Jennifer Rosner, THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS
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[3:19]I had the best time getting to know Jennifer Rosner when I interviewed her as part of the Detroit Jewish Book Fair program.
[3:26]For those of you who don't know, Jennifer is the author of If a Tree Falls, a family's quest to hear and be heard,
[3:31]which was a memoir about raising her deaf daughters and hearing and speaking world. She also wrote a children's book called The Mitten String,
[3:38]which was a Sydney Taylor book award notable. And her writing has appeared in The New York Times,
[3:44]The Massachusetts Review, The Forward and Good Housekeeping. Jennifer received her BA from Columbia University and her PhD from Stanford.
[3:51]Her debut novel, which is what we talked about extensively in this particular interview, The Yellow Bird Sings,
[3:57]is being translated and published around the world. The book tells the story of a Jewish mother and her child in hiding during World War II.
[4:03]The novel is grounded in interviews, travel, and a great deal of historical research.
[4:07]In addition to writing, Jennifer teaches philosophy. Currently she teaches the Clement course in the humanities,
[4:13]a college level course for women living in economic distress. I hope you enjoy our conversation,
[4:18]even if you couldn't be with us virtually in Detroit. Great. Hi Jennifer. I'm excited to do this with you.
[4:23]Me too. I just want to say how happy I am to be here and also to have Zibi as the interviewer of this
[4:31]conversation because you are such a great supporter of authors and readers and humans generally,
[4:38]and I just really appreciate everything you do in the book world and well beyond that.
[4:42]Yeah. That's so nice. Thank you. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you about this book,
[4:48]which was so great and really just has such staying power. I think one of the best
[4:54]debuts of the year, particularly with Jewish themes and all of that. So can I ask you some questions
[5:01]about it? Okay. So we heard a little synopsis already, but basically what inspired you to write
[5:08]this book? And what did you hope to achieve by writing it? Okay. So the journey to getting to this
[5:15]novel is kind of interesting one. I am a philosopher. I was a professor and I had two daughters
[5:22]and they were both born deaf. And this kind of turned my world upside down. I had been doing this
[5:28]kind of dry academic writing. And I didn't really love it very much. And then when the deafness
[5:33]and our family emerged, I just needed to start, I don't know, expressing personal, our decisions
[5:40]are feeling my feelings, you know, what we were going through a lot of fears. And I found that kind
[5:46]of writing to be so nourishing. I had never done anything like that. I wasn't one of those people
[5:50]who had wanted to be a writer since she was the little girl. But this personal process and kind of
[5:55]self expression was so meaningful and nourishing. And these little snippets of this eventually became
[6:02]a memoir. And I was giving a book talk actually through the Jewish book council. I was describing
[6:08]our journey with our daughters and how we were encouraging their every vocalization. We made a
[6:13]decision to give them hearing technology and to take a listening and spoken language pathway.
[6:18]And I was saying how much we were, you know, encouraging our children to talk. And a woman in the
[6:23]audience described to me her childhood experience of having to be completely silent. She was in
[6:29]hiding in a shoemaker's attic with her mother during a World War II. And I couldn't stop thinking
[6:36]about that woman. And like as a child having to be silenced, as a mother having to keep her child
[6:40]silenced, what that must have been like. I ended up finding her and interviewing her and then
[6:45]interviewing many other hidden children. So that was kind of the seed of the story. I got planted by
[6:50]this person's comments, you know, one day at a book event that had nothing to do with hidden
[6:55]or the Holocaust or anything. But it resonated so much with me because we were so much in the
[7:00]world of silence and sound. And then learning of this woman who needed to be silenced, it just kind
[7:05]of hooked on to me. And I couldn't let it go. Wow. You know, I think often about having to keep
[7:12]kids silenced during the Holocaust and characters like like Shira and Frank and others when I think
[7:18]about how hard it's been. Even just to deal with my kids during the pandemic and we have like
[7:22]every electronic at our fingertips. But even with all of that, how hard it is just to keep them
[7:27]basically inside and not socializing. And then I think gosh, with the fear lurking, you know,
[7:33]similar fear today, but obviously on a much different scale, how did parents, how do they do that?
[7:38]I mean, and we know about it. Like, you know, you even had Christina, the farmer's wife come in and
[7:45]just say like, well, I just can't imagine how I would keep my son like this quiet either. Like,
[7:50]come, let me take her for a walk around the chickens or whatever. What did you find from all your
[7:55]research? Like, how, how did people do it? Or did they just do it? Because that was it,
[7:59]left her death. And so they did it. Yeah. I mean, for one thing, I think children grew up very,
[8:04]very quickly. And they were responsible and careful and, you know, conscientious very, very early on
[8:10]when when necessity required it. But, you know, one of the things that was really interesting about
[8:15]my interviews is, you know, there were all these different scenarios of people who had been in hiding.
