YOU'VE GOT MAIL
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN OSCARNOMINATED ACTRESS STARTS EMAILING ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST CELEBRATED WRITERS? ELLE GETS EXCLUSIVE ACCESS TO ROXANE GAY AND GABOUREY SIDIBE’S INBOXES
From: “Sidibe, Gabby” <g_sidibe@gmail.com> Date: Tuesday 28 February 2017 at 12:39 To: “Gay, Roxane” <roxane-1974@outlook.com> Subject: Hello! Good God, where are you? From what I can see on Twitter, your book tour seems long and arduous. Are you doing OK? Are you drinking enough water?!
I don't know how you're managing all the things you have to do. I'm scared that, when I do my own tour, I won't be as good at it as you probably are. It was hard enough for me to get a moment alone to write this email, but I finally found it! I'm in my apartment in Chicago, waiting for my personal trainer to get here so that someone else can force me to work out for an hour.
I’m a huge fan of yours: I'm currently reading Difficult Women, but I'm taking it super-slow so I can make it last as long as possible. There are some very powerful sex scenes – do you enjoy writing about sex? I like to luxuriate in good writing, but I'm petrified of reading your new memoir, Hunger.
I'm afraid I'll see too much of myself in your words. And I know I just wrote my own memoir, which felt a bit like holding a mirror up to my own face and analysing every pore, but seeing yourself in someone you don’t know personally is a different feeling.
What was it like writing a memoir of your body? And do you consider yourself a ‘difficult woman’?
Xoxo, Gabby
From: “Gay, Roxane” <roxane-1974@outlook.com> Date: Saturday 18 March 2017 15:37
To: “Sidibe, Gabby” <g_sidibe@gmail.com>
Subject: Difficult women Hello Gabby,
I’m just home from Toronto. I do not recommend releasing two books in one year – I’m pretty burnt out, truth be told. I love doing events, but as a quiet, shy person, it takes a lot of energy to go on stage, be entertaining and then do book signings. When I come home, I pretty much shut the world out.
My memoir, Hunger, terrified me as I was writing it, and now it’s out in the world, my terror only grows. Writing a memoir of my body felt necessary, because when you live in a fat body, people make all kinds of assumptions about you. I wanted to assert some control over the public narrative about my body. I want readers to understand some of what it means to live in a world that is inhospitable and cruel to fat bodies.
Am I a difficult woman? I'm sure many people think I am, but I'm just me and willing – especially as I get older – to stand up for myself. The title was my way of challenging the damaging and all-too-narrow ideas our culture often has about women who dare to have opinions, who dare to feel deeply, who dare to be contrarian. And as for the sex scenes, I love writing about sex. For me, sex in fiction and non-fiction is the source of so much emotion and narrative potential. I love the erotic and finding ways to convey that eroticism. I love allowing my characters, and especially my women characters, to be unapologetic about sex and how they engage with it. Nothing really makes me blush, but I do notice that when I first see sex on the screen, I look away a bit, as if I shouldn't be watching. Then, I find a way to get comfortable, and if it’s interesting sex, well, I get very interested. The media really underestimates how funny sex can be, and how tender. I read your memoir, which I really enjoyed. Why did you decide to write it now, at this point in your life? From: “Sidibe, Gabby” <g_sidibe@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday 22 March 2017 at 19:45
To: “Gay, Roxane” <roxane-1974@outlook.com>
Subject: Telling secrets
I'm glad you enjoyed my book. After three years of writing, I'm still trying to wrap my head around people I don't know knowing huge secrets about me. Does that feeling ever go away?
I started writing at a time when I was depressed and working my way through some mental garbage. Every time I finished a chapter, it felt like I had unpacked a box and organised what was in there, putting it in its rightful place. That's why I wrote the memoir – I needed my thoughts and emotions to stop cluttering up my mind.
When I was going through the darkest times in my life, I was advised to go to church. Church, though it was super-fun, just didn’t work for me. I needed therapy. I needed medication. I needed the things my community told me I didn't need. So I really was honest in the book about my struggles and seeing therapy as an option. How much do you consider your audience when you write? My audience thinks my name is Precious because that’s the character I’m most famous for playing. But YOU! You are a rock star of books.
