An Interview with Cris Mazza

 

by Gina K. Frangello

Cris Mazza is the author of four novels and four short-story collections, the most recent of which are Dog People (Coffeehouse) and Former Virgin (FC2). A native of Southern California, she has been transplanted to Chicago, where she teaches Creative Writing at the University of Illi­nois at Chicago. She is a co-editor of the acclaimed and controversial Chick Lit and Chick Lit 2: No Chick Vics (FC2). Cris also trains and shows dogs.

GF: It’s interesting that when referring to you, people seem very conscious of labels like “experimentalist” or “postfeminist,” but the label “Italian-American” never seems to come up. Yet your essay, “Homeland: When San Diego Was Young and Raw,” gives an in-depth portrait of your Italian-American, rural upbringing and close-knit, large family. How did that background affect your identity as a writer?

CM: First of all, I’m not wild about being labeled anything, and I don’t think writers should expect to gain readership based on what label they’re either born with or manage to have applied to themselves. So, in a way, I no more think of my work as “Italian-American” than I think of it as “experimentalist.” If I started put­ting myself or my work into labeled boxes, that limits me from other boxes, so I want to keep my options open. Naturally I’m al­most certainly not going to be writing anything that explores the intimacies of growing up Slavic-American or Irish, but I also don’t want to be limited to topics and themes that directly relate to whatever category labels me or has been my own experience. For example, I’ve tended to explore the experience of only-children. Most Italian Americans are not only-children. Maybe I’m drawn to imagine the experience of only-children because I’m from a large, traditional family within a large extended family.

GF: But is the role of Italian-American woman still a pertinent one for you today? Are there ways in which you see yourself as an Italian-American writer—in a similar vein to, say, Tina DeRosa or Don DeLillo—or do you see yourself as a writer who just happens to be of Italian-American decent?

CM: I think “Italian-American” or the “role” of Italian-American women has to mean different things to different people because all of our experiences—not to mention ancestry—are individual, not a blueprint. Hollywood and the media have managed to blueprint what being Italian American means, and I’m sorry some Italian-American writers—not necessarily the ones you mentioned—seem to have gone along with it, which is going to make others, like myself, look like we’re either ignoring our ancestry or abandoning it. So I don’t think the way any one writer views him or herself as Italian American is the only way to be Italian American, nor are others who don’t fit that example into people who “just happen to be of Italian decent.”

     My own experience grew out of a family that, without neces­sarily abandoning tradition and culture, took conscious steps to­ward protecting themselves from a type of nationality-distinction which, during the 20s through 40s, could lead to various social tensions and outright discrimination. In other words, they were eager to assimilate, nowadays a dirty word. The first-generation boys were given Americanized names to help them prosper. Inter­estingly, the first-generation girls were not given this “gift” and did end up changing their names later in life. The first-generation children understood Italian and could speak it if they had to, but their parents didn’t want them to—especially not with an accent—so English was their language. There may have been some resis­tance when all four first-generation children took non-Italian spouses, but there was no patriarchal threat of disowning them. When the second-generation children were called “wops” in school, my grandfather pointed out that our father fought in “war number two.” So some of the themes I explore do come from my particular cultural heritage and experience, for example how often my characters change their names, but I don’t consciously do it as an exploration of Italian-American experience.

     My family also escaped some of the blatant discrimination many Italian Americans experienced. Even through the 40s, it was understood that signs declaring “no blacks” included Italians and Irish, but in Southern California, where my grandparents moved to from Brooklyn during the depression, there were groups of people who were more discriminated against, letting the Italians off the hook. I’ve read about housing tracts in Southern California where, in the late 40s or early 50s, they didn’t allow Mexican Americans. Italian Americans were permitted, but they had to show proof that they weren’t actually Hispanics trying to “pass.”

GF: So in a way, in avoiding some more blatant prejudices and media-imposed stereotypes, you were left just with the basics: the values of your parents, the way they raised you. Did your family influence your goal to become a writer?

CM: Somehow, my parents didn’t directly influence any of my sib­lings’ career directions or goals. No outright suggestions were ever made. But the notion of setting goals and being determined is evident in all of my siblings. This may be as much a post-war and post-depression era culture as any particular ethnic culture. There was a time when getting a high school education might not be available for my father—being the eldest and in ninth grade when the depression wiped out my grandfather’s business, my father was expected to quit school and help the family. It took tremen­dous tenacity on my father’s part, as well as the subtle strength of insistence on my grandmother’s part, for my father to do his fam­ily duty and still manage not only a high school education but college and a master’s degree. That may be where my drive comes from. Remarkably, my parents didn’t show much if any tendency toward separating genders into different routes in life. We all had music lessons, we all did scouting, and we all knew, from the time we could talk, that college followed high school. It wasn’t a choice, it was the next step. I can’t say this was true in how my grandpar­ents’ raised their children, nor in some other family units within my extended family, so it’s a mystery where my parents got it!

