I ended up reading a bunch of reviews out in the last couple of days, and people have been talking about how it's like watching a horror movie where someone's going into the basement and you're like, 'Don't go into the basement.' And I feel embarrassed to be the woman going into the basement. And I think for me, we're counting, or sort of trying to verbalize, this is what I believed about myself. But it's like that way in which one is hard on oneself, way more than you would be on anyone else. I'm going to stand up and tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me and how stupidly I acted when I was 24 or 25 or whatever.'Īnd that's really weird, because I would never say that to another person. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have to sort of stand up and say, 'I am a grown woman. It is really hard to talk about this book in a lot of ways. This is a question I'm trying to get used to answering and thinking about. It's more about my own embarrassment and my own humiliation.Ĭan you tell me more about what that embarrassment is and where it comes from? If that's not too difficult of a question.

The prevailing sort of anxiety about this book is not about sex and it's not about polyamory and it's not about queerness. When you write from those perspectives, are you ever concerned about being perceived in negative ways, and how do you get over those types of feelings? That was just really, really important to me.Īpart from this book dealing with partner abuse between queer women, you also continue to discuss sex and polyamorous relationships really frankly. There's something important to me about owning up and saying, 'This is my experience,” not through the lens of this premise or this story, but in my own words, and in my own way of thinking. But this is an important story that just hasn't had a lot of space in the memoir and creative nonfiction world. I have written quite a lot about my experience through fiction and that was quite helpful to me in terms of thinking about my myself in this removed way from my experience. Can you talk a little bit about that decision and why it's important for you to publish it as a memoir? It's been a lot.īut at the same time, you're committed to it being a memoir, though you're clearly adept at fictionalizing experience. It's been very hard to do press for, difficult every time I talk about it. This book has been very hard to write and edit. Very stressed out! Far more stressed out than I felt for my first book. How does this book coming out feel different compared to your short story collection?

In the dream house carmen machado