Read Me
4/3/20 - Our book is finally available (for pre-order at least)! Aminatou and Ann discuss the making of Big Friendship, writing in a single voice, and the vulnerability in a deep creative partnership. Plus, how to support your local indie bookstore, and even more reading recommendations from Emma Straub. And we talk with Adeline Dieudonne about her novel Real Life, just translated to English, and Ashley Woodfolk about her new YA novel about a friend breakup, When You Were Everything.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, Big Friendship!!!
Ashley Woodfolk, When You Were Everything
Adeline Dieudonné, Real Life
Ways to support indie bookstores:
Buy books from them! But keep in mind shipping times may be delayed
Libro.fm -- the indie bookstore friendly site for audiobooks
Kobo.com for ebooks
Bookshop.org for physical books, they give some of the money back to indie bookstores
Buy gift cards!
Emma Straub, from Books are Magic in Brooklyn, recommends:
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
Godshot by Chelsea Bieker
Always Home by Fanny Singer
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang
Wow No Thank You by Samantha Irby
All Adults Here by Emma Straub (we love women promoting their own work!)
TRANSCRIPT: READ ME
[Ads] (0:50) Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend. Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties truly everywhere. Aminatou: She's Ann Friedman. Ann: She is Aminatou Sow. Aminatou: They are the authors of the book Big Friendship. [Laughter] [Theme Song] Ann: That is like an amazing way to announce that preorders are open for our book as of this week. So yeah, big week for us really, like showing people the cover of our book which feels like, you know, that first baby photo home from the hospital. I'm like "Look at her! Isn't she beautiful?" [Laughter] Aminatou: Right. It's like the baby is swaddled. We have to say though, you know, that part of why the baby is so gorgeous is because it was designed by our pal Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson and it's gorgeous. Ann: We love it. Like truly our number one goal was we want -- okay, not our number one goal. On our list of desired outcomes for this book was having a cover that we truly loved because we're going to look at this all the time and I think it is safe to say we are obsessed with this cover. Aminatou: I'm so happy that -- on an aesthetic level I'm happy with it and on a words level I'm really proud of it. Ann: I know! You and I . . . you and I have talked a lot about our emotional journey of writing a book. The feelings we're all feeling we're both feeling since we turned it in and basically signed off on it. And yeah, that feeling of being able to get a little distance on it and read it and feel proud of it is something that I experienced for the first time pretty recently. I mean I am like perpetually . . . Aminatou: [Laughs] Ann: I mean well this is a really interesting thing about collaborating, right? Which is to say that when I'm working by myself I can be really hard on myself and be like this is trash garbage and it's motivation for me to do it better. I think working with you and it's a collaboration that same feeling I have is actually really mean because then I'm talking about your work too, you know what I mean? The mechanisms I have for assessing . . . Aminatou: Oh I know Ann. I know. [Laughs] Ann: I know. Well so I just want to apologize to you for my own process of thinking that our book was really bad in order to keep working on it. You know, just -- I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is we have been through many things in this process and I'm really happy to finally both be out on the other side and proud of it. Aminatou: Here's what I will say about collaborating is . . . Ann: One thing? Aminatou: It is amazing. One thing. [Laughter] One thing is that it's very, very good and the other thing is truly that our rule for our friendship which is that neither of us is allowed to break down at the same moment also comes in really handy here, you know? Where it's like okay, great. You're watching someone else grieve or be angry or be excited about something that you have gone through the same feelings about but you go through it at different moments and I feel that for me that made me feel sane because it's like okay, great, yes. These feelings, I am watching them be mirrored so I love it. Big Friendship, it's not bad. [Laughs] (4:18) Ann: Do you want to take a minute and talk about our process and what's in it? Because I sort of realized that we have said on the show -- obviously if you listen to the show you know that we're writing a book together. You know that the book is about friendship and about our friendship. But I feel like now that it is about to be out in the world, like it is in the hospital receiving ward or whatever metaphor you want to use. [Laughs] Aminatou: Oh my god, you and the childbirth metaphors. I don't think I can handle this. Ann: Okay, I'm obsessed with claiming this as a big moment for me, a child-free person who has really celebrated a lot of my friends', you know, weddings and babies and things like that. Like I am really interested in owning this as a major life event, hence the metaphor. But I wonder if we could just -- maybe we should talk a little bit more about like the process and also what's in the book because while we have alluded to it and mentioned it a bunch we really . . . I don't know, I feel like that is our strongest pitch for the book is being like listen, this is just how hard