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us at instagram.com slq [Music] teens [Music] good evening everyone this is Heidi G and welcome
to Culture Connection Culture Connection curated by Daniel zeleski a
nd now in its 10th year at
the Queens Public Library is proud to present inter interntional artists from emerging talent
to award winning winning Masters these disciplines include Music Theater author talks and film now
expanding into a virtual format Culture Connection is currently reaching a global audience tonight's
talk features three amazing women authors all coming together to kick off women's History Month
these books explore relationships between fathers and daughters the precarious
act of putting one's
opinions out for public consumption and the battle for control at the highest levels of the corporate
media landscape first I would love to introduce Rachel Abrams who is a pulser and Emmy winning
Emmy awardwinning journalist for the New York Times and co-author of her best-selling book with
James B Stewart unscripted the epic battle for a media Empire and the Redstone family Legacy now
available for purchase and also at the Queen's Public Library the book examines a t
ense dynamic
between a media Mogul father and daughter and battles for power at Paramount Global the multi
billion dooll entertainment Empire controlled by the Redstone family and now I'll hand it over
to Rachel thanks so much for being with us today thank you Heidi um it's my pleasure to introduce
Priscilla Gilman who is a former professor of English literature at both Yale and Vasser her
first book the anti-romantic child a story of unexpected Joy received numerous accolades
including fr
om NPR which called it a mustre and the Leonard low page show which selected it as
among the best books of the Year her latest book the critic's daughter just came out in February
and before she was an author she represented a wide range of books as an agent at jeno and
nesbet Associates one of the most respected literary agencies in the country and somehow
also found time to teach poetry appreciation to people incarcerated at a restorative justice
program and to public students in New York
City thank you so much Rachel I am here to introduce
roxan gay one of the most acclaimed and I would say as both the da of an agent and a former
agent virtuosic writers of our time it's truly astonishing that roxan has published a memoir the
New York Times bestselling hunger a novel The N nacp image Award nominee an untamed state two
short story collections uh an essay collection bad feminist which was also a New York Times
bestseller uh and opinions which is her newest book she's a contri
buting opinion writer for the
New York Times she is also the author of world of wakanda for Marvel and she currently holds the
Glorious dyum in dowed share in media culture and feminist studies at Rucker University so
opinions is the subject that we're going to be talking about tonight and I wanted to give a
little introduction to Roxanne's collection and then ask you a question roxan about it the
subtitle of opinions a decade of arguments criticism and minding other people's business
so w
e know from the start there's going to be a lot of humor in here and I laughed so hard
reading this book one of the things I love the most about it is how you're definitely a high low
girl like me because yes I did teach a y but I have watched The Bachelor since the first season
uh with Alex Michelle uh we share a love for the bachelor franchise and there is an essay about the
bachelor in this book uh I love your piece why the beach is a bummer I agree I do not like the beach
uh the book ha
s straightforward political op-eds it contains essays that work as we might call sort
of claron calls for social justice racial Justice political change uh it has wonderful essays about
the me too movement about Men Behaving Badly in the entertainment industry and the business world
and that's something we can all talk about uh later because I was in a documentary about one
of those men that you write about uh you write about the Fast and the Furious Juggernaut which
I've never seen and I r
eally need to now having read uh your wonderful piece about it there are
theater reviews there are book reviews in this collection there are even a few profiles and you
end the book with a collection of a few of your advice columns and the last one uh is called ask
Roxanne where the hell is the love of my life your answer was deeply comforting and inspiring to me
a single woman in New York City I'm going to take advice and I must say that my mother Lyn nesbet
U one of the founders of JK nes
bet has always said that she reads for voice your voice is is
absolutely inimitable it is captivating at the same time that it is hilarious it's galvanizing it
motivates me it motivates me to fight for change it's also delightful and amusing uh and it's
just very difficult to achieve that balance of being incisive and warm right and you you show
a lot of empathy even in your book reviews of books that are clearly bad uh and your review of
Joyce carolot I I loved it so much uh I have had to
review her three times I I felt for you one of
them I gave a good review the other's not so your voice to me is absolutely indispensable I was
enchanted by this book everyone must buy this book and my first question for you in putting
together these pieces that you wrote over a 10year period I wonder if you reflected on because
there's a lot of different kinds of opinions that you express here you express opinions about art
you express opinions about politics you express opinions about cult
ural phenomena like the Oscars
right uh do you feel that you engage or Express an opinion differently if you were expressing it
about ART versus politics what what's easier for you what's harder um what do you like the most
to do you know I think it's not about easier or harder it's really what do I feel more comfortable
doing and yet at the same time crafting an opinion is crafting an opinion regardless of the subject
matter on which I'm crafting the opinion and so it really is a matter of
how much research do I need
to do how familiar am I the subject and actually first and foremost how familiar am I with what I
actually think about this topic because sometimes I go into writing an argument thinking I am CLE
excuse me thinking I'm very clear on what it is that I believe and what I want to say and then I
go and do some research and I think further and I realize it's not as simple as I originally thought
and so the challenge is often times being prepared for those unexpected
shifts as I start to craft
