writer of all sorts of things
Read an interview with J.L. Powers at Through the Tollbooth!
Q: What about this novel makes you most proud?
There is absolutely nothing on the market like it! It is young adult magical realism, set in a poverty-stricken township of South Africa. It is a love story but it also deals with the clash between science and traditional medicine in Africa, and it highlights and focuses on the HIV-AIDS epidemic in the part of the world with the highest rate of HIV infections—the heart of the epidemic.
I feed my dogs first thing each morning, otherwise, life would be miserable for all of us. Then I try–*try* being the operative word here—to make them wait until 4:30 before I feed them again.
Around 3:30, they start pushing their noses into my hands to interrupt my typing. “C’mon, we’re hungry!” Petting doesn’t satiate their voracious appetite. Telling them, “It’s not time yet,” doesn’t work either (no matter how exasperated I feel!). Their noses get ever more insistent. “C’mon, Jessica, we are not playin’ around!”
That’s a little bit how I feel as I wait for my second novel, This Thing Called the Future, to be released on May 1. I feel like I’ve been waiting a looooooooong time for this one to come out!
I started writing This Thing Called the Future in the summer of 2007, just after my first y.a. novel, The Confessional, was released. I’d taken a leave of absence from my Ph.D. program in African History at Stanford to promote the book and I was already thinking I wouldn’t go back. The scariest thing about leaving the Ph.D. program was the realization that it meant saying goodbye to my easy access to South Africa. Stanford was paying for my Zulu language study…summer travel…etc. But I was miserable trying to be both an academic and a writer and I knew I had to make a choice.
So I left the Ph.D. program and I started writing this book. It was a way of feeding my voracious appetite for all things South African. And it was one of those books you feel like you *have* to write, anyway. I’d felt that way ever since the day my two Zulu sisters—thirteen and fourteen years old—crawled onto my bed one night before I went to sleep and giggled out stories of sugar daddies and secret boyfriends, men in their thirties.
“How do you meet these men?” I asked. All I’d ever seen was two very responsible young women, largely in charge of the household because Mama worked in another city as a teacher and only came home on the weekends. Gogo, the grandmother, was the adult in charge but she was tired and slow, with weak knees and swollen ankles.
They eyed each other. Then the13-year-old volunteered, “We sneak out to go to parities sometimes.”
“We are the V.I.P.’s at those parties,” my 14-year-old sister said.
“Does Gogo know?”
“No! Well…She caught me kissing my boyfriend at church last Sunday,” the 13-year-old said. “So I’m not allowed to go to church by myself anymore.”
“Are you guys, like, protecting yourselves?” This was my vague question, unsure how, exactly, to broach the topic of condoms or abstinence with girls so young, possibly having sex with men so old. And I was a guest in their home. I was pretty sure Gogo wouldn’t be pleased if I took the liberty to provide sex education, American-style.
Yet I was worried. The official HIV-positive rate is 30% among Zulu women ages 15-35. (Not to mention, it’s never good when a 13-year-old is dating a man in his 30s, certainly a case for the police in the U.S.)
So that sparked the novel I started to write in the summer of 2007. What would it be like, I asked myself, to be 14 and to start liking the opposite sex when HIV is running rampant in the community and people you know—close people, members of your family—are dying? Would you become afraid of love? What would your attitude towards sex be? What would you think of the older men seeking your attention? Would you find it flattering or scary?
Meanwhile, I was following this sexy little thread of research I’d uncovered—news reports about the killings of suspected witches all over South Africa in the late 90s and early 2000s. Why were so many people killing witches? Were these so-called witches actually practicing witchcraft or were they entirely innocent? And what did witchcraft mean in South Africa anyway, especially to this imagined young woman of 14 years old? Scholar Adam Ashforth described modern South Africans as experiencing a great deal of “spiritual insecurity” and the killings of suspected witches is only one example of it.
I soon discovered that practicing witchcraft in an African context looks only a little different than the western concept of a woman chanting hexes over a cauldron at midnight in a deserted forest. A Zulu who practices witchcraft is actually trying to send illness or death to a neighbor or family member. Usually, they purchase a poison or potion, which they then sprinkle in somebody’s yard or give to them in their food. The curse can bring all sorts of bad luck and/or illness. People told me that many of these illnesses mimic Western diseases—hypertension, for example, or arthritis, or some kind of STD—but they can’t be cured with Western medicine. That is how you know it is witchcraft.
