Staten Island Stories: Interview with Claire Jimenez!

In James Baldwin's essay, "Everybody's Protest Novel," he writes:  "The failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of life, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread, power in its insistence that it is his categorization alone which is read and which cannot be transcended."1  If only Baldwin were alive today to read Staten Island Stories. Claire Jimenez's well-crafted stories affirm life by fearlessly baring all:  the beauty, the dread, the power and failure of the human condition while also offering the reader every intersectional aspect of the characters that readers meet on this journey.  Jimenez has mentioned that Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales was an inspiration for this collection.  In The Canterbury Tales, the characters unite for their yearly pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James, better known as Santiago de Compostela (in Spain). The reader becomes familiar with each character while they tell their stories as they journey to the holy shrine.  Here in Staten Island, there is no holy shrine.  These characters are simply on a daily road to survive on an island where they are faceless, invisible.  New York itself is very diverse.  But Staten Island's demographics are predominantly white, 75.7% white to be exact while 10.6% are Black or African American, 7.5% are Asian, and the Latinx population stands at 17.3%.2

Jimenez is giving voice and a presence to these individuals.  As we begin the collection, she places us on a journey above ground, on the ferry, with a struggling adjunct professor :  "Today on the way back home from teaching . . . "(1).  She ends the collection underground, interweaving all five boroughs of New York:  "The hot trains stuck underneath the city, and all of the people crawling out of their doors, then along the wet, dark tunnels, unable to see. Arms extended in front of them like antennae as the roaches scurry away from their fingers" (157).  In between, we are treated to colorful descriptions, elegant prose and dialogue depicting the beauty and heartbreaking pain these individuals carry with them.  

We are lucky to have Claire Jimenez on La Bloga, to talk with us about her own journey in the writing of Staten Island Stories.  

Montes: Thank you, Claire, for joining La Bloga today!  Tell us about yourself.

Jimenez:  I'm a Puerto Rican writer who was born and grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island.  Currently, I'm a PhD student in English at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  I received my MFA from Vanderbilt University, but spent a large part of my career working in youth development.  Specifically, I spent years working at a community center in Stapleton.  But I also taught for many years all around New York City as an adjunct college instructor and a teaching artist.  

Montes: The community center and teaching all around New York City, I'm sure, were important for the making of your collection.  You mention that The Canterbury Tales was an inspiration.  And Actually, some of Chaucer's stories like "The Knight's Tale" and "The Grant Writer's Tale" certainly bring his work to mind.  How are the journeys different here?  

Jimenez:  Like Chaucer's characters, mine are constantly in motion.  I think that's true for many people living in New York City.  But for Staten Islanders working in other boroughs, this is especially important.  Often our commutes require the boat, the bus, and the train.  I spent most of my life living and working in New York, and so much of my experiences have been shaped by that movement.  It seemed that any collection exploring Staten Island would have to take account of our connection to the water and the ferry and how that shapes life inside the Island.  Chaucer's characters are traveling towards a holy shrine, while mine are just trying to get to work on time.  But in this collection, I try to show how the stakes are just as high.  

Montes:  In "The Tale of the Angry Adjunct," we see the struggles, the painful struggles of an adjunct professor seeking a better life.  Throughout the U.S., such a story is not unusual.  In Los Angeles, for instance, a large percentage of adjuncts are enrolled in various public assistance programs or many are sleeping in their cars.3 

Jimenez:  I taught as an adjunct for many years on top of working at a community center and an arts council.  It's grueling, underpaid work.  There's also an instability about it because you never know if you will be assigned classes the next semester.  As a result, you always accept courses when they're offered to you so that you can save money in advance.  It's such a different reality than the characters of professors we often see depicted in movies or pop culture.  Adjuncts are working class and sometimes living at or below the poverty line.  At the same time, many adjuncts have the privilege of extensive higher education.  It's a weird tension.  In many ways, they represent the brokenness of a system that promises if you work hard, if you go to school and do well, you'll turn out all right.  So, I knew when I wrote this collection, I wanted to include that story.  

As I wrote the story and learned more about my main character, I realized that Lauren O'Hare was a white woman who was also dealing with her conflicted feelings of her parents voting for Trump.  I thought her own disappointment and disillusionment with academia thematically fit in well with the conflict she experiences with her parents.  In many ways, this is a story about class consciousness.  

Structurally, I began with the adjunct story because when I was adjuncting at CSI [College of Staten Island CUNY] and Wagner College, I often assigned personal narratives in my freshman composition classes.  Chaucer starts The Canterbury Tales with a prologue that introduces the different characters.  I decided that my collection would start with a teacher who in the ending scene loses all of her students' essays.  I wanted her story to introduce us to the voices of those different characters in the same way that Chaucer's prologue does.  

Montes:  And these interactions with all your characters: the families, mothers, daughters, brothers are visceral and so real.  I'm thinking here of "You are a Strange Imitation of a Woman," where Carlos and Frances have it out.  Their profound pain reveals itself in such a riveting way.  

Claire Jimenez

Jimenez:  That story is the oldest in the collection.  I wrote it my first year at my MFA program in Vanderbilt in a workshop with Lorraine Lopez.  And it's my favorite story, because I think it was one in which the action rises most organically.  I'm interested in mental illness and power and how violence manifests itself in the home between people who love each other.  I'm also interested in intergenerational violence and how that gets reproduced.  How are these things linked to colonialism, class and race?  Those are all big themes, but I feel like with that story, I was able to begin with the particular to get to those larger questions.  

Montes:  You also play with point of view, offering the reader interesting perspectives as in "Do Now" which is in second person.  How did you decide on the POV (point of view) for which stories?  

Jimenez:  I knew I wanted most of the stories to be first person narratives, because I was thinking of them as those personal narrative assignments I used to assign to my students.  "Do Now" stands out because it is an older story.  But I thought it would fit in with the collection, because even though it's a second person point of view, it's one that's exploring how Miranda has internalized the voices and criticism around her.  In this way, it is a portrait of her own psyche, one that has been so compromised by violence and racism that it is difficult for her to say, "I." In this way for me, "Do Now" is still a a personal narrative.

Montes:  In "Underneath the Water You Could Actually Hear Bells," the buoyancy (pun intended) of these characters' interactions, their expectations and disappointments echo powerfully on this "journey" due to the elegance of the dialogue. What do you think makes for good dialogue?

Jimenez:  Thank you, Dr. Montes.  That is very kind.  I love dialogue and scene.  I think that's my favorite part of writing, hearing my characters talk to each other.  I think dialogue is made of several components.  When I am creating my characters, I have to figure out how they would speak.  What's their voice?  What are things they are always saying?  I also ask myself what would this character never say?  Why would they never say this thing?  What do they say instead?  That's how you arrive at subtext.  

Montes: Thank you so much, Claire, for agreeing to interview with La Bloga.  We are wishing you much success and I encourage everyone to read Staten Island Stories!

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1 You can read James Baldwin's entire essay at:  https//africanamericanrhet.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/jamesbaldwinprotestnovel.pdf

  

2 http://worldpopulationreview.com/boroughs/staten-island-population/

3 Click HERE for further reading on the difficulties many adjunct professors experience.