Biography
In 2001, Deborah Tannen published a book that explored the eternally complex relationship between men and women, specifically why communication can be so darn difficult between the sexes. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation clearly struck a chord with its readers, spending nearly four years on the New York Times bestseller list (holding the No. 1 spot for eight weeks) and having been translated into 29 languages. Bolstered by Tannen's extensive experience as a linguist, You Just Don't Understand has played a significant role in improving relations between men and women throughout the world.
Tannen followed her breakthrough work with several others that have tackled the difficulties in improving communication on the job (Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work), the source of argumentativeness (The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words), and general disagreements within families (I Only Say This Because I Love You). Now Tannen is turning her attention to improving communications between two groups that share one of the most complicated relationships of all: mothers and daughters.
You're Wearing That?: Understanding Daughters and Mothers in Conversation is yet another ambitious attempt to examine, understand, and resolve the long-standing communication difficulties that so often plague families. Tannen delineated the nature of the particularly thorny interactions between mothers and daughters in an article she recently wrote for The Washington Post. In her article, Tannen stated that "there is a special intensity to the mother-daughter relationship because talk -- particularly talk about personal topics -- plays a larger and more complex role in girls' and women's social lives than in boys' and men's. For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together -- and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation."
You're Wearing That? is her attempt to defuse such potential explosiveness, to get to the root of why daughters and mothers so often hit walls when relating to one another. Tannen's own strained relationship with her ailing mother was part of the impetus that caused her to begin asking the questions that this insightful book strives to answer. Along the way, she explored not only her own relationship with her mother but those of many others, as well. "I interviewed dozens of women of varied geographic, racial and cultural backgrounds," she explained in her article. "I had informal conversations or e-mail exchanges with countless others. The complaint I heard most often from daughters was, ‘My mother is always criticizing me.' The corresponding complaint from mothers was, ‘I can't open my mouth. She takes everything as criticism.' Both are right, but each sees only her perspective."
Once again, Tannen has proven her skills as a great communicator, and has penned another instant classic in the field of self-improvement. You're Wearing That? has already achieved bestseller status and inspired Miriam Wolf of the San Francisco Chronicle to call it "a book any mother would be proud her daughter wrote." Tannen should surely be proud that she has made such a significant and positive impact on those who have read her work.
Good to Know
Make no mistake: Deborah Tannen is not just another self-help guru. She has published an impressive body of work that includes 20 books and over 100 articles. She is also the recipient of five honorary doctorates.
Tannen may be most famous for her linguistics studies, but she has also published short stories, poems, personal essays, and plays. In fact, her first play, An Act of Devotion, was chosen for inclusion in The Best American Short Plays: 1993-1994.
The sage relationship advice that Tannen has imparted is not limited to the printed page. She has also lectured all over the world, once addressing an audience of U.S. senators and their spouses.
Some interesting outtakes from our interview with Tannen:
"I lived in Greece for several years; I speak Greek and consider Greece my second home. The first book I ever wrote was literary criticism about a modern Greek writer, Lilika Nakou."
"One of the most exciting experiences I have ever had was seeing a play I wrote produced by Horizons Theater in Washington, D.C. Another was having my play An Act of Devotion accepted and published in Best American Short Plays 1993-1994."
"I didn't start grad school in linguistics until I was 30. When I graduated from college, I had no ambitions other than to travel and not to go grad school. I worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Manhattan, lived with my parents in Brooklyn, and saved my money to go to Europe on a one-way ticket. My plan was to go around the world. But I got only as far as Greece, where I got a job teaching English. It was through teaching English as a second language that I first became aware of linguistics."
Feature Interview
In the winter of 2006, Deborah Tannen took some time out to talk with us about some of her favorite books, authors, and interests. What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
In a way, I could say Robin Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place, although it wasn't the book itself, but the material in the book and its author. I was inspired to get a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and become a linguist because of a course I took with Lakoff at a linguistic institute at the U. of Michigan in 1973, and some of the material in that course was published shortly thereafter in that book. Lakoff was one of the few linguists interested in how people use language in everyday conversation, and one of the first to write about differences in how women and men use language. She points out, for example, that men "pass out" but women "faint" -- and the former is somehow perceived as more serious, the latter more frivolous. Feminine word endings also suggest frivolousness. She asks, "Would you entrust your life to a ‘doctorette' "?
