SJ Sindu: On Juggling Multiple Projects, Mythology and Her Hybrid Collection, "Dominant Genes"
A new hybrid work of unsettling, raw honesty interwoven with profound tenderness, SJ Sindu’s Dominant Genes is an intensely defiant and beautiful interrogation of identity, family, love and heritage, presented in a seamless collection of poetry and lyric essays. I spoke with her briefly about this lovely collection and her creative process as a writer.
Liezel Moraleja Hackett: Thanks for taking time for this interview, Sindu, and thank you for your work. I really enjoyed spending some time with Dominant Genes. Your narrative is compelling and powerful. How and when did this collection begin to take form?
SJ Sindu: I wrote all the pieces separately over the course of the last five years. The poems, though, were mostly written in the summer of 2020, right after the pandemic started. In that first year of the pandemic, I found it really hard to write anything, and so I asked my partner, the poet Geoff Bouvier—Living Room, 2005, Copper Canyon Press; Glass Harmonica, 2011, Quale Press; Us From Nothing, forthcoming 2023, Black Lawrence Press and Buckrider Press—to teach me poetry. He’s a brilliant teacher, and I started to finally write again, but all I could write for a while was poetry. That’s when I started to think about this collection as a collection, interspacing my poems with the essays I’d written. What really holds this collection together is theme, and that’s how I made my decisions about what essays to include.
LMH: Oh my gosh, the pandemic. It caused so much grief, frustration, anger, but you also learned poetry in that time, and your poetry is lovely. It feels effortless. The imagery and metaphor, the lines are intentional; it's commanding. I love the essays between the poems. The collection is very cohesive in that way. What was the most challenging part of putting this book together? What did you like best about putting this collection together?
SJS: Thank you for saying the book feels cohesive. That’s actually a fear I have with any collection, which actually leads to my answer to your question. I have the same answer for both questions, actually. It was figuring out how to order the pieces in the collection. I changed the order five or six times. I even changed the order after it won the Black River Chapbook Competition and was accepted for publication. It seemed so important to get it right. The collection, even though it’s short, has a handful of thematic threads that needed to be pulled all the way through. It was a delicate process, and one that I liked to do physically. I printed out the first page of each piece and arranged and rearranged them on the floor to arrive at the final order.
LMH: I am a visual editor and also need physical pages in that process! Piecing together works that you crafted over the last five years with newer poems is definitely a delicate process- and I would have to agree with you about that being the most challenging but also the best/rewarding part of the process. Your final two pieces, Mother, and the title poem, Dominant Genes, really pull those threads through in a beautiful way. I love the parallels and powerful imagery you paint from folklore and mythology. What drew you to explore folklore in your work?
SJS: I’ve always been interested in myth, specifically mythology originating from South Asia, and within that umbrella, specifically indigenous mythology from South Asia. In this collection, I wanted to explore both Sanskrit stories (like from The Mahabharata) alongside indigenous practices that pre-date Sanskrit’s arrival on the subcontinent (like snake worship). My own Tamil ancestry is a complicated combination of these two lineages, and so my aim was to explore the ways in which these myths are a part of me and my heritage.
LMH: I like to lean into folklore and mythology for some kind of explanation or origin in my own work. Those stories and lore hold some insight, especially with regard to heritage and the things we inherit. I found the snake worship- and setting out milk as an offering- absolutely fascinating. As a writer, I can’t read something without considering the writer’s process. With this work, what were some facets or consistent practices of your creative process?
SJS: Regardless of the project, my creative process has become fairly consistent, developed over the years. I teach creative writing half the year, which helps me understand stories better. I usually have two or three books I’m reading—one literary, one craft or theory, and one fun book, usually high fantasy—and I’m trying to be more consistent with my reading practice. I also sit and write side by side with my partner Geoff, and we chat often about our work when we’re in the office, when we’re driving, and when we go hiking. I think that’s been one of the most helpful things, to have someone always there to talk writing with, to help me work out a problem in my plot or to brainstorm ideas. The last facet of my writing process that I’ve grown to really love over the years is to work on multiple projects, all of which are at different stages. Right now, I’m finishing a graphic novel script (Tall Water, forthcoming 2024 from Harper Collins), another comic series script is half-done, I’m working on my third literary novel, and writing a collaborative novel with Geoff. Juggling projects helps me to always be excited to write, and if I get stuck on one project, I can always get unstuck by working on another.
LMH: It’s inspiring to hear that you are fully immersed in the creative process- that you teach, have support from your partner- writing together, chatting about craft and collaborating, and that you embrace juggling multiple projects which, I agree, working on something else can help me get unstuck in another project. You’ve fostered a wonderful space for your creative energy, and it’s really exciting to hear about your forthcoming works and all of the projects you’re working on. I also love that among the 2-3 books you are reading, you tap into high fantasy. Who are a few writers/books/characters that you love/that inspire you?
SJS: George Saunders, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Akwaeke Emezi, Aaron Sorkin, Alison Bechdel, Mercedes Lackey, Mohsin Hamid. That’s only a few. I’m inspired by writers who are able to imagine with such breadth, producing vastly different worlds from story to story. But I’m also inspired by writers like Anuk Arudpragasam, writers who are able to imagine with depth, to fully map the psyche of a human with grace and complexity.
LMH: I felt the layers of complexity and grace woven throughout in Dominant Genes. It is a beautiful reckoning. Thank you so much for your time!
SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author of two literary novels, two hybrid chapbooks, and a forthcoming graphic novel. Her first novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award and was a Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Sindu’s second novel, Blue-Skinned Gods, will be published in November 2021 by Soho Press, and her graphic novel, Shakti, is forthcoming from Harper Collins. Sindu's hybrid fiction and nonfiction chapbook, I Once Met You But You Were Dead, won the Turnbuckle Chapbook contest and was published by Split/Lip Press, and her hybrid nonfiction and poetry chapbook, Dominant Genes, won the Black River Chapbook Competition and will be published in February 2022 by Black Lawrence Press. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, Sindu holds an MA in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University. Sindu teaches at the University of Toronto Scarboroug
About the Interviewer
Liezel Moraleja Hackett (she/her) is a writer and choreographer who often dwells in the space between dance and illness, culture and captivity, movement and limitation. Liezel has an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell. Her work can be found in Clamor Literary Journal (2017, 2018), UOG Press’ Storyboard: A Journal of Pacific Imagery, and Ponyak Press’ The Friday Haiku (@ponyakpress on Instagram/Twitter).