an opinion and allowing myself the freedom to not be as wed to an original idea as I might normally
be because when I do that I find that it becomes really um the writing becomes a bit calcified
because I haven't given myself any room to grow or to learn yeah and so really I try as much as
possible to to maintain that room but my process is pretty much the same whether I'm writing
about the B or I'm writing about uh roie way being overturned um because I hold thes
e things
I you know I do recognize that there's far more at stake with reproductive freedom but I actually
respect all aspects of culture and I try to bring that level of respect to everything that I write I
love what you say about allowing your thought and your feelings to evolve as you write not coming
to it with your opinion as you said calcified or completely clear or firm but using that writing
process as a way of clarifying and also adding Nuance because I think one of the things that
your opinion writing does so well is that it demonstrates it it it's it feels capacious it
feels subtle it feels nuanced and it never reads it it never reads uh like it's didactic or it's
trying to slam the reader over the head with your idea it's offering your opinion it's expressing
it with a lot of moral passion a lot of humor and even when you write about the bachelor you
you write about it in terms of fairy tales and romantic tropes I mean I was a Jane Austin expert
when I was an aca
demic and I saw a lot right so I watch it for that as much as I watch it that I I
love Joe I'm curious what you think of Joey the current Bachelor um but you know and Rachel this
brings me to a question I think that works for all of us um you and I talked a little bit about how
as a reporter you you're not really supposed to be injecting your opinion right into your paace and
so I'm curious if you could say a little bit about that um yeah I mean I I think that as a reporter
they you are rea
lly instructed and it's really instilled in you that um that your opinions can
actually uh distract from what you're trying to do and uh you I feel like journalists the last few
years there has been a lot of discussion about the role of the of reporters opinions um and this I
and I think there's been a lot of backlash against some more traditional idea that reporters should
just never express their opinions and we should all pretend we don't have any um as opposed to
what good journalists d
o which is of course I have an opinion about something uh and I likely
have an opinion about something I'm very familiar with like my beat for example um but what what
good journalists do is we put our opinions aside and we follow the facts where they lead and we
try to cover things as unbi in as an unbiased way as possible which means always wondering am
I missing something um am I uh is there a hole in is there a hole in my evidence is there a hole
in my reporting is there anything that I
maybe am assuming that I shouldn't be assuming you're
always trying to I think if you're if you're doing your job you're always mindful of what your
own biases might be because you you you should be aware of what your own opinions are and trying to
make sure that you're that they are not in any way leading you astray and I think good journalists
always are looking for ways that they might have made mistakes but I think that there's that's very
different than publicly expressing our opinion
s which I think can sometimes give the impression
to we don't want to give anybody the impression of bias right we don't want to we I I and so I
think that there's a little bit of a tension over how much some reporters think it's appropriate to
even express what their opinions are um because I think a lot there's one school of thought now
that I should be able to express my opinion and if you you trust what I'm my work you trust that
I'm putting that aside and giving you a fair and accurate
story right right and you'll see that on
Twitter where people will have their work Twitter handle or threads um and then they'll have their
personal and they say this is not the opinion of my employer or something like that making that
differentiation making that distinction um I'm not sure that does any good but yeah yeah what gave
both of you the confidence to share your opinions I mean you know roxan another thing that when I
was going over your whole career and reading um I I I had rea
d most of it um but reading all of it
you know I'm a memoirist you've written Memoir a lot of your pieces are personal as memoirists
we also are giving our opinion or our take on the family that we grew up in the people that we
interact with the relationship between opinion and fact or opinion perspective and Truth in Memoir
writing or personal writing you and I also both have phds and I wonder if you were trained not
to ever put your opinion it right it's all about making an argument not p
utting yourself in not
putting the eye in so I'm curious about that too uh you know fortunately my PhD is in rhetoric and
Technical communication and so half of my study was about the art of arguing and how to do so as
effectively and persuasively as possible and so a lot of times people ask me you know how did
you make me feel this way and it's magical and it's actually not magical I just have a lot of
training because I went to school for too long and in terms of you know like finding the
courage
to have an opinion it's like I don't actually I just have opinions and I feel compelled to write
about something for one reason or another and I'm generally terrified but I do it anyway yeah and
for whatever reason I am able to tolerate the discomfort of anxiety and wondering what people
are going to say and knowing I'm inevitably going to anger some pretty terrible people because
when you write about race gender um sexuality reproductive Freedom anything that challenges the
statu
s quo you are in you are inevitably going to engender a lot of responses and many of them are
going to be uncharitable and offered them terrible faith and that's a challenging thing that you have
to pay such a high price for expressing opinions and for contributing to public discourse yeah um
it's unfortunate and I don't know how we change that but I I do hope that's something that we
do because it can be incredibly discouraging to writers and I'm sure all of you have experienced
that as wo
men who have opinions and write into the world in one way or another yeah roxan you know
I um I'm like you I try not to think about it and I don't people will often say to me like how did
you write these Memoirs that are so personal your mother still alive um I was in the docu series
