I do think Jesse in Suicide Blonde is in the haze of her mother’s chaotic, unlived life. She does not understand that is part of her acting out, but it is what drives her, just as much as sexual desire, the unfulfilled inchoate desires of her mother haunting her and moving through her. What white people see when they look at you,” James Baldwin told Studs Terkel on his radio show in 1967, “is not visible. What they do see when they look at you is what they have invested you with.” Image:In reading Flash Count Diary, I was moved by the beauty and honesty with which you write the complications and complexities of your spiritual life. On a personal level, I related. Like you, I’m also the daughter of an ELCA pastor, and in my experience, growing up as a clergy child has made me less capable of magical thinking, but also less able to separate from the influence of the church—from faith—because it is knit into the fabric of my identity and way of seeing the world. If you come to this novel after reading other of Steinke's work, as I have, it'll seem like pretty tame stuff. This is not a criticism, as this is a very fine novel, but Up Through the Water is a sea change from some of Steinke's other novels, such as Suicide Blonde and Jesus Saves, gut-wrenching works awash in suffering and salvation.

Steinke, Darcey (June 3, 2014). "Meeting Kurt Cobain: One Writer's Story, 20 Years Later". Vogue . Retrieved February 25, 2020. Since that time, I, myself, experienced a divorce and I saw how, by hard emotional work, it can be ok not just for the children of divorce, but for the partners as well. I mean divorce, as hard as it is, is not a problem, it’s actually a solution to a problem. So I don’t agree with Jesse anymore on this. I think divorce can lead to growth and healing, not only calcified pain. I mean everyone is always coming apart but everyone is also always coming together. Contributor This is a reenvisioned, fresh look at Agnes Martin, the enigmatic, influential, highly independent painter whose life and work have proved inspirational to audiences across many fields and disciplines. Accompanied by color reproductions of works by Martin, Agnes Martin: Independence of Mind presents a series of essays by living artists and writers commissioned especially for this volume. Contributors include artists Martha Tuttle, Jennie C. Jones and James Sterling Pitt, as well as authors Teju Cole, Bethany Hindmarsh, Darcey Steinke and Jenn Shapland. These contributors write about Martin's influence on their creative lives and work, and offer new interpretations that defy stereotyped notions about Martin's life. Longer essays are mixed with shorter, more anecdotal texts by a wider selection of artists. Our first introduction to Sandy is through a sermon by Ginger’s father. “Her mother says she has a dreamy side, that she collects stuffed animals, reads fantasy novels where horses fly and fairy princesses wear gowns made from flowers.” To Ginger’s father, Sandy is Christ-like, and the community must accept its complicity in her abduction. Everyone must “come to terms with the evil that resides within us.” Needless to say, the customers in his church are not entertained.

The diary of a death wish . . . Suicide Blonde doles out some bitter, valuable lessons.--- New Yorker A common delusion of schizophrenics is that those around them, doctors, nurses, other patients, have faces that cannot be trusted. “His face is more refined then it used to be,” says Joseph, one of three mental patients studied in Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, “and behind that face there is another face that looks like another patient that used to be here.” My husband’s face, when mask-less, interacts with my face. I can read the movement of his mouth, his eyes and, in turn, he reads mine. At times, my husband recedes from my face, pulling his animating forces inside of himself. He is focused on a problem I cannot see. At these moments his face is inert, mask-like. Steinke: I actually think the best writing has paradox and ambiguity built right in. You can’t write without accepting it. I mean you could maybe write a genre book, but even the great ones like Cain’s noir novels, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) or Mildred Pierce (1941) have so much grey. We need to fold our uncertainty into our work, that’s what makes it alive.

Image: Let’s talk about anger as you discuss it in the book. There’s a great deal of conversation in our culture at the moment about women’s anger, and about that anger as a force that can drive change, create action, and speak for justice. You write that you began to see your own anger as a “gateway to authenticity.” You also say, “Rage focused my attention.” In what way has anger led you to greater authenticity? And what has the “expansive” quality of self that anger enables allowed you to see differently? Also, I wear a hijab so I definitely think twice about writing anything that is particularly descriptive about any part of my body that I don’t show in certain public settings, but even for men or women who don’t wear hijab, I don’t know how I feel (morally/Islamically) about describing or talking about sex or bodies in a way that can—to put it simply, turn people on. “Is that Islamically appropriate, to test people’s hearts that way?” that’s the question I always ask myself. In the Islamic tradition, any sex outside of marriage is considered a sin. So when I say “test people’s hearts,” I really mean “make life harder for people who are not happily married by showing them how great sex and physical intimacy can be?” I do not think sex in itself is shameful—certainly not the desire for it, since one of the greatest gifts God promises the people of heaven in the Islamic tradition is sex and companionship—and a lot of other pleasures that are purely physical. But as a Muslim, I have come to think of the pursuit of pleasures outside of a set of guidelines as sinful. I know that different Christians have different ideas about the pursuit of pleasure (sex or otherwise) both within and without sets of guidelines, but what grounds you personally?

