Debut novelist! Sarai Johnson, GROWN WOMEN
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[0:42]Sarai Johnson is the author of Grown Women, a novel.
[0:46]She grew up in the South primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied journalism and English at Howard University.
[0:51]She later earned a Master's in Literature from American University.
[0:55]She has taught writing at both her Alma Maughters and with several non-profit writing programs in the DC area.
[1:01]She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband, daughter, and dog.
[1:04]Welcome, Sarai. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss Grown Women.
[1:10]Dave, you're novel. Very exciting.
[1:12]Thank you so much.
[1:13]You're so welcome.
[1:14]I feel like we are deep in the mom's space. You've just had a baby two weeks ago.
[1:19]Your book is all about mothers and daughters, and my whole life is bad.
[1:25]I feel like motherhood. I feel like, right, especially right now.
[1:29]Okay, tell listeners what your book is about, please.
[1:32]So Grown Women is about originations of mothers and daughters,
[1:37]and a black family, Evelyn, Charlotte, Carina, and Camille.
[1:42]The stories sort of opens with Charlotte, who is pregnant and teenage, and
[1:48]newly fled from an overbearing mother named Evelyn.
[1:52]She does not originally intend to keep her child, who she names Carina, but she does,
[1:56]and unfortunately makes a lot of mistakes in raising her.
[1:59]It's not until Charlotte becomes a grandmother to Camille that her life is truly changed.
[2:06]Camille offers her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother an opportunity
[2:12]to sort of rethink and redo their trauma and their relationships while they attempt to collectively
[2:20]rape her. Wow, excellent summary.
[2:24]You know, you really speak in the book to the ambivalence of motherhood of what it means to be a mom,
[2:32]how some moms are ready. Quote-unquote, right? And some are excited, and some aren't, and it takes
[2:39]time, and sometimes being a grandmother is the thing that can make you feel more ready to be the
[2:45]mother all along. The way that you write is absolutely beautiful, truly, and you conjure up
[2:53]these women in such detail. They're so visual and there, and you talk about sort of the golden
[3:00]glow of not Carina, the mom, Charlotte, Charlotte, and the role of education, and I mean,
[3:08]there's just so much in this book. Okay, so where did the idea for the book come from for you?
[3:13]So it comes from sort of two places. I, you know, I'm a reader, obviously, but I read a lot of
[3:20]books that I felt like represented black women and black moms in particular and sort of flat,
[3:27]sort of either they know all the answers, they're sort of saints, or they are evil, or essentially,
[3:36]really deeply troubled with no sort of dimension to them, and I was frustrated and not seeing
[3:41]sort of a nuanced portrait of black women and black motherhood. It also comes from a very
[3:47]personal place of trying to sort of figure out my own relationship with my own mother. And while
[3:55]I was writing this, I became a mother, and I was asking myself, like, what do I do with the
[3:59]difficulty of my own relationship with my mother as I sort of attempt to build this relationship
[4:05]with my daughter? So tell me more about your relationship with your mother. Let's just go right there.
[4:10]Okay. So it's a difficult relationship. There's a lot of, have I say, critique, a lot of judgment,
[4:20]criticism. As I sort of grew older, it became more difficult to connect to her in a sort of
[4:27]meaningful way. My therapist would say there's a lot of jealousy in the sense that I've more
[4:34]educated than her. I just generally have more than her. But it took a long time for me to sort
[4:41]of understand that someone hurt her, that she was hurting in a way. She sort of projected that
[4:51]onto me. And I was trying to figure out what to do once I got to this place of understanding
[5:00]that that's where this comes from. And I realized I could either stay angry or sort of try to do
[5:07]something with that information and think they're like, why did she make this choice? And how could
[5:13]I make different choices? And what does that look like? And in many ways, that's how grown women
[5:19]came to be. Oh, this is great. And now I think I need your therapist. I have a great therapist.