In the context of HIV-AIDS, when enormous numbers of young people are dropping dead from terrible diseases, the temptation to attribute it to witchcraft is enormous. But most South Africans understand HIV as a virus, communicated through the transmission of blood or bodily fluids. Writer Jonny Steinberg has suggested that Africans have readily accepted the biological explanation; to believe it is caused by witchcraft is too terrible for most people to contemplate. The epidemic is so widespread that if it was witchcraft, it would mean possibly hundreds of thousands of neighbors and family members engaging in wholesale murder—and the insecurity that would engender would be too terrible to imagine.
I was curious to explore all these threads—the young woman falling in love, surrounded by people dying of AIDS, living in a community experiencing great spiritual insecurity. And it took me years to layer it all into one cohesive novel, one that depicts the realistic and magical and loving and scary world that a young urban Zulu girl occupies in 2011.
Here it is….3 ½ years later, on the cusp of being released to the reading public and my friends and my family. It’s a nerve-racking and exciting business.
I can’t wait until May 1 when it’s available. Which is why I’ll be releasing an excerpt next month on my website, a little snack of what’s to come.
Back to the dogs: Yesterday, I fed them at 3:45. When they started bugging me, I thought, “What the hell? Why make ‘em wait when they don’t have to?”
Advance review copies of This Thing Called the Future went out today and my publisher sent me a link to a YouTube video of Urban Dance Squad singing “Prayer for my Demo” at a 1990 concert….
Here it is: Urban Dance Squad-\”Prayer for my Demo\”
Chris and I are among the new Blue Shield of Californa victims, some of whom have seen their premiums increase by 59% in the last 3 months. Our premiums have gone from $540 to $860 in 3 months. Correct me, math whizzes, but I believe that’s an increase of more than 30%. Way to go, Blue Shield. Way to go, government health insurance reform!
So on Saturday, I received a letter from Blue Shield of California, terminating my coverage for “non-payment of dues/premiums.” I was wondering what the hell they were talking about–I paid $900 on Oct. 29th for the month of November, which was partly making up for October’s payment since we added a baby to our plan, and $585 for the month of December. I had just spoken at length with a Blue Shield of California representative on Thursday about some claims and another issue I had with Blue Shield (they weren’t applying any of my son’s pediatrician visits to our annual deductible because they were claiming he wasn’t “covered” in October and I wanted to know why I paid the additional premium for him in November if he wasn’t “covered”). This representative had said nothing about my coverage being terminated. So what was going on?
I called today and after literally 30 minutes on the phone, the representative was finally able to figure out that I owed an additional $10.96 cents on my November dues.
So Blue Shield of California TERMINATED my plan because of a measly $10.96.
Unbelievable. And totally, completely absurd. Come on, Blue Shield of California. REALLY? You really would terminate somebody’s health coverage because, in the confusion of adding a baby to my plan, I wasn’t exactly sure how much I owed and I accidentally failed to pay ten dollars and ninety-six cents? Have you no SHAME?
Yes, I paid the eleven bucks over the phone and the representative reinstated me and my family. I did it but resentfully. I often feel like we would be better off putting that money in a savings account rather than forking it over to health insurance company for a plan that covers nothing until we’ve paid $3500/per person or $7000 for a family annually. If you add up our monthly premium and the annual deductible, we basically must pay $14,000 before health insurance makes a difference. That’s a lot of money every year. Of course, it’s not a lot of money if you have cancer or some other catastrophic illness and your bills suddenly total hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that’s why I sucked it up and paid the $10.96 instead of demanding my November $900 and my December $585 payments back and saying, “See you later.”
The truth is, any other health insurance company is no different. And the other truth is, my parents, self-employed, also deal with private health insurance and they’ve been around the block with just about every insurance company you can possibly name. They’ve said Blue Shield has treated them better than most.
Okay. Fine. But Blue Cross/Blue Shield of California’s complaints department is still going to hear from me.
