Gayle Brandeis is a novelist you should have heard of. I confess—her name was unfamiliar to me and my fiction-addicted friends, despite the fact that Brandeis won the prestigious Bellwether Prize judged by Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Barbara Kingsolver in 2002. So why hadn’t we heard of her? I have no idea!

Brandeis is a daring storyteller. Her new novel, Self Storage, is an unlikely page-turner: a story about a woman sorting through endless boxes of moldy clothes while quoting Whitman and musing about xenophobia. Brandeis is also a poet deeply concerned with the unconscious and the sensual world. She can describe how it feels to sweat inside a burqa, and the stench of dozens of dead pelicans, and through such unflinching, raw descriptions, plumb the depths of her characters’ souls.

In early March, Gayle Brandeis and I corresponded over email about a number of questions, including: Can writing heal us? How do you take the leap to write from the perspective of someone from a different culture or race? Would Walt Whitman have liked the Internet? And, how is writing a novel similar to opening a mysterious box?

Jess deCourcy Hinds: Your first novel, The Book of Dead Birds won the Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize, which recognizes literature of social change. Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston judged the contest the year you won. Can you tell me about the role these women played in your writing life?

Gayle Brandeis: All three women are such goddesses to me. They each have found a way to meld their writing and activism seamlessly, to mix beautiful language with a social conscience, to not be heavy handed with messages, but let them rise organically from their work. Their work is so open-hearted—they all write with compassion and honesty and grace. I can't believe how lucky I am to have been given their blessing—I don't feel worthy of it yet, but I will try to live up to it the rest of my writing life.

JDH: The Book of Dead Birds explores two very different issues: the struggles of prostitutes on U.S. military bases in Korea and the environmental problems killing birds at the Salton Sea. How did you know these two stories would belong in the same novel? Where did The Book of Dead Birds begin for you?

GB: I never could have imagined writing The Book of Dead Birds. It actually started out as a poem, about a dead bird I saw when I was six years old; it was the first time I had seen death up close, and it had a big impact on me. The poem kept getting longer and stranger, and it was clear to me it didn't want to be a poem any longer, but I wasn't sure what it wanted to be. I started seeing articles in the local paper about the bird die-off at the Salton Sea that summer, and clipped them, knowing I could tie the information in with this poem-project somehow, but I had no idea how it would all come together. Then I happened to see a documentary on PBS called “The Women Outside” about women who had been forced into prostitution on US military bases in Korea, and Ava and Helen suddenly materialized in the room with me. I knew that Ava killed Helen's pet birds, I knew Helen had been a prostitute, I knew Ava would travel to the Salton Sea to help with the rescue effort to try to make amends with her mom—it all came to me in a flash. I really resisted these characters at first, though, because I felt that as a white woman, I had no right to write their story. The characters were persistent, though, and I eventually realized that I had to dive in, even though it was scary.

JDH: Ava is a beautifully constructed character. She’s on a heroic mission to save birds, but she’s a flawed, fully human character, struggling to open her heart to love. Do you think many activists, like Ava, pursue activism as part of personal quest?

GB: Thank you for your kind words. I do think that many activists see their work as part of a deeply personal journey—for many people I know, reaching out to heal the community, or the environment, is an integral part of the process of healing themselves. Being of service can help us both get over ourselves and get to know ourselves more intimately. And I keep seeing how activism is most effective when those working for peace have found (or are trying to find) peace within themselves.

JDH: When I got to the end of the novel, I was still concerned about the birds, even though you indicate that they were healthier. Would you say Salton Sea is out of the danger zone?

GB: Things definitely improved at the end of that awful summer (thanks to the diligence of the rescue workers, and the natural botulism cycle), but unfortunately, the Salton Sea is still in a precarious situation. The salinity and pollution levels continue to rise, and algae blooms still kill off fish, and occasionally birds, on a regular basis. So many potential “fixes” have been proposed—everything from digging a canal between the Sea and the Gulf of California to building a dam that would create one highly salinated part of the Sea, but so far nothing has been fully approved or funded. I continue to feel an almost maternal protectiveness for the Sea.

JDH: Speaking of maternal…Mother and daughters are central figures in your books. Both Dead Birds and your new novel, Self Storage, portray women who are torn between the demands of family and selfhood. Any comment on this?

GB: Ooh, I hadn't made that connection between the two books before—I love your interpretation! It can definitely be hard to find the space to explore and develop oneself when you feel great responsibility as a daughter (as in the case of The Book of Dead Birds) or as a mother (as in Self Storage.) The demands on our time are so great, and it can be easy to lose track of our own self in the process. While my characters in both books do struggle to find a sense of self outside of their familial obligations, they both understand how important it is for their own growth (and sanity!) to try.

