Jewish Women In America; Erica Jong, Author

This show was made possible by a grant from the Jewish Women's Foundation of New York. Welcome to Jewish Women in America, a television series that celebrates the contributions of Jewish Women to U.S. Society. I'm Blant Wheez and Cook, and my guest today is Erica Zhang, whose numerous novels, books of poetry and nonfiction, have consistently provided incisive commentary on the central issues to women's lives. Welcome, Erica.

Zhang, it's really a great thrill to meet you and to see you. You, the woman in fear of flying, who it's 30 years ago, gave us so much permission to have desire and lust. It still takes permission, doesn't it? It still takes permission, and here we are, and the grips of as you put it in one of your articles, all these fundamentalisms, you know, that once again are causing a war against women. And I know we could, I'm going to start with a quote from one of my favorite nonfiction books, I love your fiction books, and your nonfiction books, but one of my favorite books is your wonderful memoir, Fear of 50. Would you have this, well, you have a head note from our favorite poet, Muriel Rockheiser, to be a Jew in the 20th century, is to be offered a gift. And then you say, Erica Zhang, the older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family.

My mother's father declared himself an atheist in his communist youth, so he never belonged to a synagogue. But we wind up in Hebrew homes for the aged, and in cemeteries with Hebrew letters. Thus does our heritage claim us, even in America, our promised land. In my family, if you're still protesting that you're Unitarian, you're just not old enough. That's actually true of my family, and it still is true of my family, but you know Jews, most of the Jews in the world are secular. Most of the Jews in Israel are secular. This is the great irony. Most of the Jews in America are secular. Most of the Jews in Argentina are secular, and you can go on and on. So what is it that makes you Jewish? I've pondered that for years. I may even write a book about it, I'm considering it, but what makes you Jewish, I think, is a reverence for memory, a reverence for words. That words are more enduring than death. All of those things make it Jew.

You wonder why we have so many writers. We have so many writers because the essence of our being is to worship a scroll with words written on it. And even if we never go to synagogue, that idea that the scroll is the holy thing. Somehow sinks in, and it sinks in even to red diaper babies like me, who grew up with parents. My parents used to streak down commercial street in Provincetown in the 20s with no clothes on. I come from a good old bow in 1920s. I come from a good Bohemian family. I'm not the first rebel in my family. Everybody in my family. Your mother was a painter. My mother was a painter. My mother still alive. My father recently died. My father was a drummer. A barra bunchick as my grandparents called him, which is drummer in Russian. No, you're not going to marry a barra bunchick.

That's what they said to my mother. And I come from a family where there was a lot of Bohemian acting out long before I came on the scene. But they were passionately Jewish, though atheists. And they got more Jewish as they got older. And my grandfather, who believed that religion was the opiate of new masses. My grandfather, who was a noted portrait painter, his name was Samuel Mersky. He said, religion is the opiate of the masses, but on the other hand, when he was 98 years old, and ready to go, he was again speaking Hebrew and Yiddish. Really? And then you saved your aunt Katie. You have a wonderful chapter. Kitty, I'm sorry, in this spectacular fear of flying. I think it's a spectacular book. I love that book. And then you did an inventing memory. You mentioned memory is what we have. And that too is a kind of Jewish thing.

But that's a Jewish thing. Very much. Great. A reverence for the pastor. After the ancestors, a reverence for the words that preserve the ancestors, a reverence for memory, many people have ancestor worship. You might say that all religion is at its heart ancestor worship. But there's a particular love for memory among Jews. Right. Tell us about Kitty and saving. Essentially. Kitty never had children. She was married when she was young. She spent most of her adult life in a relationship with a woman. She was really a victim of the inability for gay people to marry. Because when she developed Alzheimer's, her partner, who was much younger, and not a very patient person, got really sick of her. And they had built up a life together. They had two homes, one in the Hamptons, one in New York, and Chelsea. And Kitty became difficult because she had a lot of memory loss.

And her life partner packed her off. I guess what I'm sort of searching for is, how do you errant a man, John, get that sense? I'm going to take this woman and find her a safe place. Where'd you get that kind of sense? She was my mother's only sister. And she and my mother didn't speak. And she and my mother were estranged. And partly they were estranged because they were too close in age, and their parents pitted them against each other. Many neurotic things. But partly they were estranged because my aunt lived her life as a gay woman, and my mother found that threatening. So when her relationship fell apart, and she was all alone, and she had never had kids, and even the child she helped to raise was distance from her. By her biological mother. Kitty turned to me. And I loved her.

