Interview: Debra Ginsberg

Debra Ginsberg will read from About My Sisters and sign copies of her book at Warwick's, 7812 Girard Avenue, La Jolla, at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 4, 2004.

Debra Ginsberg: Daughter, Sister, Mom— Writer Interview by Sue Greenberg copyright 2004 Sue Greenberg All Rights Reserved Visit Debra Ginsberg's website Email Debra Ginsberg

In the late summer of 2000, San Diego author Debra Ginsberg generated local and national book buzz with the publication of Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress. Her nimble coming-of-age memoir served up ironic observations from a single mom who relies on her close-knit family as she writes, waits tables, and tolerates bad customer behavior.

The recipe worked, garnering enthusiastic reader response and critical reviews. This, in turn, translated into speaking engagements, radio gigs, and television appearances (an agent and a book deal were already in place).

Ginsberg lives with sister Maya and son Blaze in Del Mar; her parents are less than 15 minutes away, as are her three other siblings, Bo, Lavander, and Déja. It's this family, constellating around her, that's helped produce the third in her series on the writing life and the folks who make it possible—by source or support.

On a warm Sunday in January, I brought bagels to Ginsberg's home to talk about her latest book, About My Sisters, due out from HarperCollins this month. Its cover shot bears the heads of four Ginsberg girls, with Debra and Maya in partial profile.

Ginsberg's 16-year-old son Blaze greets me at the door with precocious formality, using my first and last name. He has grown two feet since I saw him last; he's even taller than he looks on the cover of Debra's second book, Raising Blaze, a wrenching account of her struggle to raise an unusual son on her own terms.

As I remove my shoes to preserve the new carpet, Blaze takes the bagels from my hand and digs deep for the one variety I didn't bring. Standing by in the kitchen, Maya lends a wry counterbalance to the scene, as she does in all of Debra's books. A violinist with the North Coast Symphonic Orchestra, Maya also teaches privately and at a local high school.

Though Deb's a tea drinker, as evidenced by the colorful vintage service in her dining room, we settle on coffee for the bagels; Maya condiments the brunch with sliced tomatoes and capers. (This detail will not surprise anyone once they've read the chapter on Maya's meals.) Before departing for his room, Blaze tells me how nice it is to see me; once again, he employs both my names.

It's unusual for families to be as close as yours. You and your siblings all live less than five miles from your parents.

Debra: It's my parents' doing; that's the way they set it up from the beginning. It's their foundation. And they had a lot of kids.

Is your family ever criticized for their closeness?

Debra: Every member of my family has been criticized -- by boyfriends and girlfriends or other people -- that our family is stifling, that the closeness is no good. People assume you must be dysfunctional in some way if you spend that much time together as a family...

It is a tough room...

Debra: The people who come in to our family, the outsider mates -- people who want to be part of the group or just happen to be there -- the ones that work, work. And it can work. Everyone likes the man I'm seeing now, and he likes everyone. Maybe it's because he comes from a family with a similar sensibility.

Maya, you are all over this book.

Debra: She hasn't read it.

Maya: You keep saying that, and it isn't true. There's only three chapters that I haven't read. To be honest, I don't think it sounds like me. Debra's boyfriend thinks it sounds exactly like me. I think it's missing my edge.

Oh, no. It's there.

Debra: See? The edge is there!

Sisters don't often choose to live together. It seems to work for you two. When you invoke the sister spinsters from old Italian movies -- it's so touching, yet it isn't sentimental...

Maya: Neither are we.

Debra: That chapter ['Misters and Sisters'] is one of my favorites. The old Italian spinsters in the black dresses, I really do think of us like that sometimes. As far as living together, a lot of sisters tend to come back to it later in life, after their husbands have died....

Or when they've given up on what you call 'spectacularly bad relationships.'

Debra: Right. And some people have said to me, 'You know, I could never live with my sister the way that you do.' Well, I couldn't live with either of my other sisters. It's not that I don't like them; it's that Maya and I have a unique sister relationship within a unique sister relationship, if that makes sense...

What about your other two sisters, Lavander and Déja? How did they feel about the prospect of this book?

