Fresh Air - Best Of: 'Spider-Man' dir. Destin Daniel Cretton / Novelist Harriet Clark

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues to break box office records, after having the biggest U.S. opening weekend in history. Tonya Mosley talks with the film’s director, Destin Daniel Cretton. Long before Marvel, he worked in a group home for at-risk teens. He says it's an experience that shaped everything he's made since then, and became the movie Short Term 12.Also, we hear from Harriet Clark. She was a baby when her mother was a getaway driver of a robbery of a Brink’s truck in 1981. The robbers were members of a radical offshoot of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. For 37 years, Clark spent Saturdays visiting her mother in prison. “She figured out how to mother me in some of the most difficult conditions possible,” Clark tells Terry Gross. Her novel, The Hill, draws on her experience visiting her mother in prison. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and curated playlists of archive interviews. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today? What is happening to me? Did you miss me, Spidey? The film Spider-Man, Brand New Day, continues to break box office records after having the biggest U.S. opening weekend in history. Today we meet the film's director, Destin Daniel Cretton. Before Marvel, he worked in a group home for at-risk teens, an experience that shaped everything he's made since then and became the movie Short-Term 12. Also, we hear from Harriet Clark. She was 11 months old when her mother was a getaway driver of a robbery. The robbers were members of a radical offshoot of the weather underground and the Black

Panthers. For 37 years, Clark spent Saturdays visiting her mother in prison. She figured out how to mother meet in some of the most difficult conditions possible. That's coming up on Fresh Air Week. This is Fresh Year weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. At the end of the last Spider-Man movie, No Way Home, back in 2021, Peter Parker makes a choice. To save the people he loves, he had everyone on earth forget he ever existed. My guest today, filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, picks up the story years later in the latest Spider-Man, brand new day. Peter is still Spider-Man,

but years after everyone he loves has forgotten about him. he's living almost completely alone. And when strange things began happening to his powers, there's no one in his life who knows him well enough to even know something is wrong. What is happening to me? Did you miss me, Spidey? I'm losing my mind.

I am totally out of control. I got to fix whatever this is right now. That's Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Spider-Man brand new day, and it opened with the biggest debut in box office history. Director Destin Daniel Creighton came to Marvel from a very different kind of filmmaking. His first job out of college was at a group home for at-risk teenagers. He turned that experience into the 2013 film Short-Term 12, which featured young actors Breed Larson, Rami Malick, and Lakeith Stanfield.

Creighton went on to direct The Glass Castle and Just Mercy about Attorney Bryant's Stevenson's work Defending Men on Death Row. His Marvel debut was Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, the studio's first film with an Asian lead and an Asian director. He also created the Marvel series Wonder Man. Destin Daniel Creighton, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Okay, 23 million people went to see this movie the first weekend.

And a movie like this, I mean, it has enormous expectations. There are, of course, the studio expectations because this is a franchise, it's a brand. And in many ways, these stories have to carry each other from film to film. But there's something in particular that you have to bring to the film as well, your sensibilities as a director, knowing that you're stepping into an established story. Was there a moment or any time during the beginning of the process where you said, this is the film and this is my stamp, my place in it? There were a few moments in the development process where I felt like I now understand the heart of this story. One was in the writing process. We were trying to really understand what the internal story was of Peter Parker.

And I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university and when I didn't really have a real direction. in life when a lot of my friends are going off to other things, and it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone. That was around the time that I was working at that group home for at-risk teenagers. And when I think about that particular time in my life, I don't know, I just felt like that was Peter. That was this stage where you're looking back at the things and the place,

places that you've been, and you don't know how to define them to move forward. And so to be able to look at Peter and watch him redefine kind of the pain and the things that he's been through and actually use them as part of the things that make him strong was a very therapeutic experience. I actually want to play a clip. It's a scene where Peter Parker, as we said, he's been erased from the memory of everyone who loved him. And he crashes a house party thrown by MJ, the girl he loved, who was played by Zendaya, and Ned, his best friend, played by Jacob Battalon. And neither of them knows who he is.

It's the first time we kind of see them all together. And it's a real trippy experience because, you know, of course he knows and we know the whole backstory, but they don't know who he is. And Peter is at that moment unbelievably lonely. And he loves these two people so much. You know, he's been following their lives on social media, and he's at this party, and he sees MJ, and she speaks first. Let's listen. God, there's like 50 people on our apartment. Statistically speaking, that means at least two of them are sociopaths, which is kind of cool. Nice flowers.