Allan V Pharaoh because I was a member of the Pharaoh family when Woody Allen was involved with
Mia and that was on HBO and I've been quoted in a lot of pieces about that and people said how could
you get the c
ourage I said I had to tell the truth I had to stand up for what I knew to be right
and I had to share my perspective and that was an experience in blocking 12,000 to 15,000 people on
Twitter probably actually only like 500 people but they have multiple accounts um and but I'm like
you I try not to think about it then it happens and then you have to cope with it the best you can
I mean Rachel you probably have and and sometimes it's people that that don't have that intentions
like I've writ
ten one explicit oped piece um in my life Rox said I wrote an oped for the New York
Times in 2012 um that was called don't blame autism for New Town and it was about the new
town shooting and that people were saying that this that the shooter had autism and that autistic
people were violent and I was so Morely out I have a son that's autistic and even from people you
know operating from the right place they were like but why didn't you focus on the fact that it was
a gun that killed why did
you f why did you spend so much time and on the fact that he's not right
it's not about autism right so you you sometimes you can't win sometimes people from all sides or
all backgrounds or all perspectives are going to say I would have done it this way or I would have
added this Rachel how have you experienced that with your reporting where someone says why didn't
you take this angle or this approach or include this or that I I feel like roxan and I both have
this huge platform obviously
in the New York Times probably the most powerful you know English
language print media and so there's obviously a lot of scrutiny that comes with that and a certain
vulnerability but I I think I think what roxan does in many ways is much more it's much more
vulnerable at least like in in my opinion it is more vulnerable your opinion crit criticizing
my reporting is very diff that's not me you know like that's that's my work product that isn't
necessarily a reflection of my soul or who I am
um but putting yourself out there putting your values
out there you know putting your putting your opinions out there it's it's it's like I'd love to
do that at some point it's something I've thought about but I have always been very nervous to write
about myself I think a lot of reporters are really nervous to write about themselves because it's
one thing to have somebody like I said criticize your work that doesn't feel as personal to me to
have somebody say like and I I just went to Lond
on to help out a little bit with our coverage
of of Israel and Gaza and just to go back to the opinion thing for a second you know that's an
area of coverage where um it's obviously so under the microscope it's one of the most intense uh
areas that you can report on I think for any news organization and I and I and I understand why some
people think you know I should be able to share my opinions and you should be able to trust that
I'm putting them aside to do my job but that's an example o
f coverage where like I wouldn't
want anybody to know what I might personally feel about anything that I'm covering because
that is so charged the New York Times is under such a microscope uh there we have colleagues that
are um you know in Israel or May in the future be much more in the line of fire than I am going to
be in London or New York and so I just feel like I guess I'm answering two different questions
but one is that I I feel much more protected just being just writing non-fictio
n I don't feel
like that is a reflection of me and it's much easier to take that kind of criticism and I think
depending on what I'm writing about it's even more important to not put myself out there yeah right
um I have just a just a riff off of that um do you all three of you um do you feel like the land
landcape for women putting their opinions out there has changed or you know in the past 10 years
or so has it gotten better has it um do you feel safer now are there more guard rails or d
o you
think there's just never going to be enough guard rails I don't know I don't think it's gotten
much better um I mean I would say uh and I have a question about this actually for for roxan but
you know Allan V faroh came out when 2022 2021 um that was post me too I mean it was post and it was
awful um I I don't think there can ever be enough guardrails um and I think that it's it's very very
challenging I think that having a conversation like this with the three of us we are our best
support system and other women standing up for you on social media or on um in your personal
life having people who remind you that you are not reducible to the caricatures and stereotypes
and derogatory attacks uh that people make about you online and I think that you know Everyone's
a Critic now everybody has an opinion everybody can express it anywhere um you know my Memoirs my
father was a theater and a literature critic and um the critic's daughter you know I write about
how in his era
there critics were Gatekeepers and there were few of them and that was both a
good thing and a bad thing so it's great that there's a m it's fantastic that there's a wider
range of critical voices that people are embolden to express their opinions but there need to be
guardrails to make sure that those opinions are well considered that they are not coming across
as just attacks that they are well thought through that they are fair and that there is a respect for
the other pointed view if t
he other point of view is tenable and there was a moment in Roan's book
that I circled and wrote like three hearts around which was like there's certain points of view that
we shouldn't entertain we shouldn't have a debate with these people right who are just racist that
there that's not a like okay I have this opinion you have that there's some things that are
wrong and we need to call that out and say it yeah I would say that I don't even know that we
need guard rails as much as we need t
he right to express our opinions without fearing for our lives
yes and without receiving death threats which you know a few had told me 15 years ago when I started
writing essays because I think of myself primarily as a fiction writer but that's not how the world
sees me but if you had told me that I would receive regular death threats and have to have
armed security at public events because I have opinions that are quite frankly fairly Centrist
um I would never have believed it and it's a
