Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S6 Ep19: Bookshelfie: Kerry Washington

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Scandal star Kerry Washington opens up about the revelations in her new memoir, why she’s ditching feelings of shame and how sharing your most vulnerable self is actually the most empowering thing you can do. Kerry Washington is a celebrated actor, director, producer, activist and a Shondaland superstar. Kerry received widespread public recognition for her role as Olivia Pope on the hit ABC drama Scandal, breaking barriers as the first Black woman since 1974 to headline a network TV drama. She’s also starred in the Little Fires Everywhere adaptation, and films including Django Unchained and Ray.  She’s a lifelong advocate and activist, using her voice to fight for justice and was honoured as one of Time magazine’s 2022 Women of the Year. And now, to add to that impressive list, she’s a New York Times best-selling author, thanks to her new memoir, Thicker Than Water - in which she gives readers an intimate view into both her public and private worlds - as an artist, an advocate, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a Black woman.  Kerry’s book choices are: ** The Color Purple by Alice Walker  ** The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron **  Kindred by Octavia E. Butler ** The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion ** The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler   Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season six of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of season six? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit Harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com. Writing thicker than water is by leaps and bounds, the scariest most vulnerable project I've ever taken on, creative project I've ever attempted.

But I also feel like if you're going to do it, then do it. I didn't want to half-ass my way through a memoir. I wanted to, right? No, I really, like, also because I am exposing a lot about myself and my family. And I almost felt like to honor that commitment, right, if I'm going to air our dirty laundry, then I want to do it in the most gracious and graceful and elegant way possible because my family deserves that. With thanks to Bayleys, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. Celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives,

all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope and I'm your host for season six of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your 2023 reading list. Today's guest is none other than Kerry Washington, celebrated actor, director, producer, activist and a shondaland superstar.

Kerry received widespread public recognition for her role as Olivia Pope on the hit ABC drama scandal, breaking barriers as the first black woman since 1974 to headline a network TV drama. She's also starred in The Little Fires Everywhere adaptation and films including Django and Chained and Ray. She's a lifelong advocate and activist using her voice to fight for justice and was honoured as one of Time magazine's 22 women of the year. And now, to add to that impressive list, she's a New York Times bestselling author, thanks to her new memoir, Thicker Than Water, in which she gives readers an intimate view into both her public and private worlds as an artist, an advocate, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, a wife and a black woman. We are absolutely delighted to welcome her to the podcast. Hello, Carrie. Oh, thank you for having me.

I'm so happy to have me. I've got to apologise. I feel like it's my fault that you've come to the UK. It's chucking it down with Ray. we're doing what we do best no London is Londoning so it feels appropriate and perfect there's something about this weather that is so conducive to curling up with a good book yes there's nothing better than to have a great book and a warm

cup of tea and yeah to really enjoy this weather it's perfect for it what sort of books do you gravitate towards if you are just reading for pleasure to enjoy for pleasure which is maybe strange I read a lot of non-fiction

even though it's for pleasure. So I read a lot of health books and wellness books and books on spirituality, on parenting. Yeah. Is it easy for you to just enjoy, just read for pleasure without your actor, producer brain, switching on and thinking, especially if it's nonfiction, okay, there's something in this?

No, I do. I have to really sometimes seek out books that have nothing to do with anything that I could possibly develop a producer, a star in, because I really think it's important to be reading just for the great appreciation of the book itself and not for what's next. I guess as well, having now written your own book,

written a memoir, thicker than water, it also changes the way you read as a writer. I read that Shonda Rheim said, you grow as a person just from the act of writing. It's true. Yeah. It's true. I think I've always had so much respect for writers, especially someone like Shonda Rhymes, who is just churning out phenomenal story week after week. But this act of writing has really allowed me a much deeper sense of respect and gratitude and awe, really, for somebody who's able to do this over long periods of time again and again.

I found it to be, without a doubt, the hardest creative endeavor. that I've ever thrown myself into. Has writing changed the way you read? It has. It has. I think I've always been really appreciative of a turn of phrase, of choice of word, but now I'm so much more interested in structure and in that specificity of, you know,

I have such deep regard for word choice and for rhythm and for just, just all of the thought and care that goes into writing. Well, let's look back over some of your favorite books. Okay. The books that you've picked for a book shelvey, the first one being... It was so hard to pick. Oh, my gosh.