Oh, there are a housewarming gift. Really? Yeah. Oh, okay. Most people just brought beer and chips. It's very nice. I'm MJ. I'm a

Maynard. A Maynard. Oh, you two don't know each other? No, I'm a neighbor. Friendly neighbor? That's a scene from Spider-Man Brand New Day directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Cretton. Of course, the friendly neighbor is a play

off of the whole Spider-Man franchise. But this is a kind of what you're talking about, about that, those growing pains of getting to the next stage of life, because of course, this is the device where they don't know him and that's a big part of the storyline. But it's also something that is very ordinary, too, where you grow out of your friends at a certain age in life. Maybe the people that you have kind of been on the journey with, you're now kind of, you know, separating. There's a certain grief that lives in that. And it also just feels so, to me, so relatable.

At that stage in life, I remember being in those parties. I remember being surrounded by people who all seem like they have it together and seem like they are having the time of their lives. And I remember certain times feeling very alone in the middle of it. But it was really, it was actually really fun to explore that. And, I mean, Tom playing awkward, there's just nothing better than watching Tom play an awkward. scene. Yeah, why? Yeah. He's just his comedic timing with his awkwardness, I think is one of the most brilliant things about him. It's so relatable. It's not just comedy. It's just like a feeling and situation that I just feel like I've been at. This movie also introduces Jean Gray into Peter

Parker's world. And for people who don't know her, Gene is a mutant who can enter people's minds. She can hear their thoughts, live inside their memories. And she is one of the X-Men. And, you know, so everyone is talking about this is like, oh, okay, this is setting this up for me for the next movie here. But I've read that it was actually the other way around. It wasn't the studio who was pushing you for this. This was something you actually wanted for yourself. You wanted her to be a part of this storyline. Talk to me about why she was important to introduce, to kind of reinforce all of these themes that. you were so interested in exploring.

When we were writing this movie, we wanted an antagonist that would be a real reflection of Peter Parker and where he is in his emotional journey. And we went through a lot of potential villains, and I cannot think of a better reflection than where we landed. I was really interested in having our antagonist

be somebody who is younger than Peter, who really represents in many ways what young people are going through right now, what young people are feeling. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton. He directed the new movie, Spider-Man, Brand New Day, which is in theaters now. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my conversation with filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, director of the new movie Spider-Man Brand New Day. He also directed Just Mercy and Shang Chi in The Legend of the Ten Rings and created the Marvel series Wonder Man. His breakout film was Short-Term 12 about the staff and teenagers inside of a short-term group home

drawn from the two years he spent working in one after college. Let's talk about this time that you were working in this group home. There's a story that you tell about how cocky you felt as a young man when you got this job. You thought, like, these kids are going to love me. I'm going to be, in some ways, a savior. And you got a rude awakening. I sure did. What happened instead? It was a job that really threw a lot of things back into my faith. It was by far the the most difficult experience that I had up until that point and also the most rewarding. I grew up on Maui.

I didn't realize how sheltered I was until I was working at that group home. I just was not exposed to the type of experiences that these young people had gone through. I also wasn't ready for the people that they had become because of their experiences. These young teenagers were, in many ways, much more mature than I was. But then they were also very, you know, they had very real pain from their past just right under the surface that they were always dealing with. So it was very quickly a very humbling experience for me. I want to actually play a clip from the film, and it was your second film. Short-term 12 is the name of the facility in the film.

And the kids stay there until they find somewhere else to live or until they turn 18 and age out. And in this clip, this scene is Rami Malik. He plays Nate, a new staffer on his first day. Is he a proxy for you? Yes. He is. He definitely is. Okay.

Yeah. And he is talking with Brie Larson's character, Grace, who has been working there for. while and shows him the ropes. Let's listen. These are the files on our kids. You want to see what kind of crap they've been through? How long do they stay here? Supposedly less than a year, but we have a few that have been here a little over three. We just keep them until the county figures out where they're going to go next.

Tom, go brush your teeth. Remember, you're not their parent, you're not their therapist, you are here to create a safe environment, and that's it. And since you're new, they're going to try and test you to see what they can get away with. So just say no for a while. No. Okay. Kind of got to be an a-h-h-and-you-can be their friend.

