That "I" perspective: Privileges of selection.
The thing I like about a P.O.V. as unapologetically first-person as Yuknavitch's is that the author can do whatever the hell she wants. I spent minutes wracking my brain for an idea of how to relate the concept of "privilege" to the memoir we read (I typed it out to see if it would make sense of itself - "privilege. privilege, privilege, privilege" - it didn't). Then I realized Yuknavitch created her own privilege. It's a logical choice following a life so spun out of control - if you couldn't experience it on your own terms the first time around, pulled along by fathers and addictions, of course you'd want to tell about it on your own terms. I think we get caught up - examining memoirs like we do - in purity: factual, chronological, objective purity. Stories start to finish, beginning and end, exaggeration-free, et cetera. Yuknavitch doesn't do it like that. I kind of loved it.
What I'm learning about a memory, or a perception, is that it's almost never linear. I ask my roommate why she's upset with her parents: she tells me what's new with her stepdad. She jumps over to her asshole sometimes-boyfriend. Now she's talking about therapy. Now paying for therapy. We get to the point in jabs, reroutes, word-associations. It makes perfect sense. It's pure first-person, meaning made in the composite of things coming from all directions, pieced together, handed over in the unfiltered, conversational voice.
It's all about the details you select. Take, for example, Yuknavitch's chapter about her lover, the photographer from New York. First, the memory of their meeting: "I don't know why I did it, I just know I couldn't not. While I was holding her hand I leaned in close to her face and said my name is Lidia. I am a writer. Which I said exactly to the scar underneath her eye, letting my eyes and voice travel down her skin. I saw stars as I let go. Her hair smelled like rain." (p. 136). Following that, Yuknavitch's immediate context: "Before I met her in that auditorium in Eugene, Oregon, I'd been to exactly three SM play parties in Eugen. Wanna know how? Because my former best friend who went on the little beach excursion got me invited. At the SM play parties I saw some awesome things happen..." (p. 137) And after that, "'Tell me what you want.' That's how it began. If I said something dumb like, I'd like a kiss, she'd say, 'No, that's not right, Angel.' And lightly sting my skin with a riding crop or this crop with thornish things dangling from it in a kind of tassel. 'Try again,' she'd say." (p. 138)
We never actually get the three or four sequential points between meeting in an auditorium and Mommy-domme spankings - and who cares? We get the picture perfectly. Yuknavitch writes from so deep down in first person that she writes the way we communicate a memory: in pieces and in big picture, all at once. Again, I kind of love it. I love how much you can get away with, how much you can control the reality of your own story, when you tell it like you're talking to the reader.
Gosh. Privilege and this piece. To think about privilege in that sense, feels like a novel. I thought many time. Oh great. Another time a privileged person experiences this slant of pain that has been beaten into many poor folks and has all the access to skills/education/resources to be able to write in particular ways, to spiral out of control and still not just be dead in a ditch. Privilege privilege privilege. But boy, nonetheless, her words a beautiful. She can tell a story. She is weird. That pain in her, and that access, got something beautiful done.
ReplyDeleteGreat Gwen, she has masses of trauma and has reasons for her behavior but keeps the highlight on her acts--it's interesting as one of those self-destructive lives go, yes, this is one of those stories and one where we can follow the randomness of memory.
ReplyDeletee
"I kind of love it" when Gwen writes a blog and I experience that aha moment. I agree that we sometimes become "caught up" in examining memoir, looking for straight lines to life's problems and solutions. Yuknavitch memoir is a refreshing reminder to readers and writers that life happens as it happens and it may not be wrapped in a pretty pink box. Sometimes it may be wrapped in additions and abuse but no less valuable. Memoirs deserve to travel outside the limits of their expected linear path. Its what make creative nonfiction creative. The fact that Yuknavitch goes to the gut of life, rather than flirt with it, the first person narrative is 100% on point.
ReplyDelete