Fresh Air - Best Of: Comic Ronny Chieng / Writer Miranda July
Episode Date: January 4, 2025After Trevor Noah started anchoring The Daily Show in 2015, he brought on Ronny Chieng as a field correspondent who could offer a global perspective. Now Chieng is one of the show's anchors. He's thir...d generation Chinese Malaysian, and grew up in Malaysia, Singapore and the U.S. He has a new Netflix comedy special. Also, filmmaker and writer Miranda July talks about her novel, All Fours. It's about a 45-year-old married woman, her erotic affair with no actual sex, perimenopause, and the related fears of losing her libido and getting older.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Learn more at plus.npr.org. From W-H-Y-Y in Philadelphia,
I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.
This is The Daily Show with your host Ronnie Chang.
Today we hear from Ronnie Chang.
After Trevor Noah started hosting The Daily Show in 2015,
he brought on Chang as a field correspondent
who could offer a global perspective.
Now Chang is one of the show's hosts.
He's third generation Chinese Malaysian
and grew up in Malaysia, Singapore, and the US.
He has a new Netflix comedy special.
Also filmmaker and writer Miranda July
talks about her novel, All Fours.
It's about a 45 year old married woman,
her erotic affair with no actual sex,
beginning perimenopause and the related fears of losing her libido and getting older.
That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My first guest is comic, actor, and political satirist
Ronnie Chang. He became a correspondent for the satirical new show The Daily Show in 2015
after Trevor Noah asked him to audition. Now Chang is one of the rotating correspondents who
anchor the show. He also co-stars in the new Hulu series, Interior Chinatown.
He had a memorable funny scene in Crazy Rich Asians as a wealthy investment
banker in Singapore. Ronnie Chang has a new Netflix comedy special called Love
to Hate It, which starts streaming tomorrow. He brings an international
perspective to his comedy. He was born in Malaysia where his grandparents
emigrated from China. From
age three to seven he lived in Manchester, New Hampshire where his parents attended college.
Then the family returned to Malaysia which is basically across the bridge from Singapore
so he spent a lot of time there. He attended college in Australia where he got his BA in
finance and his law degree while also doing stand-up comedy. Let's start with a clip from his new comedy special.
This is from a section about how he and his wife
aren't ready for children, but his wife had her eggs
harvested for possible future use.
He's imagining what his child, if he ever has one,
might say to him.
Daddy, daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a stand-up comedian.
Just like you.
You just feel the Chinese coming on, right?
Stand-up comedy? Are you out of your mind? That's not even a real job.
Like what do you think is going to happen?
You're just going to run around America and tell jokes to strangers
who don't give a f*** about your mental health?
And even if you do, somehow manage to overcome the odds
and make it to even a semi-professional
level as a stand-up comedian, do you think there's any chance in hell you'd be funnier
than me? Daddy's a borderline arena acting some markets.
Have you seen my IMDB page?
I'm in everything.
Crush your career.
Oh Gary, your mother and I didn't spend a fortune
to make an A grade blastocyst
for them to become a B grade comedian.
I will never watch anything you do. Go to law school!
It's what my father said to me.
Renny Cheng, welcome to Fresh Air.
It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
And I'd like to note the contrast between the yelling of that clip and how calm the
rest of the interview will be. What else did your father say to you
when you found out you wanted to be a comedian?
He said, no white person will ever buy a ticket
to go watch it.
Wow, did you think that that might be true?
No, I didn't think that was true.
But I didn't tell him I was gonna go do it.
I went to go do it.
And then he found out like after I was, I've been doing standup comedy for about two years and then he found out like after I was I've been doing stand-up
comedy for about two years and then he found out and then you know and and he
was trying to protect me you know he was he was worried he was worried about what
was gonna happen you know what my future was gonna be and then later on he got
behind it. Nevertheless when you were on the Daily Show and you started on The Daily Show,
you didn't tell your mother.
No, I didn't tell them I got hired on the show.
What were you afraid of?
It wasn't so much afraid,
it was that I didn't want to brag about small achievements.
I just wanted to do the work.
I didn't want to tell them that I joined
this institution, which quite frankly they didn't really know about anyway, and make
it sound as though I made it, quote unquote. You know what I mean?