very high price to pay for daring to have opinions and
yet at the same time we are asked to legitimize both sides when sometimes the other side is a Nazi
like exactly why are we I imizing this nonsense and treating it like it's a point of view that
needs to be aired out it's not actually and so I think we need more just sanity and just common
sense and if if that's a guard rail sure but I think that should just be the pavement that we are
you know to use the metaphor a little further or to
take it a little further I mean that should
be the pavement we're driving on this should be just part and parcel of what we do and I don't
know that we'll ever get there especially women people of color anyone who's marginalized I
don't know that we'll get there because the mainstream or people in charge people who have
something to lose if the status quo changes they don't actually want us to be able to freely
express our opinions and we are actually bearing witness to the ongoing attempts
to dismantle the
Constitution which again something I never thought I would see in my lifetime and so like literally
these are the kinds of things that are at stake exactly I guess Rachel if you wanted to answer
that as well I I on a slightly lighter note what I kept what the first thing I thought of was just
um women writing about relationships like I uh just when you ask me like has it gotten easier um
relationships romantic relationships are important to almost everybody right like ever
ybody wants
to find love and I was just your question made me think about I just recently reread sex in the
city um and I didn't I had forgotten that that uh Candace Bushnell had written for the New York
Observer and I did not fully appreciate that how incredibly well- written those columns were and
I had just assumed that it was a frothy Beach read Because probably because there been some
ingrained sexism about how we all feel or how we're taught to feel about um women that write
about re
lationships I feel like and and Candace Buel has talked about this like you are not taken
as seriously if you WR about relationships which are important which are like are so fundamental
to who we are as people and I uh and I so what I was thinking was like do I think that women
writing about relationships has gotten has been taken any more seriously like are you or do I
think that women who write about relationships get considered to be literature more often that
that's what I was ponderin
g and I I don't I'm not sure but as somebody who would love to write
about that one day um not I just I don't know that's what I was thinking I was was like because
I and I think again I just think about this all the time like one of the big questions I have is
like if I if I write a book that involves romance like are the am I just going to get written off
do I have to write five non-fiction books first before I'm allowed to write something that is
gonna be considered frothy and silly Rach
el that's so interesting I want you to do it please
do it um I was reminded of of when my first book came out um which is a memoir of parenting um
and people who are sort of dismissed as mommy writers right or if you write about being a
parent I remember hearing from my publicist at Harper Collins that the New York Times book
review is passing and reviewing my book because we don't do mommy autism books mommy blogs mommy
books basically anything that's feminized right right and it was a mal
e editor at the time and
uh my book is like threaded through with words worse poetry and about being an academic it's
called the Indie romantic child and even with that Sheen Rachel they said that so I think
that speaks to but as you're talking about women writing about relationships splinters by
Lesley Jameson which I reviewed for the Boston Globe you know and she had to write the sort of
essays that were about culture first right this is her Memoir of getting divorced and dating as
a sin
gle mother some of the reviews I'm noticing are saying things like we can't wait for her to
get back to talking more about art and philosophy right this is like more of a minor book in
her Canon because it's about her divorce and her relationships and becoming a mother it's
an absolutely brilliant book and I this was a moment and and I want to ask you about this roxan
when I felt privileged and lucky to be a cultural critic that I could put my voice out there and
support this book and testi
fy to its literary merit and testify to how important it is and I
wonder if you feel that um you know it's hard to be a Critic these days because there are very
very few critic jobs criticism pages are getting taken out of newspapers and I mean we have book
Forum again thank goodness but um it's important that we have a thriving culture of critics who
Express their opinions and can Champion authors or deflate hype I wonder you know you and I
both did that for Joe Carolin we deflated the hyp
yeah you know it's challenging um but one
of the things I love most about being a Critic is being able to offer an opinion and being able
to uh sorry um just being able to bring attention to things that I think matter and writers and
artists that I think matter that are all too often overlooked by the critical establishment for
the very reasons that you pointed out especially women our work is often diminished as um you know
Mommy things as if that's a bad thing I'm like excuse me all of y
ou have mothers and most of you
have children and so what are you really saying when you want to diminish this kind of writing
why would we not value that and so when I have opportunties in the places where I get to write
to bring attention to things that are overlooked or demeaned or dismissed that you know that's one
of the best parts of my job nobody needs another review about um Jonathan fransen they really but
like enough people are gonna cover it you know let's bring attention to thin
gs that might not
get the attention and deserve the attention and it's not even about adoration because you can
absolutely point out like these are the things that are working these are the things that are not
working it's about respect it's about respecting the ideas enough to criticize them and exactly so
often when people review work from marginalized writers there's often a level of condescension
in it where they're not actually even willing to genuinely engage critically with the work
as if oh
no I'm afraid and like that's just cowardice and so yeah yeah it's so I I so agree with everything
you said and you were reminding me of um you know just how important a a a very very thoughtful
