think the culture has so many ideas about women, they judge them so harshly. My mom came up poor, her father drank and she was always obsessed with looking neat and clean and right. Looking respectable. This was so important to her. She did not want to be seen as having the taint of poverty or disrespectability. And all through my life I have thought to myself, how am I being seen? I remember when I left my first husband, that was a hard time as I was a single mom and divorced and while things have gotten better for women I felt sometimes I was being excluded from the center of life, of being on the sidelines. Even now I am very aware when I teach that I need to look sort of like someone who takes themselves seriously, who is a serious person. But I think this is all hardest in adolescents, because you are not comfortable in your body and you feel watched. You are watched. It’s a hard time to form your identity, when you are under such an intense sexual microscope.
CLW: I understand you have a daughter – as do I, and for me, parenthood has significantly affected my work. Is this the case for you as well? Stemming from this, female coming-of-age and adolescence are topics that you frequent. Do you ever relate these themes in your mind to your daughter, and would you draw or have you drawn from her experiences for your characters?
DS: I think I wrote SGH for Abbie (who is 19 now and at Bard College) or because of her. Seeing her come of age and how hard that was really moved me. I remember when she was 12 or so leaving childhood and moving into womanhood and she was getting greasy and her body was changing and it seemed so sci-fi and so raw and weird. I really felt for her. Also it reminded me of my own life and that time for me and how odd I felt much of the time. How sort of out of my own body, also how loosely I was constructed, how flimsy I felt in myself. How much I looked to other older women, not even just looked to them, but like clung onto them, as a little raft of possible self.
CLW: Spirituality is a common theme in your work as well. Could you address the recurrence of religion and how people wrestle with it in your novels?
DS: I think the search for God, or for something bigger and more profound than the self is a key part of life’s work. But I also think spiritual ideas are very hard to talk about without sounding reductive, silly, and small. The novel, to me, is an emotional form. A novel is a blueprint for an emotional experience. Emotion and spirit go together but I think narrative runs more on emotion. Or should. I find myself wanting to write about spiritual movement, but that movement is so mysterious and strange, not based always on context, or psychology. It’s very hard.
CLW: Can you talk a little bit about your process as a writer? When do you write, where, longhand vs. laptop, music vs. silence, any must-have writer quirks like a special pen or coffee mug or toe socks?
DS: I write longhand first and then type chunks up and rewrite and then go forward again. I always want to let myself go longhand longer but I get lost in the longhand pages and I have to shore up. Also I write fast rough first drafts and I start to want to see some nice lines and some flowing prose and so I go back and write well and carefully not just fast for a while. But it’s fits and starts. I work in the morning from 2 to 5 hours depending on how much time I have and how hot the project is. If it’s a new project I have trouble working as long. But when I am reworking I can write longer. I drink a lot of water when I work. I also will, at times, wear hunting grade noise stopping headphones. I am very noise sensitive.
CLW: I read your books in about two days so you’ll need to up your game to at least one a week to keep me satiated. What’s next? I’m dying to know what you’re working on.
DS: I am working on a book about a woman who starts her own religion. I have no idea if it will work or not. I am at the very beginning, sort of feeling out some of the action and what the feel of the book will be. Over the break I read three books about women who started their own religions: Ann Lee (Shakers), Madame Blavatsky (Theosophy), and I just finished this fantastic book on Mary Baker Eddy, who started Christian Science. I loved them all. And I am very interested in women who feel they are having a direct experience of God. I want to write about God in a very ordinary way. Not grand but just a regular woman and her extraordinary spiritual life.
CLW: What writers and books do you love and adore? Please assign all of us some books to read.
DS: I love so many books! I really love biographies and Charles Marsh’s book on the German theologian Bonhoeffer is really good. I also love Robert Richardson’s book on William James. Maggie Nelson’s Bluets is stunning as is her new book The Argonauts. I tend to like the shorter novels of the bigger writers. I love Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy and Noon Wine by Katherine Anne Porter. I think a concise 200 page novel is just so lovely. Oh and I am new to Herta Muller. I just read The Hunger Angel over Christmas and loved it. Very delicate and lovely prose with such longing.
