Hi everyone, welcome to the Superbia
weekend
My name is Tawseef Khan and today I'll be
interviewing the author Niven Govindan
let's start with a little bio about
Niven: Niven Govindan is the author of
five novels
and many short stories his work explores
the imagined lives of artists
reckless bohemians and people with dual
heritage
he writes about love death and how to
live
living's current novel This Brutal House
revives the Pose, Paris is Burning
era of New York city ballroom and it
weaves a story of queerness
protest social justice and endless loss
this brutal house was shortlisted for
the polari prize and the Gordon Burns
prize
and long listed for the giant prize
welcome to the Superbia event
Hey thanks for having me how are you I'm
good how are you
very good it's um it's great to be doing
this um
virtual pride weekend um it feels
strange but it's it's
it's um yeah it's good i'm pleased to be
here
i feel like i've got to begin by asking
you how the last few months have been
what has your
pandemic experience been like
um it's been it's been fairly mixed I
think the main takeaway for me is
I suppose i've just been really busy
working
um and i was sort of halfway through a
new book
pre-pandemic so i've pretty much just
sort of had my head down
working and then you know juggling that
with you know
family concerns and everything else
that's been going on so
it's been busy i can't say it's been
eventful in a you know in that kind of a
way
but it's been it's been productive for
me for sure
that's good now congratulations on the
great success of this brutal house i
I love the book uh the hardback came out
last year and before that you published
a novel
all the days and nights in 2014. so did
this particular book
take all that time to develop and write
or were you
taking a break from writing or were you
working on other things in the five
years that it took between the two
no no it really did it takes it just
takes me a really long time and it did
take
five years pretty much as I was
finishing all the days and nights
um i sort of had an idea about right
that i knew I wanted to write a novel
about Voguing
and about protest um
and as i was finishing all the days and
nights i've been reading a lot of james
baldwin for about a year just kind of
rereading all the books i've read
that i first read as a teenager and
there was something in that kind of
oratory
that kind of really spoke to me and
the in in a way i suppose the idea of
this novel has been
you know over 10 years in the making
I've written a short story in the
mid-noughties between novels
about for a tiny little Italian magazine
about the dying
um days of the sort of great Voguing
houses
and um when I finished that story and I
sent it to to an editor
um for a magazine and the editor said to
me are you writing a novel about the
ball scene
and it was a real lightbulb moment
because my thoughts about it it just
felt like it was a
sort of self-contained story and then I
suddenly realized that
it was something I did really want to do
and you know Voguing has been sort of
one of my psychic
kind of touchstones for you know ever
since i was
a teenager coming of age in the late 80s
early 90s going out buying records
you know being part of a kind of queer
scene so it made sense that I wanted to
do but I didn't want to do it in a very
obvious way so I just sort of filed it
away as I was working on other books and
then when I finished
all the days and nights I was just
really ready to do it
but not in a sort of basic kind of
self-explanatory um
touristic kind of a way I wanted to use
Voguing as a framework
for a bigger set of questions that i
wanted to
or try to attempt to answer
what were those questions well um
it it comes out of a sort of response i
guess so for me the most perfect piece
of art ever
made about the ball scene is Jenny
Livingston's Paris is Burning from
1989 which I remember when it came out
and
you know so that had a massive
impression that left a massive
impression on me
and because you know for me that is a
perfect
you know piece of work you know for
whatever you know i remember when the
when it came out there was a lot of
criticism from from
um people on the scene about Lenny
Livingston saying you know she exploited
people you know there's lots of
criticism about the film
but there's a capsule of actually that
scene if you look at it now I mean it's
absolutely beautiful it's stunning
heartbreaking all that stuff so you know
was that i didn't feel that i wanted to
repeat that
or introduce voking in a new way what i
wanted to do was look at
um the sort of begin you know use the
concept of a protest
as to you know to shape an arc of a
novel a protest beginning middle and end
its ecosystem the sort of various
factions within it
and to really explore using the group
voice of the house mothers because
you know when i write there's it's very
much a novel of voices
in the tradition of any everyone from
say Studs Terkle to
um Joseph Mitchell i mean tons and tons
of people you know Greek chorus a lot
and what I wanted to use in the mother's
voice was
I really wanted to write a book that was
about
collective memory and a story that could
feel like a previously
unwritten but fictional community
history
um from a part of the community who who
have been neglected in literature but
also within civics you know
