Speaker 1 00:00:07 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber tonight on, right on radio. Dave FEDEC talks with Tammy Lee, a children's librarian for the Ramsey county library. Tammy joined us in March to discuss books on anti-racism and civil justice for young readers. And she returns tonight to share a list of adult books on the subject. Tammy received her M L I S from St. Catherine university and has many professional certifications she has written about and facilitated many workshops and discussions around equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries and collection development. And I'm Noah Topliff in the last part of the hour. Any Harvey talks with Maggie ship stead she's the New York times best-selling author of seating arrangements astonished me and great circle on the winner of the Dylan Thomas prize and the LA times book prize for first fiction. She's a graduate of the Iowa writers workshop and a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford and the recipient of a fellowship from the national endowment for the arts. She lives in Los Angeles, all of this and more so stay tuned to write
Speaker 2 00:01:17 On radio. Okay, we're on. Hi Tammy.
Speaker 3 00:01:20 Hey David.
Speaker 2 00:01:22 Nice to have you back. I'm great. So great to have you back again and to all our listeners out there, you're going to wake up grandma. You want to get the kids and gather them all around the stereo console because it's going to be a great show. Tammy is back. Uh, so Tammy, you were here in March and talked about books relating to anti-racism civil justice and related themes for children and young adults. You're back to talk about books for adults on this similar subjects. Um, and I'm going to turn it over to you right now.
Speaker 3 00:01:54 Oh, okay. Uh, well, my name is looking for, uh, some things to add to this list. I came across a great article and I'd like to read, uh, a selection from it. It will take about three and a half minutes. I hope that's okay. Um, the title of the piece is when black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs. You might feel like I'm on a library. Um, but it, it is a great piece. Um, it's by Trey Johnson and it was published in the Washington post on June 11th. Um, if you're looking for it online, the full article online, um, and you hit a paywall, you know, you can always access it the full text through your, uh, through the Ramsey county and other, uh, metropolitan libraries through their Procrit pro quest subscription. So, um, you can get this one for free at the library, um, among many other things.
Speaker 2 00:02:52 Thank you for that reminder, Tammy.
Speaker 3 00:02:54 So, um, I'll just get started. Um, I'm 10 and my grandfather's back stiffened and shrink as an officer pulls us over on the way home from the mall. I'm 16 face down on the hood of a cruiser in union, New Jersey. I'm 22 and sitting in the back of a car at night with my palms pressed against the driver's seat headrest and an empty lot off the feeder road, outside Houston, as two officers shine flashlights in our eyes. I'm 36 in a mainline Philadelphia neighborhood crying in my car when an officer officer taps my window, because someone in a nearby house has called about me. I'm 42 and watching the news of George Floyd, the latest racial killing unschool across TV and social media. And as I watch, I am 10 16, 22, 36 all over again, all at once. I'm also experiencing another time moved though. Once again, as the latest racial travesty pierces, our collective consciousness, I watched many of my white friends and acquaintances perform the same.
Speaker 3 00:03:54 Pieties they've played out after Trayvon Eric, Sandra Corrine, Botham, Brianna, they are savvy practice consumers and meaningful things. They've listened to serial and become expert critics of our broken criminal justice system. Average, just one system. This is all to say that when things get real, really murderous, really tragic, really violent. Our aggressive, my white liberal educated friends already know what to do. What they do is read and talk about their reading. What they do is listen and talk about how they listen. What they do is not enough. This isn't the time to circle up with other white people and discuss black pain in the abstract. It's the time to acknowledge and examine the pain they've personally caused. This is the racial a Boris our country finds itself locked in because black Americans really have an endless loop of injustice and white Americans keep revisiting the same performance, a Broadway show that never closes just goes on hiatus now.
Speaker 3 00:04:50 And then this is your own racial or Boris. The chaos we see now stems in part from the chaos foisted upon us for generations, the injustice re protest isn't rooted in just police killings. It also lives within housing and school choices, school and professional networks, the defunding of nonwhite organizations, the demotion and firing of black employees, the microaggressions and slights that happen at dinner, parties, restaurants, cafes, and concerts, the right acknowledgement of black justice, humanity, freedom and happiness. Won't be found in your book, clubs, protest signs, chucks, chalk talks, or organizational statements. There'll be fun will be found in your earnest, willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way, either at your job in your social network, your neighborhood associations, your family, or your home comforting as it may be to read and discuss the big questions about race and justice in America. Making up for past wrongs means starting with the fact that you've done wrong in the past, perhaps without realizing it at the time and the old workplace neighborhood, classroom, softball fields, maybe even the book club, the confusing perhaps contradictory advice on what white people should do.
