When Marla Taviano and I first connected on Instagram, we became fast friends. I’m pretty sure we were on Voxer within a day, and began dreaming of writing workshops a day or two later.
I think Marla does that to a lot of people: not only is she so dang lovable and relatable, but she’s honest in all the right ways. I ate up her first collection of poetry, unbelieve (which, at the time of this publication, is currently free on Kindle Unlimited); I was equally delighted to see that she’d soon be releasing a second collection, jaded.
The book is exactly as its subtitle suggests: “a poetic reckoning with white evangelical christian indoctrination.” Marla isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions; she doesn’t shy away from owning her mistakes, nor does she play nice when it comes to playing by religious church-speak rules. Marla says it like it is and calls it like should be called.
And somehow, she makes you feel like you’re not alone, because you are welcome at her table of wild, palpable inclusion and grace any old time.
She’s just the best, so enjoy this interview with her!
Cara Meredith: How are you coloring outside of the lines, all over again, when it comes to your writing and this book in particular?
Marla Taviano: Funny you should ask. ;) I spent many many years coloring/writing INSIDE the lines of what I now know as “white conservative evangelical Christianity” (and used to think of as just “Christianity”). I wrote books with titles like From Blushing Bride to Wedded Wife and Changing Your World One Diaper at a Time. (#blessmyheart)
I even wrote a book called Is That All He Thinks About? How to Enjoy Great Sex with Your Husband (omg), which might seem to be a little bit outside those conservative evangelical lines, but no, even that book stayed very very much inside them.
And now? Seventeen years after my first book came out? I am writing books of unconventional poetry with scary slippery-slopey kinds of words like heretic in the subtitles.
Books called unbelieve: poems on the journey to becoming a heretic and jaded: a poetic reckoning with white evangelical christian indoctrination.
Whew.
Cara Meredith: You wrote a book! Tell us! What upside-down idea were you trying to turn right side up again?
Marla Taviano: How much time do we have? Ha! Oh, so very very many ideas that I believed for so very very long.
I’ll specifically share ONE upside-down (very wrong and twisted) idea that I really try to hammer home in jaded, my latest book. And that is this:
You can deconstruct your faith/beliefs WITHOUT thinking about (or dealing with) whiteness, white supremacy, and racism.
No, you can’t. I can’t. We can’t. We white folks in particular who are going through any kind of deconstruction MUST ALSO decolonize our beliefs and divest from whiteness (a phrase coined by Kina Reed).
Cara Meredith: Okay. We talk so much about audience when it comes to book-writing, but what did you learn about yourself along the way?
Marla Taviano: I learned so so so much about myself, and I’m continuing to learn every dang day. Writing, for me, has always been the way I figure out what I think and believe. It’s not until I get it down on the page that I can truly crystallize it in my mind and heart.
The biggest thing I learned about myself is that I can trust myself. Even when I mess up, make mistakes, I can trust myself. Christianity told me that I could not. That I am a wretched worm with an evil heart who cannot trust her feelings and must listen to authority and obey no matter what.
Lies.
Cara Meredith: Putting ourselves out there when it comes to storytelling is always a risk. What is the biggest, fleshiest risk you took with this book?
Marla Taviano: I wrote poems about my ex-husband cheating on me and my sister disowning me for being a heretic. OUCH.
Aaaaaand I’m very honest about things like “I don’t believe in hell anymore” and “I don’t go to church and may never again.”
Cara Meredith: Publishing a book is a shiny milestone! What else are you celebrating in your ordinary, everyday life?
Marla Taviano: Right now I am celebrating my Black writer friends and doing whatever I can to help them realize their dreams of becoming published authors. It has been one of the greatest joys of my life.
P.P.S. All of these brilliant questions (and the sub theme as well) stem from interviews that the equally brilliant
Lane originally created. I adapted them for this space, but the origins are all hers!