we've worked on this thing. [Laughs] Aminatou: Well here's the thing: the process of writing this book also not bad. [Laughter] Wow. Is this my first interview pitch situation? Probably for this. Ann: What's your book about Aminatou Sow? Aminatou: Wow, thank you so much for asking Ann Friedman. The book I wrote with you is a memoir about our friendship. We've been friends for ten years. In the book we talk about us, the ups, the downs, the beautiful stuff, the drama of it all. And we also talk to experts and some of our friends and really try to get to the bottom of what it takes to stay friends with someone for the long haul. (6:00) Ann: Wait, record scratch, the drama of it all? I thought you -- sorry, I thought we had a really perfect relationship with no problems or strife ever because we host a podcast together and are very public big friends. Aminatou: Let me hit you with a two-by-four of truth Ann Friedman. [Laughter] We like all very healthy and good relationships, we've had ups and downs. We're very good about talking about the ups of our relationship, this podcast being one of them, all of the fun things that we do, the ways that we really show up for each other. We have also really struggled to talk about all of the ways that our friendship has been challenged. And it's not because we're hiding those things; it's because it's hard to talk about. We are two very different people who process things in our own way and we've had to work through a lot of stuff. And the thing about the book and writing it that made me really happy honestly in talking to a lot of the experts that we did and to a lot of our friends was that all of the issues that we have are the same issues that everyone else has and all of the joys we have are the same joys that other people get from their friendships. So we are not unique snowflakes in fact. We are very normal people who just love each other. Ann: Aww. And normally people who love each other do some kind of terrible things to each other in the course of living. I think it's also one of the lessons. I'm just like you can't love someone without also disappointing them sometimes and being disappointed yourself. Aminatou: Wow, Aminatou Sow, she will disappoint you sometimes. I should put that on my business card. Ann: Ann Friedman, she has already disappointed you. [Laughter] That's really -- you were probably already processing the fact that she has disappointed you. One thing I wanted to say, and this is like a no-brag but kind of a brag, is one of the early readers of our book commented to me that she . . . she really struggled to think of another story she had read that felt really honest and open and kind of taking you through the emotional steps of something that was not about trauma. That was really more about a kind of frankly everyday or something that everyone can expect to happen in the course of their lives. (8:15) I have been thinking about that a lot because I think as we set out to figure out how to tell our story, which the difficult parts of our friendship are not really something you could easily film with a camera. It's not like one of us said one horrible damning thing to the other or did something, like one giant transgressive act. It was much more of like an emotional distancing, a bunch of little things that added up. That made it really difficult for us I think to . . . not to justify the need to write a book about it but almost to explain how big it felt, right? Like when there's not one big thing to show it's like it can feel really hard to explain how high the stakes felt. And when she made that comment to me it felt really, really good. Like I feel like our contribution being . . . I'm getting a little emotional. Our contribution being this is the tough, everyday stuff and even if it doesn't feel like an earthquake or a bomb going off or whatever big metaphor you want to use it can still be a huge problem for your relationship and something you have to deal with. Like I don't know, I feel really good about our attempts to get our heads and our hearts and our words around that. Aminatou: Aww, Ann Friedman! I am so proud of you. Ann: I'm so proud of you. Oh my gosh, I have to tell everyone listening to this that . . . Aminatou: Oh no. Ann: That I truly, like throughout this process you being like "I don't really know what I'm doing" or like "I don't really know how to write" or whatever you would say to downplay yourself you are truly, truly one of my favorite writers. Some of the things you came out with -- I mean you know I have my favorite lines of yours that I have just clung to like driftwood as I float in the ocean. Aminatou: Aww Ann, don't make me cry. (10:00) Ann: But you are truly one of my favs and honestly one of the great things about working on this together is just being like oh, I get to look under the hood of how that brain works in a very new way, like very different than hosting this podcast, you know? I feel -- I don't know, I feel really lucky to have had that experience. Aminatou: You know it's really funny hearing you say that because I think there is something about the way we record the show, maybe because we do it . . . we're each always in our own space. All you hear is my voice as we work through this. There is something about sitting in a room writing next to you that always made me feel overexposed. Ann: [Laughs] Aminatou: She is going to know how much I struggle to socially distance myself from snacks whenever I have to write. She is going to see all the gnarly process of how it is that I get my brain around processing from