 Matilda Bernstein-Sikomor is the award-winning author of The Freezer Door, A New York Times, Editor's Choice, one of Oprah Magazine's best LGBTQ books of 2020, and a finalist for the Penn Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she's the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and A Possible Future, Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Miriam Gerba is the author of Creep, Accusations and Confessions, an essay collection described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as one of the best books of the decade. Her memoir, Mean, was a New York Times editor's choice. Gerba's writing has been published by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Believer, and many other publications. Along with Roberto Levato and David Bowles, she is a co-founder of Dignidad Literaria, the grassroots organization that opposes white supremacy in the publishing industry. And now I will stop sharing and I will turn it over to Matilda. Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming today. It's great to join you. I'm in New York, on my book tour, so I have a very bland background other than my usual background, which is very lush and colorful. But I try to compensate by adding colors as I always do. Please feel free to light up the chat during this event, because we would love to know what you're thinking. Feel free to tell us where you're joining from, anything you're thinking as it's going on. And I'm so excited to be in conversation with Miriam and to hear all of your questions afterwards. So anytime you have questions, just throw them in the Q&A. Feel free to tell us things in the chat. So that way it feels more like we're in the room together. So I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning of the book. Well, usually I read the very beginning, because it kind of stands on its own the easiest in a certain sense. But I feel like I want to switch it up a little bit. So I thought I would read from still near the beginning, but in a kind of more immersed part. So the book centers around my relationship with my late grandmother, Gladys Goldstein, my father's mother, who is an abstract painter. And in the beginning of the book, I'm literally touching her art in order to feel what comes through. And so some of that is literally about the art. Some is about a relationship. Some is about trauma. And some is about other memories I start to have and other documents that I have. Like, excuse me, the letters between us, photographs, and it kind of starts there and sort of winds around. And so I thought I'm just going to read like a little bit from about 40 pages into the book. And yeah, and then I'll be, Miriam will join me for a conversation. And it's great to see all of you joining from different parts of the country. That's, that's one of the great things about these virtual events, right, as we can be together in different spaces that are also, so I'm going to start with a little bit reading. I wasn't thinking about the wind. But then I put these two paperwork side by side. And I noticed there's a similar shape that dominates. Or not a shape, but a counterclockwise circular movement at the top left. In one, the break is literally a rip in the paper. And in the other, the break is where the paper darkens. Does this look like a rip because of the other rip because of the lighting in my apartment right now? Or because of the light that Gladys wanted to come through? Coincidence creates a conversation between works of art. But also, art can be a conversation if you're listening. And maybe even when you're not, as if paper can pull out of paper to become bark. I have a collage in the entryway to my apartment. They used to be in Gladys's entryway. It's one of her most elaborate compositions, the layers of paper and glue bending the collage up toward the glass. So you can see the shape, the tension and extension, matte browns and tans with flowers and foil and shapes on top, words from cut up labels, articles from magazines, at least four languages visible if you look close. But the language here is in the visual layering, the way each shape is cut apart to meet what it was cut from. Sometimes Gladys fell in love with the collage and realized, oh, there's a painting here. So she uses collage as a model for one of her largest paintings in the University of Maryland collection, a diptych that's 48 inches by 120 inches. I hold the image from the catalog up to the collage in my entryway that's about the same size as the reproduction or half of the reproduction that spans two pages. And I can see how each segment in the collage is in dialogue with the matching segment on the left half of the diptych. Art as a container of art. Or do I mean a container for art? Another letter, this one Gladys sent to me in East Boston in the summer of 1995. The first sentence, please write and tell me that you are doing something meaningful. I'm getting ready to confront my father about sexually abusing me. It's right around the corner. When I confronted him, I thought I would feel relief. But actually, where I felt relief was in the process of getting ready. He was screaming. He was calling me psychotic. He was saying I needed help. And I handed him what I'd written and said, everything I need to say is here. And then I walked away. I was worried he was going to come after me. I was worried he was going to attack me. I knew this was a childhood fear. And so I did not look back. Gladys writes, there was someone in my life who really changed it. His name was Hobson Pittman. I went to Penn State to study with him because I had heard that he was a wonderful teacher. And I was interested in the methodology of teaching. It was a toss up between him and Hans Hoffman. Hobson was the more liberal in his views. He told me I was an artist, a bona fide artist. I like the exclamation mark here, marking the disbelief, turning into belief. Gladys continues, well, I have been to art school, been the best in my class, but that doesn't make one an artist. He was the first person and the only person who supported me in my beliefs. He asked me to be the one to tell me when the university decided to buy one of my paintings. We became friends until the day he died. He was homosexual, Gladys says, but it never dawned on any of us to ever even think about that. The only thing that mattered was not only that he was a master teacher, but a wonderful human being and a very fine artist. Shirley Pittman's homosexuality mattered in the 1950s to her, to the other students, to himself. Shirley, this could have been part of what made him the wonderful human being who told Gladys that her art mattered. And since she wasn't a sexual object to him, maybe this allowed him to see her in all her potential. To believe in the visual is a process that goes beyond the visual. Belief is a system, but is also something beyond the system, something beyond belief. Gladys helped me to dream an everyday experience, to look at a flower and savor each element, to take it all inside. She