You're going to be fine. That was Rami Malik and Bree Larson in the film Short-Term 12, directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Kretton. When you took that job, what were your aspirations? You know, I graduated with a communication degree, and I was... was making short films. I would do a short film once a year, and I would just save my money. So I worked at a group home for two or three years. I taught high school video production. I worked at a hotel putting up their media, their projectors and things. I had a lot of odd jobs to pay the bills. But it was all really a way to just pay.

the bills while I made movies as a hobby. Okay, because you were very clear at that time that you wanted to make movies. I was very clear that I wanted to keep making movies as a hobby. I wasn't really chasing it as a career. I feel very surprised and lucky to be where I am. I tried moving up to L.A. early on, but I found it to be a little too overwhelming. And so when I moved back to San Diego, where I went to school, it was also an admission to myself that I was not going to make it in the industry. I was going to go back

and just try to find a way to do what I loved and continue to do it without getting paid for it. So I didn't see that as a failure. I saw it as a way to survive psychologically as an artist. I want to switch gears to talk about another film of yours. First off, I just want to say thank you for just mercy. I watched that with my children during the pandemic. And surprisingly, I think it's surprising for me, that they still reference that sometimes. And for people who don't know it, it's based on Brian Stevenson's

memoir about his work defending men on death row in Alabama. I want to actually play a clip from the film. And this scene features Jamie Fox. as Walter McMillan. And Walter is a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama. And Michael B. Jordan plays Brian Stevenson. And at the time, he's a young lawyer just out of Harvard who has taken on this case. And the two are meeting for the first time in the visiting area of the prison. And Walter basically tells Brian Stevenson, I don't really trust that you can help me and get me off death row.

Let's listen. Rich boy from Harvey, you don't know what it is down here. When you're guilty from the moment you're born. You can buddy up with these white folks and make them laugh and try to make them like you, whatever that is. And you say, yes, sir, no man, but when it's your turn, they ain't got to have no fingerprints. No evidence. And the only witness they got made the whole thing up. And none of that matter when all y'all think is that I look like a man.

Who could kill somebody? But that's not what I think. You know how many people have been freed from Alabama death row? None. What will make you think you're going to change that? I ain't doing this again. All right. Mr. McMillan.

We're done here. Mr. McMillan, please. I'm here to help. That was Jamie Fox's Walter McMillan and Michael B. Jordan, who played Brian Stevenson. What is it about filmmaking that's your language? that is your way to express. Because you're touching on something with these people, especially Brian Stevenson, who just recently he had this, he was talking about how this moment that we're in is a moment where we are taking the record. It's narrative change. It's through storytelling

that we're able to make change in this generation, in this moment. And I'm just wondering for you, what is it particularly about filmmaking that is your language? I grew up on Maui, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I found connection to the outside world in movie theaters. As a kid, I would watch many movies with my dad, with her family, and that is how I traveled. That is how I was exposed to other cultures. That's how I understand how kids grew up in high school on the mainland. And one of my biggest takeaways was not how different we are, but how similar we are emotionally.

The things that, you know, when I watched E.T. And the things that I see this young man going through in his family, in his school were things that I went through. And I have always found movies to be a way of peering into other, lives that I would never otherwise experience to peer into other worlds and find those things that still connect us. And I feel lucky that I went from being a spectator to then just kind of getting obsessed with doing this as a young kid. And I think over time, I have just become, I don't know, become very addicted to the process of exploring a subject, of jumping into it and understanding it,

and finding a way to write it in a narrative through the eyes of a character that I identify with. You mentioned how you'd go see movies with your dad, and your mom was, you called her, you know, a little hippie mom. I think you referenced that she was sort of a hippie mom, but she also was a mom who was very particular about the media and other things like that that you consumed. How did that work in your household? My mom was very kind of anti-TV. She would allow us to watch certain things on, like we could watch TGIF on Friday night, but most of the time she- What's TGIF? You're talking about the home video? No, it's like that run on Friday nights that had family matters. Oh, okay, yeah. Gosh, I forgot.

Like a bunch of different family-themed sitcoms. Yeah. Watch like four in a row or something. Yeah. But it was actually looking back really wonderful. We lived in Haiku, a small town right next to a pineapple field and lots of open spaces. We grew up on the same property that my mom grew up on. And she would just force us out of the house.

