Jessamine Chan, THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS: A Novel
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[2:30]Jessamine Chan is the author of the School for Good Mothers.
[2:33]Her short stories have appeared in Tinhouse and Epic, a former reviews editor at Publishers
[2:38]Weekly.
[2:39]She holds an MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts, and a BA from Brown University.
[2:44]Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Breadloaf Writers
[2:48]Conference, the Woolitzer Foundation, the Gentle Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center,
[2:53]the Anderson Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation.
[2:58]She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.
[3:02]Welcome.
[3:03]Jasmine.
[3:04]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[3:05]Don't have time to read books to discuss the school for Good Mothers.
[3:09]Thank you so much for having me on your show.
[3:11]It's a pleasure to be here and to meet you.
[3:14]It's a pleasure to meet you.
[3:16]Your book has already had so much success, and so we book this interview.
[3:20]You've been everywhere.
[3:21]Read with Jenna, Pick, Insta, New York Times, Bestseller.
[3:24]I mean, that's amazing.
[3:25]Congratulations.
[3:26]Thank you so much.
[3:27]It's been a really wild five or six weeks.
[3:30]I bet.
[3:31]Amazing.
[3:32]Well, why don't you tell us in there is what your book is about for those who are
[3:35]not familiar with it yet.
[3:37]So the School for Good Mothers, which is my debut novel, is about Frida Liu, a Chinese
[3:42]American single mom, who loses custody of her toddler daughter after having one very
[3:47]bed day.
[3:48]And in order to get her back, she's just a spend a year at a newly created government
[3:53]institution where she's retrained with moms from all over the county, whose transgressions
[3:59]range from benign to horrific.
[4:02]And moms have to pass an elaborate series of tests, and if they don't pass all the schools
[4:07]tests, their parental rights will be terminated.
[4:10]So readers follow her journey through the school and her quest to get her daughter back.
[4:15]I was about to say, can you imagine?
[4:18]And then I was thinking, you did imagine.
[4:20]Thank you.
[4:21]Yes, we can know all of that, you know, that we're real life.
[4:25]How did you think of this?
[4:26]Were you having a really bad day?
[4:27]I actually started the book years before getting pregnant.
[4:32]So part of the book grew out of my intense anxiety about the decision of whether or
[4:38]not my partner and I should have a baby.
[4:40]So not everyone responds to ambivalence or anxiety by starting a dystopian novel about
[4:46]motherhood, but that is how I processed my anxiety.
[4:50]I was heading into my late thirties.
[4:52]It was time to choose a path.
[4:54]I didn't feel ready in any way.
[4:55]I didn't have a book done yet.
[4:57]We were living in Brooklyn, I mean, deciding whether or not to have a baby when your artist
[5:02]living in New York, it feels like a very daunting prospect.
[5:05]And so I was at the time working at Polisher's Weekly and trying to work on a short
[5:10]story collection.
[5:11]So after probably the 10th time of getting rejected from McDowell and Yatto, I took my
[5:17]vacation days and I asked my friend, Bridget, who very kindly said, yes, you can come
[5:21]stay at my house upstate.
[5:24]And so I couldn't myself there.
[5:26]I was very, very isolated and it was, I think there was some kind of crazy, like two
[5:32]foot snowfall.
[5:33]So I was just very much alone and snowed in and working through a lot of terrible story
[5:39]ideas until I had one very good writing day.
[5:42]So so Frieda's very bad day grew out of a very good writing day.
[5:47]And part of what fueled that day is writing, which resulted in the foundation for the book
[5:51]with Frieda and Harriet's story and the women in pink lab coats and the dolls and the
[5:56]voice of the book came from my ruminations on the subject of motherhood and also some
[6:03]of the idea was sparked by a New Yorker article I'd read several months prior called Where
[6:07]Is Your Mother by Rachel of Eve, which followed the really heartbreaking story of one
[6:14]single mom who left her toddlers on at home, went to work and after that they never got
[6:20]him back.
[6:21]And so something about that story just just lodged in my mind.
[6:24]So I definitely didn't sit down with a notebook thinking, oh, this could spark the idea
[6:29]for a bigger project.
[6:31]But I just felt so much rage on that mother's behalf and I think it just must have stayed
[6:35]in my subconscious.
[6:37]Oh my gosh.