So I genuinely-
Well, you kind of had. It's a big achievement. That's not a small achievement.
Sure, but I don't know. I think the work comes first. Getting the job is one thing, but then
can you do the job? And so honestly, honestly just came out of kind of humility of like,
oh yeah, I'm on The Daily Show, but it doesn't mean I've done anything yet.
So why tell them, you know, like it, my philosophy was like,
like just do the job and then maybe they'll hear good things about you.
And then that will be the, you know what I mean?
Like I didn't need the flowers from them at that point.
You deprive them of bragging rights.
Quite frankly, if you want to talk about bragging rights for them,
once I started doing decent work and people started liking what I was doing,
then they would go up to them and be like,
hey, your son is on The Daily Show.
So, you know, which I think is better than you coming out
and trying to brag about something that, you know,
at that point I hadn't even been on screen yet, you know.
I'm not sure how popular The Daily Show is in Singapore and Malaysia.
So I'd rather just do the work and then hopefully people like it.
So you grew up mostly in Malaysia, which is one bridge away from Singapore.
You compared it to me to how New York is to New Jersey.
Or how Philadelphia is to New Jersey on the opposite side.
Sure. I'll let you guess which one's New York, which one's New Jersey.
In this analogy. But yes, it's just a bridge across that is called the Causeway.
People cross the bridge from Johor Bahru, Malaysia to Singapore every day. Every morning people wake up in Malaysia, go to work in Singapore and come back, braving the traffic and the fumes and the immigration.
So were you exposed to much stand up in Malaysia or Singapore?
No, I was not. The stand up I was exposed to was in New Hampshire when my parents would
play Seinfeld, the sitcom. And so you would see Seinfeld do stand up in his interstitials,
in between the narrative, he'd do stand up. And I remember
asking my mom, like, hey, and that was the first time I saw, I even knew that that could
be an art form, just standing there and telling jokes with no other props and, you know, it's
just you and a microphone. And I told my mom, like, hey, I want to try that someday. And
my mom was like, oh, okay, cool. And I was like four years old.
You've said you were introduced to Jewish people from Seinfeld. Yes.
In the lines of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. So what did it make you think Jewish people were like?
To be honest when we watched it in, when we were watching in Malaysia and Singapore,
we think that they're white people. At least for me anyway. I didn't realize like they were like
a special type of ethnicity. I thought they were just a type of white person. And so when you're watching it
you're like, like you get little samples of Jewishness in it, right? They'll drop
a Yiddish word, they'll have a Hanukkah, they'll have little things here and there
where you slowly start to be like, oh these, I think they're different to white
American people. And we didn't have any stereotypes.
So I just thought they were New Yorkers.
You know what I mean?
I didn't think like, oh, this is Jewish behavior, or this is a Jewish joke, or I just thought,
oh, these are New Yorkers.
That's how New Yorkers talk.
Until I came here, I realized, oh, it's its own thing.
Your new comedy special was filmed in Honolulu.
Yes. Where Doogie...
Kamaloha. Yes, thank you. This is like a Doogie Howser adjacent series.
Yes. It was a reboot, yeah. Yeah, a reboot that you were in and you're very popular there.
Well... Or so you say. Okay, yeah, sure. And you say you have a lot of MAGA friends there.
Yes. And on The Daily Show, you spent a lot of time satirizing Trump.
Yes.
So how do you get around arguing about politics
with your MAGA friends?
That's a great question.
I think, first of all, one, we might be in media silos.
So the stuff I say on The Daily Show
might not actually ever reach my
mega friends because we're all so siloed in our media consumption. That's one. And then
two, I think that decent people have a sense of humor about things, you know? So I wouldn't
take the comment section as reality in terms of what the reaction is to a clip in the comment section
from mega people about political clip.
I don't necessarily think they would do react that way in real life face to face.
And third of all, Hawaii is a very different vibe, you know?
Like, Hawaii people know how to get along for the most part.
I think in Hawaii, they know how to put community before themselves, which is very un-American,
by the way.
This idea that in Hawaii, you know, everyone's very generous and you get more than you give
in Hawaii if you come with the right energy.