The entire summer institute, and Lakoff's course in particular, made me see that I could use linguistics to combine my love of language with my interest in relationships.
What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
This is tough; I love many books, and it seems unfair to pick ten out of the pack. There are those I've read recently and those I read decades ago! I'll try.
When I was an English Literature major in college, I fell in love with Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. I loved it for the beauty of the language and the abundant detail about whaling.
John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl -- Years ago, the belief became widespread that differences between women and men were primarily the result of nurture not nature. One way this was "proven" was the John/Joan case: A twin boy whose male organ was destroyed by a surgical error was successfully raised as a girl. Years later I read a small newspaper article saying the child had gone back to living as a boy at the age of 15. I longed to know the story behind this development. It is movingly told in this book -- and it is a tragedy, not a success story. The child's life as a girl was torment, because he never felt like a girl and never acted like one. In reading this book I came to admire deeply the man who had been this child, and was reminded how dangerous the hubris of scientific "experts" can be.
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat -- I love everything that the neurologist Sacks writes. He has a unique and enlightening way of showing the fundamental humanity of patients who have what are ostensibly bizarre neurological conditions. An insight that sticks in my mind is his observation that 18th-century doctors had less scientific knowledge but more understanding of the experience of diseases than we have today. What we have now is more scientific knowledge but a "soulless neurology" and a "bodiless psychology." Sacks is brilliant at bringing them together.
Donna Williams, Nobody Nowhere -- Here's another author who has written several books, all of which could be on this list. Williams writes about her experience living with autism; she is an artist: a painter, a musician, a writer. Her ability to explain her experience of autism is astonishing, and her account of coming to understand it and of her struggle to adapt her life to it is riveting. I came away feeling that I not only had gained an understanding not only of autism, but also had gained priceless insight into language and human interaction, thanks to Williams' struggle to understand them. I guess every book I love is beautifully written, as this is.
Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation -- Another luminous book that provides profound insight into language and the human experience through a personal story. Hoffman portrays her emigration from her native Poland to Canada as a young teen. In particular, she explores the ramifications of learning a new language, and how each language entails seeing the world in a different way. Especially fascinating and moving is her insight that for many years, English words had meaning but Polish words had meaning plus emotional resonance.
Alice Mattison, In Case We're Separated -- I love all Alice Mattison's stories. This is her most recent collection. They are connected stories, which means that characters you meet in one story reappear in another. Mattison's fiction is about the everyday lives of people who feel familiar to me. She shows the drama inherent in ordinary lives. I love the way her dialogue feels real and the way she captures the nuances of human relationships and interactions.
Joan Silber, Lucky Us -- I have admired Joan Silber's writing since her first novel, Household Words, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for first novels. I was delighted when her most recent book, Ideas of Heaven (called on the cover "a ring of stories") was a finalist for the National Book Award last year. I'm picking Lucky Us, but I really could have picked any of Silber's novels or story collections. She too writes beautifully, and captures the nuances of character, dialogue, and events that make up lives.
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club -- Again, I love all Amy Tan's novels, for the way she writes and her insights into human nature. She shows me worlds I would not otherwise have known, and she helps me see the world I know in new ways. Her insights into the mother/daughter relationship are among the deepest I have encountered.
Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments -- While I'm on mothers and daughters, I'll mention Gornick's memoir about her relationship with her mother. She's another writer who can capture what goes on between people in ways that allow you to see and feel what they saw and felt.
Leila Ahmed, A Border Crossing -- This is another memoir I truly loved and learned a lot from. Ahmed writes of her experience growing up in Egypt before the British were expelled and after the takeover by Nasser. In addition to being a moving personal story, it taught me more than anything else I have read about the history of Egypt and of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Ahmed makes illuminating distinctions between the compassionate, loving women's Islam she grew up with and the aggressive, warlike men's view of Islam that characterizes Islamic fundamentalism. What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
Again, so many to choose from. I think first of the many foreign films I saw in the '60s and '70s. Some that remain vivid in my mind are Fellini's Amarcord, because of its panorama of quirky individual lives, and of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, which I especially appreciate because I wrote a linguistic analysis of it, so I have a very detailed understanding of how perfectly and insightfully Bergman traces the dissolution of a marriage and the couple's ongoing relationship.
