Interview
Writing the Unimaginable to Life: AN INTERVIEW WITH aIMEE pARKISON
BY kATHRYN bRINING, dENIA r. mARTINEZ, & mICHAEL nUSSPICKEL
2016
Winner of the Christopher Isherwood Fellowship and a Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize, Aimee Parkison sets out to explore the damage of our world with her fiction and poetry. Parkison’s short story collection, The Innocent Party (BOA Editions, 2012), is an intriguing look at what happens when an innocent party becomes the guilty party. Parkison’s most recent work, a short poetic novel, The Petals of Your Eyes (Starcherone Books, 2014) takes a look at the nightmare of the world of human trafficking through the eyes of one of its captives. Through tone both dream-like and visceral, Parkison pulls no punches and leaves the reader with more questions than there are answers, both about the book and the horrors of the sex trade.
Glassworks Magazine (GM): The Petals of Your Eyes is about the plight of girls kidnapped for sex trade. Using the theatrical terms such as “director,” “patron,” “actor,” etc. emphasizes the dehumanization of the captors in the story while the captors assign flower names to the girls to strengthen the delicate state of their situation. Are the flower names taking away their identity?
Aimee Parkison (AP): In most clichéd expectations of masks and crime, one imagines a criminal wearing a mask to protect his or her identity. However, in The Petals of Your Eyes, the identity of the victim is masked in order to protect the criminals and enable a crime against humanity. If the mask backfires for the captors, it’s because of the deeper symbolism of the flowers—the constant reminder that the petals are fragile, like human skin. The masks are beautiful, but not as beautiful as the tortured faces that lie beneath.
In The Petals of Your Eyes, the masks are a sign of the captors’ creation of an experience for their theatergoers, a way of making the child actor into a product, part of an entertainment experience that relies on erasing the humanity of the victim, as slavery often does. Slavery, even in its contemporary forms, relies on one person seeing another person as less than human, an object to be used, bought, sold, altered, and oppressed. So, more than anything else, the need for the mask means that the captors are having problems dealing with the psychological awareness of their own guilt.
Aimee Parkison (AP): In most clichéd expectations of masks and crime, one imagines a criminal wearing a mask to protect his or her identity. However, in The Petals of Your Eyes, the identity of the victim is masked in order to protect the criminals and enable a crime against humanity. If the mask backfires for the captors, it’s because of the deeper symbolism of the flowers—the constant reminder that the petals are fragile, like human skin. The masks are beautiful, but not as beautiful as the tortured faces that lie beneath.
In The Petals of Your Eyes, the masks are a sign of the captors’ creation of an experience for their theatergoers, a way of making the child actor into a product, part of an entertainment experience that relies on erasing the humanity of the victim, as slavery often does. Slavery, even in its contemporary forms, relies on one person seeing another person as less than human, an object to be used, bought, sold, altered, and oppressed. So, more than anything else, the need for the mask means that the captors are having problems dealing with the psychological awareness of their own guilt.
GM: Are the masks a way for the captors to dehumanize or desensitize the girls? Do you feel like it backfires?
AP: It’s an awful psychology—a sort of reverse personification that sexual abuse and kidnapping, or any situation of human trafficking and captivity—relies on. The captors must erase another’s humanity in order to protect their own humanity. In the face of the sin of slavery, a mask is born of the necessity of turning a victim into a thing, a commodity to be bought and sold. At one point in history, racism was the mask. But in The Petals of Your Eyes, the mask is something else, concrete rather than abstract in its use and invention.
In The Petals of Your Eyes, the masks are flowers because of the funereal iconography and oppressive yet beautiful bridal rituals—the idea that a woman is “given” by her father/owner and received by her mate, an object to be possessed by paternal tradition. Every wedding is a theater. A flower is a virginal and pure sacrifice of beauty. Symbolizing life and death, petals can be picked or cut so that the flower is captured for human consumption in a home or a building. That theatrical setting becomes a prison of sacrifice, a place for the flower to wilt and die so that strangers can appreciate its beauty while being reminded of their own mortality, the greater theatrical significance.
