Interview with Marla Taviano, author of whole
Excerpts with permission by the author
Interview by Cait West
Last year, I wrote a review for the blog about Marla Taviano’s poetry. The first two books in her trilogy (unbelieve and jaded) were out at the time, and they meant so much to me as someone who has experienced faith deconstruction and spiritual abuse. And now, just in time for National Poetry Month, Marla has released her third book of poetry: whole: poems on reclaiming the pieces of ourselves and creating something new. It is fantastic, and I know it will help a lot of people feel seen. Marla agreed to do an interview with me, and I love her insights on poetry, healing, and wholeness.
Cait West: You’ve written several books before when you were an evangelical. Why do you think you’ve used poetry to process deconstruction and life after evangelicalism, rather than a different genre?
Marla Taviano: I keep meaning to write up a really good answer for “why poetry?” and never do, lol. I think it’s a combination of things. I’ve always written about my life—marriage, motherhood, unschooling, missions, etc.—in prose and thought I’d do the same with my deconstruction. But my beliefs were changing faster than I could write. Then we moved back to the States in the middle of a pandemic and my husband left unexpectedly. And somehow that big, unwieldy memoir got chopped up and whittled down and carved into bite-size chunks I called poems.
It might also have something to do with the fact that I read 250 books a year and have a million more I don’t have time to read. I often feel overwhelmed by how many words are out there in the world. I wanted something that would hold people’s attention and that they could read quickly. Poetry fits the bill.
I also have a poem that says, “when everyone wants you to explain yourself, poetry is an act of resistance.” I felt like my new, freer way of seeing the world needed a new, freer form of writing. And I found that in poetry.
CW: In your poem: “what to do when,” you write:
“god things”
keep happening
but you haven’t been
praying a lick?
you find a new
definition of god
I love how you subvert “Christianese” to say something new from your own perspective. Can you tell us a little about how you find new meaning for old language?
MT: That has been really tricky. And also fun. Language is weird. It’s hard to communicate well with people who have different ideas of what words mean. (I lived in Cambodia for five years and “learned” the language, so I have a lot of experience here.) I have many friends who were formerly evangelical Christians like me and there’s this odd jargon we all know, so sometimes it’s easier to just use the same phrases, like “a god thing,” but add a knowing burst of laughter after it. Like we know, when we say “god thing,” we’re referring to something that happened that seems so beautifully and wildly coincidental and synchronistic and perfectly timed that it almost has to be otherworldly or magical, so we say “god thing” because “so beautifully and wildly coincidental and synchronistic and perfectly timed that it almost has to be otherworldly or magical” is a mouthful.
Like what do you say when you want someone to know you care about their pain, but “I’m praying for you” doesn’t work anymore because you don’t know what you believe about prayer? My friend Katy tells me she’s sending up “anti-prayers” on my behalf.
I like how you call it “subverting Christianese” and that’s something I think I’ll be doing for a long while. People have been reclaiming language forever, and I think it’s really cool.
CW: All three of your poetry books use quotes from other writers interspersed throughout, placing their words into poetic lines. Do you remember when you first started doing this? What do you like about this form?
MT: In 2017, I started a Bookstagram account called @whitegirllearning where I read and review books by Black and Indigenous authors and other authors of color. It’s really, really important to me that we white folks wake up to the fact that most of what we’ve read our whole lives has been by white authors and that needs to change for a whole lot of reasons. So one of my big goals in life is to get people to read diversely. One way I can encourage that is by introducing these authors right inside my poems by using their words and hopefully sparking people’s interest. I know it’s working because people tell me about all the books they’re buying and reading because they learned about them in my books.
I don’t necessarily have a lot of “original” thoughts. I’m inspired by what I read, and then I take pieces of that and put it all together in what could be considered an “original” way.
CW: Your poem “inherent dignity” really speaks to me because it addresses how toxic theology can damage your self-worth:
I can’t think of many things
I want more than for my kids
to have a sense of self-worth,
to like themselves a whole lot
can’t say I got this message in
church where I was told I was a
wretched sinner which is ironic
what with the verse about being
fearfully and wonderfully made
and an origin story about god
creating every damn thing and
calling it all very good
What would you say to spiritual abuse survivors who are struggling with self-esteem and feeling worthy of love after being taught these things?
MT: This is such a huge deal to me. More than anything in the world, I want people to know that they are wonderful and beautiful and lovable, just as they are. My new book is aaaaallll about people finding wholeness, and I hope it helps people see themselves as worthy of love and wholeness when they read my words. I’m on a mission to uplift and encourage people in any way I can, to help them see that the parts of themselves they were told to hide or pray away are some of the most incredibly beautiful things about them. I want to celebrate people’s skin color and body size and gender identity and sexual orientation and neurodiversity and anything else that people told them was “wrong” or “bad” or “sinful.” Sometimes people who have deconstructed get told that we’re just against everything and not for anything. I’m definitely against a lot of things, and I’m also all for freedom and equality and love and beauty and wholeness. For everyone.
Marla Taviano (she/her/hers) is into: books, love, justice, globes, anti-racism, blue, gray, rainbows, poems (and a hundred other things). Reads and writes for a living (and a life). Mom to some freaking awesome kids. Wears her heart on her t-shirts. On a mission/ quest/ journey to live wholefarted (not a typo). (Big fan of parenthesis and em dashes.)
Cait West is a member of Tears of Eden’s Editorial Board. She focuses on writing about the patriarchal movement and how patriarchy influences Spiritual Abuse. Find her at caitwest.com and on Instagram and Twitter at @caitwestwrites.
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