An Interview with Hilton Als

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Were you a secretive child? Did you see sharing as a form of sacrifice?

Hilton Als. Oh, that’s a strange great question. In those days, being a queer child made you secretive as it was not something that you could share without becoming mistreated. I was mistreated. I couldn’t change anything about my queerness but I could choose how I was sharing, how I was protecting myself. I wanted to be generous. Therefore, writing became a treasured offering, a way of communicating out of isolation: I was telling people who I was but at a distance.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. It seems as though you were very mediated: deciding what to withhold, what to disclose. Do you now see this young version of yourself as an almost literary being, editing yourself, exaggerating certain qualities?

Mediation is subconscious yet wildly supplementary to the process of writing, and I don’t know: most of my literacy training was social reading, becoming fluent in what people want, what their gestures mean, guessing what me people are alright with. But that buries the self, so it makes writing more difficult in time . . .

Hilton Als. I think you are getting at signifying and scanning. It is a self-burial, but it’s also emboldening. Very emboldening. We must read people, we attain fluency through these close readings.

I do think as a child I was learning how to mediate. This selective communication and subway and bus eavesdropping were very educational. As a reporter, later, I also learned how to listen but not intrude on the listening, preserving my point of view about what was happening while making room in my mind for other people. I knew how to be there but not there. When I began writing, I would try to build something out of that oneness, which is not really oneness: the subject is projecting; I’m being projected on. I had to figure out where the truth is in that exchange.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Definitely, it’s like squinting to sharpen your vision. Me, I am an enormous eavesdropper, too. Throughout adolescence, from eleven onwards, I worked these monotonous deadening menial jobs, and my co-workers and I told such ridiculous stories; we were amused by anything. In the early days I was somewhat extinguished spiritually, I’m a very conclusive person so I thought my life would amount to this, serving people all day, then, in time, faith returned. I don’t know: I think storytelling is a kind of spiritual weaponry. A couple is bickering, and they’re bickering in Creole, then the woman steps on the man’s foot and throws away his food: she’s won the fight. A little little child comes in and buys a cheese pizza, eats it in a hurry, then runs out: he’s on the run!

Hilton Als. Oh it is. It really is. All writing is defending yourself against dehumanization. In another life we work together. Wouldn’t that be a pleasure?

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoyian. What fate would get us in the same workplace? I’ll think about this.

I’m wondering when you exited adolescence and began living alone, did you feel as though you began to inhabit yourself, and act as you are? Were you Hilton on the street, Hilton at work, and Hilton in your room?

Hilton Als. One of the most positive things about this experience with you is I am returning to who I once was. It wasn’t then when that happened. Yes, it was easier to connect to lovers because you don’t have to be someone else in your own home; you don’t mediate there. And on the street, I wasn’t Hilton but a human. In New York, we are all humans outside. But still, I had scars of the past—I was bringing those hindrances into many free spaces of love and friendship. I don’t think I felt free until relatively recently.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. You are human in New York. It is such a triumphant experience to be solely human, to be self-forgetful! If you didn’t feel free until relatively recently, how did that freedom to be Hilton happen? How did you bring your inner self to the surface?

Hilton Als. Thinking of that Joan Didion line, “Write more, write better.” The daily practice of writing makes you speak in a certain way. You begin to develop a sense of who you are beneath what you do. Writing is the articulation of the self: it forces you to face yourself.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. I began this line of questioning because I’ve just started to possess privacy, and my identity is growing representative of my interior. It’s somewhat devastating to hear that you’ve recently achieved a unification of the two. But it’s also exciting.

Hilton Als. It is exciting, right? It takes a long time to tell the truth. It would be a lie to single out a threshold, to say, Yes, once I left home, I was free and myself. I didn’t have the opportunity to speak as I am.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. I think translating yourself is so hard, it demands the development of a speech that is solely your own, which demands a digging. And you need an ease with being audible, you know, out there. Heard. I don’t know if I want to be heard.

Arriving at yourself seems simultaneous to arriving at a personal style. Who lent you a hand in this arrival—are there any artists you imitated that helped you learn how to tell the truth, who unearthed the you inside?

Hilton Als. Yes, that’s the beauty of contact with art, that it brings the many yous out, too. Artists that I looked toward had a more realistic view that the self was a myriad place, that there were many stories within. Proust was a big influence because he wrote about how the self is always shifting. There were queer authors that spoke to me about this weird situation of articulating the self, too. James Baldwin, James Merill, they struggled and knew that the truth wasn’t totemic, but fragments of fracture that you’re trying to piece together.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Tell me more.