[5:25]It sounds like for 10 years. Oh, that's a lot of therapy. There's one sort of particularly
[5:34]powerful. I mean, there are a lot of powerful scenes in the book, but one in which I know I shouldn't
[5:38]get all the sees mixed up. And I know that's even like a joke in the book when she's debating
[5:41]naming the daughter. And she's like, aren't these sees going to be confusing? And she's like,
[5:45]no, it's fine. But when her daughter gets pregnant at about the same age of 17 that she was pregnant,
[5:51]she immediately asks her daughter, okay, well, you know, when do you want to get rid of
[5:56]anyone to make you the appointment, do money, blah, blah, blah. And I think it kind of knocked her
[6:00]off her, you know, knock her backwards. And how can I knock her? What's that expression? Knock
[6:06]her off her feet or whatever? Surprise her, whatever. It doesn't matter. Because I don't think her
[6:11]first reaction was to necessarily get rid of the baby. And she was asking her mom then, well,
[6:16]did you want to get rid of me? And how did I come to be? And truth she had wanted to,
[6:22]not keep her originally. And yet ended up keeping her. And it sort of, in that moment, it became
[6:29]clear, I think, to her that that was not the original plan necessarily and that it was definitely an
[6:34]option. And then when she comes around and says, no, I'm going to be here for you. And she said,
[6:40]why it's the right thing to do. And she was still so surprised that that was the path that her mom
[6:45]took, even though it was right. Like that she knew right and wrong and all that. Tell me about that
[6:50]scene and painting that portrait and, you know, what that does to both parties in that moment.
[6:56]So I think Charlotte's initial reaction was actually to sort of protect Kerena from sort of
[7:03]living her life in a way. But also, I think Charlotte also is more clear headed at this point in
[7:11]her life than she was when she became a mother and is able to sort of think, my daughter is not
[7:16]an extension of me. And I think that it's such an important sort of period of motherhood as
[7:22]realizing this child is not me. This is a completely different entity. And sort of realizing I can do
[7:30]something for my daughter here and being the support that I did not have. And Kerena realizes
[7:38]she, well, she, I think she knew all along that she was not necessarily wanted. But she realizes
[7:45]that she is a source of pain for her mother in a way that she did not know. And she sees an
[7:52]opportunity also, I think, when Charlotte comes to her and says we're going to do this together,
[7:59]sort of an opportunity to connect, which is something that Kerena desperately wants is connection.
[8:05]Yeah. Well, and tell me about sort of the legacy of education, right? Because they start off
[8:11]with Evelyn, who is from the family of well-known physician. And they come from one sort of
[8:18]station in life. And then there's the lack of education sort of as the generations unfold and
[8:25]well for a little bit. Talk about the role of education and how it affects the women. And is there
[8:30]that same jealousy? So the it's really interesting. I wanted to do something interesting with
[8:37]education and sort of the lack of education and sort of the way that people can sort of rise
[8:42]without it based on sort of choices that they make. So we have Evelyn who has a PhD and literature.
[8:49]She's a writer, et cetera. And she pursues academia at a time when women, black women,
[8:55]especially we're not necessarily embraced in that world. She encourages Charlotte to do something
[9:03]similar. Charlotte, I don't think has a mind for it in the same sort of way. And that frustrates
[9:10]her. And Charlotte's pain sort of causes her to sort of, I wouldn't say fail. She doesn't fail.
[9:18]She struggles deeply. And she, I don't think she wants the same thing for Kerena. And she,
[9:26]the way she responds to that is not necessarily the right way to respond to that. It's not
[9:33]the right way to sort of push a child forward, I would say. And Kerena also does not have sort of
[9:40]the same sort of drives that Evelyn has, but she has a different sort of desire to succeed that
[9:48]she pursues through the cocktail mixology. And she sort of rises through that without a traditional
[9:55]education, but also sees that Camille.
[10:00]life would be easier for Camille if she sort of pursues
[10:03]a more traditional education, which she does,
[10:07]but not quite in the way that Corinna envisioned.
[10:13]And again, it's about the way that our children
[10:16]are not an extension of us and the choices that we make
[10:19]or what we want for our children,
[10:21]do not necessarily always line up with us and our ideals.
