Sherry Turkle, THE EMPATHY DIARIES
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Sherry Turkel is the author of the Empathy Diaries, a memoir.
[0:41]She is also the Abby Rockefeller-Mause Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT,
[0:48]and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.
[0:52]She's a licensed clinical psychologist in the author of six books,
[0:56]including Alone Together, and The New York Times Bestseller Reclaiming Conversation.
[1:01]Her latest book, The Empathy Diaries, was just published.
[1:04]Welcome, Sherry. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss the Empathy Diaries.
[1:10]I'm so happy to be here. I listen to this, and I'm mom who has time to read books, but I listen anyway.
[1:18]Excellent. Well, I mean, at least then you'll get lots of other ideas.
[1:23]Well, but I'm a special mom, because I'm a professor, so my day job is reading books.
[1:28]So I don't have that excuse.
[1:30]There you go.
[1:31]I mean, I'm a special mom category.
[1:34]Well, I feel like you're the coolest professor there can be, because your whole life is like technology meets emotion and all of them.
[1:41]I mean, what cooler things to even learn about and then to read about it. I mean, that's awesome.
[1:46]Yeah, except that then the technologies get technologists get mad at you, because they say, no, no, it's just a tool. A computer is just a tool. There's no emotion.
[1:55]You're just a girl.
[1:57]You're just reading into it.
[1:59]Okay.
[2:00]Well, they really say that to you at that type of thing.
[2:04]Well, less now, because now tech companies are realizing that they can market their computers as having personalities.
[2:12]But for the longest time, that was really, I mean, seriously, that was my.
[2:16]I don't say my cross to bear, but my struggle at MIT was that people would say, you pursue this.
[2:25]You will not get tenure.
[2:26]People garbage in garbage out.
[2:29]It is not a thing to argue that it's an intimate machine.
[2:33]It's computers were shocked. I mean, that is not a.
[2:36]That's not what we're pushing. That's not what it is. A technology is just a blank screen.
[2:41]It's just a new tool.
[2:43]Well, who were saying no, it's, you know, when I put a piece of my mind into the computer's mind, did I come to see it differently?
[2:52]That's not just a tool. So I gotten some push back.
[2:56]Yeah. Well, I feel like the most, the geniuses over time are ones who start in a new way, right, and do go against the brain.
[3:05]So I, you know, you know, right, you're like, oh, I did everything everybody wanted.
[3:10]I don't mind you thinking I'm the coolest.
[3:13]I don't mind you thinking I'm great.
[3:16]My daughter will hear it.
[3:18]Well, let's talk a little bit about your book, which as someone who like thinks a lot about empathy in general.
[3:25]And is like the hugest proponent of it as like the central force to like improve the entire world.
[3:31]Having a book.
[3:33]The empathy diaries and it's like, oh my gosh, yes.
[3:36]This looks amazing.
[3:38]And of course you open it up in such like, not nail biting, but like this way of you trying to find your father.
[3:45]And then, you know, right up front, like figuring out this big thing that he was doing as a child and why your mother had kept him from you to begin with.
[3:52]And this whole thing and all these pictures of your family.
[3:55]Like you're in it with you right away.
[3:57]Like it was awesome.
[3:58]Right.
[3:59]Well, I start that way because the central problem of my life as a child was why did my mother, she left him without telling me why.
[4:12]When I was one year old, she called her a sister and said we're packing, we're leaving.
[4:17]She, as my aunt tells it, she put a few, you know, shouldn't have luggage.
[4:22]She put a few A and P boxes bags together with some underwear and address and some diapers for me.
[4:28]And she went back to live with her parents where my aunt who was not married was also living.
[4:34]But the thing is that they didn't want me to know his name.
[4:38]They didn't want to talk about him in front of me.
[4:41]I didn't know his name.
[4:44]We weren't allowed to talk about him.
[4:46]And then when she remarried, want to use her new husband's name,
[4:51]turtle way before he legally adopted me.