And so I like to think that in Hawaii, I always try to come with the right energy.
I won't be so presumptuous to say that I always managed to nail it, but I think I come with the right energy and I think
the locals and the Hawaiians there respond to that. So I you know they can
be you know hardcore mega people, but they you know what they're totally cool
with me as far as I know. You say you love America. This is the country that
puts showbiz above everything. Oh you're quoting my special. Yeah and then you
get you get paid for saying F the president and then money comes in and you say if
you did this in Malaysia jail. Yeah. But now Trump has an enemies list he's
threatening retribution and he's trying to revoke TV network broadcast licenses. Yes.
So how do you feel about insulting Trump now?
Those are all very concerning.
Don't get me wrong.
I think if he does any of that, it is upsetting and subverts the legal process in many ways,
in some ways more blatant than others.
My answer to that is we had four years of him
and The Daily Show was making fun of him every day
during those four years.
And essentially nothing happened.
So just going off of history and past evidence,
which is all I kind of have to go by right now is
that kind of, you know, for me that's kind of a sign of how it's going to be, you know.
What his bluster versus his actual actions.
I reserve the right to change my opinion if we all end up in jail.
If we all end up in jail then I will probably be wrong.
And maybe I'm just, this is just wishful thinking on my part.
But yeah, he said a lot of concerning things about the law.
But I think ultimately I believe in American institutions. I believe in checks
and balances. I believe that the entire founding of America was geared around having a weak
federal executive who is unable to kind of use the government to go after citizens individually.
I think that's the whole premise of America.
And so because of that, I'm a bit more hopeful.
Well, I hope you're right.
Yeah, I hope I'm right too.
By the way, what do I know?
I'm just a comic, you know, just making dick jokes.
But that's what I hope and that's what I believe.
And that's why I'm still here.
My guest is comic and actor Ronnie Chang.
His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, is now streaming on Netflix.
We'll be back after a short break.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to my interview with Ronnie Chang.
He's a field correspondent and one of the rotating anchors on The Daily Show.
He co-stars in the new Hulu series, Interior Chinatown. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, is streaming on
Netflix.
Let's hear a clip from The Daily Show. And this is from the day after Kamala Harris
conceded. So it's two days after election day. And you say Trump's promised a peaceful
transfer of power. And then you say, let's a peaceful transfer of power and then you
say let's hear it for the bare minimum of democracy and here's the rest of the
clip. So I guess American democracy still works as long as the guy who likes
overthrowing the government wins the election because then he won't overthrow
the government. So with the transfer happening,
we're gonna be talking about Trump again
every day for another four years, I guess.
And I, for one, did not think
that when I came out of the jungles of Malaysia
to do comedy, that I would be making jokes
about Donald Trump every day for 13 years straight.
13 years.
I don't talk about anybody as much as,
I don't talk about my mom as much as I talk about this guy.
I don't talk about my wife as much as I talk about this guy.
You know, my wife thinks I'm having an emotional affair
with him.
I'm gonna be talking about this guy on my deathbed, okay?
Which I assume will be in three years
when he somehow brings back the bubonic plague And you might be sitting at home saying well Ronnie. Why don't you just shut the fuck up about Trump?
Well for the same reason CNN doesn't shut the fuck up about him money
So let's get these dollars right now and get back to Donald Trump
That's not really true about the money
I'm sure. There's some truth to that. Okay so you got on The Daily Show after
Trevor Noah became the anchor and you knew him from performing at the same
comedy festival in Melbourne Australia which is where you went to college.
How surprised were you to get the call? Extremely surprised, because we weren't necessarily friends.
He was obviously much more successful than me
in the festival circuit, so we rarely crossed paths.
And I ended up performing with him for the first time
in Canada at Just for Laughs in Montreal.
And that's when he was very friendly to me at the show.
He was very complimentary.
He said, it's great.
What you're doing is great.
And I said, oh, thanks so much.
I didn't think too much about it, right?
And then maybe two years later,
I get this email to audition for The Daily Show.
And I was like, it was like a dream come true.
I couldn't believe it.
And so I still remember doing the audition
in my apartment in Melbourne and sending it in
and then getting the call back to come to New York City and audition for The Daily Show in New York City,
which was obviously a huge deal if you're coming from Australia.
