'Stay Brave' with Ananda Lima
‘Stay Brave’ is an interview series by woman-identifying creatives for woman-identifying creatives to inspire bravery in the creative life. [Created and curated by Leah Umansky]
How do you interpret the phrase, "Stay Brave?"
I choose to interpret it as being open, kind to myself and others, exploring spaces and ideas that might be hard or that I might not fully understand at first, respecting my work and giving it a chance to be seen. // I feel like words like “brave,” and “courage,” (as well as others like “safety”) can sometimes be tricky. They are sometimes used in weird ways out there (e.g., be associated with some not so great things, say putting too much weight on personal responsibility, fostering positive feelings towards war, hyper surveillance, etc.). These associations gets all tangled up with the positive side of these words. So I choose to interpret it in a positive way, but remember that sometimes staying brave might not solve things and might not be enough for many people out there that don’t have the minimal resources they need, and that sometimes fear is justified.
As a woman-identifying writer, what are the ways that you “stay brave” in your life?
Being a woman or a part of any minoritized group often means having to navigate a lot of things that feel contradictory, and trying to find your own nuance and balance. As an example, from time to time, I hear the story about magazine editors who said that when they send a positive personalized rejection, women tend to take a long time to send another submission, whereas men tend to send something straight away. As women, many of us are socialized to be less confident in our ability and readiness. But still, humility, caution, being able to look at things you still have to work on (qualitles implicitly associated with women here), can be great qualities. I think we can look at this anecdote without dismissing the hypothetical woman. We can admire her consideration and respect for others and her work, rather than just saying, “she should be more like the guy!” Maybe the hypothetical man should be more like the hypothetical woman here too. It depends. But it is also still true that we should try to submit straight away in that scenario, if we can. // In my case, I think staying brave would be a matter of acknowledging and even cherishing what might be behind any hesitancy and modulating it. Being kind to myself and my work and reminding myself that my work deserves to be read, to be considered. So I don’t think I should (nor do I personally want to) force myself to emulate the image of the boldest, most brazen (stereotypically male) submitter out there. But I do want to make sure that I send my work out. // The confidence point is a good one to think about because I think it is sometimes used as a way to justify disparities. The anecdote of the positive rejection might be followed with “and this is why we publish so few women.” It can be used to blame women or marginalized groups for factors that are much larger and more systemic than a personal crisis of confidence. I think it is good to keep in mind that there might be so much more than confidence behind how things work, and it is important to not blame ourselves. All while still staying brave and sending our work out.
Who is someone in your life who models “staying brave” for you?
I have met many brave and amazing people in my life and could talk about so many people. But what comes to mind now is my son (who is right next to me :-)). He is brave to be kind and gentle to himself and others, to be himself, and to try things where he can fail.
What writers, artists, and/or musicians do you look to to foster a sense of “bravery?”
Again, so many, but let me pick some that come to mind right now: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Emily Marie Passos Duffy, Allison Albino are brave to delve into difficult emotional space with so much intelligence, honesty and sensibility. Their bravery allows them to get at so much insight and beauty in their work.
What’s a piece of advice you would pass on to your younger self about “staying brave?” What’s something you know now, that you didn’t know in the past?
Keep working for the work and the process. Continue to be open to learn, but be a little less accepting of criticism and advice that might come from people who are either not your readers or might be dealing with their own things that have nothing to do with you. If you love something you did, your opinion is valid like anyone else’s.
Can you remember a time in your life where you realized your own bravery? How did you use it to propel you forward?
I think I was so brave when I was young. I went to live in Australia, I came to live here, I applied for things, I applied again after I got rejected. It has given me so much experience, and it changed the course of my life many times over. I have been very adventurous, and I would be somewhere else entirely had I not been. But even though I do believe I was brave, it was easier for me to be brave knowing that if I really messed up big time, I had a support network that could rescue me. I didn’t need the rescue, but I knew it was there. So part of it is my own bravery, part of it is something else. I feel as this is often how things are.
What do you do when you aren’t feeling brave? What inspires you or motivates you?
I am often very brave, excited and enthusiastic about things when the deadline is far away in the future, but I can get quite nervous (or panicky) when the deadline is close. Writing on deadline can be terrifying to me. It is such a different thing from writing without a deadline. I navigate it by putting into practice something I tell my son: be as kind and gentle to yourself as you would be with other people. I don’t dismiss my fears, but remind myself of all the other times where things worked out, and remind myself that I am doing my best, and then talk myself through sitting and writing even when I am afraid I am not going to have what I need. Once I get myself to sit and write for a bit, things are so much better. I just use a lot of patience and reassurance in getting myself to write through the initial fear. A lot of being brave is about patience and reassurance to me.
In what ways would you like to be more brave in your creative life?
I would like to become a little braver in giving myself time off. Like so many of us, I have so many things I need to do and so many things I want to do. The must-dos are hard because you have to do then, but the wants are even harder because I feel like I should be filling any time off with them. It is hard to be brave and do nothing sometimes, especially to do nothing without thinking of what you want or have to do. Our time is limited. But I think it is important to do it when we can.
What is your proudest moment of bravery?
I’m not sure! That one is hard. I celebrate a lot of what I have done and things I have been lucky with. But it is hard to think of one moment.
What are you currently working on?
I am working on edits for my fiction debut, my story collection CRAFT, which will be out with Tor next year. I am so very excited about this book. It is weird and so true to what I wanted to write, and I have so much love for it. Since we are talking about bravery, I feel so happy that I stayed brave and let these stories be what they wanted to be, and trust they would find their way into the world one day. And now I feel like they are in such wonderful hands. I am so lucky to be working with my brilliant editor who loves and understands the book.
Thank you to Ananda Lima.
Ananda Lima is the author of Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Hudson Prize, and Craft (forthcoming, Tor Books/ Macmillan). Her work has appeared in four chapbooks, as well as The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The Common, Witness, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers, for her fiction. She has served as staff at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.
Leah Umansky is the author of three books of poems, most recently OF TYRANT, forthcoming with The Word Works in 2024. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her work has been widely published in such places as The New York Times, POETRY, American Poetry Review. The Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Guesthouse, and Pleiades.