Debra: First I told them my idea and asked them what they thought. If any of them had had serious objections, I wouldn't have done it. Then when I was contracted to write it, I asked them what, if anything, were the topics they considered off limits, and they told me. And I didn't write about those things. Which isn't to say that they don't feel exposed by it... Lavander feels the most exposed because she has the least experience with being the focus of a memoir. Maya's been on the road with me before; she was a part of both of the other books-- not to say that Lavander hasn't, but Maya's performed in front of an audience and Déja's an actress, so they're used to being out there. Lavander's in sales; she has a specific business persona, but it's not the same...

Maya: People came up to me after the reading [for Waiting], and they talked to me as if they knew me, and it's a very weird thing.

Do you feel that people know you and your family because of your books?

Debra: They know one aspect as told by me. With Raising Blaze, parents were coming into my father's school [Mel Ginbserg and son Bo run a baseball school in Serra Mesa] saying, 'Oh, I read your daughter's book, it's so wonderful.' He got a lot of play off his portrayal in there.

(The phone rings. Maya leaves the table to take the call.)

Debra: It was torture to write this book. The structure was impossible. It took months and months to come up with it. I was writing sort of blind. Second, it was difficult to be writing about the present while the present was happening -- trying to understand the present and my relationships with my sisters, as they were going on, while filtering them through the past and re-examining the past. Then, on top of that, trying to be fair.

(Maya returns to the table with the phone against her chest.)

Maya: 'Please go to the spa with Mommy today, on me,' says Lavander.

Debra: I can't believe it. She asked you.

Maya: You have to drive her there. Otherwise she'd have asked you. (Debra doesn't drive. It's in Chapter 10) Lavander made a plan with Mommy, and now she can't go because a client hasn't shown up.

Debra: You know, I could really use an hour and a half massage.

Maya: If you could talk mommy into driving, you can take it. Not that I don't need a massage...

Debra: (facetiously) Oh, I don't need to go to the spa. I'd rather work on World War I....

What's World War I?

Maya: It was that big war about a hundred years ago...

Debra: Blaze has two school projects to work on today. One is All Quiet on the Western Front, and in history he's doing World War I. Today's task is a paper on a famous battle.

Blaze reenters the room when he overhears his name. I ask him how it felt to be the subject of a book. It felt great, he says. Can I have another bagel?

Debra: It got him some action. One girl just loved the book. She was living with her mother and her grandmother, who told me that this little girl learned a lot about herself from reading Raising Blaze. Blaze started at a new school, and I went to the first open house, and all his teachers had read the book. So that was great. One of the teachers said, 'I wish every parent could write a book about their kid. It's like an owners' manual.' A lot of the kids had read it -- the kids themselves, not just the parents. Every kid at that school, for whatever reason, couldn't make it in the public school system.

And now there's a book out there that reflects their world.

Debra: Well, we were hoping that it would have been a bigger book, but what I'm happy about is that it's finding its way to the people who can benefit from it, who can use it; it's being taught in a number of universities.

How long have you made your living as a working writer?

Debra: Only since 2000. I quit the restaurant in 1999. I was working at a public school until Waiting came out [in August 2000]. I didn't go back in the fall. I went on the road with the book that summer. I've only subsisted on my writing for three and a half years.

What about other writing?

Debra: For part of the time while I was writing Waiting I had the job at the restaurant and the job at the school and I was freelance editing. After Waiting I did an adult education workshop.

How did Raising Blaze come about?

Debra: I was going through a difficult time with Blaze when he started junior high. I was struggling with money, and I didn't have a book in the works. HarperCollins had just turned down Raising Blaze again -- I'd submitted a manuscript as an option book pretty soon after Waiting.

An option book?

Debra: When a publisher buys a book, they have the option to look at the next work. They have 30 days to make a decision. Harper rejected Raising Blaze before Waiting. Then we sold Waiting. Then Waiting was doing well, so I submitted Raising Blaze as an option book, and they said 'No good.'

And by 'doing well' you mean...

Debra: Waiting sold 11,000 copies the first month it was out. Anyway, it was December -- a few months before I pulled Blaze out of school. I'd been speaking to the San Diego Reader, a local weekly, about doing a cover story. I told them all I had was what was going on with my child. It was suggested that I write about that. The Reader urging me to do this really helped. It was money that I needed. What it forced me to do was write it soon. I had three weeks to put all the stuff I'd already written about in Raising Blaze together and organize it for a piece in the Reader. That cover story told me, 'This is really the book I want to write.' I called Marjorie Braman, my new editor. She hadn't seen Raising Blaze, and I told her, 'Look, I'm going to submit this to you. It just ran as a cover story in the local San Diego weekly. I just want you to take a look at it with an open mind.' And she loved it.

