Summer Books 2018
7/6/18 - We're at the library, on the beach, and by the pool with our noses in books/kindles. And you know we're all about the stories that share and expand on women's experiences. This week we hear from Jessica Knoll about The Favorite Sister, her novel full of murder and scandal set in the world of reality TV. Glynnis MacNicol's memoir No One Tells You This is full of dispatches on life after 40 when you don't follow a spouse-and-kids blueprint. Yrsa Daley-Ward is perhaps best known as a poet, and her new memoir The Terrible uses that precision of language and feeling to explore her youth.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Destry Maria Sibley
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Novels by Jessica Knoll: Luckiest Girl Alive, The Favorite Sister
...and essays: I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry, What I Know (trigger warning: description of sexual assault)
No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol
Bone and The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward
TRANSCRIPT: Summer Books 2018
[Ads]
(0:58)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On this week's agenda we're talking books: everything we're reading this summer, or at least a few favorites; things we're taking to the beach; things we're using to dive deeper and think harder about ourselves; and books that are holding up a mirror to our experiences. We talked to Glynnis MacNicol, Yrsa Daley-Ward, and Jessica Knoll.
[Theme Song]
(1:54)
Ann: First up Amina chatted with Jessica Knoll about her new novel The Favorite Sister. It is what People Magazine calls "A juicy who-done-it staged behind the scenes of a reality show."
[Interview Starts]
Jessica: My name is Jessica Knoll and I'm an author and also a screenwriter is a new kind of dimension to my career that's developed from my first book.
Aminatou: I'm so happy to hear you say that because I just read both of your books and I just kept screaming "Where is the movie?" So I heard the first one has . . .
Jessica: We can scream it together. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Okay. Where is the movie?
Jessica: Where is the movie?
Aminatou: Okay, where are the movies? I love how this is book talk to movie talk. [Laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, exactly. So there's actually things going on with both books. So the first book Luckiest Girl Alive came out in 2015 and it was optioned by Lion's Gate with Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea producing and that's been three years now. And I adapted it myself.
Aminatou: That's awesome.
Jessica: It felt like you were continuing the story in a way because the screen adaptation is another deeper dive into the character and the story. So we had that approved -- the script was approved by the studio -- and since then it's just been a struggle of finding a director. And we are actually close with someone right now. I can't . . .
Aminatou: Fingers crossed. Don't say it. We're not going to jinx it.
Jessica: Yeah, fingers crossed. Yeah.
Aminatou: Fingers crossed.
Jessica: [Laughs]
Aminatou: I'm so excited that you're making the time for us today. So the joke on Call Your Girlfriend is I don't read fiction but I can say in 2018 that's no longer true. I want to talk about both of your books. So in your famous New York Times essay called I Want to be Rich and I'm Not Sorry -- I can't tell you how many people sent it to me being like "Amina, did you write for the Times this weekend?"
Jessica: [Laughs]
Aminatou: And I was like well, you know, I wish that I was a novelist in Los Angeles. But yes, this person really gets me. One of the things that I loved about it is that you have been quite sure of what you wanted to do for a long time.
(4:08)
Jessica: Yeah, I have been. People ask, you know, "When did you know you wanted to be a writer?" And I can't give them an answer because it feels -- to me it's something I knew that I wanted to do the way I know how to breathe. I had teachers and parents that encouraged that in me and recognized a raw talent and pushed me in that direction. But the piece that was always missing was how do you actually make a living out of this? And that was something I had to figure out on my own. I didn't really get a whole lot of direction when it came to how are you going to use this skill and this talent to pay your bills? And to also live a life that I want to live, you know? Like I want to be able to travel and not have to worry about money. And when you hear someone is a writer the kind of first thing people would jump to is you're living that sort of starving artist lifestyle. I always knew that wouldn't be for me.
Aminatou: That's so refreshing to hear. Thank you for saying that. I think so many people think that yeah, in order to be an artist you don't have to talk about money. And I'm going to be really honest, my entrée into your work was actually that New York Times essay. And I was like I don't care what this lady writes, I'm going to support her. [Laughter]
Jessica: Thank you.
Aminatou: So we're all very lucky that you're the most talented person in the world because this could've backfired so many ways.
Jessica: Oh, thank you. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I just thought it was really honest and it was something, I don't know, that I think a lot of our listeners also might recognize themselves in. And I think that instinct too that you talked about, you know, like trying to adapt to your work or like figuring out foreign rights or whatever and knowing that you can be in control and you can learn a new skill and you can do something for yourself, I think that was something that was deeply admirable for me. I was like yes, this is the kind of can-do spirit I like in ladies. [Laughs]
(6:05)
Jessica: Thank you. Yeah, it was. It really was about that, like learning that new skill. And it feels like each time I learned a new one another door opens. Like I know how to be a screenwriter now so now I have a little bit of power to say "Well I want to produce the next one" and I get to do that now. So it's exciting, you know, when you step up to that challenge and you do a good job with it the other doors that open there.