Take me through a day in the life of Roxane Gay…
From: “Gay, Roxane” <roxane-1974@outlook.com>
Date: Friday 7 April 2017 at 22:18
To: “Sidibe, Gabby” <g_sidibe@gmail.com>
Subject: The good, the bad and the lonely
Having a book out in the world, and particularly a book where you reveal part of yourself, is a hell of a thing. I don’t know if I will ever get used to it, particularly because people read my work and think they know me when, in fact, they know what I want them to know.
When you said, ‘My audience thinks my name is Precious’, I gasped a little because that must be incredibly frustrating.
'I LOVE ALLOWING MY CHARACTERS TO BE UNAPOLOGETIC ABOUT SEX AND HOW THEY ENGAGE
I know what you mean about being really honest in your writing. When I started writing non-fiction, which is a relatively new genre for me, I decided to be honest about both the good and the bad. In so many ways, honesty is just easier. And I’ve found that honesty is one of the main reasons people connect to my work. I often hear that they feel less alone, which is such a striking thing to me, given that I have been profoundly lonely for most of my life.
Anyway, when I am writing, I lose myself. I just let the world fall away and something takes over. The biggest quirk of my process is that I can write pretty much anywhere, at any time of day. I don’t have any rituals, and I often write in front of the television. A day in my life is pretty varied. On Mondays, I teach, so I generally wake up, prepare for class, head to campus in the afternoon and teach until 5.20pm. After that, I run some errands and head home, where I try to sort out dinner, waste time and deal with emails. I generally travel from Tuesday to Friday, so there’s a lot of time spent hanging around in airports and green rooms before events. I meet with groups of students, and attend receptions in my honour that I don’t want to attend because, as I said, I’m actually very shy.
What does your day look like when you’re shooting? What kinds of
connections do you see between writing and acting?
From: “Sidibe, Gabby” <g_sidibe@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday 12 April 2017 at 17:11
To: “Gay, Roxane” <roxane-1974@outlook.com>
Subject: Holding back
I love what you say about people only knowing what you allow them to know. I’m trying to give just enough of who I am so that my audience is convinced of the real me: Gabourey vs. Precious. It can be very frustrating to be a 34-year-old woman mistaken for a character I played when I was 24. Even though that character did great things for my entire world, it’s Gabourey I’ve been working on my whole life.
I also love what you said about honesty being easier. I find it difficult to be dishonest about myself: there’s healing in truth and stagnation in lies. I absolutely connect to the honesty in your writing. I connect my profound loneliness to yours, though I struggle with how honest I want to be about my own loneliness. This is where acting and writing actually don’t connect for me: acting is about finding honesty in someone else’s character – in both their flaws and their greatness – and then leaving them behind on set. When
I write, the only character is my own, and I can’t leave it behind anywhere.
Eight months of the year, I’m filming Empire in
Chicago. You’d think it would get in the way of writing, but I often write in my trailer. When I’m shooting, need to be at work by 5.30am for make-up and wig installation (my favourite part!).
I have breakfast and ride to rehearsal on my tricycle (yes, I have an adult tricycle that I keep on set so I can get around as fast and as annoyingly as possible). I’m usually on set for 10-12 hours. If I get off work early enough, I go home and swim in my building’s pool for an hour.
Being on hiatus from work is an entirely different animal. I have no schedule. I can spend days, if not weeks, in my home, sleeping, watching TV, and only leaving my bed to forage for food, while lying to everyone and telling them that I’m busy writing. I am not. ‘Hunger’ by Roxane Gay is published on 3 August (Corsair, RRP £13.99); ‘This Is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare’ by Gabourey Sidibe will be published in the UK by Vintage in 2018
‘I FIND IT DIFFICULT TO BE DISHONEST ABOUT MYSELF: THERE IS HEALING IN TRUTH
AND STAGNATION IN LIES’