Senator Elizabeth Warren, PINKIE PROMISES
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[0:38]Senator Elizabeth Warren is the author of Pinky Promises. Elizabeth Warren has served as the United States Senator of
[0:44]Massachusetts since 2013. She is a former law professor and one of the nation's leading progressive voices.
[0:50]Elizabeth is the author of numerous books, including This Fight Is Our Fight.
[0:55]She lives with her husband and their golden retriever in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[0:58]Welcome, Senator Warren. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:03]Thank you. I'm delighted to be her because I remember being a mom who didn't have time to read books.
[1:08]Oh, there you go. So what did you do? How did you find time?
[1:11]You know, I was one of those moms who read like by keeping books propped open on the kitchen counter
[1:19]and so I would be stirring things on the stove. I have books. I guess people would be appalled by
[1:24]this, but you know, like had popped grease on it and it ain't better and because I kind of read
[1:33]all the time. I nurse both by maybe these I'm that was I think one of the things I love best is
[1:39]I can read when I did that. I and would really tell myself it was okay to be reading.
[1:45]You know, so that that was what I did then. Now, I'm a big audible book fan too. I listen. Boy,
[1:52]when the plane is landing and they make you close your computer, good for me. I'm ready to read.
[1:57]That's true. Yep. I like listening. You know, I'm doing the laundry. You're like,
[2:01]so luckily my car laundry always to a book exercise driving when I used to commute when I was driving.
[2:10]I am convinced that it was listening to books kept me from absolutely mowing down bad drivers
[2:19]and I think into the highway. So it kept me a little more zen. My parents gave me like a box set
[2:27]of men are from Mars women are for Venus. The cassettes. You remember I remember they were all like in
[2:32]the little yep, black plastic. I had the cassettes. Oh, I still remember reading Nicholas and Alexander
[2:40]long, long, long history of, you know, the Russian families and the Russian revolution and what it meant
[2:49]for the monarchy to have the four daughters and then a son, but the son it turned out had
[2:54]him to feel. And you know, I can still remember being on the highway listening to this.
[3:00]I am now totally embarrassed by admitting what I was listening to and in contrast to what you were
[3:05]listening to. I do not underestimate the value of trash. And I mean that in a generous
[3:15]loving way. Oh, I read all the assassin books. I'm totally into assassins. Maybe it says something
[3:22]about, you know, oh, oh, what it's like to be in Washington. And I read all of it. I like the crime
[3:28]detective stuff. And of course, I like lots of the fiction that goes on now. So no, no, no,
[3:34]never be embarrassed about what you're reading. You're reading. You let yourself get into another
[3:38]world. Good for you. And you've now, of course, written lots of books. And I have your first
[3:43]children's book. Yes. Thank you promises, which by the way, gave me the chills reading. And I am
[3:48]not just saying that it's so great. I got, oh my gosh, like the confidence watching her confidence
[3:54]grow as the book goes on and knowing that she could do it. And I have two daughters and two
[3:58]sons. And just the message was so great. And I can't wait to like read and reread it to them.
[4:03]I'm so glad to hear that because that really was the point of the book. It is about building
[4:09]confidence. It's about acknowledging what little girls hear about what girls can't do and who they
[4:16]hear it from. And then getting through that as you notice pretty fast. So we get a turnaround with a
[4:25]pinky promise from some unnamed presidential candidate. And then from that moment, having
[4:34]the little girl in this, Polly, internalize that. And each time she's in a, hmm, are you sure
[4:42]you can do this? This is a little scary. It's a going to be a stretch here. That she's the one
[4:50]who squares her shoulder, holds up her pinky and says, yes, that she can do this because that's
[4:56]what girls do. And to me, that's the win is that she builds up the confidence and she jumps in
[5:05]to one thing after another. And you notice in the book, we never actually see whether she
[5:13]scores the goal or whether she wins the class presidency. Because ultimately, that's not what's so
[5:22]important. What's so important is that she took on something that was a little bit hard and a little
[5:30]bit scary. And she jumped in on her own. And that's, that's the success. You can't win if you
[5:38]don't enter the race. That's right. That's exactly right. You don't get what you don't
[5:42]fight for. Yep, that's right. I could come up with a few more of those too. And I read somewhere,
[5:49]maybe in people magazine, just saying that you actually like did a galley of it yourself?