[4:54]So I wasn't, I was, I was, I was sharing turtle officially.
[4:58]Even when it wasn't official.
[5:00]So the mystery for me was why was she keeping me from him.
[5:05]And it was the kind of thing where you couldn't say, hey, mom, look, I know there's something really bad going on here.
[5:10]But talk to me, talk to me.
[5:13]I know it's bad, but any talk would be better than what I'm imagining.
[5:21]It was before the days you could do that.
[5:24]I tried to evoke a world where children did not say those sorts of things to parents.
[5:31]And where I came home.
[5:33]My name was Sherry Zimmerman in school, but I had a lock up my homework.
[5:39]And all of my books, so that my sister and brother would not see them.
[5:44]My half sister and brother from her new marriage because they never knew I had another father.
[5:51]So I begin the book with the kind of mystery of what the book will be about.
[5:56]And tell the reader to be on my mother's side a little bit that there was a reason.
[6:02]And I don't tell you the reason until it comes up in the narrative of the story.
[6:07]And I, you know, I'm going to detail until I find him and I get the full, I get the full blast.
[6:14]But I want the reader to be on her side.
[6:17]Because for so many years I wasn't on her side.
[6:20]And I think that's very important.
[6:22]I didn't have empathy for her.
[6:25]empathy for me was a way to do the detective work of trying to figure out what could possibly be on her mind that she would do such a thing.
[6:38]So it was a detective work. It was a strategy for survival.
[6:44]And rather than really a way of reaching out to her, understanding her, being able to put myself in her place.
[6:53]And that's the kind of distinction I draw in the book that empathy isn't, you know, empathy that can heal is really being able to understand somebody else's problem.
[7:07]And say, you know, I'm sticking with you with this problem and I'm committing myself to you.
[7:15]And she didn't allow me to do that.
[7:17]So that's why empathy is so important to me because she didn't allow me to do that.
[7:22]And then tragically she passes away when you were what 18 or 19 or I was 18 and when she I'm so sorry.
[7:30]You were so, I mean, tell me about that moment.
[7:34]And then when you had to sort of reconcile all the stuff you didn't know.
[7:40]And then the loss with sort of this unresolved feelings in the midst of, you know, I mean, that's a tricky time between mothers and daughters.
[7:48]I would say sort of across the board.
[7:51]What made it trickier and what I try to do in the empathy diaries is I was so angry at, I adored her.
[7:58]She was everything I wanted to be and I'm really, I'm really not all the things she was.
[8:03]I mean, she was tall and she was, I sort of stopped at 5-4.
[8:08]You know, kind of like, oh, I take 5-4 on a good day.
[8:13]So thank you.
[8:15]I'm now finishing getting back down to 5-4 and a half.
[8:18]I mean, I couldn't, but she was, you know, she was tall and voluptuous and funny.
[8:23]And I mean, everything in terms of her personality, I really tried to emulate her.
[8:29]And she was warm and compassionate.
[8:32]And it was this thing about my, this secret about my father.
[8:36]That was the, that was the sticking point, but I was so angry at her.
[8:41]Because she took him away from me without any explanation.
[8:44]And I sensed, and this, of course, was for no reason that I somehow was like him.
[8:52]Because it was turned out to be true.
[8:55]He turned out to be a very intellectual man.
[8:58]And my family was super smart.
[9:01]The Bonawitzes, you know, heard side of the family.
[9:04]They were super smart.
[9:06]And my grandfather, I mean, he was, he read that every newspaper, he read them back and forwards and upside down.
[9:13]He's always saying, it was always saying, though, is this good for the Jews?
[9:17]I mean, he read about something in, you know, in like, you know, in the deepest Africa.
[9:21]And he would like me trying to spend a tree slomumba.
[9:24]And he would be like trying to figure out, you know, whether, yeah, whether this was good for the Jews.