So I know I did not expect to get it at all.
It was very much him who put the spotlight on me, as in the Daily Show would never have found me if not for Trevor
Insisting that get on and again. I'm not his closest friend. You know, I don't even think I'm his funniest friend
He just really was adamant that he wanted an Asian person on the show
because he he felt that
Asian people are
like half of the world's population, but
Asian people are like half of the world's population, but there's no presence on the Daily Show. And I guess at that time he was thinking of a more international show, right?
So he wanted someone who could talk to these issues.
So I'm just lucky that I was the recipient of his search, you know, it could have been anybody.
How familiar were you with the show?
Very familiar.
I've been following US politics since the West Wing came out,
was watching it religiously, and then started always reading
about US presidential history.
I'm a US president nerd.
And the Daily Show, we were watching it
as soon as we were able to illegally download it. In Australia, we would torrent the Daily Show, we were watching it as soon as we were able to illegally download it in
Australia.
We would torrent the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and watch it.
So I was a huge fan.
I was watching it all the time.
What I read about when Trevor Noah resigned is that you had just done a bit.
And then without you knowing that Trevor Noah was resigning,
he resigns on the air right after you're on...
Were you on camera?
Yes.
You were on camera.
Yes, there's a photo of me standing there not knowing what to do.
I was in the studio right next to him, but obviously off his camera,
but there was a camera on me because I was doing a segment with him, as you said.
And then we finished the segment segment and then usually he says okay everybody, Roy Chang everybody
and then everyone applauds and I leave the studio but he didn't do that
this time. He explained why he was leaving the show on air and no sign
of it. There was no sign. I didn't know he was doing that. Why did he do it that way? I don't know. He's a very smart guy and I trust his
judgment on everything and I'm sure he had his reasons, you know, and I can't
speak to them but I'm sure he had his reasons to do it because it seems like a
pretty extreme thing to do. Maybe he didn't want anybody to leak it. Maybe he
didn't want anyone to talk him out of it. I don't know. Oh, that's a possibility.
Yeah, but yeah, maybe you don't want anyone to leak it.
That's also a possibility or, you know.
What was the expression on your face like
as you heard him resigning?
I was like, is this a bit?
And then in my head, I was also like,
well, we're not live, you know what I mean?
Like he could say that and then we could just edit it
if he changes his mind.
So I was like, this sounds serious.
I don't know what's going on.
I'm a person who, I think I do a decent job at minding my own business.
So I wasn't like, what's going on? I wasn't trying to like insert myself into this situation.
You know what I mean?
I was like, oh man, what's going on?
You know, it sounds like he is going through some stuff.
And so I hope he's okay.
You know, that was my primary thought You might have also been thinking
Uh-oh, what happens to the Daily Show? What happens to my job?
you know the honestly I wasn't thinking that because I
Was here because of Trevor if I lose the job because of Trevor. I was okay with that
You know, I mean I wasn't supposed to have this job anyway
So so I've always adopted this very nihilistic view about the job and doing it. Not nihilistic, like
I care about the job a lot, I love it. It's the best job in comedy. But I adopted this
very like, live in the present, I guess, Buddhist, you know, don't worry about the future kind
of mentality with the job. And the second thing is also, I believe that America will
always have a daily satirical news show
You know, I think of all the countries in the world if America can't do a daily
Satirical news show like which country can we have the most freedom of speech. We have the most
resources
for show business
we have
infrastructure for comedic talent,
where people can write and get better
as performers and writers,
and can aspire to be hired on shows like this.
And we have the craziest political news.
Like if all those factors combine,
if America cannot have a daily news satirical show,
no one can.
Ronnie Chang, thank you so much for coming on our show.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
This is a real honor to be on this show and to speak to you.
Thank you so much.
Rony Chang's new Netflix comedy special, Love to Hate It, is streaming on Netflix.
My next guest, Miranda July, was a bit afraid of what people would think of her after publishing
her second novel, All Four's.