[6:38]Well, it felt I'm not surprised to hear you wrote it in a cabin totally isolated because
[6:43]there is that feeling that she has when she is alone and being watched and feeling like
[6:49]she's literally going out of her mind because what are you supposed to do to show your
[6:54]good mom?
[6:55]Like what is she doing wrong?
[6:56]She's second guessing literally every single thing that she does and all she wants
[6:59]is to get her child back and there is a kind of madness in that when there's when the
[7:05]most fundamental thing that you want is taken away.
[7:09]It's like how else do you how do you process something like that, right?
[7:15]I think the thing that surprised me and perhaps it shouldn't have surprised me because
[7:18]it's quite commonplace is once I started reading about the subject of the government intervention
[7:24]and family life.
[7:25]I think I was really shocked at the numbers of how many children are removed from their
[7:30]families each year all around the country.
[7:34]So I mean one tragedy that did make the headlines was the horrible beyond words horror
[7:42]of the family separation at the border.
[7:44]But in America it's primarily, it's disproportionately black and brown women who are poor
[7:50]who are affected by the government taking their children away for a host of reasons.
[7:56]And I think once I started reading more about that issue, I was really surprised that it's
[8:01]not had light news most of the time but it's happening all around us.
[8:06]Even just having to give the child to her ex or not, right, even just that and having
[8:12]just a tiny visitation and having everything be perfect and having somebody have to say
[8:17]like make her play with these dolls or whatever it is that happens in the seat, right?
[8:23]And she's like, well, she doesn't want to play with the dolls right the second.
[8:26]And no, how can, well, that's what, I don't know, the level of anxiety and the pressure
[8:33]to force the child, which as anyone who's ever been in a room with a child or seen a movie
[8:37]of that child knows is impossible to force the child to choose something they don't want
[8:41]to do at that age.
[8:43]Yeah, even just having to relinquish it, which I, you know, as a divorced mom, I'm remarried.
[8:48]But you know, even just knowing legally that my kids are with my ex husband, you know, just
[8:54]that like I don't actually have the legal right to my children on a given day is so terrifying
[8:59]that I like can't even think of that a lot of the original article was about the tragedy
[9:05]of losing your child to strangers.
[9:08]So now that the original article was much more about the foster care system.
[9:11]I definitely didn't feel that that I could necessarily access like I didn't feel like for
[9:17]whatever amount of research I could do, I didn't necessarily feel like I could access that
[9:21]experience and render it authentically in fiction.
[9:24]But I could imagine the heartbreak of a broken marriage and and feeling like your child is
[9:29]being raised by another woman or by the other woman in the, what caused the, the dissolution
[9:35]of the marriage.
[9:36]So I chose a different storyline there.
[9:39]Yeah.
[9:40]How do you go then from writing this whole book and analyzing all this before you had
[9:45]your own daughter to then becoming a mom, having thought about the worst things ever,
[9:51]although of course we probably all think about the worst things ever all the time.
[9:55]But you really went there.
[9:57]I really, really went there.
[9:58]It's a very weird thing.
[10:00]do to be working on a book like this while pregnant and while raising a new baby and
[10:05]infant and a toddler and having a book like this grow alongside my daughter. So I think I
[10:12]partly went there as a way to survive a really confusing and overwhelming experience
[10:18]because the book really gave me a home to pour all of my my thornier feelings into like if I was
[10:25]feeling really guilty or shameful or frustrated. I had somewhere for those feelings to go
[10:32]instead of just festering in my brain. So I think in some ways the book allowed me to be a little
[10:38]bit kinder to myself as a as a parent because I was writing about systemic injustices and
[10:45]about the culture and about the culture really oppressing women and oppressing moms. And so because
[10:51]I was always taking that like macro look at things I think I was a little bit gentler with myself.
[10:57]But what really changed after I I had my daughter was that I had to rewrite the whole book because
[11:03]I think I was able after having her to to really access the moms love for a child which I
[11:10]I think that is actually it was much harder to write the love in the book than to write the conflict.
[11:18]I mean to write people fighting or battling or being sad. My brain goes there much more easily
[11:23]than to write about how much she loves Harriet or how much she loved gust and even like her love
[11:30]for her own parents. I mean it those are somehow for me and maybe it's not this way for all
[11:35]writers. But for me it was harder to access the tender feelings and to to render them in good
[11:42]and so so I feel like the the freedom and her relationship really deepened. But I also feel like
[11:48]I had to really simplify the lessons after I had a baby because in the original drafts the moms
[11:55]were actually running through fire like escaping from actual burning buildings. And I think I
[12:00]didn't understand that each day's tasks are a gauntlet of emotions. Like I didn't understand like
[12:06]getting teethbrush, getting the shoes on, getting the jacket on like each had their own battles.