I know. I always feel like I'm in this position where I have to ask you what you'd pick, knowing fine well I would not be able to do it myself. It's so difficult. Yeah. There's been so many books that I've loved. So I tried to pick a wide variety so we'd have an interesting conversation. Well, that's it.

And also some of our favorite books, We know we love them. We can't remember what they're about. Yes, it's so true. I don't know. I love to that. I just know that it impacted me. I did.

I had a few books that I didn't put down because I thought, well, I know I'd love that book, but I won't be able to talk about it. Yeah. I feel you. Well, luckily, I have a little blurb for each book. Okay, great. But I feel like you're going to remember this first one, the color purple.

Oh, it's so special. Alice Walker. Oh, my gosh. This Pulitzer Prize winning novel made Alice Walker rise to fame. The story is told through letters written to God by, by Seeley, a young black girl born in deep rural Southern America. She suffers many traumas, including being raped repeatedly by her father and being separated from her beloved sister Nettie when she's forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive man.

Along the way, Seeley befriends the first woman she's known to be in charge of her own destiny, singer Shug Avery and begins to discover her true spirit. It's actually one of the first books I remember my mom reading. I remember being a little girl. at the Boys and Girls Club and my mom picking me up and seeing that book in her hand and wondering, like, what is that? It's a novel for grownups, but it sounded like a children's book, the color purple, the simplicity of it. I thought, and I remember asking her, what is that about? And she said, oh, it's about so many things.

And so when I finally read it for myself, I think it was really such a joy to kind of step into adult readership, right, to step into being. part of the community that could appreciate a book like that. How old were you when you read it? I think I was maybe 15. And did your mom encourage you to? Did she sort of press it into your hands, knowing that you'd spotted it in hers? I think I asked her if I could read it when I got older.

It was one of those books. My home had lots and lots of books because my mom is a retired professor. And both of my parents are great readers. And so it was one of those books that I would pass on the shelf again in a There were a few books like that, like some of the Nancy Friday books. But it was one of those books that I would see again and again on the shelf.

And so I just asked her finally one summer. I'm ready. Yes. I want to read it. Yeah. And I felt like she was trusting me with something special, you know, something that was more grown up. It does chart so much, a lot of trauma, a lot of struggle. And we hope that life has changed.

since this book was set, the days that it was set. But do you see any similarities still today to see these experiences? Yeah, I think what I love about the book is that it is about trauma, but it's also about resilience and about the power of love to create community and heal,

the power to find sisterhood belonging with people. So I do think that families still struggle, communities still struggle with these kinds of trauma and abuse, but that the opportunity for healing and belonging is also still so with us and so much a part of our story as families, as culture. Can you remember how you felt when you read it at 15? I remember feeling like it was brave writing. Like it was naked and brave. There was such raw truth that it felt like Alice Walker was carving onto those pages. You mentioned their sexual abuse in your own memoir. You share your own experiences.

Your fear, your confusion after being sexual abuse by a family friend. And then being gaslit as well. It's a well-documented pattern of sexual abuse victims, which in part perpetuates women's silence. What can we do to change this and to support women? It's been so interesting. So many people when they read Thicker Than Water, their response is to share their secrets with me. It's almost as if the book creates this safe space of vulnerable sharing where we get to together. realize that to let go of our secrets allows us to let go of some of the shame.

And I think that in itself, the willingness to own our story, to tell our story, to share our story allows us to know that we're not alone and encourages other people. It's funny I hadn't connected the color purple with my memoir, but I do think to have modeled in culture the opportunity to expose truth. it really does give us permission to be in our truth, which is so important. I always think that books, especially when pressed into the hands of children, young adults, it can give them the validation they need to know that their voice is worth something, that they have a story to tell, to find strength in their voice.

