I do have one regret though. I wish Kathy Acker was still alive. I wish I could go swim with her again. My literary indebtedness to her is enormous. She's a more important mother to me than anyone can possibly imagine. In language I became a daughter worth a crap because of her. In language I redefined daughter, woman, I became a writer. Dora is an homage of sorts.
Lidia YuknavitchMost of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation.
Lidia YuknavitchYour life doesnโt happen in any kind of order. Events donโt have cause and effect relationships the way you wish they did. Itโs all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common.
Lidia YuknavitchMemoirs have at their heart a content that "happened" to someone in real life. Is that what you are itching at in your question, so that if you are a reviewer or you are writing a critique you might feel as if you are stepping on someone's actual face?
Lidia YuknavitchThe maternal impulse in animals to protect their young - that kind of instinct and subsequent violence is quite beautiful. Mythic even.
Lidia Yuknavitch