Aminatou: That's cool. Well let's talk about The Favorite Sister. But this one really had it all for me. I was just like well, sibling rivalry, murder.
Jessica: Yeah.
Aminatou: Plot twists, reality TV. Like deeply speaking to my soul. So there was just -- I just really appreciated reading, you know, a complicated story that didn't feel . . . it didn't feel like the characters were caricatures, you know? Even though it was snarky and it was scandalous. I just think that for anybody who loves Real Housewives this is the smart book you've been looking to read for a long time.
Jessica: Oh, thank you for saying that because I'm a huge Housewives fan. And I think when I sat down to write the second book I used up so much of my own life in the first book that I was like what am I going to draw from now?
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Jessica: And I'm just sitting there watching Real Housewives and I think one night I was at a friend's house and we decided to go back and watch the first season of Real Housewives of New York. And I was like god, Jill and Bethany. Friendship is so heartbreaking. There's so much to unpack here. And I think from there it just clicked like I could really borrow from some of these story lines. And Andy Cohen actually called me and said he loved the book and he was like "Well you've just got to write what you know."
Aminatou: [Laughs]
(7:55)
Jessica: And I was like that's exactly what I did. I know Bravo shows really well so I wrote what I knew. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I love that. What is your process when you're going through writing about these complicated kinds of women? Especially millennial women because I do think that there -- it's such a fine line between, you know, just making them caricatures of the time and just very honestly saying this is the kind of book that a progressive feminist can be really delighted in.
Jessica: Yeah, I think it's about . . . well, so I'm a millennial but I'm an old millennial. So I'm part of this generation that we're kind of painted as entitled and at the same time some of us are really starting to grow up and have real responsibilities in our lives. And that includes becoming mothers and getting married. And that's not a part -- that's not in my life right now, I'm not a mother, but so many of my friends are. And I really wanted to dig into that dynamic between older millennial women who are mothers and older millennial women who are not mothers. So I wanted to represent kind of my people.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Jessica: Like the older millennial women who aren't mothers and how we . . .
Aminatou: Or as I call us no kids, no problems. [Laughs]
Jessica: No kids, no problems. Yeah, except for dogs that itch their vaginas on your carpet.
Aminatou: That's me except that it's not true.
Jessica: [Laughter] That's the only problem I have right now with my dog. Yeah, so I was trying to also broaden -- my first book I wrote so much about my world and the world I knew and I wanted to open up and really challenge myself in this book and put myself in the shoes of women who had different experiences than me and imagine what they're feeling and what their grievances are and what their joys are in life. So it was a lot of shuffling between the kind of three main characters who we hear from their point-of-view in The Favorite Sister. And it could be hard to move from one person to another because you really do start to fall in love with each person.
Aminatou: Aww.
(10:10)
Jessica: And you're like -- yeah, then you're like oh no, I have to shift to this other person who's kind of like her mortal enemy and get into her head. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Just like Real Housewives!
Jessica: Just like Real Housewives. It was like constant shifting of alliances.
Aminatou: Well the main friendship is obviously modeled between Bethany -- it's like the friendship between Bethany and Jill, correct?
Jessica: Correct.
Aminatou: Yes. And the thing that I love about it is how you really get into the nitty-gritty of the obsession that friends can have for each other that just you have to know everything. You have to be there for every experience. It's like you're their soulmate. One of the things that we talk about a lot here is just how, you know, friendship is one of the central relationships that a lot of young women have. Because it's not sanctioned by paperwork it doesn't feel like the main course a lot of times. But you get to explore the underbelly of that where it is like the obsession becomes so much and because you have so many boundaries that aren't spoken of that you end up just destroying each other.
Jessica: Yeah. It's almost like the love becomes so powerful that it tips the scales and it goes into that realm of like I know so much about you that I hate you now. [Laughs] I mean I just think I've had in my life, when I think about the friendships I've had in my life, like the way women have hurt me in my life, it's like no man could ever metaphorically hit me that hard, you know? It was always such a gut punch when a friendship started to sour. And I've spent a lot of times with just women in my life. I went to an all girls' school from kindergarten to eighth grade. I worked in magazines so I was only ever around women and like one gay man. That was my office for about eight years. And so I feel like I have a lot to say about those dynamics. They can be powerful for good when they're working but that power can corrupt and go bad. I've seen that happen too. I've had it happen to me and I hope I haven't done that to other people but you never know. I don't know what women I've worked with or women I've gone to school with, you know, I don't know what their memories are of me. I can't imagine that I was only ever the victim in these situations so . . .
(12:30)
Aminatou: Oh, I think about this constantly. Constantly.
Jessica: Yeah.
Aminatou: And I think that because we don't, you know . . . like in the way that in a romantic relationship if you're lucky you can have some sort of postmortem or you can really have closure I don't know that we have language to do that for friendships a lot of times.
