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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host, Holly Gattery and I'm thrilled to have with me today the author of the beautiful, touching, powerful memoir, Wordly Girls, Tamara Zhang. Tamara memoir has been on my radar for quite some time. It is this clear eyed, fragmented memoir that discusses Tamara's unstable and unconventional childhood with her busy schedule of Jehovah's Witness meetings, Bible study and door to door ministering. Tamara also details her emotionally distant father and alcoholic mother's tumultuous marriage, her indoctrination into and later rejection of her faith, her deep yearnings to become a mother after the loss of her own and her struggles with mental health. Welcome to the show, Tamara.
- [02:01]
C
Thanks so much for having me.
- [02:02]
B
Oh, it's so amazing to have you everyone. Tamara is a Montreal writer of Chinese and European ancestry. Her work has been published in the Humber Literary Review, Room Magazine and the Fiddlehead, and has also both long and shortlisted for various creative nonfiction prizes. She is a graduate of the Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University and a former member of Room magazine's collective. She currently lives and work on Treaty 3 territory, the occupied and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Adirondack and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, which is In Guelph, Ontario. Worldly Girls is her first memoir. So, Tamara, I want to jump right in and ask you where this memoir started for you. What was the seed? And I find this really interesting. As someone who's written memoir, myself, and deeply personal memoirs, you know, it's always like, the story is within us to tell, but what makes us. What is the push? What is that force that makes us actually start to write it? And I'm wondering what that starting point was for you.
- [03:04]
C
So after really putting aside writing for, you know, most of my adult life, I decided to write fiction and take some courses at U of G. So I didn't actually intend to write memoir at all. I went in there, I took an Intro to Creative Writing with Zoe Whittle, and there was different genres that you could do what she had you do assignments. There was poetry. Mine was terrible. There was fiction, There was nonfiction. So actually, eventually what became Leave Taking was one of the seeds. I guess it started there, but I really kind of started off writing very much autobiographical fiction first. And then when I took my next course with Ayelet Sabari, it was nonfiction, and then I kind of loved it. But at first I had to kind of try it out, I guess put on a coat, put on a mantle, and I did it as fiction first. I guess it felt safer for me. I didn't actually think about writing my own life at all.
- [04:02]
B
That's really fascinating. My. My master's thesis, my MFA thesis was also a fictionalized version of my memoir. So I love hearing that's what you did, too, because it feels very strange to write about these things, and it feels scary, and I think, like, fictionalizing for me made it feel a lot safer. So thank you so much for sharing that. My next question for you is one that I need to ask, because you are telling your story in this memoir, but your story involves recounting how other people treated you. And I'm making that distinction because often, as someone, again, myself who's written memoir, when I see other memoirs interviewed, it's like, well, what gives you the right to tell someone else's story? You're not. You're telling your story, and other people affected your life. I was wondering if you could talk to me about your approach to talking about people in your life, and if you had, like, a very firm idea of what you were going to say and what you were not going to say, which not to be confused with what you're leaving out, but just stories that were not yours to tell, which I feel like you did really well here. And if you didn't have a firm line that you could apply or a firm guideline for all of the book, if you approached certain stories, certain, certain aspects of your past on a case by case basis.
- [05:33]
C
So there is some stories that'll probably never be in there. And I didn't put them down, but I didn't. I tried not to think. I mean, it does help that my parents are not around to kind of read my work. However, my mom was a poet and I feel like a pretty honest person and I feel like she would be pleased with the way even if it showed her a flawed, because I actually show myself as flawed as well. So I think I feel like the writing about people in my life made me understand them better, if that makes sense. Like it made me feel more empathetic. Of course it's easy to say, oh, this was all bad, but I didn't feel like I was going in for the intention to write with a revenge themed memoir. I mean, I've sat in a bunch of workshops. I've sat in Is this okay to do? I've been in, you know, Facebook groups where we talk about the ethics of writing about other people. I did change names at times because I just thought, you know, I. For the sake of their privacy, I did ask my friend that I write about quite a bit, Robin, if I. If she wanted me to change her name. And she didn't say anything. So I left it. I did think about possibly changing it, but since she didn't say that that wasn't okay, then I decided to keep it in there. I struggled with that vacuum story for a very long time. She did ask me, she said, hey, did you write about the vacuum? And I said I had to write about the vacuum, you know, And I don't know. I did try to write it with love, I guess, in some ways, but I didn't intentionally come out, set out to injure anybody or make them look bad because I also look not great in many of the stories. And I did try to write with love. And I. I know that sometimes people say that's not enough, but I kind of had to kind of come to. To grips with. I did have to put down some hard truths. And in the end I kind of just kind of had to let go and just kind of let the pieces kind of fall where they did.