helped me to imagine a world where everything else could and should be pushed away to make room for more imagination. She pushed the world away for me in those moments when we would go up into our studio, like up into the dream when it's no longer just a dream. I was awake and I was alive. I think I'll stop there. Thank you. What an honor to be able to facilitate this event with you Matilda. It's so exciting. And I wanted to start by saying that I found reading, touching the art to be tender. It's a tender book. It's a pretty book. It's a challenging book. It's a meticulously researched book. And it engages with capital H history, which is something that I so admire. And I felt a great deal of affinity with so many of the relationships expressed by the book, in particular the relationship with your paternal grandmother, Gladys Goldstein, who like you mentioned and like you just described was a painter. I also had a grandmother who was a painter and who in a way sort of socialized me into art. And so we share this ancestor figure who is associated with visual thinking. And what I wanted to start off by asking you is this. So art mediated your relationship with Gladys. And you described quite beautifully the way that you once served as her muse. And I think it's a very special experience to be somebody's muse, especially when you're a child and you're serving as that muse because it sort of elevates you as a child. And I'm curious, when did you realize that your aesthetic roles had shifted, that you were no longer her muse, but that she had become yours? That's really interesting. Oh, I love that question. I think as a child, Gladys talked about existing in the world, you know, everything was art, right? Like you go outside and you see a leaf that fell from a tree and you look at the veins and the leaf and the colors. That's art. You know, you see a crinkled up candy wrapper, and then you make that into a collage and that becomes art. And so I think it felt like as a child, it felt like in a way that we were on a journey together. And I think that she really saw children in general as like the greatest artists, right? And so she, I think, you know, in the book, I find this video that a cousin took of her visiting a seventh grade class, like, you know, maybe about 10 or 15 years ago, I think. And there I see her with these kids, right? So she's able to engage, I think in some ways as equals or treat kids like, oh, like the kid, you know, says something, you know, asks her a question. She's like, oh, well, you know, you know, what it's like to be an artist, right? You know, so she, there's this kind of trust and this kind of intimacy that suspends the kind of the usual kind of power dynamic in a way. And so as a child, I think I really believed in that, right? So I believe that there wasn't a power dynamic, I think. I mean, I looked up, so I think what you're saying, in a way, even though I think your perception is totally right, my perception was in some ways, as a child, it was really, I was always looking up to her. There was more the other way, like, because she was an artist who was living that life. And so through her, I could imagine that life because I could live it with her like when I went up to her studio, you know. And I think that was an experience that she sort of conjured in everyone around her, like all relatives, neighbors, friends, you know, she's like, basically anyone who came into the house, she's like, oh, here's a paintbrush, start painting. And most, you know, most people are like, Gladys, I don't want to paint, you know, or I'm not a painter. She's like, oh, come on, you know, you can do it, you know. And so I think it was later, I think the transition I noticed more was the one when she stopped believing in me, right, where like my work became vulgar because it was queer, essentially. So the things that she had nurtured in me as a child were all these things that made me queer, like femininity, introspection, creativity, softness, empathy, all of that, to her was beautiful as a child. But as an adult, suddenly it was vulgar, you know, she's like, why are you wasting your talent? And so I think the question about, you're asking about, about, you know, being a muse, I don't think I realized that or even thought about it until writing the book. So it was really just looking at these documents and thinking, oh, well, here I am at like 19, 2021, going to our house and she's taking photos of me. And so, but I think the power dynamics, the way that I felt it was more in the other way, the other direction, like in, but in writing the book, of course, then I, so that's a really, so I think the question that you're asking is in some ways, what the book opens up, right? So even though, you know, or maybe because, you know, in the book, I'm looking at all everything, right? So not just the child inspiration, but the trauma, right? The trauma of, you know, being sexually abused, my father who's our only child, the trauma of her abandoning me, you know, essentially, like the trauma of her never engaging with me as, as an artist, you know, and, but then going into all these other ties that you're talking about, like history, you know, like artists of her generation, white flight and disinvestment, maybe I'm getting a little too big, but this is not. But I think in that, in, I guess, engaging with her in all of her complications and her place, sometimes very complicated and sometimes, you know, as, as like her, like participation, you know, personally, intimately and structurally in violence, right? You know, even in spite of that, I think it still ends up that I do, I do have a greater appreciation for her, even as I have greater critique. Mm-hmm. Because she, she comes to function in the text as both muse and obstacle, and how that one person can occupy that paradox. And she does it in a way that I, that you're very compassionate towards, you know what I mean? Like, you never sort of lose your compassion for her as, as a female figure and, and you attempt to trace sort of what developed this rigidity, because she did sort of have this rigidity about her and had this, carried ideologies which were very much of her time. And in some ways, the book is a tribute to her, but it also inverts the notion of tribute and becomes an anti-tribute because it's also a reckoning. And it also exposes aspects of her and aspects of your relationship with her and family politics that are less than flattering, right? And so I'm, I'm curious about that reckoning and whether or not you think that tribute or anti-tribute would be appropriate ways of characterizing this book. Oh, I think that's a beautiful question. I, I love the idea of thinking of it as both a tribute and a reckoning, a tribute and anti-tribute. Because I think, you know, I really, I think what I wanted to resist the sort of biographical impulse, right? That sort of creates a kind of false seamlessness in a way to a life, right? A kind of gloss, you know? And, and so for me, the, you know, the structure of the book