Not for men only - Bookshelf - author and journalist Jill Nelson - Interview

Best-selling author and journalist Jill Nelson is well known as a bold truth-teller with a wicked sense of humor. She is the author of Volunteer Slavery, which won an American Book Award, and Straight, No Chaser, and also is the editor of the anthology Police Brutality. In her first novel, SEXUAL HEALING (Agate, $23.95), she devotes all of her writing talents, observation skills and uncanny ear for dialogue to a unique and controversial premise--a brothel for women--that is likely to make her book the must-have summer read for 2003.

Nelson uses this idea--what would happen if two Black businesswomen started a male brothel for Black women--and uses this set-up to spin a post-feminist fable of sexual empowerment that's smart, explicit and side-splittingly funny. In fact, the book ought to come with a label warning those fresh out of surgery or with severe medical issues to beware before reading this book. Writer Ishmael Reed hailed Nelson's first foray into the fiction genre: "In Sexual Healing, Jill Nelson brings her formidable wit to fiction. She pulls the covers off of American sex, demolishing hypocrisy and double standards with a pen wielded like a stiletto, drawing blood on every page;" he says.

Nelson, who teaches journalism City College of New York, plans to write more fiction in the future, including a sequel to Sexual Healing. In a freewheeling interview, she talked with

EBONY about writing.

EBONY: How was it writing a novel? To this point you've made your reputation writing nonfiction.

JN: It was hard because I'm so used to writing nonfiction and working as a journalist, where you are always limited by the truth. But once I realized that little truth sensor was not operative, it was really freeing. It was a really exciting way to stretch my writing.

EBONY: All of your books are distinguished by humor and this one is no exception. What's your take on how you use humor and satire to tell this story?

JN: I always use humor in my work. As a writer, I often use humor as a way to discuss subjects that we'd all just rather avoid. If I can get readers laughing along with me, they're more likely to come with me on a journey into places they otherwise wouldn't.

EBONY: Was Marvin Gaye's hit "Sexual Healing" the source for your title?

JN: Absolutely. Music defines my life and the lives of many people. Good music is eternal. My first book title was Volunteer Slavery, a song by Roland Kirk, my second was Straight, No Chaser, a song by Thelonious Monk. The book title was a no-brainer.

EBONY: Do you write in longhand or do you use a computer?

JN: I use a computer, early in the morning. I finished the new book by getting up at 4:30 in the morning. I have a busy day. I teach, and it's really quiet in the morning, no phone, no e-mails, nothing.

EBONY: Your book deals with some pretty highly charged content. What's your response to critics who may be uncomfortable with its explicit content?

JN: Welcome to the 21st century--and we're late--get over it. One of the functions of art is to make people uncomfortable in order to make them think, and that often means confronting and unmasking stereotypes. Sexual Healing is about the struggles, both internal and external, involved when women attempt to own their own sexuality, and I mean "own" both literately and figuratively. It's about demons, both internal and external, that the protagonists have to face and overcome. It's also about finding allies in what we might think of as unexpected places.

EBONY: Why do your books have such appeal to women?

JN: I think my talent in terms of subject is to click into the Zeitgeist of what Black women or Black people, but especially Black women, are thinking about. That said, while the book is a story told in the voices of two Black women, it has a multiracial cast of characters and deals with issues relevant to the human family. I hope that anyone who knows how to read and who has a sense of humor, and likes sex, will enjoy this book. That's just about everyone, right?

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

COPYRIGHT 2003 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group