Best-selling author and memoirist Susan Jane Gilman is New York City-born and a fierce and honest storyteller. She has no problem laying herself bare for the world—as long as you don’t call her writing "chick lit."
"I hate it," she says, referring to the idea of "breezy, girl-oriented stories about being single and going shopping." Gilman's stories are meant to be a reaction to that "genre of light beach reading," and instead, she writes about divorce, visiting concentration camps, bullying and other "universal" topics. Despite writing about women and their experiences in the world, she tells me that men have read her work and professed their love for it, and her ability to relate to it.
"It's so reductive: Tobias Woolfe writes This Boy's Life and the cover a is a boy in a car, and you know, nobody calls it "dick lit," she jokes, in reference to a vast body literature chronicling the experiences of men.
Gilman's latest memoir, "Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven" (Grand Central Publishing 2009) at first glance comes across as sexualized because of its title and the cover photo. However her post-college experiences of traveling through 1986 China with cohort Claire van Houten is no sex romp. The cover features a naked, skinny woman in sunglasses covered by a travel backpack and squatting over flagstones marked with Chinese calligraphy. It's admittedly sexy, but the theme refers to being "laid bare and vulnerable" in terms of cultural and youthful ignorance—not sex, although that is part of the book as well.
The memoir depicts a 21-year old Gilman and van Houten struggling through travels of the China's totalitarian, third-world communist society, told in the reflective voice of the author in the present—commenting on her own ignorance and cringing at the poor choices she made at the time. The story is about the two women, but also humanity and its loneliness and fallibility; feelings of hubris and redemption, all of which are "pretentious" themes as Gilman jokes, laughing and apologizing at the same time.
Gilman writes about her disgust for food that she would now consider haute cuisine, but also how she and her comrade intentionally abandoned an earnest young Chinese man who was a gracious guide and host. The account is frank and riddled with the bipolar emotions of a somewhat naive, twenty-something college student and then the wisdom of a woman twice that age. Gilman shocks the reader by showing the unexpected desertion first, and the explanation and planning after, making for excellent storytelling. According to Gilman, revisiting that moment was her "great shame," and seems "even worse to me now," prompting the author to cite her desire to reach back in time and smack herself in the head.
"It's hard to write about yourself when you're 21 because, if you're lucky, you're pretty clueless," Gilman explains. "The voices of 21-year-olds are not that interesting or compelling…To write about immaturity and shallowness in a way that's compelling or deep, you have to create a hybrid between the images and exuberances of that youth but temper it with a certain amount of wisdom and perspective."
The story, which deals with mental illness and the coping mechanisms of the two close friends, is also important travel literature because it paints a picture of pre-Tienanmen Square China and the extreme controls over the population and the tourists. Despite the more difficult interactions the visitors had, one of Gilman's goals was to present the many Chinese who are "lovely and generous," and to remind Americans that they are no more extensions of their government than we are.
The author now lives in Geneva, Switzerland, with her UN-employed husband, but is "eternally a child of New York," although she finds it impossible to write here, requiring a less exciting city like her current home or Washington, D.C., to craft her stories. Hailing from Manhattan gave her the belief that she could "do anything," but travel did teach her that "we New Yorkers are incredibly parochial, just like any other place, we think we are the center of the universe—and we have a lot to back us up. But I've been around the world, and I don't know how to drive, or rope a steer or grow my own food. Everything I know is for [living] in New York."
Gilman never intended to be a travel writer; she wanted to tell the story of this "incredible thing" that happened to her, and it could only have happened in a setting like China because of the nature of the government as well as being watched and followed, which fueled van Houten's paranoia throughout the book. "I don't think we would have gotten this by taking a cruise on the French Riviera," says Gilman.
"A novel that's merely autobiographical is a great disappointment. But a memoir that reads like a novel is a great surprise," a mentor once told me. Like in all good stories, the protagonist has to transform in some way, and Gilman's recounting of her experiences fulfill that requirement exactly. Two vulnerable women learn about themselves and grow up by coping with the hardships of an alien society. Just don't call it "chick lit."
