Joanne Ramos, THE FARM
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[1:54]Joanne Ramos is the author of debut novel The Farm.
[1:57]Originally from the Philippines, Joanne moved to Wisconsin when she was six years old.
[2:01]She graduated from Princeton University, worked in investment banking and private equity investing,
[2:05]and then became a staff writer at the economist.
[2:08]She currently serves on the board of the moth.
[2:10]A mother of three, she lives with her husband in New York City.
[2:13]Welcome, Joanne.
[2:15]Thank you.
[2:16]Thanks for coming on, mom.
[2:16]Don't have time to read books.
[2:18]Very excited to speak to you.
[2:21]So can you please tell listeners what the farm is about
[2:23]and what inspired you to write it?
[2:25]So if you imagine the most luxurious spa you've ever seen, that's the farm.
[2:29]It's got everything.
[2:29]It's got gourmet meals and private massages, private yoga instruction.
[2:34]And it's all for free for the women who are staying there.
[2:37]And in fact, they can get paid big money for spending their nine months there.
[2:43]And the only catch is that they can't leave the grounds and every move is monitored.
[2:46]And they're totally cut off on their daily lives because all of these women are surrogates.
[2:50]And by contract, they have agreed to prioritize the life that's going inside of them
[2:54]over everything in their own lives.
[2:56]And they carry the babies of the richest people in the world.
[2:59]And so my book is really, I have four narrators ranging from the woman who runs the farm
[3:04]to a couple of the hosts and a lot of stuff in suits, as you can imagine.
[3:10]The book was so good, your book was so good, I couldn't put it down.
[3:13]But anyway, keep going.
[3:15]So what made you write this book?
[3:17]It's funny, when I started writing it or dedicating myself to writing a book,
[3:21]I was already in my early 40s and I hadn't actually written fiction in 20 years.
[3:25]But since I've been a kid, I've loved writing.
[3:27]I got my first diary when I was six and for my first community and I've written my whole life,
[3:31]just life can take you in a different direction.
[3:33]And the ideas behind the farmer really rooted in all the experiences throughout that period
[3:37]from being born to Philippines and being raised in Wisconsin in the late 1990s, 1970s and 80s,
[3:43]which was a really different time, not just for Wisconsin,
[3:45]which was I think a much less diverse place, but just everywhere, right?
[3:48]You turn on the TV in the 80s and no one looked like me or spoke like my parents.
[3:53]And so it was just childhood feeling very different in many ways,
[3:56]but also part of something bigger because my dad's family lived about 30 minutes away from us
[4:01]and we would spend most of our weekends after church there as part of really this tight Filipino
[4:06]community.
[4:07]And then I went to Princeton on financial aid and that was a very new experience for me too,
[4:13]as when the few women in Wall Street when I was there and in this one private equity
[4:16]shop I worked and I was the first woman that they'd hired as a professional.
[4:19]So that was straddling worlds again.
[4:21]And funnily enough, it wasn't just fitting in with them.
[4:24]Men there, it was also making sure that I didn't alienate or seem up any or somehow
[4:31]work out my relationship with the women who were also there because they were women there,
[4:34]they were still in the support staff and that was something very new to me too.
[4:38]And as an aside, when I'm very recently spoken to my husband about it,
[4:42]he said he's never felt the way I have often felt my life, which is
[4:45]he wanted to do well in the place where you want to make sure that you're not alienating
[4:49]the other women there or other people.
[4:51]And I think that's just a very female thing that I didn't even notice really until recently that
[4:54]it just doesn't even cross his mind.
[4:56]He just goes into a place and just does his thing.
[4:58]Anyway, that's a total aside.
[5:00]And then I started having kids and that's really when all of these different sort of obsessions I've
[5:04]had about feeling different or whether or not meritocracy was real at all as my parents
[5:09]always taught me and that I started to really begin to question at Princeton when I met
[5:13]kids, my age, some of whom became my good friends, but who never had to work, never would need
[5:16]to work and got their choice of any job or unpaid internship they wanted in the world that was
[5:20]very, very new for someone like me.
[5:23]But all of a sudden I'm on the other side of this privilege divide raising three kids in Manhattan
[5:27]and you know, the only Filipinas I knew at that point were domestic workers,
[5:33]were either my nanny who helped me for a bit or other people's nannies and housekeepers
[5:40]and baby nurses.
[5:42]And I think it was this realization that as a mother, it's very hard to describe until your
[5:46]mother that love and that deep root desire to protect and give your kid a great shot in life,
[5:54]which I felt as a mother.
[5:55]But the people I was hiring and got to know were domestic workers were also often mothers and
[5:59]they must have felt the exact same thing I did without even close to the opportunities that
[6:03]my kids had.
