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Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to this podcast on the New Books Network, I bet you like to read. I know that I do. That's why I founded the New Books Network. So as readers, we need to know what to read. And I have a podcast to recommend for you. That being the Proofread podcast, do you have a goal to read more this year? How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread podcast is here to help you. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They have 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. They offer a brief synopsis, there's fun and witty commentary, and there are no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. Life's too short to read a bad book, so subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming soon.
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Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot every drop of Jack.
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Daniels is mellowed through sugar maple charcoal, giving Jack its smooth taste. That's what makes Jack Jack.
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Please drink responsibly. Jack Daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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December 1994 train line, Montreal to Toronto. There's a knock at the door. You okay? How did she even get here? In this cramped toilet on this train with her head between her knees? Wasn't that what you did to get ready for a crash? Put your head down? Or was that only for flying? Her crash and burn already happened. This was the part that came after. And it was way worse. This is GP Gottlieb, host for New Books and Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. And today I'm talking to Aviva Rubin about her debut, White, a novel the story opens with Sarah Cartel being accompanied, as she says, to a loony bin for safe keeping. Sarah was raised with white supremacist beliefs, and as a teen, began to understand the idiocy and evil behind linked groups whose very essence is comprised of hate. She decides to infiltrate one of the racist groups in Canada in hopes of bringing it down. At some point, her duplicity becomes unbearable. But Sarah is committed to what she thinks is right, even if she risks her health to do whatever it takes. Hi, Aviva, thanks for joining me.
- [03:03]
E
Hi, Galit. Thanks so much for having me. I'm very excited about our conversation.
- [03:07]
D
So what triggered the novel and what was the first scene you wrote?
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E
Oh, the novel was triggered, I guess, by during the 1990s. In the mid-1990s, I did a lot of activism, like street activism, anti fascist and anti racist, in a group that we formed called jafoffel, the Jewish Feminist Antifascist League. And there was a lot of white supremacy, white supremacist activity in Toronto at that time and in the country, some of the people that are mentioned in the book, like the Heritage Front and Ernst Undel. So there was a lot to fight. And at that time, what was interesting is that it was almost like our group was perceived to be almost as kind of fringe as the white supremacists and neo Nazis were. Like. It was sort of like, oh, troublemakers on both sides. And I was sort of. I became really interested in that kind of notion of marginality and who. Who is doing what on the margins of, you know, of society.
- [04:18]
D
It's really. It was a wonderful novel, as I already told you before we started the recording, but we learn right away that Sarah has broken down. One of her close friends has been hurt, and she. Sarah thinks she's to blame. Can you introduce your protagonist and tell me, is Sarah Cartel based on someone in particular?
- [04:37]
E
No, she's not. I mean, I have. The book is dedicated to a very close friend of mine. Was a very close friend of mine, and she had done infiltration in a white supremacist group in Montreal at that time. And we had talked about that a lot. She did not come. Her family of origin was not a white supremacist family at all. So it was just loosely based on a bunch of ideas that popped into my head. There was no Sarah Cartel. I think it sort of interested me, the question of what happens when you grow up in a family of haters and what do you do with that? Because, of course, that's the challenge. She doesn't Just walk away from her family completely. And you find that out pretty quickly. That's sort of the dilemma that she faces. And as you know, the central relationship in the book is a therapeutic relationship between Sarah and her therapist after she ends up in a mental health facility. After everything goes down in Montreal.
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D
Yeah. Sarah grows up steeped in Christian nationalism in a small town in Canada. As a kid, she finds a book in the attic that's illegal in Canada called the hoax of the 20th century. It's right up there with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which I once found on a bookshelf and a Jewish bookstore in Spain. Anyway, can you talk about that book hoax of the 20th century and how you came upon it?
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E
Well, I just. I mean, it. I actually, the research that I did, I read a number of books as background for this in writing the novel, but one of the main ones was a book written by. Sorry, I'm drawing a tiny. Does It Matter Anyway. About the history of white supremacy in Canada. So Warren Kinsella, and it was called Web of Hate. So it was super useful to me. It went a little bit into the United States, but. And, you know, talking generally about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations that kind of came to be and, And. And how they did. And then right up until the mid-1990s. And so that is where I found out about a lot. A lot of books. And I didn't. I didn't fully read Hoax. I just read. I just read about it. Well, who would want to.
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D
I totally understand. Sarah's grandfather started the Church of Purity. Can you say more about that?