I think also it allows us into, as young people, it allows us into the inner world of adults. Because they think so often as adults we're trying to protect our children. children from our inner worlds. We're trying to kind of perform this role of smart adult who's in charge and in control and well adapted and all the things that the grownups in our lives try to image to us in order for us to feel safe, which is admirable and well appreciated. But when we get a peek into the inner lives of adults, I think as young people, it helps us know that it's okay to struggle, that it's okay to have a rich inner emotional life, that it's okay to be in process and be messy and be figuring it out and have big feelings and all of that seems

so important to our development. Well, that notion of being in process and process leads us nicely onto your second book, which is the artist's way. Yes. A spiritual path to higher creativity by Julia Cameron. Um, 1992 was when this came out. It's a self-help book. American author, Julia Cameron aims to help people with artistic creative recovery. Um, the third, book teaches techniques and exercises to assist people in gaining self-confidence in harnessing their creative talents and skills. It's on my bookshelf at home. It's a nice one to dip into it now as well. Yes, yes. Tell us a little bit about it. Why did you pick it? I love that book. That book holds a very special place in my heart because when I was, you know, living in New York

and auditioning and dreaming of having a career as a working artist, I jumped into that recovery process with the book with some dear friends and it really allowed us to walk toward our dreams with more courage and more of that sense of why not me but I think it also just encouraged me to think about my life as a creative playground not just my career but to be a creative person creative in my relationships with others and my relationship with myself it really gave me permission to think big, think outside the box, get to know myself more. And I think so much of the work that I'm trying to do in thicker than water is have a deeper sense of who I am and what I want and where I come from, what matters to me, what I'm afraid of, how I became who I am, all those

questions. But I feel like my work in the artist way, which was coupled with some of my other recovery work around eating disorder stuff that I talk about in the book. But that recovery work, in many ways, was the beginning of that process for me. And I, you know, as I've gotten older, I've gotten more keys to unlock that process. And the news that my parents shared with me most recently that I talk about in the book was the biggest key to help unlock some of these larger questions about identity and belonging. But I feel like the artist's way, really helped me connect those questions about myself and that curiosity and that creativity to a way of living in the world.

Your memoir is such a massive departure for you as someone who's been very private. Yes. Despite being in the public eye, of course. You share your vulnerability. You share all these things that you've just mentioned. But how did you know you were ready to do that? It felt like... It felt like a necessity in order to live in authenticity.

I think I have been very private when it comes to my husband and my children and myself in a lot of ways. But strangely, my parents have always been a large part of my public image. You know, I've brought them to award shows and to premieres and they've been in magazines with me. So when I got this new information that had a huge impact on my relationship with my parents and the dynamic between the three of us, it felt like to hide that I would be, if I was going to hide that information, I would be perpetuating this false narrative that they had put out in the world. And in some ways, my being more public about my relationship with my parents as it's unfolding feels almost like a corrective history.

And I think as I started to feel more comfortable with myself, I started to feel like I have less to hide. there are still aspects of my life that belong to me and that are private and I'm not now racing to put my kids on TikTok. But I do feel the desire to not hold on to things out of shame. Can you talk us through the emotions of learning about your family secret? I don't know how much we want to give away here because we want everyone to read the memoir. We can kind of warn people that we're going to talk about a spoiler. So if you don't want the spoiler, which also it's been out there. So if you don't want the spoiler, you can press pause and come back to us.

But there are a lot of reveals in the book. So we can talk about the big one. What were those early days like of living with those revelations? So one of the things that I share in the book for listeners is that my parents sat me down about five years ago, five or six years ago, and shared with me that my dad is not my biological father, that I was considering. with the help of a sperm donor, which was news to me. Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine that.

It was really striking. I mean, it was one of those very cinematic moments where, you know, it felt like time slowed down. Everybody was moving in slow motion, and I felt a little dizzy and flushed. But it's been such an extraordinary opportunity for me to, for us as a family, to transform the culture of our family, to transform even what it means to be family. Like my dad was sharing a couple weeks ago that when he was growing up, your loyalty to the family's secret was almost how you defined family.

When you think about the mafia, or you think about gangs, or you think about generations of family that keep these secrets of trauma for each other, family has been, for a lot of people defined by the loyalty to those secrets. And now it feels like in our family, we are redefining family as loyalty to truth, as loyalty to reality and authenticity and intimacy. I had a friend the other day tell me their family was going through quite a lot following a bereavement. And they all decided to ask one another to tell each other they could do it via email a family secret. And they said that the conversations that opened up, the connections that opened up, the way it changed their dynamic. And like you say, the culture of their family was so pertinent, so potent, but it's been an incredibly healthy thing as well.

