Stephanie Danler: Empowered by Choice
Photograph by Emily Knecht Stephanie Danler’s first novel, Sweetbitter, was heralded as the millennial coming of age story. Set against the backdrop of a fine dining restaurant in Manhattan, it was a love letter to the pleasure of food and the frenetic sensuality of New York in the aughts. With the impressive advance Danler earned, she was able to step away from her decade-plus career waiting tables and step into her long-held aspiration of being A Writer. But what happens in the aftermath of a dream attained?
In her latest work, Stray: A Memoir, we are introduced to Danler in the months after the sale of her novel. She has been pulled to return to her hometown of Los Angeles, leaving behind her husband and the self she had created while living in New York. The Santa Ana fire winds gust ominously through the canyon where she has moved, and debris from the eroding hillside crashes down on her precariously constructed rental. The menacing lure of her married lover, whom she aptly refers to as “the Monster,” perpetually looms. Returning to California unearths a cascading swell of memories about her family—her abusive, alcoholic mother who threw Danler out of the house when she was sixteen; her largely absent, drug-addicted father, who then took her in—and the trauma of that upbringing.
In Stray, Danler’s examination of her self is razor sharp, her prose lyrical and haunting. She details the darkness within her extended family without sentiment. Through her exploration of her past, she discovers the ways her family’s damage has armored her and set in motion the pattern of self-destruction that has followed her throughout her adult life. Danler’s unflinching gaze at her process of discovery leads to epiphanies about forgiveness, inheritance, and fate so quiet in their honesty that they shine, brilliant with hope.
On an early spring day as the pandemic surged around the world, Stephanie and I, both sheltered in place on opposite coasts, spoke about the interconnectedness of psychological and physical landscapes, writing across genres, generational trauma, developing compassion for oneself, and feeling empowered by choice.
—Elizabeth Lothian for Guernica
: You with the line “The list of things I thought I knew but did not know grew quickly during my first weeks back in Los Angeles.” Immediately I was drawn into the journey you are about to take. How did you come to this line and what were you hoping its effect would be on your reader?