And because of that, we had to. to find our own ways of playing make-believe or making up plays or making up dance routines or fight choreography and then we'd perform it for my mom. And we used to do that when I was really young. And then around 11 or 12, my grandma loaned me her VHS camera. And that's when I got addicted to making movies. And so my mom wouldn't let us watch TV,

but she allowed us to make as much stuff. as we wanted. So that's when I started making movies with my siblings. And honestly, the process has not changed. We would spend all day making a short film or a commercial or whatever. And then I'd put it together and then we'd have a little premiere, but the premiere was just like my mom or my mom and dad. But that feeling remains the same. I'm still like kind of buzzing and have those butterflies in my stomach before I'd show it, and then my mom collapsed. And it's like, that's the full process. And that's still the same creative process that I go through.

And your mom, she didn't allow comics in the house? Nope. The lore is you had one little beat-up Spider-Man comic. Yeah, that was more from my, that my grandpa had some comics. And of course, my friends, you know, right around the time I was 10 was like, That was like the Todd McFarland days, and I remember those Spider-Man comics, and sneaking, I have a memory of sneaking one that was potentially at my grandpa's house, or it was from one of my friends. But it was like those Spawn and Spider-Man were kind of the big thing when I was like 10 or 11 years old. Do you know why your mom didn't want you to read those?

Or you and your siblings? I think there's, I mean, I think she was, anytime she would see something that was violent, she wasn't into it. So fighting wasn't cool. Sexiness, probably. She wasn't into that when I was a kid. And it goes hand in hand with her being pretty protective of the things that we would consume in any type of media, TV movies. But, you know, when you're a kid, you find ways to sneak. Your Marvel debut happened in 2021, directing Shang-Chi, the first Asian superhero.

and you said this was the first time in your professional career that you walked into a space and everyone was Asian just about. Describe what that was like for you and what that meant for you at that particular moment in your career. Yeah, it was one of those things I didn't really know I was missing until it happened. And when I stepped on to set, once all of our our stunt performers were there and all of our actors were on set and it was kind of that first day on set.

It was, I mean, it was cool. It was just like, there was something about set that just felt homie, that felt so comfortable to be able to have conversations with people that fully understand what my grandma is like and what growing up in an Asian culture is like. So I didn't know that that aspect of myself could be a part of my filmmaking. You know, I always sort of compartmentalized my upbringing and my culture and growing up in Hawaii as sort of a separate thing than my experience as a filmmaker.

Until I was on set for Shang Chi, it was very special. You know, in addition to this theme of family in your films, there's also something about young people who feel. feel alone and have had to deal with the loss of loved ones. And that theme is in short-term 12 and Spider-Man, Peter, and the young villain in the movie. Also in Shang-Chi, he went through the same loss and violence. That also seems like that's a pretty strong through line. Yes, I agree. Is there a reason that you keep coming back to making films?

about that. Maybe this is true for many artists. The experience, I think, of my childhood was made up of so much joy and also quite a lot of pain and hardship. The experience that I had having a very complicated relationship with my dad who passed away a few years ago was an experience that many times left me feeling very isolated and alone. But really, the thing that carried me through was my relationship with my siblings. and they have always been there when I was at my darkest moments in life. And so, I don't know, somehow that's probably just ingrained in me somewhere, and it just comes out subconsciously when I'm writing,

or it is a story that I personally don't feel I will ever get old examining in different ways. But, yeah. Can you share more about what you mean about the complicated relationship with your dad? I think in many ways, most of my movies have something to do with my dad. My dad was a very passionate man.

I don't like to diagnose people, but I think we all suspect that he was undiagnosed bipolar on some level. He was very passionate, very wonderful, to be around very loving in moments and could also be very dark and very angry and it just depends which dad you were going to get on the day. You know, I grew up along with my siblings,

learning to navigate those emotions, those real intense peaks and valleys. And when my dad would come home, I learned to become very sensitive, to what state he was in. I have found over the course of my career that I have so much to thank from my experience with my dad.