[5:54]Like did. You know, with the photocopy paper. Well, I've never written a children's book before.
[6:01]And I knew from the first day, I knew what I wanted the book to say. I knew the, the arc of the book,
[6:10]what the story that this book would tell. But I don't know how to write a children's book. All I
[6:15]do is know how to read children's books. Because I read them when I was little. I read them when
[6:19]I was a mama. I read them when I was an auntie. I read them as a grandmother and read them over
[6:25]and over and over. And so I kept thinking, it's not like writing a grown-up book where I get lots
[6:32]and lots of words. There not going to be a lot of words in this book. There are words, but not,
[6:37]not a ton. But it's how you have to think about the story so that you want to turn the page.
[6:45]And so trying to get that rhythm done. So I wrote it up. You're going to laugh.
[6:50]I wrote it up kind of on my computer two or three times. So I thought, okay,
[6:54]here's the basic story. And I would break it in a page one, page two, page three, page four.
[7:00]And then I got photocopy paper, you know, folded it over. It's like a big arts and crafts project on
[7:06]my kitchen table, stapled it all together. And sizzered out all the lines and taped them on
[7:14]to see if it worked. And by God, I found out where it didn't. And had to, you know, read just and
[7:24]rethink. But that was basically how I built it. And I kind of sketched in a couple of my terrible,
[7:31]I can't draw, can't sing, can't draw. But at least sketched in an idea that she would be talking to,
[7:39]you know, her uncle who would tell her about things girls can't do. And then what was so wonderful
[7:46]about doing this project is then the illustrator, Charlene took over, Charlene to a who's a wonderful
[7:57]illustrator. And she took the words and just brought them to life. She just, when I was looking
[8:06]for the right illustrator, oh, I had a boxes and boxes of books, right? And I was also looking
[8:11]online at People's website. And Charlene does girls. I mean, she does girls who are engaged in
[8:21]smart, not just adorable. I mean, you know, ready to go and, and, and just girls, you know, you like
[8:29]and girls are not sure you want to cross, you know, girls, girls who eventually have some real
[8:34]determination. And so she was my number one choice. And she agreed to do it. We never even talked to anyone
[8:42]and she sent back like the first rough drawings and brought tears to my eyes to see the words
[8:53]now in the family of a picture book because I had never understood about that kind of co-authorship.
[8:59]I've always written words. And now it's a words and pictures, words and pictures. And there's,
[9:09]there's just, there's so much heart and so much hope in the pictures combined with those words.
[9:15]What a feeling. That's so amazing. I love it. And find the way. I don't know if you observe
[9:22]when you were reading it. You know, there's an all picture story that runs through the background.
[9:27]Oh, no, did I miss something obvious? I'm always missing something so obvious. I didn't say it that way.
[9:33]Bailey, the burrito eating dog, have you noticed what I didn't, what a naughty boy he is in the
[9:40]background over and over. So my hope is I understand children's picture books. I remember
[9:47]I'm eating the soccer ball. There you go. Yeah. I remember when he knocks down the lamp.
[9:54]That's true. And he gets all over the pipe, dry over and over. And then there's that post
[10:00]at the school, wanted the dog who ate the burrito, but the fun about this, and I had told
[10:10]Charlene about this, that I wanted Bailey in it, not for words, but as a secondary story,
[10:17]because I think of picture books as something you don't read once. You read them again and again
[10:24]and again and again and again, right? And that at some point in the third or the fifth or the
[10:31]ninth reading, the child you're reading this to will read it back to you. That is, we'll say,
[10:39]there's that Bailey, and the child gets to tell the story on her own. Oh, Bailey's being a bad boy,
[10:47]or look what Bailey did. And that encourages the child to interact more with the book, that
[10:59]she owns that book as well. She doesn't just have to wait for the person who actually knows how to
[11:04]read, to be able to take her through this book that she has a little punch to put back into the book.