really comes through the process of writing it and the, and starts with that act of touching the art, because, you know, we're always told, you know, don't touch the art, you know, like art is too fragile, it's too delicate, you might damage it, it might become worthless, you know? And so like to me, touching the art means unearthing all of that. And so I think that that act itself is a reckoning, you know, or it leads to a reckoning. And I think, but I think the reckoning that, and that's the part, I think I did really, you know, as I was writing it, I really pared down, like when I'm describing things, first of all, the trauma is immersed within the tribute in a sense, right? And so like the say, you know, the handmade paperwork, right? You peel up a layer and then there's seashell wind chime in the middle or like beads or sequins. And, and so to me, it's kind of all at once. And it is a kind of paradox, you know, because there's a way in which, which I don't expect, right? Because there are moments in the writing, and it's in the book too, when I'm like, oh my, like I'm reading a letter to her, I mean, from her, when I confronted my father about sexually abusing me and she's saying, you know, why are you harming us? Why are you harming the family? Like, I'm the one creating the harm. And, and I'm like shocked because I just blocked that out. I mean, I remembered what she did with the board hem, but I, but, and, and like, but I'm like, oh, that has to go in here because this is part of the memory. And so that to me is also part of resisting that. Was that a struggle for you at all? Because, because you describe how there's a point at which you describe how you had not wanted to include your father and not wanted to introduce that. And I imagine, and I'm imagining that perhaps that's because you don't want those memories to become the core or the axis or the axle, you know, of this, of this story. But then you decide that this story perhaps can't be told without mention of that. But the trauma doesn't subsume the story of Gladys. Like, this is a book that involves trauma, but it's not necessarily the focal point. And that's quite an achievement, I think. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. So in writing it, like, when, oh, were you going to say something else? Oh, so I was going to ask, like, during the writing process, what indicated for you? Like what were sort of the signs that this needed to be worked into, or in a sense even collaged into? Because I feel like you collage the memories in. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. I think for me, whenever I write, I let everything in, you know, because, but definitely as I was writing, because I'm starting, you know, like, say, you know, from the time I was about 20 or my early 20s, until Gladys's death, our whole relationship really was me calling her on the phone, and she would say, why are you wasting your life? You know, essentially, you know, and or except if I was in her studio or talking about her art, then she was completely engaged. She really respected my opinions, but refused to engage with mine at all, my work. And it was after she died in 2010, when I spent time in her house, that I realized how much it would have meant to me if she could have engaged, or I shouldn't say could have, she could have, if she had not refused, you know. And since she was dead, I knew it would never happen, right. And so in a way, that's the genesis of the book. I didn't know it then because I didn't start writing until like 2017. But that, and in a way, although I don't know that she would have wanted me to write this book, I'm doing that. It's like I'm going further, you know, and engaging even deeper, not just with her work, but with her life, with the context that, you know, she lived in, with Baltimore, with the women of abstract expressionism, with Jewish assimilation and white flight and disinvestment. So all of that comes in. And so in terms of my father, like in the beginning, though, which is where he comes in, right, I'm writing about the art, and that feeling is, is that childlike excitement. And so, and I'm like, Oh, I do, you know, I didn't want it to come in there. And I, it's not that I didn't. I mean, like, basically, in every single book I've ever written, you know, in some form, being sexually abused by my father is in the above, you know, because it is such a formative moment in my life and continues to affect me to this day. And so it's not that I didn't perhaps expect, well, no, I didn't expect it because I wasn't thinking about it. But then, but I feel like the book in a way is about legacy, you know, and so there's that childhood legacy of what glad escaped me, which in some ways is about surviving the trauma, you know, because I could inhabit this creative life, even if it was in my head, right, you know, and, but then there's also that legacy of trauma. And then of course, you know, that, that my father is her son, and he is the link between us, you know, and so there's not unless I was doing an erasure, you know, which would be, and I do ask this question about a lot about say, the women of abstract expressionism. I'm like, I would love a biography that didn't involve the men who dominate their lives at all, you know, like they could just be a race, right. But of course, that wouldn't be history. That would be perhaps an exorcism, you know, and, but I think in terms of, I think for me, I really want unearth everything. And I saw it. So I, even if I was like, Oh, no, why is this happening? I knew that it in some form would be in the book, but I didn't. Yeah. And then, and then actually it sort of expands, right, because then I realized, Oh, wait, I have these letters in the moment when I confronted him, you know, like when I'm 1920, 21. And so the documents that are I have them, my file cabinet, it's not like I like, you know, but I didn't even I wasn't even thinking about them. So in a way, the book, it travels in that associative way, you know, like, and like, I think it's more common for me, say, making abstract painting, right? Or a collage where you're like, Oh, this goes here, I don't know why I'm just going to put it there. And so I was just writing into it. And then now I don't know, of course, afterwards, I'm like editing and editing and editing and moving things around. But I but I really like what you say about like, to me, that part of the book is crucial, but is so are all these other aspects, right? And yeah, so I love that you say it doesn't overwhelm the text. In some ways, I think it enhances the depth of feeling, right? Because I think often again, just talk about like resisting that biographical impulse, right? Or even say a typical memoir impulse might be the reverse where we like only talk about one aspect, right? Like, you know, so I wanted to reverse, you know, resist both of those and create something more complicated and more nuance, perhaps. Yeah, rather than invite the reader to trace your grandmother's life journey, in a sense, what you've