By Christine Rice
The stories in Desiree Cooper’s lyrical debut collection, Know the Mother, are razor-edged, quick-footed, powerful. Cooper’s language cuts and stuns, lulls and disturbs. One story, “Ceiling,” weighing in at 154 words, whisked me through a young attorney’s life–right up until the moment when she finds herself sitting across the desk from a smug, pipe-smoking partner to ask for maternity leave. His response?
“If you wanted to have babies,” he said, smiling gently, “why did you go to law school?”
Cooper establishes Know the Mother’s rhythm and tone in the opening flash piece “The Witching Hour.” In it, she evokes the mother-fear many of us know intimately but are hard-pressed to communicate. It’s the fear that accompanies the profound responsibility of bringing another human into the world, of our ‘twinkling worry’ in the face of ‘fresh dangers.’ She writes:
Who comes to whisper our names and turn our blood to sludge? Where is the mercy for those of us who lie awake, weeping in the eternal hours before the crucifixion?
And while every story excavates the expansive terrain of being a woman–its pain, uncertainty, longing, physical and emotional baggage, heartbreak–many stories also explore the intersection of racism and sexism. Especially now, with our country’s attention finally focused on the bitter fruit of systematic racism, Cooper’s stories feel essential. The conversations they will evoke are not optional but required. Like the work of Hurston, Baldwin, Wright, Morrison, and others, Cooper’s characters absorb the repeated pummeling of racial injustice then rise against it–not only the best way they know how but magnificently.
Under Cooper’s unflinching gaze, the stories in Know The Mother will pin you down, make you squirm with recognition. She cracks open her characters’ chests (and ours) to expose what’s underneath. Whether or not you are aware of motherhood’s intricacies, or the scourge of racial injustice, these stories’ swift uppercuts will set you reeling into a newfound awareness.
Desiree Cooper comes to this debut collection with experience as a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and Detroit community activist. Cooper was a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow and is currently a Kimbilio Fellow. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010 and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets.
I was delighted to discuss Know the Mother–one of my favorite collections of short fiction ever–with Desiree.
Christine Rice: I want to begin by asking you about the short story “Home for the Holidays.” This story begins with a couple driving–their young children asleep in the back–from Detroit to Baltimore. The woman is exhausted from night-driving and we learn that she’s probably going to end the marriage after they ‘make nice’ for the relatives.
Just when I thought this was a story about a marriage’s last gasps, a truck begins tailing them and eventually, the truck’s occupants begin yelling racial slurs and trying to run the family off the road.
This is an incredibly chilling scene. Many years ago, I heard a radio essay about a very similar incident. I distinctly remember the terror of that moment and then feeling ashamed of my ignorance when I realized that this kind of incident wasn’t out of the ordinary.
I’m curious about the hair trigger for “Home for the Holidays.” Did that story emerge out of a particular experience or is it a composite story born from a number of like experiences?
Desiree Cooper: You’re actually the first person to ask me about that story. I love your experience of it—first thinking it was about a marriage on the rocks, and then it turns into a terrifying encounter with racism on the road. This is what is meant by “Driving While Black.” It’s not just the zealous and racially-motivated police enforcement that blacks have had to worry about—there are also different road rules for us broadly. Don’t drive desolate roads at night, watch out for vehicles adorned with Confederate flags, be super careful on St. Patrick’s Day, don’t engage with aggressive white males (especially on holidays, near college campuses or after sporting events). The situation in “Home for the Holidays” happens all the time to many people of color, and it’s happened to me SEVERAL times. I’ve even been egged as I walked down the street by white males yelling racial slurs from a passing truck.
I chose this situation as a way to lay bare how racism is experienced in intimate moments. While the couple is coping with internal conflict, the external force of racism puts even more pressure on the marriage. In that moment, the couple must pull together for protection. Nothing else matters. The story leaves you with a question: Will the outside threats keep them together or drive them apart?
CR: “Reporting for Duty” is one of the longer stories in this collection. In it, Sgt. Douglas Carter is driving his family from “the air-force base in San Antonio, Texas, to their new assignment in Tampa, Florida” and, among other incidents of racism along the way, after a long day of driving, Sgt. Douglas Carter is denied a room at a Holiday Inn. It’s 1959. There’s a moment, at the end, where this incredibly proud man explains to his son why they were driving away from the Holiday Inn instead of checking in, why they wouldn’t be swimming in the pool after their long journey.