JDH: I read in a previous interview that you got the idea for Self Storage from a woman you met on a plane who made a living from self-storage auctions. You immediately wanted to know: Who would do such a thing for a living? And you seemed to create a character from that question. How did Flan reveal herself to you?

GB: Flan's voice was there from the start. And her overalls, her red Converse shoes. But it took a while for me to really get to know her. In the first draft, she was doing a sort of broad independent study of the Self, and was looking into every Self-related resource you can imagine: Zen, Jung, etc. Whitman was just a small part of her quest. That draft was all over the place, too much about ideas, too little about characters. When I lit upon using Whitman as the heartbeat of the story in the second draft, I suddenly understood Flan so much more.

JDH: Flan loves opening boxes, never knowing what she’ll find inside. The contents of these boxes open up new worlds for her, and send her on imaginative—and real—journeys. How is her job at the self-storage unit similar to a novelist’s?

GB: Writing a novel is definitely like opening a mysterious box. I rarely know where a story is going to take me when I sit down to write. It is a continual process of discovery and surprise. I love going along for the ride, letting characters take me by the hand (or grab me by the hair) and take me down an unmarked path. I love the experience of gaining windows into other lives, gaining tastes of other people's experiences.

JDH: Whitman plays a powerful role in Self Storage, highlighting Flan’s deepest desires and frustrations. Flan says,

Whitman thought the self was, expansive, transcendent…everything.
I wanted to feel that way, I really did, but I wasn’t
so sure. My self felt pretty small most of the time.

GB: I don't think that Flan wants to feel big—I think she wants to feel open. She wants to feel as if she has a connection with life, with every aspect of life. She doesn't want to feel trapped in her own circumstances. Whitman gives her that sense of openness.

I think feeling small can be a very good thing—it's important to remember how small we are in the big scheme of things, how we are each a tiny atom in this big teeming universe. This perspective helps us not take ourselves too seriously; it helps us stay humble and grounded. It's very freeing in itself. I think when Flan said she felt small, though, she didn't mean that—she meant she felt limited, constricted. She doesn't want to have a big puffed up ego—she wants to have a wide open self, a sense of being part of everything, not separate. She wants to feel at home in the world.

JDH: The Internet is a strong theme in Self Storage. Would Whitman have liked going online?

GB: Oh, I think he would have loved it! So much information at his fingertips! So many windows into people's lives! So many opportunities to expand our ideas of what's possible. I think he would have been mindful of stepping away from the computer and breathing in the real world, though, too (something I need to do more of, myself!)

JDH: Flan yearns to know and help her Aghani neighbor, Sodaba. When you were writing this character, did you feel this same yearning? I did, but I’m not sure I ever really got to know her….Did Sodaba ever reveal herself as completely as your other characters?

GB: I've always been interested in learning about other cultures. After 9/11, I felt an even deeper need to explore Middle Eastern culture. I was horrified by how our culture vilified everything Middle Eastern, how people from that part of the world were suddenly looked upon as Other, as somehow less than human. I organized a benefit concert that took place shortly after 9/11, and tried to get the local Islamic center involved (the concert benefited a woman's organization in Afghanistan, RAWA, as well as a group that used storytelling to help children who had been affected by the attacks in New York.) I had several meetings with people from the center, and found the experience very enlightening. Unfortunately, their choir never showed up at the concert; they weren't ready to be so public, so exposed, during a time when they were receiving so many threats.

I have to admit, Sodaba never did fully unveil herself to me. I would have liked to have gotten to know her more thoroughly, but I feel I learned enough about her to be able to feel true compassion for her, to feel a real human connection.

JDH: How might the desire to understand other cultures connect to Whitman’s idea of celebrating the Self?

GB: I think a yearning to understand other cultures is similar to Flan's desire for an open self—it is a hunger to look outside our limited experience, to expand our understanding of both the world and ourselves. When we learn about other cultures, the world becomes much bigger and smaller all at once—bigger because it shows us new possibilities of how to live; smaller, because it reminds us that at the core, we're all human, we are all sharing this planet, and we are all responsible for caring for it and each other.

JDH: On your website, you offered a writing contest where people submitted stories about the YES in their lives. Have you chosen a winner?

