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Judith Ortiz Cofer
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This interview with Judith Ortiz Cofer was conducted by Christine McQuade in 2005.
| S&W3: |
What were the circumstances that led you to write this piece ["The Story of My Body"]?
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| J.O.C.: |
I remember the circumstances very well, and that's not always the case. The original place of publication was an anthology
called Minding the Body [Doubleday/Anchor, New York, 1994], put together by Patricia Foster, a fellow writer and essayist.
She wrote to me and said, "I really would like for you to do something for this book." She had asked many female writers to write
about their experiences with their bodies or anything that had prompted them to consider some physical aspect of themselves. I thought,
I don't know, there's nothing in particular to say about my body; but she insisted.
At the time I was doing a week's residency in Duluth, Minnesota. I spent the week thinking about what to write. I started thinking about
what my body has done for me and what it has triggered. I always carry index cards in my purse, and I began collecting images and memories.
The University of Minnesota, Duluth, near Lake Superior, was an unusual environment for me. I was jogging around a track above an
ice-hockey field, and I was thinking and looking down at those big 'ol Minnesota boys, and thinking about the roughness of the sport.
That's what started me thinking about the fact that I was never picked for any teams [as a child] because I was tiny.
What I was doing was allowing the world, wherever I was-and Minnesota [is] as far away from Puerto Rico and New Jersey as you can get-to
offer me triggers for thinking about my body. By the end of the week, I had collected a bunch of images and recollections, way too many
things. I call my mother every Sunday, and that week I asked my mother if she once called me "tall." I had reached my height of five-feet
when I was in middle school. So that reminded me that my Puerto Rican relatives had these expectations for me.
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| S&W3: |
What led you to create the four section-headers in this essay ("skin," "color," "size," and "looks")?
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| J.O.C.: |
The reason it turned out to be a segmented essay, though that's not what I called it then, was that I put it together like a montage
or a collage. Since I wasn't sitting at my desk, I was able to collage the images. Once I got back, I was able to put them together.
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| S&W3: |
Was there a natural order to the sequence when you began, or did you impose an order later?
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| J.O.C.: |
I imposed the order later. That is so for all of my essays. I don't try to impose the order to start with. That's artificial to me.
A personal essay or creative nonfiction is more organic than the academic essay. The academic essay-and I have many graduate students
and have to impose that order on them-requires a certain form; but when you're talking about very personal and intimate things, I think
it makes for a much more interesting read if you collect your information and then see where to start. I basically put all my cards in
front of me and wrote and then divided.
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| S&W3: |
Can you say more about using note cards?
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| J.O.C.: |
I travel a lot, and I do have my trusty Palm Pilot. It's harder to get the Palm Pilot out, turn it on, [and] find the category than to
jot down a quick image on an index card. The spontaneous nature of an imaginative trigger requires that you jot it down. It is like
waking up from a dream.
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| S&W3: |
Many students who have read this anthology discuss the differences between communicating meaning in verbal and visual media. What
role does visual imagery play in your work?
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| J.O.C.: |
Visual images are very crucial to me and my writing process. I am a very visual person. People have told me that in all of my work,
the sensory is what's crucial. I like to think of myself as a thinker, but to me, the philosophical statement has to be embedded in
the scene or the image.
I collect images which then reveal their meaning to me. I did a talk recently on my autobiographical narratives and poems, and I
talked about the fact that in order to get back to those memories, I use what Virginia Wolff calls, "moments of being." She said
you follow the tracks left by strong emotion, back to your moments of being and those are the things you should write about.
People always think, What do I write about? Your brain functions like a browser collecting "favorites" on the Internet, and then you
have a history of what's important to you. I can go to my favorites place, and I see that Amazon.com gets visited a lot and Google
Scholar gets visited a lot, but then so do certain stores. I can almost see a little map of my brain. It's a silly analogy, I know,
but I tell my students that they do know what to write about. It's not what I think is important, it's what they think is important.
Even if I give them a subject, the angle that they take has to be based on whatever images come forth for them.
If I say to them "Iraq," for example, I have a whole lists of associations based on my years of living that they don't, but they have
fears and concerns that are based on their age. I'm giving them the subject, but they have to discover the images that lead them to the
angle that they have to take. That's basically how I decide what I want to write about.
If I give myself the subject of "coffee," what does it call forth for me? What are the images associated with that? I find that
especially through poetry. I use poems to take me to the source of my obsessions.
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| S&W3: |
You have published numerous works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. How does the process of composing shift for you, as you
write across different genres?
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| J.O.C.: |
It's very different. I use the writing of poetry in a different way than I use the writing of fiction and nonfiction. For me, the
essay-(in any form that it takes, creative nonfiction or the personal essay)-[is] an exploration; it's an actual way of thinking about
a subject. When I am presented with something, an image or a concept that I do not really know, it will turn into an essay most of the
time. An essay is an assay: You assess things; you explore them. In Spanish, the word has it roots in ensayo; it means both "essay" and
"rehearsal." It's the same thing in French. So I see it as a rehearsal for thinking. I start essays by posing some question to myself.
Strangely, the essay is like an Ouija board in that it takes me to either answers or to more questions. Essays aren't always about
answering questions. Sometimes the best essays are about posing questions. This is the way I was brought up. Does it relate to the
way you were brought up? Does this scene resonate with you? I read essays to acquire factual information, but also to open myself up
to new questions.