You write:
They did give us a room, son,” said Douglas finally. “It was in the back by the staff’s closet. The clerk had just told another customer that there were plenty of vacancies, so I asked for a different room closer to the pool. They refused to give it to me, and I refused to take the trash they wanted to give me.
The phrasing–of both the second to last paragraph and the last paragraph of that story–is stunning. The timing. The images you choose. The father’s words. I’m just really curious about this story’s evolution.
This story and “In the Ginza” gave me the impression that you know about having a father/family member in the military. Is that true?
DC: My dad was in the air force. I’m a military brat who was born in Japan (where I spent nine of my first 14 years) and have lived all over the United States. As we traveled across the country in a car three times, there was no shortage of racist humiliation, and surprising kindness. I included “Reporting for Duty, 1959” to take a look at how racism affects men and women differently as mothers and fathers. It’s interesting to counterbalance that story against “Home for the Holidays” which takes place 50 years later, but describes another family encounter with racism on the road.
CR: As the title suggests, Know The Mother casts its gaze on motherhood. In each story, you manage to slice the experience into profound emotional segments: terror, uncertainty, self-questioning, vulnerability of love, strength.
I have never read a book that so beautifully explores the conflicting nature of motherhood. How did this collection come to be? Did you find yourself being drawn to the topic over a number of years? Decades?
DC: Unlike racism, which pretty much operates the same way over time, sexism evolves. As a little girl, you experience it one way, as you grow into womanhood, another. I thought I’d seen it all until I became a mother 27 years ago. Then sexism rained down with a vengeance. My own family relationships changed, my work life changed, my marriage changed, my body changed—all of which had profound implications for how I was viewed in the world. When I talked to other women over time, I realized that my story, while not discussed publicly, was a widely-held experience. Know the Mother is a conversation with the reader about how the mantle of motherhood has a profound impact upon personhood. It’s a collection that took me 20 years to write—not in small part because the role of mother was so demanding that it left very little room for my creative energy.
CR: You are a journalist, an editor, a community activist and a former attorney. The economy of language in Know the Mother is stunning. You are able to do, in just a few sentences, what it takes other writers chapters to accomplish. How does your experience in those other forms influence your fiction?
DC: I had to unlearn the damage done to my writing as a lawyer. It zapped my creative inclinations and forced my brain into limited, obtuse language. The purpose of legal writing is to show off and be inaccessible—both of which are death knells for creative writing. BUT, lawyering taught me how to assimilate volumes of information, digest it quickly, and boil it down to essential arguments. As a lawyer, there was never time for revision; the first draft was the last. Those were valuable tools that I carried with me as a creative writer.
The biggest influence upon my writing, however, was journalism. After being a columnist at a major daily paper for more than a decade and also producing commentaries for National Public Radio, I learned how to tell stories in compressed spaces. I had always dreamed of becoming a novelist, but when I finally had the bandwidth to try my hand at fiction, I discovered that I had been “ruined” by journalism. I couldn’t carry a narrative past a few pages. I got lost in the story or bored. I realized that my creative muscle had been built to write tightly. Thank goodness flash fiction was there for me. If it wasn’t, I’d have to invent it.
CR: You are a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. Can you talk about Cave Canem’s mission and your history with the organization?
DC: Caven Canem was founded 20 years ago by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. I think of it as a recovery program for black MFA graduates, creative writing professors and writers who struggle in isolation. Too often African Americans are told in workshops or academic settings that their work doesn’t make sense, isn’t realistic, or must be explained/justified until it’s no longer art. Cave Canem opened its arms to this massive, marginalized talent and said, “We will provide you a safe place to write.” The organization offers a week-long summer residency where fellows can attend for three summers and create, experiment and think among some of the brightest African American literary minds in the country. The result has been astounding. If you’ve heard of a black poet winning a major prize, it’s likely they have come through Cave Canem. And the truth is that over the past two decades, black poets HAVE been winning major prizes largely because Cave Canem has taken a crowbar to the American poetry cannon and broken it open for writers of color.
I was asked to join the founding board because of my legal expertise. At the time I had very little exposure to poetry—most particularly the work of black poets. All I knew is that I was glad to be in a place where I could breathe the air of black creative writers.
