LITEROTICA Erotica Writer Mary Anne Mohanraj Goes Mainstream with Bodies in Motion: Stories An Interview by Terry Hong Over the past eight years, Mary Ann Mohanraj has published 10 books, establishing herself as a master or should that be mistress? of erotica. With titles like Wet: More Aqua Erotica and covers not suitable for G-rated publications, Mohanraj is anything but shy when it comes to sexuality. I m something of a sexuality activist, she says. I believe strongly that we need to bring healthy sexuality out of the closet and into mainstream discussion which explains Mohanraj s recent move toward the so-called mainstream audience. What began as her doctoral dissertation yes, that s Dr. Mohanraj! debuted this midsummer as Bodies in Motion. Told through deftly interwoven short stories, Bodies is an engrossing tale of two Sri Lankan families and their American descendants. Her next book her first novel The Arrangement, takes three characters from Bodies, so the story continues. Too bad we impatient sort have to wait until next year to find out more. Born in Sri Lanka and brought up in a small Polish Catholic town in Connecticut, where she was the only South Asian in her school until her younger sisters came along, Mohanraj was for awhile fluent in Polish (she can still count to 100). She went to the tony Miss Porter s School, once considered the finishing school for fine young ladies. It isn t as much of a finishing school as it used to be; the emphasis is very much on academics these days, she says. She adds with ironic humor, My parents regret sending me there, though they didn t realize how much of an emphasis Porter s places on teaching its girls independent thought, which caused them some trouble later on. So how did erotica become your genre of choice? MAM: I would say, rather, that I focused on erotica for about five years, and then switched primarily to mainstream literature, though still with an interest in sexuality, in the way people s sexual choices influence their lives. I started in erotica somewhat by accident. I had read some erotic stories on the net, been unimpressed, and realized I could write better than that! I tried it, and found that I was deeply interested in the way character reveals itself around sexuality. I think most people are different in the bedroom, with a partner, than they are in the rest of their lives. There s often a lot of buried tension there, and I love working within that intimate and emotionally charged environment.
Also, given that some of the hardest decisions in my life, causing the most conflict, have been around whom I date, whom I might marry, sexuality has always been a clear locus of dramatic tension. I think that s true for most people, and especially for many young South Asian women. It makes for interesting stories. How do you deal with the why s a nice South Asian girl writing that - mentality? How has your family reacted? MAM: Any writer working with sexuality has to deal with society s hang-ups in that regard, and even more so in the Asian community. It s much more taboo to write about sex than it is to write about violence. It would be funny if it weren t so sad. I could write a story about a serial killer going on a homicidal spree, murdering a dozen people, and no one would say a word. I write a sweet little story about the first night of an arranged marriage, and I get hate mail. It s bizarre. My family and I had fierce arguments for years about my subject matter, and my parents still wish that I would write children s picture books instead. But I m 34 now, and I ve been doing this for more than a decade. They ve figured out that however much I love and respect them, which I do, they re not going to change my mind. You have to make your own choices in life, and decide what you think is important and worth fighting for. I think speaking openly and honestly about sexuality is incredibly important. Why the switch to mainstream? MAM: Writing erotica is like writing horror: it s a focus on a particular mood, a close examination of one aspect of human life. I spent a few years with that focus on sexuality, and then became interested in how sexuality interacts with race, class, culture. I pulled back from a close focus to a wider one. You lose some fine detail in that move, but you gain a wider perspective, a sense of how complex structures interact. When and how did your interest in writing develop? MAM: I was always a big reader, the kind of kid who spent recess sitting on the steps reading a book. You ll often see me walking down the street with an open book in my hands people always seem convinced that I m going to get into trouble, but I haven t bumped into anyone yet, and I always put the book down when I m crossing the street. I never thought I could be a writer; I had planned on a career as an English professor. But when I applied to seven literature PhD programs right out of college, and didn t get into any of them, I realized that I might need to rethink my career path. I had started writing stories by then, and in the next few years, I wrote more and more. I was posting them on the 2