Poetry to me is the essence of language. I'm not a native speaker; I learned English. I feel that if I can write a poem that succeeds,
I am doing something tantamount to turning three perfect somersaults, which I don't ever hope to do. I have accomplished something with
the English language that I never knew I could do when I was a nonspeaker. That's one aspect of it; I have always been tuned in to language,
and mastering it is important to me. Another aspect is that I really think that poetry is a way to get into the deepest recesses of your
memory banks and your unconscious. This is not mysterious; it's biological. I think that the power of free-association, a tool used in
analysis, is available to the poet, or people who read poetry. You experience associations with language that lead you to some unexpected
places. I have had poems reveal some things to me that I didn't know I had in my brain. I have talked to other poets about this and they
say that when you are deeply involved in trying to get to the essence of words-and that's what a poem does-it does open up new ways of meaning.
That's why a good poem is always true, even if it's not factual. For me, writing a poem is a particularly intense and important exercise and
experience.
Fiction to me is a combination of poetry and nonfiction in that I usually start out with something that I'm familiar with or that I know-how
to be a fifteen-year-old girl, for example-and then instead of stopping where my life stopped, I let my imagination take the character into
the unknown territory. As with poetry, the question is "What can I make language do without the restraints that nonfiction imposes on you?"
They are three different experiences, but not unrelated. Most of my books are multigenre, and they are that way for a reason.
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| S&W3: |
Do you tend to work through multiple drafts?
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| J.O.C.: |
Yes. I don't believe anyone who says "The thing just came to me." There are people who actually do all of their revising in their heads,
but I don't know too many. I think most of them are secret revisers. I've put poems and essays through fifteen or twenty drafts. Revision
is writing. I keep my early drafts to see what I've done, but some of them bear little resemblance to the final draft.
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| S&W3: |
"The Story of My Body" has been anthologized and written about in numerous contexts. Have you found differing responses to the
piece based on the context in which it has been encountered?
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| J.O.C.: |
I write essays for different reasons, and they end up in interesting circumstances. This happened with a little essay I wrote called
"The Myth of the Latin Woman," which was published in Glamour magazine and now has ended up in a few gender and race anthologies. It's
interesting how these essays end up with the right audience.
Students who have been brought to my lectures by their teachers often ask me questions that they are working on for some kind of test. I
always tell them, I just wrote the thing; your teacher and your interpretations are the right answers, not mine.
In addition to the context of literary studies, I have talked to readers of this essay in the context of women's and cultural studies. I
have done readings for women's studies groups who have used "The Story of My Body" in body-image considerations. There's been discussion
about how we sometimes fail to acknowledge that the concept of beauty is completely different from one place to another, and how confused
and hurt young people can be, shifting from one world to the other. There's the feminist angel and the great concern with body image, and
then there's also the cultural. I've also talked to classes that are studying cultural biases.
Last night I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink [Little, Brown & Co., 2005]. I love books about perception. He talks about how men who
are six feet tall or taller make about $5,000 more per year. I was thinking that this little essay of mine is a poor cousin to his book
in that we are judged by our exterior. It's assumed that someone who is short is not going to be a good athlete. In many cases that is
true, but the judgment is passed without any trial. Beauty is apportioned according to the aesthetic values of one particular culture or
another.
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| S&W3: |
What are your earliest recollections of writing and reading?
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| J.O.C.: |
I have more of a memory of reading than writing. I recently wrote a tribute to my mother, who doesn't have a college degree and
finished her high school degree after she was widowed. Yet all of my life she had a book in her hand. She's a voracious reader
of anything. I remember having her read to me; she read the usual children's books when she could find them. I remember that she
was thrilled to find Bambi at a bodega; she also read to me about celebrities and royalty. She taught me how to read in Spanish, s
o the knowledge of the Spanish language is mainly because of her. All of my formal education was in English, and yet I can read
and write in Spanish. Her whole family was not college-educated, but they all knew how to recite poems. It's a culture that loves words.
My brother and I were pretty lonely kids, in that our childhood was pretty dislocated. My father was in the navy, and we moved back
and forth from the island [Puerto Rico] all the time. He and I would write these little plays to put on for my father when he came
home (my brother is a playwright now). Then later, I read my way through the Patterson Public Library, where I lived.
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| S&W3: |
How did you come to think of yourself as a writer?
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| J.O.C.: |
For most of my young-adult life, until I finished grad school, I had one goal in mind: to finish college and ideally
graduate school and to teach. I loved books, and I thought that would be the life for me. I always had a need to express
myself creatively and was proud of the essays that I wrote for school and the grades I earned. But it wasn't until I was
writing my thesis in graduate school that I realized that teaching literature wasn't going to be enough. I realized I
needed to do some writing. For many years, I didn't say it to anyone that I was going to be a writer. I did show a few
things to the department chair at my first teaching job, and she got me sending out my poems. Even for a long time then,
until I had published enough that I felt strong enough to be able to say that I declare myself a writer. It's because
society doesn't really value enterprises that don't really bring in money and material rewards.
I now tell my students, "At whatever moment you feel that this is something that you are going to stick with, even if it's just
internally, you declare yourself an artist in the way that people say I have a vocation, and you practice it every day and you
do it because you need to do it." I tell my students they will know at some point. Even the students who are not going to be
writers for life ought to feel that writing is a worthy enterprise. I think some boys, particularly younger boys, think of writing
poems like dancing ballet. They're slightly ashamed of being good writers.
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| S&W3: |
What suggestions do you have for students who "hate writing"?
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| J.O.C.: |
Writing makes you vulnerable. You can be the toughest person in the world, and if you sit down and make
grammatical errors or can't express yourself coherently, then you expose yourself to the world as ignorant.
Most people are afraid to expose themselves. I tell my students [that] they don't have to show the first draft
to anyone. If they want to succeed, they are going to have to expose themselves at some point. Even if all they
do is write memos, they will have to expose themselves. So they have to practice writing so that they become not ashamed of writing.
A lot of people don't know that they're good writers. It has very little to do with their mastery with spelling
or grammar (which can be corrected); it has to do with the vividness of their imagination and originality of their
expression. They don't know that because they've never explored it.
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