The Power of Diaries: Interview with Jane Perry, Author of White Snake Diary
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Jane Perry (Photo by Kristin Cofer)
I connected with Jane Perry, author of the forthcoming White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers (Atmosphere Press), through a mutual friend. My biography of abolitionist Julia Wilbur would never have been written without Wilbur’s diaries surviving to the present time. And Jane’s book, as you will read below, is diary-driven.
Jane and I have never met in person, but, via email, I asked her a few questions about diaries, her own and other people’s, both famous and not (including, perhaps, yours). Below are her thoughts, along with advice for anyone who wants to start, re-start, or re-tool their own diary-keeping.
Q: Jane, what is your own diary habit these days?
My diary habit currently is a function of chronicling observations and reflections, flâneuse-style, to friends in emails or through Facebook. I will notice something quirky, or have a unique interaction in the course of daily life, or experience something that I feel may touch another in a way that could move then into participating in protecting Mother Earth. Often I will end up posting those diary records on my website blog.
[NOTE: Her blog is at https://janepperry.com/blog/]
Your question prompts me to realize that my regular recordings have shifted from internal wrestling, or attempting to figure out something, to connecting with people. In that sense, I guess I’d have to say my habit of chronicling at regular intervals is a function of my situation and age. First, my habits of observation, reflection, and then recording are afforded to me because I am retired and have the time—the “daily allowance” to write. I am also entering into my elder years. I will turn 65 this year. I am less focused on writing to find myself and more interested in writing to find common humanity and a way forward to a better balanced and sustainably healthy Mother Earth for the current young ones and the generations to come.
Q: What did a diary mean for you growing up?
My parents gave me my first diary when I was nine years old. It was a blue, snap-shut pre-print daily five-year diary. I took that challenge seriously. That diary meant I was to write something every day, even if it meant writing in the dark, which I note on several occasions, apologizing. To whom? You might ask. That discipline established a habit of diary writing, so that in high school, I even wrote: “I use this diary to relieve any tensions I may have before I go to bed. That way I can fall asleep better, and quicker, and have nothing bothering me.”
Q. How did you come up with the idea of your book?
“The idea started in a junk store, where I was rifling through used photo albums...”
The idea started in a junk store, where I was rifling through used photo albums, and I found a chronology of snapshots of a girl growing up into a woman. This collection of photos got me thinking about growing up, and how diary entries can chronicle that process. Later, I became curious about how others used their diaries: What did they write about? What did their diaries look like?
Q. You chose a few famous people’s diaries to feature, such as Henry David Thoreau and Anais Nin. How did you decide which of these to include in White Snake Diary?
It was kind of an organic process. I had first compiled a diary for this book. As I explored how others used the inscription process, certain themes coincided between a self-inscriber and the diary I had composed, such as nature and misogyny, in the case of Thoreau and Samuel Pepys. Other famous diarists, like Nin or Virginia Woolf, wove themselves into the self-inventive, stream-of-consciousness use of the diary by self-inscribers.
Q: And on the subject of snakes and your title, how did this come to you?
It was a dream. I was visited by a white snake. The visit was pronounced enough that I was compelled to give it attention. This book is just one way I am recognizing the transformative, healing power of the white snake. I also use this snake in a daily meditation to guide me in channeling the love and interconnectiveness of all things, as we on Mother Earth work to heal from our climate crisis and re-emerge into matriarchy.
Q: As we’ve talked about, I based a lot of my own book on Julia Wilbur’s diary. What do you find diaries reveal and what do they not reveal about the truth?
Diaries can give a first-hand account of events, often in a personal and emotionally accessible manner that can draw us close to what those times felt like, in contrast to just an iteration of facts. Diaries can tell us what it is like to live in someone else’s skin. Just like any accounting, the recording of events, transactions, or observations are filtered through the recorder’s point of view.
Truth is about who is telling the story, what facts are told or not told, what points of view are respected and acknowledged and what is unrecognized, dismissed or worse, intentionally misrepresented. In your book, A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time, Julia’s words draw the reader in, imagining the personal experience of extraordinary times, beckoning us to consider how we might have responded to polarizing circumstances not unlike today. You couch Julia’s self-inscriptions with immaculate historical research. Factual knowledge is exceedingly important when we talk about truth. Diaries are an important piece of the personal experience within factual contexts, often bringing the reader’s attention to circumstances they might otherwise be unaware of or have an unconscious bias about.