inside the brain to getting it on the keyboard. There's just something about working in the same room as someone else because all my coworkers are virtual. I think that was always really tough for me. But then also realizing like oh yeah, I work with someone that I love so honestly it doesn't matter that she's seen me wear this same pair of pajamas five days in a row. Ann: The reused looks during this book process, yeah, that was a real thing. [Laughs] Aminatou: Shout-out to our matching tie-dye shirts made by Ryan. It's funny that for two people who have worked together for as long as we did there was new information that I learned about the way we work with each other from doing a completely different kind of project so that made me really happy. I was like wow, every relationship can still be spiced up. I love it. (11:45) Ann: Well and it's just it's hard to overstate how much more intense writing this book was than doing this podcast is. It was just like, for me, leaps and bounds more intense than the work we do. Aminatou: Oh, the podcast is a joke compared to writing it turns out. And to be clear doing the podcast is hard, you know? Ann: Right. Aminatou: So as a person who really deeply enjoys your brain and loves to -- I love everything that you make, I felt really lucky to be able to make one more thing with you. Ann: Aww, me too. And it's one reason why I am just like so happy, even if everyone hates this book, I'm like well we have it for us. I feel selfishly so happy to even just like -- like the fact that this exists as a thing that you and I get to hold and own, truly if everyone else hates it I will still feel good about that. Aminatou: [Sighs] You know, like I said it's not bad. So I feel . . . [Laughs] Ann: That's the preorder -- Preorder This Book: It's Not That Bad. Aminatou: I have this thing where I still have to take a lot of medicine from being sick every morning and the other day there was a variation in the medicine that I take and usually it truly tastes like death all the time and this time whatever flavor it was was not so awful. I took it and I was like man, staying alive, not so bad. Ann: [Laughs] Aminatou: If you're a podcast listener or you're someone who knows us or you just are thirsty about information about us I think there's going to be enough to satisfy your thirst in there. You know, there's a lot of juicy bits. If you are like us social science nerds I think that you will be really pleased with some of the science and the pop psychology stuff of it all. All of the parts of this podcast that I really enjoy doing, the talking about the high and the low and how we can go seamlessly from Kardashians into like a stimulus package conversation, all of that is translated somewhere in this book. Ann: [Laughs] (13:40) Aminatou: Not to toot my own horn but I believe we do that very well. If you're someone who doesn't know us at all and you hate how we sound on this podcast and you're still hate-listening I feel so sorry for you because the book will be just like that but please preorder boo-boo. Your friend will love it. We really tried to make it into the most us book in the world. It is not just a memoir. It's not just some hefty, serious non-fiction. It is . . . it really blends a lot of our favorite things. And truly I think one of the things that we try to do that it turns out was the hardest thing to do but I'm really glad that we did it is tell the book in one voice because we were really trying to work through what it means to share a life with someone in this way. And so it's not one of those alternating voices kind of books or one person telling you about what they're experiencing. We really try to do it together and I think we arrive at some really . . . you know, some really interesting joint truths and also I'm just like excited for a lot of people to take that information and start having conversations in a lot of their friendships. Because the thing I was most fascinated by when we were writing this book is that every single person we talked to had a thing that they said that like . . . it just like lit my brain on fire and I was like oh, these are all conversations I'm having alone or I'm having with my therapist. Or, you know, I just have a lot of either complete inability to talk through my feelings because I'm an emotional idiot or also I have a lot of shame about having strife in a lot of my relationships. And so knowing that so many other people had similar things or were figuring it out, it made me excited because for as much as we celebrate friendship on the show and a lot of people say that friendship is important on a real society level we don't provide a lot of support for people shouting about how important their friendships are. So in order to glean how other people are doing friendship it was important that we told the world how we did our friendship. But I am really, really, really excited to know what other people are doing because I think that being really transparent about how you live and how you love is a transformative act. (16:00) Ann: Yeah. And I think it's been interesting for me since having written this with you to think about or to like actively bring up with my other friends if we had to write a joint narrative of this period in our friendship or of our friendship overall how would we both talk about it? Like what would we describe as the hardest moments when our friendship was challenged? What would we identify as points where we each felt really isolated and alone and the other person had left us standing in the void that used to be the