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What was the motivation for writing a novel about addiction and the streets?
I was driving through Atlanta on my way to Mississippi one August and stopped to visit a friend who was doing a public health project interviewing women at high-risk for HIV. Most of the women were drug-addicted or they were sleeping with addicts. I had a very clear picture of a “junkie” in my mind. When I read these narratives, they blew my mind, they challenged all my assumptions. These women were beautiful, they were poets, they were people with hopes and dreams like you and I. Almost always their impetus for doing drugs was pure. They did them with the intent to be better mothers, to feel better about themselves, to work harder, to connect with their partners, to see the love in the world rather than the pain. The impetus was actually quite spiritual, and yet as a culture we criminalize addiction, rather than understanding its source and finding alternatives. As Gracey says in the book, “You think somebody wakes up and says, Yeehaw, today’s a gorgeous day. Thank you Lord. Today I’m gonna get hooked on drugs. That’s your mistake, she says. It don’t happen like that at all.”
What was the most surprising part of the research?
The people I worked with on the streets in meth clinics, doing needle exchange, in the emergency room, strip clubs and get-off houses were not of one ilk. I hung out with priests, doctors, Catholic school girls, people born into money and people who’d gone to church as kids. Addiction is a common language. It transcends gender, race, creed, class and sexual orientation. It isn’t just a needle in the arm. It can also be addiction to money, to sex, to romance. It is about feeling whole. We are all groping in the dark for that light that makes us feel whole and sometimes addiction feels like that light. We don’t know how badly it will burn.
Was it dangerous?
Where there’s intense need, there is always danger. The Bluff, which is the inner-city part of Atlanta, looks like a war zone. There are drug dealers everywhere, people pack weapons and sell weapons. The get-off houses are unlit and people lurk in the corners trying to find a way to get drugs when they have no money. Gun-shot wounds and funerals are common. Here I was a white girl hanging around waiting to hear people’s stories. I was clean as a whistle, and I had very little defense. It was a risk, but still and all people are people, I found a tremendous amount of love there, a tremendous amount of willingness to connect. People want to tell their stories, and when you are asking for that, you often find tenderness rather than insult.
How was the book received?
Gracey is considered a cult-classic. It sold very well abroad, there was a documentary made about its making and Ann Hathaway optioned it for film. The publication of it was an interesting ride. In the world of literature, there are silent voices that the literati and the publishing world don’t necessarily want to hear. In truth I wrote the book for people who could bear to look at the skeletons in the closet. Gracey has a very committed following of readers, from parents of addicted teens to the addicts themselves to teens who finally feel like someone is seeing the reality of what they are being offered on a typical weekend night. Gracey was a risk. Looking at books today, we find they are primarily written by the bourgeois for the bourgeois. There are some editors, agents and reviewers who are willing to venture into a world like this one, and they usually represent cutting-edge writers. At the time Gracey was in production, I was working with a fantastic editor at Scribner, Gillian Blake. She was not afraid of the book or its world and understood the juxtaposition of beauty and grittiness that the writing was trying to achieve. She left Scribner before the book was released, and Gracey was orphaned. The publicity was dropped. The senior editor was terrified of the book and would not stand behind it. I don’t blame her. It is very frightening for people to look at addiction. They don’t want to see it in themselves, they don’t want to see it in their children or in their friends. They want a clear villain, but the villain is within the self. It is the desire within the self to be whole. Interestingly enough, Hollywood was very receptive to Gracey, and that is how Words without Walls was started. You see addiction in Hollywood films like Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream and Traffic. These are good films, but they are flawed in that they villainize dealers as black, heartless, sex-addicted men rather than admitting that, like addicts, dealers have many faces and are often victims themselves. Nevertheless, a filmmaker can use cinematography to balance the grittiness with beauty so the watcher doesn’t go to such a dark place. My vision was to use language to this same end, beautifying language in order to open the reader to this world. It was an ambitious attempt, and I think it was the one thing that reviewers found difficult. I can’t say that I succeeded, but I certainly did the best I could.
What about the cover?
Just a glance at the cover of this book personifies what advertising perceives as the drug problem. It’s the face of a needle rather than a face of a person. The needle is just a tool. Addiction is about people. I fought the cover with everything in me, but I also wanted the book to be published and the cover was designed by a very influential name in cover design, and my contract was threatened. When the book came out, bookstores were very turned off from the cover and so were readers. Fifty percent of bookstores would not carry the book because of the cover, and I agreed with their choice. It is not humanistic. That said in the Words Without Walls world, people loved the cover because of its promise of danger and intensity.
What is Words Without Walls?
The second year Gracey was out we received a donation from a very big name in Hollywood, who wanted to remain anonymous and wanted us to use the money to send the book out to rehabilitation centers across the country and abroad. The money was extended again the next year to include the prison system, where so many addicts are behind bars. Luckily, because the book was not published well, it was remaindered, so we had a lot of books in stock that were selling at much less than retail. I think we reached more rehab centers and prisons then we would have otherwise. That short print run wound up being a blessing, a boon. As well, we started a resource center connecting books to readers in places where they might not have a lot of access to them. People in rehab, in prison and now soldiers in Iraq appreciate books for the worlds they open up to them outside of the confines of where they are at the moment.
Have you, personally, battled with addiction
I never stuck a needle in my arm but yes, sure, we all battle with addiction in our own way. Anytime we think that something outside us will give us control or will make our lives better, we are flirting with addiction. Some of the people I have loved most in my life have been addicts. I had a friend in high school who died with a needle in his arm, and I have family members who almost died from pill addiction. Underneath addiction is almost always the impulse to connect with the spirit that feels lost within, and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t lost that connection at some point in their lives and looked for it elsewhere. Addiction doesn’t scare me. I think people who have the impetus to look for spirit are often braver and more interesting than the rest of us. I also think they should not be victimized. People need alternatives, they don’t need punishment. Writing Gracey allowed me to see the face of addiction as human rather than as criminal.
Who are your favorite authors?
I like authors who take risks. Edie Meidav is an excellent author who has transcended the boundaries of time, culture and gender and has written with almost unbearable eloquence about evil. I love Haven Kimmel because she opens the reader up with humor and then seers them with beautiful truth. Susan Cheever is one of the bravest authors of our time in her willingness to look into our cultures’ blind spots. I love Louise Erdrich and Joyce Carol Oates because of their lush language, their fearlessness, their willingness to go beyond the realm of mind and into a wild tangled world of pathos. I don’t much care for writers who are constantly restraining themselves, who are holding back from the reader, fearful writers who seem to be too timid on the page and need everything to be perfect. I like inconsistency, it shows the truth of the writing process. My favorite poet is Chip Livingston because his language and the honesty of his poetry makes me want to cry and self-flagellate and do all sorts of crazy things. Mostly I want to feel a tremendous amount when I read, I want to drown in a world not my own.