Writing With Your Breath

By Evan Youngs






A Q&A WITH GAYLE BRANDEIS



In her essay collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss , Gayle Brandeis experiments with the structure of prose to explore the complexities of womanhood, motherhood, and authorhood. Her writing ranges from the deaths of her parents to the use of breath as a symbol. I had the pleasure of asking Brandeis what inspired this collection and what impact she wants to leave with it.



Evan Youngs: Whether the subject is motherhood or the use of breath as a metaphor, in Drawing Breath you place yourself in conversation with other writers. Where do you see yourself in the writing world?



Gayle Brandeis: What a fun question, one I’m not sure how to answer. I think I see myself as a drop of water in a rushing river—part of something much bigger than I am (and happy to be so.) I have a lot of writing friends and students who I am in literal conversation with, so I can picture myself in those specific communities, again, as part of a thriving ecosystem, but of course I’m also in conversation with everything I’ve read, everyone I’ve been inspired by. I’m just a tiny molecule in a vast literary sphere, and am grateful to be that, grateful to have built my life around words. It always surprises me when people I don’t know have read my work—when we were about to move cross country and I was talking to someone from a big moving company I had found online to get a quote, the guy said “Are you Gayle Brandeis, the writer?” and it was shocking to me that he knew who I was (apparently his girlfriend was a fan!). So I guess I may stand out as bigger than a molecule to some people on occasion, but I’m fine with being a tiny part of a huge conversation that stretches through time.



EY: You structure many of your essays in very experimental ways, such as separating parts of a piece with dictionary definitions for “press” and “pool,” or formatting the essay into the shape of a waveform to represent breath. What inspired you to try these unique styles of structure?



GB: I love finding ways of weaving together form and content so that each one can amplify the other. Definitions of words are so rich and juicy to me, so word etymology often inspires me in one form or another (and the words “press” and “pool” are both so evocative). Sometimes it takes a while to find the right form for a piece. I tried to write “Room 205” in different ways, but it didn’t come together for me until I realized there was a formal constraint written right into the title. I decided to write the story of the four Room 205s my dad lived in during the last years of his life by writing it in 205-word chunks. Once I made that decision, the piece sparked to life. I knew early on that “Rib/Cage” was going to look a bit like ribs on the page—it just felt right. I can’t take the credit for the wave shape of “Drawing Breath.” I had divided the essay into “Inhales” and “Exhales” to mirror breath, and then the brilliant designer Jenny Kimura thought we could make it look even more like breath on the page by having the text expand and contract. I loved that idea—it takes the form to the next level!



EY: Womanhood is a guiding theme of this collection. “We Too” is essentially a manifesto for women writing in the collective first-person. What do you think we can achieve by writing as a “We”?






GB: I think that it’s good to remember that even though our individuality is precious and important and needs to be honored and protected, we are also connected to other humans and animals and plants on this planet, and there’s beauty and meaning and power in that interconnectivity. I think recognizing our connection can be especially powerful for women, whose voices have been historically silenced and denigrated. When women write as “we,” we can raise our voices together in a way that can’t be ignored. There can definitely be power in numbers, and sometimes that’s what we need to make change—a chorus of women speaking out and demanding equity and justice (and of course white women like me have been heard more than BIPOC women, so when BIPOC women speak in chorus, it can be all the more culturally transformative).



EY: In “Self Interview,” you continuously answer the same question—”How did writing your memoir change you?”—in different ways. At the risk of repeating the cliche, I’ll bite the bullet and ask, how did writing this memoir change you?



GB: I would say the biggest, most concrete way this book changed me was it made me see how much I longed to return to the Chicago area, where I had grown up. I hadn’t realized how much I had written about Lake Michigan over the years, but as I compiled the book, Lake Michigan kept showing up, and I realized how much I missed it. I’d been on the West Coast since 1986 but moved back to the Chicago area last year. I’m not sure that would have happened if I hadn’t put this book together.



I’d also say that compiling these essays into a book allowed me to understand the trajectory of my life more clearly and helped me see that even though I’ve changed over the years, my core obsessions and devotions have been remarkably steadfast; they’ve coursed through my subconscious like an underground river. So perhaps how this book has changed me is by helping me see how much I haven’t changed at the very center, and how much my writing has allowed me to give voice to that truest, most central, self. I’m excited to see what will emerge from that place next!



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Gayle Brandeis is the author of most recently the essay collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss . She teaches in the low residency MFA programs at University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Antioch University.



Evan Youngs is an undergraduate at SUNY Oswego, where they are studying journalism and creative writing. Their work has appeared in Rain Taxi and the Great Lake Review .