Speaker 3 00:06:00 Probably feels maddening to be told to step up no step back, read no list in protest don't protest, check on black friends, leave us alone, ask for help, or just do the work. It probably feels controversial, contradictory at times, and yet you'll figure it out. Black people have been similarly similarly exhausted making the case for jobs, freedom, happiness, justice, equality, and the like it's made us dizzy, but we've managed to find the means to walk straight on my straw to a voting place on election day in early June, I rounded a corner of city hall and saw not only two dozen army national guard troops, but a black woman slow riding her bike and wide dreary circles that created a miniature or a Morris bringing her closer and closer to the fence line of soldiers that drew me into as she completed her first arc. I was able to read the sign tape to the handlebars in red, white and blue letters. It red. No you do better. Mm,
Speaker 2 00:07:01 Wow. So Tammy, remind us of the title and the author from the Washington post
Speaker 3 00:07:05 It's called when black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs and it's by Trey Johnson, T R E last name Johnson and certain June 11th, Washington post so
Speaker 2 00:07:18 Much to unpack from that, Tammy. Um, because here we are talking about books. Yes, yes. We'd be here all night if you read the whole thing. I'm sure. Uh, so there's some irony here. Of course, we're here to talk about books as you suggested. Um, so let's start there. Um, we're here to talk about books and yet the point is so well-made, that, that is not enough. Um, but w so then what, what can books do, um, given what we've just heard and given your own thoughts, please? Kind
Speaker 3 00:07:52 Of like what I was saying when we were talking about children's books, um, and like some of the programming that we've had, um, during the library and, you know, it's been other libraries, uh, Ashley's a woman with ally, so she does, uh, workshops with children. And one of her main focus points, uh, around anti-racism is giving children language. And I think, um, uh, when we're talking about like having those conversations and hopefully they're compassionate conversations by having those conversations, you have to have the lingo, the vocabulary to do that. And books and book clubs, and discussions are all valuable things because you need to have the language to be able to discuss, um, what is happening in the world. And I was just listening to, oh, w uh, ODA Dr. Otis Moss and he was talking about, oh, it was just grapes. He was talking about the pick, she'll your, um, what is it, the peculiar mix of insecure, arrogance and willful ignorance that makes up white supremacy and racist and white supremacist systems. Right. And, um, and a way to combat that is to know what you're talking about to not, to could not continue to be willfully ignorant. And that's what book clubs do for us. Um, that's what reading, um, and learning on our own, um, you know, whether it's racism and white supremacy, or it could be, um, addressing biases, uh, against other marginalized communities. Um, it's always good to know how to talk and have those tools about, uh, the things that need to change.
Speaker 2 00:09:30 Can book clubs, that Stan book clubs here for a minute, can they give us a false sense? And this was suggested in the piece, um, of doing something when that's really not. Yes,
Speaker 3 00:09:39 They can. If that's the only thing you're doing. One thing that I, um, I was talking to a local reporter around the George Floyd decision, and we were talking about, um, uh, how I too, I mean, I'm a lifelong Minnesota. Most of my friends and family, um, are, are white. And, and I know that they genuinely care. I know that that, that is something that they want to change and that they work on, but there is also the matter of comfort. Nobody likes to be uncomfortable and heavy topics like that make us uncomfortable. And so one way to get more comfortable with them is to like read and talk and think about them. Um, but, uh, we can't just, you know, choose to be comfortable. Again, we have to keep growing, we have to get, you have to embrace the discomfort of that to be able to overcome it.
Speaker 2 00:10:33 So let's begin, let's continue this by talking about some of these books, um, at issue. And I'll, I'll just speak here and say for myself that I've read a number of books in the past year and a half, like, like many others. And I will say that, um, how to be an anti-racist, um, by candy, um, which is not without controversy within the black community itself, but, um, really, um, spoke to me about how to do something, how to go beyond reading books. Um, what does that mean and what, what can a white dude like me do? And it's not, it doesn't take that much, but it's still hard, uh, these little things that you do that you any rate. Um, so, um, if you ha, if you want to talk about that particular book, or if you have others you want to talk about, and please, I would encourage you, if you want to read any snippets along the way, Tammy, please do. Uh, what w yeah. Let's start with how to be an anti-racist. I don't know if you, you know,
Speaker 3 00:11:27 Well, um, how do you answer you're racist? I think it's a very popular book. You're right. It's controversial. And, um, uh, on it's kind of qualification of what constitutes racism is probably one of the biggest, um, the biggest controversies in the book, but overall, I agree it is, it's a great book and his other title to stand from the beginning, which gives us a great foundation for the history of, of, and actually mentioned. Um, and the piece that I read, um, uh, Ooh, I'm going to forget this, uh, um, there's a radio show, uh, uh, that is good. It's a 14 part radio show. Oh, it's just pushed out of my head. Um, that does a great job of talking about the creation of whiteness at, which was, which was happened at the same time that the concept of black was created. So I think I liked that, um, Mr.
Speaker 3 00:12:23 Kennedy or Dr. Kendi, uh, addresses those, um, that history, um, and that occurrence that, you know, that, that has been kept from us in that book. Um, it's been around for a few years now and it's, you know, it's, I'm glad that it's still being read and that it's so popular. I like it. It's a great book. Um, this might be a good one that's been around for awhile, um, that I like, because it's about our community is a good time for the truth edited by our own, um, local poet and author, uh, senior young shin. Um, that's a great book. Um, you're literally reading about your neighbors, you know, and, and their experiences, people that you wouldn't have expected. Um, you know, these are the people that you're up shelters with, and this is their experience that is so radically different than yours, you know?