Hilton Als. I particularly love a little Proust essay called “On Reading.” It begins with him at home as a kid, reading and becoming disturbed by a call to the dinner table. He has such an incredible way of speaking about our interiority. I go back to this Norman Mailer piece titled The White Negro, too, in which he discusses hip hop and how if you’re a hipster, a white guy, you must revere blackness. It’s one of the most hilarious essays I’ve ever read, written in the ’60s, which reminds me that the appropriation of Black culture is something that we’ve had for hundreds of years. I also enjoy rereading James Baldwin’s essays on Richard Wright. They’re very important in helping me understand how we talk about love. If we can talk about love, we can talk honestly about the self.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Yes. You become so conscious of yourself when you love someone. I study French, and in my last semester in University there will be a seminar reading all of  À la recherche du temps perdu, so I hope I’ll write to you in two years, having all sorts of Proust thoughts.

Hilton Als. I’ll be ready to receive the message in two years.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. You know, I’m amazed by your audacity, too, it’s not an audacity that sets things aflame, calls attention to itself, it is honest, speaking without restraint—this might be redundant, but how did you become so outright?

Hilton Als. Well, I think I always knew my mother loved me, beyond how I behaved. Before, we were talking about becoming yourself and saying, Oh, that takes a long time. For a while, for me, writing was my way of being in the world; how I became outright, a complete figure. To live on the page was to be with myself and other people at the same time—it was such an incredible feeling of accomplishment to be a whole self somewhere.  It was also a way of existing honestly. If I couldn’t do it at home, at least I had this space that felt free.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. It’s a dwelling. I’m so glad you had this dwelling as a young person, and the reader kind of becomes a companion to this complete you there. Or is the reader a companion? Do you want that? In your mind, where is your reader located: are they at your bedside, alongside you, above, an eyewitness?

Hilton Als. I never thought of that before. In a dream world, you want them to kind of lie down next to you. You tell stories, and they lay there and listen. I want them near; I don’t have to know them particularly well. They just have to be kind. To love me a little.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. When you say love, I remember your essay, “Tristes Tropiques,” where you refuse to reveal the gender of your beloved, instead writing “Sir or Lady.” For me, it was reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” which doesn’t clarify the race of the two friends. You both subject the reader to an experiment, suggesting that certain information is not only unnecessary, but the reader’s insistence—obsession—with identifying the gender or race, is strange. Why did you obscure your friend’s identity; was it a personal choice, provocation, or perhaps a form of love? Do you see value in disregarding terms such as gender, race, and sexuality?

Hilton Als. Yes—it’s sexier outside of them! You are operating in air, a freer space. I used “Sir or Lady” as a way of conveying to the reader who I thought he was—he wasn’t bifurcated, he contained strong masculine tendencies and feminine ones, too. If I were to have said, He was mostly straight, yet had experiences with men, that would’ve been narratively too conservative to express what I knew to be true. Why couldn’t he be many things at once, as opposed to one? I had seen him struggle with definitions. And it was a conscious choice to make a world where he is free. I really do believe we have to be as free as we can be on the page. It’s such an opportunity to be liberated. If we have that opportunity, if we can make it for ourselves, we must take it.

You asked about gift-giving before. You’re making me feel as though the invention of a “Sir or Lady” was a gift to him about him: I was able to see him but also give him a language that was loving and protective. I never thought about it until you asked me that question. I always feel guilty after I’ve published something as if maybe I’ve gone too far, but when I’m writing, this never occurs to me, my doubt is suspended. And then my writing enters the world and young people like you ask me questions and I’m amazed. I had no idea what I was doing!

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian: It was a gift! When you invented this loving, protective language, were you looking to social theory, or other novelists, or essays, or were you drafting in the dark, untangling his ambiguity on its own terms?

Hilton Als. The truth that inspires me on the page has a lot to do with the ambiguities—not ambivalences—where there’s something being shaded in. My writing is trying to say the shaded parts. I find I’m too dumb for social theory. I haven’t been able to grasp it. Instead, I look for the emotional resonance everywhere: it could be a painting; music, mostly, shows me how to get tone and balance.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. I love that you said you believe yourself too dumb for theory; both because you are one of the most intelligent people I’ve encountered, and because I believe we all have mediums which work best for us, that has no bearing on our intellect. It is hard to be honest about this as theory feels so cerebral, and of course at present the cerebral is most valued in the United States.