I am so grateful that he really was the person who instilled in me my love of movies. I mean, while my mom wouldn't really let us watch TV, my dad, who was a big action fan, and he loved Clint Eastwood, he loved Schwarzenegger, he loves Stallone. I would hear the sounds of guns and explosions going off downstairs late at night, and he would be watching the latest Schwarzenegger movie or whatever. And I would sneak downstairs and pretend I was going to the bathroom,

and then I'd go and hide behind the couch and watch him, you know, as he's watching The Running Man or Total Recall. or I have some of my fondest memories with him like going and we watched the fugitive together in a theater and that was my first like PG-13 movie and it was so exhilarating when we came out of the theater I mean this was so my dad we came out of the theater and my dad just raised both fists in the air and screamed the fugitive

but that's a type of like passion he had you know and And so I have those memories. But then I also have a dad who was often depressed. I didn't understand it was depression at the time, but who would often come home and just want to sleep or not talk. And then there was also the angry side who could be very intense and very scary. So aside from my love of movies, my experience with my dad did other things for me.

it really allowed me to not be afraid of any person, no matter how intense they are, no matter how quote, unquote, powerful they believed themselves to be. I feel like nobody compares to the experience that I had with my dad. But it also allowed me to subconsciously create the skill of feeling other people's emotions, which I find I use all the time as a director. The moment an actor steps on set, I feel like I just know what state they're in and I know what they need.

I've learned how to bring down a very intense situation. I do feel like he was a very wonderful and troubled man, but I am so grateful to have had him as my name. Destin, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been great to meet you and great to talk about all of this. Thank you for having me. Such a lovely conversation. Destin Daniel Cretton, his new movie, Spider-Man, Brand New Day, is in theaters now. Coming up, we hear from writer Harriet Clark. Her mom was a getaway driver in a robbery and a member of the radical group The Weather Underground. Her new novel is based on her experience visiting her mother in prison.

for about 37 years. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our next interview. Here she is. One of the last actions of the extremist left-wing groups with roots in the 1960s was the Brinks robbery of 1981.

Two militant groups, one an offshoot of the Weather Underground, the other in offshoot of the Black Panthers, robbed a Brinks armored truck carrying over a million and a half dollars. It ended in a shootout in which one security guard and two police officers were killed. Judith Clark was a getaway driver who was sentenced to 75 years to life. It meant leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter. That daughter, Harriet Clark, is my guest. She's just published a novel that draws from her own experiences,

being raised by her grandparents, and visiting her mother in prison every weekend for most of the 37 years her mother was incarcerated. It required traveling about an hour from New York City to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison for women. Harriet knew her mother would never get out, but she did get out after being granted clemency and released on parole in 2019. Harriet Clark's new novel is called The Hill, a reference to the prison in the novel being

on top of a hill. It's her first novel. Harriet Clark, welcome to fresh air, and congratulations on the book, you're an incredible writer, and I'm glad that you wrote this. It is an absolute trip and thrill to be speaking with you, and I'm so grateful to be on this show. Thank you. I'm honored to hear you say that. I want to start with a reading that I think will help set up your story and your mother's story.

And this is from pretty early in the book when Susanna, the child, the main character, is leaving the dentist's office with her grandfather, and her grandfather. and her grandfather has just had one of his teeth capped. So this is as they're leaving. My mother had robbed a bank, the first woman said. No, the second woman said. My mother had expropriated funds for the purpose of revolutionary struggle. The woman's tone suggested that she was possibly defending my mother and possibly mocking her.

When my grandfather emerged dazed and swollen, it did not seem right to press for explanation. but he must have heard what the woman said, or the anesthesia must have caused his mind to wander, because on the drive home he spoke to me for the first time about my mother's crime. A misguided attempt, he called it, to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Then an elaborate explanation of the insurance mechanisms of banks and further clarification that many people had money in banks, not just the rich.

When this lecture got into the weeds, he shifted gears into another regarding imperialism, racism, militarism, also materialism, all the things he said that he and my mother opposed, and that he assured me I opposed as well. His face was very close to the steering wheel. Your mother took it too far. How old were you when you first learned why your mother was in prison? How was it explained to you?

I don't have a memory of coming into awareness of my mother's crime. It must have been explained to me, but I don't recall. who explained it. My mother made clear from when I was very young that she was in prison because she had been part of something that cost three men their lives. So I think I knew from before I even knew what I knew that people had died and that my mother was in prison because of that. And she, in that sense, always raised me to understand that in some ways she was guilty and that was why she was in prison and that she would always be there. But I'm not actually sure who explained to me the details of the crime.