friendship? I mean one thing about . . . and also what would we identify as highlights and the things that really kept us going through difficult periods? Like things that we call back to in our minds. I don't know. I think the joint narrative thing really forced you and me to be like oh, I can't just say yeah, yeah, this is my version of events. We really had to talk about like okay, at the time you were feeling this what was happening for me? And can we line up our timelines? I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about what if I applied that exercise to other relationships in my life? And what if I examined other friendships to the degree that you and I have examined ours? And like that is also to me -- not like I'm going to set out to do that tomorrow because that feels like a lifetime's worth of work. Aminatou: [Laughs] Ann: But, you know, just like I think when you say "I'm excited to hear about how other people do friendship" that's part of how I think of it, you know? How would lots of other friends tell the narrative of their friendship? And so, you know, my greatest hope for this book is that people are not like just wondering why we did the stupid things we did because we do a lot of stupid things in this book frankly but that they're like oh, I wonder when, you know, I was feeling this way in one of my own friendships, what was happening for this other person I'm closed to? So it is a real cocktail of emotions. (17:50) I wanted to also, because I'm a process nerd, I wanted to also tell listeners a little bit about how we wrote this in one narrative because I think it's also -- I've never talked to anyone who had a similar process which is that we talked a lot about what we wanted in the book. We made a really pretty detailed joint outline of kind of how we thought the chapter would go or the section would go then we parted ways either in our separate homes on separate coasts or to separate rooms if we were working in the same place and each wrote a certain number of words to that point of the outline. Then we would read aloud to each other what we had each written and then we would knit together the two passages which is to say we would pick the best parts from both of ours and get rid of a few things and expand on other things. And then we would move on to the next part of the outline and do it again. And that is how we wrote, what, 70,000 words? 65,000 words? That blows my mind. When I describe that process I'm like who are these girls? What are they doing? [Laughter] Aminatou: [Laughs] I just know that I remember one of the very last writing days that we had where I looked at you and you said something like "Wow, we really did this the hardest way possible." I'm so glad you're realizing this on day 100 and not on day 2 so let's keep at it. Ann: [Sighs] Okay, I know this has gone on for so long. Part of me is like what do we do now? Aminatou: I know. It's so self-indulgent but you know what? Like please buy our book or tell someone about it. Ann: Yes, like we want you to preorder this book and we also want you to preorder it and gift it to a friend. However there are many other things you can do to support all of the time and energy we've put into this book. You can request it from your local library, like we would love every library in the world to carry a copy of this book. You can follow us and talk about the book and promote it. We are on Instagram at @BigFriendshipBook which I think is probably our most active space. And you can go to our website bigfriendship.com which has all of the links to all of this stuff. Having the money to preorder a million copies right now is not the only way to help us. (20:10) Aminatou: And also if you are making a purchase it would really mean the world to us if you ordered it from your local indie bookstore. We are really making a concerted effort on the show right now to promote other -- like other authors whose book tour schedules have been disrupted and, you know, the reality of that is that booksellers' businesses are also being really disrupted. And one way to be really helpful in the pandemic is to support small local business, and so this is win/win/win all around. Support the authors that need the support and support the bookstores that need the money also. Ann: Okay, so let's take a quick break and then we will talk about someone else for a change. [Ads] (23:55) Emma: Hi Call Your Girlfriend. I love you guys. This is Emma Straub, author and owner of Books Are Magic in Brooklyn and I am calling in to let you know what you can do to support authors and bookstores right now in this crazy world. Go ahead and order books from them. [Laughs] That's the number one thing. But keep in mind that a lot of bookstores are either shipping from warehouses or running with a real skeleton crew at the moment so there are things that you can order that are actually even better for them right this second. Those are preorders. You can order books that are coming out, you know, in the next few months. I'll give you a little list at the end. You can order gift certificates. You can order subscriptions or join a membership program. Lots of bookstores have both of those things and that is a great way to give the bookstore money right now and they don't have to send you anything in the mail immediately. You can also buy audio books with Libro.fm. That's the indie-friendly audio book company that many, many of us use. You can also buy eBooks through a company called Kobo. Those are all great things you can do to support bookstores right now. Continue liking their pictures