visibility within the wider society so
the questions the novel
is asking is a on a very basic level
it's a story of
mothers from the voting legendary voting
houses amassing all their children to
start
silent protests on the steps of city
hall to bring the city's attention to
years
of um kids from their houses
disappearing through
you know homophobic transphobic violence
structural inequality poverty all those
things
and the city has never taken that the
concerns of the community seriously
or look to look for these kids these
kids have basically disappeared
and they've tried to protest in every
single way from political lobbying to
writing
you know everything they can possibly do
and they decide suddenly they and it's
also you know a book about spirituality
and they sort of have a
sort of late life religious reawakening
where
their questions haven't been answered in
any kind of fundamental
legal scientific um rational way
so they're starting to look in other
areas that they previously
rejected in a sense of you know if I
can't find answers in the real world can
i find the answer somewhere else
from that the sense of silence a silent
protest to really scare city hall to
show them
physically a community's presence but
also a sense of
communities um collective trauma damage
determination to find answers
so i'm looking for the novel to ask
those kind of questions but also
to look at the city as as the other sort
of unspoken voice in the book as the
characters say
what is the city's responsibilities for
all of its citizens what should it
provide
what should it not provide is it the
father
or you know the father the mother is it
the parent to everyone who lives in that
city or not and if not why not
so those are the sort of questions i'm
thinking about
and i find the premise of the book so
compelling
um the image of these house house
mothers on the steps of city hall is
just an incredible way to
to start a book and i think that you
make two
really big decisions in in the way that
you've chosen to write the book
that that shape our experience of it the
first is as you've
mentioned the fact that the house
mothers speak with one voice
as opposed to individual voices so
we're getting this this as you say this
collective chorus rather than
learning about them individually
learning about the individual houses and
so on
the second decision that you make is
that we do have we do get to
experience this world from somebody's
mind and that's Teddy
who is one of the former children of
of the mothers and now works in city
hall so he's kind of
in between both worlds why did you make
those two decisions
um well the first decision was really
because
it came from an aesthetic choice which
was i knew that i wanted the next book
that i wrote to be about collective
voice and what i wanted to do
i love the weight of writing we
it's very very powerful so i wanted to
use the we
in in a very strong way so
to dilute that by breaking the way no I
did think about it
in terms of after I so basically what
happens is I thought think about a novel
for you know a while and it it it's an
amalgamation of kind of everything I've
been thinking about
in the last few years as I'm writing the
last book because you sort of commit to
a book and you write it but as you're
thinking about this one thing
you're still thinking about other things
and you're having other experiences and
they just sort of add to something
and so when I finish one book I'm I just
take that time to work out what those
things actually mean
so the we was really important and also
because I
in writing stories and other longer
pieces of work around the novel before
that
i was writing something with a they so i
knew and i really loved the collective
voice it wasn't massively successful but
i knew that actually
the collective voice was something that
i wanted to do um
so as so i basically got to a point
where i literally woke up one day
and i sort of had those sentences and i
wrote those sentences and that was the
first chapter of the book and that's
pretty much how all my
happens for my books sort of write
something and i'm like okay that is it
that's kind of my jump off point
and I just started to run with it and as
the voice developed
i did you know sit back a little bit and
think well do I want to now break this
down
but for me the power is in the we so to
break it down into you know
well X went home and had a cup of tea
and white it you know it just really
dilutes it
but what i wanted to show was um
sort of the facets of you know because
also the book is about
queer parenthood and chosen family and
queer visibility with aging all that
kind of stuff
and to sort of show you the sort of
um the full sort of panorama of what
what queer chosen family is you need to
see perspectives from maybe the children
so for me Teddy was that character
and you know in a lot of ways it's
Teddy's book
um you know because it's a very personal
kind of story
but they they you know the the sort of
spirit of both those kind of voices
those narratives um really combined
strongly so it kind of it works
you know it just kind of works out that
way for me
and then you know because i was
interested in bringing other voices in
so I started thinking about you know
so then there's voices of other children
there's voices of the police there's
voices of the phone caller