When you found out that she was part of a revolutionary group and that the robbery was supposed to support the revolutionary cause, what did you make of that? Did you know enough about politics when you learned that? Did you know enough about radical movements? And where this robbery fit in? Yes and no. Unlike Susanna, I continue to have a relationship to the women in my mother's collective. I had a half-sister, and so I returned to that collective every three weeks for the weekend,

and they were still very actively political. And so I did grow up inside a far more political atmosphere than Susanna does. She's really in the aftermath of politics. and I grew up inside active organizing, so I think I did understand something about the particular movements and commitments they had. But again, you know, for 40 years, every conversation I ever had with my mother occurred in a crowded room that was surveyed by officers or on a phone line that was recorded. And so we didn't have the privacy to talk about some of the things that might have been hardest to talk about.

And for most of my life, you know, my mother had to make prison a place I wanted to come to. You know, our visits had to be enjoyable. And so in that sense, too, it was very rare that we were sitting there getting into the nitty, gritty of her crime, especially when I was young. You know, fundamentally, she was trying to play with me and have fun with me and let me feel close to her. The prison was like your home, where your second home, because you were there every Saturday.

Susanna, in your novel, vows to keep returning there for the rest of her mother's life since the assumption was going to be there for the rest of her life. And that gives Susanna a sense of security, of routine, of safety, and of purpose. and, of course, of connection with her mother. Did you feel that way, too?

I mean, yes and no. I think that there is a way that the prison was a holding container for me and is meant to be a holding container for Susanna. I think in the prison, she's existing inside patterns that really do give a certain kind of steadiness to her life. Whereas actually, I think one of the things that makes prison in real life quite difficult is that they're always changing things on you. You know, they don't want you to be stabilized and steady.

The point is a certain kind of perpetual instability so that they can enact control over you. So I could wear the exact same outfit one week to the next and they could say, nope, those sleeves are too short. You can't come in. So actually, my experience wasn't quite as steady as Susanna's is, though I do think that I had an experience of peacefulness by virtue of the fact that I knew nothing was ever going to change. My mother had been in there as far back as I could remember, and she was going to be in there forever. And so that felt like a kind of steady peace for me and made me feel different than the great difficulties the kids around me were in.

Was it a good feeling to know she would be there forever? I mean, it was prison. On the other hand, she was always there. She was always waiting for you. You always knew where to find her. Yes, I think that I did experience myself as having a piece that the children around me did not have. Because, you know, most children lose their mothers to prison within their active awareness. You know, they had a mother at home. Most women in prison were the primary caregivers for their children.

Most women in prison are mothers. And so they lost their mothers. and that is obviously an incredible trauma that I felt fundamentally spared. And most kids, even though their mothers often had long sentences, their mothers were actively trying to come home. And I never envied that. It seemed like another form of torture to me, the way these kids were always hoping, you know, they would, at the end of visiting hours, they would say, will you be there this weekend for my recital? And some of the women would say, I'll try, you know, or will you be able to be there for my graduation? There was always this possibility on the horizon that to me seemed so torturous.

And so I felt grateful to be spared a certain kind of hope and waiting. As part of my research for this interview, I read an article in the New York Times from early in your mother's incarceration. And it was a profile of her. And it describes her as reluctant to have participated in the Brinks' World. robbery because you were a baby, but she felt she needed to prove her commitment to the revolutionary cause. She was in the getaway car. She didn't see the shooting. The money was thrown into the car, and the Brinks truck was carrying like $1.6 million. I don't know how much was actually stolen. And she portrays herself as a very kind of insecure driver and a really bad getaway driver

and doesn't really know where she's going. And I think maybe gets in a little accident at the end. Yes. So did you read that? I don't know how much she told you. I don't know how much she wanted to talk about participating in the robbery and being the getaway driver. So like the more you learn, how did it affect your opinion of your mother? I mean, one thing I'll say is that my mother was a getaway car driver. She wasn't the getaway car driver for the primary van that was used. But I worry that I do share certain qualities with Susanna. in terms of a kind of willful unknowingness. I mean, I have made myself understand better the details of my mother's crime. But one of the things I had wanted to dramatize in the book, you know, there's a chapter where the grandmother who believes you should look things in the face. You know, she's always saying to Susanna, do you go out of your way to know nothing? And Susanna keeps saying, yes, you know.