You once claimed that no memoir is true, but rather, an account of consciousness, a way of reporting on one’s soul and situation. How troubled are you by the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, especially considering how so much of your writing has hearsay, gossip, borrowed myths.

Hilton Als. Increasingly I feel less and less bound by those distinctions. I think that I never did—and that was just the way I wrote. When people began categorizing writing, I felt it was amazing. I wouldn’t be able to parse it, pick autobiography or fiction; to me, it’s just language. Whatever the language does to you is amazing. One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of a real countess, but there’s so much fictional feeling—he’s making her a character in his imagined drama. There’s the resonance of truth and the freedom of fiction.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. In The Women, how did you approach excavating silence and unspoken truths, especially within your family and friends, while respecting privacy? Your primary tense is hypothetical — did you need the “freedom of fiction” to pry open the doors to the past?

Hilton Als. I think I was trying to tell stories. As opposed to the straight truth, I shaped everything around the emotional truth. My friend once pointed it out, and she said, You do it throughout the section, you say, This may or may not be factual. You keep qualifying things, throwing the rusty wrench of fact in there. I think she’s right—I wanted the reader to know it was a story about feelings and impressions.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. You assign such value to ambiguity, which is great since most critics prioritize incisiveness, it’s invasive and resembles the stone-faced dissection of scientists.

Hilton Als. I wish I had more patience to be a real scholar of something, but I’m happy to be a person who shades things in.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. What place shame, guilt, and atonement have in your writings?

Hilton Als. I think when I feel shame about something—an experience, a desire—then I know it’s worth writing because, if I write it, the shame will be transformed into a tool, something I can use in order to tell the truth, as opposed to hiding. If everybody eluded the things that make them ashamed we would be in trouble. Because what holds society together is the truths we express.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. This reminds me of when Annie Ernaux wrote, in Shame, that she wanted to write the sort of book that is impossible to discuss afterward, that would make her unable to withstand others’ gaze. It’s such a strange, paradoxical wish to want to reveal these dark parts of yourself with such accuracy that you go silent. But it’s extraordinary that this is her pursuit, your pursuit.

Your memoirs are deceptive, though—you appear forthcoming, unafraid when mentioning things that could elicit shame. How is that anxiety not on the page?

Hilton Als. I haven’t read Shame, now I would like to. The discipline of writing has a lot to do with pleasure, what brings the writer pleasure. The shape of it must be a pleasure, bringing this aesthetic beauty to the world, to yourself. I’m always aware of how it sounds, which has to do with my love of music. I think the writer also must take pleasure in the feelings, the confusion and shame. It can’t be spoken with anxiety, once you start writing you must try to do away cowardice.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. I want to talk about cowardice but not today. You mention the aesthetic qualities of a piece—what is the relationship between aesthetics and politics for you?

Hilton Als. There’s a lot I could say about cowardice. But aesthetics, aesthetics are everywhere, right? We live not unaware of what we look like, where we’re sitting. We are always aware of where in the world we are when we talk about politics. We are aware of shapes and forms, possibilities of architecture and behavior. The aesthetic is always there, always inside the political. We’re also not thinkers without being political. The shape of the writing is based on the temperature of the inner life of the writer and what they’re experiencing in the external world. You can’t divorce any of it, it’s one.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Do you find that intellectualizing art—thinking too hard about what it’s accomplishing, putting all the unsayable on the page—desensualizes it?

Hilton Als. Yes, intellect kills the sensuality, doesn’t it? It dampens the sensuous aspect of artmaking, while also trying to equal, or outpower the art.We have to remember that one of the things that we love about art is that it makes us feel differently about ourselves. It is not a definitive project. As a critic, I’d rather go to the source. There’s more pleasure. I think it allows for the humanity of it. One of the things that is so beautiful about artmaking is that it's a really humane response to living. I could be theoretical about the art but that’s not true to what it is—it was made by someone, who is sharing themselves with the world.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. What critics lured you into criticism, like they were daring you to join the conversation?