[6:04]And on top of it, they were from often the country I was born in and it had this
[6:08]almost reflexive pride for me because we were from the same place.
[6:12]And it just, I guess it just heightened everything I felt since Princeton that this myth of meritocracy,
[6:19]this idea that one success in this country or anywhere really rests on your shoulders and your
[6:26]effort and your savvy is just so deeply untrue.
[6:28]And because I'd always wanted to write, when I turned 40 and had the very cliche midlife
[6:34]I thought it's definitely back to the economists where I had that after a five outside of work
[6:38]as a time for a staff writer, I thought, well, why don't I give this a shot?
[6:41]But to be honest, I never thought I didn't know if it would go anywhere.
[6:44]It was just something, it was just something I had to do.
[6:47]And that did end up becoming the farm.
[6:49]That's so cool.
[6:50]And so when you were writing this book, just out of curiosity, so were you doing this
[6:54]in tandem to everything else you were doing in your life?
[6:56]Like, did you try to fit this in at all late at night and early in the morning?
[7:01]Or did you tell yourself, like, I'm going to take a year and write this book?
[7:04]So basically, I so was the cliche for your whole midlife crisis thing.
[7:08]I had been home at that point for maybe three, two years.
[7:12]And I actually didn't have a nanny, which in a weird way is probably what opened the possibility
[7:19]of the book in two sets as one.
[7:21]My youngest child was starting in school, so that freed up my whole days.
[7:24]And two, I didn't have a nanny, so I had the house to myself.
[7:26]I just feel like I'm very chatty.
[7:27]I don't know.
[7:27]I think with having someone around, I would have been distracted in a weird way.
[7:32]I basically made the decision.
[7:33]I read a very, this is a little too easy.
[7:35]I read some kind of article in the business magazine saying you can
[7:38]create any habit in 37 days or 33 or 42.
[7:41]Pick the number.
[7:42]I had often on trying a little bit throughout my 30s with young kids to maybe try writing.
[7:47]And it just, I couldn't get in the habit.
[7:48]So in the beginning, that was the hardest part.
[7:50]Because I read this article, I said, okay fine.
[7:53]Every Monday to Friday until I hit 42 or 37, whatever number was.
[7:57]I'm in a right.
[7:57]And I'm in a right while the kids are at school from 830 to noon.
[8:01]And that's it.
[8:02]And so it just meant I stopped exercising often or I didn't see friends in the way I might have.
[8:08]I used to do coffees after job.
[8:10]I just didn't do any of that stuff.
[8:11]I'm like, I mean, I really give myself these 37 for you two days.
[8:13]And it actually worked.
[8:15]I mean, so that made me have it.
[8:18]It was a year and a half of writing every day in that way before I got the
[8:22]the real hook, the idea, the construct of the surrogacy facility.
[8:25]And that was from reading a Wall Street Journal article a year and a half later
[8:29]about an Indian surrogacy facility.
[8:31]And I didn't do any more research than that.
[8:32]It was the one that started brewing in my head.
[8:34]And so when people asked me now, what was the hardest part of writing the book?
[8:37]The hardest part was that year and a half where I had committed to something I'd
[8:39]wanted to do since I was a kid.
[8:41]But I was writing really bad short stories.
[8:42]I have many, many first chapters and novels that just were never going to work.
[8:46]And that was just faith.
[8:48]Right.
[8:48]That was just persistence and faith.
[8:49]Like I'm just going to do this because I've always wanted to do it.
[8:51]Not going anywhere.
[8:52]And it was a little depressing.
[8:53]It was definitely isolating.
[8:54]But luckily my husband from the get-go believed in it.
[8:57]My kids, they're like, my mom's a writer.
[8:59]I was like, no, you're not.
[9:01]You're like, they were just so proud of me anyway.
[9:04]Oh, I didn't embarrass me at the time.
[9:06]It did because I didn't want to tell people I was a writer.
[9:09]Because then of course the next question when my kids would introduce me that way is,
[9:12]so what have you pulled it?
[9:13]I was like, well, I mean, nothing.
[9:14]Nothing.
[9:14]I mean, I don't do.
[9:15]I don't know what I'm doing.
[9:16]You know, it was a little, but looking back, it was just so lovely that they didn't need proof
[9:20]the way I needed proof from myself.
[9:22]They just believed anyway.
[9:24]And so once I got the idea of pursuing a surrogacy facility,
[9:28]that was another three and a half years.
[9:29]But at least it felt like it was working, right?
[9:32]It was that first year and a half that was really the, that was a little tough.