So how do you account for such serendipity?

Debra: People think that just because you're an artist, it should be magical or easier; the truth is, it's a job just like anything else. Ninety percent of writing is just showing up, right? But I will say that I had some lucky stars. The Reader was one. My editor was another. But without those two -- and if my editor hadn't fallen love with the character of Blaze and the idea of Blaze -- it wouldn't have happened. Harper had turned it down twice already. It was because Marjorie wanted to buy it that she pushed it through.

You had other local support, too?

Debra: Yes, I did. The San Diego Union-Tribune has helped me too. [Books

editor] Arthur Salm has been very good to me. I've been writing for the Union-Tribune for years; I review for them. And Arthur doesn't show favoritism to me, either. He wouldn't tell me if he was reviewing my books, even if it was a cover review. He did not review Waiting; what he did was ask one of the staff writers from the lifestyle section if they'd be interested in doing a story on me. And that was great. The story ran right as Waiting was coming out.

How were the other local reviews for Raising Blaze?

Debra: The only bad review was from San Diego Magazine. But that didn't stop them from awarding me 'Best Nonfiction Book of 2000' for Waiting. Raising Blaze got a terrific review in the Union-Tribune by Jane Clifford. She really liked it, and she really got it. The North County Times wanted to interview Blaze also, but I said no; they said without both of us they wouldn't do it. I had discussed this with HarperCollins. 'If the book blows up,' I remember my publicist saying, 'is Blaze going to come with you, is he going to be on?' I said no. There's a line, and that's it. Blaze didn't even come to the signing. His picture is on the cover, but you can't really identify him. It's a lot about him and it's his name, but I don't want the visual attached to the copy. And it worked out like I wanted it to. The fans and the people who write to me, they want to know how he'd doing, but they automatically overlay their own kids on it, and that's what I wanted.

What did you make of the bad review in San Diego Magazine?

Debra: It was the only negative review Raising Blaze got anywhere. Publisher's Weekly loved it; Library Journal gave it a starred review. The New Yorker did a capsule review that was positive. [San Diego Magazine] said I was whiny, complaining; 'It's a mother's job to be there,' the reviewer wrote. 'We've heard all this before...' You know, get over it, basically. It felt extremely personal; I didn't feel it was objective.

You must have expected that some people might take exception to your stance.

Debra: People did have strong reactions to Raising Blaze; they felt strongly about what I'd done about schooling and medication, and that's fine. But this review was very personal and really weird. Waiting got one bad review from the Denver Post -- that was another personal attack.

In About My Sisters, you don't spare the tough stuff. When Déja gets overwhelmed hosting Christmas, locks herself in the bedroom, and asks you all to leave. When Lavander shuts you out of a personal crisis and you get mad and hurt and tell her so. It's the stuff the rest of us go through...

Debra: But don't admit...

Maya: Or don't write about in a book.

Debra: Lavander will call you on stuff; that's her style. Maya and I will get into conflict, but usually when it happens, we'll retreat. We don't hash it out. But Lavander will talk about it until it's resolved. I love her for that.

What's your hope for About My Sisters?

Debra: Like the other two books, I hope this will be one that readers can find themselves in. I hope, too, that it's a good read, but being able to relate to the material on a personal level contributes a great deal to the enjoyment of a book. I hope this one will be successful in that sense. I went to the American Library Association Midwinter conference, and what I heard was this: everybody has sisters somewhere. 'I have only one sister...I'm the oldest of four, I have three sisters, I have two... I don't have any sisters, but I'm giving this to my sister-in-law. I'm giving it my wife...' There's a commonality there; it's one of the most mysterious, deepest relationships, sisters -- you know, that woman bond. Women are complicated. And sisters are complicated.

Maya: And yet we still cannot get domestic-partnership benefits...

And the response so far?

Debra: They're the best reviews I've gotten yet. Many of the prepublication reviews said that it's candid and I don't shy away from issues, but it's 'very loving.' Everyone says I'm loving.

Maya: And here she didn't even realize she was being so loving.

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