[11:11]Like I said, the book is all about confidence, persistence, and anyone can really be a story
[11:17]teller. Yeah, you know, it's about you're really teaching her alongside her own. I like that.
[11:22]That's a weird way to put it, city. That's right. That's right. Thank you. Yeah, everyone could be a
[11:28]storyteller. Just let's nurture that. You can use that. You can use that for the rest of your interviews.
[11:34]Thank you. Okay. But you know, I'll send you 25 cents every time I use it. No, that's great.
[11:40]I won't hold you too. Where did your pinky promises tradition come from? I mean, I know you do this
[11:48]all the time. Where did it start? How did you start doing it? Well, it started when I was told
[11:52]what girls can't do. And that was in 2011. I had been in Washington after the financial crash
[12:00]after I got in that consumer agency through it. I spent a year setting it up. But that was it.
[12:05]I was not going to be named director. I headed back to Massachusetts. We had a Republican
[12:11]senator in Massachusetts who was going to be up for reelection in 2012. And I got all these calls
[12:17]from people who said, you should run. And they would say, you should run. You will lose,
[12:23]but you should run. Understand. They said to me, Massachusetts is not ready to elect a woman
[12:29]to the United States Senate. It's an old boys club. They'll let a woman be secretary of state,
[12:35]but that's it. Girl, it's not going to happen. But you should run. Nobody's going to beat
[12:39]him. So don't worry about it. You should run. So I did get in the fight. And I thought about
[12:46]from the very first day, well, okay, if I'm not going to win, at least I'm going to make
[12:52]every day count. And the way I decided to make every day count is every time I would meet a little
[13:02]girl. I would drop down on one knee. And I would say, hi, my name is Elizabeth. And I'm running
[13:08]for Senate because that's what girls do. And then we would do a pinky promise to remind each other
[13:18]what girls do. And after a while, it took on its own life. So near the end, it's getting to be like
[13:29]September, October of 2012, you know, full year later, after I got in the race, the the elections
[13:35]coming up, it's nippin' talk. You know, I'm within striking distance. I'm down like a pointer too.
[13:43]And people start showing up at our campaign headquarters, not also at the stops. There are campaign
[13:51]headquarters. I remember going in on a Saturday morning. And there was just this entire room full
[13:59]of daddies with little girls, little little little girls and medium sized girls and teenage girls
[14:10]and very senior girls who wanted their pinky promises. And that was the origin of both the pinky promise
[14:20]and what became the selfie line. And so I actually ended up winning the Senate race. But
[14:27]years later, when I ran for re-election, six years later, I would have young women come up to me.
[14:34]But they would say, oh, I'm so excited to meet you. We did a pinky promise when I was nine,
[14:42]and I always said that here, here is my picture. Here you are with me and my little baby sister. Here
[14:47]we are. And I thought, you know, this is how you make things count. Yeah, I'm really glad I won.
[14:55]And it let me get into a lot of fights. Yep. And look, and I wish I, you know, it would have been
[15:01]nice if I got to win the presidency. But I didn't. But I'm not sorry I got in the fight. I'm really
[15:06]glad that I got in there and had a chance to fight for the things I believe in. And it's the getting
[15:13]in that I wanted this, this book to be about. And how better to say thank you to all the little
[15:22]girls who kept me going because those pinky promises weren't just something I gave to them.
[15:29]They were something we gave to each other. Oh, that's really sweet. I love that.