- [07:10]
E
Yeah, I mean, he's an interesting. One of the things that I say, and we may get into it later, is that there's really only one categorically evil character in the story and that, like sort of an unredeemable character, and that's the grandfather. And he, you know, he had had something happen in his life. I mean, I think that he was always a hater. And he came from, you know, many gener of white supremacists in the United States. And he ends up moving to Canada at some point in his life and he gets married. And you find out sort of what happened. His wife left him for an African man. And I think that sort of triggered everything. But he felt the hatred that he felt before that. And he sort of broke from the church that was the main church in Goderich, Ontario, where her childhood is set, and begins this church of his own with people who kind of share his beliefs. Although it's interesting because there's also this sense that, you know, there are a bunch of, you know, I wouldn't say they are hardcore. You know, they're sort of garden variety in a way. You know, they feel these, they hold these beliefs, but they're not. He's always very frustrated by the fact that nobody wants to do what he wants to do, you know, in terms of moving forward. The, you know, the like white. White control of the world and getting rid of immigrants. So he. There's a lot of, of sort of ongoing frustration. Although, you know, what comes up in the book is he doesn't really take that action himself. And I think one of the things that Sarah realizes when she's quite young, because when she's really little, she believes in him and she believes the things that he believes and is very proud of them. And as she gets older, she realizes that he kind of spouts a lot about these beliefs but is unwilling to really stand up for them. And that kind of starts shifting how she feels about him.
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D
And wouldn't he be comfortable right now in the United States where hatred.
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A
On.
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D
The ascendancy and disliking other cultures and being, you know, just loathing immigrants is just, it's rising. Yeah.
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E
And I think one of the. What I was talking about initially about, about these ideas being marginal, the problem with right now, with this moment is that there's been a huge amount of permission granted and these ideas and these belief systems are no longer marginal at all. In fact, they're welcome. And it's like, well, you have your pride, I have my pride. Why should we not feel this way? So I think that in the mid-1990s, there was still a sense that even if you felt that way, you didn't speak it out loud because there was still a sense that it was unacceptable. And that unacceptability seems to have just been blown right open.
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D
Sarah's family doesn't just hate black people. They're. Or immigrants. They're pro Hitler and they blame Jews for all problems, including quote, this is a good list. Communism, both world wars, the Federal Reserve banking system, homosexuality, abortion and the United Nations. Say more about that, please.
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E
You know, in a way it's sort of, I mean it's a bit of a tongue in cheek list. It's sort of everything that like anything that he can think of that he can't stand is he. He blames on. On the Jews. So. And I, I there on Sundays in her childhood, the kids would, they would have a lunch after church. And he would quiz the kids on all of these, you know, on all of these ideas that he's been spewing for years and years, you know, throughout their childhood, and test them on whether or not they remember things. So there are, it's built into the story. Pretty much every name that I use is an actual person. Some of them are early white, like white nationalists and fascists from the 1930s in the United States, including like Henry Ford. And then there's a lot of people who were involved in Canada. So that's really like the list was more, it was like anything you could think of, he would just throw it on, like, blame the Jews. And there was a very, very well known doctor in, in who lived actually around the corner from where I live who did a lot of work to get to make abortion legal in Canada. And so that was kind of where that, that piece came from.
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D
And we learn right away that Sarah is in therapy. And one of the things you write is quote, spot the abuse was a therapy game Sarah felt forced to play, end quote. Did she never realize that she grew up in an abusive home? If that's all a child knows, how would they identify it? As abuse?
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E
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, and, you know, I sort of, it's. There's some sort of joking, ish comments about how like, you know, cartels don't do therapy. Like nobody, like none of them would ever have. So the idea she's forced into this despite herself and you know, and figures out a lot of things in the process. But in those early days she's just like, why does anybody do this? And if you, you know, it felt to her like that was kind of normal childhood, like her. There was abuse, but it wasn't overly abusive. Even though her dad made them do certain things as punishment that were, you know, for sure abusive. But, you know, at that time it was like, oh, maybe everybody did that occasionally, you know, to kind of set their kids straight. So yeah, I mean, she really, the idea of like therapy is such a foreign concept to her, you know, in her family. And there she is stuck like day in, day out having these conversations.
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D
So Uncle Carl, her father's brother, leaves the household, leaves the town, but he's a follower of the same hate system. What's going on there?
- [13:29]
E
Well, I think what like, so I'm trying throughout the story to talk, like to talk about the people, the other people who grew up under the tyranny of the grandfather. And I don't, I mean, as you can tell, like, I don't make them just the characters are not black and white. And in a lot of ways, I think one of the most tragic characters in the book is her father Frank. Her both and her uncle who have gone completely like, the aunt is like a lefty lesbian and the uncle is still a white supremacist. But they both escaped. Like they both left behind like quite effectively. Like they just don't go back at all. Practically Carl a tiny bit and then, and then not at all. And Aunt Katie never. So it's sort of he and the, and the grandfather is both really proud of him and really and really frustrated by him, I think, because he left, you know, and so the, it's, it's playing around with that. And Carl is not like, he's not an unlikable guy. His belief systems are awful. I mean he is like a, he's like a committed white supremacist, you know, less kind of. He's not like a stomping swastika wielding guy, but he hangs around with those people which you, which you find out over the course of the book. But I wanted to play with the idea that it's confusing to Sarah the sort of what is, you know, what is good in people that ought to just be, you know, categorically written off for their beliefs. So I think it's sort of, I try to get into that by dealing, by having characters like the aunt and the uncle and others who are not. I just don't want it to be straight out evil or good.
