City Voices Interview with Marcia Richard

Marcia Richard: Interview Questions

In many ways, our backgrounds could not be more different.

I’m the oldest of four children who grew up White, middle-class and Jewish in the 1950s outside New Haven, CT, though both sides of my family are from Brooklyn, having come there from Belarus in the late 1880s.

We had a close-knit family with my parents being overprotective. I was a virgin until age 22. The only drugs I did was smoking marijuana in college.

I moved to NYC in the 1980s for graduate school and have lived with my wife in Brooklyn since 1995.
The similarities: Mental illness in my immediate and extended family. I converted to Christianity 10 years ago.

1. Why did you write the book and what was your process?

In addition to creative writing, I’ve dabbled in art, dance, and theater. Writing has kept me alive.

2. Are you still passionate about the arts?

The most powerful image in your book is you as “a wildflower in a junkyard,” which to me generally represents your manic energy fueled by sex, drugs (and rock-and-roll?), but, more specifically, your practice of the arts when you were a young teen.

3. I wonder how common is it for a woman to be sexually abused as a child and become dependent on sex for emotional release as an adult?

4. Have you participated in any support groups for people who have reacted that way to sexual abuse and domestic violence?

The forward by Lady Shelly Harper was a hymn of praise to your fortitude and faith. You also quote some powerful bible verses on the back cover.

5. I would like to learn more about how your faith contributes to your recovery.

6. Which of the programs at Community Access helped you and how?

7. If you are familiar with the Justice Peer Initiative, a program that trains peers who have been incarcerated to work with other peers in the criminal justice system, would you like to be part of the program?

8. How does your work for NYC Well figure in your recovery?

I don’t have any children but I love the 10 cats I have rescued over the years.

9. How are you getting along with your daughter and grandkids now and what have you learned from their development that is helping with your own?

10.  Are you still looking for a romantic relationship, and, if so, what kind?

The challenges you faced on any given day were intense.

11. Before you found faith, what do you attribute your survival to?