Speaker 3 00:13:09 Um, so I think that's a great, uh, that's a great title. Some other ones that I pulled aside. Um, one thing that I've been thinking about a lot, um, is especially, um, post, uh, verdict, uh, of the murder of George Floyd. Um, obviously, uh, the killing of Linda Castillo, the people, you know, Nanjing this article, the murder of George foil, those are horrible things. Um, and they contribute to, um, this just impossible, um, untenable situation in the world right now. Um, but, um, not to lessen those occurrences, but what also occurs every day times a million are those. Uh, and that's one thing that I kind of liked about this piece are the, is the injustice that happens, uh, locally, the injustice of a small minded, um, you know, mid-level manager that impact packs a peanut butter sandwich on racial bias at lunch. Um, and it chooses not to advance BiPAP or people from marginalized communities, things like that.
Speaker 3 00:14:18 And so I think that's much more accessible when we're thinking about our culpability in, um, perpetuating, uh, these systems, whether they're, you know, racist or sexist or, you know, that sort of thing. And so there are some books that I really liked, um, that are on the list. One that I read last year as mothers of massive resistance, white men in the politics of white supremacy, um, librarianship is often, it's not compared to social work, but often my parents like kind of cross that line a little bit. Um, so it was really a familiar book talking a lot about social workers and teachers, and, you know, kind of does a woman lead a stereotype, stereotypical woman professions, right. And how, um, white women have perpetuated in these small ways. Um, they've done more to perpetuate Jim Crow than the actual people that the men that made the Jim Crow laws. And so it was amazing to me. I gasped a lot during the book, but, um, yeah, mothers of massive resistance by Elizabeth, uh, Gillespie. McGray excellent read. Um, we have a lot of social services in Minnesota. We have a lot social workers and teachers. I think it would be a very interesting book for them to prove
Speaker 2 00:15:37 Well said, Hey, Tammy, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:15:42 Oh, it also just speaks to that local thing. I mean, you know, you didn't, you had nothing to do with the, with the murder of George Floyd, but, but these are the way, you know, I think it's easier and makes the problem more accessible and solvable if you can feel or you, if you can understand how you, you know, if it becomes accessible to you by reading about other,
Speaker 2 00:16:05 In a way I hear you say that for me is you start seeing racism, start seeing these little things. I mean, it's hard for, I'll just speak for me the privileged life that I've had hard to do that, but when you try to do it, you can start seeing it. And it's rather distressing and eyeopening at the same time, Tammy, before we go on, I want to let our listeners know that, um, we're going to get a list up of these books, uh, on the Ramsey county site. Maybe we can get a link from right on radio site, um, at any rate, uh, just, uh, so they can access your amazing list. It's gonna be a lot longer than we'll have time to talk about. Now, I'm sending it back to you. What else do you have on your list?
Speaker 3 00:16:43 Okay. Um, uh, two others that are actually new books, um, that I'm really excited about, um, uh, the whiteness of wealth by Dorothy Abe brown. Um, you can get it out to any of your public libraries and it is, and it sounds a little drive, but it is not. Um, it's an expos, a, um, uh, the racism that is extended in the American tax system and how tax is a discriminate. Um, it goes a little bit into, um, housing and other forms of financial, uh, racism that happened in this country. And again, connects, it's, it's more accessible. You can see this happening, you can look at your own, uh, wealth and taxes and see how, how you might've been advantaged and how others might, might have been disadvantaged. So it's really well-written and it's brand new. Um, and I would highly recommend it. And the other one that kind of goes along with that theme, a two is called some here to equality, reparations, black Americans in the 21st century.
Speaker 3 00:17:51 I mean, by noon, I've been recommending this a lot because I think this is going to come up a lot. And I think, again, people need to have the language talk about reparations. Yes. Um, if, if, if you're across from me and you're saying, ah, reparations, I don't, you know, I don't think it's a cool thing and I'll be like, well, so what have you read about it? What are, you know, well, not that I just know, you know, I think that's something that we're going to really be talking about soon in the future or in the near future. And I think people should have the vocabulary and understanding, um, around discussing that issue because that does affect all of us. So those are, those are three things that I think, uh, three books or titles that I think, um, would be great to connect everyone, um, to these issues.
Speaker 3 00:18:36 Um, I always like to include an my list, uh, some humor books, um, books that talk about generally the black experience. Um, I, I do think that these books are aimed at, um, in a way they're in depth black folks in that, um, uh, you, you kind of know that you're not alone. So a book like, um, you'll never believe what happened to lazy, crazy stories about racism by Amber Ruffin and her sister, Lisa Umar, Amber Ruffin is a writer for, uh, uh, Seth Meyers, uh, took a relate shop years ago. And, um, it is hilarious and absolutely all of the racist things that have happened to Lacey have happened to me. I chuckled, I giggled it was very familiar, but again, they were, she's talking about her daily lived experiences. And, um, I think that would be great for people that want to understand that the tiny cuts, you know, um, it's a very gentle way to have some insights into, um, to what people, to what, uh, black brown and indigenous BiPAP folks, you know, encounter in their daily lives that you might not be familiar with.