Jessica: Right. It feels like it's not sanctioned necessarily to have those sorts of conversations after a friendship is over. And a lot of my friendships that ended badly when I was much younger in middle school, I've slowly reconnected with those people over the years.
Aminatou: Whoa.
Jessica: But on social media, like it hasn't really . . . we haven't taken it offline yet but I have gotten a sort of -- not that they've repented but I have had those moments, a little bit of closure from friends who have said, you know, "I read this in the book and it recalled a moment we had when we were younger. You know, our friendship did mean so much to us and I'm sorry it ended the way it ended." You know, and you realize that other people -- you weren't the only one who got hurt; other people got hurt too.
Aminatou: Man, you're making me want to not look at Facebook today. [Laughter] Because I don't think I could handle real talk from middle school friends.
(13:52)
Jessica: From middle school friendships? I know. All you're left with is the emotional feeling. You know, you can't even recall specifics anymore.
Aminatou: You don't even remember what it was but the feeling is so sharp.
Jessica: Yeah.
(14:00)
Aminatou: One of the other things I think that you do so well in this book is really lay bare the behind-the-scenes of reality TV for people who, you know, it's like for those of us who watch a lot or we watch Unreal or whatever we're really aware of what the manipulation is like, you know? But I think you really drove that point home that nobody really is who they claim they are and everybody is posturing for the cameras.
Jessica: Right. Right. Yes, and when I was writing the book it was before the election, before the presidential election, and it's amazing to me how prescient it feels reading it now because we're living in this kind of post-truth world, right? Where facts don't matter. We can shape reality however we want to shape it. And that's the world these women are very much living in. It's the kind of emotional truth of things versus the factual truth.
I was also fascinated with this idea of being able to lay blame at the foot of a person, that it works better for your narrative. You know, you have to read the book to know but kind of the wrong person takes the fall for this crime because it better fits the narrative that the show is pushing.
Aminatou: Okay. Well I won't ruin the rest of the book for anybody but there is murder. There is sibling rivalry.
Jessica: There is murder. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I don't even want to touch on it because I don't want to give anything away. But if that's your jam kind of like great junk food, you know? In the sense . . .
Jessica: Yeah.
Aminatou: Like some people will say it's not good for you. I dispute that; everything is good for you in moderation. This is super-addictive.
Jessica: Right. Well I hate -- yeah, I hate when people say anything about reality TV being a guilty pleasure.
Aminatou: No!
Jessica: Because I'm like why? We shouldn't experience guilt for the things that give us pleasure. Just enjoy it.
Aminatou: Yeah, I'm like this is my classics. This is the Odyssey for me. [Laughter] Just deal with it.
Jessica: We're going to put that on the cover. That's a great blurb right there.
Aminatou: You're like "Come through a journey through classics reality TV with Jessica Knoll." [Laughs] It's so true though. I think that so many people have shame about their interests, especially women, because, you know, like the . . .
Jessica: Oh yes.
Aminatou: Everything that young women care about is really frivolous. I'm like I don't know how to tell you this. If you watch sports you already know the dynamics of reality TV. It's all the same.
Jessica: Right!
Aminatou: Everything is reality TV down to politics so you might as well bow to the masters of it.
Jessica: I am with you.
(16:45)
Aminatou: I'm like some people actually get paid to make this and other people are forced to live this so who are you going to trust?
Jessica: Yeah. And I'll also add to that that reality TV is a world where women thrive and you can have arguments whether that's for good or for bad. But you don't really get to see women being like loud and misbehave and be rewarded for that. You know, there are very few realms where we get to see that take place. So I don't know, in some ways I think there are things worth celebrating there.
Aminatou: Thanks so much for coming on the show today Jess.
Jessica: Thank you for having me.
Aminatou: You can find Luckiest Girl Alive and The Favorite Sister wherever you but your favorite books.
[Interview Ends]
[Ads]
Ann: Okay, so I am obsessed with Glynnis MacNicol's new memoir No One Tells You This. So Glynnis's memoir arrives at a time when there have been seemingly this new spate of books that are being frank about the experience of motherhood or deciding whether to become a mother. I'm thinking about Sheila Heti's Motherhood. I'm thinking about and now we have Everything on Motherhood Before I Was Ready, Megan O'Connell's book. I'm thinking about Now My Heart is Full: A Memoir by Laura June also about motherhood. And so reading Glynnis's book which is about what does it take to build a life as a person who does not have kids and is not partnered and is still totally engaged with the world and engaged with her community and family, what does that life look like? And this book is just such a beautiful exploration of that. So here's me and Glynnis.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Glynnis, welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Glynnis: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Ann: I have so many feelings about your memoir. I mean all of them great. But first of all I have to ask you how you knew that this was the subject for a memoir or this is the part of your story you knew you wanted to tell now.
Glynnis: When I started, when I turned 40, I approached it with a lot of dread -- unacknowledged dread really, I think -- in the sense that once I turned 40 what came next? The only sense was if you're single and you don't have children that this was sort of the end. You've missed the last exit to a fulfilling life. Good luck.