[9:36]Wow.
[9:36]But it sounds like it's like always just part of the process.
[9:39]Like I've talked to a lot of people, a lot of authors at this point.
[9:42]There's nobody who's like, I came up with this brilliant idea.
[9:44]Set down, wrote it, and that's it.
[9:45]Like it's not a linear process writing and being creative and all this.
[9:49]It's just not, you can't like cross it off your list the way you can like an article even
[9:53]or a report or something else.
[9:56]So I don't know.
[9:57]No, you don't really want it.
[9:58]Yes, that's exactly what I had.
[10:00]I'm bummed in a friend of mine who's a great painter
[10:03]when I was in a cafe in that year and a half,
[10:04]feeling very down about myself
[10:06]and thinking I should get a real job
[10:08]or really spend more time with a kid or whatever,
[10:10]like making that self-flagellating a mother thing.
[10:13]And she said the same thing to me.
[10:14]She's like, all of your jobs and what banking, journalism,
[10:16]it's been linear.
[10:18]And when you worked, there was output,
[10:20]pretty regularly, right?
[10:21]And she was right.
[10:23]It was really helpful for her.
[10:24]She would say that sometimes she'll work on a painting
[10:26]and end up trashing it months later.
[10:28]But she believed that that work still went somewhere.
[10:31]And in truth, I worked, I have had chapters.
[10:34]Even once I got the idea of chapters,
[10:35]I worked on for three months.
[10:36]I was like, I finally had to let go and kill my baby.
[10:38]I forget what writer said that.
[10:40]But so I think you're totally right.
[10:41]I think I just didn't get that
[10:42]because I'd never had the non-linear experience.
[10:43]And then also starting so late in life,
[10:45]I just had so many little voices saying,
[10:47]really you think you're gonna write a book?
[10:49]What do you have to say?
[10:50]You're 41, like you have to find something real to me.
[10:53]I had all of those little, for whatever reason.
[10:55]Now it seems almost silly or too self-lageally.
[10:58]But I just didn't, it's almost like I had to give myself
[11:00]permission to take it seriously.
[11:02]Yeah.
[11:03]And that took a while.
[11:04]Yeah.
[11:05]I had a similar midlife 40 year old crisis situation.
[11:07]So I wrote a book last summer called 40 Love,
[11:11]sort of like a memoir about falling in love again at 40.
[11:14]And I've basically scrapped that book.
[11:16]And instead of like beating myself up the way
[11:19]I do about basically everything is a perfectionist.
[11:21]I'm like, wait a minute.
[11:22]Every author is like, that's part of the process.
[11:24]Like I wrote this book.
[11:25]And then it became this book.
[11:27]So I'm like, well, this is good, because maybe now,
[11:28]it means I'm on my way to the real book, you know?
[11:31]Right, right, right.
[11:32]But it's hard.
[11:33]It's hard, no, it's just so hard to internalize that.
[11:37]I feel like when you're not used to working in that way,
[11:40]where you're used to, if you work hard
[11:43]and you do well in school and you follow the 40 Love,
[11:46]then you arrive at a certain place.
[11:48]And I feel like writing and the paths
[11:50]to making wonderful books is not that way at all.
[11:53]Anyway, I'm rambling and I don't want to take away from you,
[11:56]but it sounds like your story, like I get it.
[11:59]It sounds, but I do stuff largely, I hope.
[12:04]Right, exactly.
[12:05]I mean, if you take off the, yeah,
[12:07]you stop punishing yourself, then you open up the world
[12:11]and writing a little more.
[12:12]Right.
[12:13]But anyway, your book was so great.
[12:14]And I want to talk more about that too.
[12:17]You started off with this really great inside look
[12:20]at the world of baby nurses from their perspective.
[12:23]And I have to admit I had a baby nurse.
[12:25]I've had four kids.
[12:26]I had a baby nurse with all my kids.
[12:28]So this is particularly relevant.
[12:29]I feel like for me, because obviously you're so close
[12:32]to the people helping you with your babies.
[12:33]And I found myself always wondering, like,
[12:35]well, what's going on?
[12:36]Like how can, anyway?
[12:37]So I wanted you to tell me some of the things,
[12:40]and I'm going to just read a little quote.
[12:42]You have eight who's the elder sort of statesman
[12:46]of the nursing world giving advice to her.
[12:49]Yes, you're an optic.
[12:50]Oh, I'm sorry, Ate.
[12:51]Okay, so Ate is giving advice to her cousin Jane
[12:56]who is going to take over for her as a baby nurse.
[12:59]And she's giving her all this great advice.
[13:00]And she says things like, and by they,
[13:03]you mean the people who have the baby, the clients.
