Memory—An Interview with Amy Eaton
Interview by Katie Lynn Johnston
Today Mulberry has the pleasure of sharing an interview with the thoughtful writer and artist (as well as my aunt) Amy Eaton, to talk about her beginning as a writer, her experiences in the Chicago lit and performance scene, and what compelled her to write her essay, “My Brother was a Real Dog.”
For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve always seen you as an artist, through and through. You’ve written plays, prose, certainly poetry, but what is it that drew you to writing? What made you want to tell stories?
First of all, that warms my heart to hear that and means so much to hear coming from you. So, thank you!
I was always a big reader and it didn’t take much to make a leap to writing. I always liked creative writing in school and, as a kid—like a little kid—I remember having one of those diaries that had a lock and all the dates written on each page. I credit that diary for my first sense of imposter syndrome. I never wrote consistently every day and it never fit neatly onto each page, and I really felt like I was failing at keeping a diary. But it was a safe space to get out my feelings, especially when I had no one else to talk to. My mom was a dramatic storyteller—everything was always a little larger than life—and listening to her and being left to my own imagination along with a big ole pile of books kind of led me here.
I wrote one of my first plays in fifth grade with a friend about four dogs who were on a plane. We were very excited that one of them was named “Lizard” and her only line, I think, was when she got on the plane and announced, “Hey, everybody! It’s Lizard!” Of course, when I say we were excited, I mean me. We got to perform it for the class—my fifth-grade class was two classes in one huge room with two teachers. We were called the The Big Five. That was a great school year. Oh, and the dogs didn’t know how to fly, so they crashed the plane, but they all survived.
In “My Brother was a Real Dog,” you share stories surrounding your childhood and growing up an only child with a gay mother. What drew you to telling this part of your life? Is this an essay you have included within your memoir?
A lot of that essay came from a piece I originally did for the Live Lit show, MissSpoken, a few years back for their Siblings episode. Because my mom didn’t begin coming out until my senior year of high school, I never take for granted the fact that I can talk about those years of my life freely and to anyone now. I feel like it’s really important for any kids of gay parents to know they’re not the only ones out there.
I’ve met a handful of people with gay parents and it’s like finding a long-lost family member. There are certain things—like the fear of being outed in an unsafe space or the constant mental check to make sure you didn’t say too much about your mom and her girlfriend’s actual relationship that might lead to, at best, uncomfortable looks or questions or, at worst, custody battles—another kid of a gay parent is going to get on a primal level. I have a writer friend who’s written a book about having gay parents. When I read her book and when I’ve shared some of my work with her, we’ve both had these really powerful moments of “Oh my God, I’ve never seen somebody else write a story I recognize my own life in.” There’s real power in that, for the reader and the writer. It’s an enormous gift.
I hope it’s different for kids now, but there’s still prejudice, there’s still homophobia. It’s better, but I’m sure it’s not completely gone. I also think that there’s an unspoken pressure that if you are part of a queer family, it’s all neato-keeno, when really, just like any other family, there’s good stuff and bad stuff. Most of us don’t get lucky and born into a well-functioning, mentally healthy, happy family. But in queer families, there’s a pressure to be exemplary, because if we’re just normal and messy like everybody else, then we’re afraid we’ll get the side-eye letting us know this whole gay family experiment thing isn’t working out so well. So, I do think kids tend to be very protective of their gay parents.
I know I was, even though I was very isolated by my mom being in the closet and not having any siblings to share that secret with. I wasn’t allowed to tell my best friends, my dad, anyone else in my family. Her mother and sisters didn’t even talk about it or actually acknowledge it. I couldn’t even talk to them—not like there was much to talk about, but just for a sense of normalcy instead of that constant white lie we all lived under. It was like, when it was the three of us or just Mom and me, there were these little inside jokes we had, but that was really a protective mechanism. And Mom’s girlfriend, during my growing up years, was not the best person. Kids innately know that stuff and I always knew it about her. But again, the important thing to me as a kid was to make sure my mom was protected.
What advice would you give to young writers hoping to jump into the Chicago live lit scene? Do you remember your first live reading performance?
I would say it’s really important to know the show you’re doing. Go see it at least a couple times. For that matter, go see a good handful of shows, there’s a ton out there! Chicago is so lucky! The pandemic has slowed people down—it is definitely harder to perform on Zoom—but stuff is still out there! There’s such a difference in the energy of different shows—some will have people only reading off the page, such as Write Club or Essay Fiesta, some don’t have anyone reading off the page like Stoop Style Stories, others are a mix where you see both. Some places have open mics which is always a great way to dip your toe in the water! Some shows I’ve really gotten a lot out of (and I’m sure I’ll forget a few) are Write Club Chicago, MissSpoken, Stoop Style Stories, Grown Folks Stories, Essay Fiesta, Serving the Sentence, Tuesday Funk (these last two are open to other forms besides creative non-fiction or essay), Stories From Here, The First Time, Outspoken, The Paper Machete, and 20x2.