[12:12]And so so the lessons became much more streamlined. And I I added things like trying to convince
[12:19]the dolls not to drop food on the floor or trying to swallow anything or to take medicines.
[12:24]So so the so real-life motherhood definitely informed the revision.
[12:30]It is all so hard. I mean all of it, you know just getting out the door.
[12:35]The the psychological, especially as the kids get older, it's like before you can just kind of
[12:41]pick them up right if they really didn't want to. You had that option. But my kids are all older
[12:45]now. I can't even like lift most of my kids anymore. Well how old are they? I have 14 and a half
[12:51]year old twins boy and a girl. And then I have an eight and a half year old and a seven year old.
[12:57]I can pick up the seven year old. But he wouldn't like it. Like I can't pick him up
[13:00]and carry him out the door or he'll like throw you know. But yeah all these little tasks.
[13:04]I had this idea a while back that I still want to pursue at some point. I want to do like a
[13:08]game show called TopMom where you have moms like performing all these tasks and there's a contest
[13:15]and a timer. And you have to judge them like try to walk try to get all these hold all these things
[13:21]and leave a playground at the same time like which mom can balance it best because like all these little
[13:26]things we do. Sometimes the solution is like heroic right? Like the directions for things and
[13:33]just how we have to make our way through the world taking care of children can sometimes feel like
[13:38]you know they would have been nice to have a school for this. Not this kind of school granted but you
[13:43]know. You know this is reminding me of my my group text with my mom from some West Philly. One of them
[13:50]my my friend Dorit suggested wouldn't it wouldn't it be something if there was a contest where
[13:57]you pass all these tests and what you win is a year of free childcare and she was saying like
[14:04]she was saying like it could be like a hunger game style battle. But at the end you would get a year
[14:08]of free childcare and one of my other friends chimed in said like I would cut you all down
[14:12]like to get to get that year of free childcare. So funny and that's a good addition.
[14:17]Maybe I should talk to your friend we should do it together. I had like a whole trivia section where
[14:21]you like a speed round you have to remember all these kid songs and then you have a physical
[14:25]challenge and anyway I'm getting off topic but I'll just say there's a lot and it's it's really
[14:33]a jungle and you know there's not always big brother watching you but it feels like that. I mean
[14:39]even with nobody watching I mean I hope nobody's watching although of course they say Instagram is
[14:43]listening all the time but anyway it always feels like somebody is watching and judging no matter
[14:48]where you are or what you're doing and if it's your inner critic or if it's the mama you know
[14:52]at school drop off or wherever it always has this like very loaded feeling like you're not just
[14:58]acting in your own sort of universe right it's all judged and then of course it makes it so hard
[15:05]to act in that scenario until you gain the confidence over years of motherhood or never I guess.
