Can you speak to your experience of being raised in—and then separating from—the church, but still being drawn into questions of faith in your work? How does the spirituality of your upbringing continue to influence your creative interests? Also, I wear a hijab so I definitely think twice about writing anything that is particularly descriptive about any part of my body that I don’t show in certain public settings, but even for men or women who don’t wear hijab, I don’t know how I feel (morally/Islamically) about describing or talking about sex or bodies in a way that can—to put it simply, turn people on. “Is that Islamically appropriate, to test people’s hearts that way?” that’s the question I always ask myself. In the Islamic tradition, any sex outside of marriage is considered a sin. So when I say “test people’s hearts,” I really mean “make life harder for people who are not happily married by showing them how great sex and physical intimacy can be?” I do not think sex in itself is shameful—certainly not the desire for it, since one of the greatest gifts God promises the people of heaven in the Islamic tradition is sex and companionship—and a lot of other pleasures that are purely physical. But as a Muslim, I have come to think of the pursuit of pleasures outside of a set of guidelines as sinful. I know that different Christians have different ideas about the pursuit of pleasure (sex or otherwise) both within and without sets of guidelines, but what grounds you personally? The book is filled with imagery of decomposition, decay and decline: of cancer, of the South, of America, of religion, of death -- everything seems to be rotting in humid, fetid confines. Moral bankruptcy is blanketed in hypocritical religious and corporate righteousness.

a b c d e f "Darcey Steinke, Michael Hudson". The New York Times. June 21, 2009 . Retrieved July 14, 2012. spiritual place inside of you. I think everything should be allowed in writing. I came up with the Ecriture Feminine, the work of Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and now Elena Ferrante, the idea that we must write from the female body, the truth of our emotional and physical experience. I felt that way at twenty-five and I feel that way at fifty-five. I have to say the parts of your memoir that were really honest about sexual feelings really helped me; they resonated with my own life and they helped me understand you as person and as a Muslim.Rail: It’s so great you mentioned your daughter, because I was so interested in the passage in Suicide Blonde where Madam Pig asks Jesse “who told you that you have to do what you don’t want? [...] Your mother?” I don’t have a daughter, but I’ve been obsessed with the idea of having one for a few years now, and I am obsessed with writing about my own mother and her family. The motif of a complicated mother-daughter relationship is so common in literature written by women. It is empowering in the way that writing about female companionship is, in that it creates a semi-separate world where women are exerting such tremendous influence on each other and supporting each other against a greater (usually patriarchal) force or pulling each other down further. Why do you think we write so intensely about these semi-separate worlds and our relationships with our mothers and other women? Steinke blends and explores the obsessions of her characters fearlessly, painting a vivid and terrifying portrait of Southern life in the 1990s; hers is a contemporary update of the classical southern Gothic novel. She references much pop cultural detritis on her sweeping canvas: everything from TV talk shows to the infamous Polaroid found in a parking lot showing bound-and-duct-taped abductee Tara Calico (although she does not mention Calico by name).

Rail: Could you talk a little more about your personal ideas about it? I mean, did aging ever trouble you as a writer? There’s a part in the book where Jesse muses about how Bell used to tell her she looked like a student and compared her to women he thought looked better and more desirable. Steinke has a diabolical grasp of the willfulness of decadence, the ambiguity of sexuality, and the transmutability of identity. . . . [ Suicide Blonde is an] electrifying tale with the ambience of a Warhol or John Waters film. Edgy and powerful stuff.--- Booklist Contemporary artists and writers from Jennie C. Jones to Teju Cole consider Agnes Martin's influence and legacyIt comes off as easy, but I doubt it is—writing well isn’t easy for anyone—but Steinke’s writing has been marked by a kind of languid sureness from the start. Like so many naturals with a singular vision and an unyielding gift, Steinke wrote a perfect book nearly right out of the gate, one which both emanates from its time and will last the test of time. I’m glad, on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary, for Suicide Blonde to come around again, to show us how it’s done. Darcey Steinke (born April 25, 1962) [1] is an American author and educator. She has written five novels: Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, Jesus Saves, and Milk, [2] Easter Everywhere, [3] and Sister Golden Hair. [4] [5] Steinke has also served as a lecturer at Princeton University, [6] the American University of Paris, [7] New School University, [8] Barnard College, the University of Mississippi, [9] and Columbia University. Image: Let’s talk about anger as you discuss it in the book. There’s a great deal of conversation in our culture at the moment about women’s anger, and about that anger as a force that can drive change, create action, and speak for justice. You write that you began to see your own anger as a “gateway to authenticity.” You also say, “Rage focused my attention.” In what way has anger led you to greater authenticity? And what has the “expansive” quality of self that anger enables allowed you to see differently? Just before I lost consciousness last September, my young surgeon, Dr. Katsuura, came in to join his team in his gown, cap and mask. His eyes were the last thing I saw before I went under. My doctor’s mask, standard surgical wear, also seemed like part of the uniform of a metaphysical astronaut, one positioned between my body and its pain, even its mortality.

