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Apr 20, 2014 News
– Acclaimed local writer, Ruel Johnson, provides interesting insight
By Kiana Wilburg
Behind almost every ingenious creation there is extensive research. But when it comes to the world of writing, particularly romance novels, it is almost thought-provoking to imagine what kind of research leads to such “sultry creations.”
Do the authors write from their encounters, fantasies or a bit of both? Do they investigate and document the love lives of their friends? Which mixture affords for an original approach?
In an attempt to explore this mystery, I engaged in a rather interesting Question and Answer session with one of our acclaimed local writers, Ruel Johnson. Apart from being a controversial and outspoken public figure, Johnson adores romantic writings and he has written a few pieces of that nature as well.
But what the kind of research is done before he pens a romantic piece? Below is an excerpt of from the interview where Johnson shared details of his current projects and his views on the social importance of romance novels.
Kaieteur News (KN): In a previous conversation, you explained that you have a sort of political mission when writing about sex, could you expound on this?
Ruel Johnson (RJ): My next project is a book called “Sex and the Single Writer”, which is partly an erotic memoir, partly a sort of treatise on the absence of sex in Caribbean writing, particularly by straight male writers. I think what has been lost in all the academic debates and explorations of contemporary Caribbean sexuality, and one resident Guyanese and their experiences are largely absent from, is a firsthand perspective on how our men interact with our women in a way that is at once both cerebral and sexual. I see it as a sort of political mission to introduce this into the equation.
KN: What research is done before you write a sensual or erotic piece?
RJ: I live my life, as a man, as fully as possible, and that means exploring my physical and emotional relationships with women as deeply as possible.
KN: What is one piece of advice you would share with local romantic story writers?
RJ: Fall in love, risk being hurt – risk being shattered and made whole and shattered again because until you do that, until you’re there, you can’t communicate this profound and amazing thing that is love, and there is no romance without it.
KE: On your blog (http://cumae.blogspot.com/2008/05/ars-erotica.html) you said, “Caribbean women will lap up those romance novels set in medieval France or Civil War America where the heroine gets her first taste of love… between pages 74 and 102.”
Do you think our local romantic writers are also guilty of this and do you think that there is a demand for something different?
RJ: We in the Caribbean retain this imposed, colonial sense of ourselves as sexual creatures, even when we are, to appropriate a legal term, observing it in the breach. We are fairly sexual societies but we stay away from intellectualizing it, particularly in representing it in literature, and particularly from a straight, male perspective…We either accept writing outside of the Caribbean that is erotic, like 50 Shades of Grey, or we accept erotic writing set in the Caribbean that features a main external character, for example ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’, but we don’t want to see people looking like us or thinking like us, making love to each other in erotic writing. Forget about the demand – I think there is a need to represent ourselves completely in writing, and if we can represent ourselves as ethnic beings, as political beings, as spiritual beings, we need to reach state of evolution where we represent ourselves as sexual beings in our literature.
KN: What project (collection of stories or poems) are you working on and how long do you think it will take to complete?
RJ: I’m working on two screenplays and I will hopefully finish them by mid-year for submission to a couple of competitions.
KN: You said that your work is a part of your spiritual and psychological nature, of which the sexual nature is but one part. How does this aid in effectively achieving the purpose for writing a specific piece?
RJ: As writers, we are all essentially chimeras – part lover, part parent, part politician, part prophet, even part psychopath. The average story or poem often contains reflections of all these separate but connected selves. The most explicitly erotic story I’ve ever written, and one of the best I’ve done, April, is about a black woman living in Buxton who takes an Indian lover into her house in the midst of the post-elections violence of 2001.
The sex is recounted in graphic stream of consciousness primarily from the woman’s perspective, but the story is more than anything else a story about politics, about social upheaval and the impact it has on the lives and desires and dreams of ordinary people. It is also very much a spiritual story, which doesn’t negate its erotic quality because the best sex – as is represented in the story – can often be a spiritual and life-transforming thing.
KN: What is the social importance of romance novels, and from what perspectives should they be written or explored by the Caribbean writer?
RJ: I’m not sure we can call it social importance as opposed to social impact, and I think that romance writing everywhere can be a two-edged sword for the individual reader. For the reader ignorant of what is possible emotionally, it opens up a world that they can eventually take the risk of exploring themselves; on the other hand, there is the real danger of the reader being trapped in that fantasy and not being able to compensate for it in real life. We should enjoy erotic/romantic writing, but it must never be at the expense of our erotic or romantic lives.
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