done is like almost create an art studio space that the reader can enter into and play in sort of imaginationally in order to get to know your family. And so the the experience is almost one of space because you're inviting us into spaces. And then and then you're playing in these spaces with it, which then sort of invites the reader to play in these spaces along with you. And and one of the other talents that you have as a writer is bringing texture into the work that's drawn from your grandmother's sensibility because you describe the texture of her work in this incredibly great detail. And then you mimic that sort of narrative texture in the work. And you do it often by showing seams. And I love that that we can see where the hems and the seams and the frayed edges are. And for example, I'm referring to a moment toward the end of the book, where you begin to describe what your process was in terms of doing research and how much you enjoyed the research. And and rather than than then showing that through the research itself, you insert yourself as narrator and draw attention to yourself as narrator. So in a sense, it's like you're you're pointing to these very colorful seams. And so in a sense, it feels like sense sensibility wise, that's also a tribute to Gladys. Yeah, thank you. I love that. I think. Yeah, I think Gladys in her work, in her art, she always wanted the seams to show like she wanted something that appeared effortless and always showed the effort. So painting that she might have worked on for, you know, years, it would always have, you know, like, just things that looked completely accidental, you know, but they weren't. I mean, they were, they might have been accidental in their initiation, but keeping them was not accidental, of course. And but I think in her life, she wanted to conceal. And so in this book, I'm doing that with life, too, or with history. And also I think, you know, for me, I think I'm always drawn toward the gaps, you know, toward the places of rupture, you know, the places, the seams, like you say, and and wanting to expose them because I feel like that is where that's where the story is, right. And so and in terms of research, I think that's, you know, because when I started the book, I had no idea that it would involve research. Because again, all I knew was I was writing about my relationship with Gladys. And, and then, you know, it started and then it went into my own like archive. And then I decided, oh, I'm going to move to Baltimore because and so I knew there was going to be that kind of research. But it's the research kind of and then by the end of the book, because when I until so I moved to Baltimore for about eight months, because I realized, well, all my work is place based. And usually about where I've lived, where I am living or where I have lived, but I never lived in Baltimore. And that's the city that formed Gladys, you know, she was, you know, moved there when she was two and she lived there until she died. And you write so well about Baltimore. I've only been a handful of times. I went last time when I was on the book tour. And to me, Baltimore felt like a densely populated ghost town. And I feel like you really you really animated that on the page. I wanted to compliment your your your ability to capture that feeling. Oh, thank you so much. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so when I'm in Baltimore, I'm just sort of doing similarly to touching the art. It's like whatever comes through. And so, and I didn't move into what would be traditionally considered research, other than, you know, going to like the Baltimore Museum archive that had, you know, Gladys' scrapbook of press clippings and but the kind of research where you're like reading books and stuff. I resisted doing that until I left Baltimore because both in terms of touching the art, I didn't want to approach it like as an art historian or an art critic, because I'm not the either of those things, you know. And I felt like that was a strength where I could, you know, have a more sensory experience, right? And similar with Baltimore, like there were things that happened in Baltimore that I would never would never have come into the book if I wasn't there. And but I wouldn't have known that before. Like I wouldn't like, for example, you know, when I was there, I noticed how artists are used so blatantly as tools of gentrification. And now, of course, that happens everywhere. But in Baltimore, it's this top down thing, you know, where the city is like, this is an arts district. And then like international capital comes in. And, you know, for example, there'll be $18 million to renovate, you know, a theater in a neighborhood that's still like mostly in collapse, you know. And so that way of touching the art comes into the book. And then later, after I leave Baltimore, is when the research, like reading, starting with like reading about the women of abstract expressionism. Now, Gladys didn't consider herself an abstract expressionist, but these are her contemporaries, essentially. This is like her generation. And these are the people who have been documented. She has not been documented in that way. And so, you know, they're just reading book after book after book, books about white flight and disinvestment and redlining, books about Baltimore, you know, one thing that comes in again that wouldn't have happened, I don't think if I hadn't been in Baltimore is, you know, because Gladys grew up like two blocks from the line that legally segregated Baltimore. So the line, you know, below the line, you know, she was two blocks above where black people could live in Baltimore in a rigidly segregated city. And I was trying to think about like, well, what did that feel like? I mean, I can understand it historically, but like, did she cross that line? I can't answer those questions. But I realized that Billie Holiday grew up in Baltimore, and she's an abstract artist, you know, jazz is abstract art. And they're essentially exact contemporaries. And she lived there until she was about 14. And so then I'm reading all these books about Billie Holiday. And in her memoir, she says, in Baltimore, the whorehouse was the only place where white and black people could interact in any natural way. And I was like, Oh, well, that's, that is the felt experience. Right. And so it's things like that in the research where I realized I could read like seven more books about Billie Holiday. And she does that into the book and become, you know, a character in a sense and a participant and her actual history. But in the end, like sort of what you're talking about where, and I am in my mind, I'm like, because like, you know, it's like, I just keep going, going, going, going. And I'm looking for answers in a way, right? But like answers don't exist. Right. And so like, so for me, I want to leave that to make that visible, the process of looking, right? Because that's the process of the book. Like sometimes I can have a definitive answer about certain things. But the