(22:05)
Ann: Right. If you're a straight woman people are like you've exhausted your options. You're not married and don't have kids.
Glynnis: Exactly. And there was nothing out there to suggest otherwise. My immediate feeling waking up on my 40th birthday was one of enormous relief. This sense of like oh, I'm free now from all of these expectations and free of the clock that tends to tick in women's brains once we hit puberty. And then I spent the year being really increasingly frustrated and resentful that no one had actually prepared me for what life might be like. That it was complicated and difficult in ways that no one had suggested to me but also so exhilarating and wonderful. And I had so much freedom. I got angrier and angrier that there were no stories to look to to see my life and the life of so many women around me reflected back to me. I sort of compared it to how women have traditionally not been taught how to deal with their own money until very recently and I really felt like I had not been taught how to deal with freedom. The freedom to make all of my own decisions which is both amazing and difficult but no one had told me either of those things.
So I got to the end of my 40th year that I spent a lot of times complaining there were no stories. Then as a writer it eventually occurred to me I should write the story. And it just so happened that my 40th year involved a lot of highs and lows that reflected I think a lot of challenges that single women face. I was a primary caretaker for my mother who was quite ill and my sister was a single parent at the time with small children. On the flip side I had a modicum of financial stability and was traveling quite a bit and was just having this sort of incredibly exhilarating time. And both of those things were counter to the ideas we have about single women which is either they're objects of pity which I was really not since I was sort of sailing through France at one point and/or very spoiled which I was equally not spoiled. I had enormous responsibilities.
(24:20)
So I felt like the year encapsulated a lot of things I felt were lacking in the conversation and that I wanted to contribute to it, and that I needed to see myself. So I figured, you know, probably other women did too. Or I hoped anyway.
Ann: Yeah. And I'm curious about how you feel about the kind of broader atmosphere this book comes out in.
Glynnis: [Laughs]
Ann: And I mean that in a couple of different ways. Like politically for sure, maybe we can talk about that one first, but then I'm also interested . . . I mean one reason your book was just like oxygen to me is because it came out at the same time as all these other very well publicized memoirs and books about motherhood. And I was like totally feeling this overwhelm almost retrograde like there's so many books about this very traditional take on womanity. So I'm curious. And then of course it's impossible to consider anything absent this political moment. So maybe talk about those things. You know, I know books are written in different environments than in which they are birthed.
Glynnis: Yes. In this case extremely different. When I sold this book it was greeted with some skepticism like will anybody actually be interested in this? How is this a story? Is there anything compelling about this? And I think what we're seeing right now is across the board women, people of color, minorities, anybody that doesn't fit the mainstream narrative of what life is supposed to look like are pushing back against the lack of narratives around all of our lives.
(26:03)
One of the reasons we have the administration we have is that the dominant narrative of whiteness and maleness was really challenged during the Obama administration. We're seeing a push-back against this. So I think it's a little overwhelming to be publishing in this moment. We are -- this is a very intense, intense moment in American history I think it's fair to say. But I also feel really fortunate to be putting into the world in a moment of time when we're seeing so much direct and violent pushback against the right to story of anyone that's not a white man essentially, that I'm able to put this out into the world and support it and have this platform. So I don't know, I'm up to the challenge. It does feel a little overwhelming.
Part of writing this book was that I felt really suffocated by the really narrow limited narratives provided for women in general and was trying to counter that using my own life experience with a slightly different story. If we are going to come out of this current moment as overwhelming and depressing as the news is -- and I do think we are going to come out of it -- then what's going to take us out of it is a wide variety of narratives being woven into the idea of what this country is in a more permanent and celebrated way.
Ann: Right. And it's okay to acknowledge, you know, on some people these constraints are suffocating; on others they are life-threatening. We desire all of these stories.
Glynnis: Absolutely.
Ann: I'm curious about there's so much in this book about your mother, especially because she was sick during this period of your 40th year that the book is about. And this idea of what if your life is a rejection of your mother's? Or what if your life is a commentary on your mother's choices? And that's something that in this hetero-patriarchy we dwell in, like a thing women think about a lot. What are the choices that the women who came before me had? What am I doing with my different set of choices? How do I judge and feel about those women who came before me and my family history or personal history?
Glynnis: Mm-hmm.
(28:30)
Ann: And I think that your book was one of the most interesting and artful grapplings with that question that I've read in a really long time.
Glynnis: Thank you.
Ann: So maybe you can talk a bit about that?
Glynnis: Yeah. My mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's and dementia a few years before I turned 40 and was very, very ill during that year and passed away a few weeks after I turned the first draft of this book in. So it was very like forefront of my mind and really forced me to grapple with ways in which I had rejected her life or taken on certain things. Probably had I written this book at a different time I might have been thinking about that less but I was so confronted with it on a daily basis, especially because dementia, similar to Alzheimer's if any of your listeners have dealt with it, my mother was confused about what decade she was in. So sometimes she would talk like she was still in the '60s in university and just dating my father and sometimes she would talk . . . so it was like sometimes she would be cycling through these decades and I was a strange sort of witness to her thinking as it was arising.
