Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby welcomes editor Michele Filgate and contributors Joanna Rakoff and Kelly McMasters to discuss their moving and deeply relatable new essay collection, WHAT MY FATHER AND I DON’T TALK ABOUT. Michele shares how her viral essay inspired the original mother-themed anthology, and why a companion book about fathers felt essential. Joanna opens up about uncovering long-held family secrets and the mythologies we inherit, while Kelly reflects on intergenerational parenting, memory, and the unspoken ways love is shown.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome back to Totally Booked.

I am so excited to be talking to so many contributors and the editor Michelle Phil Gate of What My Father Night Don't Talk About, 16 Writers, Break The Silence, and I'm here with Kelly McMaster and Joanna Rakoff as well. Such a treat. Oh my gosh. Welcome. 

Michele: Thank you so much for having us. 

Zibby: Aw, that's so much fun.

Okay, I'm gonna read quickly all of their bios like really fast so that you know who they are. Michelle Phil Gate is the editor of what my mother and I don't talk about. Her writing has appeared in long reads, poets and Writers, the Washington Post. The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Paris Review.

I'm gonna just stop, and many other publications. She received her MFA in fiction from NYU, where she was the recipient of the Stein Fellowship. Michelle teaches writing at the new school. We also have Joanna Rakoff. I hope these are alphabetical, and if not, you need. Okay. Okay. Okay. Joanna Rakoff and by the way, all of these authors have been on my podcast before and I love them all.

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the International bestselling memoir, My Salinger Year, and the bestselling novel of Fortunate Age Winner of the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction and the L Readers Prize KO's books have been translated into 20 languages and the film adaptation of My Salinger year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming, which I saw.

She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from McDowell Yado, Malay Arts, Suwanee Breadloaf. I'm gonna stop. There's so many and has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College and Aspen Words. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Oprah Daley Vogue, l Porter, and elsewhere, her new memoir, the Fifth Passenger, is forthcoming from Little Brown in 2026, which we keep teasing for like years now.

So I would really love to get that out. I can't wait to me too. I can't wait to read it. And finally, Kelly McMaster is an essayist professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She's the author of The Leaving Season, a memoir. And welcome to Shirley, a memoir from an Atomic town, which was the inspiration for the Sundance Selects documentary, the Atomic States of America.

She is also the co-editor along with Margot Kahn of the anthologies, wanting women writing about desire, and this is the place women writing about home. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Atlantic Lit Hub, The New York Times, Orion magazine, The Paris Review, daily River Teeth, VQR and more. She is an associate professor of English and Director of Publishing Studies at Hofstra University in New York.

Find her on Substack at the Magpie or at kellymcmaster.com. Are you impressed by these women or what?

Okay. Michelle, tell us about this project, the four, the one that came before and how this one came to be. 

Michele: So my first book came about because I wrote an essay that was published by Long Reads in 2017, right when the Me Too Movement took off and my essay went viral. It was about my stepfather abusing me and the fracture that caused in my relationship with my mom.

And I think the essay did not just go viral because of the content but also the title of the essay, which was what my mother and I don't talk about. I kept hearing from so many writers who said, I have a story about what I don't talk about with my mom and I realized it was a great writing prompt.

So I quickly put together a proposal and sold that as an anthology. I wanted to do an anthology because the subtitle of both of these anthologies are the first one is 15 Writers Break the Silence. This one, the Father Collection is 16 Writers Break the Silence. 

Zibby: You just couldn't cut the one extra would've been so much easier.

Michele: I know. But I wanted to do this as a group because it's so much easier to stand on a stage with others, to be in a book with others. Writing about something that is so vulnerable no matter how close you are or not, to your parents. It's a very difficult thing to write about your parent.

And it's something that speaks to so many people because, everyone starts to think about what their relationship is like with their parent when they read these books. So the first book went viral on TikTok twice a few years after it came out. 

Zibby: How did you make that happen? 