net, getting nice e-mail from people telling me they liked my work, and that s what gave me the confidence to start trying to write seriously. I m assuming that The Arrangement will be your first mainstream novel? How different has writing a mainstream novel been, compared to the process of writing your previous works? MAM: Well, it s my first novel, and I think that s the main difference, actually. The experience of writing a novel has so far been completely different from that of writing short stories, and after 10 years of writing short stories, it s something of a shock. I m still figuring out how to do it. I can t hold it all in my head, the way I can with short stories, so writing the novel has been much more layered a process I write about the plot first, then I go back and do a draft working on characters, then I go back and do a draft working on scene and sensory detail and so on. Do you have a preference for what sort of writing you most enjoy? Novel? Short story? Poetry? Mainstream? Erotica? MAM: Nope. I love them all. In the last eight years with 10 published books, you ve been incredibly prolific. What plans do you have for future titles? Other genres you might want to discover, explore, try out? MAM: The novel, The Arrangement, is obviously the next book. After that, I hope to write a nonfiction book, a combination of memoir and travelogue, set primarily in Sri Lanka, where I just spent a month traveling. I ve drafted about 40 pages so far there s obviously a lot to go, but at this point, I know that I want to try to trace some of the similarities between arranged marriages and nationalism, the ways in which we can have an arbitrary connection to a person or place, which develops into a deep and enduring love. It s tentatively titled Arbitrary Passions. After that well, I do have a young adult fantasy novel about three chapters written, about a 16-year-old Sri Lankan American girl. We ll see if that comes next, or another novel that s been poking around in my head, about a woman who fought for the Tamil Tigers, and then ended up marrying in America, having children here. That one s going to require a lot of research to do it right, so it may get put off for a while. The problem right now is having too many ideas, and not enough time to write them! How do you go about deciding what you re going to write? MAM: What am I passionate about? What perplexes me? What do I end up having late night conversations about 3
with Kevin [Mohanraj s partner], with my friends? What do I see people I know struggling with in their own lives? These are some of the questions that lead to attempts at answers in my fiction. What s a typical writing day for you? And what might you consider a perfect writing day? MAM: When I m writing well, deep into a project, I ll leave the house around 9:00-ish, go to a café with wireless internet. I ll go online until 10, answering e-mail, reading journals, doing work for the two arts organizations I run, the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit [www.desilit.org]. At 10:00, I ll close the e-mail windows and open up the text file with my current book, and start writing and revising. I ll try to write for at least four hours sometimes I don t manage that, sometimes I go longer. Then I come home, do more e-mail and other work, including answering interview requests. I read, which counts as work for a writer (one of the best parts of the job). Most days, I work about a 12-hour day; some days, longer. I don t get weekends off. I don t think I ve taken an actual vacation in at least five years, but there are times when I ve gone months without getting any writing done, which generally just makes me feel cranky and ill. Just exactly what is speculative literature? MAM: Speculative literature is a catchall term that encompasses any nonrealistic literature: science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, fairy tales, ghost stories anything with an element of the fantastic. Most of human storytelling has been speculative fiction; the rise of realistic fiction has been a very recent development, and I think we re seeing a resurgent interest now in non-realistic, speculative, fiction. Some excellent speculative literature authors would include Salman Rushdie, Haruki Murakami, Gabríel García Marquéz, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Michael Chabon, Isabel Allende, Aimee Bender, George Saunders and Chitra Divakaruni. How do you think having mass access to the internet has changed writing? Your personal website, www.mamhanraj.com, is quite active MAM: The main difference for me is the immediate feedback I can get from readers, which I love. I don t think it s actually changed the kind of writing I do, or the quality of it, but I m sure it s affected my productivity. Getting responses from readers keeps me motivated, spurs me on to keep writing. 4
Books by Mary Anne Mohanraj The Arrangement (2006) Bodies in Motion: Stories (2005) Silence and the Word (2004) A Taste of Serendib: A Sri Lankan Cookbook (2003) The Best of Horizons: Year One (2003) Kathryn in the City: Create Your Own Erotic Fantasy (2003) The Classics Professor: Create Your Own Erotic Fantasy (2003) Wet: More Aqua Erotica (2002) Aqua Erotica (2000) Torn Shapes of Desire: Internet Erotica (1997) 5