The book is partly about sexuality and has some very explicit sexual scenes, but that's true
of many books. Her larger fear was the theme of a woman reaching midlife and
entering perimenopause, the time in a woman's life when she's transitioning
into menopause and is experiencing some of the many symptoms associated with
that time of life. For her main character, the fears are of losing her libido,
dealing with strange moods, anxiety, and the thought of being seen as an older woman.
But the book has gotten the opposite reaction Miranda July feared. It was on many of 2024's ten best lists,
including in the New York Times, in which it was described as the year's literary conversation piece, and in the New Yorker, where it was described as, quote,
a study of crisis, the crisis being how middle age changes sex, marriage, and ambition.
July's moving, very funny book is at once buoyant about the possibilities of starting
over and clear-eyed about its costs."
Our critic at large, John Powers, described All Four's as hilariously unpredictable.
All Four's story revolves around a 45-year-old woman, a slightly famous artist, writer, and
performer, who decides to take a break from the routines she's stuck in and drive from
her home in LA to New York. Her husband
thinks it's a good idea and even suggests the best route for the drive.
But about 30 minutes away from home she stops at a gas station and feels this
electric connection to a young man there and he seems to feel it too. They end up
having an affair in a motel room she rents and redecorates and she spends the
entire three weeks there. Their affair is both sexual and chaste. They're both
married. He won't engage sexually, which would be disloyal to his wife, but they
touch and dance and the intentional eroticism becomes all-consuming for her.
But then the three weeks are up, she returns home and has enormous trouble re-entering
her life as a wife and mother.
Miranda July is also a filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and visual artist.
Miranda July, welcome to Fresh Air.
It's such a good book.
I really enjoyed reading it, and I'm looking forward to talking with you about it.
So you were afraid to write this book and what people would think of you. Elaborate on what your biggest fears were.
I mean, I think fear in general was also why I wrote the book. Like, I, upon turning 40, which
was a few years before I started writing it, it seemed like this grim time was suddenly
approaching that was very vague, like this time of a woman who's no longer young. And
I wanted to not write about that because so many women I admired, so many writers had written about more important things,
right?
Like they had not focused on the people trying to shame them
or the shame they felt themselves.
They focused on important subjects.
But the more that I got older,
and I started writing this book at 45,
and the more that I talked to other women
and gynecologists and naturopaths,
the more I felt that this subject actually wasn't separate
from those more important things.
Well, one thing about getting older is,
I think Wikipedia has relieved the burden of that because
for most people their birth date is on the Wikipedia page and so you can't
really hide it even if you want to anymore and I resent the fact that women
especially are supposed to hide their age like why can't we own it why can't
we proclaim it you know why should we have to reinforce the idea that
a woman getting older is a really terrible thing?
Right. I mean, we shouldn't have to reinforce it for sure. But it does. Like, I think people,
I don't totally want to blame women when there's real repercussions economically,
just in their sense of what's possible in the world.
So it's a tricky line.
Yes, I sort of obviously am on the side of declaring it.
But I am kind of often, I'm just being honest here,
because so much of the book is about like, not trying to be less ashamed than I actually am.
Not trying to seem less ashamed. Because I feel like then you can't evolve. Like if you're hiding the place where you're actually at, then it's hard to get to the next place. So when I say I'm 50, I am always a little disappointed when the person
doesn't look shocked.
Oh, like, oh, but you look 35. That kind of thing?
When they just sort of are like, hmm, yeah, like, I still have that in me despite having
declared all that stuff a massive construction, you know, like a best construction ever that, that we
become less interesting, you know, so early, so young, right? 45, I mean, like, why was
I thinking about this at 45? But, but I was.
There's a line in your book where you're buying something from an older woman.
And you think about how you sometimes really hate old women.
And so...
Well, it's not, yeah. We're gonna have to decide, are we saying you?
Oh, I'm sorry. The character. The character, the character.
I mean, we can get into that, but, you know, the narrator's saying...
So the character, this is where the character has gone to the hotel
She's felt this like erotic charge from this younger man. She's
45 he's 31 who she met it who she looked at at a gas station and he looked back at her and then they met briefly
in a diner
so she's unpacking her suitcase at this motel and the reading
is about what she's thinking as she's unpacking her clothes and which one
she's gonna leave in the suitcase and which one she's gonna actually unpack
and wear. Right, yeah, so she leaves the sort of more androgynous styles in the suitcase.
