Full interview with Angela Garcia (Part 2)

Angela’s writing space — Photo by Angela Garcia

We spoke with Angela Garcia, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, who is an award-winning anthropologist and author. She is known for her work on addiction, kinship, ethics, and violence, and the ways these are shaped by histories of colonialism. She is also known for her literary approach to ethnographic writing.

In her newest book, The Way That Leads Among the Lost, Garcia draws readers into the hidden world of anexos: informal treatment centers for alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness that are spread across Mexico City’s tenements and reach into the United States. For many families desperate to keep their loved ones safe, they offer something of a refuge from what lies beyond them – the intensifying violence surrounding the drug war.

KVD: It's fascinating, this mentorship relationship, that you mentioned you felt like you actually almost did this whole literary training program through publishing this one book. You also mentioned that you don't know how much writing you're going to do now. So the next question is a bit more technical, like, What is your writing practice like? Has it changed over time? Did it change from the first book to the second?

AG: Well, it's wonderful to have a dissertation to work from, and in the second book I didn't have that kind of initial draft. [To revise my dissertation into a book], I didn't really do that much revision. I did add a new chapter – after I got my PhD, I did a little bit more research. But in our first book we're very lucky to have something to work from. I always encourage my students when they're writing their dissertations to begin from the very onset to think of it as a book, to go beyond thinking of it as something that we do to please our committees, or to get a job. Those are very important to do, obviously. But to begin from the onset like: I'm writing a work. This is a work of writing. It's not just a piece of scholarly writing, it's a work. And so the dissertation for me becomes a really important first draft. With the second book I didn't have anything to revise, I had to start anew. And so it was a really different process.

I have a terrible system where I'm constantly editing as I'm writing, and so in some ways my first draft was my last draft because I was continuously editing it as I was writing it, and my editor at the time said, “Stop doing that.” But I couldn't. And then eventually he said, “Okay, that's your process.” It took me a little bit longer, and I suffered a lot because I often would go back to the very first sentence and read in order to get to the next chapter or even the final chapter – I would still go back to the beginning to make sure that I was carrying some kind of story forward. But the folks at FSG were like, “Just get your 1st draft out,” and I just couldn't do it. The first draft was the last draft, and that's just the way I work, and it can be excruciating at times, and it can feel like I'm not making any progress. But eventually the pages begin to build, and there they are.

Right now I have very little time. I did start a new project – two projects, one that I'm imagining as a kind of novella, just to take a little bit of pressure off of myself, [instead of] thinking I have to write a 300-page book, thinking maybe it's a 40- or 50-page something, and that maybe it's part of a larger book where there are two or three of these shorter pieces that are nevertheless ethnographic and literary. So I'm trying to reimagine… the book that I'm working on now is maybe two little books in one larger book, so that I have the actual bandwidth to at least accomplish one of them while I'm chair.

I try to write at least… I mean, I used to write every day when I was really working on the book. But now I'm lucky if I can write 2 days a week, and usually that's only for about 4 hours each time. So I don't know what it's going to end up looking like, or if I'm going to be successful in getting this done. The press very much wants… I'm learning that there's a whole different schedule with non-academic publishing, where they really want you to follow up your book with another book pretty quickly, and because you're sort of in the mix. And so it's a good time to come out with something new. I'm a slow writer. It took me, I'm embarrassed to say, 14 years between the first and the second book. But 10 of those years was research. I'm just hoping that I'll be able to carve out and commit to a few days a week, and also… I went to Russian River, and I rented a cabin, and I just went by myself, and I brought some wine and some food, and just wrote for 3 days, and that was my quiet monastery that I was trying to recreate for myself. So I'm trying to find spaces. But I haven't yet figured out whether or not they're sustainable with the new responsibilities that I have. I'm really hoping that they will be.

KVD: Well for some people twice a week for 4 hours actually sounds like quite a lot of writing that can be done. So yeah, it really depends, I think, on the project.

AG: Well, that's good. Thank you for saying that, because I always feel like Oh, my God, it's not enough time! When I was writing the book I was maybe doing 3 hours every day, Monday through Friday, and giving myself a break on the weekend. And now I'm like, Oh God, I wish I had that availability! So I need to figure something else out.

