I met Joelle Fraser at the 2003 Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, where we both presented.  Her book The Territory of Men intrigued me.  Sherman Alexie (author of The Toughest Indian in the World), and Beverly Donofrio (author of Riding in Cars with Boys) both blurbed the book saying it is written with honesty and is tender, funny and true.  When I read it shortly after the conference, I felt the same.  As the book jacket reports, “Fraser’s sharp vignettes of her intense relationships, brief, turbulent marriage, and itinerant life are haunting echoes of her early memories.” Born in mid-sixties’ San Francisco, Joelle is the daughter of a flower child and a surfer.  Despite the freedoms of her mother’s “me generation,” Joelle’s life and her mother’s play out on men’s territory. Joelle’s task in writing about her life is to learn how to possess her own being and to forgive those who created pain.

Whether she is talking about harrowing misadventures as a vulnerable child selling her paintings in Sausalito or the loss of meaningful relationships with men as her mother chooses new lovers, Joelle Fraser’s prose reflects the way children listen and the way they think:

In my mind, it all happened on the same day, the same afternoon, when I was seven years old:  my little brother Dace was born, Mac moved out, and my mother’s boyfriend Tom moved in.  In truth, my mother had been seeing Tom while she was pregnant with Mac’s son, and the changes took place over a few weeks. But my memory has collapsed these events into one, as if they were easier and simpler to carry that way.

Before he left, Mac took me on a motorcycle ride up Highway 101 to Tiburon, a nearby town across the bay.  He pulled over and pointed out Sausalito, and the direction of our house, which we couldn’t see because it was hidden by the curve of the land.  I tied to picture it, but in my imagination it already felt small and sad.

He said we were all leaving that house, but we would not be going to the same place.

He had brought me here to say goodbye.  We sat down on a bench, and he held my hands and told me I needed to forget him because he was going far away, and because I had a real father in Hawaii. He said my father was real to me in the way that he, Mac, was real to my new brother, Dace.  It had to do with blood. Dace would be visiting him in the future, and I would visit my own father.  His voice was calm and low.  He didn’t look at me much–he’d just glance in my eyes and then quickly away, as if they were too bright to look at.  Usually he talked to me face-to-face, and his nervous eyes worried me, though my hands were warm in his.  What he had said was so strange–how could I imagine him gone?  It was impossible!  Here he was beside me. Where would he go?  Where would he live?  And what I most wanted to ask:  how could I make him stay?  Questions rose and fell in my mind.  I thought if I spoke them out loud, or if I cried, it might upset him and make him want to leave even more.  I listened respectfully, hoping he would be impressed by my grown-up manner and change his mind.

Sheila
You have a degree from one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious, writing programs in the country. What was your training like at Iowa?

 Joelle
At Iowa, I took seminars in craft/technique and of course workshops.  Also, outstanding writers and poets are constantly coming to Iowa, so I went to many readings, usually two a week, which was an excellent complement to my studies. Every day it seemed I felt inspired or intimidated–or both!

Sheila
Can you describe what you enjoyed most about the approach and opportunities?

Joelle
I loved the atmosphere of excellence that seemed to exist, for writers, in Iowa City.  There was the feeling that just because you ‘got in,’ because you ‘were there’–or even that you lived there!–that you could actually have real talent.  In other places, before I published a book, I sometimes felt a sense of disdain from people when I told them I was a writer. But in Iowa, you never know–you could be talking to next year’s Pulitzer winner.

Sheila
How did your graduate training help you begin and shape your memoir?

Joelle
My graduate program afforded me the time, and the support, to focus in on a book-length project. To get an MFA you have to have a thesis, and mine–which ultimately became a collection of essays–formed the basis of my eventual memoir. In general, it’s the luxury of the graduate program to have the opportunity to immerse yourself in a writing community. It’s tough to find that kind of environment anywhere else, at least for the span of two years! But specifically, my graduate training allowed me to work with mentor writers and other writer/students, who could show me where my writing was working–and where it was not. The feedback from a community is priceless. And then you go off on your own.

Sheila
What were the biggest hurdles you faced in writing the memoir?

Joelle
One hurdle was motivation. I had a book contract, which was an incredible, wonderful incentive, but the material itself was often so painful that it took all I had some days just to sit down and face it. I had to “follow that rope into the deep” every single day (in order to get to the power of my memories), and that’s a grueling process. I know other writers face that frequent frustration when getting to work, but memoirists have to add on all the emotion that exposure can provoke.

