Dorothy Rice
Dorothy Rice is the author of Gray Is the New Black: A Memoir of Self-Acceptance (Otis Books, 2019) and The Reluctant Artist (Shanti Arts, 2015), an art book/memoir about her father. After raising five children and retiring from a career managing environmental protection programs, Rice earned an MFA in Creative Writing at 60 from UC Riverside's low-residency program. In addition to writing, she now works for 916 Ink, a youth literacy nonprofit, and co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, a literary performance series.
Twitter: @dorothyrowena
Instagram: @dorothyriceauthor (though I scarcely use it!)
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
Yes! This has been a recurring state. Feeling as if I had to pretend I was something other than what I am and/or feeling that I didn’t really belong where I was and would be called out for it.
As a teenager, I remember wanting so desperately to be one of the “hippie” crowd at my high school (1968-1971), and dressing, talking, acting like I thought I was supposed to, in order to be accepted. Yet even when I managed to get invited to the “right” party, or to sidle up to the “right” lunch time crowd, which at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, was along a concrete wall that led to the outdoor amphitheater, I couldn’t relax. I was sure I’d be singled out, embarrassed, and forced to leave. I could never just be.
During my working career, I lived a waking Emperor’s New Clothes nightmare. Only I was the naked emperor and I knew it, while everyone else either hadn’t noticed yet or they were too polite to say.
I’d worked my way up the state civil service ladder, beginning as a clerk typist and eventually becoming the Executive Director of the State Water Resources Control Board. As a liberal arts major (Spanish Literature, of all things) with no technical expertise or training, I managed statewide programs staffed with engineers, scientists and geologists. My guard was up ALL the time, fearing that I might be unmasked at any moment. Imposter Syndrome on steroids.
Thank goodness I was eventually able to retire and write.
Do you collect anything? If so what, why and for how long?
I have collected many things. When I was 11, we lived in Mexico for a year and I collected food labels and kept them in a shiny cookie tin. Then came Rolling Stones memorabilia. Posters, photos and anything I could find in the newspaper and magazines, which back then (1960’s) wasn’t hard – the Stones were always doing something outrageous that made the news.
As an adult, I’ve collected frogs (not real ones), salt and pepper shakers, cool buttons (thrift stores used to be great for finding jars of buttons made from non synthetic materials, like wood, shell, bone, pewter (this was when I sewed a lot and imagined I’d used them one day, though I never did).
Moving my mother multiple times as she declined with Alzheimer’s, then dealing with her belongings after she died, has given me a different perspective on collecting. I fear leaving my kids with the task of figuring out what to do with all the “things” I’ve amassed over a lifetime, objects that meant something to me at one time or another, but that will likely lack context for anyone else. So, now I’m on a purging and minimizing kick, and try to fight the collecting impulse.
Oh, I do still collect something – writing prompts for my writing prompt box – interesting postcards, objects, bits of nature.
Do you speak another language and how has it affected your writing?
I learned Spanish as a child, when we lived in Guadalajara. I completed sixth grade there. I also studied Spanish literature in college. After I graduated, and earned enough money for the trip, I lived in Madrid for a year (1978) and wrote what I hoped would be my break-out novel (lol) - its hiding in a cupboard in my office; I don't dare read it.
During those times, I did feel as if I became a different version of myself when speaking, thinking and dreaming in Spanish. In English, I feel constrained; I’m an introvert and hesitant to speak up. In Spanish, I always felt more lively and in some sense more alive. Perhaps it's the lyricism and musicality of the language that made me more comfortable expressing myself emotionally.
It was amazing and wonderful to wake up and realize I’d been dreaming in Spanish. I miss that. In the years since, my language skills have eroded from lack of use. I hope to live and write in a Spanish-speaking country before too long, and to experience that different side of myself again and see whether and how it shows up in my writing.
Are your comfort foods sweet or savory?
My impulse is to say that my comfort foods of choice are sweet. But it isn’t necessarily the need for comfort that drives me to sugar; rather, it’s an addiction. If I eat one piece of chocolate from the box and no one is around to witness my wanton gluttony, I’ll eat the whole box. Which isn’t comforting; it makes me sick.
In truth, my comfort foods are neither overly sweet or savory, but rather, what some might call bland. Homemade biscuits or fresh bread, warm noodles with butter and cheese.
When my girls were still living at home and one of them, or me, had a rough day, I'd propose biscuits for dinner. Just biscuits. Making the dough, eating some of it raw (ah, the tang of buttermilk on the tongue), rolling it out or just plopping big spoonfuls on a baking tray, then eating them fresh and warm from the oven, with butter, maybe some honey or jam, while watching reruns of one of their shows – Buffy, Friends, Seinfeld. That was comfort food.
And yes, I write about food all the time, in terms of both pleasure and pain!
Is there a work of art you love?
I love Las Meninas by Velázquez. I visited it in the Prado when I lived in Madrid in 1978, then again when I returned to Madrid with my younger daughter when she graduated high school (2016). Both times, standing in the massive room with his paintings surrounding me, Las Meninas taking up one entire wall, was a profound, moving experience.
I’d first learned of Velázquez and other Spanish painters (Ribera, Goya, El Greco) from my father. Dad showed me photos of their work in his big art books. He always said the Spanish masters were under-appreciated, overshadowed by the more widely-known Flemish and Italian painters.
I can remember visiting museums in San Francisco with my father when I was young. “Incredible, isn’t it,” he would say. “So alive. That man could walk out of the painting and onto the sidewalk today and no one would look twice.”
At the Prado, in the Velázquez room, engrossed in Las Meninas, I imagined I could walk into that painting, into the strange royal world he’d depicted, the cosseted infanta, her ladies-in-waiting, court dwarves, a big, sleepy dog, the artist himself in the shadows, recording the moment. It was that alive.