I mean Kitty was the person who sent me Collette novels when I'd never heard of Collette. Kitty was the person who said to me, it doesn't matter whether you love a man or a woman as long as you love. Kitty was the person who opened my mind to things that I wouldn't have learned it only in my parents' house. And actually both my sisters feel this way about her. But my older sister was not in this country. She was living then in Beirut. And my younger sister, because she's the youngest, did help me with Kitty. But she felt disloyal to my mother because my mother didn't want us to see Kitty. So there was nobody else but me and my husband. And so we had her declared incompetent, which is a horrible process. We took over her care. We took over her money, which there wasn't very much left of. We sold her loft. And you got her into the Hebrew and we got her into the Hebrew home for the age of which is a marvelous facility.

A marvelous facility. And in fact, the funniest thing about my Aunt Kitty is that once she got into the Hebrew home for the age, her memory was so spotty that she forgot she was gay. And I would go up to visit her and find her sitting next to a man and touching his thigh. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter. Because she told us love that was mad. That mattered. It didn't matter. She was a really dear person. You're the author of 19 books. 22. 22. 22. I only have 19. 22. Your first book was a spectacular book of poetry. For 10 minutes. For fruits and vegetables. Which everybody that I knew everywhere was reading when it first came out. 71. 71. And that was followed by your spectacular fear of flying. There was another book of poetry.

Half two books of poetry. And then fear of flying in 73. And fear of flying really introduced the world to Erika Jean. 17 million copies. Well, you know, the amazing thing about fear of flying is, you know, let's admit it. We're both writers. Most people don't read. This is a worldwide phenomenon. And of those people who do read, most people don't read novels or poems. So the fact of a novel that sells, I think fear of flying has to date, sold about 20 million copies. It's like lightning striking 17 times. It's very rare. It almost never happens. And when it happens, it always happens for the wrong reason. Because people don't read novels. I believe there are people who read fear of flying who have never read another novel in their lives. There are also people like you who read fear of flying and read the poetry and know that I did other books after that. But very often I meet people. Often women my age who say, I love that book. Right.

And I know it's just come out. In a 30th anniversary edition. Did you add some words to it for the 30th? I wrote an afterward about who I was when I wrote fear of flying. And it's called Happy 30th Birthday Fear of Flying. And in it I talk about what it's like 30 years. It can't be 30 years since fear of flying was published. Either time is an illusion as I've always suspected. Or I've been sleeping through the decades like Rip Van Winkle. The girl who wrote this book is young enough to be my daughter. And then I talk about who I was when I wrote the book. Or as people always call it that book. That great book. That was a very important, really life-enhancing. And it still is. And I think at this moment when we're in the grip of fundamentalisms would you have referred to in one of your articles. We now know there's fundamentalisms everywhere.

And in all the major religions. You know, the ongoing war against women. The effort to get women out of the workplace. And once again, out of the canon. But Erica Jean is so much in the canon. I mean, you're required reading in most colleges. But how long will this last if we allow the fundamentalists our situation as American women is nowhere near as dire as women in other parts of the world? I mean, we suffer discrimination. We still make 72 cents on the dollar for every man, which hasn't changed in many decades. And we suffer many forms of discrimination. But the plight of women in Africa, the plight of women in the Middle East, women who die in childbirth were most pregnancies in this world are death sentence for women. And it has been made worse by the American government in cutting all the funds for women's health. For the reason that the base of our current president

is a right-wing fundamentalist base. And in order to pander to his base, he cuts women's health funds all over the world. And the U.S. just pulled out of the Beijing at the UN Commission on the status of women. The U.S. just pulled out of the 1985 Beijing protocols for women. Because we don't approve of birth control and health care for women. This administration does not approve it. I want to go back to you. OK. We go from fear of flying. I guess there's several questions to your newest book, which is truly incredible. And for those of us, you make several points in your articles and other interviews about how few women were taught at Barnard so that at Barnard you didn't know. You didn't learn. She was not part of the canon.