[9:29]I have to show you this book, which I just, do you have this yet, the newest Jewish encyclopedia?
[9:34]Because literally at the end of every chapter, they say, but is it good for the Jews?
[9:40]It's funny.
[9:41]You just said that.
[9:42]Oh my gosh.
[9:43]That was my grandfather.
[9:45]But he was super smart.
[9:46]He had to drop out of school when he was 12, but he was just super smart.
[9:49]And my grandmother was smart.
[9:51]And my aunt was smart.
[9:52]So the Bonawitzes were very smart.
[9:54]But it turns out that my father, my biological father, the Zimmerman guy.
[10:00]she was drawn to him because he was very intellectual and I sensed that there was something in my
[10:06]intellectuality that kind of came from him. So without it in knowing him, I identified with him
[10:13]and of course he was forbidden so that made him more. Who could he be? Why was he taken away?
[10:19]What had he done? And I was angry at her and this anger came out in weird bursts because I
[10:29]technically loved her so much and there were a few episodes in the book which was the bravest
[10:35]things for me to put in because I show my anger at her and I put them in and I took them out and
[10:42]I put them in and I took them out because I didn't want to show how mean I was to my mother
[10:48]and people say oh but you showed your husband being unfaithful to you, you showed nothing compared
[10:55]to that I showed I was mean to my mother and there's one episode we're going to an interview
[11:01]at Radcliffe College where I so wanted to go and she had not told me of her cancer because she knew
[11:08]that I would stay home and not go away to college which I so wanted to do was my dream if I knew
[11:15]about this about this cancer I would I would have just wanted to be with her in her last years
[11:22]and to the interview one of the clips that she used to kind of keep the bouffant style of her hair
[11:31]she had left because she kept the man all night to kind of keep the line of the hair and she had
[11:37]left it in for the interview she had forgotten to take it out and as we came out of the interview
[11:43]I said to her mommy I'm so ashamed you we left in a clip and it was like telling her
[11:51]you've ruined it for me you've ruined it for us you know there was that clip you you show
[11:59]us to be who we were we don't belong here and it was so cool and I say if I could have one
[12:07]do over in life that would be my do it was so it's okay it's okay thank you but honestly it's
[12:16]as though I want absolutely I think the reason the book has a certain you know what I'd like
[12:24]about the book where I think the book is really me is there's almost asks the reader to say is it
[12:30]okay you know do you forget that you forgive me I'm not over it yet I could with all my analyses
[12:38]you know I'm just getting over it the book has been a healing because I realized that there was
[12:43]no way for me to not be angry at her that I had to I had to at that point not knowing that she
[12:52]saved me by leaving my father I had to be angry at her so the book really has been a journey
[13:02]in that way but that is that is the kind of story I tell because I was just separating from her
[13:10]being angry at her maybe I was going to confront her about this father thing like okay look I'm
[13:15]you know 18 years old I'm gonna be 19 you know what now it's time to talk to me maybe I should meet
[13:22]him maybe we should talk about him maybe I should see him before he dies I should know who he is
[13:29]I should know what he did you know was he abusive was it I need to and she dies and so then
[13:36]later in the book I I find him with private detectives and this a whole second chapter but the
[13:43]story of my mom and how I had to get closer to hers really it's it's why I needed empathy
[13:50]the kind of empathy that could let me try to get into her head and figure out what she wouldn't
[13:56]tell me oh well I just all those unresolved feelings you know I in the sense so hokey to say
[14:04]out loud but you know just because you pause the movie at a bad place doesn't mean it's not a
[14:10]wonderful movie generally like just because that's where your relationship had to end
[14:16]chronologically doesn't mean that she didn't take all the positives along with her like she knew
[14:20]how much you loved her I so and I mean I feel like your regret becomes from like her not feeling
[14:27]that love or respect right and that you diminished her in that moment when really that's not how
[14:32]you felt but she knew how you felt for real I'm sure she did yes yes that's my comfort is I
[14:39]think my mother knew that I of course she did my love and then with the empathy piece too I mean