[15:36]I was meanwhile watching all these videos of you giving the pinky promises and like learning the
[15:40]backstory. And meanwhile, in the back of my head, I thinking, oh my gosh, like COVID times, these
[15:45]pinky promises. I was like cringing inside like, I hope they're okay. I know. And you know,
[15:51]I wrote this when literally I could not touch a child. You know, I wrote this right in the middle
[16:00]of COVID long before we got the vaccine. I'm going back and forth with Charlie and it was,
[16:07]it was almost as if it intensified the feelings around it. When I wrote this book,
[16:15]I didn't know when we were going to have a vaccine. I didn't know when I would be able
[16:19]to see in person my own two granddaughters, you know, it so Polly, the little girl in this
[16:26]becomes in some way. She's my substitute. She's my, she's where I poured all those pinky promises
[16:32]for a year and a half. But like you are right in the days of COVID. This is all,
[16:39]this is all different. And we've got to get this behind us.
[16:42]What is going to happen with Polly? Are there more books coming? Do we get to follow her narrative
[16:47]a little further? Right now, obviously, what I'm really doing is, is totally focused on wanting
[16:53]a lot of people to meet Polly. And frankly, people will tell me, if people love Polly and are
[17:01]interested in hearing more from Polly, but I will confess to you, Zibi. There are times later
[17:07]now when I'm about to go to sleep, then I think about the next thing that happens in Polly's
[17:12]story. So we will see. We will see. I feel like there needs to be a whole thing that end. I want her
[17:19]giving the pinky promise. I want this going on and on. The whole circle. That's right. I like that.
[17:26]I like that city. Okay. I'm going to, we're going to, we're going to keep working on this.
[17:30]Okay. I mean, you do have a few other things. I'm sure I'm here to do this right now.
[17:35]But this was never, this was never a burden, not even a little bit because like I said, it was,
[17:43]it was the fact that I got to do this and got to think very much about very specific little girls
[17:51]that I did those promises with. It was like a way to revisit them and the experience,
[17:58]not just of doing the pinky promises to begin with, but writing the book to memorialize the
[18:04]pinky promises to kind of have something tangible to keep around the pinky promises.
[18:10]I feel grateful to have had that opportunity. It's a good one.
[18:14]Well, I think especially for someone who reaches so many people in your work right
[18:19]you're constantly out there showing these intimate connections. I mean, really, that's how
[18:24]change happens. That's how connections happen is this, these one on one moments. And that's,
[18:29]and then they build over time. So like, I just love the whole story. I just
[18:33]good. I'm so glad. You know, and it is interesting, this comes exactly at the moment in Washington
[18:40]when we're talking about making for the first time a real investment in childcare and raising
[18:47]the wages of our childcare workers and preschool teachers so that we acknowledge the importance of
[18:53]the work we do and making universal pre-case something that that we believe in as a nation for
[19:02]our children. Those are big deals. And very much, of course, the fight that I'm in right now.
[19:10]My dad thinks that teachers shouldn't be taxed. They shouldn't be paid tax. Your dad may be on to
[19:14]something. We should take a look at this. He said, but it really is. The importance, you know,
[19:20]I was a public school teacher way back at the beginning for me. This is, it was my dream from second
[19:26]grade. I wanted to be a public school teacher and nobody of my family got into college and
[19:31]my dad. My dad, he ended up as a janitor. My mom worked a minimum wage job at Sears answering the
[19:38]phones. College just didn't look like it was there for me. And a whole series of things had to unfold.
[19:45]And ultimately, I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester. And I got
[19:52]to teach special lead. And I loved it. And then I got pregnant, I got pushed out of the job.
[20:00]because that's the way the world worked then.
[20:04]And so I think of how grateful I am
[20:08]for the doors that were open for me,
[20:11]college that you could pay for
[20:13]on a part-time waitressing job,
[20:15]not here today.
[20:16]Pregnancy discrimination,
[20:18]worse back then,
[20:20]but still here today.
[20:22]And how that's very much shaped
[20:25]many of the fights that I'm in.
[20:28]I think that the importance
[20:31]of expanding opportunity
[20:34]for women, for people of color,
[20:37]for people with disabilities,
[20:40]I think that that's just,
[20:42]we can't overstate
[20:44]why letting everyone get a chance
[20:48]to be in the fights that they want to be in,
[20:52]to be able to make the contributions
[20:55]they want to make.
[20:56]To me, that's what real progress
[20:59]means for a nation.