GM: We couldn’t help but notice the intense similarities Petals shares with the short story “Theater of Cruelty,” which is included in your collection of short stories, The Innocent Party. Both follow the theater metaphor/setting very deeply, both involve captivity and abuse, and both narrators develop complexes around their sister. There are a few specific themes and ideas that the two share as well (Taxidermy, corpses, referring to characters by role as opposed to any names.) While “Theater” is from the perspective of the captor’s while Petals is from the captive’s, both narrators have rape and abuse in their backgrounds as key trauma that defines who they are. Were you working on these simultaneously or did one influence the other?
AP: Here are two quotes from the fictions so that you can see how they deal with similar themes in slightly different ways--
“Every town has a secret theater disguised as a house among houses.” (The Petals of Your Eyes)
“The illogical nature of animalistic destruction was the demon inside all man, the demon that had invaded my childhood home.” (“Theater of Cruelty”)
I was working on “Theater of Cruelty” in proofs and galleys while drafting a revision of The Petals of Your Eyes at the same time. Both manuscripts had already been accepted for publication and both overlapped in terms of their final revisions and their contracts, so that one publisher had to agree to exercise a competing works clause. So, yes, one narrative might have subconsciously influenced the other during my creative process. It wasn’t conscious but certainly
possible.
GM: How long had you been playing with these ideas before you wrote these pieces?
AP: Nightmares had been dancing around in my mind for years before I started writing these fictions. Certain themes and subject matter are reoccurring elements in my work, often repeating with different characters of various ages, genders, backgrounds, and worlds. I’m not sure why I’m compelled to create such stories.
GM: Will this be a recurring theme in other works?
AP: Currently, I’m working on several fictions, one is a historical novel that has many characters. Because of the historical setting, society’s understanding of rape was different, so rape is a complicated aspect of the novel I’m still researching.
I have also been working on a contemporary novel about the adult sex trade, but that project isn’t as far along.
GW: In your novel, The Petals of Your Eyes, The Rose seems to witness and experience quite a lot in her time at the theatre. In fact, it seems to make her stronger than before and not so reliant on no one’s daughter, whereas no one’s daughter seems to rely on just herself and succumbs to what everyone wants. Are there anymore characters that we should be paying attention to in The Petals of Your Eyes and how they relate to the girls in such terrible conditions?
AP: Other characters in the novel, besides the girls, are their captors. They’re important because each has his or her own tortured psychology. Many of the captors were victims of their own pasts and are not really free.
AP: It’s an awful psychology—a sort of reverse personification that sexual abuse and kidnapping, or any situation of human trafficking and captivity—relies on. The captors must erase another’s humanity in order to protect their own humanity. In the face of the sin of slavery, a mask is born of the necessity of turning a victim into a thing, a commodity to be bought and sold. At one point in history, racism was the mask. But in The Petals of Your Eyes, the mask is something else, concrete rather than abstract in its use and invention.
In The Petals of Your Eyes, the masks are flowers because of the funereal iconography and oppressive yet beautiful bridal rituals—the idea that a woman is “given” by her father/owner and received by her mate, an object to be possessed by paternal tradition. Every wedding is a theater. A flower is a virginal and pure sacrifice of beauty. Symbolizing life and death, petals can be picked or cut so that the flower is captured for human consumption in a home or a building. That theatrical setting becomes a prison of sacrifice, a place for the flower to wilt and die so that strangers can appreciate its beauty while being reminded of their own mortality, the greater theatrical significance.
GM: We couldn’t help but notice the intense similarities Petals shares with the short story “Theater of Cruelty,” which is included in your collection of short stories, The Innocent Party. Both follow the theater metaphor/setting very deeply, both involve captivity and abuse, and both narrators develop complexes around their sister. There are a few specific themes and ideas that the two share as well (Taxidermy, corpses, referring to characters by role as opposed to any names.) While “Theater” is from the perspective of the captor’s while Petals is from the captive’s, both narrators have rape and abuse in their backgrounds as key trauma that defines who they are. Were you working on these simultaneously or did one influence the other?
