by Rebecca Honig Friedman

Ellen Sussman is the editor of the new book Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, a collection of essays about the many ways in which women can be bad or can be considered bad by others. Whether sexually, verbally, religiously, psychologically, gustatorily; intentionally or by accident; with self-congratulations or self-hatred; these essays run the gamut from funny and frivolous to sad and serious, but each is thought-provoking in its own way.

Along with heavy hitters like Daphne Merkin, Susan Cheever, Joyce Maynard, and Erica Jong (to name a few) are younger or less well-known authors, but the quality of the essays overall is of very high caliber, which is either a testament to Sussman’s skill as an editor or to her choice of authors, or both. Either way, Bad Girls makes for a great read.

Sussman is also the author of the novel On a Night Like This and the upcoming Dirty Words: The Unabridged Encyclopedia of Sex, which will be published by Bloomsbury in late 2008, dozens of short stories, and four screenplays.
Her fiction has been published in Seventeen Magazine, Bennington Review, The Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Story Quarterly, and Commentary, and she has won Redbook’s Short Story Contest, Paris Transcontinental’s story contest and a Writers at Work fellowship. She has also taught writing at several prestigious universities, as well as in private classes and seminars.

Though Sussman is a self-professed bad girl, she was good enough to give us an email interview about her book and to ponder whether it really is good to be bad.

1. JEWESS: What was your inspiration for Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave?

ELLEN SUSSMAN: I was driving over Rte. 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains to give a reading in Capitola for another anthology. I thought about all the essays I had written and discovered a common theme — they were all about my bad girl behavior! And so I thought: what if I gathered essays from other writers about their bad girl behavior? Wouldn’t it be interesting to discover what lies beneath our deviant acts!

2. How did you choose the writers, and what kind of direction did you give them?

Some of them were obvious choices — Erica Jong for instance! — and many were writers I knew and admired. I asked them to share and explore their bad girl stories — and was thrilled to get such a range of material.

3. On some level it seems like being a bad girl is linked with being a feminist. How do you explain the connection?

There are too many rules for girls and women in our society. “Bad girls” choose to follow their own path — which often means breaking a few rules along the way. (Boys are expected to break a few rules!) I think feminism has to do with claiming our freedom, our rights, our ability to break out of society’s restrictions. Bad girls boldly demand that for themselves.

4. Several of the writers discuss the act of writing as their “bad” behavior. Is writing inherently a deviant act?

Interestingly, both Joyce Maynard and Erica Jong talk about breaking silences as a way of being bad. So yes, they write to be heard in a world that wants to keep them quiet.

5. Are Jewesses any badder than other women? Do they perhaps have more rules to rebel against, and therefore more opportunity to be bad?

As Elizabeth Rosner so aptly puts it in her essay [”Everything I Know About Being Bad I Learned in Hebrew School”], the rules of Judaism, especially orthodox Judaism, turned her into a raging feminist at the age of 9!
As a reform Jew, I learned to question everything. That was good training for me — in lots of ways — including my bad girl ways.

6. Almost all of the writers mention ex-husbands. Do bad girls have a higher divorce rate than the general population?

Interesting! I have no idea — will have to look into it.

7. A lot of the bad behavior written about in the book is in good fun, but just as much results from — or results in — serious problems on the part of the writers. To what extent is “acting out” a form of empowerment and to what extent is it a cry for help? Should we really be celebrating being “bad”?

I was so pleased to be able to collect essays that explored both ends of that spectrum. It would be naive to think that all bad girl behavior is worth celebrating. Some of the writers explore the darker side of that story.

Posted on July 25th, 2007 Filed under: Interviews |