[13:06]They will tell you to make yourself at home,
[13:09]but they do not want you to make yourself at home.
[13:11]Because it is their home, not yours.
[13:12]And they are not your friends.
[13:14]They are your clients, only that.
[13:16]And then she also says, be careful of the guilt, Jane.
[13:18]Do not allow it.
[13:19]At times, Mrs. Carter will tell you,
[13:21]I will take Henry, go nap, you were up all night.
[13:24]But most likely, she is only feeling guilty about you.
[13:27]So tell me a little more about this
[13:29]and how you feel baby nurses have to sort of cater
[13:32]to the moms in this way.
[13:35]Well, so it's funny because again,
[13:36]just like everything that I've been talking about
[13:38]with this straddling in the world,
[13:39]I have friends at my book launch of the strand.
[13:42]I had a number of women there
[13:44]two of whom more nannies who had worked with me in the past.
[13:47]And then several others who are just my friends
[13:49]from that period when I was at home and got to know women.
[13:51]And so I would hear stories about some of their clients.
[13:54]But I've been a client.
[13:55]And so I find the relationship between a mother,
[14:00]especially, but a family and their,
[14:02]the woman helping them raise their children
[14:04]to be so intimate and so fraught.
[14:07]Because it is fundamentally unequal.
[14:09]And we can all tell ourselves and I have said this
[14:13]and I don't say it anymore, but I have said,
[14:15]oh, well, go on the bike is like family.
[14:17]She's like family.
[14:18]I hear people say it all the time.
[14:19]And it's just not true because ultimately,
[14:22]my kids can take an app on the couch
[14:23]and I'm not gonna think about it.
[14:25]And I love, I think you want both of the nannies
[14:28]who have helped me.
[14:29]If I came home and they were sleeping on my cat,
[14:31]would I feel the same?
[14:33]Oh, I don't know.
[14:34]I should be saying, no, why are you sleeping on the couch?
[14:37]They're not my family.
[14:39]And I wish my new thing is I wish that we'd feel more
[14:41]completely accepting it is an intimate,
[14:43]but it's a work relationship.
[14:44]And we should feel as proud to say,
[14:47]I love my nanny and I am the best employer I can be
[14:50]to her and I treat her fairly,
[14:51]because they're not family.
[14:53]And that's what I was trying to explore in this piece
[14:55]that I have definitely heard.
[14:57]I have not said, I've definitely heard friends say
[14:59]that they tell their baby nurse to make themselves at home.
[15:01]And then when the baby nurse didn't make themselves at home,
[15:04]my friends were like, so annoying.
[15:05]She ate my, the last and the yogurt that I let,
[15:08]you know, don't say to make yourself at home,
[15:11]but I understand that compulsion
[15:12]because I do have this ambivalence about having help.
[15:15]I think certain cultures are much more comfortable
[15:17]that I don't think Americans are.
[15:18]I am not my mom grew up in the Philippines.
[15:20]She has much more, and we did not like they were wealthy,
[15:22]but you always have help in the Philippines
[15:24]and she's much more comfortable having help
[15:26]because she grew up that way.
[15:27]So it was that sort of push and pull and that tension.
[15:30]And yet the love because there is love there a lot of the time,
[15:33]especially with these long-term relationships,
[15:34]like nanny, I feel.
[15:36]So it was that it was exploring both.
[15:39]So interesting.
[15:40]So Jane goes to work at Golden Oaks,
[15:42]which you just described at the beginning of this talk
[15:44]is the most luxurious spot ever,
[15:46]but she has to leave her own daughter with her cousin,
[15:49]Ate.
[15:50]And she's totally anguished by this, of course.
[15:52]So Ate thinks to herself,
[15:54]Jane needs the money, but perhaps it is too much
[15:57]for her to be apart from her daughter, Amalia.
[15:59]Most of the women, Ate knows,
[16:01]have left their children behind to provide for them.
[16:03]And she has had clients, American women,
[16:05]with important jobs, bankers, and lawyers,
[16:07]and professors and universities who return to work
[16:09]when their babies were only 10 weeks old,
[16:11]staying so late in the office that they did not see
[16:13]their own children until the following morning.
[16:15]This Jane thinks she is the only one to sacrifice.
[16:18]So I thought that was super interesting too,
[16:19]because it's not only people,
[16:21]there are many ways to sacrifice for your children.
[16:24]So I just wanted to talk to you a little more about that
[16:26]and how you put that in.
[16:29]I mean, the kernel for the book,
[16:30]in that year and a half of writing really bad stuff
[16:33]to get it out of my system or part of the process,
[16:35]I wrote one flash fiction piece that was only good thing
[16:37]I wrote, like 800 bars.