[8:20]So, you know, there were those who were in these cramped spaces and having to be silent,
[8:25]there was a person who was hiding in plain sight on a neighbor's farm. There was someone who
[8:30]had just was carried over a ghetto wall in a suitcase. I mean, all these, all these situations,
[8:34]there was a man who was in a school attic with his mom and aunt and uncle. And there were
[8:40]children at school and playing in the yard. And he was inside this attic looking out through
[8:45]these slats and having to be quiet. But what was unbelievable about his story was, his mother
[8:51]found an atlas and she spent time with him. She would quiz him and say, you know, if you had to get
[8:56]from Odessa to Warsaw, what path would you take? What route? And she taught him how to read while
[9:01]in this attic. And this man describes his time in hiding during the Holocaust as being cocooned
[9:08]in love, which is such a testament to that mom. I mean, it just, it is so incredible what people did
[9:14]and their ingenuity and their creativity. And that was part of, I think, what inspired me to have
[9:19]my, the mother character, Rosha be telling stories and they're working on reading and music and other
[9:25]things because this is how they got through that time. And my editor initially said, I can't even
[9:30]keep my kids still on, you know, like dealing with a one snow day. How can they function in this barn
[9:35]for, you know, what's essentially almost a year and a half or something? And that's kind of what we,
[9:39]you know, she, you know, she was encouraging me to set out to do is to say like, how can you hide?
[9:44]And what happens? Like how do you use the bathroom? How do you brush your teeth? How do you,
[9:47]how do you function like this over this amount of time and get through? And in listening to the
[9:52]stories of the, the hidden children, there was just so much resilience and intelligence.
[10:00]That came into play and very, very inspiring and humbling.
[10:05]And also, almost reminds me of that the groom, although they didn't have to be as quiet most of the time, but just what parents can do when it's just you and a child and limited materials and you just have to make do with your imaginations.
[10:19]Yeah, right remarkable.
[10:21]And I also felt like how were you able like I felt fully like I was in the situation after I read this book, but like I knew what it was like because you described it so well.
[10:31]How did you did you get all that from the people you interviewed I mean it felt like like did you ever try to like bury yourself and hey, because it felt very much like you had experienced it yourself.
[10:42]Yeah, well there's two things, I mean, I didn't bury myself under hell, but we do have a rabbit we have a lot of hay around.
[10:49]And I could have done that, but I and I do know what hey really feels like in smells like and how it pokes at you.
[10:55]I think that my you know every writer brings strengths weaknesses to their work and has to has to kind of come and say for things that are harder for them and has an easier time with certain things and.
[11:05]I think that honestly being a mom of deaf children enabled me to really slow down when it comes to sensory experience which enables my ability as a writer to be descriptive of sensory.
[11:19]And so I think that is something I think I spent a real lot of time you know what would it sound like what would it smell like how did it feel you know really slow and that's what I think enabled the sense of really being there.
[11:32]Because of the way I was able to harness we had done so much work with our children about you know about not just hearing but seeing and getting every sensory perception in order to gain as much information about the world as possible.
[11:45]And that training actually has really helped me as a writer, but I also did a lot of travel for this novel so I had written a draft of it first so I interviewed the hidden children many many.
[11:56]And then I said all their stories aside because I wasn't going to write any of their particular stories I thought maybe they would write them or maybe their children or grandchildren will write those stories.
[12:06]And I wrote a story kind of out of my imagination and then I felt I really should do some kind of cross check here because I'm here in Western Massachusetts imagining the convent and the barn and all these other things just want to make sure I'm okay you know.
[12:20]And I found a guide who was just this amazing man he read my manuscript in advance and then he planned our trip and he took took me actually my eldest daughter came with me and we went to several places we went to this area of farmland.
[12:36]Where you got to see how it would really be to try to hide someone in your barn because you know initially you think of a farm and you think they have a lot of land and it might be fine you know pretty safe but.
[12:46]You know for community reasons the houses were very close together and the barns were right there too and then the land you had was in these narrow swaths going back.
[12:54]So you didn't actually have a lot of space from your neighbor your neighbors kind of right on there.
[12:58]It was very hard to keep anything private and in fact even when we were there looking around people were wondering who we were and asking questions so you could see that you know people were very curious and hiding someone in your barn be really hard.
[13:10]And he took us to a con several convents but one where Jewish children had been hidden and this was really interesting too because you know I had sort of concocted a bit of a grand convent.
[13:22]Initially stone and you know and then he said you know we're a pretty poor country it's brick here and but there were all these sensory details there you know the smell of soup as you walk in and the way your feet move on the floor and what the partitions were like where people were hidden.
[13:38]What kind of sensory information that was so incredible to have as a novelist and then he also took us much to my daughter's sugar into this area of Premievel forest where my carrot you know since my character was going to be hiding in the forest in winter I insisted that we go in winter.
[13:54]And so we're trumping around it's freezing cold my daughter is saying why didn't you decide your book in Greece I mean why are we doing you know but we were we were.
[14:06]I know so but but you know to see the denseness of the forest to see how someone could possibly dig a burrow in that in that situation and all again all the ingenuity that came to those people survived in the woods and in family camps and all these things that happened.
[14:23]I also got to go to Tel Aviv and I met a violin maker who's sort of this amazing man who reclaims violence.
[14:29]That were salvaged from Holocaust times and he rebuilds them and they're played around the world in orchestras and just so many things that really enriched in rich my novel but in addition you know I consulted with so many people so there was you know a forest tracker because I had to figure out how my character could move through the woods and.
[14:47]Of mushroom farager and you know a nun and all these different people but most importantly a master class violinist because of share of being a violin prodigy I needed to understand how that was going to work out how what she would play when would a piece be played etc so there was a lot that went into.
[15:02]This journey of of understanding what it must be like to be a hidden in this barn and then move to a comment or into the woods etc etc so each step took a lot of.
[15:12]Research and tell me about the decision to have the mail owner of the barn Heinrich sort of come and visit her each night and right next to her daughter and how that decision made in the novel and then how.
