To be tall is to take up space, something seen as anathema to traditional notions of femininity, Susan Swan writes in her new memoir.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
The goddesses and amazons of ancient Greece were often depicted as tall to symbolize their power, majesty and divine presence. But between those gals and the dawn of the age of supermodels, in the eighties and nineties, tall women have often had a rough go of it.
That was certainly true for the novelist Susan Swan, 80. By the age of 12, the author had already reached her full adult height of 6 foot 2 – a stature that often made her the target of jokes and public ridicule in her hometown of Midland, Ont. (her doctor-father’s 6-foot-5 frame, in contrast, commanded authority and respect).
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Though her discovery of feminism, performance art and fiction writing would eventually help Swan get comfortable in her own skin, as she writes in her new memoir, Big Girls Don’t Cry, to be tall is to take up space, something seen as anathema to traditional notions of femininity. The Globe spoke to Swan at her home in Toronto.
In her introduction, Margaret Atwood takes credit for suggesting you write a memoir about your height. I assume that’s true, but it’s also the case that one of your first novels was about the unrelated real-life giantess Anna Swan. Was she an avatar for you?
Initially I thought writing about my height was a goofy idea. But then I realized that my life actually had been following the pattern of my character, because like Anna, I was always searching for a place where I fit.
She had quite a glamorous life for someone who was basically a hick from the backwoods of Nova Scotia. Barnum paid her $1,000 a month – just astronomical then for a farmer’s daughter, but I think he exhausted her. And everywhere she went didn’t work out. She got engaged to the Kentucky Giant. But that didn’t really work out, because the English treated them as colonial novelties. She went to Seville, Ohio, to retire, and the locals saw her as a rich businesswoman. They never really fit into the community, so there was this constant search for the place where you belonged.
I’ve had better results because the obstacles aren’t so debilitating. I mean, Anna could never have worked out an acceptance of her body in the culture of Victorian times, where women were supposed to be petite. She was a parody of what they considered a woman. I probably secretly thought I was going to grow up and be Anna Swan. Be what was considered then a freak. A part of my psyche saw myself as not just tall, but abnormal.
I didn’t understand that memoir is a bit like a quest novel, in that sense. I was searching for the place I fit, like Anna. And I didn’t really realize that until I considered the idea about writing about my size.
When you were a child, you write that you tried to hide your “shameful” body. Then later, when you got involved in performance art, you were literally going on stage naked. How did that experience help you?
I would go into these new environments looking for something to help me deal with my height and to become myself. And the underground performance art scene in Toronto in the seventies was an exciting cultural time. The idea wasn’t to project a perfect piece of theatre, but to give the audience an experience that would change their way of looking at the world.
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I was a terrible performance artist. When I look back, I was just awkward. But I was game. I was getting something out of it, and I was understanding for the first time that when you sat down to write, you didn’t have to turn out a perfect, polished manuscript the first go.
Hugh MacLennan was my creative writing teacher at McGill, and I never finished the stories I wrote for him. He would say, “Miss Swan, well, why can’t you finish?” And I realized I just had this terrible fear of my work being judged. Doing performance art helped with that. I performed one poem naked at Hart House. It shattered a lot of constraints that I had put on myself.
You write about not seeing the personal power that you had back then, in that same era. That you and your artist friends were “lured by the power of being a female victim,” which has obvious resonance with what’s called victim culture these days.
I was struck by the way younger feminists, especially during the #MeToo movement, used their vulnerability as a weapon. They weren’t afraid to admit they were vulnerable as women, and that vulnerability was part of their arsenal of tools to get change. Whereas my generation were trying to be like men, to be accepted in the workplace. To be dominant, aggressive in putting ourselves forward.
You would never, back in the seventies, have wanted to use your vulnerability as an activist tool. But they did, and I became good friends with some of them during the [Steven] Galloway controversy, and we’ve had lots of discussions about this. They found a way around this dilemma: That when you become aware, as a young woman, that you don’t have as much power as men, that there’s a sort of strength in that that you can use. It was horrifying to older feminists, but looking at it really objectively, there was a kind of purpose in it, and it was quite effective.
Writer Susan Swan, second left, stands with other girls who tied for intermediate honours at Midland Public Schools. A part of my psyche saw myself as not just tall, but abnormal, Swan says.Supplied
In the nineties you decamped for New York – you describe Canada at the time as being a “go-along box.” Tell me about the liberation you found there.
Canada was still quite traditional and Victorian. And I was this weird anomaly: a writer who did performance art, which was frowned on by the theatre community.
By “go-along box” I mean you don’t make any complaints, you just accept things as they are. I wanted to go to a place where there was more freedom of thought – which is so ironic now – more room to be unconventional as a writer. I found what I was looking for in New York: the sense that, if you’re going to write, be yourself fully in your writing and celebrate what makes you unique. One of America’s gifts to the world is the celebration of the individuals and their uniqueness. We’ve lost that with [Donald] Trump, because he has such a narrow definition of America.
My Presbyterian background was about, you don’t make a show of yourself. It’s sort of disgraceful. So that was really liberating. I got to know Gordon Lish, and writers like Diane Williams and Amy Hempel, who all seemed to be going for it without worrying about whether they were making shows of themselves. That was a wonderful literary time in New York City. America at its best.
And of course the Carol Shields Prize, which you co-founded, is bi-national. What’s that been like with everything that’s going on politically lately?
The prize has created a feminist community of like-minded people of all different generations. One thing that our societies don’t do is let there be enough interaction between the generations. But in this prize, young women writers, non-binary authors meet older, seasoned authors, or older women advocates. It’s exciting because there are differences of views, but we somehow work it out.
Through the Carol Shields Prize I’m getting a portal into what’s great about America and what’s great about Canada. It’s a really successful initiative that really stands out right now. So that inspires me. Everybody just comes away from one of these events rejuvenated.