(29:40)
And part of the frustration of this book was that I couldn't talk to her about it. I was thinking all these things and I didn't have someone to check them against because of course she wasn't there and she didn't remember. But from almost day one I was fairly in rejection of how my mother operated in the world. [Laughs] I think I say this in the book but I remember her telling me when I was very young she was seeing a therapist and complaining about me. And the therapist is like "You have a very powerful child there, Ms. MacNicol." And I used to think that was a great thing but in hindsight I realize how overwhelming that must've been to her. She was a very kind and gentle person and I was a very forceful person and just structured my life in a way that was so completely the opposite of her choices. And I don't know if I even articulated that to her from me at the time. It was very instinctive. Like I saw the life I was being raised in and I just didn't want anything to do with it.
My mother's generation, she was a little bit older than Hillary Clinton but the expectations placed on women who were born sort of baby boomer or a little before changed significantly decade-by-decade. And I think as I've gotten older I have increasing symphony for what it must've been like for my mother to be a child and a teen in the '50s with all those expectations placed on her and then suddenly find herself in the '60s. Not to mention the '70s with the women's liberation movement. Like it was just -- it was I'm sure overwhelming to have the definition of being a woman shift under your feet so significantly with each decade.
As a grown-up I'm far more understanding of the choices she made and how she lived than I definitely was as a teen or in my 20s and 30s where it was just get me away from this as quickly as possible. Yeah. I just -- I'm just thinking my poor mother too. That's what I mean, my poor mother too was trying to get me to wear a slip or dress nicely or say nice things and I was like I won't have anything to do with any of it.
Ann: Okay, real talk though I love a slip. It keeps your butt from eating the dress you're wearing. That's why I love a slip. Your butt can eat the slip instead.
(31:55)
Glynnis: I know. The funny thing is that -- that's totally true. I associated everything she tried to get me to do with a very conservative life in the suburbs and I just rejected all of it which could not have been very pleasant for her although she was very understanding about it.
Ann: I know that this is not an advice book. This is a book about your own journey and experience. But especially because it does begin with you at this like . . . I don't want to call it a crisis point or a low point but the kind of mixed feelings that you have on your 40th birthday, I guess we can say that.
Glynnis: Mm-hmm.
Ann: Do you feel like you came to some general here's how to work through the feeling of not seeing your story reflected and your path for the future not laid out by culture and social narratives? Did you sort of come to a point where you're like okay, maybe this is a more . . . this is a coping mechanism for being written out of that narrative?
Glynnis: I think my coping mechanism was probably writing this book to be honest and I think about that a lot in terms of if you are not a writer what is the coping mechanism? Because my response was literally like I'm going to fill this void and demand to be recognized. But I also think -- and this is, you know, you hear this a lot but experiencing it is really enjoyable -- I stopped . . . my concern for other people's opinions and thoughts has just almost disintegrated. Like I'm so disinterested in, I mean, give no fucks I think is the phrase we like to put to that. I'm not invested in that opinion at all anymore. It's been an amazing experience. But you know I don't like advice books. I'm not somebody who has ever been attracted to them and I think I really just wanted to say this is my experience. It was almost like notes, like dispatches from the land of 40 that no one talks about. I just wanted to report back and say "This has been my experience out here. I should tell you about it as opposed to . . ."
(34:15)
Ann: Correspondent from this phase, yeah.
Glynnis: Here's how you should approach it. I don't actually . . . I just hope women approach it with . . . I just wanted to diminish the shame that seems to come around age for women. And the older I get and the more we talk about Me Too and this real -- even I find myself overwhelmed by the awareness of what we've accepted in terms of magazine covers and imagery and this deep-seated assumption that as you age your worth diminishes and what that is rooted in. I really just wanted to be like I feel great, you know? I mean I have shit days like everyone else that the world is not particularly wonderful because I was seeing that in so many women I knew too. And I just thought man, is this a secret? [Laughs] Did I do -- was I not aware? And just declare it less than here's how you should do it.
If there's one piece of advice I would hope to come out of this book it's that I do believe every American should drive across this country if you can. It's a very . . . I've driven across it for many years and you really, if you have any awareness at all of your surroundings, you become immediately aware of how differently people are treated on the road. And we're seeing evidence of that in the news stories right now. But yes, Sandra Bland left to drive across the country only a few days before I did so her story was on the news as we were driving and I was just so incredibly aware of the divide between her experience on the road and my experience on the road. That to me is such an example of privilege. Just a privilege of movement, you know? The ability of me to move around the country is new too.