- [07:26]
B
I would say that your story is so expectation shattering and binary breaking and this relates to what you said because I had not, at no point did I think that this was not a story about family and love. At no point did I think you were being unfair to anyone, except perhaps yourself. I really loved the treatment of your mother, who, as I said in the intro, was an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic. I'm deeply interested in how people talk about alcoholics and about the disease. And I really felt like it was such a. You have to pardon the term here, but him. To family and being together and, yes, love and loss and regret as well. But it was. It felt so balanced to me. And it's in your approach to absolutely everything. And it felt deeply compassionate. And no, I didn't put down the book. I didn't walk away thinking, oh, any one person is terrible, or they. Somebody. I think that people were treated unfairly, the same way we all treat each other unfairly sometimes. But I didn't feel like it was. I didn't. I didn't feel like it was problematic. I just know when you write about things like this, you know you're going to have people who are just like, oh, you don't. You don't talk about your mom, don't talk about your dad. And I think. And I'd love your opinion on that, but I think on this, what I'm about to say, I think it's an interesting mirror of the reader and not the writer. Does that make any sense? Yeah. That the person who's having a problem with an alcoholic mother who is no longer around, the person having a problem with that being talked about, is actually that they're revealing themselves and their own values and their own secrecy and their own ideas of shame. They're not actually reflecting what you have done at all or even who or out of any respect for your mother. So I. I always find the responses quite interesting. Next, I have a quote for you. And this is going to relate back to what I just said. Anne Lamott, who's a famous American nonfiction writer, says something to the effect of write what you want if people. Or tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. Now, I think that's a really interesting. I'm paraphrasing there. I said a quote, but I actually very much did not do a great job of relating that quote verbatim. But the gist is there. I would love your thoughts on that. And if you agree with it, if you disagree with it, or if there's a bit of both.
- [10:02]
C
Yeah, I have heard that quote before, and I think I was like, okay, yeah, I'll go with that. It's true. Maybe we should have behaved better. But yeah, I could appreciate what she's saying there. And I think too, if people want to write their versions, of course they're free to do so. They're free to use their platform to do whatever. I remember another writer saying in a workshop, Kaylee Jones, she was saying something, and I'm going to paraphrase her too, she said something like, you know, you've written a good book, or nonfiction or memoir. If they're having a book burning at the family gathering, I was just like, well, that was like a little extreme. And I don't think that would be happening to mine. But I think, I don't know. It is what it is, right? Like, this is, this is a life. And I think, I thought I need to put it down, you know. And again, my mom, and especially with things like aa, like, was quite forthcoming about her life the way that it had been and was. And I really don't think she would think twice about what I have written. And, you know, I'm a fan of my mom. I loved my mom. You know, we had a very complicated relationship. I grieve that we cannot have an adult relationship because I feel like I was an adult back then. Even if I was 20, I felt like I was a super young 20. You know, there were moments where we were very like in sync and then there were moments where there was like these huge gulfs between us. So I think as much as it's about not just my mom, it's about my dad and about all these people again, like, could they have behaved better? I mean, I look at their life and I'm like, wow, like me, I probably, maybe I was gonna probably do act the same way. Like, I don't hold that against them. I mean, it is what it is. I can't, we can't change any of it. And the same with myself goes with myself too.
- [11:42]
B
That's a really great answer. And I also think that to build on that, that I think while I agree with so much of Ed lamalt's quote, I also think that it denies grace to people. The fact that we're all going to treat people badly, we're all going to mess up. And do we want to be only seen through the one terrible thing that we've done? Now, of course, great memoir and great creative non fiction doesn't ever show person, show one person through just one light. But I, I do, I do see the possibility of an interpretation issue with that quote. That kind of frees people from the burden of having to recognize other people's humanity when they portray them. And I really do think yours book worldly girls. I mean, I was just entranced by your relationship with your mother. And you spoke about the gulf between you two. And I was hoping you could tell our readers a little bit more about that and what created that gulf.