[14:47]when you meet your dad and like he exhibited like zero empathy like as you sort of
[14:53]like he is like you know when I first started reading about I was like maybe he's like autistic
[14:58]or he's on the spectrum or I think he is on the spectrum in fact and actually I think that
[15:06]was part you know we have to put your I've been reading to do my research I read a lot about the
[15:12]attitudes of people towards people on the spectrum people who are autistic people who were a little
[15:18]off a little crazy and I think that my mother is wanting him out of my life had many dimensions
[15:25]so one dimension is that he was treating me in ways that people on the spectrum treat people
[15:32]me he was treating me like an object he didn't know how to treat like I would say a real girl
[15:37]not a Pinocchio but a real girl you know so he was treating me he was objectifying me treating me
[15:43]like a doll and I think she took you know she took a look at that and she was out but more than that
[15:48]I think when she realized that he was not in some ways relational in the way she needed him to be
[15:57]for her child not not to mention their marriage I mean you know because I I'm sure it wasn't a
[16:02]happy marriage but I think when she saw him relating to me like a doll and she didn't have words for
[16:09]it but she knew he wasn't all right there was a tremendous stigma number one she had married
[16:17]somebody mentally ill oh my god it was in her community in her Jewish community at that point
[16:25]that was like bad number two and perhaps she wouldn't be able to marry again number two she had
[16:32]a child by this man and what about the genetics of me I think in that world I would have been
[16:40]stigmatized so she wanted to keep she wanted it not to be known as she was married not to be
[16:46]known who she was married to not to be known why she was divorced and not to be known that there
[16:53]was a taint of potential something with something in me because she was worried for my future
[17:01]all of these things which today we don't even think about were on my mother's mind
[17:10]and when I was just dishing out my little cruelties because she wouldn't talk to me
[17:19]I wasn't thinking about any of this none and actually I've have to say that it wasn't until
[17:28]the book was sort of finished that I had many of these revelations so the book isn't even
[17:35]the book for me was in so many areas was a project of discovery and now I have some more things
[17:45]to say you know about really what I learned because I don't think I I don't think I discuss
[17:55]I mean I'm fine but I don't think I took the full measure of some of these things that were on
[18:00]her mind I don't sort of stop the narrative and say hey look at how mental illness was considered
[18:06]in the six days you know I don't I I keep the story going and I let the reader do some of that
[18:11]work which is fine so what was it like for you I mean clearly this is so emotional and so close to
[18:19]your heart what was it like sitting down just you and the computer I mean I'm assuming you did it
[18:25]on the computer what was it like you facing the computer and and having to get all these thoughts
[18:31]out and and relive some of these painful moments it was very different different days so for
[18:40]example and even now I'm a different person for having written it for example the memories of
[18:46]Rockaway and relationship you know the outtakes of the book I have a daughter who's now 29
[18:54]when I finished the first draft of the book which was I want to say four times the length of
[18:59]this book I have an apartment in New York and I printed it out of the I don't know a FedEx you know
[19:06]kind of that had a printer because my home printer like was like shaking it was not too much
[19:13]and I printed it out I made two copies I put it on a kind of credenza I have because I tend to
[19:18]lose things and I just kind of put them there and I said back I invited her to dinner she lives
[19:23]in New York and said back a look this is everything and you're not going to want to read this now
[19:29]this is like too much but you know when you're 40 when you're 50 you may want to read the details
[19:36]of like every little shopping list of your great grandmothers in the first draft I was so into it
[19:43]that I have great grandma's Monday shopping list Tuesday shopping list the special Wednesday
[19:51]shopping list because Wednesday my grandfather had it sort of late day off kind of his time was a
[19:58]a little different coming home from the theater
[20:00]He was a manager of a Times Square Theater.