I left these things in my suitcase in favor of my more overtly feminine and form-fitting clothes.
Heels and pencil skirts, cropped sweaters, shirtwaist dresses with tight belts around the
smallest part of my waist. Every old thing had a modern counterbalance. Past age 40, you had to be careful with vintage.
I didn't want to be mistaken for an elderly woman
wearing the clothes from the 1960s of her youth.
Young people especially had trouble making distinctions
between ages over 40.
When I got my first Patti Smith tape, Horses at 22,
Smith was only 49.
But I didn't think of her as a contemporary person. I wasn't
even sure she was still alive because the cover of Horses was a black and white photograph.
Instead of knowing this was a stylistic choice, like vintage clothes, I unconsciously associated
the record with the deep past of black and white movies. If anyone asked, I would have
probably managed to assign the album to the right decade,
but most of life is a vapor of unconscious associations
never brought to light.
A good way to check your outfit is by running past the mirror,
or better yet, make a video of yourself
running past your phone.
How old was that blur of a woman?
Was she from the past or was she modern?
And where was she going in such a hurry?
I walked around Monrovia in a red shirtwaist dress and white wedge heels. The commercial
areas weren't really built for walking, but there were some nice residential neighborhoods.
Several times I passed teenage girls wearing backpacks, their breasts inflated by the hormones
in cow's milk and barely covered by tank tops.
Whenever I saw them coming, I pretended I was from another country, projecting the air of someone so
foreign she could not understand or be hurt by anything American.
Did you share a similar, almost fear of older women or a dislike of them that your character has?
I think I was catching myself around this time. I kept sort of noticing what I was
thinking about older women and
noticing the way
that I might dismiss
noticing the way that I might dismiss someone or not give them sort of the full benefit of an interior life or an erotic life or or think of them as like a sad character kind of for no reason, right? Like this is just like someone I'm seeing in passing. And by the time I was
writing the book, I was aware like, oh, that fear or hatred of older women is of course
self-hatred, you know, because I will become that. And to some degree, I will become that and to some degree I already am that to people younger than me.
So it's like a kind of slippery zone.
My guest is Miranda July. Her latest novel is called All Fours.
We'll hear more of our conversation after a break.
I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terri Gross. Let's get back to my
interview with Miranda July. Her latest novel is called All Fours. It's about a
woman wanting to shake up her life. She's thinking of leaving her marriage and is
having a very erotic affair. When she discovers she's entering perimenopause,
she fears the best part of her life may be ending and she may lose her libido. She worries about getting older
There are parallels to Miranda July's life
Your character is experiencing things and fears
That relate to perimenopause, but some of the things she's experiencing
She doesn't know relate to perimenopause until she actually goes to her gynecologist.
Was it that way for you that you had symptoms of perimenopause that you were attributing
to other things?
Well, I had a different experience from the narrator.
I actually had this amazing doctor, Dr. Maggie Ney,
who started talking with me about it in my early 40s.
I may have been just 40 and she's like,
look, we're gonna take your blood
and see where your hormone levels are at.
And that's just to get a baseline so that as you get older,
you know, and things, your hormone level drop
will kind of understand like the speed at which that's happening and when you might want to do bioidentical hormones if you
want that. And I always remember at the end of describing all this, which was a longer
conversation, she said, I'm so excited for you. And she didn't mean that like as a joke.
And I not knowing anything else about this, never having had a conversation
about it in any other time in my life, not having had a conversation about it
ever before with anyone, I just smile.
I just dumbly smiled and was like, huh, yeah, you never know what's coming
next, you know, like this is exciting, like, go from ballet slippers to pointe shoes, you know,
like, it's always something new. I don't know, it didn't seem inherently bad. But then, you know, as
I would talk to my friends, I was like the only one who knew anything.
You know, as I would talk to my friends, I was like the only one who knew anything. So one of the things the book is about is the feeling that you need to change your life,
but not knowing how to do it, and knowing that there will be consequences and rewards
if you do.
And part of the consequences will be for the other people in your life if you're leaving a marriage, if you're breaking up
a home in a way that will affect your young child. And I know you've experienced
similar things and this might be too personal, but was there a lot
you had to weigh before changing your life, knowing that it might
be the right thing for you, but there would also be consequences that everyone in your
family would be facing, including you?