Michele: I didn't do anything.

I don't like I watch tiktoks, but I've never made a TikTok myself. But these wonderful young women in their twenties who I had never met before, read the book, loved it. And the first one had 1 million views. The second one got 5 million views. 

Zibby: What did they do? 

Michele: They just were talking about how much they like the book.

It was like a quick video that was like maybe a minute long. About the first one was talking about the book. The second one had music playing with some text on the screen. 

Zibby: I'm looking for tactical tips here. 

Michele: Yeah, I know. 

Zibby: What is it asking for a friend? 

Michele: What is it that makes a TikTok go viral?

Who knows? But I quickly realized in the comments and also as I was traveling the country doing book events for that first book, so many people were asking, where is the book about dads? And so it just really made sense to have this companion book. That could have been honestly. Twice as long.

And there, there are so many amazing contributors in here, including Joanna and Kelly, who I'm so pleased to be on stage with today. So it was an extraordinary experience to work with all of these writers in this book. And I have two writers in the anthology who contributed to the first one because I thought it would be interesting to see them write about their mom and their dads.

So Naomi Vera and Dylan Landis are both in both books. 

Zibby: And Dylan was in the audience at the LA Times. 

Michele: Yes. 

Zibby: Festival of books and we were both there. 

Michele: Exactly. 

Zibby: It's lovely to meet her. Yes. I was so excited when I saw this coming out and I'm like, it's about time. I loved the first book. Okay, Joanna, talk about your essay and welcome.

Joanna: Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here. So I I'll just say I loved what my mother and I don't talk about, like I've read some of the essays in it a few times and I love anthologies in general. I'm like an anthology person and I love essays. I think Kelly is the same probably, and like an essay junkie.

And I was so excited when Michelle asked me over a barbecue dinner at an AWPA few years ago to contribute something and I was here's my two second pitch, and the other people at the table were weighing in maybe it should be more like this. Maybe that's boring. Maybe it should be more like this.

So anyway, it was very exciting to be asked to do this and also to work with Michelle, whom I've known forever and who I love. But my essay which is, will be woven, it is woven mostly into my new book, which is called The Fifth Passenger is about one secret. My family has a lot of secrets, a lot of things we don't talk about.

And that book, as is about growing up with this enormous secret that I grew up believing. I had one sister who's almost 19 years older than me. People would think she was my mother and that kind of thing. And discovering in about middle school age that there were two kids in between us who had been killed, and I didn't know why.

And in the book I go and report out what happened, which is taking a very long time. So initially Michelle said please, we thought the book, The Fifth Passenger was gonna come out before this book, so she said, please don't write about your siblings. And thus I chose a different secret. So finally, what my essay is about is basically something related to this, which is essentially growing up with this idea in my family that my father was from this kind of scrappy, lower East side, Poor socialist background. He'd raised himself on the streets. He was like fighting gangs and running away from bullies and that kind of thing. Something you would see in like a 1940s movie. And my mother was a kind of coddled wealthy, beloved child from a rich family in the Adirondacks.

And there were lots of holes in this story, including the big one being that my father would always say, don't ask your mom about her childhood. And it turned out that, in fact, this was constructed basically by my father, possibly as a way of glamorizing our life. He had given up a career in the theater to be with my mom, and I think he was always a little bit sad in a small way, though he didn't show it about this loss. And about the kind of like suburban pedestrians of our life. I'm not entirely sure my parents passed away my dad a long time ago. But in this essay I look into how this all came out and these holes and what this secret did to our family.

Zibby: Your essay was so powerful. It was. Amazing. And every time I feel like I read anything of yours, I'm just like so eager for more details because you share in like D dribs and drabs all about your life and all these different places, the memoir and this and that. Now I'm like, oh, no way. That's what her relationship with her mom was like.

'Cause it was, there was quite a distance. And you had this moment in the car with her where you're just like trying to be like, or in with your dad being like, why does my mom not, not like me. That's so hard. 