[16:38]And it was about a young Filipino baby nurse
[16:40]who left her a newborn at home
[16:41]to take care of another newborn.
[16:43]So the book in many senses started with Jane.
[16:45]And I was interested in there is a lot of,
[16:48]it's very easy and understandable to feel sympathy
[16:50]and your heart sort of being broken
[16:52]when you think of a young woman like that,
[16:53]who's sacrificing basically time with her child
[16:56]to take care of other people's children
[16:57]or that child.
[16:59]But when I was writing this part,
[17:00]I thought that a lot of people do it,
[17:02]not to diminish it,
[17:03]but there are many different ways
[17:04]to sacrifice time with your family
[17:06]for the sake of that family.
[17:08]And I pushed it to the extreme
[17:10]by making the women at Golden Oaks surrogates,
[17:13]but if you think about it,
[17:14]women who work these high-powered jobs
[17:17]and maybe the primary breadwinner do it in some senses
[17:20]with more privilege, yes, and I'm not damaged it.
[17:22]There are people who have to work in class,
[17:24]people in America who need two jobs
[17:25]to support their families.
[17:26]Their kids may be at home.
[17:28]They may not be in a service-y facility,
[17:29]but they don't see their kids.
[17:30]They're struggling to make it
[17:31]and they're sacrificing that time for their kids.
[17:34]And then there are people who like some of the Filipino
[17:36]and their kids in Manila
[17:37]to become baby nurses here or other things.
[17:39]And so I think it is a spectrum
[17:41]what ties all of these people together is that their mothers
[17:44]and they're all doing it for a love of a child.
[17:46]And I think almost the more interesting question is,
[17:49]if the fundamental driver of all these disparate women
[17:52]from the high-powered lawyers
[17:53]or something like our kids to the women
[17:55]and joining Golden Oaks,
[17:56]if that compulsion is the same,
[17:58]then what ends up making them so different
[18:01]in society and the book and how they treat each other.
[18:03]And I think that is where my fastness and kind of lie.
[18:07]So lies.
[18:08]You also wrote an Emory Claire article
[18:10]about how at the beginning you really wanted to understand
[18:14]how women, particularly women who had left their kids
[18:17]in other countries can emotionally compartmentalize successfully
[18:21]to do their jobs well and sort of deal with being a part.
[18:24]So what did you find
[18:26]when you were talking to people about that?
[18:27]I didn't do explicit research for this book.
[18:29]It was more years and years of just being
[18:31]kind of a friendly person who is curious about people.
[18:34]So I knew a lot of people's stories,
[18:35]but it was never with the intent of a book
[18:38]until then I started writing the book
[18:39]and all of these memories and stories came back.
[18:41]And in those conversations,
[18:43]I never felt comfortable asking that
[18:45]because I was worried there might be judgment in it
[18:48]or I was just worried of making them sad.
[18:50]Right, yeah.
[18:52]You've just seen them sad.
[18:53]And so I never, and so yeah, because I didn't do research,
[18:56]I didn't like have a journalistic approach
[18:58]to asking people the tough questions.
[18:59]It was just people who became my friends
[19:00]or didn't become my friends,
[19:01]but I was sitting in a park bench talking to them.
[19:04]I have heard some of the women over the years say things to me
[19:08]especially when the kids they were taking care of
[19:09]was the same age as their own children.
[19:11]Wow, they have a tutor.
[19:13]Wow, what chance do my kids, things like that?
[19:15]That quite honestly made me feel uncomfortable
[19:17]because my kids were basically,
[19:18]I mean, they're talking about their clients kids
[19:19]and my kids are clients kid.
[19:20]My kids have all the opportunities
[19:22]and privileges of their clients kids.
[19:24]And so then again, I would maybe shy away
[19:26]from that conversation too.
[19:27]So I'm guessing, and I believe from the people
[19:30]I'm closer to who are domestic workers,
[19:32]you just kind of deal with it
[19:34]and see it as a different world from the one you're living in
[19:37]and trying not to draw too many parallels
[19:39]because when you do make the parallels,
[19:40]the friends I know who do make those parallels,
[19:42]it's hard for them.
[19:43]They feel like the kids never are not gonna have a shot.
[19:45]Yeah, I think one of the things your book does so well
[19:48]is just highlight sort of the unfairness
[19:50]of the lottery of life that you're born into one family
[19:53]or another if you can't control it
[19:56]and you either get all these immediate advantages or you don't.
[20:00]And not to say you can't change your life,
[20:02]but some people have to work so much harder
[20:04]than other people.
