by Arkansas International Staff
The Church of Santa Maria Nuova is in large part a meditation on the writing process through the lens of a new medium—drawing. I’m as surprised as the speaker when Justin says “Draw that,” pointing to an elaborate fresco of a crucified Christ. He breaks down the image into simple shapes. The speaker begins to describe the fresco. How do you find the process of drawing and image-making analogous to the writing process?
You know, when I enrolled in Justin’s class, it had been years since I had picked up a pencil to draw. As fun (and at times intimidating) the whole experience turned out to be, my drawing practice fell by the wayside once I returned home from Italy. I am happy to say, however, that it has emerged full strength during the pandemic.
At present, on any given day, if I have not been successful in writing per se but I have made the time to draw, I count that towards my writing practice. Just the act of putting my pencil to paper and making repetitive motions has been meditative and calming. Yes, it’s similar to writing and rewriting sentences and polishing and editing them over and over again but because this is something I am doing for pure joy, it’s not brought along the kind of frustration that an unfinished essay or story brings with it. Drawing has allowed me to think a thought through, no matter how jumbled up, or how many parallel thoughts it has triggered. I have had to sit with each thought (while continuing drawing) and not chase it by burrowing into my phone immediately. That has been helpful for sure.
“I encourage my students to give in to all the chaotic and loopy ideas as they occur to them and I tell them to not worry if they can’t see a connection between the various ideas immediately. The connection exists. That’s why your brain tossed them to you.”
Can you talk more about your research process when crafting a piece of creative nonfiction? Does art (or other subjects) usually inform this quest for research, as drawing Santa Barbara from the fresco spurred you to research her story?
Research is my jam! I am constantly curious about the vast array of subjects that interest me, and I firmly believe that nothing is wasted. Sooner or later, it will turn into an essay or story. But even if it doesn’t, even if it never leaves my head or my notebook, it’s fine because it’s given me the opportunity to play and practice my craft.
My research process comprises reading; watching movies and documentaries; listening to passionate, creative people; going for walks; exploring museums, art galleries, historic sites, and libraries; browsing archives, and observing, eavesdropping, and talking to strangers.
In my classes, I encourage my students to give in to all the chaotic and loopy ideas as they occur to them and I tell them to not worry if they can’t see a connection between the various ideas immediately. The connection exists. That’s why your brain tossed them to you. Give yourself time and patience and you will make sense of how these connections can be tied together. If writing or even thinking about Aunt Grace’s apple pie has reminded you of that time you dissected a frog and how it smelled, and then it reminded you of that scene in Predator that makes you uneasy though you will never admit it to another person, it means that there is a fascinating essay waiting to be written.
Your piece offers many pathways for exploring transnational attachment and overlapping histories and structures. You mention, for example, finding the Church of Santa Maria Nuova reminiscent of “lavish” Hindu temples in India, and of being “transported” to Chittagong through the image of Santa Barbara. Can you speak a little more to this epiphanic experience of “transportation”? How does this experience impact your lens for revisiting and reconceiving culture?
I think in this particular instance this “transportation” happened because there was hardly anyone else around me, and Justin’s prompt required me to really dig into what was in front of me. I think if the Church had been busy every single time I visited it, it would have prompted a very different essay because as writers and artists we are so stimulated by our immediate surroundings.
Your account of visiting Bangladesh is very moving, as you describe a new way of being perceived that dispels a former “illusion” of what you thought the visit would be like. Your Indian-ness becomes apparent in a way you never considered before, and you learn that it’s your very gaze that gives this away. “Here I, the citizen of a powerful neighboring country, had the self-assured gaze to match it.” This contrasts to your experience of seeing others and being seen in the United States, which can repattern the way one might understand “seeing” more broadly. There are various structures of power at play in these dynamics of sight: the politics of citizenship, belonging, and recognition. In what ways can interrogating the politics of our gaze offer us new ways of “seeing” in order to shed light on how we relate to one another within these structures of power?
Great question! We often make the mistake of thinking that what we have experienced or what we believe is unique to who we are as individuals. That we are who we are irrespective of where we were born and raised. This is especially true in individualistic societies like in the US, where everyone is, at least theoretically, encouraged to be their own person. But the truth is, most of us, most of the time, don’t want to stick out. We want to blend in. Sure, we may want to believe that we are different and edgy, but everything from what we consume for entertainment to how and what we eat, where we shop, what we wear, what we say, is dictated by the specific world in which we are born and raised.
Which is why traveling and living in places that are not your hometown are so important, as is eating food that’s unfamiliar and being friends with those outside of our immediate orbit. And why schools and colleges need to do much more work in terms of offering diverse curriculum. If I could, I would make it mandatory for everyone everywhere in the world to spend at least six months living somewhere outside of their comfort zone and cultivate curiosity. In my dictatorial regime, it will be a crime if you say things like, “I love Asian culture,” but you are unable to answer what countries besides China and Japan make up Asia or point them out on the map.
How did your experience of seeing/being seen function within the framework of the “Western” gaze in Italy? In what ways did it shape the way you moved through the country (either consciously/or unconsciously) and inform both the observations you made and the art you created?
Thus far in my life, I have either lived in gigantic cities where I have had all kinds of good, bad, and dangerous run-ins when out and about, or I have lived in places far away from “home.” As a result, I am always hyper aware of my surroundings. Not for me, making too much eye contact or smiling at strangers or leaving my bag unattended for even a second!
In Italy, I stayed hyper aware of my surroundings in places like Rome and Florence, even though there were so many tourists and nearly everyone spoke English, because, Hello, Big City and Lots of People! In smaller places like Viterbo, there were very few Black or brown people, and on top of that, I felt an additional layer of vulnerability because I didn’t speak the language and so few of the locals spoke English. Plus, unlike in the US where I don’t think twice about going to a café or a lunch by myself, in Viterbo it seemed like nobody ever ate alone. So, I felt like an outsider for more than one reason.
There are points in the piece where you offer an imagined female-centered narrative, or a different gaze, for example when you imagine Yashodhara’s side of the story when the Buddha leaves her and their young son or notice women doing everyday things in the Mughal paintings. What do you think is the importance of women’s stories and shifting the male dominant gaze in art and writing?
“If all you’re reading has been written by only one specific demographic, then how will you ever understand the complexity and beauty that is this world? ”
Oh, so vastly important! To ignore other voices, be it on the basis of gender, race, or any other markers, is the greatest disservice we have done to ourselves and are continuing to do to ourselves.
The easiest example I can give of why we need to engage with the Other (however we understand that term) is from my own classrooms. My students could be engaged in a passionate and intelligent conversation about an essay or story they know well. Now, pop in a guest speaker and invariably, what they bring to the discussion is something none of us have ever considered, and boom, that piece of writing we thought we knew everything about suddenly takes on a whole different meaning.
I recently taught a course called Issues of Diversity in Contemporary Publishing, and the first exercise required students to really reflect over what sorts of books they have read up to this point of their lives. They examined their own bookshelves at home, revisited what they had read while in school, so on and so forth. It was shocking for many of them to discover how much of their worldview had been shaped by old, often dead, white men because that’s whose work they had read more than anyone else’s by a gigantic margin. If all you’re reading has been written by only one specific demographic, then how will you ever understand the complexity and beauty that is this world?
Read “The Church of Santa Maria Nuova” in Issue 9 of The Arkansas International.
Sayantani Dasgupta is the author of Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between—a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative Nonfiction—and the chapbook The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Hindu, The Rumpus, Scroll, Economic & Political Weekly, IIC Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, and others. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and has also taught in India, Italy, and Mexico.