[10:27]I remember when my parents got divorced when I was 14,
[10:30]I promised there's a reason why I'm saying this,
[10:32]but I felt like my mom felt like I was an extension of her,
[10:37]like how I looked and how, you know,
[10:39]and I was like, what could I do to make her the most angry
[10:42]to show up just how mad I am?
[10:44]And I was like, I'm going to gain a lot of weight.
[10:47]And I'm going to show her, anyway,
[10:48]if this is my maturity, but yeah, we do what we can.
[10:52]Definitely definitely definitely understand.
[10:56]And even Charlotte was upset that her daughter wasn't
[10:59]even as traditionally beautiful as she had hoped too.
[11:02]There was also that, which I found very interesting.
[11:05]You know, you don't often see that
[11:06]where the mom is like, well, she's not cute.
[11:09]I mean, that's not exactly how it was portrayed, but.
[11:12]Right. And Corinna has this, she understands
[11:15]that she doesn't look like her mother.
[11:17]And that's also like a source of frustration for her.
[11:19]Yeah. And that's, that's my experience also.
[11:21]I do not necessarily look like my mother
[11:24]and I could tell that that frustrated her.
[11:26]And it was just like a question pulled.
[11:30]Am I part of her?
[11:32]Am I not part of her?
[11:33]What does the point for about me?
[11:35]You know, that sort of thing.
[11:37]Interesting.
[11:38]But you're beautiful though.
[11:39]So I'm sure that wasn't the thing.
[11:42]Oh my goodness.
[11:43]So when you were writing,
[11:44]tell me about the process of writing the book
[11:46]and I know you teach and you edit
[11:47]and you do all these amazing things
[11:49]and you know, your education is like off the charts.
[11:51]Talk about writing it, how long it took the process
[11:55]like all the behind the scenes.
[11:57]So process is not very straightforward.
[12:01]So I actually had been working on something
[12:06]about the Camille character for a long time.
[12:10]I'd written several short stories.
[12:13]I can grad school trying to figure out like who Camille is,
[12:17]what drives her, where does she come from?
[12:20]And I started working on something
[12:24]probably like in 2019 that I was going to
[12:29]write the origin story of Camille.
[12:32]And I showed it to someone
[12:34]and they were like, I think this is a book.
[12:37]And for some reason I was like,
[12:39]I'm gonna do that.
[12:40]Oh, that's a great idea.
[12:43]So I actually left a full-time job
[12:48]to work on sort of a outline draft
[12:55]while my husband was like,
[12:56]I'll cover our living expenses
[12:58]and you can figure this out a little bit.
[13:01]And I wrote the outline.
[13:04]It a very sort of fits and starts sort of way.
[13:07]I realized like there's a lot of advice
[13:09]about like you set aside two hours in the morning
[13:12]and two hours at night.
[13:13]And you just write or you have a word count
[13:17]that you meet and that was not working for me.
[13:19]So I did other things while I thought about the book.
[13:28]And I only wrote when I was clear-headed,
[13:31]like I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do.
[13:34]And when I was doing other things,
[13:36]I was also, you know, of course reading books
[13:39]that felt in a similar sort of genre,
[13:41]similar themes to what ground women eventually turned out
[13:45]to be, which would be like Cora Hadora
[13:49]is probably by Gail Jones, one of the number one,
[13:52]beloved white oleander, et cetera.
[13:55]And I read like I was in school,
[13:58]like highlighting, figuring out like what I wanted
[14:03]to say, what things didn't sit right with me,
[14:05]what tropes didn't sit right with me,
[14:07]what I wanted to convey based on sort of older texts
[14:12]and what I wanted to avoid.
[14:15]I know that kind of stuff.
[14:16]So I spent very little time actually writing
[14:19]and a lot more time thinking and reading.
[14:22]And it took probably about a year or two
[14:26]before I was ready to submit to agents.
[14:30]I had, I was sharing with friends
[14:32]and my husband listened to me read numerous drafts.