smart nuanced doesn't have to be just a rave like in a productive way but somebody taking your work
seriously and engaging with it and championing what works about it um you know my mom was Tony
Morrison's agent um for her first five books and I I will never forget I mean I remember vividly
when John Leonard in the New York Times gave Song of Solomon a review that put it in the company of
all of these Classics of great literature and I remember Tony's reaction I remember my mother's
reaction it transformed her life uh and we need more people fighting for books and movies and
whatever it is in culture I don't know if we need people fighting for The Bachelor but it is good
um you know fighting for great things and bringing their intelligence to bear on it and passionately
enga
ging with it I I think it's so important yeah and it just creates a richer culture of
ideas and know the more that we can appreciate the breath of work good bad and in between I
think the better um not everything is great not everything is not everything is great
exactly and I just like being able to talk about the things that are not great in addition
to the things that are I do I do too I do too I gave a pretty negative review to one of the
bestselling books of last year and I got an angr
y email from the publicist and I said sorry
it's part of the job right I told the truth as I saw Joyce carols is still mad at me she blocked
me on Twitter after my review which Ro she went on a radio show and complained about it she's
very about the review and I'm like I stand by it like I would write the same review today
the book was I stand by it too I seconded it and you know what my father um my father was
on the cavage show in 1979 dick kavat asked my father who's the most overrated w
riter in
America and he said John Irving and Joyce carolot oh wow yeah so that's uh that's spicy he
was not afraid of sharing his opinions Rox I love that yeah it definitely takes a lot of
Courage I think to put your opinion out there like that and I'm sure that you've
all experienced a lot of different types backlash um but it's a privilege to be able
to express it right and um I wonder uh just you know what kinds of hurdles that
you've had to jump over in order to you know be able to hav
e that privilege
to express your opinion um like just in general I feel like I should let r I think you
should answer this this before I try to oh um you know I've actually been very lucky I've
been very very lucky I'm sure there have been hurdles but I guess I wasn't deterred by them
for one I always had a day job so I was never trying to make a living as a writer and so my
rent money was not contingent on whether or not someone was going to let me write an opinion
and thank God y um the
biggest gift I think any writer can give to themselves until they don't
need one is a day job yeah my mother always said that roxan yep excellent answer yes um and you
know the thing is I'm just I'm really really stubborn and so I will take no for an answer but
I will just submit the work to someone else and a lot of the challeng I face are of course the
challenges that other black women face people of color there's a little bit of freezing going
on probably because of the Wi-Fi but maybe i
f you can just repeat the last thing that
you said oh yeah said you know the biggest challenges have been overcoming the bigotry of low
expectations and what people think I'm capable of and having to prove myself over and over again
having to be prolific to get a fraction of the consideration that my white peers get yeah
so that has been incredibly frustrating but I also know that compared to some of my other
writing friends and colleagues I've had I've I've encountered far fewer obstacles
than than
many and I don't take that for granted makes a lot of sense yeah I think it's is helpful
for people one the one last thing I'll say is oh go ahead oops oh I was just going
to say that one last thing I would say is that oftentimes when I'm advocating
for Equity especially in the writing world people think I'm advocating for myself
and it's like no I'm advocating for everyone and these are known problems and they may not
happen to everyone but they happen to enough of us that we ne
ed to be talking about this
all the time to try and create some change and change unfortunately is very slow but
hopefully we'll start to continue to see more I'll answer this slightly differently
because um uh obviously I don't I don't write um opinions journalism but I do just to answer
a little more broadly in terms of like trying things to overcome in term in uh what I feel like
I'm trying to overcome in order to be successful as a journalist and as a writer um I've been
thinking a lot
recently about confidence and not just having confidence in my work but I feel
increasingly like I see people other reporters who walk around as though they deserve to get
Beats and assignments and front the front page and attention and um and a lot of times they men
but not always sometimes they're women too and I have thought a lot more in recent years about like
how much more would I be able to get for myself if I moved through the world as if I deserved it
and um and how much would tha
t affect my career and I'm sure you know I like there's a lot mixed
up with that of course there's you know there's obviously like I do have a lot of privilege to
do what I'm doing and to have gotten where I am um but I do I mean they always say confidence is
key right with everything whether it's dating or whether it's um whether it's your career and I
feel like I am trying to I'm trying to think a little bit more about how I might carry myself in
order to get what I want interesting yeah
Rachel I'm waiting for that dating and relationship book
from you it's gonna happen I'm here to embolden you I'm here to give you confidence that you can
do it um you know I think that's a great point that both of you have made I mean my mother tells
every single writer that walks through her door you must have a day job until you're one of like
the teeny teeny teeny percentage the camp but you need if you want to do your best work you can't
write for the market it's in other words it isn't
just about like I have to churn out these pieces
in order to pay my rent it's also like do your work for the work sake not to pay a rent then
you're going to actually write from your heart your soul what you actually believe not trying to
plate or impress anyone else right you do it for you and I always tell my students that um you have
to do it for you but the other thing you know as a memoirist and I'm curious to hear your thoughts