Another hurdle was trying not to be inhibited by thinking of who would read the book. I had to consciously tell myself to keep writing–to not worry about what so-and-so would think if he or she read it. I’d tell myself, “I’ll worry about that later.” I knew that it was the only way the writing would be authentic and have any power.

Sheila
What questions do people ask you after a reading–are there ones you hate to answer and others you have found intriguing?

Joelle
People ask the same things: how did my mother react; why did I write a memoir instead of a novel; how long did it take to write; how did I remember everything, etc. Nothing irritates me, really. Honestly, I’m usually flattered that anyone’s even mildly interested. What has been hard, though, is the way people will confront me with their personal experience. Someone will come up and say, “I really relate to you–my Dad killed himself last month” or something, and they’ll want me to engage on a heart-to-heart level right at the bookstore’s podium.

I think it’s hard for readers, who aren’t necessarily writers, to understand that books are filtered through an artistic process. My memoir didn’t come verbatim from a diary–it’s crafted. But people come to me without that filter, hearts exposed, and I often feel unnerved, and inadequate, in the face of their pain. At the same time I feel honored to know that I’ve connected on a deep level with people. Isn’t that what art’s about, in the end?

Sheila
What does it feel like to have told your story so publicly? To create the narrative you have had to reveal much of what you remember about your mother’s thinking and behavior and your father’s as well as your own life’s events concerning men.

Joelle
It’s not been easy, mainly because it’s a very strange thing to do. I feel like an oddball much of the time. And there are some people who simply do not understand, and do not accept, what I’ve done. They won’t even address it. Maybe they’re very closed off, or they’ve been brought up to view public disclosure, or even private, as shameful. I’ve crossed some kind of line by writing my story, and I can tell immediately where a person stands in regard to that line once they know I wrote a memoir.  This has resulted, over the past months, in my becoming rather hardened to it. It’s done, I’m not ashamed, and besides, there are so many more people who love my book and tell me I’m brave and that they are grateful to me. I’m also so very happy that I wrote it well–that on a literary level the book is pretty good and that it was well reviewed nationally. It makes it so much easier to stand tall.  I can’t imagine how awful it would have been to have been panned or ignored.

Sheila
Can you advise other memoir writers out there about shaping their stories for the page?

Joelle
I’d tell memoir writers to think about theme and metaphor, because lives are messy and don’t make sense, and you can get easily bogged down by dangerous tangents because your story is interesting to you. But a reader needs to feel there’s a theme, or a pattern, or something, so that it doesn’t just feel random or encyclopedic in terms of family details that are in the end, sorry, boring to others.

That’s why my title, The Territory of Men, was so helpful and necessary for me. I was able to keep each essay directly or indirectly related to that theme/metaphor, and it kept me focused. Look at most successful memoirs and they’ll have a theme that holds them together. Usually the title gives it away.

Sheila
How about when memory fails the memoir writer?

Joelle
I interviewed family; I visited the actual, physical sites of memory; I put photos of my family and myself on the wall above my desk. I listened to 70s music. And I let imagination work for me when all else failed– “I imagine that my mother must have thought…” etc. or, “I often picture it…” or “He must have…” It’s the wonderful option that we have with creative non-fiction.

Sheila
And what should a memoir writer do if someone objects to the author’s writing about him or her?

Joelle
That’s tough. Some of the people in my book never got a chance to approve or not. I changed their names. What happened was years ago…and I always made very sure to point the finger at myself in my book. There’s no revenge going on. In fact, I tried very hard to keep forgiveness in my book–which is how I authentically feel, so it wasn’t too difficult to be forgiving. In the end you have to do what you think is best, and live with the consequences. There are some things I left out of my book because I didn’t want to jeopardize a relationship (such as with my mother). And such things could have made the book spicier, more sensational, more powerful. So maybe I’m not a “true” writer or artist, but so be it. I wasn’t willing to lose my mother.

Sheila
How can memoir writers be sure they are writing an interesting story?

Joelle
I always say, consider not what you have of interest, but what interest do you have? The tension between the writer and the material–why he or she is compelled to write it–is what ultimately intrigues the reader. So what haunts you? Follow it; try to make sense of it. That process will always be interesting.