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D
Sounds sketchy.
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E
Exactly.
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C
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E
So sick.
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C
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D
No way.
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C
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D
You mentioned an interview because Sarah is researching all of this. And you mentioned an interview she finds in Life magazine, 1938, with a Canadian guy calling for the forced resettlement of Jews to a concentration camp in Ontario. I think we're raised down in the States to think of Canadians as way nicer than we are. It sounds like you got the same kinds of crazy how hate filled loonies.
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E
Yeah, I mean, I think the extremes, like people who like there. There's no question that, I mean, and that's not an isolated incident in Canadian history at all. Like in fact, around, you know, during the time of like right after the Second World War, that we didn't even want to let any Jews into this country. So that kind of, that kind of really, like heartfelt antisemitism is long standing in this country. It's, I mean, I would say, like, are we nicer in some ways? And the thing about this moment in history is that we, there are certain things that are anchored into, into Canadian politics that feel like they won't, like we won't lose them. Like in terms of, you know, access, like gay marriage choice, like access to abortion, like that. Though there are certain things where even the most conservative governments here have sort of floated the idea of changing the federal government's position on those. And there's never really an appetite. That said, who knows, we tend to follow suit a little bit. The people who are on the right are far more right wing than they used to be. But it is, I think, interesting for people and friends of mine read, who read the book, who knew absolutely nothing about the history of white supremacy in Canada, were pretty shocked to find out that this stuff was.
- [19:00]
D
I think I'm in that category. I was kind of stunned because there wasn't the same situation with slavery, for example, and you didn't have the same huge numbers of immigrants in the late 18th century, early 19th century in terms of the numbers. So yeah, it was shocking. Okay, moving on. While the United States Supreme Court has limited prohibitions on publishing false or hate, you know, info or news, the Canadian, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down the prohibition, any prohibitions in 1992. Are people still talking about that? Is that still something being mulled over?
- [19:43]
E
I. Not, not exactly, I would say, I mean, I don't think in the same, in the same way there's like, the whole issue of freedom of speech and hate speech has become so complicated. I mean, in both good ways and problematic ways. And I don't, I don't. So it's, it's now like everybody feels like they get to say whatever they want, and that's what freedom of speech is. Or only I get to say what I want about my beliefs. And you do not get to say what you want. And that's. And it's been. And it's so overt. That kind of. It only goes one way. And I think this is a problem across the political spectrum, really. But, you know, that decision at that time, I mean, I personally believe, and I think that, and this is sort of comes to through Sarah as well in the book, is that I'd rather know what people are thinking and believing rather than, and rather than have them forced into silence. Like, I'm like, let me know who my enemies are who actually hates me if you make it illegal to even say those things. And I can't identify who's that.
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D
I agree with that. My question is about false news.
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E
Oh, I don't even know. I mean, I don't, I, I, I, I don't even know what to say about false news. It's like, it's shocking. It's, it's so, I mean, that's the problem because then it's not even, it's not, it's no longer freedom of, I mean, it's the freedom to just make up crap and, and, you know, and, and it's, and which has no bearing on, I mean, this is the problem now is that we have lost truth. And, and so when you, when you no longer have that, like, I feel like at least when this book was written, there was this sense of, you, we were, we had more proximity to truth. You. And we didn't have like 7 million different points of access to, quote, news, you know, or, and you just ended up sort of siloed in your little belief group on Facebook or whatever it happened to be or whatever, you know, social media platform you were on. It was like, you read the papers of RA Record, you read the New York Times or the Globe and Mail, and then you made some, you know, you made some thoughtful decisions on your own with, with that. Like, you know, it's not like, I'm sure that there were some things that were not as, you know, truthful as they could be, but now it's just like the fact that we're even having a conversation about people's right to say things that are complete and utter fabrications and dangerous to other people's lives, whether it be, like, around health or. Or around, you know, I don't know. It's. I don't. I. It's like. I think I'm sounding like it's so frustrating, and I don't know what you're supposed to even do with that. So it feels like a stupid conversation to even be having a conversation about freedom of speech when it's just like there's no substance to what anybody's saying.
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D
It has to do with morality, too. Is there this moral relativism, like, your side is equally good whatever you say, no matter. No matter how hateful or repugnant, it's okay. And that's what we're grappling with now. So Sarah gets involved with a white supremacist kid who, among other things, admires Timothy McVeigh for doing the Oklahoma bombing in which children were killed. Like, what kind of acting did she have to do to sleep with someone who was so abhorrent to her? And how did you come up with that idea?