(36:05)
You know, women traditionally have not been encouraged to drive across the country. I think the iPhone has really shifted that for a lot of women. But just the difference of my experience literally on the same roads is a real good measure of the privilege with which I operate in the world. But I also -- the conversation around privilege I hope never shuts people up from talking about their own stories. It's just bringing an awareness to how you tell your story ideally, not that you shouldn't be telling it. And also who isn't being able to tell a story is the flip side of that.
Ann: Okay, well I'm going to live my dream in my head that this is the first of a . . . you know how those old YA series used to be with like a border?
Glynnis: [Laughs]
Ann: Like the women's experiences beyond 40 series. I'm like yes, give me all of them, all of the different experiences.
Glynnis: Oh my god, that would be amazing. I want to hear all of them. I wrote this one but I'm still desperate to read other ones. It's not like there's a plethora of them out there. I'm dying to hear more stories because it's not like I solved my own life. Life is still -- there's still challenges. It is still difficult. I talk about living without a blueprint in this book. It is still very difficult to not sort of have the traditional blueprint and be modeling it as you go and I'm dying to hear other people's versions of this and the challenges and joys. Yeah, we should start that series. That's a great idea.
Ann: The Blueprint Series.
Glynnis: The Blueprint Series. Ugh.
Ann: I want it to happen so bad, oh my god. Okay, Glynnis, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Can't wait to see -- hear about this book out in the world and hear about people's reactions to it.
Glynnis: Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled that we got to talk.
[Interview Ends]
(37:50)
Aminatou: Find No One Tells You This: A Memoir on bookshelves starting July 10th. You can also if you're in New York catch her in conversation with Amina at The Strand on July 10th and if you're in Los Angeles she'll be chatting with me at Skylight Books, one of my favorite places, on July 15th.
[Music]
I discover Yrsa Daley-Ward's poetry on Instagram which I think is true of a lot of her fans and I loved her poetry collection Bone which is drawn from some work that she had already published on the Internet and some new poems. Her latest book is a poetic memoir called The Terrible which I don't know, I don't know that poetic memoir is a term but definitely it reads in this kind of lyrical way that puts it in my mind somewhere between the realms of poetry and prose. Anyway it's about her childhood in the north of England, about her difficult relationship with her mother and with her grandparents, about discovering the power and fear of sexuality especially when you are queer and just starting to realize it, about losing yourself in pills and sex and partying, and ultimately finding yourself and finding your voice. Here's Yrsa.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: So thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Yrsa: You're so welcome. It's a pleasure.
Ann: I just read The Terrible in a single sitting because I couldn't put it down.
Yrsa: Oh!
Ann: So I wonder if you could talk a bit about how this book began because I also was a big fan of Bone and maybe I expected another book of poetry or something? I did not expect this.
(39:48)
Yrsa: Well I didn't expect it either actually. That's the thing about making anything or doing anything organic with your art form, you don't know what . . . you don't know what form it's going to take. And I certainly didn't. I was asked if I had anything like Bone at the time. I had -- well not like Bone, actually; if I had anything else. And I said "Yeah, of course." I didn't. I didn't have anything. Ugh, you know, I just said I did. And then I was asked for it and so I had to produce something. I thought it would be -- I thought I would write a fiction novel next. I didn't know it would be that.
But I think when you have a story to tell it gets in the way of everything else. And so that's what happened, it just came out. And I thought at some point it looks like I'm writing a memoir. [Laughs]
Ann: Are you someone who keeps a journal? Did you have something like that that you relied on or did it truly just come from within and from memory?
Yrsa: No, it truly came from memory. I used to have a journal when I was really, really, really young, maybe about eight to ten, then maybe again 15 to 16. And actually I came upon that when I'd already submitted the book. My memory was actually spot-on. But then it would be because those things happened in my life.
Ann: I always do wonder about that though where artists have this ability to not just remember the facts of what happened but everything you're writing is so emotionally in all of these moments from your youth. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that, like did it feel like revisiting some sort of other version of yourself or previous self?
Yrsa: It's definitely another version. It's definitely not you now because you have so much that you didn't have and you have so much less than you had. So it's definitely you. It's a bit like -- I guess like watching a film that you are very familiar with. You are different. You are changed because you are older and we're changing in every passing minute. But you're still unmistakably what you were and those memories are still yours. So it is a revisiting of sorts but it's . . . it's with a different perspective. It's with definitely more of an observer -- definitely more objective. And your emotions are different about certain things.
(42:20)
Ann: Can you think of something in the book that you did notice how your emotions had evolved about it? You know, at the moment of writing it versus recalling what it felt like at the time.
Yrsa: Well a lot of the book . . . I mean it feels like hindsight, you know? So many ideas of beauty that I thought were real and unmistakable facts were not facts. Maybe the way I felt about the people around me and the things that were happening. You know, when you're a child you tend to think in very black and white about what is fair, what is not fair, who is good, who is evil. But of course as you get older you realize there's just so much spectrum and light and shade in everything and everybody. And so I approach it, and why I think it was a joy to write and not difficult to write is because I don't hold on to any feelings of resentment or trauma or anything that's just negative because there's no point. Because I'm not the same and that was then. And also, you know, I'm an adult now so I'm looking at what adults did in the book and understanding it anew.