[15:29]How was that okay because there was some noise involved with that like how do you think they got away with that.
[15:36]Yeah, that's a very good question well let me say that while I said most every personal story aside when I made decisions like this I I wanted to make sure that they have happened and this is a scenario that I heard about.
[15:52]Of less than entirely clear way there was a woman you know nearly 80 or whatever was talking to me about her experience being hidden she was quite young in the barn with her mother.
[16:02]Who and there was a farmer who she believed visited every night she didn't totally know what was happening, although actually i'm going to try to find it because I think it's really incredible and moving she wrote a poem as an adult and you know poetry.
[16:18]So you know something in your experience will just show up for you I have it I have it on my phone and this is this woman who said to me.
[16:28]You know that that he came and they talked about the news and she thinks maybe he loved her mother is called wild strawberries and this is her comics very short.
[16:38]Sometimes under cover of darkness mr r would visit I would see my mother silhouette her long hair down her back and in the dark the outline of mr r's powerful shoulders as he sat opposite her on the straw covered attic floor.
[16:53]He would talk in hushed tones I sat beside my mother but apart from them feeling a vague excitement mingled with fear he would bring sweet wild strawberries in the night.
[17:05]And you know I was also very much aware of how much sex was traded in the Holocaust traded for survival.
[17:12]And so the scenario felt realistic and it felt like you know this this family is it I wanted this to be a blurry situation because you know this family is the couple the farmer and his wife they're risking their lives are risking their families.
[17:28]I think the wife is in many ways righteous but yet you know she gives eggs and bread to the child not to the mom she knows something's happening in the barn but you know.
[17:38]There's a question of whether it's kind of a relief that it's happening and that there's some pressure off her I mean there I wanted it to be a really blurry scenario I wanted it to be want you wonder whether he fell in love with her.
[17:50]In the barn or whether it really was just sort of pain into the sort etc so I thought it would create obviously tension but also questions about how we respond in times with the challenges that we're faced with you know because we make a lot of moral judgments of people and how they respond in circumstances but we're not necessarily faced with those same challenges right we want to believe we'd be one thing sometimes we might be a model.
[18:20]And I think often people were modeled in their reaction you know kind of both good and bad I learned that one criteria for being accepted into righteous among the nations and Yad Vashem is that there was no sexual predation of any sort but also learned that there were many people who are who are candidates and then rejected for this reason that there had been.
[18:43]So just a lot of blurry stuff and the noises are really good question actually about noise in the barn and maybe the only thing to say is that she was trying to keep it still as possible and trying to hope that it wasn't going to kill them them all and you know it's very complicated.
[19:01]And I feel like you left it a little ambiguous because there was one stretch where he didn't visit as often and she was missing that she was welcoming him back when he eventually he did.
[19:11]There was sort of the question mark like do you follow it's almost like what is that called the Stockholm syndrome or you you fall in love with your abusers after a while and anyway.
[19:21]And that was also part of the blurriness I wanted there because you know her body responds even if the situation is quite horrible and some there you know I had gotten some reactions of people upset about this and I was like but this is what happens because we are bodies also.
[19:39]And it happens even when the situation is very hostile your body can respond and then people feel guilty for having responded but it's something that happens and anyway I just I think I wanted the complexity to be there.
[19:53]And tell me about the decision to have music be such a part of it I feel like this all sort of jealous with the sound and you're done.
[20:00]others and your music. Well, you take it away from that. Well, there are so many parts to this.
[20:06]I mean, the first thing is that my father who I lost a year ago, he played violin every single day.
[20:12]So he was a very dedicated violinist. He wasn't a prodigy or a virtuoso, but he played
[20:18]daily and it was really infused in my life because I heard it every day of my life. And music,
[20:24]I saw that he used music. He also composed some music and it was, it seemed to me that it was a way of
[20:28]him somehow connecting to his Jewish roots through the music he was writing as well.
[20:33]And then I studied opera and he and I made music together. And so I saw the connective power of
[20:39]music. I also have to say that it links to something else, a few things that are dealing with
[20:44]the deafness in my family, which is that, you know, when we looked back at our family tree and we
[20:50]I eventually discovered these great great ants who lived in a little straddle in the 1800s who
[20:54]were deaf. And the one like substantial story I learned about them is that when they went to sleep,
[21:00]they would tie a string from their wrist to their babies at night. And so that in the darkness,
[21:05]if the baby cried or fuss, they would feel the tug and they'd wake to care for them. And
[21:09]this string in the darkness was such a model of connection and mothering. And I think I had felt
[21:15]in many ways unheard by my mom, except when I sang. So music was one of those times when she
[21:20]really attended. But I wanted a string so badly between my daughters and me and I didn't feel
[21:26]that that was really in my, in my, I wasn't sure if it was in my repertoire. I think that having,
[21:31]I think I chose violin not just for my father, but because it was a string instrument. And I
[21:35]wanted Shira to have this connective string that moved through and her mother placed cello and her
[21:41]father played violin and her father, grandfathers of violin maker. So there was this string,
[21:46]the string instruments and string moving through the story for very personal reasons all
[21:50]through. And tell me a little more if you are willing about why you didn't feel like you felt
[21:56]heard by your mother. Yeah, I mean, I think that is really complicated. My mom has a hearing loss
[22:04]that isn't, isn't supposedly linked to the genetic deafness that's carried by my husband and
[22:10]I having recessive genes. So we're not totally sure about how it all links, but she too grew up
[22:14]with some hearing loss, which I think caused her to retreat in certain ways. I think it's an energy
[22:20]saver. I think it's, it's conservation for deaf people sometimes, but I think it's also that a variety
[22:27]of things that happen in her own childhood caused her to be more kind of turned in and not turned
[22:32]out. And like I think she like, you know, loves me dearly, but just wasn't able to be as
[22:37]attentive and focused. And I think I was, it was intermittent, which is very hard for children,
[22:43]sort of you, you think you sometimes have it and then it's gone and it's very hard to hold on to.