[15:11]Yeah I don't I don't know if I've gained the confidence so much as accepted my own limitations
[15:19]in a way especially during the pandemic we definitely have changed a lot of our rules regarding
[15:26]things like screen time or yeah I've been very lucky to have a pretty even temper child I'm
[15:34]gonna knock on wood after this interview because I don't have any real wood right now but I will
[15:39]knock on the wood floor to to praise my my gender generally even killed daughter but it's
[15:46]yeah I don't I don't know that I I people ask me now for for like friends who are having babies
[15:53]and have asked me for parenting advice but I I think it's it's just stunning how much pressure
[16:01]we all live with you know like talking about when we were talking about the judging and the shaming
[16:06]I was thinking of one one anecdote that I've told which I just really captures the sort of
[16:11]flippant judgment of strangers so my daughter had I think she was maybe five months into learning
[16:18]how to walk and so how did you know she's she just turned five just got her second vaccine dose
[16:24]a week ago no two weeks ago she got her second vaccine dose which is a Halloween moment
[16:29]but when she was about maybe 18 months so she was new to walking was falling down a lot
[16:35]and I did not at the time carry band-aids in my diaper bed because I wasn't experienced yet
[16:41]and at some point she fell down and scraped her knee and there's another mom of the playground
[16:45]who just looked at gave me this sort of very dodgy side and she said um your child is bleeding
[16:52]and then she's turned away and after that day I always carried band-aids because I just felt
[16:58]I just felt the shame I mean my daughter was fine have you seen the show pivoting it's on
[17:05]Fox right now it was written by a woman named Liz Astroph is a good friend of mine she I met her
[17:10]originally through the show several years ago and her book was called Don't Wait Up Confessions
[17:14]of a State WorkMom anyway her show is hilarious but there was just a scene that I watched last
[17:19]night or two nights go rather where one mom is like in the park with the trainer she has a crush
[17:24]and he gets dung by a bee and she reaches into her bag and like pulls out like the venom sucker
[17:29]thing it's just like going to bed about and then takes like a superhero band-aid and puts it on him
[17:34]and you know her daughter's like really old and anyway it was hilarious and it yes as a mom
[17:41]these habits die hard with the band-aids anyway watch the show it's hilarious yeah I haven't
[17:47]seen it up but I love the idea of that yeah it's very funny so what are you working are you working
[17:52]on another book or did you write another book after this one or what's what's next I wish I could
[17:57]tell you yes on both counts we finished the edits last spring and then pretty much immediately
[18:05]headed into into pre-pub land so so that's where I met you for the first time during like some of
[18:11]the earliest I'm an issue disturbance but I think I I think I took the time when I could have
[18:17]started another book and moved to another city so so I was living in in West Philly and we moved
[18:22]back to the Chicago area so we could live near my parents it was definitely one of those decisions
[18:26]born out of the pandemic when you don't see your family for 18 months and decide that okay I'm
[18:31]going to relocate so that we can see each other and and so I think I took some of that downtime
[18:37]and just moved us to another place but I'm really excited to start writing again I'm right
[18:42]at the moment I'm launching the book and doing press for the UK and also I'm just trying to see
[18:49]my daughter more but I'm I'm excited to to get back to writing fiction soon but but I think I'm
[18:55]probably going to be pretty secretive about the next project because I tend I tend not to to share
[19:00]too much about stuff that's that's still in process what do you think the school for good
[19:06]fathers that look like I think it would be a nicer place I bet everyone would be a little
[19:12]gentler with the fathers I I think I envisioned a place where the the fathers are treated
[19:18]more humanely on every front like more calls home more respect for their individual autonomy less
[19:25]less shaming so I certainly some elements of the both schools are satirical but I did want to reflect
[19:33]the the different ways that that our culture treats moms and dads excellent what advice would
[19:40]you have for aspiring authors two things one is to keep going and I I'll just I've been trying
[19:48]in any interviews I do to say my age because I just feel like in the publishing industry there's
[19:54]definitely the the standard narrative which is you have to get your book done by 30 or 35
[20:00]and there's a lot of focus on youth and so I'm publishing my first book at 43. I started writing
[20:06]when I was 18 in college so it was a very long slow journey. I mean I started this
[20:12]book in my mid 30s but I've been writing for my whole adult life so it's this is the dream come
[20:19]true after a very very long long series of ups and downs to get here so so first is to knock
[20:26]it and then second I would say try to stay off the internet if you can there's definitely a
[20:34]lot of pressure to be a person on the internet before selling a book but I'll just add that I
[20:42]did not have any public social media accounts before selling my book and I was generally unfindable
[20:47]on the internet and it's not that those conversations didn't come up when I was selling the book
[20:53]to say like hey like you have no foot digital footprint but I decided to do that because I knew
[21:00]that I had to protect my writing time and certainly that's very true for for anyone who's a
[21:06]parent is like you have to do you have to do some things differently to just like hold onto the time
[21:11]that you have and the concentration you have so so I definitely found that that like not being
[21:17]publicly on Twitter and Instagram was was helpful for for my creative life during the time before