Speaker 3 00:19:53 And like I said, it's funny, another one is how we fight racism, or I'm sorry, how do we fight white supremacy by act like Kiva, Solomon and Kamaria Rankin. I'm really loving these women to have another one. Um, another book are, can, can Rhea rank and has anti-racism powerful voices, inspiring ideas. Um, they are editors that color lines are colored lines, which is an online magazine, um, uh, that addresses issues in black culture. Um, and, uh, one thing that I, um, I, in fact, I had to put it on a sticky note on my own desk. Um, they basically interviewed several, uh, black and brown folks and asked them, you know, how, you know, happy by white supremacy. How do you live every day? How do you fight one that I love because my friend Lucy actually, who introduced me to this guy, um, Jace moon, he's a DJ out of New York.
Speaker 3 00:20:51 Um, and my friend, he has the biggest crush on him. Um, uh, he says I resist white supremacy by loving my people, thinking about systems and telling the truth. And I think that it's, uh, I think it just hit a chord with me. It has to get to great playlist for fighting white supremacy too. Uh, it's a, it's a, yeah, it's some great discussions with a lot of famous people and another one, um, for black and brown and indigenous folk BiPAP that are, that are, you know, walking around trying to live these days. Um, it really is across the board. Um, but it's called the black fatigue. How racism or rose the mind, body and spirit by Mary Francis winters? I know a popular local book is my grandmother's hands, um, by Resmah. Um, Manaca um, um, and, uh, this, uh, is a similar book that talks about how the effects of white supremacy manifest themselves in our bodies and make us sick.
Speaker 3 00:21:57 And, um, I also think this is a good for good book for, for majority populations to read. Um, because again, they, they see, they have some insight into what's going on. So, um, uh, another one that, uh, is on my list, that is, that is an excellent book, is what doesn't kill you, makes you blacker a memoir. And I say human young. Um, and he's the co-pilot, co-founder very smart brothers, I think was bought by the root, um, uh, Michael Harriet writes for, um, if you, if you don't know the route, you should be getting their emails
Speaker 2 00:22:37 Everywhere. I subscribe to that. I agree. It's fantastic. It's very funny and very, very, to the point we are down to our last minute, Tammy. I just can't believe it. It's killing me. Um, I want to remind everyone, we're speaking with Tammy Lee, our resident librarian for right on radio from Ramsey county. And I'm just going to say that I've gotten to know Tammy a little bit between March and now, and it's just been a delight. And we have talked about bringing her back quarterly to talk about all kinds of books, what we should be reading what's coming up. She has insight into what's coming down the road and she's so entertaining. And so, uh, bright, and we just love having her here. Uh, Tammy, thank you for this list. And please, when you prepare that list, if you would put that 14 part podcast that you mentioned or radio show, that would be lovely.
Speaker 3 00:23:23 It's good. Seen on radio, like S C E N E. And it's the whiteness project or what is white whiteness? So it's a great thing and yes, I will. I will listen on there as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:34 Okay. Thank you, Tammy. What a treat, we'll see you again best to you and thank you. And now this
Speaker 0 00:23:44 <inaudible> 90.3
Speaker 4 00:23:46 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey with right on radio. And I'm so excited to have Maggie ship's dead here today. Maggie is the author of several novels most recently. Great circle, Maggie, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me for those who haven't had the chance to get their hands on the book yet. Could you briefly describe what happens in it? Yeah, absolutely. Great. Circle is primarily about a fictional female pilot named Marian graves who disappears in 1950 while trying to fly around the world north, south over the poles, but it starts much earlier and goes through her childhood in Montana and learning to fly in the twenties there. Um, she flies in Alaska in the thirties. She flies in the UK during world war II. And her story is interwoven with that of a modern day movie star named Hadley Baxter.
Speaker 4 00:24:38 Who's playing Marianne in a biopic about her life and sort of gets drawn in the question of who Marion really was and what her disappearance kind of means. This book has everything. Just picture Stefan on SNL for anyone who hasn't read the book yet and is debating, picking up a copy. There's lots of aviation learning to fly old west moonshine, bootlegging, Hollywood, tabloids, undercover, queer romance, um, contemporary film stunts, family tragedy, secret children. The book is 600 pages, but to me it felt more like 300 cause I was just flying through it. Things kept happening with all this stuff going on. Could you give me a little insight into your research process for this and how you use research to tell the story in a way that's so engrossing and feel so present? Yeah, well, so I never plan my books. So when I started, I sort of thought that like my other books had just sort of knock this off in a year, which turned out to be extremely incorrect.