- [12:42]
C
I think, you know, there's that point when you're a child, like your parents are everything. They're like gods, goddesses, you know, they can't do nothing wrong, even if there is a lot of wrong happening, you know, like being left somewhere for extended periods of time as a child, remembering being, you know, afraid of things, you know, because your parents are your whole world. We were in sync with the writing thing. She used to help me. Like, she always encouraged me to write and to be a good reader and to read a lot. You know, I was a library kid. I loved taking books out. I loved reading, I loved. She probably read to me, but she introduced me, I think, to, well, or what I read is Little Bear. And I love those stories. I loved Anne of Green Gables, all those things. So we're in sync that way. But meanwhile, she did have this poet's life that I didn't really realize. Like my dad told me later, she would submit her work and didn't get accepted. And I had no idea about that life. But the gulf, I think, really came when we were witnesses. We were like this happy little family. And then when her Virginia had died, then she drank heavily for years. And so the gulf started, like, expanding. And as I became a teenager and more rebellious or independent, you know, it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then when religion took root with me, that became more important than my relationship with my family, because that is kind of the way that it, it trains you. You know, she had, I had said in the book, like, she had trained me too well. I. I became a regular full time minister just like she had. You know, I got baptized quite young. She was older, but I just became more distanced from my parents and more into the religion. And so Jehovah was like the father, the God, the community was everything to me. And then I started kind of like stepping back away from my mother and also my creative pursuits as well.
- [14:22]
B
Yeah, that was a really moving part of your book to read. When you see you and your mother drifting and the way that you describe your mother's reaction to it, she. She seemed to have this quiet acceptance of it. It doesn't seem like she was really pushing back against it. And I mean, maybe it's just again, being a mirror to my mothering style. I thought that was in many ways more respectful than I would have ever been on my children's decisions. And I was wondering if. If you would talk specifically about writing about your face, because there's a. What I found to be a fascinating tension in this book between following your faith and being in a cult. And that tension plays out and you struggle with it. Like you very. It's part of the book, part of attention there is you struggling with is, is this faith or is this something more sinister? And I'm really interested in knowing about your approach to writing about that. And is this something you knew about going in? Did you see how it was going to play out? Or was. Was that struggle something you were working out in the memoir as you were writing it?
- [15:39]
C
You know, I didn't really know, I think at first, you know, what kind of changes were coming. I knew that I loved Stacey May Howells, of course, my editor, but I didn't know at first. I think Book Hug was suggesting possibly a longer narrative, like, all kind of complete. And then eventually they came to the decision that essays would be the way to go, and then they kind of put them in there. I didn't know how it was going to play out with my faith. Somebody like one of the first book reviewers had mentioned about how my faith, you can see it start to change throughout the book and the placement of the essays is that I thought I should put more scripture in. I was thinking in my head, and then. But slowly the scriptures were less and less like as the faith was kind of leaving my life, you know, and I didn't. And about the cults, I had a hard time reading previous Witnesses work because it's so ingrained in you that you do not read like apostates. You do not read outside of the organization. And I struggled with the cult definition, but I did try to read more about those things. And I was like, there are parts of it that definitely are labeled as a cult. And it's hard, I guess, the ashamed factor. You're like, oh my God, I was part of this also. You're like, oh my God, I was part of this. You know, I didn't definitely plan out to think that I was going to write that way about cult even. I had a hard time putting it down on the page, even writing the word. And, you know, I have feel this resistance just seeing it there, you know, and talking about it and being kind of like, labeled that way. I definitely feel resistance or felt resistance Just even reading it. And I was like, oh my God, you know, what is this going to mean for friends and family that are still in it? Even the organization, if they contact them, like, are they going to kick me out because I'm not shunned, Like, I'm not disfellowshipped. So I'm like, are they going to think I'm being anti Witness? Whereas I really don't feel like this book is anti Witness. However, it does point out where there's some harm and hurtful things that happened and had happened and are happening.
- [17:30]
B
Yeah, there's one, one line in the book that I remember where you, you're essentially like, okay, it was a cult, but it was like this. It's such a reluctant thing that you're admitting and, and not reluctant, just hard, difficult to. To admit. And I. And even with me using the term like making the differentiation between faith and cult, I'm always try to be as respectful as possible towards people's faith. And so I would never have used the word cult if you hadn't in your book. Right. I wouldn't have done that. But of course, yeah. I mean it's, it's a complicated relationship. It's not, it's definitely not black and white with the way that I felt you were observing being a Witness, that it's not all bad, you know, it wasn't all good. But like the. You did definitely point out that harm and it was such a. It was, it was a difficult read in part in the best possible way. And saying that I was wondering if you would read to us from the.