on this roxan and and also you said you thought of yours
elf as a fiction writer and that's how I
came to you reading your fiction interestingly um as a memoirist you know people often ask I will
often be asked uh how did you get the courage to write about you know all these very painful things
your divorce your your parents divorce uh your you know your children's diagnoses with various kinds
of things and I always say that I just I really do and I'm sure that this is true for both of you
just shut out what people are going to say you just can't
think about it you can't write for how
an audience is going to react uh and I think that applies to this day job question as well right
you can't write in order to earn a certain amount of money or to get a certain kind of reaction or
avoid a certain kind of reaction you have to write what you need to write has to be urgency behind it
and you can't be trying to so I always I only show it to people at the very last stage when like the
lawyer from the publisher is calling me and saying you h
ave to send it to your mother would your
mother sue you uh you know at a certain point you do have to share it show it to other people but
it's that courage of like getting in touch with that still small voice inside you and expressing
it not thinking about how people are going to receive it yeah for sure I always just tell myself
no one's going to read anything I write every time and to this day I'm just like girl you don't
have to worry literally no one's GNA read it and you know it used
to be easier to believe that but
I am still able to lie to myself so um I I don't think of an audience and in general I'm writing
for myself and not in a vain way but rather I'm writing the kinds of work that I would like to
see in the world and writing about the things that interest me and fortunately enough slowly but
surely over the years I've been able to build an audience for that and hopefully I can sustain
it we'll see amazing that all just makes so much sense I mean you know just yo
u have to just
do your work for you and you know it shouldn't really be any other way right um I think we have
a few minutes left before uh we're going to open it up for questions but um I wonder wonder if
you if maybe you all could talk a little about the um the father daughter tyin you know with
all of um just the similarities between your work Roxanne's piece about um the pity of good
gifts for Father's Day has got to be one of my favorite pieces of all time my dad was like
the just get
me the Glenn livid I was like Dad I don't want to just get you the Glen Liv
we need more um yeah it's fascinating I mean you know and my and my my book is about being
the child of a Critic my father is a Critic who his professional life is expressing his opinion
about theater and um and literature and teaching it um so my book you know I I reflect on what
it means to be a Critic in the world and being his child going into the world and knowing that
there were a lot of people who hated him
because he had given them bad reviews and I write about
teaching in aerobics class when I was in my 20s and Wendy waserstein was in the class and he
had been her professor at the old school of drama and given her play as bad reviews and I
was so nervous that he was gonna that you know that was going to taint my relationship with her
um so it's learning it's learning the best being true to the best of your father and learning
how to differentiate yourself and be your own person isn't the fat
herdaughter relationship
really underexplored in literature compared to like father son and mother daughter Rachel I
think so I yes my opinion is that you're correct Rachel yeah you know it's interesting in general
fatherdaughter relationships are portrayed in a pretty singular way of Daddy's little girl Daddy's
Little Princess and um you know like what what do you have like what kind what kind of story are
you allowed to tell when you're not Daddy's Little Princess I actually get along gre
at with my father
but I was never really a princess um and so it has been interesting thinking about the ways in which
I write our relationship into the world which I actually don't do a lot because my parents are
very private people and I respect that there's nothing I need to unburden myself of so much that
I would transgress um our boundaries and there might my both of my parents are my biggest fans
and my dad in particular loves to um rearrange bookstores and do some extra merchandising
and if
you sit next to him on an airplane God forbid I'm sorry in advance but he means well but you know I
do think it's interesting to bring a a different kind of writing about fathers and daughters to the
Forefront because it's a very unique relationship when you're lucky enough to have maybe not a
perfect relationship but an interesting and a good relationship with your father yeah because I
guess if there was another primary Trope it's of the terrible father and I I I firmly believe th
ose
stories need to be told but um and they are told though hopefully more people will feel encouraged
to tell those stories as they feel so inclined um but yeah it's something that interests me quite a
lot even though I don't write about it as much as I write about other things as someone who just
wrote a whole book about a terrible father but not your father no not my father some to Red a
different person's father um yeah I can tell you it was very interesting and also probably the most
interesting thing about that was that um despite everything that that man did to his daughter uh
she still yearned for his love which really tells you something about um how nuanced and complicated
relationships are family relationships yeah yeah there's a very tumultuous relationship in your
book um between Sher Redstone and her father and you know battles all kinds of battles so I
wonder if um maybe you want to expand on that a little uh well I mean like it's funny because
some rone was e
xtremely abusive and he also was somebody who couldn't even let his kid win uh if
it meant he lost so like they couldn't even play tennis if it meant that um she would beat him and
I think a lot of parents would be really excited if their child you know exceeds them at something
especially something that they were proud of but that was not the case with him and um and I uh
and despite it because of his brought relationship with his family he was able to there were other
sort of grifters tha
t were able to come into his life and take advantage of him and isolate him um
I joke that our book is kind of a mix of Weekend at Bernie's meets uh King Lear but in but in all