Diaries also include self-description: the stories we tell ourselves. David Sedaris, in the foreword to Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977–2002, gives some candid reflections on the selectivity of what he chose to include in his accounting. I give some other examples in my book.
Q: What advice would you give other people who want to get in a diary habit?
“Most habits are best adopted when they are a regular discipline, when you stop thinking should I write today? and just weave it into the flow of your life.”
Most habits are best adopted when they are a regular discipline, when you stop thinking should I write today? and just weave it into the flow of your life. I applaud anyone who wants to record their thoughts. It is an honoring of one’s voice. Plus, the habit can be a magical experience of discovering something that did not exist until it comes through your fingers – or through your voice if you are using a voice-activated dictation platform. If you want to get in a diary habit, bless you for your compelling desire. Honor that which is telling you to record. And start. You never know where your diary habit will take you.
A note on the mechanics of writing, if I may. Sometimes it is hard for people to get their thoughts through the muscles of their arms and fingers, and that can feel very frustrating. The ideas and thoughts are there, but physically getting them out onto paper feels like an obstacle. I have had success with stalled writers by simply encouraging them with open-ended questions to talk, as I, sometimes feverishly, take down their words verbatim, dictation style. All of a sudden, the self-inscriber has a record. It is out there in physical form, and pretty much every time, it is way more writing than they have ever done on their own. It is very, very rewarding. So, that might be another piece of advice: if you are having a hard time getting started, find someone who can help you. Many communities have adult education and/or Literacy Volunteer programs that will help you get started on a diary habit.
Q: And what about if they want to use their own or other people’s diaries in various creative endeavors?
“Ahhh! Privacy! Did the self-inscriber intend to write for future readership? Some diarists I include in my book appear to – one even writing an entry to the future. ”
Ahhh! Privacy! Did the self-inscriber intend to write for future readership? Some diarists I include in my book appear to – one even writing an entry to the future. You yourself have considered the delicate nature of exploring personal records because you discovered Julia Wilber’s diaries in an archive. That is a piece to the story: someone saved another’s self-inscriptions, or, directions were given by the diarist to save them. You note in A Civil Life in an Uncivil Timeyour efforts to reassure yourself that Julia’s journals were purposefully distilled by her into a designated collection.
In certain creative endeavors, the self-inscriber could not have even imagined the use of their records. Samuel Pepys could not have anticipated that Annie-B Parson would use his entries to conceive, direct, and choreograph a 21stcentury reconsideration of the female voice in the award-winning 2018 Big Dance Theater’s 17c. But in his flamboyant, narcissistic manner, he certainly wrote for posterity.
I have a few women friends who have a pact: should one of them die suddenly or become mentally infirm, another, having been given the exact location where her diaries are kept, will pull them out and destroy them.
If you are the self-inscriber, your writing is your own. There are numerous examples of diarists in my book who have used their inscriptions to jump start their creative writing process. Some even wrap their records into their writing. Some publish their diaries! Were these writers writing for future publication? I imagine not, exactly. If one writes by profession, it is hard not to have an “external other” sitting on one’s shoulder. But diary writing is special because it is, by its nature, private, at least to begin with. Our current social media culture begs for self-disclosure to an audience, however, in the minutest fashion, which brings us back around to interconnectivity.
Q: Do you feel that a diary written by a woman is different than one by a man, or is it more based on the individuals and not gender?
“A diary written by a woman is going to include self-constructions within the context of the constraints of patriarchy. ”
Is the daily life of a woman different than the daily life of a man? Absolutely, so, too, their records. Is the daily life of a cisgender, gender fluid, gender non-conforming, gender non-binary, or trans* based within their own experience? Surely. But I think you are also asking about more than content. Suzanne L. Bunker and Cynthia A. Huff, in Inscribing the Daily, their book on women’s diaries, cite the “braiding” format particular to the way women weave variety in structuring their self-inscriptions.
A diary written by a woman is going to include self-constructions within the context of the constraints of patriarchy. I believe a diary is in part genderized because of the current patriarchal system requires subjugation. As opposed to matriarchy. Vicki Noble writes on her websitethat matriarchy (matri/mother and arche/beginning) is an egalitarian system of creative and non-hierarchical living based on consensus and a focus on the sacred cycles of nature. I see women’s diary writing as a striving towards matriarchy. In the privacy of the diary space, women can exercise their full and thriving selves.