- [18:36]
C
Book Hearth of Two. I'm going to read from lessons. That's. I believe it's the second. Yes, it's the second chapter of that book. One, two, buckle my shoe. In kindergarten, when Ms. Diner took out the wooden shoe with its demonic yellow laces I'd hide with the dust bunnies under my desk, I didn't know how to tie my shoes. I tried to learn, but it just wouldn't stick in my brain. Ms. Steiner noted this lack on my report card. Turns out teachers cared if you couldn't tie your shoelaces. But nitrate laced hot dogs for lunch were hunky dory. Ms. Diner told Ma that I had memorized We Are Jehovah's Witnesses and then had the whole class singing it. So I guess I could do some stuff. All right. At the Kingdom hall, we learned about Armageddon and Satan and what happens to those who do not follow God. Lying was forbidden because Jehovah sees all, and I could pray to him when tested to make us good Christians. Ma often read to us from the book, listening to the Great Teacher. But it didn't always work. For example, when Ms. Steiner said it was okay for me to eat pumpkin seeds at Halloween, I believed her. Ma punished me for that with her hand on my backside. It was one of the many times I failed her and God's rules. Unfortunately for me, Velcro sneakers didn't become a thing until the 80s, so I struggled to tie my shoes way after kindergarten. I was at least eight when my father finally taught me. While we waited for our clothes to be washed in our apartment building's laundry room, I cling to those early memories of him before he left us. Even with his help, it took me forever to figure out where the laces went and how to make a knot that stayed tied up. I had trouble listening to directions. I needed to see it. Show me, I'd say. Some believer, huh? I learned early to disguise who I was, whether it was hiding under the mask of being a Jehovah's Witness, concealing, not getting math concepts, and being bad at shoelace tying or pretending to be fine no matter what. Especially when it came to my parents troubled marriage. The fights. Oh, the fights. We never talked about my mother's problematic drinking, only endured it silently. Children always seem to be good at hiding what is not ready to be seen. 3, 4 knock at the door I'm 20 years old when Crystal tells me about a stranger who came up to her when she was steps away from the Kingdom Hall. Why do Jehovah's Witness girls wear hooker boots? Yes, I met Crystal at a party when I was 16. We hit it off right away. She was everything I wanted to be as a Witness. She was funny, decent, kind, and a great friend. But we are in the same hall. Even if we were apart, we knew every Saturday morning we had our routine. We'd be knocking on doors with our Bible based magazines, the Watchtower and Awake, preaching the Kingdom message. I always started with my memorized conversation starter, the one I had spent time preparing at home, practicing in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the hallway. If I could throw in a scripture, I did. I really liked Revelation 21:4 New World Translation he will wipe out every tear from their eyes and death will be no more. Neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away. A typical introduction at the door would go something like this, how are you today? We're just taking a moment and Sharing with our neighbors a message about God's kingdom. Do not mention Armageddon yet. Do not mention Armageddon yet. Gauging their interest, I would offer a magazine or a book and make a note to return. In my return visit book. I would then call on them and call on them until they either accepted a Bible study or told me not to come by anymore. I grew up on a regular study diet of everyone wicked dies at Armageddon, except for those doing God's will. First, Jehovah told Jesus that, and then Jesus told the elders and ministerial servants, male shepherds chosen by the Holy Spirit and the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. The shepherds were always male, blessed and living in a volunteer commune supported by voluntary donations from the flock. Long live the patriarchy. When I started drifting away, it was 2005. I was depressed again and my belief system was falling apart. Therapy was beginning to heal me in ways that had me thinking about possibilities other than religion and God Living apart from the congregation. The weekly meetings started to whittle away their hold on me. Yet despite all these years of separation, I find myself on many Saturday mornings feeling that I need to be somewhere else. On a nice sunny day, I think, what a nice day for service. Also, whenever I pass a pair of witnesses standing by their cart of publications, and for some reason I see them a lot, I think that could be me. That was me.