RP: That leads me over to the next question. In your chapter on “the experience,” you describe this writing experience almost like a breakdown healing or catharsis. We want to ask you, what is cathartic writing? Could you tell us more?

AG: Well, that definitely was a cathartic practice, and I think part of what enabled catharsis to happen in the process of writing was all of the other things that contributed to that experience – not eating, not sleeping, being with others, taking these walks through the forest, being reprimanded… for these groups it's almost like a system to bring someone to that point of utter collapse. And that happened to me there. But there have been other quieter moments of catharsis, particularly when I was writing the memoir – aspects of the book where I was reaching deep into some very painful places, and I would sometimes write something and just break down crying and realize that I had hit a nerve. And I wanted to stick with the nerve that I was hitting, and allow myself to explore it to its fullest. And so much of what I wrote is actually not in the book, but it's those moments of catharsis where there is a sense of breakdown, and that sense of breakdown often is in the context of of retrieving – it was, for me at least, retrieving something very very deep and hidden for many, many years, and retrieving that and working with it, and then letting it go after it's on the page. There is this sense of, at least for me, tremendous release. And so I found myself at many points of the writing process for this last book breaking down and needing to step away and take a very long nap, or just cry. And also, when I was writing about certain individuals that I became close to during fieldwork, I similarly would sometimes break down crying. Crying is something that I unfortunately feel like I do too much of when I'm writing, but it is a wonderful way of letting go, and I think writing can be that space, too.

But there's writing to the point of breaking in “the experience.” That was the goal. And when I'm working, I don't know about you, but if I hit a groove I won't leave my computer, sometimes 8 hours can pass, and time stops in those moments of what I feel is like cathartic writing most of the time. It's very laborious and difficult, but when I'm in that space of what I've come to understand as a cathartic writing practice, time does go away. And my kids would be like knocking on the door like, “Mama, come eat something!” and I would be like, “No, I'm in my… I'm here, and I'm letting it all out.” And it feels really hard at the time. But then there's this tremendous sense of release, and I had a lot of moments like that in this last book.

But I'm writing about “the experience” now. I'm writing about that kind of writing practice that I did in that therapeutic setting. But I'm thinking about what can we learn from it as writers? Because it was such a powerful modality of writing, and I think one of the things that I learned, it was the sense of community that was around that supported the practice of writing, supported me writing through the night. That nocturnal writing practice kept me awake, kept me going, and I think that as professors, as mentors, we can be in that role, albeit very differently. But to have writing be more of a collective practice, too, to me was also very cathartic, because it took me away a little bit from the loneliness of the experiences that I was writing about. And I felt a sense of community during the experience. And I'm trying to figure out, how might I be able to cultivate that for myself and for others? Taking the lessons that I learned from “the experience” into a more everyday practice. And I've pushed myself to try to replicate the writing through the night. It hasn't worked. It's just not the same, but what is the same, I think, is those long extended periods of writing where time does stop. And then eventually you come to some kind of end, and you just break down. And that does happen for me a lot. It does happen.

HW: I'm so excited to hear that you're writing about this and what other writers can take from that experience without having to go through “the experience,” because it really struck me – all 3 of us, since we teach other people how writing can be better. I was just thinking about exactly what you said, the community aspect. [In “the experience”] there's the fact of other people writing at the same time as you, and you describe that connection. But then there's also, as you said, the practical, logistical support – they bring you coffee, they bring you snacks. And then what I found so moving about it was the role of the helper and the listener. This other person who is your audience, right there in front of you, repeating this and reading this as you're writing. Obviously that's hard for others to replicate, but just that idea of – there is another person who is going to read this, and who is going to respond to this.