felt sense, we can never really know. I mean, we can maybe look in someone's diary or something. But like that was the diary written for who was it written for? Like, who did they think was reading the diary? You know, like when I was an audience, right? Unknown audience. I'm always fascinated, like, who do they want to discover this, you know, totally. So so I love that way you were saying because I really wanted that. I always want to make myself visible, rather than invisible. So like, you know, because there is a discomfort in a lot of these places, like when I'm like going to the neighborhood where Gladys grew up, where she said, when I asked her about it, she said, if she ever went back, she just said, you can't. And I'm like, Oh, what do you mean? And she doesn't not exist anymore. And she said, Oh, you just can't. And so I knew that meant that it had become a black neighborhood and that her racism and the racism of Baltimore prevented her from ever going back, right? And so in going there, like, there is an aspect and finding the neighborhood where she grew up, which has been destroyed by decades of structural disinvestment, you know, by, you know, white flight and hyper policing and redlining and predatory lending that continues to this day, right? Like, I don't want to just show it as if it's neutral, right? Because it's never, I'm never, you know, no observer is neutral. And whiteness is never neutral. And history is never neutral. So all of those things I want to kind of contest the idea that they're, they can exist apart from actual experience, you know, and trauma and everyday life. And you unite all of all of those phenomena really, really exquisitely. One of the, one of the figures who came to mind for me while I was reading this book, because there are so many references to various painters. And then you also take us down a path that that introduces us to Billy Holiday's connection to the stories. One of the figures that came to mind for me was Buford Delaney. And he was a black painter from Appalachia, who had schizophrenia. And he was, he was a philosopher of sorts and very, very close friends with James Baldwin. And in an interview published in the Paris Review, Baldwin credits Delaney with training his eye and explains that everybody who is committed to prose should engage heavily with painters and with painting, because it's painters who can truly train the eye to see. And then he describes this formative moment that he had with Delaney when they were walking in Manhattan. And Delaney points at a puddle and asks Baldwin what he sees. And he answers, I just see a puddle, you know, with Merck in it. And Delaney says, no, look harder. And then he does. And then he has a vision of sorts. And that that vision never leaves him. And so that for me was like a memory that emerged. And, and I felt very much as if these other figures were kind of whispering in conversation with with what you were recording in terms of the history of Baltimore. And I also wanted to ask about your relationship with dance. Because you do describe your relationship to music and dancing at several points in the book. And I found it interesting, I found those instances interesting. Because it seemed that when you were writing about your experience of dance, you were writing about yourself, experiencing like physical wholeness and experiencing one of the purest forms of pleasure accessible to humans. And so I was curious about your relationship to readers who might assume that writing is a therapeutic practice for you, because I so often have had readers challenge me and want to know whether or not writing is a therapeutic practice for me. And it's not. For me, hiking, gardening and cooking, in other words, being in my body is what functions in a therapeutic way for me. And I get the sense that for you, that's dance. And so I was curious about how you relate to the page versus how you relate to the dance floor. Are those similar relationships or are they very dichotomous relationships? Oh, that's a beautiful question. Yeah, I love that you pulled that out. The dancing for me is when I'm most embodied, you know, and it is when I feel the most alive. And it is when I can exist, you know, I deal with sort of devastating chronic health issues, basically all the time. And so dancing, if I can get to a certain place is where it's like I'm transcending. It's like I'm simultaneously so embodied that I'm in another world. And I'm so much in this world that it becomes that other world. And I think in some ways, like the way I exist in the world, which is always looking for a kind of experience that will change me in everyday life, is also a kind of movement practice that involves all of the senses. And we're often, most of the time, I don't find what I'm looking for. But the searching has to exist anyway. And I think writing for me, it is what keeps me alive. I write in order to stay alive. I need to express what my life, what I experience in the world, what I'm thinking, all of it has to go down. I mean, it's just the it's just what I've had most access to. I've, of course, developed that. But the question about whether it's therapeutic is a different one. I think it's not so much therapeutic for me as a necessity. It's like, I have to do it. And I have to get to that place. But I think there is, I think it's really, it's really varies, right? Because again, because, because often I'm writing through trauma, I'm writing through everyday overwhelm, you know, I'm writing through like I can have everything in my head, I sit down at the computer, it's gone. And I'm like, okay, well, how do I write something anyway? Maybe it's a word, maybe it's a sentence or a paragraph. Maybe I'm writing about the inability to write. But and sometimes that comes into the work as well. You know, like in the book, I think I say, you know, when someone says, what is your writing process, you know, and I think it's to try and try and try and then somewhere in the gap between, and then I sort of leave it, right? That's where that's what writing is for me, is to try to express what cannot be expressed. Yeah. And to do it anyway, like, and if I could dance like that all the time, I would love to, you know, or integrate. And I do think that, yeah, but I don't think it, so my life in a way is searching for both of those things, right? The way to have it be integrated. And the way it's integrated, of course, is sometimes in the text itself, right? Because the text is also searching for its own embodiment or its own way to exist. And in this book in particular, the different parts, you know, are kind of existing on their own, and then also in dialogue with one another. And I feel like that it's also a form of touch. And so that's that's sort of touching the art that sort of forms the book and also allows the book to open up into the world in a certain sense. I love that. I'm going to ask one more question and then maybe we can go go into the chat and open up to group questions. So I somebody recently asked me a question