Shereen Ali

Jacque­line Bish­op is an award-win­ning writer and vi­su­al artist, born and raised in Ja­maica, who now lives and works in New York City. Ed­u­cat­ed in psy­chol­o­gy, cre­ative writ­ing and art, she writes po­et­ry, fic­tion and non-fic­tion, as well as do­ing mul­ti­me­dia vi­su­al arts projects. She re­cent­ly won the non-fic­tion genre prize in the 2016 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture for her 2015 book The Gym­nast and Oth­er Po­si­tions.

Bish­op has twice been award­ed Ful­bright Fel­low­ships and cur­rent­ly teach­es in the Lib­er­al Stud­ies pro­gramme at New York Uni­ver­si­ty. The Bo­cas judges said of The Gym­nast: "...Bish­op's mo­sa­ic of frag­ment­ed nar­ra­tives is as orig­i­nal as it is in­sight­ful. Mod­ern, spon­ta­neous and for­mal­ly in­no­v­a­tive, it blurs the bound­aries be­tween the re­al and the imag­ined in a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery through the arts of the imag­i­na­tion in the Caribbean and else­where."

The T&T Guardian here in­ter­views Jacque­line Bish­op about some of the ideas be­hind The Gym­nast.

Sev­er­al of the short sto­ries in The Gym­nast ex­plore fe­male sex­u­al­i­ty–whether it's the sex­u­al awak­en­ing of young women, in­ti­mate be­tray­als, sex­u­al lib­er­a­tion, or the life-af­firm­ing, brave earth­i­ness of your moth­er in the es­say Sto­ries of a Birth about her ex­pe­ri­ences as a young ex­pec­tant moth­er. Do you find some of these themes still taboo?

I do still find some of these themes very much taboo. Even here in the Unit­ed States... I of­ten felt my writ­ing life was very dif­fer­ent from my vi­su­al art life, but your ques­tion shows me that it's not; be­cause right now I'm in the midst of com­plet­ing a huge vi­su­al art project on fe­male sex­u­al de­sires.

My whole think­ing about fe­male sex­u­al­i­ty is that it is very hid­den. And it tends to be quite dis­tort­ed. We tend to see it through the lens of men.

I've of­ten times won­dered: what do women say and think about their own sex­u­al­i­ty? And some of that is be­ing ex­plored there (in The Gym­nast,) as well as in the fe­male sex­u­al de­sires art project.

I think that there's not been enough fo­cus on what is plea­sur­able, joy­ful, and joy­ous. I'd like to see more of the work that is cel­e­bra­to­ry.

How close­ly do you think fe­male sex­u­al­i­ty is tied to a girl's or woman's iden­ti­ty?

Very much so. I have to ad­mit that in Ja­maica...this is re­pressed. It is cer­tain­ly re­pressed here in the Unit­ed States. When I was work­ing on the fe­male sex­u­al de­sires project, what I did was col­lect 150 sex­u­al de­sires from women all over the place. There were women say­ing: O my God, I am trem­bling to an­swer these ques­tions on sex­u­al de­sires, I am so afraid.

Was the project a vi­su­al one or a sto­ry-gath­er­ing one?

Well, ap­par­ent­ly it's both! (laugh­ing) It start­ed out be­ing a vi­su­al project...and your very ques­tion makes me re­alise how it was feed­ing over in­to my writ­ing as well...Women have had to de­vel­op all sorts of strate­gies to de­ny or hide as­pects of their sex­u­al­i­ty, and I think it's time we as women re­claimed our sex­u­al­i­ty.

Why do you think some of that hid­den­ness ex­ists?

I think it's a com­bi­na­tion of things. Speak­ing about Ja­maica and the US, re­li­gion def­i­nite­ly plays a role in this. But pa­tri­archy plays a role as well. And cul­ture plays a role. So if you even look at Ja­maican dance­hall mu­sic, you might think: "O my God this is a cel­e­bra­tion of fe­male sex­u­al­i­ty"–but it's al­ways from a male lens.

Ja­maica comes so alive in your book The Gym­nast, whether through ob­served de­tails or through in­di­rect so­cial com­men­tary via char­ac­ters (eg the ter­ri­ble Kingston mur­der/hos­pi­tal/morgue sit­u­a­tion in the sto­ry So­lil­o­quy). Would you say the Ja­maican part of your­self is a touch­stone in your lit­er­a­ture?