Joanna: It's true. I'm like about to cry. It's true. I think many people were raised by this kind of mother.

This is a little bit the plot of Gilmore Girls, my favorite TV show. But when that show launched in 2000, people were calling me saying, is Emily Gilmore based on your mom? And I'm not making that up. And there was this kind of enormous distance between us, I think because my mom, for lack of a better term, leaned in to this mythology.

And created this persona for herself of this kind of, fur coat clad, always perfectly made up Upper East ish lady. Who really believed, and I know this is partly a generational thing, but it was also a very, her thing believed that her job was not to be my friend, was not to show me who she really was, but to show me how to be a lady by example, it wasn't to take care of me emotionally or to get to know me. It was to show me how to properly put on the right brand of stockings and what heel height was appropriate for what occasion did I get it right. I don't know. I don't know, and that kind of thing. 

Zibby: Well at the end when she finally opens up to you and shares more about her own life, and you could have that moment, like the sense of closure, don't you feel like was so wonderful in a way?

Joanna: I do. 

Zibby: Hard earned and maybe not in time, but 

Joanna: No, I really do. My mom passed away about a year and a half ago. I wrote an essay about this for a cup of Joe, if you wanna see it, there's a little more detail. And in the final year or so of her life, possibly because she had dementia, she opened up in ways she hadn't, and revealing all sorts of unhappiness and also her actual history.

And in the book you'll see there's a lot, there are these kind of reveals throughout the new book where she does reveal other things to me as well, and it did, when she died, I felt closer to her than I ever had. So there was definitely closure. And yet I wonder if any of you, I'll you feel this way about anyone in your life.

I, that closeness at the end really made me want just more time with her. To, it made me wish that we could have had years in which I knew more of the actual her and there wasn't this distance between us. 

Zibby: I remember when my grandmother had dementia and my, at Thanksgiving, I overheard my dad talking to my uncle and he said, how's mom?

And one of them said, not good. She said, I love you.

That was exciting. 

Joanna: Exactly.

Zibby: Anyway, Kelly. 

Kelly: How do I follow that? My goodness. And that essay is just luminous. Both your essays the Cup of Joe, one about your mother, and and the one in this book. How do we not cry when we talk about these essays? They're everything for us. And I think I, when Michelle approached me to be in this book, and I'm so honored to be joined.

To be in a chorus in this kind of beautiful chorus of these writers. I thought I was going to write about my father's hatred of grass because we growing up we lived on golf courses and I grew up in the golf course, not in the way that you may be thinking, but because my dad worked at the golf course, and I actually, when I was very little, believed the entire thing did belong to us.

We were, stuck in the like drafty back wings of the clubhouses or in a little cottage at the very edge and what I thought was a cottage, when I was reporting out this story that I ended up telling, I realized it was actually a single wide trailer. And my mom sent me the photo and I thought, because she knows that I loved that house.

It was my, we lived in many houses, but that was my favorite. And and I said, this can't be the house and she said, this is absolutely that house with the potbelly stove and this and that. And there it was on, cinder blocks and this sort of sagging, little scrappy place that was so magical to me.

So as a kid growing up in these situations I never thought. About my dad as someone's employee. And what I realize now is he, I looked at him and he just seemed like the person everybody wanted to talk to as the golf pro or, he would sometimes sell sodas at the tennis court and things like this.

And and so while I thought that I would be writing about the way we speak and plant. That's what I talk about. He loves gardening. So whenever we talk about rhizomes. It's a joke. It's his favorite. Every conversation will come back to the way rhizomes work is they go underground and you have to, he, it always comes back to rhizomes.

And what I understood through writing this piece is yes, that's how we communicate. And I understood why, and it's because he actually, although his father lived in the house with him, he was not much of a father and my grandfather's father abandoned him. And what I learned through writing this, and I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to write through it, to, to see it was the intentionality that my father brought to being a father and being a parent. And I think for myself when I was going through a divorce, I have two sons and my father would not really want to talk about it, but we would garden next to each other and he would show me how to split hostas and say, look at how much more growth you get when you split the hosta at the right time and things like this.

