Interviewed by Michèle Dawson Haber
There are so many reasons to love Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses (Vine Leave Press, October 15, 2024), Jennifer Lang’s second experimental prose memoir told in bite-sized propulsive, chapterettes. I loved the short chapters, the fun visual elements interspersed throughout, learning more about the practice of yoga (now I want to try it!), and witnessing the growth of a wife and mother who resents accommodating her husband’s religious observance and wish to live in Israel into a woman who understands that her thoughts and prejudices are the source of her discontent, not the actions of others. It was delightful to accompany Jennifer on and off her yoga mat as she applied the chakra wisdom she gained from her teacher — the nationally acclaimed Rodney Yee — to each obstacle in her path to self-knowledge.
I was excited to talk to Jennifer about the themes in Landed and the craft challenges she conquered in writing it. But I needed to get something out of the way first, and neither of us were happy about it. We had to have the post-October 7th Israel pre-talk. What questions would be appropriate for this interview? Who was the audience? Was there anything we should stay clear of? Was even acknowledging this potential self-censorship a no-go zone? The outcome of the pre-talk was inconclusive. I proceeded with the interview asking a wide range of questions on structure, writing style, yoga, and identity. At the end, Jennifer resolved the conundrum. I had just asked what advice she has for other Jewish writers struggling with prejudice, cancellation, and rejection due to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and she answered: “Try not to hide. Stand tall and strong and be yourself.”
This is exactly what Jennifer Lang does in Landed, and it is another reason why I enjoyed the memoir. It is unapologetically Jewish and an unflinching reflection on her experience living in Israel as a liberal, secular, Jewish woman who yearns daily for peace. Maybe “in this world we live in” only Jews will read her book, but I hope not. There is so much in Jennifer’s story for any reader who has an open mind and wants to learn. Let’s not hide in our own corners; let’s talk.
Michèle Dawson Haber: Congratulations, Jennifer, on the publication of Landed. I don’t usually ask about structure right out of the gate, but your big themes are so intertwined with the way you’ve chosen to tell the story, it seems like an obvious starting place. So, can you tell me how you landed on yoga as both vessel and metaphor for your story about finding self-acceptance in a place and in a marriage where you often felt like an outsider?
Jennifer Lang: As a Virgo, I adore structure and boundaries, rules and restrictions. Anything to help me feel a sense of control. But as a young wife and mother on the move, I felt the opposite — as if I was swimming in chaos and uncertainty. Yoga was the perfect antidote to the chaos. In my first book, Places We Left Behind, I wrote about how after spending my first eighteen years in the same home/ bedroom/city/state, I uprooted. I chose to leave my home state for college in the Midwest, then leave my country of birth to work in France. But after quitting my job in Paris and before starting grad school in New York, I went to Israel to see family and learn Hebrew.
Five weeks after my arrival, I unexpectedly met the French man of my dreams, bringing its own kind of chaos. Marrying him meant staying in Israel and observing Judaism his way. I lost myself in the relationship and in our subsequent moves and no longer felt the ground underneath me. In 1995 (our second major move with our firstborn: Israel to Paris, then Paris to Northern California), a friend urged me to try yoga. I had no idea who the teacher named Rodney Yee was but loved his language, telling us to plant our feet and root into the earth. This man gave me the words I needed to tether myself to the ground. The thin blue rectangular yoga mat served as a boundary and contained my inner turmoil.
MDH: Your memoir is divided into seven parts, representing seven years and seven chakras. Can you tell me what are chakras and what felt right about structuring your story in this way?
JL: The number seven is very significant in both yoga and Judaism, two huge parts of my everyday life, and therefore seemed like an obvious structural device (Virgo, remember?). The chakras are the spiritual, energetic channels running from the area between the perineum and lower spine to the crown of the head. Sometimes Rodney (as well as other instructors) taught a class centered around all seven chakras and at others, only one. For the sake of the narrative, I condensed the seven into one class and used them to separate the long seven-year sections. The main narrative is told in present tense chronologically, starting from our arrival in 2011, but I jump back in time with the chakras and thematically.
MDH: You published your first memoir, Places We Left Behind in September 2023, and this second one is coming out just one year later. That’s pretty darn quick! Was there any overlap in the writing of the two?
JL: Initially, I had written one long story of my mixed marriage (bicultural and interdenominational), beginning in 1989 and ending in 2018. It was 95,000 words: dull and never-ending. If there was a narrative arc, it was buried. I hired a developmental editor, whose best advice was to set it aside. While cast aside, I took a flash class online, became an assistant editor at Brevity Journal, and grew obsessed with writing short, compressed prose. In the British literary journal, Mslexia, I saw a call for a 300-word maximum submission, “J is for…” I found the word “jury” hidden in a 3000-word chapter about sitting in the sunroom with my husband celebrating our 20-year wedding anniversary and deliberating like a jury of two: do we move to Israel, or don’t we? Do we stay together or separate? I cut and cut and cut to reach 300 words, and my prose snapped, crackled, and popped. Finally, I found the heart of the story.
Over the following months, I combed through the alphabet, revamping the manuscript from A is for … to Z is for … stories. I ended with an asymmetric number of chapters for each letter, each hovering around 300 words. I set it aside again. Time passed. After swapping my lettered manuscript with a writer friend, she suggested I focus less on my marriage and more on my journey. I got shivers, understanding my journey started in 2011 upon landing in Israel and covered seven years during which I finally, fully reclaimed my identity as a secular Jew in my marriage and made unconditional peace with where I lived. Thus emerged two separate books, the first, our search for home and the second (Landed), my midlife coming-of-age.