Yes. Even though it sort of swept the ground from beneath their feet. But it puts you in such reality, puts you in such presence, right? To let go of the performativity and to be able to be truly present with each other. Bayleys is proudly supporting the Women's Prize for Fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women. in, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Baileys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out Baileys.com for our favourite Bailey's recipes.

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with her black female hero through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impact of racism, sexism and white supremacy then and now. Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the south. Ruthus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning and Dana has been summoned to save him. She's drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters and each time she stays, her stay grows longer, more arduous and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not her life will end long before it has a chance to begin. I mean, who were you at the time that you read this book and who were you after it? I was a young woman in my 20s living in New York,

auditioning and in an interracial relationship. And reading this book was so eye-opening for me because I hadn't really thought of myself as somebody who loved fantasy or sci-fi. I mean, I really loved A Rinkle in Time, which I read as a child with my mom. But I didn't have any other examples of science fiction or fantasy that really drew me in. But this changed that for me. It opened me up to the idea of how fluid of a relationship we can have with genre when the humanity is there. When the humanity is right, it doesn't matter the genre context.

You can fall in love with the characters in their world and suspend your imagination past the kind of traditional drama of a more real. realistic novel. And I just loved that book. I loved that book. And it made me think a lot about, again, those questions of where do I come from? You know, where does my family come from? What are the blind spots we have as African Americans about our lineage and where we emerge from? It also made me think a lot about, you know, I had been to India already when I read the book. spent some time living there. And it made me think a lot about karma and Dharma and what's meant to be. You know, this idea that you could go back in time.

And if you save an ancestor, it could cost you your very existence. Those questions are so, they were so fascinating to me and thought-provoking and inspiring. Is reading a big part of your home life within your family? Do you read your children? Yes. Reading is so important to us. And I've actually tried to make this shift to not read as much on my tablet because I want my kids to know when I'm reading and not, you know, playing wordal. So we try to actually read books. But we do, I mean, my mom's a retired professor of education. And I remember my mom saying, you have to read to your children every single day. And I thought every single day. And with my daughter, I mean, from the day she was born, We are a reading family. I'm currently right now reading some graphic novels with my son who has become, he's seven.

So he's a new reader and he loves to read. But I know he's also working very hard at school all day on his reading, on his own. So at home, I'm doing a lot of reading. And when he wants to jump in to read with me, he can. But he loves graphic novels. So we've been reading those together at night, which is so fun. And my daughter and I will read my younger daughter. and I will read young adult novels together.

And then my older daughter, sometimes I like to ask what she's reading for school and jump in and read something with her. So most recently they read Bitter Sweet, which is an incredible nonfiction book about emotion. And so I was reading that at the same time she was. So we do try to share books. One of the first things that my husband suggested when we were dating early on was to exchange books. But both of the books he gave me, Kindred was one of the books I gave.

gave him. Both of the books he gave me were written by men, so I couldn't talk about them on the show. But yeah, reading is big in our family. It's an amazing thing. We were literally just saying before we started recording that I saw a boy about 14 years old on the train the other day. And he was reading Chimimamanda and Gossi Dichos, we should all be feminist. And I asked him, is that for school? He went, no, I just, I thought I should probably read it. Oh, my goodness. You know what? One of the early on books that he gave me actually was half a yellow son. Yes. And my husband's Ibo. It's all looking same. So having that novel was such an extraordinary introduction into his family history and his family culture. And I mean, I fell in love with Chimamanda. Then we read Americana together. So, yeah, books are so vital to the culture of our family.

I always feel like we should be reading more, but we are doing a bit of reading. It sounds like you're doing an amazing amount. I mean, like you said with Hafielo, it's an education. It's such an education. In our history, in our heritage, in the sociopolitical climate. Yes. What's wonderful about a novel, like that novel, for example, for me to be able to talk to my mother-in-law about the civil war that unfolded in her country, but to not just have the facts and the details about the politics, to have a window into the rich emotional lives of the people who were living in that time.