AP: Here are two quotes from the fictions so that you can see how they deal with similar themes in slightly different ways--
“Every town has a secret theater disguised as a house among houses.” (The Petals of Your Eyes)
“The illogical nature of animalistic destruction was the demon inside all man, the demon that had invaded my childhood home.” (“Theater of Cruelty”)
I was working on “Theater of Cruelty” in proofs and galleys while drafting a revision of The Petals of Your Eyes at the same time. Both manuscripts had already been accepted for publication and both overlapped in terms of their final revisions and their contracts, so that one publisher had to agree to exercise a competing works clause. So, yes, one narrative might have subconsciously influenced the other during my creative process. It wasn’t conscious but certainly
possible.
GM: How long had you been playing with these ideas before you wrote these pieces?
AP: Nightmares had been dancing around in my mind for years before I started writing these fictions. Certain themes and subject matter are reoccurring elements in my work, often repeating with different characters of various ages, genders, backgrounds, and worlds. I’m not sure why I’m compelled to create such stories.
GM: Will this be a recurring theme in other works?
AP: Currently, I’m working on several fictions, one is a historical novel that has many characters. Because of the historical setting, society’s understanding of rape was different, so rape is a complicated aspect of the novel I’m still researching.
I have also been working on a contemporary novel about the adult sex trade, but that project isn’t as far along.
GW: In your novel, The Petals of Your Eyes, The Rose seems to witness and experience quite a lot in her time at the theatre. In fact, it seems to make her stronger than before and not so reliant on no one’s daughter, whereas no one’s daughter seems to rely on just herself and succumbs to what everyone wants. Are there anymore characters that we should be paying attention to in The Petals of Your Eyes and how they relate to the girls in such terrible conditions?
AP: Other characters in the novel, besides the girls, are their captors. They’re important because each has his or her own tortured psychology. Many of the captors were victims of their own pasts and are not really free.
"There are many ways to fight. One way to fight is to physically lash out at an attacker. Another way to fight is to run. Still another way to fight is to submit, to give in." |
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GW: Is this the same outcome for girls who are stuck in sex trades, where some may become powerful and determined and others seems to just wilt into submission?
AP: In some situations, a victim has to learn to adapt quickly in order to survive. She has to learn to know her attacker or captor as a matter of survival. Instinct and survival become part of a trial-and-error process. Girls who are victims have to fight to survive, but there are many ways to fight. One way to fight is to physically lash out at an attacker. Another way to fight is to run. Still another way to fight is to submit, to give in. It’s a way to stay alive, especially in cultural situations where refusing to submit has its consequences. Kidnapping, domestic abuse, and human trafficking are a culture. Even those victims who appear submissive might be powerfully determined to survive long enough to escape to freedom. For instance, Stockholm Syndrome might allow for longer and more sustained (safer) methods of survival in captivity.
GW: You have a gift for the unnerving and disturbing, but you also write endearing works about the ordinary. What makes you decide when a piece gets to be innocent like “What Happened with Gilbert That Night” and when it should be more intense like “Allison’s Idea”?
AP: Voice is influenced by emotion, as well as the narrator’s motivation for telling. Often, something lurks beneath the surface, something implied, hinted, indirectly told. This changes everything.
The question of intensity often has to do with humor, when and if and why humor is used or not used. Humor allows for relief, a break in intensity. Works with less humor are less endearing but also perhaps more intense for the reader. Different readers respond to such intensity in different ways. Many resent it. Others appreciate the experience. It’s torture, just like a good horror movie should be torture. It’s great to really be scared or challenged by something rather than just zoning out and escaping. What I write is the opposite of escapism, even if set in a nontraditional world.
GW: You are currently working on The Dumb Supper which is a historical literary fiction about four young women who need to nonverbally communicate their needs and desires to their potential mates. Do you find writing this story any different than your previous works?