More recently I have missed those slow, thoughtful foreign films that are about real people and their everyday lives, with dialogue that sounds realistic. A film I liked is Magnolia, because it had that lyrical quality, and the characters were believable. I always say that a work of art -- a book, film or play -- only works if you care about the characters, and in that film, I did. I liked Brokeback Mountain very much for that reason, too. I found myself thinking about the characters for days after, wishing they could have found happiness together. When I saw scenes from the movie in the academy award ceremony, that concern for them came flooding back.
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I don't listen to music while I'm writing, but I love folk music. I confess: I'm an old folkie who spent her teenage years hanging around Greenwich Village in New York City. I still love all the old greats like Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, the Weavers. OK, I'm dating myself. I especially cherish those who are still performing: Theodore Bikel, Tom Paxton, Peter Paul and Mary, and Peggy Seeger.
I also love a cappella music of all kinds. My husband and I love to go to concerts of the old great doo-wop groups, like the Temptations and the Four Tops. There was an a cappella group called the Flirtations that performed in the '90s that we particularly loved. We try to never miss the a cappella concerts at Georgetown, featuring the many student groups, both homegrown and visiting from other colleges.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading?
Alice Mattison's novel In Case We're Separated. I love how she captures the real lives of real people and the daily dramas that seem insignificant but make up our lives.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
My favorite would be a book I mentioned wanting to read. I also enjoy large photo books because I can return to them briefly from time to time.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
My desk is a mess; how I wish it were not so. But luckily, when I start writing, I get absorbed and don't see the mess. My only ritual, if you call it that, is that I have to start in the morning, the earlier the better. Once it's afternoon and I haven't started, then forget it; I have to wait for the next morning.
Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I guess you've have to count from the time I first sent an article to a women's magazine while I was a grad student, which was probably 1975, until 1990 when my book You Just Don't Understand became a bestseller (and remained so for nearly four years). That's 15 years during which I hardly took a day off, and worked pretty much all day every day, weekends as well as weekdays. Most of this was academic research and academic articles and books based on it, but I also wrote a few magazine articles and a book, That's Not What I Meant!, presenting some of that research for a general audience. You Just Don't Understand was my tenth book.
Setbacks along the way? Ah, you don't know the half of it. Or the tenth. I'll tell one: My first book for a general audience, That's Not What I Meant!
I knew I wanted to write a book for general readers about the importance of understanding how language works (what I call "conversational style" or ways of speaking) for relationships. I began by writing a draft of such a book in the form of questions and answers. On the basis of this, I found an agent, who told me how to rewrite the material as a proposal -- a second rewriting of the material. On the basis of this I got a small advance, a contract, and an editor who had a different vision for the book. After I'd written 100 pages to his specifications, he left the company, and I was assigned an editor who had another conception of what the book should be and told me to start fresh and write a complete draft without censoring myself. This I did. I sent her a 300-page draft that she pronounced unsuitable. By way of guidance, she sent me a package of paperback self-help books and the suggestion that I look them over to see how to structure my book. I was devastated.
I eventually pulled myself together and drew up an outline (without looking at the self-help books) that went from the littlest pieces of language ("linguistic devices") to bigger ones ("conversational strategies") and from there to situations and topics like gender differences. With this outline approved, I wrote the first three chapters, which pleased her. I then wrote three more, and sent them to her -- and learned she was leaving the company.
I was assigned a third editor who believed my book should focus on male/female differences. I agreed to throw out the six chapters I had just written, and prepared a detailed outline of a different book. But I put off writing it, and turned my attention instead to a technical paper in linguistics that I worked on for the next six months. This turned out to be a blessing, since this editor was fired. I was then assigned yet another editor -- my fourth -- who had yet another book in mind. She read everything I had written to that point and declared it all unacceptable. It was clear from talking to her that she had concluded I was a problem who had been kicking around for so long that I clearly was incapable of writing a book. At that point my agent moved the project to another publisher, where an editor happily approved the version that the third and fourth editors at the first house had rejected. I wrote the last chapters, and the book was published -- exactly as I had written it, with no changes.
If you could choose one new writer to be discovered, who would it be?
Micah Perks, because she's my niece.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
This is more geared to a fiction writer I think. Nonfiction writers who have an area of expertise, which is the only type of publishing I know, I advise to get articles into magazines first, and use them to find an agent, then cross your fingers while s/he does the walking.
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