A Conversation with Joanne Greenberg (Interview‪)‬

Joanne Greenberg (1932-) is best known for writing I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964), a groundbreaking, fictional representation of a teenage girl's recovery from schizophrenia, based on the therapeutic relationship between Greenberg and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann; the novel was recently re-issued with a new afterword. Greenberg has published seventeen works of fiction; a new novel, Miri Who Charms, is scheduled for publication in May 2009. Greenberg's work--praised by writers as varied as Sanford Pinsker, Ruth Wisse, Joyce Carol Oates, and Christopher Lehmann-Haupt--still awaits the acclaim and critical attention it deserves. Formally inventive and deeply moral, politically aware but skeptical of political agendas, Greenberg's work explores Jewish themes and characters. Greenberg's first publication was a historical novel, The King's Persons, about the twelfth-century York massacre of Jews (1963); like that novel, this conversation reveals Greenberg's ongoing concern with Jewish history and texts. Greenberg lives with her husband, Albert, near Golden, Colorado, in the home they built over fifty years ago. In addition to writing daily, Greenberg teaches writing, ethics, and anthropology at the Colorado School of Mines. This conversation with Gail Berkeley Sherman took place at Greenberg's home in August 2007; the notes are supplemented by further discussion in November/ December 2008 and February 2009. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.