|
BIO
Susanne Antonetta was born
in Georgia and raised in New Jersey. She is the author of three collections of poems,
including Bardo, a Brittingham Prize winner. A portion of Body Toxic was
published as an essay entitled "Elizabeth" that was declared a Notable Essay for
1998 by Best American Essays. Antonetta lives in Washington state with her husband
and young son.
INTERVIEW
July
27, 2001
Poet Susanne Antonetta
spent childhood summers with her extended family in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. There
they swam, caught crabs, fished and sunbathed --- and did irreparable damage to their
health. In her beautiful but terrifying memoir, BODY TOXIC: An Environmental Memoir,
Antonetta describes how the land and water of this vacation paradise was polluted by
nuclear waste, pesticides, cyanide and all other manner of poisons. Bookreporter.com
writer Jana Siciliano talked with Antonetta about how the author blended family history, a
child's perspective on the turbulent Cold War years and an environmental call to arms.
TBR: The stories about your immigrant grandparents, the stories about your drug use, the
scientific facts that point to the various reasons for your family's health problems from
environmental factors, the adoption of your son --- what was the defining moment in which
you realized that you had to put all these experiences into a book?
SA: There really wasn't a defining moment at all. I
was writing with no real aim ---certainly not the aim of a book --- various personal
stories relating to my mother's family, which was always a huge influence in my life. At
the same time I was, out of pure terminal curiosity I guess, doing my own research on the
environmental problems in the area where we had all spent time together. I never thought
of the latter as book material; I went after it just to satisfy my own curiosity, my need
to understand why so many different things were happening to me, in different parts of my
body. It seemed like relentless bad luck. I'm not even sure when that research crept into
my writing --- I think I used the nuclear power plant first because I was very aware of it
when it was built. Then community activists I interviewed kept mentioning these other
Superfund sites, so I would look into them and gradually start writing about them, too. I
realized over time that I might have internalized that landscape in a much more literal
way than I had ever imagined. And I just kept going. I had probably more than half a book
before I ever thought of it as a book.
Mostly, I think, I am just curious. I have things I am studying closely now, animal
languages, evolution. I may write about these things but I may not. It seems like we live
at a time when access to information is so rich and so ready. I just follow what interests
me.
TBR: You have suffered from various medical problems and discuss your infertility with
great awareness and in great detail. How is your health at this writing?
SA: It's fine. I am facing surgery
sometime in the next few months, but not for anything life-threatening. After seeing
several people close to me go through cancer treatment, I really can't complain.
TBR: In the book, you mention that you go to great lengths to give your adopted son the
opportunity to live in a world where the environment isn't necessarily going to harm him.
Yet, he already has asthma, making him prone to many respiratory illnesses. Do you feel
that there is still more you can do to help keep him as healthy as possible, safeguards
that you haven't already applied to your life?
SA: Well, there isn't anything else I can do I'm aware
of, but that doesn't mean much, does it? I told that story about the Romans eating off
lead tableware at the end of the book, having no idea their pretty ceramics were poisoning
them, because I really don't think we can know what we're doing. I am pretty fanatical
about things like organic food, and larger things like maintaining a very green,
waste-free household. But who knows? We may discover in 20 years that pediatric Tylenol
had unanticipated effects. As a parent, of course, you worry all the time.
I've been reading the scientist Edward Wilson a lot lately. He is skeptical about the
actual evolutionary value of intelligence. He kind of throws that comment off but I've
really thought about it a lot. And I can see how it is potentially terrible to be
intelligent enough to manipulate --- really manipulate --- your environment. You either
have to be intelligent enough to grasp how it all works together, not missing a link in
the chain, or you're going to create some royally big problems for yourself.
TBR: How did you deal with the irony of things like being put on lithium, one of the
chemicals poured into the water system around your family's home which may have caused
your health problems to begin with?
SA: Well, it is ironic, isn't it? I'm not sure what
you can do with that irony except name it. Someone, a scientist, pointed out to me that
really contaminated environments tend to function like cancer treatment on a healthy
population --- lots of radiation and toxic chemicals for everyone. Then of course those
environments seem to create cancers, so you fight the effects of chemicals and radiation
with more of the same.
TBR: How did you decide upon the title BODY TOXIC? It is perfect.
SA: It is a great title! I can say that because I
didn't come up with it. My agent Jill Grinberg did. She's a genius.
TBR: What was your journey to publication like? Part of this book was published first
as an essay and thus a Notable Essay of the Year winner. Did you find it difficult to
engage others in your story and get the whole thing into print?
SA: I really was very blessed with this publication,
and after the kind of glacial waits you have in poetry, I was surprised. The book was
accepted just a few weeks after going out, and there were several houses extremely
interested. I find people are surprisingly engaged with the story --- so many I think are
encountering similar things.
TBR: Is the story of the Radium Girls based on anything you encountered in real life?
SA: No, except that it's set in New Jersey. I was just
so fascinated by those women!
TBR: What was your writing process like throughout the creation of this book?
SA: I write every day in the morning for several hours
--- anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. That usually includes some research time, though I
sneak research and reading in throughout the day. I juggle a lot; time with my son is
sacred to me and I won't cut into it except in rare instances. So, I'm not sure I have any
interesting writing process secrets to tell. If I feel uninspired I write anyway, and then
when I come back to my desk I can snicker at the unspeakable drivel I produced yesterday
and I'll feel impelled to replace it with something better.
TBR: Your diaries play an important part in the narrative. How many do you have and how
did they begin to figure into the story you were telling in BODY TOXIC?
SA: Years' worth --- two full booklength diaries and
at least a half a dozen little school notebooks, all full. At first I wasn't going to use
any, then I put in too many and my wise editor Dawn Seferian got me to take some out. She
was right; a little of that voice goes a long way! It is just the tip of the iceberg
though. I doubt I'll ever use the diaries again in that way but I like having them around,
pulling them out. I feel like I'm kind of in dialogue with that girl. Sometimes I'm trying
to get her approval; sometimes I just want her to know things are OK.
TBR: This, of course, is a memoir. Do you see your life as an endless well of
inspiration or is this the last time you will write specifically about your own
experiences?
SA: I'm awfully sick of myself right now! I just find
myself the most boring company; I think that's kind of a memoir hangover. I'm working on a
new ms. of poems and they're all in persona. I don't even want to hear myself think for a
while! But I find I am incredibly drawn to personal narrative; I started out writing
fiction but somehow the "fiction" part of it never stuck. So I am also working
on new nonfiction and somehow my presence in it does keep coming through. It feels to me
right now like a mouse whose little nose keeps sticking through the baseboards, no matter
how uninviting you make the kitchen. But it's a different kind of presence altogether, a
meditative watching presence, not a recounting one.
TBR: What will you write next?
SA: See above!
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