[20:04]Some just have to maintain their lives.
[20:06]And I feel like your book really looks into that very well.
[20:10]So I was just wondering, what do you think?
[20:12]Like, do you think, I mean, in what way is this fair?
[20:16]Like, is there anything we can even do about it?
[20:18]Like, do you feel like this is something like from God?
[20:21]Is there something the government should get involved in?
[20:23]Like, is this just life?
[20:26]Do you know what I mean?
[20:27]Is it just like life and we have to deal with it?
[20:29]No, it's me.
[20:30]It's since since I've thought about this a lot
[20:33]not in the way of an expert just to someone
[20:36]noticing differences starting in college probably.
[20:39]And then if the economist was always a very live debate
[20:42]when I was writing for the economist,
[20:44]the difference between relative inequality,
[20:45]absolute inequality, which one matters, which one doesn't,
[20:48]I think it's pretty clear that inequality's
[20:50]gotten to such a point, to such a point,
[20:53]that it is starting to affect the basis for who we are,
[20:57]as I'm talking now as Americans.
[20:58]The idea that anyone can come here
[21:00]and make it the idea that all men are created equal
[21:05]and what that actually means.
[21:06]I've been reading articles lately from people like Eli
[21:09]Brode and others who are getting into this debate
[21:12]and not in a way that some might expect,
[21:14]or some of these billionaires are saying
[21:16]that we should have a wealth tax,
[21:17]that I'm not an expert, I'm exploring this,
[21:19]but the idea that it's a lot,
[21:20]and then on the other side that you see people
[21:22]politicians very openly stated that they're socialist
[21:24]in a way that you wouldn't have gotten
[21:26]maybe much traction, let's say,
[21:28]a generation, definitely a generation ago,
[21:29]but they're the same phenomenon, right?
[21:32]And so at the very least, I don't know the answer,
[21:34]but the fact that it's becoming a mainstream discussion
[21:38]from both ends, from people who have the privilege
[21:40]to change things and from these politicians
[21:43]have the ability to change things too,
[21:45]but sometimes I feel like they're talking about it too.
[21:48]I just hope it gets there.
[21:50]I don't know that this place in the inequality,
[21:53]that there's always been inequality in life, right?
[21:55]And the idea that at least if you give people a shot,
[21:58]if they want to work hard to bridge that,
[22:00]that's what makes inequality, if not palatable, acceptable, right?
[22:04]And so my issue is less would be not less weird,
[22:08]but inequality, but with, do people have the chance
[22:11]if they have it in them?
[22:12]When first of all, have a decent life,
[22:13]I wouldn't have a decent life in health care, I believe,
[22:16]but to surmount whatever they've been born with
[22:19]in the unlocked lucky lottery of life,
[22:21]because a lot of your life, I think that is a part
[22:23]that is what it is, right?
[22:24]And I just, I'll tell you, I guess until I had privilege
[22:28]and money more than I grew up with,
[22:30]I didn't understand fully how unfair it is.
[22:32]And I say that with very mixes of right where
[22:35]but sort of royally emotions,
[22:38]because on one hand, I feel very lucky that my,
[22:40]I'm at this place that my kids have that,
[22:42]but I had no idea what the bill was.
[22:46]And I don't know if 10-year-old,
[22:47]13-year-old, 17-year-old me back in Wisconsin knew
[22:51]what I let them able to give my kids
[22:53]the opportunities, the enrichment that feel it,
[22:57]so many things.
[22:58]What that 17-year-old who was working her ass off
[23:01]to get out of Wisconsin and do better
[23:03]if she would have felt energized or discouraged.
[23:06]I really don't.
[23:07]And so again, that's back to being on both sides.
[23:09]I just, that's the book I wanted to write,
[23:11]that if people, some people read it
[23:14]and question a little bit, what's around us?
[23:16]Even if some readers do, then I will feel proud of that.
[23:20]So now that you've survived this whole book writing process
[23:24]and you've written this beautiful book
[23:26]that's made people think about all these really important issues
[23:28]and maybe think about their own home life
[23:31]and domestic situations a little bit differently
[23:34]and really changed the day-to-day lives as so many people,
[23:37]what's coming next for you?
[23:40]Like, did you love the process?
[23:42]Did you find it too frustrating that it took five years
[23:44]to write this book?
[23:45]Like, are you now energized to write another one
[23:47]for like, how have you ended up thinking about this whole thing?
[23:51]And what do you want to do next?
[23:52]No, I definitely, I'm like, MCM issued a write.
[23:55]I have not had time because it turns out
[23:57]that selling a book takes so much time.