- [23:05]
B
Thank you so much, Tamara. That was really, really beautiful. And as you were talking, I was thinking about the. The rift again between your faith and your mother. And I'm trying not to give anything away. And I also do want to talk about your father, who I haven't really brought up yet. But without giving anything away, I was. And because we met, you mentioned the vacuum earlier, and I realized that our listeners might be like, what vacuum? What vacuum? And me having read your book, I know exactly what vacuum. I was wondering if you could talk about what the vacuum story is. And this does have to do with the rift. And if you could also talk about living in this state of living with questions and without closure. Because that is what I really walked away from thinking about with your book, living with questions, living without closure. Because I'm a big fan of spiritual life writing, and your book is an exclusive, explicit examination of spiritual life. But to me, spirit, having a spiritual life is not finding answers for me. And it's different for everyone. It's learning to live with the questions. And I just adored the way you did it. And this does relate back to the vacuum Listeners. So, Tamara, would you talk about the vacuum?
- [24:21]
C
So the vacuum, I kind of. I needed a vehicle to kind of. How could I talk about Robin? How could I talk about my mom and my loss of faith? And I knew I needed some kind of container. And I did take a course with Nicole Bray and I found, you know, she was able to show me all kinds of different examples of writers like Sarah Minor, just, for example, just the way that they would hold something difficult to tell and put it in something. So like a container, you know, Shalene Knight calls it, they calls containers. And I knew that I somehow had to have the vacuum in there. I just didn't know how I was going to do it. I just remember I had wrecked a vacuum. Anyway, it is in the story. And my mom had an Electrolux and that was kind of like the. Not, I wouldn't say the love of her life, but it was like she had felt she had finally got there. It was a very special vacuum. It actually lasted a really long time. It was very expensive. And so I somehow wanted to put it in there to talk about it, but to talk about how my relationship with my mother was also troubled and how we had also drifted away, but also with my, one of my best friends, we had also kind of drifted apart as well. And I kind of wanted to talk about that with regards to the vacuum. And as far as just spirituality is, I actually thought I wasn't spiritual anymore since I'd left my religion because I felt in my faith I did honestly have an answer. I felt like for a lot of my questions and I didn't understand that you could be spiritual and not religious. I really had to unlearn that kind of philosophy or that thinking. My therapist helped a lot with that. She said you can be spiritual and not religious. And I really had a hard time wrapping my head around that. She introduced me to Tapestry, which helped me like talk about or think about other faiths with other people too, and also listening to their experiences. And it opened up my mind a bit to. To having more acceptance, I guess, or grace, even for myself. And one of my therapists had said, you know, sometimes it's not about the answers, but it's about the questions. And I had to think and sit on that a very long time because I thought it was about the answers and not the questions.
- [26:26]
B
Yeah, well, thank you. I think that's such wonderful advice from your therapist. And it has me saying I should probably call mine soon. And it has me missing mine, getting teary eyed. But yeah, I do want to talk about your father, who was a fascinating character for me, although a bit of an enigma. And an enigma for me, because he was a bit of an enigma to. For you for a long time. He wasn't there. And I. I wanted to ask you about that because. Okay, as mentioned, tomorrow's biracial. Her father, Asian mother European. And there it was, an interesting meditation again on cultural differences. Two in. In this book. But, I mean, your father. Your father's distance and him being estranged. I'm careful not to pin that down as a cultural thing. That was very much a him thing. And I would love for you to talk about writing your father and writing someone who wasn't around a lot. How do you do that?
