Femininity and Conditional Morality: A Conversation with Dantiel W. Moniz
Photo Credit: Marissa Pilolli
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“I think that’s such an important revelation to have about ourselves and the people we’re in relationships with—that they exist outside of our expectations for how they should be.”
It was recently announced that Milk Blood Heat, your debut collection, was one of the twelve books nominated for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize, a prestigious literary award that celebrates young writers. This year’s list is formally diverse, including a range novels and poetry, but yours is one of just two short fiction collections included on the long list. What drew you to short fiction as a medium, and why did you feel it was the best fit for the ideas and themes you consider in the collection?
I think it’s always peculiar how often story collections are missed in the wider world of “literary achievements” (and I know poets are rolling their eyes, as they should). But I’m thrilled with the recognition MBH has gotten. I don’t know that I felt short stories were the best medium for this particular book; I didn’t even know it was a short story collection until I had several stories in hand. For whatever reason, the form of short stories makes so much intuitive sense to me, maybe because of their episodic nature? Maybe because, even though having to be tight and controlled in a way novels don’t have to be, they allow a certain kind of freedom in terms of POV and time? I love them, how playful they can be, how emotionally dense, and how the best ones ask their readers to work a little harder, pay more attention, believe in the humanity and lives of people who don’t actually exist and see where an emotional truth might connect with one’s own.
Something that I found absolutely fascinating about the collection is how the three images in the title: milk, blood, and heat, factor into virtually every story. What led you to settle on these three images, and did you build the collection around them, or did they emerge organically in each story?
I said before that I didn’t know I had a collection, so with the first few stories, I was actually worried I had no originality and was writing the same story over and over while only changing character names, when in fact, I was taking the same set of questions and making three-dimensional worlds around them so I could explore them from different angles. Once I realized that what seemed separate was connected, I was able to go back and do what I was doing unconsciously with intention. The title of Milk Blood Heat existed for the story before I knew it would be the title of the collection, but once I understood what those elemental words represented, with the help of my first reader Sarah Fuchs, everything made too much sense to ignore. What I most wanted to write about was the body and how it moves us through and connects us to the world, and these words, to me, elicit not only the body, but the making and nourishment of the body.
It seems that motherhood, and often the relationship between mothers and daughters, is a uniting theme throughout the stories in Milk Blood Heat. I think that the messiness of motherhood can still feel like a taboo subject even today, what inspired you to write about the anxieties and tensions between mothers and daughters?
Motherhood was something I didn’t realize I was consciously writing toward until I had all the stories together. I knew I was writing my way toward this idea of conditional morality, and how terms like good, bad, right, wrong are not absolutes, are actually subjective, but I didn’t know these other questions “What does it mean to be a mother/should I become a mother?” were there, even in stories where they don’t appear to be. For me, a lot of the answer to this question revolves around a scene that occurs in the story “The Hearts of Our Enemies” when Margot, the daughter in the story, understands that Frankie is a person outside of her role as mother. That her mother, even clumsily, is doing her best. I had a similar revelation about my own mom sometime in my early twenties and it made allowing grace for both her and myself so much easier. I think that’s such an important revelation to have about ourselves and the people we’re in relationships with—that they exist outside of our expectations for how they should be. That sometimes the love you want is not the love you are offered, and how do we continue to grow and love in spite of that?
You write about both girls growing into themselves and adult women with grown up problems and responsibilities—the collection is truly an exploration of femininity and womanhood without age restrictions. Did you feel like there were any other writers highlighting the kinds of women you wanted to write about, or do you see yourself as filling a void in the literary landscape?
I definitely see myself as joining a tradition—no one creates art in a vacuum, even though some would like you to believe that. There were so many writers that allowed me to expand my idea of what was acceptable to write about when I still felt I needed external permission to write through my own obsessions and curiosities (dear reader, spoiler, you do not). This goes doubly for writing about Black women that makes space for us in all our messy, flawed, human glory. Writers like Toni Morrison, Janet Fitch, Alice Walker, Antonya Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, Julie Orringer, Leni Zumas, Raven Leilani, Dawnie Walton, Chet’la Sebree, Deesha Philyaw. Too many to list them all and the great thing about literature is, so many more to discover. Everything in its own timing.
It’s clear that place is very important in this collection, as all the stories in Milk Blood Heat take place around Jacksonville, Florida, where you grew up. The common setting gives the collection a sense of cohesiveness and really brings the stories to life, imbuing them with a sense of atmosphere. Do you see yourself continuing to write about Florida in the future, or do you anticipate setting your work in a totally different place?
It was important for me to write about Jacksonville for the very reason that people feel like it’s a phenomenon or against the grain. Do people ask writers depicting New York or other major cities if they’ll write about them again? Maybe, but I don’t think so, at least not in the same way that favors pegging them as a “New York writer.” I’m excited for what a long life of writing literature could look like. It feels so open. I could become interested in anything.
The response to Milk Blood Heat has been really strong in the year since it has been published, it seems that a lot of readers really connect with the collection. Could you share any of your favorite responses to the stories or any discussions you’ve had with readers/friends who connected with the work?
Connecting with readers—absolute strangers! —has been my favorite part of having published a book, hands down. Truly, if you love someone’s work, reach out and tell them—it’s the warmest feeling. Recently, a writer friend of mine told me that they saw one of their 9th graders reading my book. They told me it wasn’t a class assignment, the student was reading it on their own and the student was “walking through the halls with it, not at all watching where she’s going.” And that really was a more illuminating joy than anything else I’ve experiences, even prize nominations. I remember what it was like to be fourteen and deeply immersed, finding my way to classes through luck and senses alone because I couldn’t come up from the world of a book. It’s very cool to be that book for someone. Top tier feeling.
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