Ann: Absolutely. I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about the title and what The Terrible is.
Yrsa: The Terrible was a tongue-in-cheek kind of -- the terrible, dramatic title. But it was the name I gave to the thing that follows you around if you don't deal with it. And you know we all have a version of the Terrible so it can be grief, addiction, loneliness, despair, depression. It can be an eating disorder. You know, it can be dysmorphia. It can be whatever, whatever it is for you that's the sticky thing for you. Sometimes it's a mixture of two things. Sometimes it's a monster. Sometimes it looks like you. So the terrible is the name -- yeah, the personification of all of those things.
(44:20)
Ann: And what is your particular terrible? Maybe you can talk a bit about that for people who haven't read the book.
Yrsa: Well we'd be here all night but I mean there are . . . [Laughter] I mean the book covers so much. I like many other people growing up went through a lot of different terribles. In fact they all meld up to make one. But you know the struggles with identity, depression, not understanding who I was in the world, lots of things . . . it covers so much things. It covers sexuality. It covers substance abuse and not understanding how to control one's emotions and process it in an honest way. And I think that's why -- that's why it built up because it was so many different things.
Ann: Right. One of the many things that I think kind of, at least at some point for you, fell into this bucket is you described this term -- maybe I'm getting it wrong -- the power fear or the fear of power from your adolescence.
Yrsa: Yeah.
Ann: You know, just that moment of nascent sexuality and being sexualized. I'm wondering about if you can talk a bit about how you put a name to that feeling because that was one of those one-word things in this book that really just stopped me and took me back to that moment in my own life. And I think many, many women listening to this will probably also identify with that.
(45:48)
Yrsa: Well the power fear is almost -- it's almost an oxymoron, not quite, but it's that moment when as a young woman, as . . . well as a child. Let's be honest, as a child growing into a young woman you hit that moment where suddenly your body becomes different and it's viewed differently. And the idea of the so-called -- and this is inverted commas -- the so-called power that you wield from all of this and all these other people are looking at you differently and expect different things from you and desire different things from you which can feel very powerful. Can feel very powerful but is actually frightening because you're not old enough. You don't know what to do with it. You know, it's being seen and viewed in a very strange way all of a sudden. So that's why I called it the power fear because it hangs in the balance between what you can do with it and also what can be done to you.
Ann: Ugh, I love that. I mean I'm wondering about the authors who you read who maybe shaped the way you work with words or the way you feel about words both as a teenager in the power fear years and now. Inspiration is the wrong word but who are you in conversation with and who's changing your feelings about your own work?
Yrsa: Well I think the biggest thing that other writers have done for me is kind of let me know that it's all right to write about the things that I wanted to write about. Because if I'd never read Alice Walker The Color Purple and By the Light of My Father's Smile or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye or Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit I wouldn't know that my specific stories are okay to be told to go out there because so much of what I grew up reading was just, you know, we have this homogeneous reading list.
(47:55)
And it was interesting. You know, they're books. I've always been interested in books, wildly, but it was a single story. And so the moment I started reading woman writers, woman writers of colors, and they were talking about sexuality in this very sensual and detailed way and talking about religion and the black family and ideas of attractiveness and beauty in a way that just deconstructed it, and I was completely, completely enthralled with that and still am. And I go back to those writers all the time for the same reasons.
Ann: Right. It's almost like a giving permission?
Yrsa: Yeah. And permission is what you feel like you need when you're 13 and 14 and you know you love literature and you know you love to write but you don't know whether what you have to say is valid.
Ann: Well and now you're someone who at least I feel gives a lot of permission to others. I find myself wondering with a lot of the subjects you deal with so openly in your memoir and your poetry you must get so many messages from people who are in deep with their own terribles. I'm wondering what you tell them and if that's overwhelming and how you deal with that.
Yrsa: Well you know there's not a set response or indeed feeling because they're all different. I will say that it's lovely to know that something you write can be -- can help somebody else. And that really did a lot to change how I felt about what I was doing and why I was doing it, because there's got to be a point to it. It's lovely to write a book and to have it out there but there's got to be something that you are doing to make things better in the world. And I hope that the writing is doing that.
(50:00)
Ann: Ugh. You said earlier when talking about how this book sort of came as the result of a prompt, like what else is there, do you think now differently about how you ask that question of yourself? And, you know, you said it was kind of a natural extension of a creative practice and I'm wondering if you can talk about where your practice is now and the things that are exciting you.