on social media, interacting with them in that way, because I know for me bookstores are really about community more than commerce. So if you can stay engaged with them they will really appreciate it. As for authors a lot of events right now are moving on to Zoom like probably everything else in your life. Stay up-to-date and if there's someone whose event you would've gone to at the bookstore go to their event on Zoom. Ask a question in the comments. Especially for emerging authors who haven't really found an audience yet or who don't have a big audience they will notice and appreciate if you show up for them in this really, really, really confusing, scary moment. (26:00) If you don't have an independent bookstore you love personally but still sort of like the idea of them and want to support them generally there's a place called bookshop.org which gives some of its money back to independent bookstores, all of the independent bookstores who have signed up, so that is a great website to check out. And then last thing, just a few books that I think CYG listeners would like, these are all books that either are coming out right now or in the next couple of months so these are all books that are great to order or preorder through the independent bookstore of your choice, Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight; Godshot by Chelsea Bieker; Always Home by Fanny Singer; How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang; Wow No Thank You by Samantha Irby; and I am not too proud to add All Adults Here by me, Emma Straub to that list. It's a weird time. It's a weird time to run an independent bookstore or a small business or, you know, to be a human so on behalf of all independent bookstores and all authors I say thank you for anything you can do to support. All right, peace and love. Thanks everybody. Aminatou: For this week's episode I spoke to a writer who I really, really, really appreciate named Adeline Dieduonne. She lives in Brussels, Belgium and wrote this book that is really, really, really popular in the French-speaking world and just got translated into English and I was really, really excited to read it in English again. And so it's the story about this young girl and her very, very, very dysfunctional family who live essentially in a house of horrors. The narrator's unnamed. She's afraid of her father who's a big game hunter. Her mother and her have a really awful relationship and she really, really, really loves her young brother. And so her and her brother go through this -- her and her brother witness a tragedy in their home then their lives are changed forever. I won't tell you more than that but it's a book about a narrator that's convinced she's living in an alternate reality. It is both incredibly sad and disturbing but tender and really funny in parts and I really enjoyed it as a novel. It's called Real Life and here is Adline. [Interview Starts] (28:38) Adeline: My name is Adeline Dieduonne and my book is called Real Life. Aminatou: Real Life addresses, you know, themes of dying and coming of age and just this, you know, I think a thing that is really familiar to a lot of people, damaging family relationships. And the person who tells the story in Real Life is never named. Why did you choose to keep her nameless when you were telling the story? Adeline: I don't know. At first -- the first version of Real Life, I wrote it without thinking of that and when I had the first version of the manuscript, the little girl, her name was told one time in the book. Maybe because she's speaking at the first person so usually we don't say our own name. Yeah, I saw it was only told one time so I decided to remove it. Maybe because I wanted the character to be more universal or something like that. Aminatou: Yeah, could you talk a little bit more about the relationship between the heroine and her mother? (29:55) Adeline: [Laughs] That's a complicated relationship. At first -- in the beginning of the book, the little girl, I think she's angry with her mother because the mother doesn't protect her children. It's a family where the father is very violent and he beats the mom and yeah, and the mother, she quit the job of being a mother for her kids. So the little girl is angry with that. But when she's growing up along the book she realized that maybe it's more complex. And her mother, she calls her an amoeba in the beginning of the book because she thinks she doesn't exist. She realized maybe she's more than that and she finds some kind of sisterhood with her and the relationship has a positive evolution. Aminatou: The way that you tease out this bond between the mother and the daughter, and it's very much you see that their relationship changes because they become aligned against their misogynist father. And so I'm just wondering why it was so important for you to write about that -- you know, that relationship specifically. Adeline: Hmm, I don't know. It sounds logical because the little girl, she wants to escape kind of a determinism because her father wants her to become like her mother and so -- a woman without any own existence and who is just staying at home and cooking and so on. And yeah, she wants something else. She wants to become someone else. And yeah, I think I was wondering about transmission, how we can escape our condition. How we can become different. And I think today it's a big question about feminism: how not to reproduce something that exists for so many years. Yeah, so long. And I think without too realize that when I was writing, I think that's something that was