GB: I'm currently in the process of choosing a winner (five winners, actually). I received around 50 entries, and it's been so moving and inspiring to read about what makes people say YES. Family, friends, love, nature, creative expression, community service seem to be the top choices within this group. Reading about what makes people say YES helps me appreciate all the YES in my own life, and makes me want to delve into it even more deeply. I think it would be cool to expand this project, to create an anthology about what makes people say YES—it would be such an affirming book. I'm not sure I'll ever get to that—I have so much on my plate—but it's fun to think about. For now, I'm enjoying reading through the contest entries!

JDH: I really hope you do the YES anthology someday…That reminds of me of the anthology This I Believe, based on the NPR radio program where ordinary Americans articulate their most deeply-felt beliefs. My college students are writing “believe” essays and finding it very challenging to articulate what they believe in, as opposed to what they don’t believe in. I think writing about YES would be a great exercise, too.

Anyway….My next question is about dreams. How have dreams influenced your writing life?

GB: I was at the AWP Conference a couple of weeks ago, and heard Robert Olen Butler speak about how art doesn't come from the mind; it comes from the place where we dream. I agree with this—our dream selves have access to all sorts of wild imagery and symbolism that might not make sense at first but that can strike a deep chord within us. I love dropping into that dream-like place when I write, where everything feels fluid and open to interpretation. And I love when my dreams reveal things to me about my characters—in the case of The Book of Dead Birds, a fever dream when I had strep throat changed the whole course of the novel. I had been writing the book in third person because it felt safer to be writing about Ava as an observer rather than claiming to be her, but in this fever dream, I became her, which was very intense; the experience made me realize that Ava needed to tell her story in her own voice, and that's what brought the book to life for me.

JDH: Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women is a truly original guide, largely composed of meditations on different kinds of fruit and women’s bodies. What was the original seed for this book?

GB: Fruitflesh actually didn't start out as a book for women writers; the original title was Writing from the Body, and I saw it as a guide for any writer. I had found that the body was where my two arts—writing and dance—intersected, and where we could access our juiciest source of creativity, and I wanted to explore that in a deeper way. Writing the book was a case of teaching myself what I wanted and needed to learn. I thought I had come upon a fresh new approach to writing, but when I was about halfway through the first draft, a book called Writing from the Body by John Lee came out, and I was devastated. I felt as if my life's work had been wrenched away from me. It took me a while to screw up the courage to look at that book; when I finally did, I realized that even though I shared some ideas with the author, there was still room for my voice in the world. I decided to focus on women writers, because I live in a woman's body and understand that most intimately. Also, I've always been upset with how women's bodies are portrayed in the media, and I wanted to break through that destructive beauty myth and help women see that we all hold rich stores of creativity in our bodies, no matter what size or shape we may be.

JDH: Are there other guides to writing that you’ve found helpful? How do you think writing guides can be useful, and sometimes not useful, to the beginning writer?

GB: I love Natalie Goldberg's books, especially Wild Mind. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a favorite, too. So is poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Wooldridge. As for new books about writing, my friend Laraine Herring's Writing Begins with the Breath comes out from Shambhala later this year. It will rock your world.

I think that writing guides can be very useful for beginning writers—they can help us gain confidence as writers, begin to take creative risks, begin to feel like part of a larger writing community. There is a risk inherent in these books, though—it can become easy to read about writing without actually writing, or to do continuous writing exercises rather than working on a project that is coming from deep inside yourself. I guess it's important to notice whether you're using the book as a tool to enrich your own writing, or as a crutch that's keeping you away from your truest work. If it's the latter, try to wean yourself away from the writing books, and work on trusting your own judgment, your own voice, your own autonomy as a writer. You can always return to the writing books for a quick fix of inspiration.

JDH: Fruitflesh emphasizes the relationship between writing and healing. You received a BA in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing” from the University of the Redlands. Can you describe your philosophy about the relationship between writing and healing?

GB: All writing has the capacity to be healing, whether it's through journaling, poetry, fiction, any other form. It doesn't have to be autobiographical; it doesn't have to be remotely about our own experience. I think if we keep ourselves open—our senses, our minds, our hearts—and let what wants to flow through come, it will transform us, heal us. The stuff that needs to bubble up somehow finds a way to do so—sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes head on. Writing is such a safe place to explore all aspects of ourselves: our shadows, our pain, our darkness—also our pleasure, our joy, our wildest dreams. We just have to stay open and the writing will take us where we need to go.

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Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications), The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, and her latest novel, Self Storage (Ballantine.) Gayle is also a teacher and an activist, and was named a Writer Who Makes a Difference by the Writer Magazine. She lives in Riverside, CA with her husband and two teenage children.

Jess deCourcy Hinds is the Book Review Editor of Small Spiral Notebook. This summer, she’ll launch a new section of SSN called “Literary Features.”