AP: The novel takes place after the Civil War, a time when eligible men are scarce and proper women are expected to become wives, so death and love are intertwined.The dumb supper is a unique celebration linking death and dating in the years directly after the Civil War. Set in Concord, Massachusetts, in the late 1860’s, my novel focuses on courtship among women and wounded veterans. With the help of local matchmakers, these women meet their potential mates at a dumb supper, a ritual based on the superstitions of Irish immigrants.
GW: Are you approaching the nonverbal aspect differently in this new novel?
AP: The nonverbal aspect is difficult as it relates to the mores of another time, a time of parlor games and social formality, a formality that bled into gender roles, courtship, and social status. What fascinates me is the constraint, the fact that so much is left unspoken because certain thoughts were socially unacceptable, but those thoughts and desires and fears are still there. So, there’s a hidden implication in every staged aspect of courtship, even parlor games, which have strange histories.
GM: Have you ever felt as if your characters ran away from the direction that you wanted them to go? How do your characters personally deal with their oppression differently than how you originally imagined?
AP: I’ve felt the creative challenge and frustration of realizing that my characters are strangers to me during the drafting and revision process. So, yes, in that sense the characters have tried and often do get away from me and have different reasons for their current predicaments and reactions that I might have originally intended. Having a relationship with a character is just as challenging as having a relationship with a living human being—the character is constantly changing and reacting and growing. There are moments before the present that you have to try to understand in order to get a full sense of the person. Creating a character is about going deeper. The first imagined scenario is not always the best result. You have to reimagine, to mine the character.
GM: Do you think the approach of using a male perspective in “Locked Doors” and “Theater of Cruelty” takes away or helps to showcase the oppressive situations that your female characters tend to face in your stories?
AP: That’s an interesting question, one I’m still struggling with, partly because the question is so political and our society’s notion of gender is constantly evolving. I’m sympathetic to both interpretations of my handling of gender in what I consider rather risky subject matter of sexual violence. Readers or critics have pointed out that I often write about violence from the female point of view. Such people rightfully point out that males are victims, too. Then, on the other side, there are readers that support a strong feminist reading of my stories, and often these readers resist or perhaps resent my using the male point of review to reveal men oppressed by similar trauma that society often associates with female victims.
AP: In some situations, a victim has to learn to adapt quickly in order to survive. She has to learn to know her attacker or captor as a matter of survival. Instinct and survival become part of a trial-and-error process. Girls who are victims have to fight to survive, but there are many ways to fight. One way to fight is to physically lash out at an attacker. Another way to fight is to run. Still another way to fight is to submit, to give in. It’s a way to stay alive, especially in cultural situations where refusing to submit has its consequences. Kidnapping, domestic abuse, and human trafficking are a culture. Even those victims who appear submissive might be powerfully determined to survive long enough to escape to freedom. For instance, Stockholm Syndrome might allow for longer and more sustained (safer) methods of survival in captivity.
GW: You have a gift for the unnerving and disturbing, but you also write endearing works about the ordinary. What makes you decide when a piece gets to be innocent like “What Happened with Gilbert That Night” and when it should be more intense like “Allison’s Idea”?
AP: Voice is influenced by emotion, as well as the narrator’s motivation for telling. Often, something lurks beneath the surface, something implied, hinted, indirectly told. This changes everything.
The question of intensity often has to do with humor, when and if and why humor is used or not used. Humor allows for relief, a break in intensity. Works with less humor are less endearing but also perhaps more intense for the reader. Different readers respond to such intensity in different ways. Many resent it. Others appreciate the experience. It’s torture, just like a good horror movie should be torture. It’s great to really be scared or challenged by something rather than just zoning out and escaping. What I write is the opposite of escapism, even if set in a nontraditional world.
GW: You are currently working on The Dumb Supper which is a historical literary fiction about four young women who need to nonverbally communicate their needs and desires to their potential mates. Do you find writing this story any different than your previous works?