It does. It closes the gap for us between humans. you've been honoured as one of time magazines 2022 women of the year in addition to appearing on the magazine's most influential people list in 2014 I mean these accolades are incredible but how much they mean to you do they feel that their wider we were talking there about historical context do you feel their wider historical context is important in recognizing a black woman

and acting as a role model for generations to come I think the accolades are fun and important in that they inspire other people. I think to see somebody on those lists who looks like you is important. And I also think to see people on those lists who don't look like you, who open you up to curiosity about other cultures and other identities. So I think those lists are inspiring in lots of ways. But I always feel like when that kind of stuff happens, I just need to put my head back down and continue the work, right? To not get distracted and like, oh, I mean, I remember actually when the Time magazine, the most influential list came out. It was perfect timing because that week, actually, the People magazine Most Beautiful was announced.

The Time magazine most influential was announced. I was on both lists, which was surreal. but I was also hiding out in my hospital room because I'd just given birth to my now nine-year-old daughter. And it felt like, well, this is as it should be, that I'm wrecked, destroyed, emotional, feeling not so beautiful and feeling not so influential because I have no idea to do what to do with this brand new human being. So that kind of balance I always think is a gift when you can sort of have the accolades, but be brought down to life to what's really important and what really matters. Life is all about balance. Right. We talked about the grounding of family.

Yes. Just then, which is something that really does come to play in your fourth book, Shelfy book today, which is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion in this intensely powerful snapshot of a loving family torn apart in an instant and the painstaking attempts to make sense of sudden tragedy is one of the most profound books ever written about suffering and grief. Didion takes the reader through an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience, a portrait of a marriage and a life in good times and bad. Why is this book important to you?

I'm really lucky in that I haven't had a ton of loss in my life. And someone strangely, at the time I thought it was very strange. someone gave this book to me when I was in the midst of a really challenging breakup. Which is grief. Yes. Which is a loss. I didn't connect it in the beginning. But I, in the end of that relationship, I was navigating a kind of loss that I hadn't really had to process before.

And so reading that book really, I mean, Joan Didion is just so extraordinary, so brilliant. So she, I love her voice because she writes. eloquently and with extraordinary vision and purpose, but it feels so accessible. You don't feel, it doesn't feel posh or like unattainable, unaccessible. It feels so human and grounded, but like the best of us, right? And I loved that book. Just made me feel less alone in my grief and my loss. It made me feel like this was a well-tread path that people had walked this road of loss and

survived it and figured out how to live more richly in the context of that kind of loss. It's quite a revelation, isn't it, when you realize that a breakup is its loss and its grief and it helps you feel so much less stupid for us. Yes. Where are these enormous feelings coming from? And then you realize, oh, loss is loss. It comes in so many forms. And it's not linear.

It will come in waves. as it does in light of tragedy and bereavement. This memoir is beautiful and it's devastating. How difficult is it for you, for any artist, to put your most vulnerable self at the center of your work? I think it's hard. I mean, I think, again, writing thicker than water is by leaps and bounds, the scariest most vulnerable project I've ever taken on,

creative project I've ever attempted. But I also feel like if you're going to do it, then do it, right? Like don't, I didn't want to half-ass my way through a memoir. I'm going to phone in. Right? No, I really, like, also because I am exposing a lot about myself and my family. And I almost felt like to honor that commitment, right? If I'm going to air our dirty laundry, then I want to do it in the most

gracious and graceful and elegant way possible because my family deserves that. My children deserve that. I deserve that. Like our family story is actually a beautiful story. So I wanted to capture all of its complexity, even the trauma, even the failures, even the difficulties with as much beauty as possible. That felt like the way I could honor my family. And in letting go of that shame, we can be our most authentic selves on the pages of it. the book and in life. Yes. Kerry, we've come to your fifth and final book today, which is the vagina monologues by E.

Ebensler, a landmark work in women's empowerment as relevant as ever. The vagina monologues honours women's sexuality in all its complexity, mystery and power. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, this award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies, fears, anger and pleasure. and calls for a world where all women are safe, equal, free, and alive in their bodies. Now, you've said that this play changed the world, seeing it changed my soul, performing in it, changed my life. Tell us a little bit more about the impact that this work had on you.