- [23:20]
E
I think that at the core to me of that decision, and I needed to really understand it, because otherwise it just seems like, why the hell would anybody ever do that? And I think in part, you know, I sort of sum Sarah up as not believing that she actually deserves to live in the world that she's trying to create. So whatever sort of pain or whatever these choices, whatever pain these choices might cause her, she feels somewhere like I kind of deserve that anyway. So the choice to do that, like, she. I mean, partly it's a choice. It's an infiltration choice. It's sort of like that's gonna be the most convincing thing that she could do to get herself right in there with this group. But the fact that she makes the ch choice says to me something about how she. How she feels about herself, like, her own sense of self worth. And I think that. That. So I was just going to add that it's that in a similar way to how she doesn't connect, she has difficulty making friends and connecting with people and feeling like she's. Because she feels like she's just always lying in order to get what she. Like what she wants and needs to take down these movements. Like, she doesn't feel that she's deserving of close friendships either, because she's always misrepresenting herself to the people around her.
- [25:02]
D
Wow. She's just a really Strong character. Although she does fall apart, she's still strong, I think. Aviva, do you have hope for Canada? Are the haters winning?
- [25:13]
E
No, I absolutely have hope for Canada. It was interesting. I went to see Rebecca Solnit and Rachel Maddow were both here speaking a couple of weeks ago, and the interviewer said, do you have any advice for Canada, given everything that's going on there? And Rebecca looks over at Rachel and then looks back at the audience and is like, I don't really think that we're in a position to be giving advice. It was very funny. But I do feel like I'm worried about us only in terms of our proximity to the United States, and we've always been influenced, and economically, this moment is of great concern with tariffs. And Trump just has it. Has this. Has it in for Canada. And I'm not exactly sure. I don't know that anybody like, you know, Rachel Maddow says, like, she's just like. It's like, oh, squirrel. Like, people mentioned Canada, and then it pops into his head and he's like, oh, I want Canada. You know, that should be ours. But, you know, so I worry about that. I don't. I do not feel that the haters are winning here. I. And maybe that's a bit naive on. On my part, but that said, it's. The country is very polarized, like, more polarized than I feel I've ever experienced it in. In my lifetime, as things are in the United States. It's just kind of flabbergasting how polarized things are. So, you know, there's not any reason to firmly believe that we couldn't just quickly slide down that same, you know, the. To the same place that you guys are. But, you know, we do meant even the person who's going to run for the, you know, who's running for, you know, the Conservative Party in Canada. He's a bit of a wet noodle, I would say. Trump is like a force, you know, hateful. Not even force, but a force. Like, people kind of line up behind him and we don't. I don't feel like we. We also don't have, like. And I mean, I don't know how much you know about Canadian politics, but we just don't. It's not the same of, like, big, huge show here. Like, it never has been. Like, when you watch, like, the Democratic National Convention and people get up and they speak. So, like, they're amazing orders and people are all gathered, like, thousands of people in the room and balloons and we just, we don't have any of that here. Like, it's very, it's so much quieter. And in that way I feel like in some ways people are just like, we just want to live our lives, you know, even though there are people that absolutely hold the same beliefs as the, you know, MAGA folks for sure.
- [28:03]
D
So, Aviva, what are you working on next?
- [28:06]
E
Well, I'm actually, I have sort of said to myself because of different things that happened and didn't happen with the book, that next time I won't be writing about Nazis. So the book I'm writing on, working on right now, I call, I say it's like a me too meets late coming of age book. About a 57 year old woman in Pittsburgh who is a math genius and she's been working in a little financial Boutique firm for 30 years. Her boss has a heart attack, he has to retire and she finds out all sorts of things that he's been up to both personally and financially with the company and she has to join forces with, she's kind of neurodivergent and has to join forces with people she would otherwise really not want to hang out with in order to find, solve the mystery and figure out what's happening. So that's what I'm working on right now.
- [28:58]
D
It sounds like a mystery. I'm interested.
- [29:01]
E
Great.
- [29:02]
D
AV it was lovely talking to you. Best of luck on the next novel and I hope we'll see you again.
- [29:07]
E
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful conversation and thank.
- [29:12]
D
You for joining me again. This is G.P. gottlieb, author of the Whipped and Sipped mystery series and host for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Today I've been talking to Aviva Rubin about her gripping story, a novel. Hope you all have something gripping to read today. And always happy reading.
- [29:45]
G
Experience, the sequel everyone's been waiting for. With Sideline 2 intercepted, join Drayton and Dallas as they navigate the challenges of college life while trying to stay true to themselves and each other. Catch all the drama and watch Sideline 2 Intercepted, starring Noah Beck and Sienna Agudong for free on Tubi this Thanksgiving.