surrounding me. Those questions were very important for me. (32:45) Aminatou: Yeah. You know, another big theme of the book honestly is death and just how present it is. You have these two kind of young children characters who see death every day in their father's trophy room. There are big stuffed carcasses of game animals. They witness these really violent incidents. And so I'm just really curious if you can talk a little bit about, you know, what the relationship to death is in the book for all the characters. Adeline: Yeah. At the beginning of the story the two little kids see someone dying right before their eyes. They realize how fragile they are, their own vulnerability. How death and suffering are never far away. I think we all experience that one day or another, the dark side of life, and how do we live with that? Most of all when you are a child and your parents are not supportive at all. How do you find a way to create some light in that darkness? And yet you have the stuffed carcasses of the trophy room. It takes another color when you think of that. The little girl realized they were real, living animals before. Of course she knew it somehow but now she really sees them as dead bodies. So yeah, I wanted to explore that, the relationship between children and death. (34:30) Aminatou: You know so much of the book also for all these big kind of -- the darkness that surrounds it, there is a real sense of humor to a lot of the stories. And so I'm always so fascinated by people who can write about really, really dark things in a funny way or even just write in a funny way because humor is so . . . I think it's hard to write. Did it just happen as you were writing it? Or you kind of had a sense from the beginning that you wanted it to have an edge of humor? Adeline: No, it was very instinctive. The voice of the little girl, yeah, she has that . . . that gaze on her family. And yes, sometimes it's funny because she's a child and she has a cruel gaze. The way she analyzes everything around her is sometimes very funny because she's very critical about that. And I don't know if I did it on purpose. I think it's just because when I'm writing I need to have fun for myself. Yeah, I think the first person I wanted to make laugh is myself so I did that way. And yeah, I think if I didn't put some humor in my story it would've been very suffocating. It's difficult to talk about death without humor. (36:05) Aminatou: I love that. I read the book in French before reading it in English and I'm always so fascinated by translations because the translator has such an important role in telling the story again in a language and making it seem, you know, both accurate to what it is that you were saying but also I think imbuing it with a sense of understanding for a new audience and a new language. And so I would love if you could talk about the process of translating this book, how involved you were and also what your thoughts are about the book and how it's being received in the US. Adeline: From now the book is translated in 20 languages so the process is different in every language. For the US translation I had the privilege to work with Roland Glasser, the translator. He asked me a lot when he was working. We had a lot of contact and he sent me a lot of questions by email and it was fascinating for me because I had access to his sensitivity. I loved it. It was like if I gave my child to someone else and seeing that he was very careful and loving with her and knowing she was in good hands it was very moving for me. So I loved that, that process. (37:50) Aminatou: That makes me really happy and I just want to say congratulations on the success of the book. I'm really excited for our audience to read it and to also respond to it so I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I hope that quarantine goes a little bit easier on your side of the world. Adeline: Yeah, and I hope it's okay on your side and take care. Take care of you. Aminatou: You too. Thank you so much for joining us. Adeline: Thanks a lot. [Interview Ends] Aminatou: Who did you speak to for this week's episode? Ann: I interviewed a YA novelist named Ashley Woodfolk about her book When You Were Everything which on the same tip as our conversation earlier this episode about our friendship is about a friendship between two teen girls that implodes. And it's written in this kind of before-and-after flashing back-and-forth to the period when they're really close and then the period when they are no longer friends. That alone made me want to read this book because I feel like that is a really tempting way to think about any relationship that goes sour, you know? The kind of like the good times and the like oh, now that things are bad or things have fallen apart. And so she writes the book from the perspective of one of the girls, Cleo, who is sort of a classic teen friend breakup story where Layla, her friend, kind of falls in with a different friend group and Cleo feels left behind. Even though they both probably have different versions of what happened to the friendship it's really firmly rooted in Cleo's point-of-view. And I just felt, I don't know, I felt such warmth for these girls that she writes and also I was really struck thinking about how yes, like high school is this singular experience where you're kind of trapped socially with people no matter what happens in your relationship. You kind of have to keep showing up to the same building every day. And that even though it's many of the same dynamics that play out in adult relationships, that makes