In the middle of this August, the debut collection that I spent a third of my life on will take the shelves. This is supposed to be a glamorous time, the stuff reveries are made of. I am supposed to fall forward in literary bliss. Let the rose petals shower over my hunched back. But instead I am tense and on guard. I find myself plagued by more worries than usual. I am not soaking in as much celebratory mist as I should. Too many things are getting in the way.
For one, I’m having a hard time with interview questions. It seems that people want to know about my upbringing and how it relates to my subject matter. Did I really grow up poor? Did I really live near the people I portray? I feel fake when I answer. I have resigned myself to this game of validation. It’s the ultimate irony. Testifying my poverty to the well-off for their stamp of approval.
I read an article about Robert DeNiro in GQ back in the day. The whole thing was about how he doesn’t like giving interviews. It was supposed to be a profile piece, but he wouldn’t answer questions, so the author had to get creative. I remember thinking, Just answer the questions, Robert DeNiro. Now I understand.
I feared that one day I would have to deal with this contradiction. This urge to be both public and private.
I don’t want to answer interview questions about my book.
–or do I?
I am a shy person, often painfully shy. The pandemic, as horrible as it was, gave me an excuse to be my true recluse self. But I write publicly now. When I was teasing out my stories, I was always hounded by the thought: if you’re such a private person, Sidik, why don’t you just write and show nobody or just show family and friends? Why did you send it to an MFA program? Why did you submit it to a workshop? To an agent? And now to the world? If you’re so shy, why do you dabble in art, a thing that some would say needs another person’s eyes to truly exist? I didn’t have to answer those questions before.
I’m in a weird spot now. I want people to read my book, but I also want to be left alone and I don’t know how to reconcile the two. There are publishing professionals advocating for me everyday and I hang on to their every utterance. I am presented via email with all these opportunities for appearances and I devour each hungrily. I love the idea of them, but I also dread them, dread having to open myself naked in an interview. But then the interview comes and I enjoy it, oh, so much—until the …….
Source: https://lithub.com/sidik-fofana-on-balancing-shyness-with-being-in-the-public-eye/