Because I'm sure there'd be a downside as well. And my changing life moment, it wasn't like I alone in my head was coming up with that
I had to do this.
It was like an ongoing conversation with my husband at the time. very slow and we both, I think as much as we didn't want to traumatize our kid, we
also didn't want to traumatize ourselves. And we were very attached to ourselves
and the triangle of our family. So what exactly had to change and what could stay the same.
I feel like it's still changing.
I mean, kind of as long as we're a family,
which will hopefully be forever, you know,
you've got three changing people in it
whose needs are changing and who are trying to be honest.
And I guess that was the big shift was like, oh, we're not going to pretend we're not changing
anymore.
And that a lot of those changes have nothing to do with each other, you know, or this thing
that we've built. But you know, as much as you worry about the kid, my biggest worry was that they wouldn't
get to see me as I really was.
And I say they because they're non-binary.
There's just one kid.
Because I started to realize, oh, there's a whole lot of myself that happens outside the home with my best friend or in my studio alone, being creative or just me alone in the world.
Like, I feel like I'm starting to feel like this part that used to just be like me on a break or, you know, at work.
break or, you know, at work, this may be the lion's share of me. This might be kind of what I have to offer them as far as one way to live, one way to
be.
But actually when I go home, I'm being like a smaller version and not kind of like I'm
just less interesting to even to myself like because I was biting my
tongue a lot and no one was asking me to do this by the way like it's it's very
personal I know a lot of people who the freest they feel is is in their home and
you know the world is terrifying but and so I began to feel like something I had to do for my child. Like, I need to
change these circumstances so they can see who I really am.
So this may be too personal, but please don't answer it if it is, you and your former husband,
is that the right way to describe it,
live together for a while with your child,
but more as friends than as a married couple.
How did that work?
I think a lot of people would be curious about that,
because I think there are a lot of couples who separate who remain friends
But they don't want to be romantically involved anymore, and they want more freedom outside of the home
But I could see where there'd also be a lot of discomfort and tension and
Nervousness around each other so if there's anything that you can offer
about how that arrangement worked out?
Yeah, I mean,
it is interesting, I feel a little different
since the book came out.
Like I've now read so many emails and messages and comments on my
sub stack about women at this point or women doing things differently or trying
to figure this out that I no longer I'm like is there a way to answer this
question that isn't specific to me because I actually don't feel like I
think at the time I felt
very unique and very like no one's doing what I'm doing and both worried by that and sort
of proud and now I'm like no, it's, this is incredibly widespread, at least lots of thoughts
about it and then people trying to figure
out how to do it.
I mean, the thing of living together, it's what you're used to.
Obviously, that's not going to work if you're incredibly embattled, you know?
But if you're not, then it is kind of an opportunity to see who the other person
is a bit more. Like, wow, this person who's like my long time pal, but I never could quite see what they were like when they're dating, you know?
Not that you're necessarily getting any details or anything, but just like their energy, you
know, because you were the person they were dating, and now you're not.
And like, yeah, there might be some sadness or strangeness about that, but you're also
like, look at you, you're a
person, like I never really gave you all of that. And meanwhile you're also getting
it too, like they're seeing you as a person more completely and nothing you
do is threatening in the old way, you know, the way every new thing and change
is like sort of threatening when you're in a couple sometimes.
And if you know it's going to be a lifelong relationship, you know, partly because of
the child, but also because, you know, life isn't that long and you've already invested
so much time and energy with this person, like maybe that's sort of interesting to get
to see and be seen,
you know, in this different way.
Have you changed a lot having more space in your life on your own?
Because I would imagine you co-parent with your former husband and that you don't have your child every day to take care
of.
And in some ways, that's a real loss and in other ways, it gains you some independence
and personal time.
And I wonder what that shift in time and that shift in the balance of independence versus having somebody dependent on you all the time has changed you.
For better or worse, has changed your life. Or for better and worse.
So, yeah, the four days, every other four days, I'm alone, you know, or wherever, whoever I choose to sleep with, like in my 20s. Like it's,
it's really like you really have to stop and think when you have that time alone where you're not responsible,
like, what actually am I doing here in this life?