[22:47]So it was something that was, was quite hard. And yet, like I said, it was funny. Like when I
[22:53]sang, it was like everything stopped and, and she was right there. And so I, I, I'd sang a real
[22:59]lot. And you know, I studied, I studied voice and I, you know, it was the thing I, I really took
[23:04]on because I, that connection meant so much to me. And so I think that when it came to creating
[23:08]these characters, I just, I think the power of you transported power of music and connected
[23:12]power of music just, it was like right there as a, as a subject matter.
[23:18]And then with the book being divided into three parts and having three basic identities for
[23:24]Shira as she goes through different stages of her hiding and her travels and, you know,
[23:29]culminating in this fantastic ending, I thought. Tell me about the division of her time in those ways
[23:35]and how you even renamed the characters and then started the character rather. And in each
[23:41]section, it became, you, you referred to her as the new name, not even her original name, which I
[23:47]thought was really interesting. Tell me about that. Thanks. Well, so I thought it was really important
[23:53]for us to remember now that we're in this age where we can find anyone, you know, if you want to
[24:00]see your fourth grade friend, you just go on Facebook and put their name in. And there, there
[24:04]she'll be, you know, but people lost the threat of not just their families, but their self,
[24:09]themselves. And I was really struck by this. I was struck by it emotionally. Well, I went to the
[24:15]Holocaust Museum in DC and saw this almost like a program where there were these pamphlets of people
[24:20]and they would have a face and it would say, do you remember me? And it was this literal question,
[24:25]like if you could tell me that I'm, you know, Anna, you know, whatever from this village,
[24:30]then I would be able to go back and find my family and figure out, you know, where I come from
[24:36]and who I am. And it was just incredible. And it kind of resonated with me also as a philosopher,
[24:42]because, you know, what we are as we persist in time, you know, and when we shed particular things,
[24:49]are we still that same person? And, you know, what does it mean to be a self over time? And
[24:54]especially in a situation where all these things have to change, your name changes for your safety,
[25:00]not everyone got to have their name buried in a jar that got unearthed later. A lot of the time,
[25:04]they just changed their name and they forgot the other one and they were five years old and
[25:08]they don't know their mother and father's actual name. They just knew them as mama and tata and
[25:12]et cetera. So all of that way in which the threads can get frayed or broken completely,
[25:18]I felt was really interesting and important because, you know, later there was really no way back.
[25:24]You couldn't figure it out and so people were just lost. It was incredible. And so that was,
[25:30]that was just an important point for me to see that this is what happens in war. It happens
[25:35]especially in a brutal way to children because the thread gets lost and then they can't quite
[25:39]be connected and find their way back so that that's kind of part of what I did with that,
[25:45]with the different names. I also wanted it to be linked to the fact of so much religious
[25:50]confusion because your name gets changed to a Catholic name and you're put in a convent and now
[25:55]you're praying to this god and you're listening to these Psalms and I wanted even the music,
[26:01]there was this sort of the chaotic Jewish music beforehand and then the orderly music of the convent
[26:06]and it was soothing to her and there were many hidden children I'd read about who ended up in
[26:12]other settings where they clung on to the orderliness or the Mary statue or something that felt
[26:20]some kind of anchor or mother figure or something just to kind of orient and reorient but then later
[26:26]it's so confusing to figure out who you are and who you were and how to be now. So I wanted all that
[26:33]to be up in the air because I saw that very clearly especially in some of the people I interviewed.