everything so much more heightened and intense because yes there's this before and after timeline but the after is never really after in the way it is with adults. So here I am with Ashley Woodfolk. [Interview Starts] (40:10) Ann: Ashley thank you for being on the podcast. Ashley: Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I'm excited to be here. Ann: So I wonder if you could start by talking a bit about why you wanted to write a novel about the end of a friendship. Ashley: I feel like we very much in our culture value romantic relationships over friendships as a whole and so that was the main reason why I wanted to write it. It was something that had happened to me so many times but something that I had never read a story about. Ann: Right. And I know your novel is technically a YA novel. I know friendship breakups are not exclusive to teens. Ashley: Right. Ann: When you think about your own experiences is there one that really stands out as having shaped this story in particular? Ashley: Probably my very first one that happened. The first friendship breakup that I experienced was when I was in middle school my best friend at the time was a girl who went to the same church as me and she was a year older and so when she -- well so I was technically still in elementary school I guess, so I was like eleven, and she turned twelve before me and moved on to middle school. And she just sort of I guess dismissed me in a way, like sort of started treating me like I was a baby. You know, she had this cool new friend that was in the eighth grade that she was hanging out with. [Laughter] And she started wearing makeup. Nothing crazy because we were like thirteen, you know, twelve and thirteen. She started doing all these things that I wasn't personally ready for and I wasn't necessarily interested in I guess and so that is sort of the heart of When You Were Everything. Her best friend -- the main character's best friend Layla falls in with this new group of kids and she sort of starts to change. So I think emotionally that first breakup definitely inspired the story but then some of the awful things that happen that they do to each other to sort of completely break the friendship are similar to things that happened to me when I was older. (42:20) Ann: Yeah. And one of the things that I think is so interesting about this book is the way that your characters Layla and Cleo can't really get away from each other. And I think that in a way this is specific to like a high school friend breakup. Not entirely but the fact they have had this rift and through circumstance they still have to be in proximity to each other. I wonder if you could talk about that a little more. Ashley: Right. I think this is one of the many reasons why friendship breakups are so much more difficult than romantic breakups. Sometimes obviously there are exceptions to that rule but generally if you have an ex you don't want to see you don't have to see them. I think with friendship, especially when you're younger, but I think this is true even if you're an adult, a lot of times if it's you have a friend breakup with one friend in a friend group you're both still friends with everyone in the friend group so it's like you can't escape that person in the same way that you can escape a romantic partner. When I was writing the book I wanted to sort of toy with what if you had this enemy and you literally could not get away from them? And I think that that creates a really interesting dynamic because not only are you faced with potentially the person who hurt you but you're also faced with all of the things you did that hurt that person and you sort of have to grapple with it regularly instead of just dismissing it or forgetting about it or ignoring it. (43:50) Ann: Right. And your book is divided into these now and then timelines, when the friendship's good and when the friendship is non-existent anymore. I'm wondering about that choice and why you chose to do the book that way. Ashley: I knew that I wanted to do a dual timeline from the very beginning but it took a very long time to actually pull it off. Like in the revision process it was a nightmare. The main reason I wanted to do that was to make the reader more compelled to want to figure out what went wrong because so often in these friendships it's not one thing. But in my experience most friendship breakups you do have usually that one big blowout fight or that one moment where you're just like screw this person, I don't want to talk to them ever again. But there are all these little moments usually that build on top of each other until you get to a breaking point where you're like okay, I really can't do this anymore. You have the first tiny betrayal and then the next one that's a little bit bigger and it only feels bigger because of the first one right? And they all sort of build on each other until you get to the point where you're like oh, you know, F this B. [Laughs] I'm done here. And yeah, so I thought doing the dual timeline in that way would 1) allow the reader to become more invested in their friendship because you're able to see when it was good and how these girls relied on each other and how they were there for each other and what made their friendship work. And then you were sort of able to see it slowly fall apart. Ann: You know it's interesting to me because I think so many friendship stories are told from the perspective of one friend or the other, you know? And I found myself wondering while reading your book about like what would the version of this novel from Layla's perspective