that I'm going to go ahead and pose to you. And in the way that it was that it was addressed to me had to do with an essay that I wrote that is a reckoning with my grandfather, who's a poet, and and who's commitment to Mexican arts and letters developed in me a great admiration infection for Mexican arts and letters. But at the same time, my grandfather was a misogynist who rolled obstacles in my path as a writer. And so, you know, I drafted this essay, wrote this essay that was a reckoning with him. And somebody recently asked me, you know, my grandfather is gone now. But what would he think? Could he if he could if he encountered if he were to encounter, you know, this book that you've written that has this essay about him that is that is not necessarily the most flattering. It's a very realistic portrayal of who he was. So it really, it's, it's, it's a tribute to his humanity and not necessarily the person he believed he was. And so, you know, I answered that person who was asking me that, you know, my grandfather made his living as a publicist. So I think he'd actually be very proud because all press is good for us, you know what I mean? And so I would imagine like, and you know that the book's title is creep. So I'd imagine my grandfather being like, I'm the creep, I'm the creep with my copy of creep. So I'm imagining, so glad as were to were to come upon touching the art. What do you think her relationship to the book would be? How would she receive it? I think that's a great question. I think that unfortunately, I think she would refuse to read it. And at least I mean, that's an interesting question. I have to, I mean, I know, like, I don't think she ever read any of my books, you know, when she was still alive. And, and the writing that was about her, because they're what she did read in my first novel, there's a part that I actually incorporate into touching the art, where, because I had these conversations with her where I was asking, again, I didn't know I was going to write this, this is like, I was, you know, maybe when I was like, in my early 20s, I had these conversations with her where I was like, how do you see yourself in the context of contemporary art? And, and she has these answers that are just like, well, you know, she's like, I'm much better than Pollock. I'm not as good as Roscoe because he did something completely different. Maybe I'm like Richard Debencorn, although he might have been a better painter, right? So she just immediately puts herself in the context of, you know, these so called great men, right? And so I'm using these, this as, you know, this is like material that's amazing. And I do remember when I showed her that piece, which ended up in my first novel, that was vulgar to her. She was like, this is vulgar. And I don't know if that was the part that was vulgar, but the whole thing, the thing is a whole. And so it's, so I think, in a certain sense, I think she would have refused to engage. But Alisa is actually opening up an interesting question in the chat. The cover, because it is, you know, the cover is features candy wrapper collages that she made. She made these collages for decades. And on the cover, if you look close, you can see like the label as you can see, like Hershey, you can see truffle, you can see like a caution label, some phone numbers for poison control, like Dove, you know, different, you know, work. And so it is really like touching the art. And this is exactly what I wanted the book to feel like in that sense. And so that is an interesting question, like, even if she didn't read the book, would the object itself ever feel that is such an interesting question too? Because like, I remember, and this is in the book where, you know, like, there was a time when I was at our house and she told me like, that my earrings were ugly or something where they were. And, and I, in my mind, I was like, I know her aesthetic. Yeah, because it has formed me in many ways. And I know there's like 100% chance that she did not find that she thought they're beautiful. I knew that. But what was ugly was, was the queerness, right? And so that's what was vulgar, right? It was that I was, you know, and so I think there's this complicated thing where, if somehow, and again, the thing is, people refuse to read, when they say they refuse to read your work, because it's about them, they almost always eventually read it, right? Of course! It lives in their mind rent free. Like, they got to access it eventually. Oh my god. It's so ironic too that she would make a statement like that about your earrings and you knowing her sensibility, you would know that like, she's probably like, you know, envious of them and wanting them. And like, she seemed to kind of have a, at times to express herself clearly, like, because you describe her as having been a pipe smoker wearing her loose fitting clothes. I was like, oh my god, she sounds so Michigan Women's Festival. Like, oh my... And I was dying to see a picture of her with this pipe. I was dying to see one. Oh my god, are there any? I've never seen the picture. Well, let me think about that. I'm gonna look when I get home, and if I find a picture with the pipe, there are lots of pictures of her. She's very glamorous. I am fascinated by vintage female smokers. So like... Oh, smoking. I definitely have a photo of her. Okay. So I'm gonna look for that when I get home and let you know. And yeah, should we go see what the questions are in the Q&A? Absolutely. Let's see. Okay, so this book feels very different from your previous work. Can you describe how your process was similar or different? And that was from Jim. Oh, hi, Jim. It's great to have you here. And yeah, I think the main thing that is very different is the research. None of my other books involve this level of research. So in terms of like reading dozens of books, like circling around... I guess I'm always circling around in books, but here I'm taking things that I don't know at first belong at all, you know? So like, when I'm in Baltimore, I see the art of Mark Bradford, who is a gay black abstract artist making work now. And I'm like, this is the art that's touching me. So I'm gonna write about it. But I don't know until the end when I realize, oh, he describes this art, this exhibition as being about the failed project of reconstruction. And I realize, oh, well, that's what I'm writing about. And so there's certain things like that, that in the beginning, I don't know why they belong at all except that they, you know, are touching me in a certain way. And then they come back through. Now that is similar to how I usually write, except I'm not usually using, like say, like Billie Holiday, who is totally separate from this story by all appearances, but does come into it. And so I'm bringing other histories in and also like the history of Jewish assimilation and white flight, which I really knew nothing about before writing this book, but in trying to understand, first of all, Baltimore and the kind of segregated mentality that, you