CR: I’m interested in the concept of literary citizenship – of being supportive of other writers and being openly inspired by them. In what ways has being involved with Cave Canem influenced you? How has Cave Canem supported you?
DC: I stayed on the board for a decade, attended each summer retreat, and sat in some of the workshops. It was a life-changing education for me. I learned so much about craft, about process, about language, and, most importantly, about the diverse, brilliant voices in the black community. Those weeks at Cave Canem were both inspiration and torture. I was so energized around the possibility that I, too, could become a writer. But I was inevitably disheartened when I returned home to an environment that was not supportive or conducive to my heart’s desire to become a writer. Without returning to Cave Canem each summer, I’m positive I would have let go of that dream years ago.
I might add that in 2012, I became a Kimbilio fellow. Kimbilio is modeled after Cave Canem, but it’s for black fiction writers. There, I have found a community that has been invaluable support for Know the Mother as I stepped out into the world as a fiction writer.
CR: The story “Ceiling” blew me away. It is about a half-page long and its power felt like a freight train running through my brain. In “Ceiling” as with many of the stories in this collection, you employ color to evoke emotion:
His tie was burqa blue and lemon yellow, a robin’s egg cracked open, yolk running. He leaned forward and knocked his pipe on the crystal ashtray, filling the room with the linger of fire. She was nothing more than a useless bride, crossed legs as brown as firewood ready to be doused, life going up in saffron flames.
Do colors evoke emotions for you? If so…why?
DC: This is something that studying poetry taught me. When you are writing in tight spaces, you have to employ different “tools” to evoke emotion, set a tone and help the reader enter a particular milieu. Color is one way to do that.
In “Ceiling,” I wanted to globalize a very particular experience of a privileged woman. She is educated and in a lofty space that very few women ever get to inhabit—a law firm. And yet she finds herself in a position of extreme vulnerability when she decides to have a child. The excerpt you quoted is where the story pivots from the law firm setting to women everywhere whose status as mothers or potential mothers puts them at risk. Burqa blue—Afghanistan. Saffron flames—India. Color is used as in invocation, to bring those women into that room.
CR: “Ceiling” seems chillingly realistic. Can you tell me about the evolution of this story?
DC: Several of the stories in the collection explore what happens when women bring their uteri to work. I practiced law for five years, and many of my friends are professional women in male-dominated work environments. We hear about sexual discrimination at work all of the time, but what does that feel like? There is a chilling effect upon femininity that goes far beyond the technicalities of the law. For example, in “Cartoon Blue,” a woman experiences a miscarriage at work, but feels compelled to continue on as if nothing is happening. (This is another story, by the way, where color is used to create a starkness against which this traumatic event is happening.) “Ceiling” explores what it feels like to have to beg for maternity leave. “Queen of the Nile” explores how a woman tries to muddy her racial identity to enjoy aspects of white privilege at work.
CR: There’s this opinion piece “Going Long. Going Short” by Grant Faulkner in the New York Times in which, at one point, he discusses his frustration with the form’s concise nature.
A few years ago, however, a friend of mine, Paul Strohm, wrote a memoir consisting of 100 100-word stories. He modeled the form after a fixed-lens camera, with the idea that an arbitrary limit inspired compositional creativity. I tried my hand at writing such tiny stories because I like to experiment, but I quickly became exasperated by my early attempts. I couldn’t come anywhere close to the 100-word mark. At best, I could chisel a story down to 150 words, but I was frustrated by the gobs of material I left out.
Can you talk about your experience with the shorter short story form? Why it draws you?
DC: I’m not exactly drawn to the shorter short form; it’s honestly all I know how to do!!! When I grow up, maybe I’ll become a novelist. But for now, this form is perfect for me and many readers. People just don’t have a lot of time. I fall asleep after reading three pages in a book, no matter how wonderful it is. I’m just generally exhausted. Flash fiction can be read on the bus, right before falling asleep, on the toilet, on your mobile device. I love how it matches the way many people live nowadays.
But just because it’s short doesn’t mean it’s not challenging to read. I think flash assumes that the reader already knows the essential story. All the writer has to do is put the reader in the middle of the action and let the reader take it from there. In that way, flash is a wonderful, evocative tool for dialogue.