[20:03]So we had breakfast together and she bought
[20:07]this thing that was expensive called Sturgeon.
[20:11]Never ate any other day of the week.
[20:14]And I include this detail and because I got so
[20:18]into the pleasure of recreating Brooklyn in the 50s.
[20:25]And also chapters on Essie who ran the sweet shop
[20:32]and what she was like and what did she went to Florida
[20:36]and the winter and how every more all the boys
[20:38]were in love with her because she was big bosomed
[20:40]and the girls wanted to act.
[20:43]I just had, I mean, I just got into like,
[20:47]Prustian, I was like in a new space.
[20:50]And as I discovered, as I rediscovered,
[20:54]my mother's affection for Archie and Veronica comics
[20:58]and how she wanted to be Veronica and how,
[21:00]I mean, I've seen as a being on subway stations
[21:04]with her where she bought Blackjack chewing gum
[21:06]and then I went out and found that you could still get Blackjack
[21:10]chewing gum and I went through a month of chewing Blackjack
[21:13]chewing gum much to my dentist.
[21:17]What is going on here?
[21:18]Don't you know that you have, you know,
[21:20]feelings, you can't do it.
[21:24]Who do you think you are?
[21:25]You know, some five-year-old with your mother chewing Blackjack
[21:30]chewing gum.
[21:32]So some of it was very like pleasurable like being in a,
[21:36]and then some of it was so hard because I knew that I,
[21:41]I didn't wanna tell a story that was like me, me, me, me, me,
[21:44]you know, the story, everything in the book
[21:46]had to serve a higher purpose.
[21:48]I haven't, I have a, you know, they've been going to talks
[21:51]about the situation and the story.
[21:53]I mean, I have a story, but I also really am trying
[21:56]to make some points about robot psychotherapy
[22:01]and about, you know, when about,
[22:03]for me that the world shouldn't be friction free
[22:06]that people don't operate like that and about empathy
[22:09]and about healing and about the pandemic and about,
[22:12]but everything had to have a purpose,
[22:15]but I did want to show vulnerability about myself
[22:21]because I think that so much of my point is that
[22:25]vulnerability is where empathy is born.
[22:28]That if people couldn't feel empathic with me,
[22:31]I hadn't done my job.
[22:33]And if I just was, you know, little Miss Smarty,
[22:37]little Miss Smarty does great, takes great tests,
[22:40]and then this little Miss Smarty takes great tests
[22:43]in next school, more than Miss Smarty, you know,
[22:46]that wasn't gonna work.
[22:48]And so I include stories that were very painful
[22:50]and that was hard.
[22:52]But in general, it was a book, as I say,
[22:55]of great writing about myself was,
[22:58]and the objects of my life was a,
[23:02]I think it was a very healing exercise.
[23:05]Well, and you do a fantastic job,
[23:08]the parts about Rockaway.
[23:10]I mean, I felt like I was there.
[23:13]Like I understand now what that was like at that time
[23:16]in that era, in that place, like it was so visual.
[23:20]I felt like I was watching like bright and beach memoir
[23:22]or something, you know, that movie, like anyway.
[23:25]So that was great.
[23:25]You transport the reader in both emotion and time and place,
[23:29]which is like, that's great.
[23:31]What else can you ask for in a memoir, really?
[23:33]Plus the secrets, right?
[23:35]And I feel like that's the key to most memoirs, right?
[23:40]The corrosive power of secrets in a family.
[23:43]It's like time and time again in different books
[23:46]and different, that's because it's what people are working
[23:49]through constantly and sort of understanding themselves,
[23:52]like what was hidden and what happens when it comes out.
[23:55]So I don't know, pretty awesome.
[23:58]My mother had secrets.
[24:00]She had these big secrets, you know, my father
[24:03]that he was ill, that he had done,
[24:07]you know, he had done since I don't wanna get away.
[24:09]I won't, I won't say anything.