AP: The novel takes place after the Civil War, a time when eligible men are scarce and proper women are expected to become wives, so death and love are intertwined.The dumb supper is a unique celebration linking death and dating in the years directly after the Civil War. Set in Concord, Massachusetts, in the late 1860’s, my novel focuses on courtship among women and wounded veterans. With the help of local matchmakers, these women meet their potential mates at a dumb supper, a ritual based on the superstitions of Irish immigrants.
GW: Are you approaching the nonverbal aspect differently in this new novel?
AP: The nonverbal aspect is difficult as it relates to the mores of another time, a time of parlor games and social formality, a formality that bled into gender roles, courtship, and social status. What fascinates me is the constraint, the fact that so much is left unspoken because certain thoughts were socially unacceptable, but those thoughts and desires and fears are still there. So, there’s a hidden implication in every staged aspect of courtship, even parlor games, which have strange histories.
GM: Have you ever felt as if your characters ran away from the direction that you wanted them to go? How do your characters personally deal with their oppression differently than how you originally imagined?
AP: I’ve felt the creative challenge and frustration of realizing that my characters are strangers to me during the drafting and revision process. So, yes, in that sense the characters have tried and often do get away from me and have different reasons for their current predicaments and reactions that I might have originally intended. Having a relationship with a character is just as challenging as having a relationship with a living human being—the character is constantly changing and reacting and growing. There are moments before the present that you have to try to understand in order to get a full sense of the person. Creating a character is about going deeper. The first imagined scenario is not always the best result. You have to reimagine, to mine the character.
GM: Do you think the approach of using a male perspective in “Locked Doors” and “Theater of Cruelty” takes away or helps to showcase the oppressive situations that your female characters tend to face in your stories?
AP: That’s an interesting question, one I’m still struggling with, partly because the question is so political and our society’s notion of gender is constantly evolving. I’m sympathetic to both interpretations of my handling of gender in what I consider rather risky subject matter of sexual violence. Readers or critics have pointed out that I often write about violence from the female point of view. Such people rightfully point out that males are victims, too. Then, on the other side, there are readers that support a strong feminist reading of my stories, and often these readers resist or perhaps resent my using the male point of review to reveal men oppressed by similar trauma that society often associates with female victims.
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GM: When it comes to writing about violence, what do you feel is your most significant challenge?
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"Life is Damage. Love is Damage. Everything worth doing is difficult." |
AP: When it comes to writing about violence, gender is perhaps the biggest complication. I’m currently writing an article for AWP The Writer’s Chronicle called “Women Writing Violence,” so I’ve given a lot of thought to the topic lately.
Many readers think violence against women is titillating and are more comfortable with victims being female. I hope that I’m working against this notion by taking away that comfort. When writing violence, I want to rob people of the notion of comfort, not play into it. I realize that some readers might go to my subject matter for the wrong reasons, looking for the wrong things, but I hope that the disturbance I create in fiction doesn’t allow such readers to feel comfortable for long.
GM: Do you feel that gender violence is discriminatory?
AP: There are violent women, just as there are violent men, but society is less familiar and less comfortable with this notion. In the same way, just as there are female victims, there are also male victims, but society is also uncomfortable with this aspect. So I would agree that another aspect of violence is the gendered reading of victim and predator.
Gender clichés play a huge role. For some reason, the question of who is passive and who is active often becomes a question of who is truly female or truly male. The stereotypes are always there for a writer to work against, but they can’t be ignored.
Women who commit violence become masculinized or monstrous, and men or boys who have violence done to them run the risk of being feminized by their victimhood. A lot of what I deal with in writing about violence has to do with shame of violence and what it does to gender roles as
interpreted by society.
GM: You touch upon difficult subjects such as suicide, alcoholism, incest, sexuality, prostitution, etc. Do you feel any topic is off limits to you?
AP: Because the damage of living is what makes the lives of survivors possible, I don’t really feel that any topic is off limits. That’s part of being an artist—taking risks. The real danger is being too safe, of losing the sense of risk taking. That’s when the work dies.