Speaker 4 00:25:40 It took three years and three months to write a first draft. And my first draft was 980 manuscript pages, which is about 25% longer than, than it ended up being. Um, wow. And I just kind of, I had the only things I knew or Marion's route around the world and I decided what kind of plans she would use. And I knew I wanted her to fly during world war II, but I didn't know if I would do that in the U S or the UK. So I just sort of started and then immediately I thought, well, I'll start with the ocean liner sinking or the launch of an ocean liner. And so then I have to, you know, go get all these books about ocean liners and try and figure out why they in and then write that part and then move forward. And that's pretty much my research model throughout the book was I would come up with some question that I didn't know the answer to or something I needed to write about.
Speaker 4 00:26:34 And then I would track down the information I needed and sort of use it. And then it kind of goes right out of my head. So it was really pretty organic. Uh, and then as I discovered, or just came across bits and pieces while I was researching, that would then kind of drive the plot as well. Like there are plenty of left turns just because it came across something that interested me or seemed useful or appropriate. But yeah, it was, it just made it all feel like swimming upstream because I'd make a little bit of progress and then I'd be like, now I have to figure out what Seattle was like and, you know, 1928 or whatever it was. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of work that feels very true to the nature of the story in that in the current day track Hadley, unlike a lot of the people who are making the movie and are coming at things from such a prescriptive lens, like, oh, this is what Marian graves was.
Speaker 4 00:27:29 This woman wrote this book about her and retreating that as definitive for this movie, Hadley is so open and flexible to like, oh, um, knowing that she'll never know everything about Marianne or learning something about Marianne and actually like believing and being relieved that the narrative is getting complicated and accepting those non tight answers. Did you feel kind of like you're having a parallel experience when you were writing it or did that ethos writing it play at all into your writing of Hadley's journey? Oh, interesting. Um, I'm sure subconsciously, I mean, I think I didn't, I also didn't think through this when I sort of came up with Hadley, um, which was also some accidental, I think I'd been working for three or four weeks on the book. And then I wrote a section of the book where Hadley is publicly cheating on her movie star boyfriend with a pop star and walks out of a club.
Speaker 4 00:28:18 And on the surface that had nothing to do with this aviation thing I was starting to work on, but I sort of felt like it was the missing piece. And I think one way in which that ended up being true is that Hadley has this, you know, long-term personal experience of people thinking they know her when they don't, you know, and seeing a picture of her doing something or being somewhere. And then this whole story gets constructed. All these wrong assumptions are made, they spread like wildfire. And so I think that in some ways, predisposed her to look at the bits and pieces of Marion's life that she can find or has access to and not think that she knows the whole story or not. She, I think something in her resists sort of filling in the blanks as enthusiastically as everybody else does. And, and so that was one of the important things about her lens.
Speaker 4 00:29:04 And the book was just showing, you know, how much is lost when someone disappears or dies. And the reader has this close experience of Marianne's life and knows almost about enough as much about Marianne does Marianne does. And meanwhile, Hadley is like trying to, you know, assemble something out of those pieces and the reader can see how, in some ways, few title it is, but, you know, I don't think we never really know other people even when they're still alive. So yeah, that's so true. So just to dive into that a little deeper, I think that the voice work and the time work in this story was so fascinating. And one of my favorite things, it, because you have the pretty immediate close third person that's describing Marian's life, it feels like a very traditional novel. And then you have the Hadley perspective, which is, feels more contemporary.
Speaker 4 00:29:54 The language is a little like very emotional, um, a little more sparse in a good way. Like I read through those sections, like I was eating popcorn, um, but still felt them very much. And those together came into, you have a vantage in the past, seeing how things are you've advantage in our time. So the future for Mary and trying to decipher things, and the reader is in a fascinating space where they're holding a curated set of information that none of the characters do. Like we know how Marianne will be perceived in the future, but we also know a fair bit about how she felt in the moment. And I was just wondering, um, how did you, besides that experience, you had writing Hadley walking out of the club. How did you choose film specifically and celebrity specifically as the future corollary to Marian's life, especially when there are so many ways to be a public figure in like the internet, age Hollywood, very specifically.
Speaker 4 00:30:50 Um, yeah, I mean, some of it was just interest and I live in LA and when I started writing the book, I had just moved here and a lot of my friends work in Hollywood. And so it's just so pervasive that culture in the city, which, which I find really fascinating. And I had also written a short story that was published in tin house. I started writing grade circle in fall 2014. And I think the previous year was when I published the story that was also sort of an intense first person voice of a movie star. And it was playing with sort of familiar tropes or, or it was playing with the Katie Holmes, Tom cruise story and with Scientology. And, but I sort of reinvented all the vocabulary and I really enjoyed that process. I thought was really interesting. Um, I talked to Curtis Sittenfeld for book event and she was saying that she feels like when she's writing about public figures, like she's done with Hillary Clinton or, um, Laura Bush, it's, it's like, she's talking to the reader about someone they both know, you know, as opposed to, if you're talking to a friend and you're telling a story to your friend about someone, they don't know, it really changes the feeling.