[24:11]But there is a secret, but she also had little secrets.
[24:16]She did have a kind of desire to,
[24:20]she, her favorite character was Scarlett O'Hara
[24:23]and Gone with the Wind.
[24:25]And from that movie, she took the idea that you could
[24:32]make the world into your version of the world
[24:35]by force of will.
[24:37]So she was this tall, beautiful woman.
[24:40]I mean, she was like, I know she was five, 11.
[24:42]She might have been 60 and she didn't like that.
[24:45]She thought that wasn't feminine.
[24:47]And so she, this is hysterical.
[24:49]She convinced the women at the division of motor vehicles
[24:53]when she got her license.
[24:54]It was like five, seven, right?
[24:57]Every time she went, he said, look, I'm single
[25:01]and I wanna catch a husband and if he thinks,
[25:06]I'm a little shorter, it'll be easier.
[25:08]So funny, I always wear flats or heels.
[25:11]There's tiny little kitten heels,
[25:13]a little Audrey Hepburn ones with like less than three
[25:16]and a half inches, like almost two and a half inches.
[25:18]You know, just with a very shaped little heel,
[25:21]she was a specialist for wearing these sandals
[25:24]with yeah, she had a whole wardrobe of these.
[25:26]Very beautifully shaped, but very low heels
[25:31]so that she could slink along with a five, 10 guy
[25:36]and kind of hunch over, even a five, nine guy in current.
[25:40]But she kept shaving inches off her height.
[25:45]So by the time she died, I had her wallet
[25:48]and she was five, seven, which defied imagination
[25:53]and there she was of five, seven to be shorter than her
[25:57]current husband and I mean, there was no way
[25:59]my mother was five, seven.
[26:00]She walked into a room and she was like,
[26:03]sit your face, sit your face.
[26:05]And as a matter of fact, she was so happy.
[26:07]She idolized Sid Shewis, who was Fred Astaire
[26:11]as one of his last dancing partners
[26:13]who was exactly five, 11.
[26:15]And I think Fred Astaire was five, 11.
[26:18]And so Sid Shewis wore ballet flats to dance with him
[26:21]and even then with was a little taller than he,
[26:24]but Fred Astaire just says she's a great dancer.
[26:27]Let's do it.
[26:28]And she idolized Sid Shewis.
[26:31]And because Sid Shewis just was tall and proud
[26:35]and I think that if Sid Shewis had come on the scene
[26:38]a little earlier, my mother might have not shaved so many
[26:42]and dropped over.
[26:44]But then it was two, I joked with her, but mom now,
[26:47]it's like too hard to go back and say you've grown right.
[26:50]You can't let go back now and say,
[26:52]now you want to be Sid Shewis like.
[26:56]So what advice would you have to aspiring authors?
[27:00]Start with an object.
[27:02]My book, I wrote a book on evocative objects.
[27:05]And actually the cover of the empathy diaries
[27:09]is me in the red car,
[27:11]but I think Nancy Drew had a blue roadster,
[27:14]but I don't remember if it was red or blue,
[27:16]but I think it was blue.
[27:17]But I interpreted it as red and I had a red roadster
[27:22]going off after I graduated college
[27:25]on my adventure of my life.
[27:27]And all the objects that surround me
[27:31]are the objects that were evocative objects.
[27:35]I teach a course on evocative objects.
[27:37]And these are objects that really carry more
[27:40]than the objects themselves.
[27:43]They carry the meaning, they carry the people,
[27:46]they carry the things that you bring them inside
[27:49]and they kind of become part of you.
[27:51]And on the outside of my grandmother's best dishes
[27:56]that she used for Passover and Hanukkah and Rashishana
[28:01]and a birthday party and anniversary.
[28:05]And they were so special that she said,
[28:08]we weren't wealthy and she said they were bought
[28:10]for her as a wedding present by her mother
[28:14]and her mother's mother.