[23:59]Starting in January, I've been really busy doing
[24:02]a whole bunch of stuff, talks and media
[24:03]and started writing personal essays
[24:05]for a few publications, which I have never done before.
[24:08]It's really fun.
[24:09]I've learned a lot writing them.
[24:11]Actually, things about myself that I didn't even know
[24:13]until I wrote them.
[24:14]And I really love the, I was very nervous
[24:17]about the public speaking, public facing part of it.
[24:19]It's still not, I don't think my forte,
[24:21]but I really love, ended up really like them
[24:23]because so far, and I'm still new,
[24:25]my book's not even out two months yet.
[24:26]So far, I've learned something yet.
[24:27]I think except for one event, I've learned something.
[24:30]Like, someone's asked a question that I thought,
[24:32]I never thought about that or pointed out something
[24:34]in the book, basic things in the book.
[24:35]But I didn't, someone said, you know,
[24:37]there aren't men in the book except for Leon.
[24:39]Are you trying to say that white men still in the world?
[24:40]I'm like, oh, right, I mean,
[24:43]you didn't write books and you're not trying
[24:47]to put all these messages in,
[24:48]but things get in there from your subconscious.
[24:50]And then it takes someone on the outside to point it out.
[24:52]So it's been really on this part.
[24:54]I really love it, but I definitely definitely,
[24:56]definitely want to write.
[24:57]I mean, this is it.
[24:58]This is what I've always wanted to do.
[24:59]Finally, I'm just a really late bloomer.
[25:01]No.
[25:04]I actually feel like it's very rare for,
[25:06]and I've been trying to figure out just, you know,
[25:09]obviously not from a research standpoint,
[25:11]but just from life experience.
[25:14]Most people writing fantastic books are not 25 years old.
[25:17]Right?
[25:18]And so is it what you learn over time as a person
[25:22]that you have to bring to your writing?
[25:24]Because then everybody comes into it thinking
[25:26]that they're late, whereas this is actually the age
[25:29]I feel like when great writing really happens.
[25:31]So you're probably right.
[25:33]You know what it is, is our society is so youth obsessed
[25:35]and we love all those lifts like the 30 under 30
[25:38]and that, that, that, that, that, that.
[25:39]So what gets a lot of error when there's a new phenomenon
[25:43]out there, you hear a lot about it.
[25:44]Like in Sally Rooney, it is incredibly talented.
[25:47]Like her books.
[25:48]Yes.
[25:48]She's very young and she gets, because she's a great writer.
[25:51]She gets a lot of press, but because of rage.
[25:53]So young, right?
[25:54]And so I think that is probably in every profession
[25:56]that those 40 under 40, 30 under 30,
[25:58]listen to every, it's in media, it's in business,
[26:01]it's in writing.
[26:02]But you're right, it probably isn't that.
[26:05]I just think like in other professions,
[26:07]you actually can be just as good when you're younger.
[26:10]I don't believe that.
[26:11]I don't think for writing.
[26:12]I'm not that some people can't be outliers.
[26:14]Well, anyway, this is just my own theory.
[26:16]I'm like, hey, I'm interested to see what you're saying.
[26:19]And I, I just think there's something about,
[26:22]I don't know if it's the wisdom with age or the experience
[26:24]or just something, but I feel like I want to like go back
[26:27]to myself and college, because I've, I've also always
[26:29]wanted to be a writer and just be like, keep doing it.
[26:32]But just FYI, don't expect anything big to happen
[26:35]until you're 40.
[26:36]It's like, you know, everything along the way will help.
[26:39]But you know, pace yourself.
[26:42]No, my son, my oldest one, he's 13 asked me to speak
[26:45]to his class at school.
[26:47]And just because he's soon not going to want me around
[26:49]or met all because he'll be a fool on to, I went in right away.
[26:52]And he said, mommy, the night before I said,
[26:54]don't worry if the kids don't ask you any questions tomorrow.
[26:57]It's a fraud to, I was speaking on a Friday,
[26:58]it's a Friday, it's the last period of the day.
[27:00]Just don't be sad.
[27:01]Oh, I'm also sensitive.
[27:03]And sensitively thought that I would be really sad.
[27:05]And I went in and my, I wasn't sure what to say.
[27:08]So I just made it about exactly what you're saying.
[27:09]I said, you know, there is this,
[27:12]especially of their generation.
[27:13]There's so much pressure to know where you're going.
[27:15]Like some of the kids already think my calls.
[27:16]They're so great.
[27:17]I mean, so crazy.
[27:18]And I said, you know, I don't think I could have written this book
[27:21]if I didn't take all these detours and zigzags.
[27:23]But along the way, I wanted to be right.
