Journey into speech - a writer between two worlds: an interview with Michelle Cliff - Black Women's Culture Issue - Interview

African American Review, Summer, 1994 by Opal Palmer Adisa

Among the subjects Jamaican born writer Michelle Cliff explores in her writings are ancestry, the impact of colonization on the Caribbean, the relationships among and interconnection of African people in the diaspora, racism, and the often erroneous way in which the history of black people is recoreded. In her latest novel, Free Enterprise (1993), Cliff attempts to rewrite the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant, the African American woman who supplied money with which John Brown bought arms for the raid at Harper's Ferry. Her other two novels, No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Abeng (1984), are semi-autobiographical and explore the life of Clare Savage, a fair-skinned girl raised between Jamaica and North America, who must reconcile her mixed heritage in a changing society. Other works by Cliff include Bodies of Water (1990), The Land of Look Behind (1985), and Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (1980).

The following text is based on two separate interviews: one done in person in Albany, California, in December 1989, and the other conducted over the telephone in September 1993.

Adisa: When did you find your voice, when did you decide that you wanted to be a writer?

Cliff: I always wanted to write. Actually there was a terrible incident. I don't know if I should tell you, but I will. When I was at Saint Andres,(1) I was keeping a diary. I had been very influenced by The Diary of Anne Frank, and as a result of seeing the movie and reading her diary, I got a diary of my own. I wasn't living with my mother and father at this time; I was living with my aunt in Kingston [Jamaica] and going to Saint Andrews. This aunt also had a house in Saint Ann, where we used to stay on the weekends. Anyway, my parents broke into my bedroom in Kingston when we were not at the house. They went into my room, broke open my drawer, took out and broke the lock on my diary, and read it. Then they arrived at the other house. My father and mother had my diary in their hands and sat down and read it out loud in front of me, my aunt, and everybody else. My sister was there. There were very intimate details; there were a lot of things about leaving school and not going to class and playing hookey, but there was also the experience of the first time I menstruated, and I remember just being shattered. My father read it, and my mother was in total collaboration. (Pause.) Anyway I remember just crying and being sad and whatnot. I spoke to my sister about it once, and she remembered, even though she was seven at the time. And she said, "Don't you remember screaming and saying, 'Don't I have any rights?'" (Pause.) That incident really shut me down as a writer. I had wanted to be a writer from a very early age; I always wanted to write. The subject I liked most in school was English, and I read an enormous amount as a kid. But that really shut me down until quite late.

Adisa: How late?

Cliff: Until the mid-seventies. The only thing I wrote after the diary was my dissertation. Then I wrote "Notes on Speechlessness." the reason I wrote "Speechlessness" was ... I guess it was all working inside of me for a while. I was involved with a group of women in New York who got together and discussed their works. We met once a month, and each person had to present something--and it was my turn. I was terrified, and I had a hell of a time just speaking. I was shy and tongued-tied a lot of the time. I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd write something and just read it, because that would be easier than speaking. So I wrote this thing about feeling speechless. I wrote that in 1977.

Adisa: So that is your first piece towards being a writer.

Cliff: That was the first piece, and that led me to "Obsolete Geography."(2) For a long time I hadn't thought about what it meant to be a Jamaican, even though I was going back there a lot. I was sort of creating myself but not really dealing with a lot of different things.

Adisa: You mentioned that growing up you read Anne Frank and Great Expectations, and that you loved literature. What else did you read?

Cliff: Everything! I loved Hemingway, and I loved F. Scott Fitzgerald. That was when I was quite young. I read a lot of poetry.

Adisa: What were you thinking as you read all of these works? How did they influence you?

Cliff: I think I used reading almost totally as an escape when I was young. I used to long for Saturday afternoons so I could go to the library and take out all these books, and then I would sit and read them all. I was very isolated. I was alone much of the time, and if it wasn't the library, then it was the movies. I was absolutely addicted. I still love movies, but, as a kid, they would lead me into a completely other world. I used to go to matinees, and I remember that when I would come out it would still be light, and I would feel totally disoriented.

Adisa: Your work is very detailed, vivid. What impact have the movies had on your writing?

Cliff: A lot. My writing is very visual. And I find movies coming into it a lot, using movies as an idea, and the effects of movies. Growing up in Jamaica movies were one of the only contacts with the outside world for many people.