Muriel Rockheiser, Edna St. Vincent Malay, Eleanor Wiley, the great poets that H.D. I'm in love with, he'll do little. And now you've just given us Sappho's leap, which is a novel, but it's so much more than a novel. Your research is so extraordinary. Thank you. I love it. Thank you. Tell us how you got. Just give us a little journey. Why did I write Sappho's leap? Well, once again, I was trying desperately to write a novel about a woman in her 50s who isn't dead yet. And I was trying to write a novel about a character like myself who came from a Jewish family in New York and artistic Jewish family in New York and so on. And I got petrified in the middle of it. Petrified because it was so self revealing. And I remember thinking, how am I going to get out of this? I'm going to write another novel that's going to lay myself

there on the page. And I thought, no, I think I'll write the Sappho novel next. I've been thinking for a long time that I wanted to write a novel about Sappho because at some point in my 50s, I read Sappho again. And she struck me like dynamite. I had never understood her when I was in college when I was in graduate school. And suddenly I read these fragments and I thought, she's a modern woman. She's us, she's me. Who else could have written? I have a daughter like a gold flower. I would not take all of Lydia for her. Lydia being the most wealthy country on earth in Sappho's day. Who else could have written? I am green as grass in talking about desire. The things that Sappho said. I mean, she invented the vocabulary of arrows

and everybody who came after her imitated her. This is the amazing thing about Sappho. She created the vocabulary of love. If you listen to popular songs on the radio, driving back to your house in the Hamptons, you will hear metaphors that were first invented by Sappho. Always. So I began to understand her. Often, you know, books come to us at a time in our lives when suddenly we're able to understand them. And I got into it. I went over to the New York Society Library, my favorite library, and I started going through Sappho translations. I didn't know R.K. Greek. I had no R.K. Greek. I had never read Plato in Platonic Greek. Certainly, Sappho wrote in a language that was like 200 years after Homer. Very ancient language.

Most Greek scholars can't even read Sappho. And I began to read the different translations and I suddenly got her. That's wonderful. And what I got about her was she was a mother. She was a lover. She was happily and totally bisexual. She was, as many ancient Greeks were. She believed in desire. She believed in passion. She was a devotee of Aphrodite, the goddess of desire. And I realized that I identified tremendously with her. So I began reading about her. This was about seven years ago. And I wrote a cycle of poems called Talking to Aphrodite, which are in the back of the book. And then I put them aside. And I thought, I don't know how to proceed with this. And I went back to writing my contemporary novel, which now I've gotten back to again. And then there came a moment. And I can't remember when. When I thought, I got it.

But I continued to read about ancient Greece. And I began getting records of people reading in ancient Greek. And I thought, I'm going to go back to Barnard and study ancient Greek. And I was reading. And it was sort of sinking in. And then there came a moment when I thought, I know what the novel is. Sappho is standing on the cliff. She's about to jump off the cliff. Because she's had a love affair with this young fairy man who is beautiful as a cleft chin and brown curls. And he's the kind of man I used to fall for in Italy in my salad days. He's gorgeous. He has those little muscles that indent here. He looks like Michelangelo's David. He's just gorgeous. And supposedly, according to the myth that was made up of that, he threw her over and she killed herself in depression. You mean he dismissed her?

Not just threw her off the cliff. And his name was supposedly Fayon. And Sappho was in her fifties and Fayon was 22. And Sappho had a tard affair with Fayon. And then he dumped her. And she threw herself off a cliff. Now, I knew this couldn't possibly be true. The wisest woman in the ancient world, the inventor of the vocabulary of love poetry, would not have thrown herself off a cliff. For a child, a young man. She would not. She would have tumbled him. She would have taken him to bed. She would have had fun. But probably at the end of the story, he would have thrown himself off a cliff. So I knew it was wrong. I just knew it was wrong. That's great. So I thought Sappho is standing on the edge of the cliff. And she remembers her whole life. And she doesn't jump. But rather, I can't tell. Well, it's a wonderful ending. And then there's a postscript for the ending.

And that's even more wonderful. It's such a reconciliation story, which made me think of, I shouldn't tell, because it really is a suspend story. But just to quickly jump to your life, you have this wonderful daughter. And she's just become a mother. And that's the creepiest thing about writing. Yeah. When I was writing Fannie Hack about Jones, I invented this red-headed heroine with big breasts and blue eyes and all of that. And in the middle of the book, I gave birth to Molly. And Molly arrived with red hair and blue eyes. Writing Sappho's leap. I do think that when you're writing you're in touch with other states, other mental states where you can see the future, altered states. But when I was writing Sappho's leap, I invented for Sappho, a beautiful daughter with golden hair, and a grandson. At the time I was writing Sappho,