It’s always better to be too short than too long. Live Lit is a really interesting art form to me because when it really soars, it’s equally strong writing and performance. So definitely make sure you read your piece out loud and preferably try it out in front of someone. And it’s not acting, so don’t act. You kind of have to get to the core of you and then share that with the audience. And that can be scary and exhilarating.
As for my first reading? I did poetry readings in my early twenties in college and before I moved to Chicago. Pretty shortly after I moved here when I was 24, I started working on an inter-disciplinary piece that didn’t really fit in a box. I was calling it dance theater at the time, but it had a lot of Live Lit elements in it. It was a solo performance of modern dance and then spoken text that I’d written about various memories of my mother and stories she’d told me, including actual letters she’d written which I read out loud during the show. It was called “Photographs of My Mother” and in earlier versions I would hand out actual family photos to the audience and let them pass them around. I’d have to count them to make sure I didn’t lose any every show. Later, I did the show again at the Blue Rider Theater down in Pilsen and your mom was my tech person. She ran a slide projector from the front row so the photos were projected onto the wall behind me. It was a vulnerable piece, though there was a lot of humor in it, so it was awesome having your mom there. She’s like the world’s best audience member—she gave me a lot of courage.
Is there a story from your life that you want to tell, but haven’t quite found a way to yet? How do you go about finding the right ways to tell the stories of your life?
Sometimes a line pops into my head and insists on being written. If I’m not in a generative workshop sort of situation, that’s generally what happens. The trick is to write it down before I forget it!
I don’t know if there is a right way to tell the stories of your life. I guess as you grow and change and go through different things, certain things come up, certain patterns play out, bigger pictures become clearer. Sometimes you’re able to find the courage to forgive or understand yourself or someone that hurt you in the past, sometimes you’re able to find the courage to stand up for yourself or rage about some injustice that you didn’t have the guts to before. Some stuff you just let go of—you can write about it, but you revisit it and it no longer seems important. There’s definitely stuff I’m not sure I will, or even can write about, but in time that may change, and that sentence might pop in my head and demand I put it down on paper. We’ll see.
What projects are you working on now? Anything exciting you would like to share or plug?
I’m supposed to be going to Lancaster, PA for Hippocamp in mid-August as long as Delta stays out of my way! It’s a three-day conference that focuses solely on Creative Nonfiction and it is such a warm, welcoming, great group of people. I’ll be part of a flash panel of various topics and my topic is about failure, which I’m very excited to talk about. Having been an actress and in theater, there’s such a heavy lens we look at artists through—like you’re a “failed artist” unless you’ve appeared on TV or in a movie or gotten reviewed by a certain critic. The same goes for writers—have you won a prize or written a book and, if so, was it sold to a big five publisher? I mean, if you have, congratulations! But there’s lots of other writers out there doing really interesting, really meaningful work and especially in a country that commodifies artists and doesn’t see their work as work, I think it’s really difficult to keep feeling like your work matters. So, I’ll be talking about that.
In September, I will be teaching a Live Lit class virtually for Creative Light Factory, who also happen to be in Pennsylvania. Over the summer I taught a Live Lit intensive for them where we went from nothing to a virtual performance in just six classes and one private half-hour rehearsal with me. Their stories were so, so good. I was so proud. I loved getting a chance to dig in with people and help them with some directorial coaching. We had so much fun! I’m excited to teach it again!
Amy Eaton’s work has appeared in The Coachella Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Mulberry Literary, and Napalm Health Spa. She has been seen live and on Zoom in many Chicago Live Lit shows including Write Club Chicago, MissSpoken, Stoop Style Stories, and Fillet of Solo. As an actress and director, she’s worked with many wonderful people in Chicago’s fringe circles, including Curious Theater Branch, Prop THTR, Thunder Rd Ensemble, and Red Moon Theater. She was the Artistic Director for Evanston Children’s Theater from 2000-2005. She founded and served as Artistic Director of Mudlark Theater Company from 2005-2010. Most recently, she was able to teach a workshop at Andy’s Summer Playhouse in New Hampshire on Personal Narrative and a Live Lit intensive for Creative Light Factory in Pennsylvania.