MDH: You write each of your chapters in flash form and also employ unconventional elements, such as drawings, arrows, thought bubbles, and photos. My favorite was Shazam! Can you tell me about how you arrived at such a distinctive style?
JL: Technically, I can’t call it flash. With flash, each chapter must stand on its own and have a beginning, a middle and an end. These shorts are part of a narrative and not stand-aloneable — but they are compressed prose.
MDH: Ah, I didn’t know, thanks for clarifying that!
JL: I didn’t get there directly and don’t know if any author does. While submitting Places We Left Behind to small press creative nonfiction chapbook competitions, I noticed “open to experimental prose” in some of their guidelines. An early reader of my 95K word manuscript had wished I’d included my pro-con list of moving in with my boyfriend. It started from there, very organically. I then spent months chiseling and sculpting, trying to find creative ways to say things differently. After submitting to Vine Leaves Press and receiving this incredible email saying, “We love this!” I knew I was onto something and decided to chisel and sculpt the Landed manuscript before submitting it to them six months later. That structural makeover helped me hone my voice and discover what you are calling style. I don’t think I know how to write traditional prose anymore.
MDH: You finished writing this book in 2021 and it was with your publisher when the horrific terror attack by Hamas occurred in Israel on October 7, 2023. You had written about enduring the impact of war and terrorism as a civilian in Israel and coming safely out the other side, accepting that remaining in Israel meant a life of both beauty and chaos. And yet, the reader can’t help thinking what a different book it might have been had you still been in the throes of writing post-October 7th. What are the challenges of publishing a book at a time when current events change the lens through which people view your work?
JL: I had my first book event in Israel in late January 2024. Someone in the audience asked if I’d started writing October 8th, what would have been the same and what would have been different. My answer: I never would have written Landed.
MDH: But it’s a story of you growing into your authentic self, of looking for and finding a stillness within, recognizing that self-knowledge (and yoga) is all about harnessing control over your thoughts. That transformation still happened; October 7th doesn’t take that away.
JL: Yes, I agree — but… So, so many buts. But it’s hard for me to see the beauty in the story. It’s hard for me to see it separate from and outside of the lens of October 7th. It’s hard to put it into this world at this moment. I pondered pulling it. I emailed the publishers to ask if they would let me add to the manuscript and bring it up to date to October 8, 2023. The publisher said what I needed to hear: “We are so sorry for what you’re going through. We can pull it, and you can add to the story and resubmit through the traditional channel, but this is the manuscript we accepted.”
I continued to ponder. I consulted my husband, who was concerned I was setting myself up for failure. I asked two friends overseas who have known me and my story for advice. I wrote a preface. Then a very wicked smart friend suggested I use track changes and make margin notes dated January 2024, which sounded spot on. But since it was technically impossible, I used asterisks with commentary at the bottom of the page.
MDH: You inform the reader that the Sanskrit word “yoga” means yoke — “the union of the individual spirit with the universal spirit.” There are many people in the Middle East, in other war-torn countries, and in North America facing prejudice and hate at unprecedented levels who feel like this universal moment, this political moment has never felt so hard to bear. When the personal is yoked to the political, and the political threatens to swallow everything good up, how can yoga help the individual spirit survive?
JL: While I always considered yoga to be a very physical experience, I bathed in the teachings and the talk — about using the body as a vehicle to access and quiet the mind, about believing in an intrinsic goodness at the core of everything, about understanding that change is inevitable and can be good, about harnessing control over our minds, and about recognizing that the biggest hindrance to our personal development is our own perspectives and prejudices. I swallowed all of it and always tried to impart it to my students too.
MDH: I’m curious about your path to publishing. How did you end up at Vine Leaves Press? Did you have an agent?
JL: I didn’t feel like either of my manuscripts were agent friendly, too unconventional and too Jewish. I targeted small, independent presses instead. For my book proposal, I had read two collections of vignettes as comps — Penny Guisinger’s Postcards From Here and Alexis Paige’s Not a Place on Any Map — both published by Vine Leaves Press. In the FAQs on their website they are very transparent about authors needing a platform, which takes years to build. I was in the midst; it is a work in progress. Vine Leaves is run by two expats living in different parts of Europe, with a very befitting tagline, “We are a nomad publisher. Our feet are spread all over the globe.” They publish many American authors as well as authors abroad, and it just felt like the right place for me. Knowing they stand behind this book now means a lot.
MDH: In your About the Author you tell the reader you teach YogaProse. Can you tell me more about this?
JL: YogaProse is using meditation, breath work, and physical poses to get into the body, quiet the mind, and access story. We’re on the mat with a journal and pen, and we’re practicing. At certain points, I offer writing exercises that connect to a theme.
MDH: Jennifer, it has been a real pleasure speaking with you. I wish you all the best with your upcoming launch!
Michèle Dawson Haber is a Canadian writer, potter, and union advocate. She lives in Toronto and is working on a memoir about family secrets, identity, and step adoption. Her writing has appeared in Manifest Station, Oldster magazine, The Brevity Blog, Salon.com, and in the Modern Love column of The New York Times. You can find her at www.micheledhaber.com.