my daughter was not in a permanent relationship, was not thinking of getting married, and was in early 20s running around like people ought to in their early 20s. And there was no grandson in the picture. I invent for Sappho this adorable little grandson. And what do you know two years later? I have an adorable little grandson. Did I write him? Did I dream him? Did you create a... No, I don't think so. My grandson is only 12 weeks old. So... But it just... One reads this now. It's a great harmonic convergence. And I totally recommend this book, a book dedicated to love and adventure and women power at a time when we need love and adventure and women power. So, from fear of flying to fanny, knock about to Sappho's leap

through your books of basically memoir, nonfiction. What is your favorite book? Do you have a favorite book? Well, for a lot of years my favorite book was fanny, because I felt I had earned my chops as a novelist with fanny. I had figured out how to write a lot of different characters with different personalities, and I had learned how to tie up the loose ends. I don't feel that way anymore. I think, you know, my favorite book is the book I'm writing. And I'm writing for my sins. I'm writing Happily Married Woman, which is the fourth is a Dora book. Oh. And in this book, is a Dora becomes a grandmother, and in this book is a Dora loses her parents, and she reaches the age of 60, and with no diminution of passion. So, I'm terrified of writing this book. But you're writing.

What I'm writing. I mean, you know, you... It's really... I'm terrified, and I'm going to find some other historical novel to interrupt me. Okay. Because one of the things that's really important for those of us who are critically both acclaimed and attacked viciously, how important it is, and I tell my students all the time, just enjoy the process. And as Audrey Lorde used to say, survival is the best revenge. I think it's so important to keep writing and keep writing the deepest, most... From the deepest, most honest place, no matter what little epigones attack, and you have some wonderful comments on these, you know, shirky little epigones who attack you, which are terrific. But they always attack. They always attack. The joke of it is that I tend to get reviewed, you know, by people who've never published anything. Well, they're irrelevant. But it's being attacked by these little twerps. It's really amazing. You know, one of whom you name,

you know, prevented his wife from really having a career. But we have to keep writing. And right from that really... Well, there's so much bitterness towards women writers. It's truly... It's truly astonishing that it's still there. I mean, Sappho invents the vocabulary of erotic love. We have no lack of poets. Emily Dickinson is the mother of American poetry in the sense that Whitman is the father of American poetry. We have excelled at this craft for millennia. Not just for a few years, millennia. Right. And the idea, you know, who was it, you said, oh, the woman who... The woman who propels the pen such an intrusion on the rights of men, was it Afro-Ben or somebody like that? I don't know. But it's true that there is incredible criticism of women. And I always find, in my bad reviews,

an undercurrent of antisemitism. Interesting. You said earlier that you were thinking of writing an essay or a book on an antisemitism. An antisemitism. An antisemitism. And you recently went to Israel and fell in love with the desert, with the desert, and wrote a spectacular piece on the negative for traveling leisure, for traveling leisure. Do you want to say a word? We're almost... I was invited. I fell in love with Israel really, quite belatedly. I've never been there as a young person. And I went to the Jerusalem poetry festival and the Jerusalem Book Fair. Oh, when Yuhuda Amikai, who was a dear friend of mine, was alive, I guess that's seven years ago, eight years ago. And I fell in love with Israel. So I looked for every excuse to come back. And a friend of mine who teaches in Tel Aviv invited me or got me invited to Ben Gurion University in Beresheva. And I went there as a visiting teacher

of American Jewish American writing. And I lived for about 10 days in a hotel in Beresheva. And every afternoon after I was finished with my lectures, I would get a taxi to take me out into the desert and take me to the various tells or to Ben Gurion's kibbutts on one occasion or to the various archaeological sites in the desert. But as though you mean a hill. The hill. A tell is a hill. An archaeological mound actually. An archaeological mound. Yeah. And I found the desert so beautiful that I thought, this is a place I could live. Amas Oz, by the way, lives near Beresheva in the desert. And it's a very beguiling place. If folks want to read your articles, you have a website. The article about the negative. It's on your website. It's probably on www.aricajang.com. Because I can't believe it, and I'm sorry,

but we are out of time. Thank you very much. Eric is young for speaking with us today and for your bold female visions. I don't know, female women visions. And thank you for your work and your galvanizing commitments. And everybody should immediately go out and get Sappho's leap. And not to be out in paperback. It's soon to be out in paperback and the new fear of flying. And then there's fear of 50. And then there's inventing memory and scores of other books. Thank you so much. This is Blanche Weez and Cook with Jewish women in America. Thank you, Eric. Cheers. Hi.

I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna cry