CR: Other discussions about flash fiction suggest that there is an inherent ‘ambiguity’ in the form but, to me, the stories in Know the Mother never seemed ambiguous. Every ending left me with a definite, hard-won emotion. I realize that, in writing, for every ‘rule’ there are a million ways to break the rule…but I’m curious about your thoughts about ambiguity in shorter fiction.
DC: I’m not a fan of ambiguity. I suppose this comes out of my journalism background. How do you connect with people if they don’t know what you’re talking about? On the other hand, I try not to be patronizing or too explanatory. There are times when I want to challenge a reader to meet me where I am rather than vice versa. But more often, I want to evoke something in the reader while also allowing them to bring their own story to the table. It’s a fine tension.
When I do readings, I invite questions about my intention as the writer, but I also love to hear from the audience how the story “landed.” I gain incredible insight from this give and take.
CR: Flannery O’Connor wrote:
A story is a complete dramatic action – and in good stories, the characters are shown through the action and the action is controlled through the characters, and the result of this is meaning that derives from the whole presented experience.
When it comes right down to it, the rules for chapters, short stories, flash fiction are really all the same. It’s simply in the approach. But, to me, it is more difficult to successfully write a ‘complete dramatic action’ in the shorter format. Can you discuss why the shorter form fit Know the Mother so perfectly?
DC: The shorter form fit because there’s so much to say about the gender, race and the role of motherhood. It’s so broad, a book about it would be a million pages. I think of the stories in Know the Mother as a collection of examples or demonstrations of the different aspects of sexism as they play out in intimate settings. It’s like a deck of cards that each illuminate an aspect of the motherhood experience.
CR: “The Disappearing Girl” is incredible. And “Mourning Chair.” I just had to say that.
DC: Aw, thanks. Both are stories where a mother realizes she cannot control her daughter’s life journey. What do we tell our daughters about what we have learned as women? How much do we spare them, and how much do they have to experience themselves?
CR: In an essay in MUTHA Magazine, you write that, after the birth of your first grandchild, “I’m right back at that heart-stopping, stressful place I was when raising my own children.”
And later you write:
Here’s what I suspect has happened: I’m old enough now not to let my commitment to Jax (or my aging parents or more grandchildren) diminish the commitment I have finally made to my own dreams of writing fiction. This time, Jax and the creative spirit within me will grow up together.
The entire essay made me feel less alone but that last line really struck me. In Know the Mother, you really access feelings I remember having when my kids were young. Do you think that the fact that you help care for your grandson has actually kept those memories and those emotions fresh?
DC: I would have never forgotten the struggle of motherhood because it has never ended. Even if I didn’t have grandchildren, my parents now need caretaking. There has hardly been a phase of my life where there wasn’t a tension between my desires for self-actualization and the pull of family needs. Most of Know the Mother was written long before I had a grandchild. And the title story—about a daughter sitting at her mother’s bedside realizing she doesn’t really know her mother—was one of the first stories I wrote two decades ago. At the time, my mother wasn’t ill. But, even back then, the constraints and demands that are put on women as mothers, wives and daughters felt inevitable. I could easily imagine that there would come a day when my parents would also become my responsibility.
The struggle for women between who they really are and who they need to be for others is constant.
Watch the TRAILER and buy Know the Mother from Wayne State University Press.
Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and Detroit community activist whose fiction dives unflinchingly into the intersection of racism and sexism. A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Cooper uses the compressed medium of flash fiction, to reveal what it means to be human. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010 and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Her first collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2016. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She is currently a Kimbilio Fellow, a national residency for African American fiction writers. She lives in metro Detroit.
Christine Maul Rice’s award-winning novel, Swarm Theory, was called “a gripping work of Midwest Gothic” by Michigan Public Radio and earned an Independent Publisher Book Award, a National Indie Excellence Award, a Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award (finalist), and was included in PANK’s Best Books of 2016 and Powell’s Books Midyear Roundup: The Best Books of 2016 So Far. In 2019, Christine was included in New City’s Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago and named One of 30 Writers to Watch by Chicago’s Guild Complex. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, 2020: The Year of the Asterisk*, Make Literary Magazine, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Roanoke Review, The Literary Review, among others. Christine is the founder and editor of the literary nonprofit Hypertext Magazine & Studio and is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University.