Well, color me pink or something like that. I just got a phone call from a Blue Shield of California representative because somebody apparently monitors the blogosphere, came across my blog posting, and wanted to make sure my questions were thoroughly answered. I even got a phone number that I can call if I have further questions.
That was totally unexpected and, well, I guess it did what it’s supposed to do. Makes me feel a little more loved and warm and tingly or something. So. Good customer service but…I still think everything I thought in the last posting. It doesn’t change anything about the power imbalance, the fact that the system is rigged, or anything else.
But I know health insurance is necessary the way the medical system operates these days. I posted my earlier comment on Facebook and got a number of comments from disgruntled people. A parent told me how it took 15 months to get Cigna to cover a new wheelchair for his severely disabled son. A mother told me how much her daughter owes the hospital ($15,000) for a minor thing–a gallstone–and that’s after the health insurance paid their part. Another person said that he had cancer and one test alone, a diagnostic test using dye, cost $115,000. He cautioned me not to go off health insurance. But, he added, many Americans are stuck in low-paying jobs simply because they’re afraid to lose their health insurance benefits. I know how true that is. For a long time, I wondered if I could leave grad school at Stanford–simply because of the health insurance. And then I realized there was no point in being miserable simply because I had good health insurance.
Anyway, regardless, before the phone call, I did decide to stick it out with Blue Shield. I cancelled the application with Mega Life last Friday, and over the weekend, talked with at least three self-employed people who have all felt reasonably satisfied with Blue Shield (or one of its variations, such as my parents, in Texas). My parents were able to compare their Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage with coverage they’ve had from just about every other plan out there, and my dad’s take on it was essentially, “Yeah, the premiums are a little higher but it’s a better policy than most of the others. They haven’t raised the premiums on us the way otherl companies have.” My dad gets frustrated with policies that start out low and, within three years, have doubled or tripled the monthly premiums you have to pay.
The cautionary satisfaction with Blue Shield is about as good as it gets. So I’m sticking with it and hoping that, when or if the time comes, they end up coming through for us. But I’m not forgetting the point my little brother made yesterday when we talked about it: “Health insurance companies are out to make money. That profit motive is incompatible with paying for your medical costs.”
Yup.
This past week, I’ve been battling the big evil corporations known collectively as Health Insurance Companies. Act
ually, I’ve been trying to figure out whether I should stick with my Blue Shield of California plan or switch to some other plan. The question has boiled down to this: “Which company is going to screw me over the least?” I know that I’m going to get screwed; but if I can choose the degree of screwedness, I’ll feel a little better about life.
My frustration started Continue reading ‘Health Chronicles #1′
A few days ago, I started a new y.a. novel. I should be working on my nonfiction book on healing, South Africa, religion, science–all that jazz, the reason I went to South Africa in the first place. But so much happened to me while I was there, and I interviewed so many people, that it feels like I need a few weeks to synthesize that information, to process the new changed me.
That is, if I am changed.
Except…I know I am. I just haven’t entirely figured out how yet. I had a few epiphanies while I was gone. Some things inside of me broke, but in a good way. Some things inside of me feel calmer now. And one of the first things I did when I got back was buy an orange tree to honor my ancestors–actually, two particular ancestors, my great-grandfather on my father’s side and a child that my mother miscarried–like a sangoma that I visisted advised me to do. We planted it last week in the front yard.
I’m aware more than ever that hokey-ness has nothing to do with whether a thing is true or not. Still, I hate hokey. Which is why all we did is dig a hole and plant the tree and now we’ll watch it grow.
The story of how I visited a sangoma, an African traditional healer, and why I believed what she had to say about my life–that’s a long story, one that will surely be in the book, but one I’m not ready to tell yet. At least not here.
But I can say that I like seeing that orange tree out there in my front yard. I like knowing that it will grow tall and strong, and bear fruit for many years to come, even after I’ve moved away.
I like honoring the people who came before me, reminding myself of what they did for me–and what they might still be doing for me.
The thing that is both wonderful and terrible about immersing yourself in another culture is how quickly you find yourself humbled by your own flawed expectations about how the world should work.