so it's it's it's very much a sort you
know
I wanted to sort of um reaffirm the idea
that it's like an
oral hour or history so you've got lots
of voices coming and you don't
again they're not necessarily named bad
there's a whole chapter with
a group of missing bounty boys who just
turn up and they just speak
but you know they're not named they're
there are they in as much as the mothers
are a we
so yeah i'm trying to sort of throw all
those things into the mix
and the relationships themselves what i
also like so much about it
is that they're not glossed over so
these are not um
you know we talk about families but
these are families that come with all of
the complexity of family
the the mothers can be incredibly
demanding they can punish their children
the children can be disinterested um
petulant uh you know they you know so
so all of the kind of like complexity of
actual families is rendered into
to the novel whereas the temptation
often is to talk about surrogate
families as
as only positive and and to whitewash
them so I really love that you've done
that
well for me Iwas very much interested
in exploring the idea of
sort of imperfect parenthood and
you know to a large degree their
parenthood over the children
is sort of involuntary it wasn't really
of
in a lot of ways it's sort of it's
something that's kind of snowballed
but it's a mixture of a that that they
feel as elders they need to protect the
kids and sort of pass on what they know
but then when they realize actually by
taking in children and starting the
houses they're actually families of
their own and yes families come with
their own complexities
and they talk about it they say you know
we come from imperfect
childhoods you know we can't be expected
to be sort of perfect parents and
they're not
but they are the sort of mothers who
will fight to the death of their
children and this is
what where they're at with this with the
protest they're
they're selfish but not they're
personally selfish sometimes but i think
ultimately it's really about
the selflessness of what community and
actually family
in that kind of way means because when
you think of
sort of Voguing Houses and um
you know balls that you know
the the the sort of you know the
legendary mothers of those voting houses
who started those scenes
and started all the houses in harlem
they were
they had to create their own scene they
had to create their own safe space they
weren't welcome
you know in the pageants in manhattan
they know those clubs didn't want them
they had to create their own space for
them
and their kids and it sort of comes from
that
actually what surprised me um i a few
years ago i shared
a a an apartment with one of the
house mothers um from the new york
ballroom scene from the house of
misrahee
and i was so surprised that he said oh
yeah
i spent all i all night all he did was
possibly
yeah all night all he did was was talk
to the children
and make sure that they were prepared
for this and taking care of this and
take care of that so
like the reality of the responsibility
that the house mothers take
is is very real yeah absolutely
and in the book when the kids disappear
it really
affects them you know they're
you know there's a difference between
you know one child disappears and it's
you know a tragedy and then you see a
spate of
children disappearing and they realize
it's not just about the sort you know
and it's not this book isn't some kind
of mystery you're not there's no
explanation to what happens to children
etc it's about
when children successively go missing
how
as you know the elders of their
community they have to
deal with that and you know help the
children in that community deal with
that
and also find a way to um
get recognition for what is happening
within a wider
you know city network who really aren't
that bothered about them
and i think that even though the book is
heavy serious it's a protest novel
there are also pages of pure joy um
yeah and i believe that joy is central
to the queer experience and joy is also
part of
protest so you know when i'm i'm
thinking of the
the pages dedicated to the vocal with
the categories
and the walking for me just or sewing
subaru and and
i have them on a bag somewhere um
hold on it's such a great bag
um but i wanted to ask you about that
how how central joy was
in in this book as well yeah very much
so
because the whole concept of you know
well i mean you know the balls are full
of joy but
and also but also they're incredibly
competitive people
fight you know battle to the death of
balls it's that
serious you know it's as much about
family honor as
everything else but because i didn't
want to write
a book which was about and then they
went to the ball and something it's
pretty
you know that wasn't my you know i i
was very very sort of you know adamant
that this wasn't a primer and i wasn't
interested in that but
i did want to have sections again
you know using this sort of concept of
voice to really show you the sort of
color and the
fire and the joy from balls and for me
i suppose what i love the most about
balls is
what a vogue caller does because you
know it has a lot to do with
um you know it's not that far removed
from hip-hop in terms of them seeing
it's about wordplay it's about authority
you know the mc is the authority
um and is you know the ring master is