And that's a lot what the book is about, you know, what feels so threatening about knowing things about our. our loved ones, like knowing their mistakes or their sufferings or their histories. You know, in the novel, The Grandmother, really doesn't want the burden because it feels like the burden of raising Susanna after Susanna's mother's in prison. Is that the vibe you got from your grandmother that she wanted to be free, but she was tied down taking care of you? You know, the older I get, the sadder it is to me how little I knew my grandmother. not only because she died almost 30 years ago, but also because I really knew her in the wake of the two greatest tragedies of her life,

which were her daughter's life imprisonment and then her husband, her great loves, death. And so I think I knew my grandmother in incredibly grief-stricken years. And so my grandmother did have a certain atmosphere around her, of clearly being somewhat embattled with the life she had. But it's hard for me to source exactly where those feelings came from. And I will say the grandmother in the book is not my grandmother. But also the fundamental thing I had wanted to dramatize in that book was, you know, my grandmother did not want the life we had.

And to some extent, I did. I loved my grandmother. and she felt like my whole life. And so, you know, there's a moment in the chapter where the grandmother is fantasizing about how their life should be if the mother hadn't committed the crime. And Susanna says, I want to live with you. And the grandmother says, then you're wishing a man dead. And I think that was a real conundrum to me in my life, that sense of how can I value my life if it's based off of a tragedy and suffering by so many other people. And so that was one thing that I felt I was trying to look at in the chapter.

And also the fact that my grandmother and I did have this difference because she always knew we were inside a tragedy. She always felt this should not be as it is. And I fundamentally did accept the life I had and still found much of it meaningful and delightful even. I recently interviewed Zaid Ayers, who's the son of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorn, who were two leaders of the militant left-wing group, The Weather Underground. And so Zaid wrote a memoir about growing up underground because his parents, early in his life, had like, fake identities. They were basically in hiding underground. So one of the themes in his book is if his parents knew that they were going to continue as revolutionaries who were going to be doing revolutionary acts that could easily get them in prison, why do they decide to have a child, knowing that they could be locked away for years?

And I'm wondering how much you thought about that too. You know, it's interesting because from the outside, people have often been struck by my mother's abandonment of me. And I know that that is touched on, this idea of the mother abandoning her child is touched on often in the book. But my actual lived experience was of my mother's profound devotion to me because, you know, most people have to share their mothers with the world. You know, their moms have partners and jobs and other kids and friends. And every time I saw my mother, all she was doing was giving me. attention. I was her whole world. And so I didn't have the feeling of being abandoned by my mother in my kind of conscious reality. I'm sure something in me did feel fundamentally abandoned in life.

I think I've always felt somewhat precarious. But I didn't feel abandoned by my mother. And because her love for me was so present, it was never confusing to me why she'd had a child. I could see how much she wanted a child. I could see how much she loved me. And I was also, you know, if you're raised in a women's maximum security facility, you're raised around women who are perpetually being demothered, whose mothering is being disrespected. And I've never wanted to imply that my mother was less of a mother to me because she had other commitments. My experience is not that she's less of a mother. I think she's an incredible mother. I think she figured out how to mother me in some of the most difficult conditions possible. And so I think because I've never felt like I had a second-class mothering experience, it doesn't feel to me like, why did she even bother having a child if it was going to be under these conditions? I knew she loved me and wanted me, and I knew it was the great tragedy of her life, not to be able to be around me all the time.

Your mother's sentence was commuted and she was released on parole in 2019. When your mother got out of prison, did she live with you? at first? No, she's never lived with me. And actually, you know, I think that many people, my mother included, I think, did expect that we would be making up for a lost time, you know. But actually, because I was so shaped by my mother's imprisonment, you know, it's like my whole life as a child, as an adult, I could never call my mother, you know, I have no memory of ever wanting to, of having something upsetting happen and wishing I could call her or having something exciting happened.

I just never, I knew I couldn't call her and I didn't want to call her. And now, of course, she's like any mother and she's like, why don't you ever call me? You know, so I think that maybe she and others thought, you know, now we would be together all the time. But actually it's like I'm kind of this awkward teenager having to learn for the first time how do, you know, get my mom to leave the house so I can drink with my friends.

Harriet Clark, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much for having me. It really, it's a great honor. Harriet Clark's new novel is called The Hill. She spoke with Terry Gross. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our engineer this week is Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Anne-Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestor. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moosley.