Speaker 4 00:31:57 And I think that's true. I like sort of having the reader have a running start and the Hadley sections with these little bits and pieces that are sort of familiar and known, but I also think, you know, we get so much of our information about history and past figures through film and TV now kind of for better, for worse. And I also, you know, I thought a lot about Amelia Earhart in starting the book, because she's sort of, there were many female pilots who were kind of household names in the twenties and thirties, but she's sort of the one we still remember it. And it's the less about her accomplishments, although they were major than about her disappearance. And, and I it's I'm, I would bet everything I have that she crashed in the ocean and drowned, like there's no way anything else happened, but you know, every few years somebody digs up something so random and it goes viral, you know, photo of nothing.
Speaker 4 00:32:53 And they're like, is this really what happened to Amelia her? It's like, we know what happened to her. And so I think that sort of virality and that confusion of narratives also was indirectly what pushed me toward a Hollywood story. Um, and even looking at like the way Amelia Earhart has sort of this game of telephone that happens culturally, that conveys a person's life to, um, to sort of the general public, I think is really interesting. Yeah. I would love to dive into the way that patriarchy is so pervasive, both in the Marion thread and in the Hadley side. And something I really appreciated about this book is that you, you could say that gender dynamics have changed a lot over the duration of time between Marian's life and Hadley's life, which in some ways it's very true. But on the other hand, it's very true that, uh, both of them had to interact with male gatekeepers and please male gatekeepers in order to have their career.
Speaker 4 00:33:53 I'll try not to spoil anything for those who haven't read, but to give a little context, Marianne had kind of a patron to help her afford her flight teaching, and then Hadley had to deal with, I'll say it. She had to deal with some kind of greasy studio execs who did not behave especially well in order to get her roles. And I just thought that the way that there was that parallelism yet also that difference in how patriarchal society prevents smart and capable women from achieving what they can do without that, um, upward punch of male financial or industry patronage, I'll say male gatekeepers across time. Yeah. Male gatekeepers is a great phrase. Um, yeah, you know, it, it kind of arose of its own accord. Like I, when I started to write the book, I didn't have any thoughts of like, this is how I will weave my feminist agenda into it.
Speaker 4 00:34:44 Although of course, no, I think a lot of it was just the practicality is of, okay, this woman or girl, a teenage girl in 1927 decides she wants to be a pilot and she doesn't have, you know, wealthy, supportive parents. She's effectively orphan. She's raised by her sort of semiformal childhood raised by her nerdy, well, uncle, how do you become a pilot? And you know, certainly there weren't a lot of there, wasn't some structure of supportive female pilots, like looking to help her out. And so she's trying to take lessons and all these men are like no way kid, you know? And, and so she realized that she needs to make money. And how do you do that? And again, that's hard as a girl. And so I think all these obstacles were very concrete and she had to apply a lot of ingenuity and make some very real sacrifices in order to find her way to this thing she, she had to do.
Speaker 4 00:35:37 She had to be a pilot and would literally do anything. And it kind of talked herself into like the relationship you mentioned with her patron. She sort of was like, this'll be fine. I'll be able to get out of this one. I need to, and it's a lot more complicated. And, you know, I, I think too, like in her time period, when she decided she didn't want a domestic life, she didn't want to get married and have children. That's not just one decision you can make. It's this endless series of choices she had to make throughout her life to sort of protect this unorthodox life. And she's constantly vigilant about it at the expense of human connection, even with people who, who didn't overtly want to take that away from her. And so then with Hadley, I mean, you can, as many people do as celebrities can look at her and say, well, this is a, you know, extremely rich and famous young white woman there.
Speaker 4 00:36:26 She has no problems, no obstacles and, and sort of on a certain logistical level. That's true, but what's, you know, Hadley's big sort of problem is just the crushing weight of public scrutiny and how you can never do anything, right? Like you can't perform womanhood correctly. You're supposed to be sexy, but not have sex. Uh, you're supposed to be interesting, but not be sort of this wrecking ball that she has a little bit. And she's also, I mean, yeah, as you mentioned, it's, you know, for an actress, it's, there's incredible pressure on your body to live up to this male gaze. Um, you mentioned she has sort of a, what we'd now call a me too moment with a Harvey Weinstein S not even quite, uh, much less demonic, uh, movie producer. But I think I wrote that before the Weinstein story broke and I've gotten asked about it a lot.
Speaker 4 00:37:19 And it's like, well, one of the things about Harvey Weinstein was like, even people had no connection to the film industry already knew that guy was like a monster. Like, I think it was a huge bombshell that took journalistic tenacity, like nobody's business, but nobody was surprised, you know, casting couch jokes have been around forever. And in some ways it reminds me of the Catholic church, um, abuse, scandals, where it's like alter boy jokes have been around forever. Like people have always known this, it's been in the sort of in the ambient culture. And then at a certain point, like things break and it comes out. So yeah, I think Hadley, yeah, her problems are different than Marianne's, but I think that they're both just kind of fundamentally grappling with like, how do I make my life the way I want being all SWAT also being a woman.