Life is damage. Love is damage. Everything worth doing is difficult. Every great moment has an end to mourn. Every great love takes courage because there is so much to lose. The act of birth is violent and dangerous. Everything that is beautiful is also deadly. Everything that lives kills to survive.
GM: What real world “damages” have occurred to bring inspiration to your stories?
AP: Perhaps I’m hyper aware of this because I’m what’s called a “highly sensitive person.” That means that I feel not just what happens to me but what I imagine could happen. It’s hard for me to have too much social interaction as I’m so susceptible to the moods and unspoken cues I get from others. It’s too much.
If I hear something horrible happened to someone, I feel it also could or will happen to me. I feel it. I think about it. It stays with me.
In a way, I might have too much empathy. The disease of empathy can become paralyzing to a highly sensitive person. But it can also be a great resource to draw from as an artist. It allows you to feel for your characters and to find ways to create empathy in readers.
GM: What is the message that you want your readers to take away from your writing? Do you want your readers to become self-aware of their daily lives in order to survive the daily battles, a sort of “learn from others mistakes”?
AP: I want to make people feel. I want to make people experience any powerful emotion. If a reader can feel the suffering of others, even an “other” very different from the reader, then that reader will be more connected to greater humanity and more aware of the need to protect themselves and those who need protection.
Many readers think violence against women is titillating and are more comfortable with victims being female. I hope that I’m working against this notion by taking away that comfort. When writing violence, I want to rob people of the notion of comfort, not play into it. I realize that some readers might go to my subject matter for the wrong reasons, looking for the wrong things, but I hope that the disturbance I create in fiction doesn’t allow such readers to feel comfortable for long.
GM: Do you feel that gender violence is discriminatory?
AP: There are violent women, just as there are violent men, but society is less familiar and less comfortable with this notion. In the same way, just as there are female victims, there are also male victims, but society is also uncomfortable with this aspect. So I would agree that another aspect of violence is the gendered reading of victim and predator.
Gender clichés play a huge role. For some reason, the question of who is passive and who is active often becomes a question of who is truly female or truly male. The stereotypes are always there for a writer to work against, but they can’t be ignored.
Women who commit violence become masculinized or monstrous, and men or boys who have violence done to them run the risk of being feminized by their victimhood. A lot of what I deal with in writing about violence has to do with shame of violence and what it does to gender roles as
interpreted by society.
GM: You touch upon difficult subjects such as suicide, alcoholism, incest, sexuality, prostitution, etc. Do you feel any topic is off limits to you?
AP: Because the damage of living is what makes the lives of survivors possible, I don’t really feel that any topic is off limits. That’s part of being an artist—taking risks. The real danger is being too safe, of losing the sense of risk taking. That’s when the work dies.
Life is damage. Love is damage. Everything worth doing is difficult. Every great moment has an end to mourn. Every great love takes courage because there is so much to lose. The act of birth is violent and dangerous. Everything that is beautiful is also deadly. Everything that lives kills to survive.
GM: What real world “damages” have occurred to bring inspiration to your stories?
AP: Perhaps I’m hyper aware of this because I’m what’s called a “highly sensitive person.” That means that I feel not just what happens to me but what I imagine could happen. It’s hard for me to have too much social interaction as I’m so susceptible to the moods and unspoken cues I get from others. It’s too much.
If I hear something horrible happened to someone, I feel it also could or will happen to me. I feel it. I think about it. It stays with me.
In a way, I might have too much empathy. The disease of empathy can become paralyzing to a highly sensitive person. But it can also be a great resource to draw from as an artist. It allows you to feel for your characters and to find ways to create empathy in readers.
GM: What is the message that you want your readers to take away from your writing? Do you want your readers to become self-aware of their daily lives in order to survive the daily battles, a sort of “learn from others mistakes”?
AP: I want to make people feel. I want to make people experience any powerful emotion. If a reader can feel the suffering of others, even an “other” very different from the reader, then that reader will be more connected to greater humanity and more aware of the need to protect themselves and those who need protection.
