From the Archive: Sandra Tsing Loh Loves Mad Moms
From the Archive: Sandra Tsing Loh Loves Mad Moms
She's an award-winning writer, actor, speaker, and playwright with a hot take on motherhood, among other things!
This interview was orignally published in 2023.
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Welcome to the Womancake interview, Sandra! How is your work day going?
Well, I'm right in the middle [of] this play that I've written and am independently producing. It's opening soon, and then we'll run for five weeks. So it's exciting! It's a comedy called “Madwomen Of the West” that explores what it's like to be a woman my age. I'm 61, a boomer-aged woman in the 21st century, in a time where I have two children, 21 and 22. One would, I think, describe herself as bisexual and the other would describe themself as trans or non-binary.
So it's been interesting as a woman who went to college in the 70s, when there was “sexual liberation”, which I described as neither sexual nor liberation. As women living in these various decades, we were given so many narratives. In the 80s [it was], “Don't get married, put your job first. You can freeze your eggs and have babies at 55.” And then the 90s [it was], “We hate all those mean women, you have to be a supermom!” Each decade comes along, and it seems we're expected to do more and more things. And women are always blamed for the falling apart of the nuclear family, etcetera.
Now here we are having gone through this big election in 2016, where whatever anyone thought of Hillary Clinton, it was actually the apex of feminism, [the possibility of] a woman president, and then Trump [won]. It just feels like every decade, as a woman, you're not doing the right thing or you're getting blamed for something. I'm really happy to be working on a piece that explores this in a comedic and very warm and universal way. But I'm also independently producing it, which has its own challenges, so it's a little bit “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Love that you attracted a great cast for the show, including Marilu Henner and JoBeth Williams. You’ve always seemed to me like an artist who has a very strong faith in your own creative instincts. Have you always been that way?
I think that early on I didn’t. I used to get so excited about something I did, it was almost like I didn't know how wrong it could go. In my mind [I would think], “Well, of course this will be amazing!”. I never had a full-time job, I just kept doing it. I can see that I had a lot of luck early on. I worked hard, too. There was [also] a time where my ideas just weren't quite panning out. So I've lived through that, too. But I'm most engaged when I'm working on a proof-of-concept of something. I like people and communities, and I like building things, but I have [also] had things go very, very wrong. You have to learn from those, too. I think artists kind of live in a growth mindset. I don't like to do the same thing over and over. Some people can do it and get really good at it and make a lot of money, [but] my mind just wants to jump to some other thing, even though it sometimes doesn't work. So if anything, that's why I think writing in play format is fun now, because the characters can say all kinds of things. They don't all have to be me.
The theme of our first issue of Womancake is “flourishing”. Is there a particular environment activity or state of being in which you flourish?
The writer Candace Bushnell, who wrote “Sex in the City”, the original book, calls these the “bonus years”, because by the time you get 60, people that you know have died. It's like you're of a certain age, and you're lucky to be anywhere. I think flourishing is certainly having friends that you can relate to, and who are funny and who lift you. Pick people who are fun to be with and then make you feel good, because there's things that you don't have to prove at this age.
I think flourishing is certainly having friends that you can relate to, and who are funny and who lift you. Pick people who are fun to be with and then make you feel good, because there's things that you don't have to prove at this age.
How does wisdom manifest in your life at this time?
If there's anything, it's [that] sometimes people used to say, when I was working, “You have children, how do you do it all?” [But] if you looked at my car, it looks like there's a serial killer living there. It's discarded cups, and also 15 coffee mugs. I'm not exaggerating, it's just a volcano. So part of it is accepting [that] minimal [effort] is made for that. Also, recently, I haven't been sleeping very well. Sometimes I go to sleep, but I wake up at four. I'm on a journey of not pathologizing that. When I did my menopause book, it was [partly] a response to the other books that would always say, “Just cut out alcohol, sugar and caffeine.” Those are my three basic food groups! When I was pregnant it was the same advice. I mean, you don't want to go nuts and run through the street screaming, but it’s a good time to just accept your quirks.
Will you share an event from your life that created a distinct “before” and “after”, and what kind of wisdom and insight you gained from the “after”?
Something happened to me in my 30s, which is sort of a simplified version of different ways that I would continue to live it. I had been writing about my life, and I had a book called “Depth Takes A Holiday”, short essays about my life [and] being late-20s, early-30s unemployed. [Living] like a yuppie but downwardly mobile. I was doing a solo show based on it, and it was selling well. What I was doing sort of [matched] the high watermark of all this culture in the late 90s. There was a lot of money going into arts and culture. I was doing my show at the HBO workspace, which was like this melting pot for [people like] Jack Black and Kathy Griffin. People from the CBS quality development [department] showed up for my show, and they were laughing.
I met with one of them, and they really wanted me to take my book and my stories and create a sitcom based on my life. It would star [other people], because at that point I did [like what they wanted]. And I said, “Well, okay, but I'm a solo performer. If I could be on TV in any possible way, like on ‘Cheers’, where there's 11 people in that bar, can I just be the 11th guy?” They just said, “No”, and they were really mean about it. They expected me to keep doing it anyway. [The fee] was about $25,000, which was a lot of money at that time, but I just couldn't go through with it. I had an agent call me and leave me a message on my machine, [saying], “You don't understand, you cannot write and perform at the same time. You're making tea, and this is a coffee maker!”. It was just so abusive. At that point I just said to myself, “Well, I'm going to be the queen of a shoe box. It's a small shoe box. But I'm going to be queen of my own thing.” It takes a strong stomach to be a dedicated artist. It's not it's not a matter of talent. Some people want to be a writer or their friends want them to be writers. And they do write very nicely, but you [still] need some sort of drive or obsession to be the person who keeps at it.
I know what you mean! Your book, “The Madwoman In the Volvo”, which was published in 2014, is a menolit classic. I’m wondering if you have any further insights about the menopausal experience that have come to you since then?
Basically at age 46, I was in perimenopause, which, because of your hormonal levels, is almost like a second teenage [phase]. Suddenly, you're just wild in a way that you weren't. I was kind of an old mom, and when I was first mothering [my kids], for the first year or two, I didn't really have help, because I thought that I had to be with them all the time. I would write in my sweatpants on my bed, I'd be typing all day. [But] they get bored, and they don't want to watch TV anymore. They want to hang out with their mom and make lemonade and do crafts. I felt I had [been] really horrible at mothering, but I think that my children seem good. So as I like to say, better that their mother tries to find their own thing, than put her head in the oven and leave! If the mother goes nuts at some particular point, it's better to let her go through some really real stuff that women have to do. There's still a double standard. My trans kid said, “Mommy, [you] can pick your pronouns”. So [I thought] instead of a mother, I’ll be a father. The standard for fathers is so much lower. Just lower the standards for your mom, and then they will have a mother.
Wow, great points! Lastly, will you share a book, or life hack, or media that you're currently enjoying?
I host a monthly book show, and last week we [featured] Sharon Gless’ memoir called, “Apparently There Were Complaints.” She played Christine Cagney on “Cagney and Lacey”. She's really funny. She's really smart. She's 78 and just so honest. You can be 78 and still puzzling things out, but laughing along the way. That's what she said, “At least they’ll laugh!”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sandra can be found via her website. If you live in LA, hurry and grab tickets to her new play, or if not listen to her book show. But in any case, everyone should read her menopause manifesto.