know, Gladys was very sophisticated in many ways, certainly about art, but in life, you know, had, was imprisoned, you know, by the segregated mindset that is still very present in Baltimore, especially among her generation. But I would say across the board in many ways, you know, and, and could not even go like, could not even imagine like the neighbor that she grew up in, which was, you know, like four miles from where she lived, you know, and so I think that aspect of research or searching for histories that I previously did not know anything about, or sometimes were not even interested, like I was not particularly interested in the history of abstract expressionism, because I was like, these like misogynist men, like, do we really need to hear more from them? Right. It was in reading Mary Gabriel's book, Nine Street Women, about the women of abstract expressionism that sort of opened up this kind of gateway where, you know, I'm, you know, like Gladys, like most of her contemporaries, thought that, you know, the only artists were men. You know, this is someone who her entire life was about art, but the only important artist to her and to almost across the board, you know, including now people are very famous and have been like resuscitated in their careers, like, you know, Lee Krasner or Elaine de Kooning or Grace Hartigan, or they also thought the only great artists were men. They only compared themselves to men because they were only people that mattered. And so in order to understand her, to understand that generation and inhabit it. And so I think that's the main thing I think that is different is the research base and the way that the research, like it is in the book, sometimes very intertwined and sometimes the seams have to show, because I have to tell a history that, like the history of Jewish assimilation, that, which is of course assimilation into white supremacy, that I have to articulate in order to get these other things across. And so I think for me, that's probably the one thing that is most different in terms of the word. There is a question about, let's see, writing about the abuse. Matilda, how did you write about your father and the abuse without being overwhelmed while writing about it? That is something I struggle with in my own writing about the same topic. Oh, thank you. Well, I think that I, I think there's no way to not be overwhelmed by it, unfortunately. I wish I could say that I wasn't overwhelmed, but I think the thing about sexual abuse, for me, I've always, it's, you know, it's been in all my books in some way. And so I always think, well, why, like I can talk about it without being overwhelmed. It's not overwhelming at all, because this is such a central part. It's like, if I'm going to talk about anything, right? It's like, it's just there, right? That doesn't overwhelm me because it is, in some ways, it's both the most traumatizing thing that ever happened to me and that continues to traumatize me to this day, but also it's completely mundane. And such part of me, it's like talking about my earrings or something or talking about, you know, sex or talking about crying or talking about writing, right? It's just, it's there always, you know, and, but in the writing, there were moments, like especially in the, those letters from Gladys, where, because then I remember because in the moment of, you know, Gladys, you know, my mother, you know, like, essentially the entire, you know, birth family of their generation, supporting my father over me, I knew that was going to happen in that time. And so it traumatized me, but I didn't feel it in the same way. I just felt, well, I felt it, but not, I felt it in a different way. And so when you feel something in a different way, I think it's always going to be overwhelming. And I think for me, maybe, I guess for me, in order, what makes it maybe less overwhelming is once it is written. So there, I think in, often in my writing, like the things I, I'm trying to write what I feel like if I say I might die, so that then I write it and I don't die, right? And then at the same time I connect with other people who also maybe have similar experiences or maybe don't, or maybe just, like, but I think that's, that's when it becomes less overwhelming, is I think it's once it's there. But the process for me, there might be another way, but I think there is always an overwhelm. Yeah. Here's a question about Gladys' relationship to smoking. So I thought Gladys stopped smoking when she realized it was harmful to you when you were young, but she didn't seem to mind hurting you when you got older. I wonder what caused this change? Oh, well, that's a brilliant question. I wish someone could have asked Gladys. I think that Gladys saw herself as, yeah, I mean, she, the story she told was that when I was born, this is a time when people still smoked in hospitals. She was smoking in the waiting room and I started coughing and, and she decided that she was going to quit smoking right that because she didn't want to harm, you know, me as a child. And, and I think that is in some ways that is, I mean, Gladys really did care about children. And this was way before people were not, this is 1973, like, like I said, people are smoking in a like, like, they're like, here's your, your wonderful baby. Like, you know, people weren't even thinking about that. And my mother has said that she wasn't thinking about it. It wasn't something that she had ever thought about. And so in that way, she was way ahead of her time, you know, and it was very hard for her to quit smoking. Like, because it was, it was not just an addiction, it was part of her identity. Like you mentioned, because it was part of like, you know, that way of like, I'm going to assert myself, you know, in like a man's world, essentially, you know, the right bohemian affectation. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, so, so I don't, I think the answer that I would say is that she didn't believe that she was harming me when she was older. So that's how, so to her, you know, saying, you know, why are you hurting us when all I was doing was, you know, telling the truth, right? That to her wasn't harmful. And so that I think in some ways I think that, you know, I think sometimes people ask, well, how do why, right? Why do people always protect the abusers, rather than the survivors? And this is like, almost across the board, right? How do they live with themselves? And the thing is, they think they're doing the right thing, which just makes it worse, right? It doesn't matter. It makes it worse, you know? So I think in a way she believed in that, you know, that she was this kind of superiority, right? This generation, I think the part of that is this generational thing, like I was still a baby, you know, like I wanted her to engage with me like as equals. That's how I engage with her. But she still wanted me to be that child that would sort of perform this beauty for her, but not something that was for me. Another question about your relationship with Gladys, can