read like? Or how would she characterize everything that happened between them? (45:55) Ashley: What was happening? Yeah. That's actually a really interesting point. I am more -- I have always been the Cleo in all my friendship breakups. I was the one who sort of felt left behind, who sort of made the narrative read as if I was the victim even when I had done bad things too. And so that was an easier perspective for me to write from. And also I feel like a lot of the books I write I'm writing for my younger self and my younger self would never be Layla. I could see myself being Layla now but high school Ashley would've never been Layla. High school Ashley was 100 percent Cleo, like liked things to stay where they were and liked people to stay exactly the way they were and hated change. I think often in these situations everything feels so one-sided. It feels like the other person is being ridiculous. Even when things first start to go wrong between them Layla isn't actually doing anything wrong. Like there's nothing wrong with wanting to make new friends or wanting to make additional friends. There's nothing inherently wrong in that. And I'm able to see that now. [Laughter] But I was not able to see that then. Yeah. Ann: So do you think that there are parts of their story that are specific to high school? Or do they feel -- does this dynamic feel true to adult life to you too? Ashley: I think the part that . . . the parts that are specific to high school are the parts where you are physically forced -- they are physically forced to share space. As a kid you don't really have an option to leave school. You could beg your parents to transfer you but also you don't want to leave all your other friends. So I think that part of it is definitely . . . the feeling of being stuck is definitely very specific to being a teenager, being a kid. But I think the emotional landscape of the story, the feelings of losing someone, the feelings of being left behind, the feeling of being a little lost without a person that you have sort of anchored your existence on, I think all of that can definitely translate to being an adult. (48:15) Ann: One of the epigraphs at the beginning of your book is a Shakespeare quote that reads "The band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the strangler of their amity." Ashley: Yeah. Ann: And I'm wondering if you could talk about why you chose it. Ashley: In the novel Cleo is super-obsessed with Shakespeare. That said that quote specifically made me think about a lot of my friendships that have fallen apart. I think that people tend to come together because they see in someone else something that they lack. What is the source of attraction for friends, for romantic partners as well tends to also end up being the main source of tension and the main source of conflict. And so, you know, I think Layla is attracted to Cleo because Cleo feels safe and I think Cleo is attracted to Layla because Layla is brave. And then -- and outgoing. And ultimately those things both break down for both of them. You know, Layla is outgoing so she wants to make new friends and that is exactly what causes the beginning of their conflict. And then, you know, Cleo being this safe space for Layla, that goes away because Cleo betrays her. The reasons that they came together and became friends are the reasons that they're not friends anymore. And I think that's true in a lot of relationships. Ann: Last question. I want to ask you about the dedication of to all the girls that broke my heart. I wonder if you picture them reading this book and what you hope they'll take from it. (50:00) Ashley: There have been friends that I never got the chance to apologize to. There have been friends that I did awful things to and just like never spoke to them again. And there have been friends that I apologized but we couldn't fix it. So I guess if one of my ex-friends read that dedication I would want -- and read the book -- I would want them to see that even though some bad stuff happened between us ultimately I still respect them. I still love them. I still think that our friendship happened for a reason and that there's value there. And ultimately I still miss all of these people, you know? To not have that person around anymore I think your life is definitely lacking in a way. You're okay and everything will be fine and you'll make new friends but there's still like a hole in your life that is the particular shape of that person and no one else can ever fit there. Even though I was a bitch [Laughs] or even though they were to me ultimately I still wish that things had been at least more civil if not -- if the friendship couldn't have lasted longer. Ann: Ashley thank you so much for being on the podcast. Ashley: Thank you so much for having me. [Interview Ends] Aminatou: Oh, I'm excited to read this. This is great. Thanks Ann. Ann: Whew, so many books to read. Thank you listeners for hanging in with all of our books content because I guess there are worse times to talk about books, let's be real. Aminatou: Listen, you know how I feel about reading. It's very important and it's very essential and I really have to say in this moment even though a lot of people are saying they have more time to read I really feel that is a luxury and a privilege that I can't forget because so many people that we know right now do not have the luxury or the time to read because we are not working from home. We are at home because of a crisis. Ann: Right. So if you do have the luxury enjoy it. If you don't these books will be waiting for you if . . .