[26:37]They either never quite found the thread or they imposed a new thing. I'm going to be a Jew. I'm going
[26:43]to whatever and that's what they did but it was like a imposition in a way like they decided it
[26:50]by fiat rather than sort of an organic development. I hadn't really I mean obviously I had thought
[26:57]about it but your book just put this in such stark you know black and white details of how hard it
[27:03]is to find somebody and how many people have just drifted and even the like near miss type
[27:10]situations that must have happened all the time it just is like heartbreaking. I think that's one
[27:15]of the things about this book it's like every part of it you know logically reading it has
[27:22]actually happened in your life magnified millions of times and can you and like the depth of that
[27:27]sort of suffering and those emotions just makes this book even more powerful so riding on the
[27:33]the hotels that trauma collective trauma. One of the questions actually from the chat and you
[27:38]started talking a little bit about your philosophy background is what type of philosophy do you
[27:43]teach and how how has that affected your writing and it sounds like it has. Yeah so my work has been
[27:50]in the area of moral psychology and in the nature of self you know so from in the academic realm
[27:55]it's it's really quite abstract and theoretical and that bothered me a lot because you know it's
[28:01]about the self so you think that we should be able to relate to that but you know the the work I
[28:06]did sort of you know as you know before kind of really moving more into writing had to do with
[28:13]the ways in which there can be ambivalence in the self and how you know I wrote I edited this
[28:18]anthology called the messy self because it was about how we can have these warring factions within
[28:23]and warring desires so we might want something but we might not want to want it and all this kind
[28:27]of conflict and ambivalence and fracture and I think it has really affected my work as a writer
[28:33]because you know especially for instance when Rosha makes this decision to give her child up
[28:39]for her safety so she'll live and yet she carries this shame or guilt it's it's inevitable to
[28:45]take it off your shoulders you go to a family camp and someone else brought their child along so
[28:49]maybe I could have made it I could have made it to that camp with my child and I didn't have to
[28:53]give her up but then you see at the at the family camp that maybe some children die because
[28:58]there's danger there too so there wasn't and there was no exact answer here everyone was just
[29:03]doing anything and everything they could the best decision they could make then the daughter will
[29:08]be in the barn and get subset and makes a loud chirp and then real carries this forever thinking
[29:14]you know if I hadn't made that chirp maybe I'd still be with my mother my mother sent me away
[29:18]because I was too loud if I could have been quite or you know so the kinds of ways in which our
[29:23]minds do this thing where we can carry even when I say I was given up so that I would be so
[29:29]that I could live my mother gave me away so I could live sits in the same mind with if I hadn't
[29:35]made that shirt maybe I could have still been there you know and and we do this all the time
[29:40]because we can draw walls in our minds and you know what it is to be a conflict itself what it is
[29:45]to have self-deception etc all these kind of things you know are kind of undergirded in emotional
[29:50]experiences that I was trying to you know include in the novel it's also what does it even mean to
[29:55]be safe and what does it mean to live right there was one part where
[30:00]saying, you know, we'll safe is with my mom. What do you mean, keep me safe? Like I was safe,
[30:04]I was with her. And I feel like that's what kids long for, right? That's what is so. And to have
[30:10]all that taken away and say, no, no, you know, now you're going to go with a bunch of strangers to
[30:14]a convent and take away all of my love, but you'll be alive. And what five-year-old will take that
[30:20]choice. I mean, yes, I mean, I know. I think it's just so complicated because you,
[30:26]yeah, everyone will do their best and tries to make the life that they're given to make as much
[30:32]sense as possible. But there are these emotional pulls that are so deep and profound. And, you know,
[30:38]it was also why, as I was writing this and there were children being separated from their parents
[30:42]at the border. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, we're going to lose the threat as we have,
[30:47]is there's 540 who can't be put back together with their parents now. And now I'm going to,
[30:54]you know, if in 75 years someone interviews them for their novel and they sit down and say,
[31:00]I'm still in this acute pain because I was separated back then when I was five. I mean, that's
[31:04]what I learned is having these interviews with people who, you know, have made these beautiful lives
[31:09]for themselves. But the pain of that time is just, it's endless. You know, it just doesn't,
[31:16]it doesn't go away. You know, and it's right there under the surface. And that kind of
[31:21]of emotional complexity is what I really wanted to capture and how difficult it was.
[31:26]You did. You captured it all. It's, you know, all these themes that you bring up
[31:31]are so thought provoking. And, you know, speak to a whole generation. What does it mean to have
[31:36]a generation of people in pain growing up? And then the effects on them raising kids. I remember
[31:41]in college, I did some report for children about children of Holocaust survivors and what it
[31:48]meant to grow up as, as that with parents who had a such trauma in their own lives. And then
[31:54]I think about even now, which is again, not the same, but just a period of time where people
[32:00]feel at risk. And what does that do? What does that do to, you know, whether or not to send your
[32:06]kid to homeschool or, you know, leave the city or all these decisions parents have to make now,
[32:11]it's still like, what do you do? You have to make your own. It's like, it's like you have to make
[32:17]your own way again. Right. There are not clear guidelines. And do you trust officials? And I don't
[32:24]know. There's more of them. Yeah. I was in a way. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's very complicated. And I
[32:32]remember interviewing one man who, you know, we, I went into his home and it was this, you know,
[32:38]you see that he just has really built this beautiful life. He showed me pictures of his grand
[32:42]children's bar mitzvahs. And it was all this, you know, kind of healed world. And then we sat
[32:48]down and the interviews took, you know, quite a long time, I'd be there for five hours or something.
[32:53]And, you know, by the end, you know, we're, I mean, first of all, we're both interiors, but he
[32:58]even, you know, at one point sort of we were talking and he had been kind of shifted around in
[33:03]these different ways that were very trying as a young child. And I think, you know, he, it's like,
[33:09]while we were talking, it's almost like his eyes like shuttered over and he just said to me,
[33:13]if you told me my mother was in the other room, I wouldn't go in there. And it's just,
[33:18]there was so much pain, you know, that, that's all. And longing that went for so long, you know,
[33:25]unmet in this case, you know, longing and then kind of rebuilding something over it,
[33:30]but it's just there's a hole there. What do you think about inherited drama? I know I was kind of
[33:35]of throwing that around and someone in the chat is asking about it as well. What do you think about it?
[33:40]I mean, I think that I'm no expert on any of that, but I just feel like it's cellular probably,
[33:46]you know, that's what I think. I think it's cellular, but also, you know, I think about this as a mom
[33:53]of two children. So both were born deaf, but you know, my first one was so, it was such a surprise.