Speaker 4 00:38:06 And, uh, yeah, it's, it's never not complicated that segues really nicely into something else that I wanted to ask you about. And kind of the women's history section of how, of how I perceive this book, both Hadley and Marian in their own ways are given much higher kind of quote unquote moral standards to meet in life than men in their communities. They're kind of expected to uphold good behavior as they get increasing amounts of attention and also meet the needs of their men, the men in their life, while also being groundbreaking, doing what they do. So they're often blamed for the mistakes of the men that have equal or greater culpability for what has happened. Like for example, Hadley's affair that kind of imploded the perfect dating situation in which she was dating her movie CoStar or Marion being blamed for her husband's alcoholism. Instead of, I dunno, acknowledgement that alcoholism is its own thing for this kind of women as moral benchmarks phenomenon.
Speaker 4 00:39:09 How did that play into your story crafting process and your research? Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I don't think I've thought about it, but I think it's very true. I think some of it is, you know, men are still very much treated as like the default human experience. And so of course, men face criticism and judgment and reprobation all these things. But I don't think it's often in the context of like, well, that's because you're a man or like, you're not a man. Right. And I think that's kind of always lurking for women. It's like in the equation at all times, Marian's uncle who raises her as just complete and total mess. He's like a degenerate gambler. Who's an artist is, has a stinking problem, but I think the way he is perceived even in that community and in the twenties and Montana is different from how, say the mother of Marion's best friend Caleb is treated who's, uh, also has a drinking problem and is prostituted.
Speaker 4 00:40:11 So, yeah, I don't, I don't know. It wasn't a big part of my thought process, but I think, you know, just so much about the female experience, once you start writing about women, it finds its way, um, yeah. To change topics a fair bit. There are a lot of history of aviation benchmarks in addition to a lot of information about planes that Marion wanted or was interested in flying the world war II planes, how did planes become kind of a central meat of the story and how did you craft them in a way that felt very present? Yeah. I never been big into airplanes. My brother just left the air force after 20 years and he hasn't fun for a while, but he was a pilot in the air force. We flew C one 30 is, and as a child, he was just obsessed with airplanes and he could tell what kind you know is flying over.
Speaker 4 00:41:05 He knew everything about them. And I think a lot of people who are pilots just know it's just this thing. Like I must be a pilot and I never felt that. So when I started writing the book, I had a fair but fair amount of anxiety about like, can I write about pilots? And, and I thought about taking flying lessons and sort of fundamentally, I did not want to, as I have like sort of poor spatial relations, none of it's intuitive to me, I had, it would be sort of scary. It's very expensive, but I did go on rides in airplanes when I could. And so, like I went in a glider and did a loop, which sort of informed how Marian Wright describes flying a loop. And I landed on glaciers and ice sheets. And I was in Missoula once and at the aviation museum.
Speaker 4 00:41:51 And just by chance, these two guys were taking up a 1927 traveler, 6,000. And they were like, tell that lady, she can come too. And I was like, oh, and so, you know, that that was completely serendipitous. And I made that the kind of plane that Marion learns how to fly because I'd written around in it, in the exact place where she was learning. So I'd seen the site and I heard it and smelled it and I have video of it. But the morning, you know, and I, I read lots of books by pilots and about pilot and I use internet resources like YouTube as well. But you know, the more I learned about aviation, the more kind of moving, I found it just the speed at which this technology changed the world. And an example, I think of all the time is, you know, Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927 in sort of a glorified laundry basket.
Speaker 4 00:42:42 And it was this world event and praise and his most famous person in the world, just this one flight, you know, that's not so ordinary to us. And within his lifetime, he was present at the launch of Apollo 11. So he was there for the moonshot, that shift just in one human life span, I think is, is really sort of on inspiring as we're just kind of those early pilots. They're so adventurous reading about them is also a way to see how much the world has changed. Like they would just sort of land wherever, just in a desert and hope for the best. And, uh, just the wildness of the planet is something that I thought about a lot too. Yeah. Again, try not to spoil for folks who haven't read yet, but they land in Antarctica. They're all over Europe. There's so much going on in here.
Speaker 4 00:43:30 And all of the flights seems to feel very tangible. They feel like a real experience and flight felt to me, like it was the perfect linking force between Marianne and Hadley because they're pretty, they have pretty different personalities, but they're both free thinking. They're, autodidactic, they're really avid at doing things on their own, be it reading, exploring, and they both have relationships to tragedies without being defined by their tragedies. And it just felt like solo aviation still has that kind of adventurous connotation even today. And it just, it felt like such a good link. Thanks. Yeah. You know, I will say one of the hardest possibly the hardest thing in the revision phase after I'd written, my first draft was sort of how to connect these, these two characters. And so I was always looking for ways to do that. And, and through my drafts, I strengthened the sort of concrete coincidences they have, like their orphans are both raised by uncles and it was less about doing anything cutesy and more just about creating a reason why Hadley would sort of look at Marianne as having something to do with her.