[14:37]And at that point, my current agent asked me
[14:43]to make some revisions.
[14:44]And I think they signed me in 2021.
[14:47]So I think it took about two years.
[14:50]So do you ever regret your decision when someone told you
[14:54]to be a book?
[14:56]I don't know what I was thinking sometimes, like I kind of jumped
[15:01]over the like literary magazine submission era
[15:05]in which straight to the book.
[15:07]And I think a lot of that has to do with like,
[15:08]I don't necessarily gravitate towards short stories.
[15:11]I'm much more like a novel person.
[15:13]So when I think about writing a short story,
[15:16]it's not as easy to me.
[15:18]Like it doesn't necessarily make as much sense
[15:21]even though there's some stunning short stories out there
[15:23]that I really love and appreciate.
[15:25]But novels I love and sort of have spent more time in it.
[15:30]So I understand more I think.
[15:32]What are you reading now?
[15:34]I just finished by Ette from her first one.
[15:39]A woman is no man.
[15:40]Yes, that's right.
[15:41]Just finished a woman is no man.
[15:43]And I just started the God of small things.
[15:46]Mm, amazing.
[15:48]I feel like there's some similarities with your book
[15:50]and Hello Beautiful by Anna Volotano.
[15:52]Have you read that book?
[15:53]I have not.
[15:54]I have.
[15:55]It's a multi-generational.
[15:58]It's more siblings than moms and daughters,
[16:01]but it's the same like complicated relationships
[16:04]and overtime.
[16:05]I don't know.
[16:06]There's the pacing even a little bit.
[16:08]Anyway.
[16:09]I listened to your interview about it.
[16:11]Oh, thank you.
[16:12]That's so nice.
[16:13]Very funny.
[16:14]I have it on my Libby Netflix.
[16:18]So that's worth getting to it.
[16:20]Excellent.
[16:21]Amazing.
[16:22]And what are you working on now aside from having an infant
[16:26]and a toddler?
[16:30]I am thinking about, I have written,
[16:33]I think it's about a young black millennial woman
[16:39]who sort of rejected her mother
[16:42]for being kind of a simple house life
[16:45]instead of as she perceives.
[16:47]It's the correct way to be a woman,
[16:50]pursuing a career and gold outside of the family.
[16:54]But in the book, she's going to sort of move back towards
[17:00]understanding her mother and appreciating her work
[17:03]in the house.
[17:04]Amazing.
[17:05]Well, well, that's off to you.
[17:07]I mean, I was not, my brain was so fried
[17:10]after my kids when I had any barn.
[17:13]So I was, that was predate.
[17:16]My brain was not functioning at all.
[17:17]And as soon as I gave birth, I was like,
[17:20]oh, I can get back to thinking.
[17:23]Okay, so there you go.
[17:25]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[17:27]I would say it's important not to keep your work close
[17:32]to your chest for too long.
[17:35]If you're working on it sort of in a solitary way,
[17:38]it won't progress in the way that it needs to.
[17:41]If you are to share it with readers, other writers,
[17:45]I shared it with just like my friends.
[17:47]And the more that I was able to sort of talk about it
[17:50]with other people, the more it made sense.
[17:52]So I think often, if maybe it feels embarrassing
[17:56]to sort of say, especially early works with others,
[18:01]but it's better to show it, better to reveal it
[18:07]to whoever you can, whoever will read it,
[18:09]or who will listen.
[18:10]Excellent, amazing.
[18:12]Well, Sarah, congratulations.
[18:14]I really thought your book was beautiful.
[18:15]I love the way you write, I really do.
[18:17]You've been like, at the beginning of each chapter,
[18:19]you have such a punchy line and, you know,
[18:23]the smell of the catfish.
[18:24]I don't know, you're just, it's very,
[18:26]you're a very good writer, but you probably know.
[18:29]But I agree with the consensus, best of luck.
[18:33]Thank you so much.
[18:34]Okay, take care.
[18:35]Bye bye.
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