Bookpleasures.com  welcomes as our guest,  Jenna MacSwain author of  A Slow Leap into the Sky.

In her freshman year at CalTech in 1982, Jenna was the only undergraduate African American woman on campus.  At the time, the overall ratio of male students to female students was 7 to 1. Her sophomore year saw 4 more incoming freshman African American young women, and that was roughly 10 percent of the incoming women students. She later began a career in Silicon Valley at a time when it was virtually an all-male environment.

 

Norm:  Good day Jenna and thanks for participating in our interview.

Please tell our readers a little bit about your personal and professional background. 

Jenna: Looking back over my career, I think it reveals my adventurer’s nature.  In high school, I only applied to colleges that I had not visited, colleges that were too far away from home to reach with a day’s driving. 



I have been an engineer, an inventor, a teacher, a business leader and a consultant variously over the last thirty years. I have followed opportunities to be challenged, including moving to Indonesia for three years.  I currently do technology consulting, and I run a small (non-technolgy) business, and I write.

Norm: What motivated you to become a scientist and work in Silicon Valley?


Jenna: I think I was born a scientist.  Recently, I saw an interview of Stephen Wolfram, who proposed that most scientists come to science inspired by science fiction. 


But for me, I was awed when Ms. Baca, my first-grade teacher, taught us that the sun was a star. And even before that, I had tried to grow a blue tailed lizard from its tail.  (Blue tailed lizzards are common in central New Mexico and when caught by the tail will release it. The tail grows back. I was convinced that with the right care, the process could work the other way and grow a lizard from the tail.) 

From as far back as I can remember, I was in love with the world and in love with trying to figure it out. I came to science fiction eventually, but that was later. Not to give the impression that my novel is science fiction. Science, math and engineering are fascinating enough to me that I include them in my writing as I would a beautiful setting.  I don’t try to fictionalize them. 

Norm: What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your career? 

Jenna: I am particularly proud of my patents, especially my first one which was granted in the bicentennial year of the US Patent Office, and was an invention in the combined fields of solid state physics and neural networks; and I am especially proud of my last one which is owned by the company that I founded, and is an invention in the field of virtual reality.  And, I am proud of the many young people who began their careers in one of my companies.

Norm: What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?

Jenna: As an African American female engineer, swimming against the currents of bias has been a given.  But it has been difficult to know when to adjust from struggling against the bias of “you aren’t capable” to the bias of “you shouldn’t be here”. 

They can look the same, but an effective response is very different. Dealing with a belief that you can’t do something is straightforward: you do it.  Dealing with the belief that you shouldn’t do something, or worse, that you shouldn’t be who you are is tougher and can see like there is way forward. At times you have to accept that you won’t directly change the person who holds this belief, and focus on practical matters:

  • Insuring that “shouldn’t” doesn’t force you to change who you are

  • Insuring that the believers of “shouldn’t” are not empowered to stop you

  • Insuring that “shouldn’t” doesn’t foster your own self-doubt

Norm: How did you become involved with the subject or theme of A Slow Leap into the Sky?

Jenna: I think I had been affected for years by the suicide of a colleague who had been a role model for me.  Her death coincided with the birth of my daughter, which is also why that particular loss felt so much like I was haunted. 

I wanted the world that was so hard for her to live in to be different. I wanted it to be easier for my baby girl. But I also felt that it couldn’t be different until there was a better depiction of how the world is, of how we are. 

Women of science are nearly invisible, such that even today the popular belief is that we don’t exist and never have. I was inspired to write a story of a woman of science who was as fully formed as I could make her, who made a mark on history, and who lived a full and fascinating life.

Norm: Could you briefly tell our audience a little about your novel and is there much of you in the book?

Jenna: There is none of me whatsoever, except that I am every single character.  But seriously, this is not autobiographical at all, I have borrowed aspects of my personality, especially my flaws, and fused that with little pieces of people I know -- friends, family. 

The main character’s mixed heritage, for instance, is inspired by my niece. I have met savants, people who came to Caltech at fifteen and younger and proceeded to test out of their first year of classes, graduate with a perfect GPA and then go on to become Rhodes scholars. 

They were still human beings whose extraordinary ability was not the totality of who they were. Alexandra Harris, my main character, breaks from the stereotypes of a scientific savant; she is female and has insecurities and emotional struggles that come from her choices, her obsessions, her desires … not merely from her extraordinary abilities. 

Norm: What do you think most characterizes your writing?  

Jenna: I think that my writing creates a world that is culturally seen as unapproachable and unattractive, and shows its beauty – creates a depiction that is attractive, delicious and sonorous.  My characters are people that my readers will recognize, and hopefully, fall for.

Norm: What was the most difficult part of writing this book?

Jenna: I wrote the first draft rather quickly, in 8 weeks.  The rewriting, which is where novels truly take shape, was also done in a reasonable span of time.  I worked with a writing group that I dearly love. The hardest part was getting it out into the world, which is a form of letting it go, and of exposing myself in ways that my other work doesn’t.  The process of publication came with lots of opportunities for procrastination.

Norm: What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them? 

Jenna: I think radical ideas are best normalized in society through storytelling.  It is still a radical idea that women and girls are not simply vessels for passing and amplifying the humanity of other people.  They have humanity of their own that is valuable to society and to history. Life is hard for brilliant, ambitious women, and it destroys far too many.  I wanted to normalize the idea that they should get to live long fulfilling lives without changing who they are. Time will tell how well this story helps.

Norm: Did you see your book from an outline or did it come from a completed manuscript?

Jenna: I wrote A Slow Leap into the Sky, along a circuitous path.  I wrote scenes as they came to me, out of order.  With each scene the writing momentum grew, and toward the end of the first draft at times I felt as if I was losing my mind a bit. 

I constantly had imaginary people talking to each other in my head or talking to me to insist that I immediately take out pen and notebook to capture what they were doing.  I would scan through magazines looking for people who looked like them or catch myself window shopping for clothes that they would wear. Eventually the arc of the plot was clear, and I did the more foundational work of building character histories and a timeline.  I never had a proper outline. I am developing one for the next story.

Norm: Which character was the easiest to write?  Most difficult?

Jenna: The easiest were Tracy and Kevin.  They were my voices of reason.  

The most difficult was Donna, Alex’s mother. She was very complex, and I think I became obsessed with her such that her origin became the inspiration of the next novel.  The tension of the connection between Alexandra and Fredrick and the simultaneous disconnect that comes from their being of different generations, this was a challenge. Also, when Fredrick is first introduced, I didn’t want the reader to be certain how to feel about him or his intentions.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and A Slow Leap into the Sky?

Jenna:

Norm: What is next for Jenna MacSwain?

Jenna: I have begun writing the story of Alexandra Harris’s mother’s family.  I am telling the story of her maternal grandmother and grandfather. It is a story that spans the start of the great depression through the second world war.  It goes deeper into the world of music and musician, where jazz is a character, similar to the way that I tried to make technology and Silicon Valley a character in A Slow Leap Into the Sky.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your book, but nobody has? 

Jenna: I have thought a lot about A Slow Leap into the Sky and the Me Too movement.  This novel was completed before the movement had taken shape.  But the movement has brought out of silence the sexual exploitation of professional women that has been there for generations.  If I were asked ‘How are we supposed to feel about Fredrick? Is he a hero or a villain?’ I hope that I have done my job well enough the he is complicated, and different readers will have varying opinions about him.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors

Jenna:Thank you very much, and thank you to all of my readers.  I am grateful for each and every one.