- [27:29]
C
Yeah, it was. It was hard. It's funny because my. My husband said, you know, you and your brother idolized your dad, and we really did, you know, for so many years. And then once the. That wore off, I was, like, so angry about a lot of things. And I guess you get to a certain point in your life where you're. I just felt like I can't be angry anymore. You know, I felt like I had to, like, approach it from a different angle. Yes, I could write about the angry stuff, and I think I did in the beginning. But then once you whittle away, once I started to learn more about him, I actually started to see that this was, you know, something deeper, that he was different. I started asking questions, even if it was limited. I asked him stuff he would tell me. I didn't really know my father. When I found out about his paper suddenness, which is, you know, having to buy papers to come here, I realized why he had to be so secretive when he had his other family. Like, I realized, okay, well, he had to hide stuff. He would give me more. As I got older, I think I had to write the ask question, write the right questions, ask them when I did, and find him in the right positive or frame of mind when he was able to discuss it with me, because he was a man of many words sometimes. But it was limited. My access to him was limited because he was in a different province as well. So I think in some ways I'm still getting to know him, which is why I hope to work on. There were two, three stories that didn't make it into this memoir, so I hope that would be part of another book. And because I'm still getting to know him, I'm still getting to know his journey and story, and it's very complicated. When I found out he didn't really know his dad. It really hit me that he grew up, like, fatherless in many ways. And so then I realized, okay, it's starting to make sense, you know, how could he learn how to be a father? That's how we learn how to be parents, from our parents, you know. So I started to care for him in a different way. I started to tell him stuff, little tiny bits about my writing. I didn't think he'd ever read it, but I just said, you know, I'm writing about our family. I'm writing about, you know, this thing. And whether he acknowledged or thought about it or not, like, he didn't. He didn't say don't. He didn't say, I won't help you. You know, he did answer. He would answer questions hesitantly, but he did answer them in the way, I guess he was able to.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, he was. He's quite fascinating person. And I hope to read whatever you write next because I. I think about. Whenever I think about your book, there's two things that come to my mind. Your father leaving, like walking out the apartment door. And then the other image that comes to my mind is when you. You're gonna have to help me here because I read your book months ago. When you're looking at your mom and you both see each other, you're still a witness. Your mom has been shunned and disavowed. And you look at each other, you both see each other, but you don't wave. And I think you're at. Is it a train station or a bus station? Or maybe you're just out somewhere. I just, in my head, it was busy and I. That was such a heartbreaking scene. Because you're reflecting back on it now, knowing what you know now. And I mean, you say that you weren't very good at poetry, but I'm going to say what I say to so many people because again, I am a poet. There's a poem in that people get annoyed with me. They're like, I'm just grocery shopping, picking an avocado, leave me alone. Like, there's a poem in that. And I get. Everybody gets very annoyed with me. I'm not allowed to say that to my children anymore. I will be shot in this if I do it anymore. But you have the ability to render these incredibly intense scenes in a very compact period of time with just very on point imagery. And those two scenes are beautiful. So one of my final questions for you is about the slow reveal of information. So these are all separate essays, but there's actually an information build. So we know, for instance, your mom has passed away. But throughout the course of the book, we found out. Find out just how. And it's really devastating and so heartbreaking. And I was wondering if you could tell me about pacing that out, if this was, like, an editor's note, if Stacy was like, hey, this is the way we should reveal this information, or if this is something that just came to you, if this tactic was something that came to you as the way you wanted to and you. You felt authentic to relay the information.
- [31:51]
C
This is all Stacey May.
- [31:53]
B
Okay.
- [31:54]
C
Yeah. Because for me, the writer, I am living with the knowledge that I know my mom's already passed. So it's funny that when I'm starting to write, I. I'm always assuming the reader knows. You know, I'm thinking in my head, because I'm the reader as the writer, right? I'm the reader. The writer at the same time. And I was like, yeah, we already have all this information, but in reality, the reader has not. And so I think Stacey Mae was basically like, you can't do this to them. You know, it can't come later. It has to come up front. They have to know, because it is unfair. And I agree. It would be unfair. I would be really pissed off. I was in the middle. I'm like, what? Because this changes everything, you know, how you view the writer, how you view their. Like, because there's that knowledge now. You're like, oh, this happened. But not just. They didn't just die. This devastating thing happened. Right. So this was Stacy Mae kind of, like, very strategically positioning the stories, of course, with my agreement. Right. Like, there had to be some kind of flow, of course. And, you know, she did it perfectly. So this was very, you know, strategized.