Yrsa: I get excited by non-structure. I get excited by feeling something, on meeting people that make me have new feelings and reading new things and reading everything. So it can be a book on spirituality. It can be, you know, a book on . . . I would say like a physics book. It could be an art book. All of that's going to give me fodder even if I don't realize that that's happening. And the world around me. And as far as practice it's an early morning thing. My days are full so by the middle of the day I don't feel like writing anything down, like so much has happened. But yeah, I'm at my best in the early morning. The 5s and 6s and 7s when everything else is quiet and you're new because you've just woken up. Yeah. This is not like 4, 5, 6 from staying up all night. No. It's like getting up in the morning. Yeah.
Ann: [Laughs] This is like the part in the book where you say it takes six moments to write a thing.
Yrsa: Right.
Ann: Maybe you can talk a bit about that?
Yrsa: Well sometimes there's this moment where I sit down and think oh my god, is that going to be it? Is there anything left? Maybe nothing will come. And of course that's just not true. There's always going to be stuff. But it's just a funny little I guess slight paranoia that you've talked about all the things you want to talk about. But as you're growing and experiencing every day that's impossible. That's impossible because we're not the same one moment to the next are we?
Ann: Right. So better to always be documenting huh?
(42:10)
Yrsa: I feel like -- this is another thing. I feel like you don't need to. I feel like you can trust that it'll be there when you come down because people say "Oh, you're going to lose it. Write it down right now." But you know your body stores things. Things are in memory and memory isn't just -- memory is everywhere. And I do think we can rely on ourselves to remember things just as you remember the words to a song you haven't sang for ten years. You can remember experiences. You can bring them up, which is why we can write memoirs without the aid of diary or anything that was written down at the time. I think it's all stored somewhere.
Ann: Right. And I think that's especially true for the things that you felt deeply. I mean I don't remember every song from ten years ago but I do remember the ones that I really felt . . . and it's probably the same with experiences.
Yrsa: Well yeah, I think I gave you an unfair one there because I don't know what it is but I've got a . . . I don't know what it is. I've got a crazy memory for songs. If someone starts a song that I haven't heard in ages I can just remember the lyrics and I don't understand what that is or how best to use it yet. Certainly yeah, as you said, with things that you remember how something felt in your body or you remember the look on somebody's face, those are things that don't go away.
Ann: You've written "When you talk about yourself watch your language."
Yrsa: Yes.
Ann: And I'm wondering if you apply that to your writing as well and how that kind of gentleness with yourself extends to writing about yourself.
(53:45)
Yrsa: Well the way I put it, and god, I don't even know if I practice what I'm about to preach, but you know, there's only one of me. There's only one of you. So I always -- I try to be really gentle with myself and not judge myself or chastise myself for anything that I'm about to do, anything that I have done. I can certainly say "Oh, that wasn't a great decision." But the way I treat myself is the way I treat others and vice-versa so you've got to have understanding and grace. And how am I going to have understanding and grace if it doesn't start with me? So yeah, I've got plenty of that.
Ann: And that certainly seems to come through. I thought one of the most transcendent sections in this book is when you write about all the things that the Terrible has given you.
Yrsa: Yeah. Yeah.
Ann: Near the very end. Maybe you can talk about that a bit, the kind of . . . I don't want to say the upsides or the silver linings but the way that it's impossible to separate all of the terrible things from your history from the person you've become.
Yrsa: It is so impossible to separate it because without them of course you don't have you. You know, you don't have tenacity. You know, certain levels of adversity bring so much. They bring so much light. And that moment in The Terrible that you're referring to is when the Terrible -- we kind of come face-to-face, you know? Nose-to-nose. And the Terrible says "Well don't you know without me you wouldn't have this, that and the other? Without me you'd be boring. You wouldn't have experienced this. Don't you know I kept you safe? Don't you know that during that you're still here? Don't you know that there'd be no glittering story? There'd be no fantastic timeline. There'd be nothing to speak of. You wouldn't have anything to give." And I absolutely -- I didn't even realize this until I was writing the passage at 6:00 in the morning or whenever I was writing it. Then I thought oh, yeah, there's been a reason for every single terrible thing that has happened and I'm only just starting to understand that now.
(56:00)
Ann: I'm starting to understand it thanks to this book. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with it Yrsa.
Yrsa: Thank you.
Ann: Best of luck with the tour. I hope so many people buy and read this book.
Yrsa: Thank you so, so much. It was a pleasure.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Look for Yrsa Daley-Ward's The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir at your favorite indie bookseller. And we want to hear about what you all are taking to the beach, taking to the pool, taking on vacation and reading this summer. You can use the hashtag #CYGBooks to share what you are reading and what you are up to and we will continue to use it to share the rest of our picks with you too because prime summer activity in this family is reading. See you on the Internet and in your local indie bookstore and in the library.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, you can download it anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts, or on Apple Podcasts where we would love it if you left us a review. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @callyrgf. You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter The Bleed on the Call Your Girlfriend website. You can even leave us a short and sweet voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. Our theme song is by Robyn, all original music is composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, our logos are by Kenesha Sneed, and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.