Interview with Janet Banks

Janet Banks’ essay “Iowa Through the Windshield” was published in the Winter 2021 issue of Bluestem. Banks is a Boston-based writer with roots in Iowa where she was born and raised, and New York City where she lived and worked for thirty years. Her personal essays and poems have been published by Cognoscenti, Poetry and Places, The Rumpus, Entropy Magazine, Silver Birch Press, Persimmon Tree, and elsewhere. Shortly after retiring from a corporate career, she was published in The Harvard Business Review. The essay was reprinted in HBR’s Summer 2020 Special Issue: “How to Lead in a Time of Crisis.”

One reason you cite for returning to Iowa was to “say [your] last good-byes to the geography of [your] youth,” which was seemingly an overall positive experience for you. Would you recommend others to take a similar trip to their hometown for closure? At what point in life would it be ideal? 

I am so happy to have made this trip when I did, and today, I’m hoping it won’t be my last. If it is, I’ll have great memories, but the experience opened the possibility of a future with Iowa vs. merely providing closure, as I’d expected it to. Reconnecting with family and being warmly welcomed after so many years was an unexpected gift. I’d never had the chance to develop relationships with the younger generation, so this was a beginning, and we’ve continued deepening those relationships since. 

As a non-fiction writer and poet, I’ve written often about my early years and my family of origin. Iowa is likely to inspire future pieces, so it was great to bring myself up-to-date. For example, I visited Drake University’s campus where I graduated in 1966 (the same year as Karamu/Bluestem Magazine was launched!) and peeked into their beautiful new theater. We toured Des Moines via the River Walk with a stunning bridge honoring Women of Achievement – all new to me. I encourage anyone, particularly those in later years, to explore what their childhood home might have to offer them today.  

You briefly mention that you visited eight towns in six days and drove 700 miles. Can you tell us more about the road trip itself? What was the most memorable experience? 

I’d made a list of all the places I wanted to revisit, and we plotted the best route on a map. We enjoy road trips – exploring the sights, buying sandwiches, looking for local parks, enjoying picnic lunches.  The most memorable experience was driving the country roads, looking out at rows and rows of corn and soybeans with so much sky, like an ocean. I paid little attention to scenery when I lived in Iowa, but as an adult, I miss it.  

Moving from a small town in Iowa to New York City is a dramatic lifestyle change. What were the benefits of your move? Besides the separation from family, were there any other drawbacks? 

I moved to New York City as a newlywed. My husband, an actor and singer, was pursuing a career in the theater. I got a job teaching high school English in a school, twice the population of my small town! Within a year, we’d adjusted and claimed the city as our home, enjoying the diversity, the arts, new friends. One drawback that eventually turned out to be an advantage, I left teaching. I loved my students, but schools were terribly managed in the 1960’s. I found a new career in business that served me well until I retired. Fortunately, my parents loved NYC and visited me every year. My son and I stayed with them in Iowa for a couple of weeks every summer. Plus, we wrote weekly letters. I didn’t feel cut off from my immediate family. 

Near the end of “Iowa Through the Windshield,” you describe Iowa as a “state of mind” in addition to a physical location. Can you explain this idea further? 

My “Iowa state of mind” invokes quiet, spaciousness – more room in my brain, a feeling of being unencumbered. I’d fly back to Manhattan feeling refreshed. Now, living in Boston, I go to the ocean to evoke those same feelings.  

Your current project (at the time "Iowa Through the Windshield" was published) focuses on aging and “the need to create a future when you are old.” How has the aging process affected how you view life and the concept of time? How do you think this project will benefit others in the aging process? 

Before we turned 70, my husband and I asked ourselves the question: How do we want life in our 70s to be? The result of that inquiry was what we called The Age Project. We researched healthy aging by reading books written by 10 experts in the field. I wrote an essay about our findings, published by WBUR’s Cognoscenti, 3/18/2016, The Age Project: Living Well Into Our 70’s. We created a framework: 1) Keep Moving, 2) Always Be Learning, and 3) Stay Connected. We’ve kept with our plan, straight through the pandemic and beyond. 

We’ll be 80 in months, not years. Cognoscenti suggested I update our thoughts about aging. I’ve been working on a new essay. Much is the same, but we’ve had health challenges and time feels more finite. I appreciate what Sherwin B. Nuland wrote in The Art of Aging: Aging is a type of creativity. All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. I’m enthusiastic about writing poetry. I’d never written a poem until 2020, but now have published 10 poems, and I plan to continue writing and submitting. I’m eager to put my first collection together. Meanwhile my husband is deciding what class he’ll enroll in for the fall term. Enthusiasm and attitude are everything.