[33:58]I mean, it sounds like it shouldn't be because my mom had hearing loss, but my mother had hearing
[34:02]you know, supposedly due to mastoid infections. And then we learned this, there was like this hidden
[34:07]tree that had aster, family tree that had asterisks of deaf people, but I had no idea about it.
[34:12]So I, if I call from the hospital and say my daughter failed to test my dad's like, oh, I'm sure it's,
[34:16]you know, fluid, you know, that kind of thing. But I think that what happens is your whole body
[34:21]goes into a mode of, okay, you know, how are we going to deal with this, etc. And I know that my
[34:28]older daughter absorbed so much of, you know, our reactivity to her. Whereas my second daughter,
[34:36]by then, you know, I just flung her over my shoulder and kept singing because, you know, I knew
[34:39]by then that whether she could hear it or not, she was going to get it. You know, she was going to,
[34:43]she saw my face, she felt my body, she felt the air, she knew what I was doing. You know,
[34:47]she kind of knew as much without her sound as with it, you know, but I didn't know that the first
[34:53]time. So, but I do think that you can just see, I mean, maybe it's what do they say, but the oldest
[34:57]child in the first pancake and all that stuff. But I think that, you know, they do feel your reactivity
[35:03]and they're so sensitive and so smart. So there's both like the cellular, but there's also the
[35:09]kind of transference inevitably. And we're all doing our best in trying not to, and putting on
[35:14]them, you know, our, our, you know, calm, brave, whatever. But of course they're much smarter
[35:18]than they know everything. So, you know, I can't hide anything in my family, you know, my kids know,
[35:23]it all. So I think that it's, it's quite real is what I'll say inherited either, you know,
[35:30]one way or another, you know, yes, the ability of kids to pick up on emotions. Yeah, crazy.
[35:37]I'll be a little more about writing this book. He said you didn't grow up wanting to be a writer
[35:41]and yet here you are with a memoir and a children's book and a novel and all of it.
[35:46]I know, well, I found it all out when I was 40 that I loved writing.
[35:50]Yeah, I mean, that's a thing the vicissitudes of life. So, you know, because of really because of
[36:00]Sophia's deafness and then just trying to journal that experience and then learning that I love
[36:04]this. I love this so much. I love it a lot more than like logically constrained analytic philosophy
[36:10]writing. And so, you know, the memoir, I think I really needed to express all those things. And
[36:15]what I love about writing so much is that you think you're writing about one thing and then it
[36:20]all gets turns on its head when you realize when the work is coming out you realize. So for
[36:26]instance, I thought we were working on whether our children would hear, but ultimately when I
[36:31]examined all that stuff with my mom and all the string and et cetera, it was whether I would hear
[36:36]them. I don't, I think that's what this was all about. It was all a big question of whether I
[36:42]could hear, not whether they could, you know, but I didn't know that at first. Someone would say
[36:46]what are you working on. I'm like, oh, you know, it's about raising our daughters and
[36:50]a hearing speaking world and whether they would, you know, it's so it's just interesting. There's so
[36:54]much self discovery. And I think what I love about it is that I'm connected to sort of subconscious
[36:59]things in a way that I never could be. I think if I just went along, you know, without sitting down
[37:05]and being quiet and trying to write. So I really value it very much and feel so lucky to be doing it.
[37:11]And yeah, I mean, you know, I wanted, I stopped doing those sort of big, high-powered academic
[37:17]track to be on the floor with my kids anyway and thank God for that. And then got to be writing
[37:23]in between. And that my process is I write in between, you know, I, you know, right now everyone's home.
[37:28]So between all of that, I tried to write. And that's been sort of true the whole time as they
[37:33]were growing up. I mean, now they're actually 17 and 20. So it's not as nearly like it was, although
[37:38]they do still want me to make every meal. It seems like, but they can make their own. So that's
[37:44]good. But yeah, it's just been like that. I've been sort of writing in between things and being
[37:48]the on-call audiologist and the on-call, et cetera, you know, all the time, but have managed to,
[37:54]you know, to do these, this writing, which to me is such a gift of self expression.
[38:01]But writing a novel is not the same. I mean, there's one thing where you write with your emotions
[38:07]and to sort out your feelings and even just to chronicle your experience for whoever's
[38:12]benefit and to share with others. And there's all these arguments for why that your memoir came into
[38:17]the world. But this is like, and I see all of the parallels, of course, but just teaching yourself
[38:24]how to write fiction. That's pretty impressive. Like how did you take any courses? Did you
[38:29]Google how to write a novel? Like what did you have several failed novels, you know, tucked away
[38:36]in drawers before they come out? What's something? Was this just your first out of the gate, you know,
[38:40]smash it out of the wall? It's my first novel, but that, you know, when I met that lady at the
[38:46]book talk for my memoir, that was in 2010. So this thing's been batting around a really long time.
[38:52]So while it is my first memoir, maybe someone else would have written, you know, I mean, when I first
[38:56]novel, someone might have written for you or for in this time, I don't know. But for me, since I am
[39:02]self-taught, I kind of shot my wand with that PhD in philosophy. I can't really go back and get
[39:07]the MFA, which I would really love to do. But I just, I don't know. I don't see how I can do that.
[39:12]But I did go to, I went to Bredlow for a session and I went to Tinhouse for a session.
[39:19]There sort of these writing workshops in the world had some really wonderful teachers. And I just
[39:24]read a lot and that helps. And yeah, I mean, reading helps you become a good writer.
