Of frenzied love in the empty glitter of a small town.
Lucia Pajon: Let’s start with the title of the book, Rose of No Man’s Land. That is the title of a song that paid tribute to the work of the Red Cross nurses in WWI. And indeed the meaning comes clear towards the end of the book. But even if some people are not aware of this, it is a powerful line with the basic message of beauty, strength and independence which are the raw qualities of Rose, one of the main characters. How did you develop this idea? Did you have the title and the reference in mind from the very beginning?
Michelle Tea: I did not have the title and reference in mind from the start; it just sort of developed as I went along, like much of the book. The original title was Square One, after the mall, but then I thought that was sort of a dowdy title, and that really the story was not about mall culture, which I'd been drawn to write about initially, but about the relationship between the two girls. I have a Rose of No Man's Land tattoo myself, and never knew the history of it until this man who also had one stopped me in the street to talk about it. I was very charmed that the girl on my arm had a past (what girl doesn't?) and she sort of took hold in my mind as a character, bursting out a bit unexpectedly when I sat down to write this book.
LP: In the first part of the book Trisha Driscoll, the narrator and main character of the book lets us take a peek into her life in a small town in Massachusetts. She takes us to the mall, the great micro cosmos of glitter and junk food where people’s “needs” are catered for, from finding a job to shopping and being entertained. Did you choose to set your story in Mogsfield to zoom in the decadence of it all? Since your other books (Valencia, Rent Girl, Beautiful America…) are based in San Francisco, what made you “move out”?
MT:I was actually inside this mall in Saugus, Massachusetts, the town I fictionalised into Mogsfield, a town very close to where I grew up, with a key landscape, the neon restaurant strip of route 1 that I wanted to put in the book. I was visiting Massachusetts and that mall, where I hung out as a young teen, and really just wanted to capture the sort of absurd and over stimulating (and appealing) atmosphere. I actually don't think that landscape is any more decadent than the San Francisco landscapes, just differently so.
LP:Trisha is a confused and very cynical 14-year-old loner. She is well acquainted with alcohol and doesn’t get any attention from her hypochondriac mother. She would have many reasons to become an angry person, but she is not at all, instead, she has this openness and curiosity that crushes through her dead end world and takes her to team up with Rose. She is a very real and beautiful character. Was it difficult to give her such an interesting voice?
MT:You are so sweet to say such things about Trisha! She would be very touched to hear it. Though it was absolutely difficult to make the switch from memoir to fiction, Trisha’s voice came fairly natural to me, thank God. I think how you deal with the crap that life hurls at a person affects everyone difficult. Who knows why some people get crushed and some manage to find their way, or some people turn mean and others are able to hold onto some sort of optimism. I think Trisha was teetering between two ways of responding to her world. Partly she's open and really wants to experience the world and embrace it, and partly she's afraid to be too open cause there's so much bullshit out there, and that's her snarkier side.
LP:Rose is a big driving force in the book. She is fearless and likes to push the boundaries. She seems to have a very detached attitude towards the world but she does look after Trisha. I can’t help but like her. Is there anything you don’t like about Rose?
MT:Being the god that created then, I have an unconditional love for all the characters, even Monster Paulie and Donnie. Clearly if Rose doesn't learn how to become more grounded she's going to keep hurting people, including herself, but I can't dislike her for it. She's just a wild girl, and her style of figuring out her own boundaries and responses are different than Trisha's.
LP:Do you ever see yourself in either character?
MT:Absolutely. I think I relate more to Trisha, having been drawn to reckless, sort of dangerous girls a lot throughout my life. But I think I may have been a Rose-character to some people, too, and just not realized it because I always feel like a Trish. To borrow from astrological language, I'm a Trish with a Rose rising.
LP:The main events of the book take place in just one day. This makes the pace really intense. Some people would take a lifetime to experience what Rose and Trisha do in less than 24 hours. Was this intentional, to show how much they want to avoid boredom, how much energy they have?
MT:Nothing about this book was intentional! I think I had so much anxiety about being able to successfully write fiction, and that anxiety is clear in the fast pace. It was me sitting down at the computer saying "Shit, I've got to make them do something, okay go here, go there, do that!"
LP:What made you choose teenagers over say, a 30-year-old adult?
MT:Though I am 35, I feel like I've only become an adult maybe three years ago. So I don't yet feel comfortable with adult voices, and, being queer and largely poor for much of my life, have felt locked out of many 'adult' experiences and rites of passage. I can really relate to the pared-down, alienated stance of a girl like Trisha, and can relate to wanting to overcome that alienation to become part of a larger world.
LP:Men are not portrayed in a very good light in the book; we have vacant fathers, drug dealers, shameless slobs like Donnie, (Trisha’s mum boyfriend) or the kids in the car that tried to harass Rose and Trisha with terrible results. Was that your feminist side pushing through?
MT:Nothing was intentional. I think that, being feminist, and having such a critique of so much of men's unchecked behaviour in the world, it colours my writing. I've absolutely encountered all the creepy men fictionalised in the book; they're really out there, and you get so harassed by them when you're young and female and traipsing through roughneck neighbourhoods. Really, to me it was just portraying reality.
LP:Rose’s mum is a lesbian and her partner Irene is in Iraq. Did you feel it was important to mention the war and its impact on people?
MT:I did. I felt it was somehow irresponsible to not mention it. I don't like that as an American in America I can sort of have this life that is wholly unaffected by the war, by what my government is doing to other countries. The injustice of it makes me nuts, it's so enormous and really unfathomable, what is happening to Iraq. I didn't want my feelings to overtake the book, because that's simply not what the book is about and I do believe art suffers if it's too beholden to a political agenda, but I thought I could find a way to bring it in there, to make it part of the book, because it is on my mind so much.
LP:In those 24 hours, Trisha and Rose develop an intense connection with each other. And I do think it goes beyond being just a drug-induced, in the spur of the moment relationship. However, there’s a moment in the book where Rose says she’s not a lesbian. She does seem to have a problem more with the way society people perceives her mum than with the fact her mum is a lesbian. This comes as a bit of a surprise because Rose is such a tough girl, what do you think?
MT:Well, Rose is tough but she's got to have an Achilles heel. She's still a fifteen-year-old girl and no one gets away with totally not caring about what people think of you. Everyone's got their weak spot. I think Rose is truly unsure of who she is right now and is afraid of being boxed in by what she's doing in a moment. I think like most girls the thought of being like her mom is freaky so there's that, too. And of course a bit of internalised homophobia at work. I think it's clear that Rose likes girls, but her identity is still being shaped.
LP:Your other books relied heavily on your own life episodes. This one is a novel. Did it take a lot of energy to put together?
MT:Yes!!! It was terribly hard. I didn't know what I was doing and felt unable to gauge whether it sucked or not. I couldn't tell if the characters were believable or even if they needed to be. I felt utterly lost and had an existential meltdown about why anyone should care about people who don't exist. I felt like I was playing Barbies and asking an audience to watch. Oh, it was a dark time. Occasionally I manged to enjoy myself, though. Now when I write fiction I write an outline first, so I'm not struggling in the dark.
LP:What has this great book given you?
MT:Well, the confidence to write more fiction, certainly. Which I needed, because I and the rest of the world were about to burn out on my own personal experiences! I had to take a break from memoir. I may write one again, but I feel so happy to learn that I can engage my imagination like this. It's truly opened up new worlds for me. I'm psyched.
Rose of No Man’s Land was first published in 2006. This interview took place in the same year.