AG: Absolutely. I think that we can try to create those spaces to the best of our ability – writing retreats, writing groups, even writing in a cafe, which I can't do personally, but I know that a lot of people need that. It is a sense of community, but also… when I have been able to go on writing workshops – and I've only gone to a few, I would love to go to more – there are people taking care of you. They're feeding you. They're telling you to take a break. They're talking to you, or they're not. And at night they're asking how things went during the day. We need more of that, I think, because otherwise, the figure of the solitary writer – which is sometimes how I feel – I also know now that there's this other way, and one of the things that was so striking to me about “the experience” was the demand to go deeper and deeper and deeper into this thing that they were calling truth and vulnerability and to not hold things back, and to have someone there who could sense… you know, my helpers, when I was maybe not going far enough. Their reading back to me, I could hear myself from the perspective of another. And I could be like, Yeah, you're right. I'm protecting myself right now. I'm not being vulnerable, and it's 3 o'clock in the morning. Why am I holding anything back? And so okay, here it comes. And then they would just be like, “Okay, keep going. Just keep going. Here's some coffee.” And then I would. Then daybreak would happen, and it would be done. It's a remarkable practice. And for me to see all of these people who will never be writers in the traditional sense, but who are truly writing their stories, often to be burned at the very end of the experience, really provides a whole other perspective on what writing can be, how it takes place, how it's enacted, but also where does it go? It goes, in this case, into oblivion. But it doesn't mean that it's not writing, and doesn't mean that it didn't happen, and the stories weren't there. A couple of people who were in “the experience” with me on another “experience” I went on [gave] me their writing that they had created throughout those 3 nights. So I'm looking at that. And I'm trying to… not analyze it, but trying to think with it, and to really think about what “the experience” can afford us in terms of thinking about our own ethnographic writing practices, and the importance of community, the importance of – like what you guys are doing with the Substack, you know, people are hungry for community, I think. And so this is another forum. “The experience” is one version, and there are so many others. And I think we need to be really deliberate about creating those spaces.

HW: Yes, I love that. I think that's a great great note to end on – community, with maybe less of the sleep deprivation.

RP: Yeah, that too.

HW: Yeah, if it works, it works.

KVD: The sleep deprivation part sounds very ritualistic, almost like religious practice, more spiritual, which… sometimes there has to be this physical hardship involved in order to achieve…

AG: Yeah, yeah. And just one more thing about that. Because I was so moved by… these are people who may have a 3rd grade education, maybe. And so the helper and the listener were that much more important in giving the writer confidence that they could do this. I often see, when I've gone on these experiences – I've gone on three now – women, almost all women who can't write, but who are speaking to their helper and their listener, who are transcribing for them, and to me that was the most beautiful symbol of what writing could be – to have that community and multiple voices working together, to create an autobiography of a person. I think about it and it still gives me chills because it was just a really beautiful vision of what writing could be.

HW: That also really stood out to me. And I loved the fact that even for those who aren't physically writing themselves, they are still considered writers and part of the writing experience. I think that label of writer is so meaningful and holds so much power for people, and it's so important that it also gets shared with those who can't physically write, but can write their story in other ways.

AG: Right? I'm glad that that stuck out for folks.

HW: Among many things. I wish we had all day to just chat about the book. But thank you again so much.

RP: I have one more selfish question: recommendations. What is on your bedside table? What are you reading?

AG: Well, I'm always reading. I'm going back to [W. G.] Sebald and I'm also reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf again, and I'm finding it very difficult. But I love her experimentality. There's another book, Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, which is amazing. And Orlando, which is remarkable and hard, but such an important book, and I always go back to Sebald, who I teach a lot in my classes. And Frank O'Hara, who's a poet. I read his work quite a bit. I have the collected works of Frank O'Hara that I look at quite often just to think about the importance of a sentence, and how much a sentence can do, and how they can build upon each other and create an image. I'm very interested in that. Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharp is something that I'm teaching right now. It's very experimental. It's really a beautiful book, with a lot of images in it, so I'm interested in the way photography and narrative can work together, and she does a really great job. So I read for different reasons. But right now Orlando and Nightwood are just… They're not pleasure reading, because they're both really difficult. But they teach me. I read a lot of women writers, and I prioritize women writers deliberately. And I'm just astonished by the creativity and the chances that they both took as writers in that time that they were writing, they were really radical, and I gain a lot of courage from them. So that's one of the reasons why I read both of their works. I highly recommend Nightwood, if you haven't read it yet.

Angela Garcia, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, is an anthropologist and writer. Her first book, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande, received the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and PEN Center USA’s University of California Exceptional First Book Award. Her second book, The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos, was published by Farar, Straus and Giroux in 2024.