GF: Your family life sounds almost idyllic. Yet after your own early marriage and divorce—

CM: My marriage wasn’t that early—I was 24 and finishing a master’s degree, is that an early marriage?

GF: Sure, nowadays, isn’t it? I was twenty-five when I got married and I felt like a child bride! Most of my friends in their thirties aren’t married yet, especially those in academia.

CM: Well, if you’re going to pursue tenure . . .

GF: Exactly. That’s why I was wondering, since you enjoyed fam­ily life so much as a kid, if your decision not to remarry or have or adopt children is a conscious one, or more one based on the harsh realities of academic life—long distance relationships, little time?

CM: I have to believe that the maternal impulse really is just that, a biologic impulse, and some defect in me never got it. Yes, I was conscious about not wanting children, and lucky to find men who shared this conscious decision. If not wanting children is not a biological condition, it would take a psychologist to determine how my “idyllic” childhood and large, extended family might’ve caused me not to attempt to try to live up to that standard on my own. Could my choice not to have children be related to my ten­dency to have characters be either only-children, or only-children with only one parent, or to completely ignore parents as though the character appeared on earth as a fully formed adult without benefit of progeny? Someday I’ll probably tackle the complexity and confusion of a character with lots of siblings and an extended family.

GF: You also made a point in an interview with Poets & Writers to stress that you haven’t had a particularly checkered or traumatic past—that your life has been pretty normal. As a writer, particu­larly one whose forté has been touchy issues like rape and sexual harassment, do you ever feel your past is something you have to account for? For instance, does it ever seem that there’s a privi­leging in the literary community of writers who have lived hard, seen the bottom, and are therefore “qualified” to write about it?

CM: Yes, I feel somewhere along the food chain—editors, review­ers, media, etc.—a value judgment has been made not only that only those who have been victims are interesting, but also that they’re the only ones who can imagine engaging and important situations, and that they’re the only ones who are good writers! Now how ridiculous is that? Just like violence on TV, I think the escalation of exposing all our dirty secrets, in print as well as in the broadcast media, has desensitized everyone to what actually qualifies as a personal trauma significant enough to make anyone take notice or even feel something. So while, according to this so­cietal-imposed gradation, my actual experiences may not have been “bad enough” to be important, I still can see the large issues behind my particular experiences and then apply those issues and questions to the “larger” issues of society—sexual harassment, date rape, etc. Here’s one example: when I was a teenager, back­seat fumblings in cars was not called date rape, even though the same activity would fit that category now. Many girls, like myself, felt there was something wrong with us not to like the sweaty grapplings of our male peers. So, without saying no, we endured as much as we could. I remember consciously thinking, There’s something wrong with me, because it didn’t feel good, sometimes hurt, and I hated what was going on. These episodes, thankfully, never got as far as intercourse, but achieved what would legally be called sexual assault if the activity weren’t “consensual.” So there was an assault—every time I had a date. But was it consensual? I blamed myself for not liking it. So wasn’t I complicit? I struggled with this conflict. So I explored it in fiction on a much larger scale, branching into the power-imbalance between genders at work in the 70s. Am I not “qualified” to do so?

     Of course, there are also many unspoken traumas in adult life, one being sexual dysfunction, which I’ve explored in much of my work. It doesn’t take being a victim of society’s worst ills to imagine how the varieties of sexual dysfunction can create conflict that plays on and complicates other conflicts.

GF: The postfeminist movement, which you’ve been instrumental in bringing attention to, has been pretty outspoken with respect to a collective exasperation with the tired, old Woman-as-Victim re­frain. But how would a new ideology pertain to women outside the art world or the middle class in general? For example, what role might postfeminism play among the urban, Italian-American girls from my old neighborhood who are still joining gangs and getting pregnant and dropping out of school? They don’t read Chick Lit or know what experimental literature is, they don’t surf the Postfeminist Playground, they won’t read this interview. Yet one of the main criticisms of “the old feminism” was that it fo­cused exclusively on white, middle-class, educated women and no one else benefited or gave a shit. How would postfeminism im­pact women who watch Oprah and may read Toni Morrison be­cause she’s on the booklist, but who have no idea who Cris Mazza is?

CM: First of all, let me reiterate that there are many different Ital­ian-American experiences besides the inner city, ethnic neighbor­hoods. But this is not the first time I’ve heard this particular veiled criticism that I’m not taking my “message” or “movement”—if there is such a thing—to the urban working class. Some of that argument may seem to have truth to it: my contention that there are other important aspects to women’s experience besides being victims seems to exclude women of color and/or women in the urban working class. But how can any woman want to claim that her only importance is her example as a victim? That’s why I don’t understand the argument that this stance is exclusionary. Even if a woman has been a victim of everything there is to be a victim of, does she want those experiences to be the only thing about her that’s interesting to anyone else? But I’ll concede some and say, maybe this movement, which I don’t claim to have started, is a plea to middle-class, white women to stop whining!