really running things and
can um denote success or failure even
before
you've even stepped out so i love
the the sharpness of it the
you know it's sharp it's camp it's
brutal
you know it's fierce it can cut you dead
but also it can completely give you life
so i wanted to write passages that were
like that
so there's a vocal a chapter which is
just
uh vocal you know calling out categories
you know and we love
category i love a category um but
it's interesting those chapters you know
they can be misunderstood depending on
who is actually
reading it and publishing this book has
taught me
um an enormous lesson or reminded me
I guess in terms of as a readerIwhat you bring to a book is kind of your
experience of the world and kind of what
you know or what you're open to
so those chapters in particular
flummoxed a lot of people in particular
um a lot of sort of older or non-queer
readers who couldn't understand why you
would have
a chapter with categories on why there's
a list and why is this ridiculous
and it's supposed to be sort of fierce
and kind of funny and joyful but
the point of writing a a chapter full of
categories is it becomes a sort of
um it becomes in turn political
because it's it it starts from being a
very kind of you know
category is first time in drags category
is you know
etc but then it becomes quite political
and it's about the categories being
their own categories for survival and
their own
um you know how you know their
their vision of their own place in the
world so it becomes sort of quite
hypnotic and it becomes
again because the book has a sort of i
hate to say spiritual dimension but
there is this sort of
other worldly sense to it it sort of has
a sort of um
mantra sort of you know it feels like
it's its own prayer in a way
and the same way in later on in the book
where there's another section with a
vote caller which is literally
a chapter where he's just telling them
to walk which is you know if you think
about
the heat of being in the ball so right
in the middle of the
evening where literally there is no
and also this is a book about silence
and not worse there is a point where
there is no words and it's only about
sort of
movement and walking and being fierce
and really really killing it
and i don't think you can really you
really get that unless you've really
kind of felt that moment
not necessarily even in the balls just
from going out and i think
you know in terms of queer readers
understanding the concepts of queen eye
life
and just being out at night and having
that kind of tunnel vision
moment you get it i'd only call read as
well and that's fine you can't expect so
to um answer everyone's questions as you
read but i hope that
people who read it who don't necessarily
understand it will kind of open them up
a little bit to thinking about that
that moment all that you know that kind
of
lifestyle definitely and i think for me
what's great about that is then
the book itself becomes a protest like
who is the book for
uh if you don't get it maybe it's not
for you um
it's written for for other people you
know who understand those moments and
yeah i mean i don't like to be um to
exclude readers
definitely definitely not but i think
you know in the spirit of
of writing i guess sort of in the
avant-garde
to really to really be central to
the experience within the book you have
to
be thrown into the book without
explanation
because that is that is what experience
that's what kind of experiences
absolutely and i think that if if i was
to use
pose as a comparison pose definitely
glosses over
um a lot of some of the harshness of
of the experience with people from the
ballroom community it gives
them the opportunity to have maybe an
element of their their fairy tales
um come true to some extent in the
second season
but in your book in this brutal house
the protest
does come to an end and it doesn't it
doesn't necessarily
succeed um we could say that it's
it's sabotaged to some extent what made
you
end the protest in that way
and I guess it just felt like a very
sort of natural
evolution in terms of how the how I
wanted the protest to unfold which
and also I in terms of you know how I
how i approach all my kind of books
i'm not necessarily into us into endings
that feel
definitive and arcs that feel definitive
because life isn't definitive like that
I don't think you get that kind of
clarity in
life per se you can have black and white
moments yes
but in terms of and also it would be
massively unrealistic I think personally
to write about a community struggle and
then end with a very
no spoilers here but a very kind of
black and white kind of ending which
gives you
an idea of what of of what is answered
one way or the other because it isn't
you know society you know shifts in
society show us
it isn't like that and you can see that
you know through the history of the
queer you know the progression of queer
civil rights is essentially the history
of queer protest
in the last century and the same thing
for where we are
in terms of black lives matter um
societal shift comes through
mass protests but at the end of every
sort of protest cycle
you may start to see change you know
societal or
legislative changes but
they're never definitive and these are
the these are the sort you know
what i'm trying to explore in the book