[21:02]That we expand opportunity like that
[21:07]then we become more like the nation
[21:10]that I think we want to be.
[21:13]So that's why I stay in these fights
[21:15]for little girls and big girls
[21:18]and their brothers and their daddies
[21:20]and their uncles and all of them.
[21:22]Steve at it has to be a fight at all.
[21:24]I know.
[21:25]I know.
[21:26]I know.
[21:27]What advice would you have
[21:28]for aspiring authors?
[21:30]Oh, no for sure what you want to say.
[21:32]Coming in and just mumbling around,
[21:34]you're going to have a hard time.
[21:36]It's going to be a very painful process.
[21:38]I know because
[21:41]I think it's my 13th book.
[21:43]Now remember, I've written all kinds of books.
[21:45]Persist came out last spring,
[21:48]which is my latest.
[21:49]Actually talking about being a teacher
[21:51]being a woman in politics and policy,
[21:55]but also I've written case books in law.
[21:58]That's where I actually started
[22:00]because I was law professor.
[22:01]But I think it's really important
[22:03]to know what you're trying to do.
[22:05]And the second part is for me,
[22:07]I have to get my audience very clearly in mind.
[22:12]Every day that I've worked on pinky promises,
[22:17]I saw a grown-up,
[22:20]maybe a grandma,
[22:22]maybe an auntie,
[22:24]maybe a daddy with an arm around a child,
[22:28]usually a girl.
[22:30]And they were sitting together reading this book
[22:33]and they are the two people I'm talking to.
[22:36]And I think that if you keep the audience in mind
[22:40]the same way with my first book,
[22:43]it was a law class.
[22:45]And I think that's what I'm trying to do with,
[22:47]what those students just look like
[22:48]and true for my second and third books,
[22:50]didn't become almost like a conversation.
[22:53]It's almost like either talking to each other
[22:56]or like sending each other notes.
[22:59]And in the case of a children's book,
[23:01]like I said earlier,
[23:03]because the words are so much smaller
[23:07]than the books I usually write,
[23:09]it's almost like sending love notes to someone.
[23:12]But that would be my advice.
[23:14]I don't know what you want to say
[23:15]and know exactly who you want to say it to.
[23:17]I love that.
[23:18]It's so great.
[23:19]Yeah, you never know who you're going to reach.
[23:21]And as long as you get your message across,
[23:23]it's pretty awesome.
[23:24]Anyway, I will be that.
[23:25]I will be your target audience.
[23:26]Okay.
[23:27]Tonight, I'll be reading this to my kids.
[23:28]Many times.
[23:29]It'll be great.
[23:30]Oh, great.
[23:31]And let me know how it works.
[23:33]Yeah.
[23:34]They're much lower for me.
[23:35]Yeah, for sure.
[23:36]And I guarantee you they will notice the dog subplot immediately.
[23:39]I think that's great.
[23:41]And they may not.
[23:43]On the first time through because, you know,
[23:45]there's a lot going on in those pictures
[23:47]and lots of great color.
[23:49]Yeah.
[23:50]But I suspect they will find Bailey.
[23:52]Tell me if they found Bailey faster than you did.
[23:54]In terms of how he's a recurring background theme.
[23:58]We'll do.
[23:59]And Holly's sidekick.
[24:01]All right.
[24:03]Well, thank you so much.
[24:04]Thank you for coming on Senator Warren.
[24:06]This is such a pleasure.
[24:07]And.
[24:08]Oh, thank you.
[24:09]It's so good to be here with you.
[24:11]Nothing's more fun.
[24:12]They're talking about books, especially the books we get to
[24:15]recharge children.
[24:16]Hey, totally agree.
[24:18]All right.
[24:19]Have a great day.
[24:20]Thanks for everything.
[24:21]Thank you.
[24:22]Bye bye.
[24:24]Thanks for listening to this episode of
[24:26]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:28]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[24:30]at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:33]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
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[24:38]authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:40]Thank you so much to Steve and Ryan Beck,
[24:42]Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:44]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[24:46]fantastic intro and outro music.