- [32:56]
B
It was great. You know, your mom's past like that. For the reader knows that from the very beginning, but without being incredibly morbid. And I don't think there's any way for me not to sound morbid about this. Maybe I could just say, like, curious. But there's a reason morbidly curious exists. Like, I was like, how? But because I trusted you, and I tried, like, I was. I trusted the voice. I knew it would be revealed to me. So we. I knew she was gone from almost the very beginning, but how was not revealed until a bit later, which I found really interesting. And I sat and reflected on what. What is with me? Why did I want to know that so bad? You know, like, what? That there's something to Investigate there what's wrong with me. But I did find that it wasn't just from a craft standpoint. And I, I this, I'm not saying that this is a manipulative thing, but just from a pure craft standpoint, it felt like a really great way to drive the story forward and like, what happened? What happened? Because you we begin to understand as readers that something happened that wasn't like a typical cause of death. You know, it was something a little bit out of the ordinary that happened. And maybe, but I'm not going to give it away, but maybe it's more typical than I think. Maybe I live a very sheltered life. I don't know. But I was taken back and there was such a lack of closure. And you paint this beautiful heart rendering scene about the whole discovery. And I'm just going to stop talking about it now because I am going to give something away soon. But. And the audience is probably like, what happened? Pick up the book Worldly Girls by Tamara Jeong. It's published with Book Hug and you can find out. Tamara, my last question for you is what are you working on now? Or is it those essays about your dad? Or is it something. Are you doing that and something else? Or if you put those aside and working on something else.
- [34:48]
C
I will be working on the essays with regards to my father. Like next. I haven't done too much right now just because I'm still in kind of book tourist mode. But I will be working on that. I'm doing a little bit of like just, you know, random things, like not really related necessarily to the next book. But that will be my next project that I'm going to be working on. It doesn't have a name. It's nameless right now. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free.
- [35:11]
B
Yeah, throw some ideas. You know, spitball with Tamara. Just DM her. Wouldn't that be so weird? Some random.
- [35:19]
C
I would love it. Yeah, some random, like, yeah, some random title. I would love it.
- [35:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. I'm. I either with titles, I either know what they are right away, like when I start or it's like, you know, it's. And whatever was the working title that I used the entire time. I mean, like, I guess that's what we're going with. Yeah. I just don't bother changing it. It's such a. I have such a. I think titles are so important. Again, it's probably the, the poet in me. But titles can do such heavy lifting and I can't believe I forgot to ask this. This is written Right down in front of me. But I do want to end with one more question, and that's for you to talk about the title Worldly Girls. Because until I read your book, I didn't realize that that was a term like a word used in the Jehovah's Witness faith, slash, cult, or whatever people are calling it to refer to a specific type of person. I'd love to hear you talk about it.
- [36:10]
C
So originally, the book was called 14 Stories, and I wasn't married to that title, but somebody had said, you know, you have to call it something. 14 stories I had picked up because my therapist had said I'd said 14 sorrys within the hour. And I was like, did I? And I was like, that's a great title for a book, you know, but apparently no. So we had to find something else. And so we were thinking of something, and Stacey May was like, what about Worldly Girls? Because I thought about Worldly Girl, but then she was thinking the relationship between, you know, mothers and girls. She thought that would be good. But worldly is also a term in. In the Jehovah's Witness faith. That's really. You would think that it'd be something like. It's known as sophisticated and worldly wise and, you know, you know, the lay of the land. You're. You're kind of, you know, you know, stuff. But in our faith, a worldly person is somebody sort of outside of the organization. There's somebody that is, you know, have. Has gone on the opposite camp, you know, of God. So that's not something you want to be. I did want it actually to be a signpost to people that were either Witnesses or Witnesses that have left that would recognize the title right away. And I did have a reader reach out or a person reach out saying they still have a title, and they knew. So that's kind of what I was hoping for as well, that people would know that and they would say, okay, I know what that's about.
- [37:25]
B
Well, I didn't know what it was about, but I enjoyed finding out. I still like the title. I just had no idea how many layers there were to the title. I would have thought the. The first idea of Worldly, you thought, oh, this is someone who's sophisticated and elegant. I had no clue. So it was a really wonderful and moving experience for me to learn so much about being a Jehovah's Witness. And, I mean, my only experience with a Jehovah's Witness was the people who came to my door. And growing up Muslim. My dad invited them in and they stayed for tea and talked for hours. And then there was somebody in my class who left every time oh Canada played. But that was basically my entire body of knowledge about it. So this was quite, quite a education for me. And I felt like I was in such safe, capable, and not to mention talented hands with you, Tamara. So thank you so much for writing this gorgeous book.
- [38:20]
C
No, thank you so much for having me, Ella.
- [38:22]
B
Oh, such a pleasure, everyone. We were talking to Tamara Zhang about her wonderful debut book, which is a memoir called Worldly Girls, which was published with Book Hug Press and is available anywhere books are bought or borrowed. I look forward to talking to you again tomorrow.
- [38:36]
C
Thank you so much.