This episode we interview Jane Park about her debut novel, INHERITANCE. Jane is a second-generation Korean-Canadian writer. She was born in Edmonton, Alberta, lived in New York City for over a decade, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta. INHERITANCE is her debut novel. Linny was excited to identify the similarities of Jane’s life and that of her leading character in INHERITANCE, Anne.
In INHERITANCE, Anne Kim is a disaffected lawyer living a successful life in New York City – a far cry from her impoverished childhood in rural Canada where she faced racism and bullying as a second-generation Korean immigrant. When Anne returns to Canada for her father’s funeral, she must face the relationships and past she thought she had left behind and reckon with who she is.
We talk with Jane, the author of INHERITANCE, about the second-generation immigrant experience, the dark family dysfunction humor that only immigrant kids understand, and the family scripts set forth by Confucianism. We learn about how Holocaust generational trauma literature informed the novel, as well as how Jane worked to prevent her trauma from impacting her own children. Jane also tells us how becoming a mother changed her writing in INHERITANCE and how her interest in God is reflected in the novel.
We hear about Jane's family’s journey to Canada and her journey to becoming a novelist, despite its incongruity with most immigrant families’ desires for children to become doctors or lawyers. Jane tells us about the crucial support she received, financial and artistic, that brought this novel to life. We also learn about her love of fine arts.
And, we now have two Korean words to add to our vocabularies: eunjangdo and ajumma. One controversial; one endearing.
In INHERITANCE, a debut novel by Jane Park, we meet Anne Kim, a successful New York attorney. Anne has returned home to the Canadian prairie to bury her father. Memories of her upbringing as a second-generation Korean immigrant start to crowd Anne, but she finds little help from her mother and brother. Her mother wants her to forget the past. Her brother, dealing with substance abuse issues, wants her financial support. As Anne begins to make sense of the poverty, bullying, and abuse she and her brother endured, she begins to realize her life has been a exercise in making her parents proud, rather than in making her own choices. Nancy and Linny discuss the competing demands Anne faces, the emergence of research about PTSD, and the Korean War.
KATE SCHATZ joins us on the front porch for a rollicking and deeply felt conversation about her novel, WHERE THE GIRLS WERE. She's the New York Times-bestselling author of the RAD WOMEN book series; the novel WHERE THE GIRLS WERE; the 33 ⅓ BOOK RID OF ME: A STORY; and DO THE WORK: AN ANTI-RACIST ACTIVITY BOOK, co-written with “United Shades of America” host W. Kamau Bell. Kate tells us WHERE THE GIRLS WERE was inspired by her mom’s experience of having two unplanned pregnancies in 1960’s San Francisco and being sent to private homes to wait out the pregnancies. Kate had never heard of this practice. Her research eventually led her write this book.
One theme that comes through clearly in WHERE THE GIRLS WERE is the unequal burden women bear from the consequences of unprotected sex. Yet, the book mentions that for as long as there have been sex and babies, women are taking care of each other. Kate did want this truth to be evident in Baker’s story. The care women have taken, has often looked like hiding and secrecy. Kate also didn’t want Wiley to be a jerk. He’s just a dude. But she did want to show he just gets to walk away and continue his life.
Linny also mentions Nancy and her experience in visiting a commune!
Today we’re reviewing the book, WHERE THE GIRLS WERE by Kate Schatz. This book is set in 1968 San Francisco. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Phillips, whose nickname is Baker, is a high school senior. She’s set to be her school’s valedictorian, she plans to go to Stanford for college and become a famous journalist, and probably live in Paris along the way. But then, her older and more free-wheeling cousin, Mae, invites her to a party where she indulges in what it would feel like to be the not-so–perfect daughter and she falls into a passionate, secret relationship with a young hippie, Wiley.
This book takes us to a very turbulent year in the United States, 1968, and we live through it through Baker’s eyes and the upheavals she is personally facing. 1968 was the year of the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and intense civil unrest. 1968 saw major political shifts, including LBJ's decision not to run for reelection, violent protests at the Democratic National Convention.
1968 is also known as the beginning of a new era of sexual freedom, though it was certainly a contentious concept. The birth control pill had been approved in 1960 and IUDs in 1968, allowing women to separate sex from childbearing and facilitating the “sexual revolution”.
However, access to contraceptives for single women remained restricted in many areas and most doctors required parental consent for unmarried women under 21 to receive birth control. Baker certainly isn’t familiar with any sort of birth control. So, when she and Wiley begin having sex, she inevitably becomes pregnant. When Baker does become pregnant that it is entirely her problem to solve. Wiley already moved on to other women and is off to Mexico to evade the Vietnam draft and live the surfer’s life. At one point, Baker says, “If men could get pregnant, I bet it would be different.”
We loved interviewing Debra Curtis about her debut novel book, LAWS OF LOVE AND LOGIC. Debra is fresh from her appearance on the Today Show and a dinner honoring her thrown by Jenna Bush Hager. Debra tells us the idea of writing a novel snuck up on her in her 50s. The story of these two sisters, Lily and Jane, was influenced by Debra’s experience as a sister and as the mother of twin sisters. The book explores how supposedly contrary ideas can be held simultaneously, like a belief in science and in God; the importance of being a strong woman, and of finding a good man; and of seeking social justice, and finding personal meaning.
Debra tells us about her journey to becoming a published author and how a Massachusetts psychic and a Parisian sculptor led her to her agent Felicity Blunt. LAWS OF LOVE AND LOGIC has a lot of literature, but also music. Debra says music is important to her and she listens to music, over and over for days, when she’s writing. Before we know it, we’re all singing Harry Nilsson’s WITHOUT YOU.
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