seriousness there was there were a lot of elements of of elder abuse and and in the end Sher Redstone
uh the daughter who had been pushed out just really wants to get back at her father's life and
and help him and and this is going to sound really cliche but Jim Stewart my co my co-author and I
we really came away fr
om this whole experience feeling like it this so underscores that at
the end of your life when you are the most V vulnerable Su Redstone was in his 90s when he
passed away and he was very frail and like I mentioned that he he was vulnerable to outside bad
outside influences it really really hit home that that no matter how much money you have at the
end of the at the end of your life it's about who is surrounding you and the relationships
youve built and who is going to take care of you um
and it also hit home in some respects SAR
Redstone as a billionaire was of course a target for people to take advantage of him obviously
but also it really Jim and I both thought my God if somebody who has all the the means in the
world to have guardrails around him so that the grifters and the users don't get in if somebody
like that can't protect himself then it's really a lesson to all of us that of how Paramount those
relationships are that's very moving Rachel 100% I have to say I want
to sit next to your father on
a plane like like everything that I've read about him he's my kind of guy and I want to go to a
sports game with he's great my dad raised me on on Sports I think um there are a few questions
that have popped up in the chat um so I'm going to just you know re you know throw
a couple of them at you while we still a little bit of time for it um so okay uh Dan is
asking um thanks to all of you for this women's history program for cultureal connection
can any of y
ou make a statement about the current rash of book bands in the USA as
well as the attacks on drag queen story hours and he says thank you uh you know um book bands are not new and
moral panics are also not new these things are very cyclical and we happen to be in a a very
terrible cycle and one of the things that's really important to remember about these kinds of moral
panics is that they're generally fueled by very few people and like around 60% of all the book
bands are initiated by 11
individuals and that's uh an alarming thing but it's also a reminder
that the media doesn't necessarily report all of the information to contextualize what's going
on that said it is a very real problem because it's uh the kinds of books that are being banned
you know people aren't rallying to ban mind com they're banning books about the lgbtq experience
they're banning books about the Holocaust they're banning books about racism and the ills of racism
really they're banning anything that m
ight make people uncomfortable about history and they're
trying to erase history and they're trying to make it seem like we have overcome all of the
the isms that we've been working so hard to to battle over the past uh hundred years so you
know it's incredibly frustrating to see and it's particularly frustrating to see these random and
bizarre attacks on drag queen story hours because drag queens are awesome performers and story
hours anything that gets children interested in storytelling
and reading is incredibly important
anything that exposes children to difference is incredibly important and the way that something
very simple very innocent has been perverted by sex obsessed conservatives who are really just
acting out against their own issues uh is alarming and that's why we have to push back and um every
opportunity we can't just say oh that doesn't affect me yes it does actually affect you because
it's about the communities that we're going to be raising our children i
n and our children's
children and yes I would love to hear what others think too roxan um I couldn't agree more uh when
you said book bands are not new in moral Panos or not new my father was actually the president
of pen America in the early 1980s and organized a big event uh that was about book Banning that
uh many writers from Tony Morrison actually was at this event and um John Irving overrated but
useful uh to bring attention to the pernicious nature of book Banning and I found that vi
deo Penn
released it recently actually it's on the internet with all of these incredible writers uh reading
excerpts from books that had been banned and uh so it just reminds you this is not new it's been
going on for a very long time and it always gets worse when we're making progress on all those
fronts that we want to make progress on because all those conservative people who want to erase
history and want to pull us back come out in not droves but come out in a group of 11 um when this
happens backlash and I I love that point so much ran because um we need to keep emphasizing that
that this is not the opinion of most Americans this is the opinion of a small uh bited minority
a tiny group of people and we don't need to give them more megaphones and I think I read recently
that The Bluest Eye is the most banned book in America right now uh and I just taught a class
in which I taught that book and I thought this is a challenging book this is a difficult book
this is a a wre
nchingly painful book to read and this is a book that I would want to teach high
school students because it allows them to confront issues that they might want to their parents and
they might not want to confront but they're going to be bigger larger better people for confronting
and reading and it's also a masterpiece of world literature um but it is and and the drag queen
thing Dan I mean I would be my kids are 21 and 24 now it's incredible but you know when I had
little boys I would want
to take them I mean these draglings are ful performers think about
tons of Charisma who better to ignite that spark right teach kids to love stories and reading and
sharing and come get coming together in community to celebrate literature and to share stories
and what better who better to teach us about um the wonderful panoply of individuals on this
planet and celebrating them right Rachel free speech very important that's that's very important
everyone yes super important 100% And you kn
ow of course the difference between free speech and hate
speech right um and trying to figure out where we all fit you know where where how everything comes
together um so there was another question um and I can't really see the the it's BVO which is like
someone's screen name um roxan what do you want to write about right now also watching Love is
Blind what are your thoughts can I also just add to that BRX and I'm dying to know what you think