Susan Jane Gilman read from "Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven," April 23 at McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince St. (betw. Lafayette & Mulberry Sts.), 212-274-1160; 7 p.m.
"I hate it," she says, referring to the idea of "breezy, girl-oriented stories about being single and going shopping." Gilman's stories are meant to be a reaction to that "genre of light beach reading," and instead, she writes about divorce, visiting concentration camps, bullying and other "universal" topics. Despite writing about women and their experiences in the world, she tells me that men have read her work and professed their love for it, and her ability to relate to it.
"It's so reductive: Tobias Woolfe writes This Boy's Life and the cover a is a boy in a car, and you know, nobody calls it "dick lit," she jokes, in reference to a vast body literature chronicling the experiences of men.
Gilman's latest memoir, "Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven" (Grand Central Publishing 2009) at first glance comes across as sexualized because of its title and the cover photo. However her post-college experiences of traveling through 1986 China with cohort Claire van Houten is no sex romp. The cover features a naked, skinny woman in sunglasses covered by a travel backpack and squatting over flagstones marked with Chinese calligraphy. It's admittedly sexy, but the theme refers to being "laid bare and vulnerable" in terms of cultural and youthful ignorance—not sex, although that is part of the book as well.
The memoir depicts a 21-year old Gilman and van Houten struggling through travels of the China's totalitarian, third-world communist society, told in the reflective voice of the author in the present—commenting on her own ignorance and cringing at the poor choices she made at the time. The story is about the two women, but also humanity and its loneliness and fallibility; feelings of hubris and redemption, all of which are "pretentious" themes as Gilman jokes, laughing and apologizing at the same time.
Gilman writes about her disgust for food that she would now consider haute cuisine, but also how she and her comrade intentionally abandoned an earnest young Chinese man who was a gracious guide and host. The account is frank and riddled with the bipolar emotions of a somewhat naive, twenty-something college student and then the wisdom of a woman twice that age. Gilman shocks the reader by showing the unexpected desertion first, and the explanation and planning after, making for excellent storytelling. According to Gilman, revisiting that moment was her "great shame," and seems "even worse to me now," prompting the author to cite her desire to reach back in time and smack herself in the head.
"It's hard to write about yourself when you're 21 because, if you're lucky, you're pretty clueless," Gilman explains. "The voices of 21-year-olds are not that interesting or compelling…To write about immaturity and shallowness in a way that's compelling or deep, you have to create a hybrid between the images and exuberances of that youth but temper it with a certain amount of wisdom and perspective."
The story, which deals with mental illness and the coping mechanisms of the two close friends, is also important travel literature because it paints a picture of pre-Tienanmen Square China and the extreme controls over the population and the tourists. Despite the more difficult interactions the visitors had, one of Gilman's goals was to present the many Chinese who are "lovely and generous," and to remind Americans that they are no more extensions of their government than we are.
The author now lives in Geneva, Switzerland, with her UN-employed husband, but is "eternally a child of New York," although she finds it impossible to write here, requiring a less exciting city like her current home or Washington, D.C., to craft her stories. Hailing from Manhattan gave her the belief that she could "do anything," but travel did teach her that "we New Yorkers are incredibly parochial, just like any other place, we think we are the center of the universe—and we have a lot to back us up. But I've been around the world, and I don't know how to drive, or rope a steer or grow my own food. Everything I know is for [living] in New York."
Gilman never intended to be a travel writer; she wanted to tell the story of this "incredible thing" that happened to her, and it could only have happened in a setting like China because of the nature of the government as well as being watched and followed, which fueled van Houten's paranoia throughout the book. "I don't think we would have gotten this by taking a cruise on the French Riviera," says Gilman.
"A novel that's merely autobiographical is a great disappointment. But a memoir that reads like a novel is a great surprise," a mentor once told me. Like in all good stories, the protagonist has to transform in some way, and Gilman's recounting of her experiences fulfill that requirement exactly. Two vulnerable women learn about themselves and grow up by coping with the hardships of an alien society. Just don't call it "chick lit."
Susan Jane Gilman read from "Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven," April 23 at McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince St. (betw. Lafayette & Mulberry Sts.), 212-274-1160; 7 p.m.