So, Eve Ensler, who is now, who now goes by V, her name is V now, she really transformed culture by by forcing us to say a word that so many of us had been taught was a bad word. And it's not a bad word. It's just the beauty of a woman's biology. And I think, you know, I was very blessed early on in my career to be able to perform the vagina monologues and to be able to actually be on the board of V-Day, which is the global activism movement that was born out of the play. So Eve wrote this incredible.

play performed it. Tons of other women all over the world have performed it. And then she realized when people were coming up to her, she always says she wrote a play about vaginas. And so she thought that people would come up to her after the show and just talk about their pleasure and all the great sex they were having. And instead, women would come up to her after the show and talk about their trauma and talk about their abuse. And so what started off as a play became a movement, a global movement to end violence against women. And I was really lucky early on in my my career to get invited to be on the board of that movement and to work with extraordinary women like Melody Hobson and Jane Fonda and Pat Mitchell, these sort of pillars of feminism. And Rosario Dawson, we were the two young ins together. And to do the hard work of figuring out how to continue to leverage culture to transform our policy and our real behavior.

That's it because art can and does so often impact society. Yes. Women's reproductive issues are so often too often cloaked in silence. Yes. What can we all do? I think we can just keep speaking up. We have to keep being unafraid. You know, now vagina is no longer a bad word the way it was when the monologues were first produced.

You say this. I said it on the radio the other day and we got a complaint. Oh, see, there you go. I was going to say the new verse. version of that is abortion. So there's a lot of talk around making abortion not a bad word, but just talking about it as an act of health care. But I think you're right. I think we struggle with these words that remind us of our humanity. But we have to. We have to be in the truth of who we are as human beings in order to continue to be free and protect each other's

freedom. And this is something that you do in your memoir. You talk openly about your own abortion and about your miscarriage. Why did you decide to include this? It's so funny because in the beginning, I wrote my abortion story and I omitted it from the original draft. Did you? Yes. It just felt like I remember writing it one day because I would have these writing commitments.

I had a friend who was kind of my accountability coach, another writer, and I would send 500 words a day or 1,000 words a day. And so one day I wrote this abortion story and then I thought, well, I don't know. where that would go. Like, that has nothing to do with this other story I'm telling about identity and belonging and figuring out who I am. So I shelved it. I actually emailed it to the friend and forgot about it. And then when my editor was going through my draft, one of my early draft, she said, you know, you say this thing at the end of the book about how our reproductive lives are cloaked in secrecy and that you had the same realization until you started talking to other people and

sharing your abortion story and your miscarriage. And she said, it's very difficult for you to just drop that in the end of the book as like a drive-by notion without giving us more context. And so I went back and tried to locate the story and realize that in many ways, my abortion story is a story about my loss of privacy and that the attack on abortion that's happening in the United States right now is also an attack on our right to privacy. And so I thought, I think it's important for me to put in here. I think it's important for me to share this moment where I felt like I was losing my agency, my sense of self, my ability to make decisions with privacy and empowerment. Because that attack, my private moment mirrors the larger attack that's happening on women's identities and agency

and bodies. What a journey to have gone on in writing this memoir. Yes. I'd just love to know before we wrap up, what can readers expect from you next after this journey? Nothing. It was such an extraordinary experience to write this memoir. And I do have a lot of writer friends who have been encouraging me to think about what's next. But I don't know.

I mean, maybe a children's book. It feels like, you know, my poor children want to celebrate this book with me, but I won't let them come to any of the conversations about it because, you know, I don't, I don't need my seven and nine-year-old thinking about some of the larger issues in the book, although my 17-year-old has it. And I do hope that by the time my littles read it, that nothing in there is a surprise to them, because I do feel like we are very much redefining the culture of our family and the way that we tell our truths. So I want my kids to know the things about the book, the things about me that are in the book.

before they read them. I want them to be able to feel like I gave them enough of myself that there were no surprises. Well, thank you for being so open with us and so honest because it's a beautiful thing. Thank you. Carrie, I'm going to ask you

if you had to choose one book from your list as a favorite. So terrible. So terrible. Because you said it at the beginning that it was hard enough to choose five. I do apologize. If I had to pick one to be the only book I had.

Just as a favorite. I'm not going to be so. so cruel is to take all your other books away from you. Do you know what? I think it's a book that I talked about but didn't include on my list. I think it would be half a yellow sun. Oh. Yeah.

It makes me very happy. It's my favorite book at all time. It's so special. Chimamanda is a treasure, a global treasure. A true genius. A philosopher without philosophizing. Yes. The way she understands.

Her book on grief as well. I mean, her, she's just a gift. Well, we could chat all day. Yes. but thank you so much having me. I've loved it. Well, likewise. Thank you. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.