[27:25]I didn't know why always I was doing what I was doing.
[27:27]I was taking the next thing.
[27:28]I was trying to get a lot out of whatever I did.
[27:30]But I didn't, there was no grand plan that led to this book.
[27:33]It turns out the book couldn't have been written
[27:34]without knowing about finance, running for the economists,
[27:37]being about all of these things.
[27:39]And I said, so just have some faith
[27:40]that if you're working hard and staying open and curious,
[27:43]it will lead somewhere.
[27:44]And at the end, it was dismissal.
[27:46]And they were still asking questions.
[27:48]And it was so, and finally I said,
[27:51]you know that we guys were dismissed seven, eight minutes.
[27:53]We were like, wow, and then they all ran away.
[27:55]But when I'd heard from the mothers and dads after,
[27:58]what their kids were saying, it was mainly that.
[28:00]It was like, oh, it's so good to not be like,
[28:02]you always have to know.
[28:03]And I do feel like you and I already feel that
[28:05]about our younger selves.
[28:07]but I feel like the pressure on kids now is even more heightened.
[28:10]Or maybe it's just living in New York City
[28:11]and being a son of all.
[28:12]I don't know.
[28:13]I kind of feel like it's everywhere, though.
[28:14]When I speak to my friends and staff and other places.
[28:16]My 12 year old son the other day in response
[28:20]to something random, some quiz, or I don't know,
[28:22]something he like slumped over at the kitchen island.
[28:25]And he's like, do you think my shot at Princeton is gone now?
[28:30]And I was like, oh, you're 12.
[28:31]Like, are you kidding me?
[28:33]Yeah, anyway, so I'm so.
[28:35]And I'm like, there's so many schools.
[28:36]What are you talking about?
[28:38]Exactly.
[28:39]Yeah, I think there's something cultural.
[28:41]Yeah.
[28:43]Well, I know we're almost set of time.
[28:45]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors now
[28:48]having been down this road if there's somebody out there?
[28:50]I know we've been touching on this, but I feel like I've
[28:53]been saying way too much myself.
[28:55]Well, what's your advice to aspiring authors
[28:57]aside from letting it unfold throughout the course of life?
[29:01]I mean, I think that really the main one
[29:02]in those first months when I was getting into the habit,
[29:06]it was, I would read a lot of the books about writing.
[29:10]And the common thread among them and the one that I really
[29:12]found to be true is just the persistence
[29:14]to stack up the pages as Ann Patrick says and stick with it.
[29:17]I do have friends who don't believe that you need a routine.
[29:19]For me, I had to write every day.
[29:21]I directed to, in part, to prove to myself
[29:23]that I was taking it seriously.
[29:25]I just, and even in some days when my kids were
[29:27]sick, it would be 30 minutes.
[29:28]But I kept my foot in that door.
[29:29]I didn't let that door ever really shut.
[29:31]And I just kept at it until something came.
[29:34]So I think it's the persistence and the faith,
[29:36]because it may be a while before you come up with the idea.
[29:38]And it's going to make sense for you.
[29:40]And the other one that's much more micro
[29:41]is if you're interested in writing a book,
[29:43]I kept through those five years.
[29:45]Anytime anyone at a party anywhere,
[29:47]like I can't drop off.
[29:48]Oh, my roommate from Bucknell, I used to be an agent.
[29:51]I'm like, roommate from Bucknell, agent.
[29:53]List of potential agents.
[29:55]Why do you all so vaguely?
[29:57]I knew most of them so vaguely.
[29:59]But at least I don't want to.
[30:00]but it just got me get around the slush pile.
[30:02]That's a very micro thing,
[30:03]but it was really helpful to not totally start
[30:05]from scratch five years later when I had a manuscript.
[30:07]I had this list of little connections that I could use
[30:10]to say, I know Bob.
[30:11]He was your roommate at Bucknell.
[30:14]Very smart.
[30:15]Here is my man.
[30:15]He was like, that's awesome.
[30:18]That's awesome.
[30:20]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's time to read books
[30:23]and for writing such a beautiful novel
[30:25]that I will inspire so much thought provoking
[30:27]discussion around the world.
[30:29]Thank you.
[30:29]Thank you.
[30:30]Of course.
[30:31]Bye.
[30:32]Thanks again to my sponsor, Libro FM audio books.
[30:36]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[30:38]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[30:41]to read books and at zippy Owens
[30:44]and my new podcast at Kids Do Have Time to Read.
[30:47]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[30:50]for the Sound Editing.
[30:51]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:53]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[30:56]Thanks for listening.
[30:56]You can always email me at zippy and zippy Owens.com.