     Chick-Lit was criticized for not attracting a large pool of ethnic writers, and I was sorry this happened. But interestingly, Italian Americans are well represented in the anthologies: Carole Maso, Kim Addonizio, Tristan Taormino, and one of my co-editors, Jef­frey DeShell. The bigger problem of literature reaching urban, working-class people is not just a problem for me and my specific concerns. Oprah has obviously done a world of good, but she can only plug so many books, and I’d bet she won’t be plugging many books from independent literary publishers. Meanwhile, the reading public is at the mercy of what the New York publishing industry and Barnes & Nobel decide to give them to read. They, the mass reading public, really have no choice of what to be exposed to.

GF: Though your characters aren’t clear-cut victims or perpetra­tors—often instead filling both roles at once—they are almost al­ways loners who are socially awkward and feel isolated from those around them. Is this autobiographical in concept? Or do audiences just like to read about characters who see themselves as “outcasts” or “misfits?”

CM: Well, I’m uncomfortable in “disorganized gatherings” like parties, from the formal literary party to the informal gathering in someone’s living room. I tend to stay in one place then leave early and go home. I rarely ever host parties—having a reading group was a way for me to handle hosting a social event. Organized events are a little easier for me—there’s a structure to what I’m supposed to be doing. Am I a loner or outcast or misfit? Even in a family with five children, I was always and easily able to play alone, though I did play with my siblings too. I think I was some­what of an outcast in junior high, then found a niche among other misfits in high school marching band—we were called “band freaks”—and ended up satisfied with a fairly small circle of friends, not much social life, and a lot of time spent alone, includ­ing a long-term, long-distance relationship. So, again, in my fiction the exaggeration of my personal experience and tendencies can easily create the social-outcast loner character, especially when I add my penchant for making the character an only-child with only one parent, sometimes a weird, loner parent! But I think it’s be­yond my ability to analyze myself to say why a product of an “idyllic,” large Italian-American family has inclinations toward lonerism.

GF: You mentioned in a recent article in the Chicago Tribune that your former agent thought the characters in Dog People were freaks, so you went out and got a new agent because you love those characters and object to such a classification. What, in your eyes, is the difference between dog people and other people?

CM: All the time I spend alone I spend with my dogs. We eat to­gether, sleep together, and are together in my study when I write. We take walks together, take cross country trips together, and we share a very time-consuming hobby: training and showing. The relationship between a person and a dog who train and compete together is somewhat different than a person with a companion pet. My dogs and I are partners. The same kind of partnership can be seen more intensely in a police dog and officer, where there may be a life-or-death situation and each relies on the other. The partnership between my dogs and I doesn’t have risk—other than humiliation at a show, and only the human will feel that!—but it’s still built on each knowing what she needs to do to help the other perform better, working together, respecting each other’s abilities. A relationship with a dog is far more powerful and complicated than merely receiving the benefits of unconditional love.

     This attitude, I suppose, is what led that former agent to call the people in Dog People “lunatics.” When I first titled the book Dog People—the only book I ever titled before it was written—my initial reference was to people who show dogs as being “dog peo­ple.” We call people who own dogs but don’t show them “pet people.” The expansion of the term is natural and desirable—I never intended it only to have the one narrow sub-culture mean­ing. But, because they’re so extreme, those kinds of “dog peo­ple”—who develop that kind of intense relationship with a dog and understand their dogs’ behaviors far better than they do their own—are a wonderful backdrop for a book about human conduct and imperfections.

     Most dog people are also far more intimate with their dogs’ sexuality and sex organs than ordinary pet owners. If we’re breeding and monitoring cycles, we have to be. I’m positive some dog people are more intimate and familiar with their dogs’ sexu­ality than their own . . .

GF: Okay, so you’ve given me the perfect lead here. What’s the deal with animals and eroticism in your writing? I mean, as some­body whose experience with animals is confined to two neutered cats, I’ve got to admit, it’s all foreign to me. How have you used dogs to convey nuances about human sexuality, and what is it that can be captured that’s difficult to achieve when writing about the standard human to human affair?

CM: I hadn’t self-analyzed the relationship between animals and eroticism and why I have repeatedly made this parallel, until re­cently when I’ve read reviews of Dog People. Animals’ sex lives are like eating and shelter. Maybe they don’t fight over shelter, but food and sex produce about the same intensity of drive in most animals, and I can’t say too much “self esteem” is mixed into their sex lives. They don’t use their sex lives to compensate for anything else, and their sex lives don’t mean anything else, like love and commitment or betrayal. How much more perfect a backdrop for the complexities of human sexuality can you ask for? So, for ex­ample, in Dog People a couple endures an excruciatingly embar­rassing sex therapy session, then a few scenes later they’re breed­ing their dog and having to use artificial insemination, which means masturbating the stud to collect the semen. Just putting these scenes side by side is fascinating to me. From there, imagine the wide variety of human-to-human sexual complexities and complications, from impotence to the desire for a trio, from fet­ishists and cross dressers to devotees of S&M—and imagine any of these people raising rabbits or cows or horses, either as a hobby or part of their livelihood. They probably don’t make the connec­tion. That doesn’t mean I can’t!