Hilton Als. They are always great storytellers and stylists. Edwin Denby, dance critic; Elizabeth Hardwick, literary critic; Julian Bell, art critic; Charles Baudelaire, art critic. These are all critics whose work has a great deal to do with their personality—they don’t write about something so far removed that they have an authority or fake distance. They have their opinion, but also their feelings. V.S. Pritchett, literary critic.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. What experiences most led you to have the eye you presently look at things with?

Hilton Als. I think prolonged yearning, the desire for love. I am a loving person. I can’t escape my own heart.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. It’s strange to say but from the way you speak you can almost feel the immensity of your heart, it’s beating in speech, too. I’m working on not believing love to be scarce. Meeting you has been proof of that a little. You make it seem far easier to be loved. I am surprised that you took to essays and criticisms instead of poetry, poetry seems to naturally align with your sensibility.

Hilton Als. I’m moved by that question: let me live in it for a minute.

I think it has to do with mentorship. If I had been mentored by a poet or knew what that was I would’ve been a poet. But it’s never too late, is it? I would like to try. I do try. I’ve never published any of it—I always felt I needed to study poetry, know the rules of poetic form, before I could be a poet. We’ve just met but I doubt you will have trouble being loved.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. My greatest ambition is to have lasting romantic love. I don’t know many woman that have been blessed in this way. You know, I’m so surprised by you mentioning mentorship, considering how you seem like someone who would never be interested in learning any rules or having any teacher.

Hilton Als. I know. Isn’t that weird? What do you recommend? That I try a little every day?

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Yes. You could also try to translate things you’ve written to poetry. I feel prose functions similarly to a nervous system, the sensations are all in communication, listening to one another, dependent. In poetry, it’s as though each nerve was set free, and then they’re simultaneous but not bound. It’s a symphony of nerves, they’re jazz sensations. And in poetry you won’t have to identify speaker, subjects. That’s freeing, too. We’re past enforcing rhythmic patterns, though you can still take them on.

I’m still so surprised, astonished seriously, to hear that not pursuing poetry was an incident. I never think of poetry as exclusive, but it depends on what you read, whether or not you’re exposed to it at a young age. How does this make you feel?

Hilton Als. Well, this is one of the most profound questions I’ve ever received. It makes me less ashamed and want to write poetry more.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Oh no. Don’t say all that, I didn’t intend to.

I’m wondering, now, how you see the relationship between mentorship and a writers’ perception of their abilities. I never would have thought you wouldn’t write poetry because you weren’t didn’t meet a poet. But I guess the writers I’ve met in college, the people who are in The Advocate and The Crimson, they made me, they shook my narrow understanding of who I was permitted to be.

Hilton Als. There’s that wonderful thing that Toni Morrison would walk into her class on the first day and say that she started writing fiction when she was older than most people. She would wave her hand and shout, I give you all permission. You’re giving me permission to do poetry. I’m moved by this.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Did you ever feel as though you needed permission to write essays or criticism, as though someone had to say something, some invitation had to be gestured to. I mean: has permission always been a precondition to a form for you?

Hilton Als. I was mentored by a gay man who was interested in culture, therefore, I started writing about culture. Always, I knew the form was very literal, limiting. My stories were a mixture of these things you’re identifying—and that was how I could be free. But I think what you’re telling me is, I can free myself even further and write the way I want to write in poems, prose poems.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Do you consider freedom terminal, or that a body of work is the attempt for that? I mean, I think Ishmael Reed is free. Derek Walcott was free. Toni Morrison and Lauren Hansberry, hopefully, died feeling to some extent free.

Hilton Als. I think what you’re talking about is how artists of color often feel that they have to earn the freedom as opposed to just assuming that we’re free and that we can act however. What you’re saying to me is that you don’t need any permission, that it’s present on the page.

Victoria Amani Mwaniki Kishoiyian. Something that makes me sad is that I figure that these writers were free because of their works. I believe the writer of Mumbo Jumbo should have felt free upon standing up and staring at his creation. Same with Omeros, A Raisin in the Sun, Beloved. I wonder if it’s those ideas, the texts themselves, that are free—and the writer, upon finishing, no longer possesses freedom. Almost as though it’s a liminal space, which convinces writers to continue writing.

Hilton Als. That’s brilliant. It's an eternal return: you want to go back and understand not so much what you’ve done but what you want to do, what you’re capable of doing. The eternal return is always about possibility and despair—you’re never finished. There’s a great deal of joy in that, too. The prospect of being a different self with this project. That’s an extraordinary thing you’re saying. It is true.