Like, what do I feel?
And you keep, just because you've unburdened yourself
practically from this construction
or these real responsibilities doesn't
mean they just automatically lift off your shoulders.
Like most of my issues come from within, right?
So suddenly you're like, oh, it wasn't all
the construction of marriage or the patriarchy
or it was those things, but they're inside me.
And I'm still running for dear life or replacing those constructions with new
ones, you know, anything that'll fill up my time, take my time, please, you know,
Instagram, whatever, like, and so to actually be willing to take on that freedom, it's a real practice.
Like it's, and I don't mean to make it sound hard or scary,
it's only hard in the way that, like, a new habit is hard.
So I want to talk about your formative years.
You gravitated toward punk as a teenager.
And what drew you to it?
And what were your first experiences
listening to punk rock or going to clubs?
I mean, I think I wasn't ever like,
I'm not like a music head.
So the thing that drew me to punk, especially
as a teenager, was first of all, it was an all ages scene, like the clubs, like I could
go to them. They weren't they didn't have alcohol. And not only that, but the the whole
premise was you don't have to be taught, like you can figure it out yourself. And that was
great for me who did not want to be taught by anyone anyways and wanted
access to a like a space, a world, a literal, I mean I put my first plays on
in a punk club in 924 Gilman, a sort of seminal all-ages punk club in Berkeley. And that was
so great. Honestly, I would wish that on any teenager to have the freedom to do something
outside of school that's, while punk seems sort of lawless, it actually was a structure,
you know, it did formalize what I was doing.
AMT You actually moved to Portland to be part of the Riot Girl scene.
LB – Well, I moved to Portland to be with my girlfriend at the time and Riot Girl kind
of had just happened. I'd say I sort of missed it slightly. But certainly the feminist
underpinning was all there.
One of the jobs that you had early on while trying
to support yourself, I guess, while you were doing your art,
was working at a peep show.
How and why did you get that job?
Initially, let's see, my girlfriend and I broke up.
She moved out.
We had to cover her rent.
And I remember my friend at the time, like, how are we going to get this money
really quickly, you know, that we were missing?
And she said, well, one of us is going to have to strip and it can't be me
because I have glasses.
And I was like, OK.
And I was like, huh, okay. And so initially it was this club that I think is still there called Mary's, Mary's?
And in Portland.
But then I've had these kind of lifelong problems with my eyes, and there was smoking in the
bars back then.
So I couldn't really handle the smoke.
So that's why I moved to the peep shows,
which is just like a box.
You're not really sharing air with anyone.
And you're separated by glass, right?
Yeah.
What did you learn doing that about sexuality or about men, about yourself, about what it
means to get really turned on looking at somebody who's basically on exhibit behind glass?
Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, my main goal was to make as much money,
it still wasn't that much,
but to make this amount of money in a short time
so I could work on my, what ended up being
like my first book of short stories, my first feature film.
I needed the time was how I was thinking about it.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't recommend that job
to my child or anyone else's child,
but on the other hand, like most jobs at that age
are not so great.
What were some of the conversations that you know about
about your book that you found most interesting?
Like what were some of the themes that you're glad about your book that you found most interesting, like what were some of the themes
that you're glad your book provoked?
You know, the themes in the conversations.
I mean, the things that make me most happy to read
are like women who, while they were reading the book,
felt kind of exposed, like, oh no, this is like my whole inner life exposed here
in this book.
And I've had people tell me that they were reading it
on the plane and they felt like they at a certain point
had to put it away, not because of the sexual content,
but because they were sitting next to their husband
and it was all their true feelings that they weren't saying. And that's always kind of astonishing to me like
oh writing can do that. Like I get a lot of messages from older women who say like oh this
all happened to me my all-fors time was 20 years ago. But I'm stunned to realize
that I wasn't alone. I thought I was uniquely crazy or irresponsible or something. And so
they're just, it's like a reframing of their life to have the community from the book.
Well, I look forward to your next book.
Thank you so much for being on our show.
Thank you so much, Terry.
Miranda July's latest novel is called All Fours. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terri Gross.