‘Ready To Go’ - What is it?

Steinke: I like this provocation. Yes, it’s true. If I wear something designed by Calvin Klein or Yves Saint Laurent or (more likely) a designer influenced by them... How is this different than other (religious) designs made by men for women? I think you are right really. And the idea of how much or how little of the body to show, does that come from a female point of view or a male point of view... whether we are talking about modesty or showing skin. So touché. You are right! For those concerned about the title, be aware that this novel -- which I find to be a grand achievement in fiction -- has other things in mind; it's an ambitious examination of contemporary America... Agnes Martin was born in Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1912, and moved to the US in 1932, studying at universities in Oregon, California, New Mexico and New York. In the early 1950s she developed a biomorphic style influenced by Abstract Expressionism. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1958. From around 1960?61 she began to work with the grids of horizontal and vertical lines for which she has become renowned. In 1967 she moved from New York to New Mexico, where she lived until her death in 2004.

Rail: I remember last year there was a celebration at The New School for Toni Morrison where different actors, singers, musicians, and artists were performing readings or songs inspired by her work. I noticed that a lot of the performances were actually of sex scenes and I was so amazed because while they were so physical and descriptive and clear they were also so spiritual and beautiful—they weren’t pornographic or disturbing in the least. That, for me, as a writer and a woman, was so inspiring. a b "Sister Golden Hair – Fiction / Poetry – Books – Tin House". Archived from the original on October 21, 2014 . Retrieved October 21, 2014. So why is the book called "Jesus Saves"? We don’t know. Jesus is frequently discussed, but he never manifests. However, because we live in southwest Virginia, we would never suggest the title is ironic. That would get us shot. We accept, without question, that Jesus saves. We just wonder when he intends to start. I'd read another of Steinke's more popular books, Suicide Blonde last year, but this one is much more substantial on every level. A rewarding experience for those with patience.Unseen regularly and in-person by friends, strangers, even loved ones, I feel my identity, never that solid to begin with, fraying. I feel unmoored, less real. This must be, in part, how masqueraders at carnivals and festivals throughout history have felt. Identity loosens allowing one to act outside constructed roles. “Masks,” writes anthropologist Efrat Tseelon, “unsettle and disrupt. The fantasy of coherence replaces clarity with ambiguity and undermines the phantasmic construction of containment.” DS: Yes, but I also sometimes feel very nostalgic for the years when my father was in a parish. We lived in the rectory. We played in the church, and when we wanted to talk to our father, we could just run upstairs to his office. Eventually, after I turned eight, he trained to become a chaplain and didn’t have a church again after that. But those years before are romantic and sentimentalized in my memory now. Can you speak to your experience of being raised in—and then separating from—the church, but still being drawn into questions of faith in your work? How does the spirituality of your upbringing continue to influence your creative interests?

Steinke: In my generation, most women were cut off from their mothers. In part because our mothers had lead lives that were limited because of what was possible for women at the time they came of age, and what was possible for my generation was more. And we resented our mothers for accepting limitations. I see this as wrong now, of course. I just read my mother’s journals—she has been dead for five years—and in one way they are the sad writings of a divorced women who blamed her problems on everyone else, but in another important way they are like The Handmaid’s Tale, a story of a woman beaten down by patriarchy.The most powerful member and opinion-leader of the congregation, Mulhoffer -- a well-to-do furniture tycoon and lover of the TV advertising that made his fortune -- wants the church to become a TV ministry and open health spas and such to serve the members. To paraphrase him: people who don't watch enough TV are troublemakers. My own mother was so conflicted about work, and marriage, and what it was to be a female that she offered up a confusing array of hopes for me. She wanted me to work but then thought women should stay home with their children. She wanted me to be financially independent but then she wanted me to find a rich husband to take care of me. Jesse is young in Suicide Blonde, but you were also very young when you wrote it, so do you think there are times for exploration and experimenta- tion, and that there is a sliding set of guidelines that come to form as you grow as a person in a complex relationship with religion and parents and different cities or settings?