This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The paperback cover of Lidia Yuknavitch's second novel, 2015's "The Small Backs of Children," proudly announces the book as a "national best-seller" topping a design marked by 13 gushing blurbs.
"Tenaciously written," says the Boston Globe. "Incendiary," according to Kirkus Reviews. "Wild … genuinely subversive," says The New Yorker. It's a story, that at its core, is about a writer who sinks into depression after the death of her baby. The woman is emotionally resurrected only after she is allowed to rescue a young girl who is at the center of a photojournalist's portrait of an explosion that kills the girl's family.
It's a book about art and war and women reclaiming their bodies after sexual violence. But summaries of the book's plot and themes don't do justice to the complicated, explosive power of the Portland, Ore., writer's language and emotionally vulnerable storytelling.
The praise garnered by Yuknavitch's novel marks the expanding audience of her searing memoir, "The Chronology of Water." "Trauma brought me to the page, it is that simple," Yuknavitch wrote in an essay that prints at the back of her novel. "When my daughter died in the belly world of me, I became a writer — so that all the words that cannot name grief, all the words threatening to erupt from my belly and uterus did not explode up and through my skull and face and shatter the very world and sky."
Yuknavitch is coming to Salt Lake City for a discussion with the Hivemind Book Club and other events that also fall under the umbrella of the Utah Humanities Council's annual monthlong book festival.
To mark her Utah appearances, Yuknavitch answered email questions about her work, her much-viewed February 2016 TED talk about being a misfit, and how women's stories are grounded in their bodies. In Salt Lake City, she's planning to read from her narrative braid "Woven," which focuses on her ongoing themes "about violence, compassion and Lithuanian folktales together in an effort to de-story how we talk and think about violence."
In her teaching, she focuses on helping students understand how writing can be a life practice. "Though being published is the thing that creates connection to readers, it's not why I write," she says. "I'm grateful for the electrical current that publishing creates between writer and reader, I'm grateful to participate in a larger community of writers for whom storytelling is a life practice, but I'm also keenly aware that storytelling existed long before us, before the market, and will exist and likely change forms after we're gone. It's the act of making art and bridging to others that drives my heart."
What impact has your TED talk had on the reception of your work, particularly among readers?
I do know that many people out there felt "counted" by that TED talk, because I heard from them personally. Honestly, since I'm a hardcore introvert, I actually thought doing that TED talk might kill me. But the reason I did it is that I wanted to amplify the voices of people who do not ordinarily get the light — those of us who make a lot of mistakes or take bent paths that we have to make up in order to move at all. So I'm not really sure how the TED talk impacted the reception of my work, except to say that what I suspected is true: There are legions of us walking around feeling like we don't fit, and I hope to keep telling our stories and helping others to tell theirs. The light falls on all of us.
How does your forthcoming novel differ from "Small Backs" or your memoir?
"The Book of Joan" is like "Small Backs" and "Chronology" in that it explores the stories of women who have to forge a self from the ruins of the stories their cultures tell about them. It is different in that I took on an established historical figure and her story, de-storied it, and re-storied a version that speaks to the present tense. At its heart it's an attempt to undo the traditional love story and open the definitions of love and war, creativity and destruction. It's a story about how many different ways there are to love if we are willing to let go of the old stories that bind and blind us.
How have your thoughts changed since you posed this question in your Rumpus interview of writer Kat Meads: How does a woman writer invent self-worth every day of her life in the face of the market?
I consider my current status to be "infiltrator and agitator." I still think we need to turn our art-making away from the market, I am convinced more than ever that we need to ask more deeply why we make the art that we do and what we would like the art that we make to mean in the real world.
Your memoir became what the publishing industry describes as a "cult classic," as reviews showed up on blogs and the book kept resurfacing. Do you have any insight about how women writers can find an audience?
Isn't that a weird phrase? "Cult classic." Where is this cult? I'm suspicious. Women writers can find an audience by telling the truth. By moving away from the stories we are TOLD we are supposed to tell and sell, and going back to our actual bodies, because our bodies are carrying the truths of our lives.
What has been the aftermath of your essay about the decision to feature a (beautiful) boob shot on the cover of your memoir? Has the publishing world changed in any significant way in how women writers are represented?
Change is afoot here and there. Among my favorites: The Black Lives Matter movement and the Standing Rock movement. I think women, people of color, LGBT folks, their voices are rising, mercifully, beautifully.
Probably too late, but about art and the market — I don't teach writing workshops in publishing. … I teach writing workshops to help people understand that writing can be a life practice.
facebook.com/ellen.weist —
Lidia Yuknavitch
The writer (of the memoir "The Chronology of Water" and the novel "The Small Books of Children") reads from her work in Salt Lake City.
Tuesday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m. • The Hivemind Book Club hosts a reading, discussion and book signing at The King's English Bookshop, 1511 E. 1500 South, Salt Lake City
Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m. • The University of Utah Guest Writers Series, in partnership with the Utah Humanities Council, hosts a reading and reception at The Art Barn, 54 S. Finch Lane, Salt Lake City
Friday, Sept. 16, noon • Lunchtime colloquium with Yuknavitch. Bring your lunch, friends and questions, at the Art Barn.