I sometimes think I’ve been more defined by the hypocrisy of the church, and the struggle of it. The struggle of trying to have a faith that’s engaged. I think my dad’s example was interesting. I would hear him in the morning preaching to the bathroom mirror, and I would know that he was nervous, and I would also know that he was nervous because of what had gone on at the church council meeting on Wednesday, or whatever. The church was 3-D for me, is what I’m saying. The minister was a person I loved, who was a person of faith, but who was also a person struggling with his own faith in a real and visible (at home) way.

Darcey Steinke

DS: Apophatic theology, or negative theology—seeing God through darkness—has always been the theology in which I’ve been the most comfortable. This is the theology of St. John of the Cross, which considers God through what cannot be known about God. As I said earlier, my dad has been a chaplain for thirty years, and his model of ministering to dying people has been formative to me. It’s a model that says you should minister to the dying with respect to their fears about the unknowns of death. You shouldn’t tell them that everything’s going to be okay; instead, you should listen to their anger and their sorrow. That’s been a strong influence on where my faith is centered. Unknowing is the best way to approach the problem of God. I just think there’s so much spiritual energy in doubt. I can’t believe that anyone gets behind spiritual certainty, actually. That kind of certainty seems so dangerous to me. It goes so wrong when people believe they are sure about what God wants. Dismantling the things you think you know about God and yourself and other people seems to me a better way to be theologically engaged. To question your beliefs. To question what you think you know about the way God moves in the world. For me the only way I can have a relationship with divinity is through the unknown, through mystery. If your idea of divinity is leaning into the mystery, you’re more likely to find grace in a variety of places. In my fiction I have tried to make traditionally ugly places beautiful and filled with grace—garbage dumps, malls. I’ve always had that impulse to try to see things not the way the world sees them, but to see the spark of movement and divinity in what is considered to be darkness, ugliness. That makes the most spiritual sense to me.

a b Metcalf, Stephen (February 8, 2005). "The God Disillusion". The New York Times . Retrieved July 14, 2012. Our first introduction to Sandy is through a sermon by Ginger’s father. “Her mother says she has a dreamy side, that she collects stuffed animals, reads fantasy novels where horses fly and fairy princesses wear gowns made from flowers.” To Ginger’s father, Sandy is Christ-like, and the community must accept its complicity in her abduction. Everyone must “come to terms with the evil that resides within us.” Needless to say, the customers in his church are not entertained. Complicating things further is the reality that clergy families are held up as an impossible model, which, as a child, is a difficult responsibility to hold. I remember once—I can’t remember if I was misbehaving, or was being wild—but my dad said, “I wish this wasn’t true, but your behavior affects my job.” Steinke: The only feminist credentials I have are that I was born and have lived as a woman. I came of age in the Virginia suburbs in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when “Female Raunch Culture,” as New Yorker writer Ariel Levy calls it, was the norm. Wet t-shirt contests were weekly events at the bars along the highway. Sex seemed to be everywhere: playboy bunnies, pro-football cheerleaders... I actually wore a t-shirt at fourteen from a local Pizza Place that read: “Had A Piece Lately?” Many of my friends’ mothers were completely invested in their daughters having sex, and at a very young age. It was well known that the swim team coach was regularly on the make with the young female members of his team. Though it was common knowledge, no one did anything about this. I can’t say I was completely comfortable or complicit with all this, but it interested me. As it seemed the way my suburban world worked.

For those concerned about the title, be aware that this novel -- which I find to be a grand achievement in fiction -- has other things in mind; it's an ambitious examination of contemporary America... This is a reenvisioned, fresh look at Agnes Martin, the enigmatic, influential, highly independent painter whose life and work have proved inspirational to audiences across many fields and disciplines. Accompanied by color reproductions of works by Martin, Agnes Martin: Independence of Mind presents a series of essays by living artists and writers commissioned especially for this volume. Contributors include artists Martha Tuttle, Jennie C. Jones and James Sterling Pitt, as well as authors Teju Cole, Bethany Hindmarsh, Darcey Steinke and Jenn Shapland. These contributors write about Martin's influence on their creative lives and work, and offer new interpretations that defy stereotyped notions about Martin's life. Longer essays are mixed with shorter, more anecdotal texts by a wider selection of artists. The aging face is an anti-face. It does not receive the automatic empathy Levinas claimed for the face. In The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke writes of faces he sees on the streets of Paris. He is particularly disturbed by an old women’s face. “When they are barely forty years old they come to their last one… it is worn… has many holes in it, is in many places as thin as paper, and then little by little the lining shows through, the non-face and they walk around with that one.”