about Bravo and what's happening there can I j
ust like flump that yeah 100% of course I'm watching
Love is blinding rxan and I want your thoughts too what's happening with Bravo just they're out
of the loop the the all these people on All These reality shows accusing bravoo of everything from
like plying them with alcohol to ignoring serious problems and also the that big the thing that took
over the country in some sort of psychosis Scandal where this guy was C cheating and his spurred
girlfriend seems to have spent the last year like
torturing the woman who uh who slept with
her boyfriend and now is being sued for spreading revenge porn and it's like this CRA I just feel
it's just I don't know I'm so I'm obsessed yeah um right now I would like to write anything at
all I've been dealing with writer block and it's challenging but I am really interested in writing
about Tik Tok because I think there's a lot going on there and there's a lot going on there about
Conformity people love to frame it as a place where you get to
be an individual and yet 90% of
videos are people imitating other people and so that's just very interesting to me I have not
watched um Love is Blind I I mean I know what it is I saw parts of the first season I haven't
seen the new season but I like I'm on I'm online enough to like get the broad Strokes of this
current season and just like interesting and with Bravo the thing about Bravo is that it made a
cottage industry out of sort of manufactured drama and they were not the first peopl
e to do it they
will not be the last but they really did create this unique stable of the Real Housewives of and
then of course the Vander pump rules Cinematic Universe and the um Summer House Winter house
universe and the things that Bravo is being accused of to be frank are happening in all of
reality television it's a formula they apply except for maybe Survivor and The Amazing Race
they actually ply all of these contestants with a great deal of alcohol because that's what
creates drama
and that's what you give them something to film The Producers are often feeding
the contestants information lines Etc so that they can again manufacture drama and now we're starting
to see like that there are consequences for this and we're also starting to see like sorry H
Bethany Franco for example a Bravo star is trying to create a union of reality performers and I
actually think that's a great idea because reality television isn't about reality anymore these are
actually performers the
y are performing labor and that they are creating very interesting narratives
and there are writers on most reality shows and so they should be paid an equitable rage wage and
we should stop pretending and allowing networks to exploit this form of Labor so that they don't
have to spend what they are spending on scripted Television right and I you know we're just
starting to see that with scand of all I think it was something that finally was interesting
after several years of boringness in
the Vander pump universe and you know Ariana was with Tom
sandal for so long and her you know like that their mutual friend betrayed the relationship you
know I hold Tom responsible for Tom's relationship and not the little girl I think her name was
Rachel um Raquel and you know I read about the lawsuit today and I think it's very interesting
and I suspect that there's some Merit to it and I also think it's overblown because Raquel is
pathological liar now so is Tom and I'm sure that Ariana
is not actually a saint either she scorned
but she's not a saint so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out but I do think in the next
five years Bravo in particular and Andy Cohen I think he's not going to last much longer in
the Bravo Universe um even though he basically created it uh I think that they're GNA give him a
very nice exit package but he's gotten two inter in the universe now he's gotten too involved he
socializes with these people and you know controls a lot of their pro
fessional Fates and it it's
going to just reach a breaking point and I think we're pretty close wow interesting thank you for
add to that question we have about one minute left so anything else that anyone wants to add uh to
the Love is Blind question Amy Johnny forever this season that's what I'm going to say uh and Olive
is asking us a question she's a High School Junior and she wants to know if we have any advice on
expressing opinions in the age of social media but one is still forming
views and staying open-minded
but wants to be accepted in online spaces great Olive hi that's a great question what's your best
advice yeah give us your best advice yeah I think think about what you mean by being accepted in
online spaces do you mean being welcomed into spaces without being challenged for your opinions
or do you mean being welcomed into spaces and being given space to have opinions and sometimes
facing challenge but not facing challenge that is malignant um it is unfortunat
e what social media
has done because I remember a lot of the opinions that I had between the ages of 16 and 30 and I'm
really grateful that social media then wasn't what it is now because now you see a lot of adults who
are like dunking and making fun of younger people for having opinions that we know are probably not
great but they're just 17 like what are you doing messing around in a 17y old's backyard and so you
want to look for spaces where you can be welcomed and embraced and given th
e space to grow and to
think um and just know that a lot of the Judgment you face online is manufactured and it's for
people who are Desperately Seeking attention and so also look for spaces that are me not
necessarily on social media where you can start to test drive what you think and what you feel
and then be as willing to listen as you are to speak excellent advice r did you want
to add anything just if it goes on the internet it lives there forever just remember just remember so so tru
e um wow I mean yeah we've
covered a lot of ground but I mean I'm sure we could you know continue on forever and
ever but it is you know 8 o'clock so um I believe that we are supposed to end at some
point um anything else anyone wants to add other otherwise um I just want to thank
everyone yeah thank you all so much this is so such a pleasure oh thank you so much um
Roxanne I'm looking forward to your Tik Tok piece and Rachel your romance and dating book
right up thank you for having hold
you to it for having me bye bye bye everybody thanks
for having everyone thanks for having us
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