[21:24]selling a book so I am participating now but I I definitely ignored that for a really long time
[21:30]and did do like how did you did did the agent you get say anything about that like did anybody
[21:36]at any stage tell you to do it differently you know I I only so I literally only had a public
[21:43]Instagram and Twitter account after after we sold the book in fall 2019 and I didn't start
[21:48]posting much until probably 2020 no one gave me explicit instructions I think if I if I said like
[21:56]I absolutely can't do this I think that probably would have been an option I think I I have wanted
[22:01]to contribute to the team effort to getting to getting the book out there but I'm a very private
[22:08]person and so so interfacing with the world in this way has has been a definitely a really different
[22:15]experience but it's I'm very grateful for the online community now because I mean launching a book
[22:20]during a pandemic is not super easy and certainly Instagram and Twitter has been a great way to get
[22:28]to get the book out and to hear also to hear from readers at a time when I'm I'm only doing a
[22:33]a handful of in-person events do you have any regrets like as a private person and someone who protects
[22:39]their space to then have this be all over the like this is you couldn't have had a more
[22:45]national introduction to publicity for books right with Jenna and everything we ever like oh my gosh
[22:52]maybe this is a mistake like that dude I mean like you can't go back now you know I've had a
[22:58]really charmed launch and I've been lucky and pretty much every single way so the the amount of
[23:05]publicity the book has gotten has been a very very fortunate thing and I think having worked up to
[23:12]this experience over many years I think I'm able to to appreciate it and I think everyone's been
[23:19]a very respectful of my desire like I don't I don't put pictures of my daughter in the internet
[23:24]and I I totally respect the decisions of parents who do but that was just a decision that my
[23:30]husband and I made to not share her image publicly and to let her decide that when she's older
[23:35]I mean that has taken some effort to to say like only sharing photos of her where there's like
[23:41]her little baby feet showing or something like that or like where she's turned away from the camera
[23:45]so like there have been some extra efforts required to maintain privacy for my family but it's
[23:52]yeah I don't think I have any regrets it's been it's definitely been really surreal to launch the
[23:58]book at a time when I've mostly been living in isolation because I mean early January was a difficult
[24:04]time for everyone and especially with my daughter not being fully vaccinated yet we we just
[24:09]generally didn't see anyone so I've been especially grateful for for the the community and the
[24:16]conversation online because that's that's really the only conversations that that we were having
[24:21]at that at the time of the launch was was on the internet. Do you have a favorite
[24:26]kid show that's like on rotation at your house that you want or maybe or anything you know
[24:31]I can tell you what I wish my daughter watched and she is watching a paw patrol a lot now which is
[24:37]driving me a little bit insane all due respect to the creators of paw patrol she I don't know
[24:43]what it is about that show but she loves it with her whole heart I really want her to watch
[24:48]eat a twist scientist on Netflix but she is really obsessed with paw patrol and I think the thing
[24:55]that we found recently to make the screen time a little better as you can turn the the dubbing on
[25:01]in Mandarin so she's actually she's actually attending a Mandarin immersion Montessori which
[25:08]were very thankful to to have the opportunity to send her to and it turns out on Netflix you can
[25:14]turn on like a variety like you can turn on Spanish you can turn on Mandarin like I think there's
[25:19]several other languages too so all the kids shows can be like you can play them in another language
[25:25]so that that softens the blow some of the cartoons but I love Molly of Donali on PBS kids but she's
[25:34]she's lately decided that she's over PBS kids even though we're trying really hard to get it
[25:38]back into the rotation I've been pushing it a twist too and we love those books but they're just
[25:44]not into it right now but they will she will grow out of Paw Patrol it's like so perfect for one age
[25:49]and then they get a little older they just grow it out of it so what what do you transition them to
[25:55]I don't know they kind of find my kids have found it I don't know how because we're like all
[26:00]year on Netflix but I don't remember what because now my daughter's like almost nine so we've
[26:05]like we're like four shows out but I think octa knots is right around there maybe that came right
[26:10]after Paw Patrol a little more I don't know we we know that the minute she starts to read she's
[26:16]not going to talk to us anymore so we're trying to just enjoy this this pure this remaining
[26:22]half year before she starts learning to read when when she still wants to hang out with us because
[26:27]I she she's very ready and she's very eager and I think once that skill is learned like
[26:33]there's going to be very little like hanging out time with us I mean not awesome but funny anyway
[26:41]all right Jasmine thank you this has been a pleasure congratulations again and I hope you find the
[26:47]time and space you need to to go back to your writing what you love and I'm just so excited for
[26:52]you after all these years that you got the whole like dream come true scenario so it has
[26:56]relief in a dream come true thank you so much for having me on the show today my pleasure all right
[27:01]take care bye bye thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books
[27:08]don't forget to follow me on instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books
[27:14]also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[27:19]of authors on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the
[27:23]sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:28]now trim music