Photo by Deborah Copaken
Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is the author of the new novel Mirror Me. She also has written the novel Embers on the Wind. A former ballet dancer and a psychotherapist, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
Q: What inspired you to write Mirror Me, and how did you create your cast of characters?
A: I could write a book on that question alone! *Takes big breath, pours glass of cabernet.* The seeds of the project that would become Mirror Me were extracted from my very first adult novel, called Birchwood Doll. That was a fairly autobiographical story about a biracial ballerina who would evolve into the character of Lucy.
I wrote Birchwood Doll when I was just figuring out craft—in many fitful, piecemeal lessons. It was the book I revised, reworked, tossed out, dusted off, hired a book coach for, submitted, got rejected, and loved with all my soul.
Though Birchwood Doll was a finalist for the Nilson Unpublished Novel prize, it never saw the light of publication—never even landed me an agent. It was sprawling and bulky, but full of good characters, passages, and descriptions of ballet culture that I’ve used elsewhere, including in pieces I’ve published.
Mirror Me began as a sequel to Birchwood Doll, originally called Acid Shabbat, in which Eddie trips on acid, then shows up at a Shabbat dinner hosted by his sister-in-law, the troubled ballerina from Birchwood Doll, and, well, antics ensue.
I became obsessed with Eddie’s character, his anxiety and sense of feeling other in the world, his relationships with his family and his neuroses. I knew I needed him to be Black and Jewish like I am, a bit of an outsider in each culture. He came to me male, as the brother-in-law of Lucy, and I left him that way. I like him as a young man buffeted by life.
The story itself and the character of Pär, who is essentially Eddie’s personal Greek Chorus, came gradually. I’ve been tinkering with this novel—mostly while on breaks from other projects—since 2009.
Q: The writer Nancy Johnson called the book “an exquisitely rendered meditation on race, family, and memory.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love that description so much, especially coming from Nancy Johnson, author of The Kindest Lie and the upcoming People of Means. She’s such a master at writing the juxtaposition of race and class.
As a biracial Black/white/Jewish author, I meditate a whole lot on race in my writing, especially in nonfiction essays about my parents’ long interracial marriage. Likewise, I get lots of material from memories of my biracial 1970s childhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Eddie grows up.
I’m also a former adoption caseworker and a psychotherapist with a post-Masters certification in family therapy. To me there is nothing more fascinating than how we are influenced by our family circumstances into the adults we ultimately become.
Q: Without giving anything away, did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I definitely did not. As noted, there were so many versions as I reworked the plot over the years. It evolved and surprised me.
The story was initially set in the present to correspond with Birchwood Doll. I was stumped on how to carry out the twists because one internet search by Eddie or any of the other characters would have wiped out the whole plot. Only when I set the book back in the pre-Google 1970s and 1990s did the ending come together.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: This was a process almost as grueling as writing the book itself! For months, my editor and I tossed titles back and forth before arriving at Mirror Me, which literally refers to the rendition of Eddie that he sees in the mirror.
For much of the time, we were hung up on the water theme, and then the adoption theme. I literally polled my social media followers and got a million suggestions. It was also very difficult to come up with a title that wasn’t a spoiler. Mirror Me was kind of a last minute, throw-it-all-out and look-at-it-anew effort.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now, I am working on a mother-son story that tackles the race/class continuum in the age of BLM and Covid-19 (it’s just a hair more political than my other work). Also in the hopper is a sequel/expansion of The Story of the Birthing Room, which is one of the stories in my debut novel, Embers on the Wind (Little A, 8/2022).
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I think that’s all for now! Thank you so much for these fantastic, thought-provoking questions.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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