you speak more to your childhood experience with Gladys' art and its relation to your queerness and transness? You speak of her art as instilling certain queer and trans feminine affects, sensibilities, and aesthetics into your life early on. How did you touch the art as a child and how were you touched by it? Oh, that's a beautiful question. Yeah, I think that I think there's a way in which like as a child, like I actually did not see the Gladys that much, you know, because she was in Baltimore, I grew up in D.C. My parents didn't really want us to spend that much time. They were suspicious of both of their, you know, parents for different reasons. I mean, now of course I see it like that's how most abusive families are. They don't want many people around, right? But the way they saw it was that Gladys was too idealistic and the other grandmother was too materialistic, you know? But I think that the connection I had with her, I think, you know, her best friend was a gay artist. The first person to ever tell her she was an artist was a gay artist. And these people were instrumental to her life. I never met them or even knew of their existence. I did know about her best friend, but not anything about, you know, him being gay or any details, really, when I never met him. But I think that those sensibilities formed her in a lot of ways. And so what she saw as beautiful in me as a child was that queerness, you know, and was like from very early, you know, like just like my sense of color or like like texture or attraction to jewelry or sparkly things or like ribbon or just detail or like being able to like look at art and exist within it, right? As well as outside it. And I think that's, I think, part of like, I don't even know the mechanics of that, right? I just know that that inside and outside experience for me, it certainly comes from my relationship with Gladys, but I don't know how exactly that happened, other than that being immersed in that. And I think also that that she did like find all of that beautiful that, you know, like when I was a teenager and I started wearing pendants and she would like get me these pendant, like these weird like art, like brooches or something. Like, no, that's not what you get. Like what you're like, so called like male child or something, you know, but, but that was like, she really nourished. But as soon as, and so when I like, I never even officially came out to her, I just like started talking about queerness, because I was like, she already knows, you know, and, but to her, there was this, this separation between those two things. And so even if like so much, and again, this is a lot of us, I didn't even realize until I started writing the book, until I became so immersed and I'm like touching these handmade paperwork that I saw her make as a child. And then I'm, I'm realizing how much of, you know, my formation as a creative person in the world, my queerness, my femininity came through that, right. And so it was a collab, I guess it was a collaboration in that sense. And she would, you know, she, she would never have acknowledged that, right, like when I was an adult, right. And I didn't even know how to articulate that then to say, well, Gladys, this is what you wanted, right. Like, so, yeah, so there's always that contested space, I think. This next question is, is amazing, is there a special kind of grief you've experienced that comes from not getting answers from Gladys that would have answered some of your burning questions? Oh, I love that. I think that grief always has so many layers. And some aspects of grief are beautiful in a certain sense, like, like touching these, this art, like it gives me this child like excitement, but there also is a grief there, right, like, or or all the things that could not in terms of Gladys could have answered these questions. But also, there were like documents that she left, you know, her diaries, all these things that my mother threw out. She was like, Oh, this isn't interesting. Bye bye. So I think there's grief and the things that could have answered those questions. I think the grief with Gladys is more the relationship that she refused that I directly asked starting when I was like 19, 19, I wrote her a letter that said, you know, I would like to exchange a week of mine for a week of yours. So I invited her to San Francisco, you know, to spend time with me. And then I would go to Baltimore and spend time with her. And we would experience each of our lives on the other's terms. Now I went to Baltimore. And she never came to San Francisco. She never came to, you know, and so I think that that is perhaps the deepest grief is that so I and I think but I think the magic of a book is that the things that are not answered create the book. Like I might want more answers, but I actually think the book in some ways is more resonant with more questions. And that mystery is what creates tension for the reader, right? But like that wanting to know and that not necessarily dissatisfaction, but that itch for more, do you know what I mean? I started to wonder about your research and your writing about people who are who are gone, who are deceased. And I was curious about the research that you did in terms of approaching these figures. Did you go to grave sites and an attempt to visit like any of the figures you were writing about? I sometimes do that. I'll sometimes go to a grave and have a conversation with whoever's resting there about my intentions. And I was curious if you had any sort of practice like that writing about the deceased. That's an interesting question. No, I think for me, I was definitely the sort of touching aspect of the art itself. Maybe that in some ways is that but it's with the living object that still exists. And so then what kind of relationships come through that? And I think and also with people that were still alive, like her childhood best friend, who was 101 and still like remarkably coach it, right? Like I was like, whoa, that was like a gift. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it was more maybe with the material objects that sort of form the, yeah, that kind of shift and form and kind of move the narrative in all these different directions, both internally, externally, historically, personally, intimately, structurally, like kind of all of that at once. I think that's sort of how that that comes through that that sort of engine. Yeah, maybe this is a good time for us to come to a close. There have been so many great questions. These have been amazing questions. Yeah. Yeah. Does anyone have any burning thoughts? You know, please write down in the chat. It's been wonderful just to see your comments and to see so many writers and people I know from like different spaces and different places, like joining us today as we've been touching the art. So thank you to Kevin and the San Francisco Public Library for hosting this wonderful conversation. Yeah. Thank you Matilda and Miriam for a truly amazing conversation. So glad that we got to experience