Speaker 4 00:44:36 Like, I think habit is, is fundamentally as self self-absorbed person as she inevitably would be growing up as a child actor. And she's like, she thinks the universe is sending her messages and this is one. Um, but I had different versions, you know, there were, there was a draft where Hadley and this producer, she works with Redwood are like in a library, like going through files and like digging up stuff on Marianne, but that was like two sort of on the nose and literal. And so, yeah, it was this sort of, kind of the last thing that fell into place with the book was having enough, but not too much Hadley and having their connection be close enough, but not too, too tidy. So yeah, I think, um, flight, or even just a sort of a metaphorical sensation of flight was something I was sort of trying to put in there.
Speaker 4 00:45:29 Yeah. It felt to me like the connection between Hadley and Marianne came out balanced really nicely. And then I think they each had nice foils within their own lives. Like I really enjoyed the parts about Jamie for again, for those who haven't read, Marion has a very pacifistic exploratory brother who doesn't really understand her, but participates in her life and goes on his own adventures. And it, it feeds really nicely into her story for revising this book down hundreds and hundreds of pages. Is there anything that you wish could have been in or could have been done differently or are you, do you feel like you came down to something that you really feel settled on? That may be a weird question and feel free to take it where you want? I mean, I think part of the reason I'm able to publish books is that at a certain point, I go, okay, this is done.
Speaker 4 00:46:22 And then I don't really let myself second guess it. So I cut 230 manuscript pages. And most of that was done doing small pervasive cuts, just to book that long, you cut a little bit on each page and you ended up cutting a lot of pages. And there was one section that we cut that I miss. I think it was absolutely the right decision to cut it, but there are these sections called incomplete history as you know, that zip through sort of long periods of time. And there was one for Antarctica, but it came very late in the book right before their flight. And my editor was like, you know, people have read 500 pages. Aren't going to be excited when it's like Pandora peers. I just want to know what happens. I don't want to know about the movements of the tectonic plates so that when I miss a little bit, there was also Jamie had a different storyline for awhile that involved him, joining a religious community in Canada called the duke reporters.
Speaker 4 00:47:24 Um, and they're sort of like Russian Quakers. They're communal, they're pacifist vegetarian, they're Christian, but don't use the Bible. It's all sort of some prayer. It really interesting people. And my editor was like, this is just one sort of weird thing, too many. So that got cut. And then, um, I had to sort of reconstruct his, his plot line, but yeah, I think, you know, it's just, nothing's ever perfect and you know, no one ever wishes, they published a book sooner, like an earlier draft without have that horrifies me. And I'm sure it could have done more, but also it was like, it had been seven years since my last it's now been seven years since my last book was published. And it was just, you know, it was time. Yeah. When you finished a huge project like this, do you immediately start working on another project?
Speaker 4 00:48:15 Usually? I mean maybe in a perfect world, um, seating range, I sold astonished me right before seating arrangements was published. So my second book, my first book, um, and that was kind of happenstance. Like I astonished me, it was a short story. I was trying to revise and then it just sort of, blurped out into a short novel. I wrote it from start to, or to selling it in, um, five months. So super, super fast, which gave me misguided thoughts about how quickly a great circle would go. But then a lot of time elapsed between finishing astonished and really starting great circle, although I'd had the idea of a female pilot for a couple years, just with no elaboration. Um, and you know, also like when I finished the drafts with my editor, then I have to do copy of that, sent up to do page proofs.
Speaker 4 00:49:05 And so that takes a few months, but now, I mean, I had started something kind of earlier in the pandemic that just sort of fizzled. And then kind of two months before grade circle was published, I started something that I think will stick, but I only had time to write 65, 70 pages and then kind of now I'm much too busy, so I'll definitely be going back to that. And I wish I had more, but I also realized I was really depleted by this book. Like I've put a lot in it. And so that was hard. And then also just facing a blank page after at least having been working with something for six years, that was really daunting. Is the, is the next book you're working on also something that's intensely research based. I certainly hope not. Um, as I've started it, it's more of a modern story about a family in LA and I can feel it sort of starting to sprawl a little bit and I'm trying to sort of reign it in and I'm like, we will not be writing another thousand page manuscript.
Speaker 4 00:50:09 And also just, you know, it's kind of, it's important to me too, to have a lot of variation in my projects. All my books have been different from each other. All my short stories are quite varied. I have a short story collection coming out next summer. So yeah, I'm always looking for S for change. And I think too, I just wouldn't try to match this book with my next one. So yeah, I'm sort of purposely trying to scale down. Cool. Well, I, for one, I'm so excited to see what you do next, and I really appreciate you joining us for those who started listening part way through, you're listening to KFAN 90.3 FM and listening to Maggie ship staff. Talk about her new book, great circles, which is available now. Maggie, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, it was such a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5 00:52:09 You are listening to right on radio on KFA 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie. I'd like to thank our guests tonight, Tammy Lee and Maggie ship's dead. Plus our listeners without your support and donations KFA would not be possible. You can find more news and info about right on radio at kfa.org/program/write on radio. Plus listen to recent episodes on our podcast. Find it on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, anywhere else you get your podcast.