When I first arrived, I stayed with a Zimbabwean immigrant family on the outskirts of Johannesburg. They run a small local paper, employ Malwaian immigrant workers, and live lives riddled by the contradictions of Zimbabwe/South Africa border politics. Currently, I’m staying with a white South African and her American husband in Pretoria, who have introduced me to local and national politics, the internal world of the ANC, and liberal white culture in South Africa. Continue reading ‘Culture Shock and the Writing Life’
Had two fascinating conversations yesterday on the plane with the two gentlemen I was sitting next to.
The first man, an Indian who has lived in South Africa for twenty years, introduced himself by asking me if I’m French. I told him, “Non.”
“Funny,” he said, “you look French.”
His name is Varkey George and he’s the director of the Student Health and Welfare Centres Organisation. He hosts student groups that come to Cape Town to do charity work. I told him about the book I was writing, and he thought it odd that I define healing so broadly.
“Well, why not?” I asked. “People seek healing from all kinds of practitioners and I’m not sure there’s a logical correspondence between the type of illness they’re experiencing and the type of healing they’re seeking. I think people have different ideas of what healing is, so they don’t necessarily feel healed by a medical doctor even if their body is in good shape after seeing one.”
He could understand that. The question, he said, is this: “What is the wound?”
A good question to ask. What IS the wound? Even if you are physically ill, that may not be the wound you’re seeking to cure even when trying to cure your body.
I also sat next to Barnard Gardiner, who works for the Red Cross as the Manager of the HIV Global Programme, Health and Care Department. We had a long and involved conversation about AIDS, especially AIDS in South Africa, and he asked several provocative questions about how we could stop the epidemic in Africa.
First, he asked me if I knew about the theory that HIV is spread when people are engaged in simultaneous relationships, not necessarily promiscuously but one man has two relationships and both his girlfriends also have two relationships, and so on and so forth, until it creates a network where HIV is easily transmitted. Of course I was so he continued. He said that gay men were able to stop the transmission of HIV because, without coordination, they somehow figured this out and realized that they didn’t need to use condoms all the time, but they should use condoms outside of their primary relationship. So they didn’t use condoms with their primary relationship but when they slept with other people, they did.
He suggested that there are two ways to stop the epidemic—either be monogamous or use condoms all the time, something that no group has been able to do. He said that nobody realized that Africans had concurrent relationships—women as well as men—until the epidemic, so he said, “We’re asking Africans to either use condoms all the time (something nobody has been able to do) or to stop being African.”
I thought this was a disturbing way to put it. Is it African to have concurrent relationships all the time? Polygamy, yes, but to my knowledge, there is not a long history of African *women* also being involved in more than one relationship at a time. I pointed out that there was no evidence from archival materials and early European recordings of African behavior that would suggest this was a common part of African culture. And Europeans were certainly happy to exaggerate any behavior they found odd!
“It may be a common part of African culture today,” I said, “but I struggle to believe that it’s a long-standing feature of African culture, that it’s been around for centuries, because there’s no evidence of it in the record. Maybe it could have gone by unnoticed for so long but…”
It disturbed me to think that the reason the epidemic has spread in Africa is intrinsically related to something that is fundamentally African. Maybe that’s true and I just have sickly-sweet, politically correct, academic-trained-by-the-book knee-jerk reactions that are misplaced and misguided. But still…
Then I remembered a few things: thigh sex and Facing Mt. Kenya. I told him that there are African practices that indicate that women did have multiple partners when they were young, but they didn’t engage in penetrative sex. I told him how Jomo Kenyatta outlined practices that the Gikuyu engaged in, that young people were encouraged to indulge in sexual play with multiple partners as long as they didn’t go all the way. And the Zulu trained women how to have “thigh sex,” that is, how to get a man to come by rubbing his penis together with their thighs.
He got kind of excited when I mentioned that and said that this might be the answer—if Africans could re-learn some of these traditional behaviors, then maybe it could stop the epidemic.
Like any good academically-trained historian, I have knee-jerk reactions to the concept of “tradition” as well. There are always people that believe if we go back to some idyllic past, to practices that they believe have been corrupted or have disappeared from society, that we will eliminate or reduce some problem that has cropped up in modern life. But many times, our idea of what is “traditional” is based more in nostalgia and romance than in reality. And furthermore, I’m not sure it’s ever possible to resurrect old practices that way without enormous controversy.
Both interesting conversations on my way to South Africa to explore this topic!