[39:30]What do you like to read? What are your favorite genres or authors or?
[39:34]Yeah. I mean, I have to say that at different times, given what else, whatever, I've been trying
[39:40]to write, there are certain, you know, reads that have made a huge difference for me. So during the
[39:46]course of writing the Elliberate things, Anthony Doers, all the light we cannot see was this book.
[39:51]I just wanted like, I could have like wrapped it around myself with a cloth and carried it around
[39:57]because there's just something about.
[40:00]sentences, you know, the sentence by sentence beauty of his writing, the structure of that novel
[40:08]is like that box where the jewel is, I mean, it's just a beautiful thing. I mean, to examine
[40:14]real, and I read it, I've read it many times because I was reading it as a writer, not only as
[40:18]a reader, and that was very, very meaningful to me. There are a lot of books like Tony Morrison's
[40:24]work, Marilyn Robinson's work, these are writers, you read, and just are studying, you know,
[40:30]how they put that together. How do you make, you know, how do you incorporate that magical element
[40:38]in that way, you know, in that special way? Or how do you have the ordinary rise to the extraordinary?
[40:45]Marilyn Robinson takes the most ordinary thing, and you read your reading, and you think,
[40:50]like, you know, so there are writers like that who have been really influential. And, you know,
[40:57]I remember while I was working on my memoir, I kept going back to the history of love by Nicole
[41:01]Krause, and I kept going back to her ex-husband's book, Jonathan Saffron Forest work, etc. So
[41:08]because there was sort of an experimental quality to it that I was interested in, and there was
[41:12]like a looseness that, you know, I was going from philosophy writing to literature and wanting to
[41:17]kind of stretch, and so there were just, you kind of go to different books at different times
[41:21]for different things, I guess. That's how it is for me. So when I started my podcast, I had never,
[41:28]I mean, I took a lot of English in school and all that, but school was kind of a long time ago at
[41:32]this point. And I, when I, as a grown-up, when I've been reading, I wasn't reading, like, as you said,
[41:37]as a writer, right? I was just reading and enjoying and whatever, and author after author would say,
[41:42]well, no, when I take a part of the book, and I take a part of the structure, and I analyze this,
[41:46]and I analyze the, and I was like, you do really? Do you think that the author's intended it that way?
[41:52]And it turns out, yes, they did. Yeah. So obvious now, but it's really part of the process.
[42:00]We have to sort of have that whole perspective on the project and the in-depth research,
[42:08]as I guess you must. Well, it's interesting too, because in the course of writing this novel,
[42:13]I mean, I would read the draft just for verbs. Well, let me just think about the verbs.
[42:21]Are these the best verbs? Are they active? Do they have the power I want them to have?
[42:26]Or the passivity I want? Or that kind of thing. And just the verbs. And then I would read
[42:31]just for setting. Do you feel you're in the barn? Do you feel you're in the woods? Do you feel,
[42:35]you know, can you really feel that, you know, with that sound, you know, et cetera, like, how do I make
[42:39]this vivid? How do I make it feel this way? So yeah, I mean, there's those 10 years, you know.
[42:46]That's great. That's amazing. Well, good for you. I mean, however long it took.
[42:50]Do you ever want to send it out? Like, did you ever feel like, okay, this is good enough? Or did
[42:54]you know, you wanted to keep going? And then how did you end up selling it? Yeah. Well, no, I never
[42:59]felt it was good enough. I mean, you know, I think that's that's the philosophy training too,
[43:05]where it's it's so critical. I'm trained really critically, sadly. And in fact, the beauty of
[43:11]some writing environments I've been in is that they would have this thought where if you hear
[43:15]someone's new writing, you just say what's working. And I was like, that's amazing. We're talking
[43:19]about what's working. I've never even done that before. I always used to talk about what isn't
[43:23]working. So anyway, it's such it's a beautiful thing. And it actually helps you improve greatly
[43:27]because somehow when you hear what's working that stuff rises and the other stuff falls. So it's
[43:32]it's a really great thing. And it's a much more healthy world for me. I'm so happy to be in it. But
[43:36]let's see. I mean, I worked on it a long time. I ended up sending it. It was kind of a circuitous route
[43:43]as many, many publishing routes are. I had had an agent for my memoir. She wasn't sure about this
[43:48]novel. We decided to part ways. So I was unagented. But there was an editor who had passed on my memoir,
[43:56]but had written the nicest note. It was like the loveliest fail. You know, she thought it,
[44:01]the writing was beautiful. She loved the story, but she just felt she couldn't make it big enough
[44:05]for her. And that was Amy Einhorn, who published his really big books. And so she loved it,
[44:10]but she couldn't take it. So I said, what about just Amy Einhorn? Like, what if we just sent it to her?
[44:14]And my agent who might actually, my soon to be ex-agent was like, I can't. I don't think it's ready.
[44:19]Whatever. And I was like, okay, so I sent it myself to Amy. And I said, look, Amy, you passed on
[44:24]my memoir, but I know I remember it was such a nice rejection. Would you consider reading it?
[44:29]And she said, I will read it. And she accepted it. So on agent did. And then said, so now you
[44:34]need to get an agent. And I said, well, if you've accepted my novel, I'm pretty sure I can get one.
[44:39]You know? And so I did. And that's how it happened kind of in a backward way. But obviously,
[44:44]if my agent had my ex-agent had she sent it to Amy, she would have taken it. But she didn't.