are changes that take
decades to actually shift if not more
yeah and the great thing is that it ends
with so much defiance um i like that we
don't have
a love wins ending um because again
sorry i love wins and
you know like a very sort of gay ending
as opposed to
a sort of a political queer realistic
ending which is that you know this is
about more than just legislation this is
about dignity
and no matter how much the the house
mothers are mistreated by the state
they still hold on to their dignity they
still hold on to their spirituality
they're very stoic
and you know and that kind of defiant
note on which the book ends i think is
uh maybe far more inspirational than you
know a happier alternative perhaps
yeah i think i think the book is the the
book ends in a way that's very true to
the spirit
of the mothers and their kind of core
and it sort of
reflects their journey through the
protest and where they are
so yes for me I really really love
that
that final chapter of the book because
it really does sort of solidify
the power of of those characters
and the power of their spirit in a way
that feels entirely true to me
definitely and your book was released at
a time i mean it probably wasn't
conceived
when that that ballroom and voguing and
everything will become so mainstream but
it's
definitely been released in a context
where it is so mainstream
do you think that has been a good thing
um
has it had has it had the capacity to
change people's
perspectives um how like how do we
how do we sort of conceive I think
reflect on
the place of ballroom in in queer
culture and in broader culture as well
well i think I mean I think I have to
talk about
both in in the context of broader
culture which is
so when I started writing this novel
about protest
um my nearest kind of
um which shows you how long it took me
to write it my initial
sort of physical manifestations of what
protest currently meant to that
particular time was the occupy protests
you know in terms of people just sitting
on mass
you know outside landmarks in washington
outside pools
in New York etc and on Wall Street and
as I started writing it
the Black Lives Matter um movement kind
of coalesced from
being sporadic um protesting different
cities around america into something
that
suddenly felt like it was the national
conversation and I realized that
what i was writing was going to come out
in an environment where
the concept of um
community protest people who didn't
think they would ever need to protest
again for whatever reason
you know obama was in power um
in the uk we had you know you know over
a decade of a labor government you know
a lot of a lot of things happened
which made people think that the days of
kind of protesting or
protesting on mass you know taking aside
maybe the Iraq
protests were weren't there then you see
what happens with Black Lives Matter and
the marches against Trump
and Brexit and you know and me too
and you suddenly realize you know as
this book was coming out that we
it's coming into an environment where
people really
understand the importance of kind of
leaving your house
and being part of a mass that there's
lots you can do with your singular voice
and how the digital world is
has given everyone the the the ability
to amplify their voice
but actually sometimes the physical
power the power of
being a physical mass on the streets one
out of a million one out of a hundred
thousand whatever
it's really really important so that was
i was really aware that of that as the
book was about to come out and i was
you know quite you know in a hurry um
sort of really impatient because you
know obviously by the time you deliver a
book you've got a way
you know ages for it to come out and i
was just really keen for it to come out
for it to be read
within where we are within the cultural
moment it felt important to me
but also in terms of the
where we are in the in terms of the
um visibility within queer culture i
think
within the wider society i think that
what drag race has done
to bring elements of queer culture
within the wider
um within wide societies had a massive
effect on how this book is read so
there'll be a lot of people who won't
necessarily read a lot of queer fiction
who will read this because
they saw drag race and they saw pose and
it puts the book within a certain frame
um how they then react to the book
compared to those things I can't say
that depends on where you come from a
reader
as a reader you know I've had people who
god's message said oh I love posing they
read I said but it's not like Pose and
it's like well it was never meant to be
Pose
when I was writing the book they wasn't
Posed.  Posed didn't exist
so but what I what I'm interested in is
writing books that sort of add to the
queer canon
and um add to the sort of sum of queer
experience
and because we've been
sort of so starved within mainstream
culture of queer art
the visibility of queer artists writing
about
sometimes the same thing sometimes about
different things so it's interesting
that you know
obviously i've written about that voking
and it's come out the same time as pose
and there was a novel
by joseph cassara a really brilliant
novel called the House of Impossible
Beauties that came out the year before
we're using voguing as a template but
we're all using it in different ways and