You men­tioned So­lil­o­quy, and yes it's en­tire­ly fic­tion­alised in my book, but that sto­ry was based in fact. I did have a friend whose fa­ther died, and no­body (in the hos­pi­tal in Ja­maica) could find the body, no­body had told the fam­i­lies that he had died. They found him hours be­fore he was to be buried in a pau­per's grave...It's sad. It's al­so a fact that some­body saw his obit­u­ary and wrote to my friend's moth­er try­ing to date her! (laugh­ing) Right? So a lot of that sto­ry is based in fact.

With re­gard to home, I think that the de­f­i­n­i­tion of home has ex­pand­ed for me quite a bit. Of course I was born in Ja­maica and al­ways see Ja­maica as home, but I have lived in the States longer. But in New York I wasn't on­ly Ja­maican any­more–I be­came Caribbean, be­cause it was the first time I in­ter­act­ed with a lot of peo­ple from Grena­da, from Montser­rat, from Trinidad, and I start­ed a mag­a­zine called Cal­abash: A Jour­nal of Caribbean Arts & Let­ters, and it re­al­ly re­in­forced that Caribbean iden­ti­ty. Home is Ja­maica, that's true, but there is a Caribbean iden­ti­ty forged from liv­ing in New York, and of course there's an Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty.

In the sto­ry of Ef­fi­gy, you evoke the im­por­tance of re­mem­o­ry–memo­ri­al­is­ing a passed loved one as a form of both trib­ute and heal­ing. How im­por­tant is mem­o­ry and per­son­al myth-mak­ing–the sto­ries we tell our­selves to make sense of our lives–in defin­ing our­selves?

Your ques­tions are mak­ing me see con­nec­tions be­tween my writ­ing and my vi­su­al art. My first se­ri­ous vi­su­al art project was called Child­hood Mem­o­ries, in which I looked back, try­ing to rein­hab­it a place which no longer ex­ists. I want­ed to rein­hab­it my child­hood in Ja­maica. I think that is what you're sens­ing in the work The Gym­nast.

It so hap­pens that last night I was watch­ing a pro­gramme on de­men­tia and Alzheimer's dis­ease. What is the most con­found­ing thing about this dis­ease, and what we strug­gle with the most, is the loss of mem­o­ry. It's as though we need mem­o­ries to gird us, to move us for­ward. And how will we learn, for bet­ter or worse, if not by pro­cess­ing mem­o­ries? So I think that mem­o­ry, "re­mem­o­ry"... is su­per-im­por­tant.

Can mem­o­ry lie? Can mem­o­ry recre­ate?

Mem­o­ry ab­solute­ly lies. And mem­o­ry ab­solute­ly recre­ates. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. This is a fact. In psy­chol­o­gy we call it de­nial...and so we re­al­ly have to in­ter­ro­gate these mem­o­ries that we put for­ward.

What is some of the best ad­vice you ever re­ceived as a writer?

The best ad­vice I ever re­ceived came from Paule Mar­shall, and she said: "Jacque­line, you have to write whether you win awards or not. You have to do it for your­self."

In what kinds of ways do you think your vi­su­al and lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tions in­flu­ence each oth­er?

I've re­alised that my art medi­um is "ahead" of my writ­ing. And so I will make an art work, and I'm not sure why, but the rea­son will be­come clear­er even­tu­al­ly...I did my first col­lec­tion of po­ems–Fau­na (2006), all about a child­hood in Ja­maica–with­out re­al­is­ing that I had al­so done this in a child­hood mem­o­ry art se­ries.

I'd like to men­tion that we in the Caribbean have art forms that we do not pay enough at­ten­tion to. My grand­moth­er and my great-grand­moth­er made "patch­works"–here in the US they're called quilts–but no-one paid at­ten­tion to patch­works in Ja­maica. Now some of these patch­works have trav­elled the world in art ex­hibits. Now I un­der­stand that in my own work as a writer and as a vi­su­al artist, I've been pulling from the tra­di­tion of patch­work mak­ing in Ja­maica with­out re­al­is­ing it.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on win­ning the non-fic­tion genre prize in the 2016 OCM Bo­cas Prize. How do you feel about that–was it a sur­prise?

It was a to­tal sur­prise! (laugh­ing)... I was at home, one Sat­ur­day night, and start­ed get­ting these texts on Face­book say­ing "Con­grats"–then I saw I was on the long list, which to me just blew my mind. ...Paule Mar­shall is right–we should not look to prizes to af­firm us, but I have to tell you some­thing: I cried, be­cause I felt I was be­ing af­firmed by the place where I most want­ed to be af­firmed, the Caribbean.