[28:15]And she said on the lower side of a push cart.
[28:19]And she said, this is the only thing that will survive me.
[28:25]These dishes will survive me.
[28:27]You will eat on them and your children will eat on them
[28:31]and beyond.
[28:32]And I remember being a little girl
[28:34]and knowing exactly what she meant
[28:37]because she didn't have jewelry or anything to pass on really.
[28:40]And it's true.
[28:42]I cherish them, my daughter cherishes them.
[28:45]And I know that my daughter will use them
[28:49]and her daughter will use them.
[28:51]These dishes will die.
[28:52]I have my grandparents.
[28:54]This is too.
[28:55]Well, I mean, she knew what she was talking about.
[28:59]And so the dishes are the frame
[29:01]and then Nancy drew mysteries.
[29:03]It was come in the second
[29:05]because they were in a bucket of object.
[29:06]They were my guide, the cover of the Nancy drew mysteries.
[29:11]Some of my Master drew mysteries.
[29:13]And then there's a letter that my mother wrote me
[29:17]when I was in Paris at their hold back.
[29:20]And then there's the photograph,
[29:22]a mysterious photograph of the man taking me out on a lake,
[29:26]which is my one memory of my father,
[29:28]my biological father, Charles Zimmerman.
[29:31]Because I was allowed to see him once or twice.
[29:33]He went to court to have the right to see me.
[29:36]And it's shrouded in mystery.
[29:40]But I remember that event.
[29:42]And I teach my memoir students
[29:46]that you just begin by talking about an object
[29:50]that means a lot to you.
[29:53]And I began this book by writing about my grandmothers
[29:58]giving me a Smith Corona.
[30:00]an electric typewriter when I went off to Radcliffe.
[30:04]And in my third year, and my second year,
[30:08]maybe it was my third, I think it was my second year.
[30:10]Because the whole first year, I had borrowed other girls
[30:14]typewriters, I had, there was a school
[30:18]had a typewriter and it was old and my papers
[30:21]like disgusting and she didn't have very much money
[30:24]and she said she cooked depression,
[30:26]coming for two months, you know,
[30:29]like adding a lot of noodles to the soup
[30:32]and a lot of what she called mondels to the soup,
[30:35]which were little fried pastries so that my grandfather
[30:38]wouldn't notice that there wasn't much soup,
[30:40]but there was a lot of, and not much meat,
[30:43]but a lot of these pastries in the soup
[30:48]so that she could buy me this typewriter
[30:50]probably at the time, it costs $40,
[30:53]but she didn't have the $40,
[30:54]but she saved it all summer to buy me this typewriter.
[30:57]And I still have the typewriter,
[30:59]and I still write on it when I get writer's block
[31:02]because it just what forces you to think in sentences
[31:07]which is something you don't have to do
[31:09]when you write on a computer,
[31:11]but mostly it just brings me back to her love.
[31:13]So that's the best thing you can do.
[31:15]You start writing chunks of things around objects
[31:20]and stay at it for two months
[31:23]and then read what you've written, read what the,
[31:24]where the objects of your life have taken you.
[31:28]And it opens up a lot, wow.
[31:31]Well, thank you so much.
[31:32]This has been so interesting and moving and emotional
[31:36]and I feel like it's taken me back through my mother,
[31:39]grandmother, great-grandmother,
[31:40]like as you were talking, I'm like imagining my own.
[31:43]And anyway, so thank you.
[31:45]Thank you for your book and this conversation
[31:47]and it's been a pleasure getting to know you.
[31:49]It's been a pleasure, I really appreciate what you do.
[31:52]Thank you, thank you very much.
[31:54]Have a great day, bye-bye.
[31:57]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms,
[31:59]Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:01]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[32:03]at Zibi Owens and at Moms,
[32:04]Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:06]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[32:08]and sign up for my virtual book club
[32:10]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[32:13]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[32:14]in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[32:17]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[32:18]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.