that's what I really love and that's
that's that really sort of encapsulates
the sort of possibilities of what art
can do
and I think you know if you're if you're
not queer and you're straight you take
that for granted there could be ten
novels about cricket
and no one will be really that bothered
about it um
so now there's there's a whole slew of
of things being made about
vVguing about the ball scene about drag
culture
and they're all completely different and
some are more critical than others some
more avant-garde than others some use it
to talk about other things some
some um pieces of work and sort of
have a pure focus that's brilliant i
think the more the merrier
definitely we're also talking about a
protest novel
in in a context where protesting has
is i guess much more tense there's so
much more attention about the idea of
protesting
the black lives matter protests were
fantastic and i think that they were
ongoing but there was so much tension
around
should these be taking place in the
middle of a pandemic um
we're talking for pride but we are
talking online because we can't be
together physically
so what what kind of how can we imagine
or reimagine
protests in this particular situation
do you think that there is anything to
take from this year or is it a case of
putting it aside i think i think the
interesting thing about black lives
matter
you know particularly the protests that
happened in this country was
that protests were happening in the same
way that they happened before
you know you had people who were
socially distancing but he had you know
kids
really wanted still felt it was really
important to come out
and you know be a physical mass so it's
going to be interesting to see
over the next year how that changes
but you know if you didn't if you didn't
um
use covert as a prism and say you put a
picture of
Black Lives Matter 2020 next to Black
Lives Matter 2014
two groups of people probably look
fairly
the same actually and it's only with
because of what we know about Covid we
look at it slightly differently
but if you look at you know look at look
at the um protests and bricks
in Bristol around the Colston statue
that could have been taken at any time
yeah that picture
it's you know it's the movement and the
protest movement is still incredibly
powerful
it's going to be interesting to see for
sure how it changes
do you have any sort of messages for
people who um
are not able to gather for pride for
example what what should we be
doing or thinking about or taking from
this year
with without the ability to to protest
and and and have Prides
 i think what the
pandemic has really done
which I think has been amazing has in
terms of what the digital space
actually can give us in terms of
feeling visibly part of something and
sort of dropping into something i think
is really powerful before i
i was the of the the digital space is
something that you can use to amplify
your voice and be a part of a community
but suddenly when when you're in a
lockdown situation you can't reach
people you have to find a way to
actually reach people
so um so you know what what we're doing
here i think is massively important but
what you see
um across the board in terms of people
just having sort of virtual meetups and
trying to form active communities
that not just give you kind of solace
and friendship
but actually give you a platform
to um add your own voice and add your
you can still add your presence
so i definitely feel that this year for
sure that means that you
absolutely i mean i think being able to
connect with you
um through this event is kind of magic
you know there are still ways for us to
to do the work to connect to get our
messages out there to be visible
um even if we're not physically doing
those things i think we're lucky to be
able to
organize in a time like this where there
are so many alternatives and i think
organization is key
i tell you what i've never thought
actually
over lock down that we
as a queer community or as people of
color have not felt visible
and if you think about how
so many people around the country really
galvanized by Black Lives Matter
but only really a fraction of those
people went out on the street
it kind of shows you how connected we
we can feel I don't I don't think
you know I would have liked to have gone
on a on a protest for sure but it didn't
for me personally I didn't really feel
safe about doing it
but i didn't necessarily feel that i
wasn't part of that moment or adding my
voice
or being able to speak out and talk
about you know anti-blackness within the
POC community
um to show ally ship all that kind of
stuff i didn't feel thatI wasn't part
of that
and if anything i felt very much part of
it because
because of the organization within the
digital space that let us all be part of
it
and i feel i very much feel the same for
Pride for sure
absolutely I'm being told that that's
all we've got time for
unfortunately i have like two pages of
questions for you
but um this has been so much fun
you know i always love talking to you uh
this brutal house is out on paperback
now
I wanted to ask you about your next book
diary of a film which is
out next year February the 18th
keep your eyes out yeah I'm looking
forward to hearing all about it
uh thank you so much for your time
living thank you for watching
Thank you, take it easy