[44:49]So I sent it myself. And Amy and I, we worked on it. It wasn't done yet. In fact,
[44:54]the book, I think I had written every single moment of the entire book. So what jumps in time now,
[45:00]I had written a lot of that straight a whole New York story. There was a second daughter. She couldn't
[45:04]bond to her. But, you know, there was like all kinds of stuff on the cutting floor. Amy said,
[45:08]you know, I think the heart of the stories in the barn, I really care about this daughter now,
[45:12]that daughter, you know, that kind of thing. And so it took shape that way where we really expanded
[45:17]the barn and this journey during the war only. And then kind of made a move to the later years.
[45:24]And I do want to say, I mean, it's always hard in these conversations because you never know if
[45:28]anyone, if there are people who haven't read and you don't want to do any spoiling. And I won't.
[45:32]But I just want to say that, you know, in making a decision about the ending,
[45:36]a lot of it had to do with respecting what I've learned from interviews of reunifications and
[45:42]how complicated they are. And my daughter, my daughter characters five when you're really invested
[45:48]in her life. And that's a very simple time compared to being nearly 30. And what that really would be
[45:54]like to be true to it, to be fair to it, to give honor to the people who struggle with the
[45:59]complexities of finding someone after so many years and having such complicated emotions about it,
[46:05]wanting to make sure to give that honor and not just make like wrap a big bow around something
[46:12]that's complicated. And so that kind of leads me to say that in the thing I'm working on now,
[46:17]there's some revisiting of this concept. I was about to ask that. So thank you for wondering
[46:23]what are you working on now? Yeah. So I decided that I started with these two characters that are
[46:29]completely new and different. It's after the war, which I think is important because, you know,
[46:33]there are people who don't want to even pick up a novel that's set in the Holocaust, which,
[46:37]you know, is a fact of this novel. So I joke now, I think it should just be called post-war,
[46:43]just so you know, it's post-war. But it's right after the war and there's a boy and a girl
[46:48]and a brother and sister. And I wanted to explore something I learned from someone I interviewed,
[46:54]which was that she went after the war and she would find Jewish children in Christian settings
[47:00]and transport them to Palestine to, that was British, Palestine at the time. And this was also
[47:07]like a very complicated thing for the each individual child. So it might have been, you know,
[47:12]in terms of rescuing Jews after the war, it makes total sense as a population management issue.
[47:17]But as a human single one to individual issue is really complicated. I wanted to explore that.
[47:23]But one thing that happens is that these children end up in a kibbutz in Israel and there's this
[47:28]violin prodigy. And so we're going to circle back and her and her and her mom, you know,
[47:34]it's all, it's you're going to kind of see the middle, middle and end that you don't see here
[47:38]because I really want to do what it's due. And I didn't want to, I didn't want to dishonor some
[47:42]real things that I felt were very important to, to give their space, you know, and not tack on
[47:47]like a weird second novel on a first one kind of thing. Oh, I love that. Well, I was wondering if you
[47:52]had any advice for aspiring authors in case there any other listening. Yes. And I think my advice
[47:58]persistence and faith, you know, just keep going back and having enough faith that whatever it is
[48:06]you write each day, whether it looks like it has no relationship to the thing you wrote yesterday,
[48:11]whether it doesn't seem like it's very good, etc. I really do believe that the mind is this
[48:16]incredible web and that these things are related and that if you kind of give yourself the freedom
[48:20]and the chance and that you keep going and keep persevering, that it's going to show up there
[48:25]and you're going to see it. And I've always been really fascinated by how, you know, people can take
[48:31]cards of plot almost and like shuffle them one way and you'd have one story and shuffle them another
[48:35]way and you'd have another story. And so we just have to understand that our mind connects dots,
[48:40]you know, so if you're there putting out your moments, moment, moment, moment, moment, moment,
[48:45]they will relate to each other eventually, you know, and if we just kind of give ourselves that
[48:50]trust, you know, and to keep doing it because it does take a lot of work. I mean, it takes a
[48:55]real lot of work, but you can do it if you stick with it. I say, after 10 years. And are you
[49:02]still singing? No, I haven't sang as much my husband is very upset about it actually. He's always
[49:08]saying, why aren't you singing? I sing in the shower. All right, there's been some times when I
[49:14]thought of joining some groups around here, but I also get kind of picky like I like to choose
[49:20]what I sing. This is also why sometimes it's hard to be in book groups because you're like,
[49:24]I want to choose what I read, even though if you just go along with it, you find all these amazing
[49:28]things that you wouldn't have, you know, so yeah, I probably just have to give myself the chance.
[49:32]Well, maybe after this conversation, I'll get an MFA, join the singing.
[49:37]You know, a lot on your to do it'll be very I'm inspired.
[49:41]Well, okay, it's beautiful and you're writing is beautiful and whatever magic you did
[49:47]analyzing texts and verbs and structure and everything. It worked and it was really great.
[49:54]So congratulations. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to talk to you as I do it would be.
[50:00]So really appreciate it.
[50:01]Well, have a great day.
[50:04]And just a reminder, again, please pre-order a copy
[50:07]of my book, Moms Don't Have Time To, A Quarantine Anthology,
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[50:26]Thanks so much.
[50:27]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[50:29]to read books.
[50:30]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebie Owens,
[50:33]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[50:42]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[50:45]for the Sound Editing.
[50:46]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[50:48]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.