And I realized he couldn't talk to me about what he necessarily wanted to be talking to me about or what I wanted him to be talking to me about, but he did it in his own way. And then as my children were growing up in a home without a father, I felt such a hole in an absence and tried to fill that space myself.

And I was so grateful that my father was there to help me fill that. And and so it was plants but it was, and he hates grass. He, which I hate grass too. It's just an American thing. And so it's a, it's an essay that I thought would be funny. And turned out to be probably one of the most vulnerable pieces, and I've written a lot of memoir.

But it was, it turned out to be one of the most vulnerable pieces pieces I've ever written. 

Michele: Thank you to both of you for these gorgeous essays. Honestly. 

Zibby: Kelly, in your essay, you have a moment where you're on the phone with your dad. I think you're on the phone, and he said that he wanted to talk to your son about something and to tell him that how proud he was of him and how he had come through this divorce.

And how he's really just proud of the way he's aging. And you choke up on the phone and can barely talk. 'cause you're like, do, of course you can tell my son this. Do I want you to notice? To express that you notice that what I'm doing is working and oh my gosh, it was so moving. I'm not explaining that very well, but 

Kelly: No, you are and I couldn't talk to him about what that meant to me either, because I realize in writing this, I talked to him about implant as well.

It's just how we communicate and I, I hope. I did ask him to read this before I sent it in. And and actually my mother as well, and he, he thought he thought, sure you can write whatever you want. He didn't have any changes. And the only change that my mom had was, can you just call that.

Just don't use the word trailer.

So I think I did change that to just single wide. But but yeah it's interesting. I think. Be, as a writer, I find it so much easier to write him a card or or write an essay that I'm going to share with other people, and be terrified when he reads it than just be on the phone with him or be next to him and talking.

So it's I'm grateful for at least having that outlet to, to share with him to, so he knows. I think he knows, I think he knew before he read the essay, but, so he knows how much the way he fathered me and taught me how to parent really means to me. 

Zibby: Yeah, it was really beautiful. Okay. And Michelle, you also wrote about a way of communicating with your dad.

Both of you have a DHD and the way you talk at each other, but that's the way you're connecting. Talk a little bit about your essay and what that was about. 

Michele: Yeah, so my essay is called Thumbs Up because that's my dad's favorite emoji. That's how he shows he cares. Is he is he often, will send me a thumbs up in response to texts or Facebook messages I send him. But I initially, when I started writing my piece, it, the focus was gonna be more on my uncle who took his own life in 2019. And he is in this piece. But I realized as the piece was evolving that it, what this piece was really about was how after my uncle died he, my dad that was his best friend, my dad is one of, four boys, and they were so close, they would talk a million times a day. They were in bands together. And so once Uncle Jim died, my dad tried to fill that hole in his life by calling his daughters a ton, as much as often as he would call Uncle Jim. And but our conversations are very much on the surface, partially because I think this is a common dad thing where it's really hard for dads to have some dads anyway, to have serious emotional conversations. So he shows his love in other ways by calling to check in just to, to ask how I'm doing. But it's often at very inconvenient times. While I'm waiting for the subway or, in a Zoom meeting at work, or, and he'll be like, are you at work?

And I'll say, yes and thumbs up. It's like he's just calling to check in. And I've learned that's, that is his way of showing love. And the piece is also about how objects are something that mean a lot to us, and that's another way we communicate. So my dad, oh my gosh, he is obsessed with collecting like memorabilia that reminds him of his youth.

He's in his seventies and his office at home is like lined with Toy Studebaker cars because when he was a kid in the fifties, his dad had a Studebaker. He's got all these things that he like, has a shrine to his youth, basically in his office. He keeps his office locked at home like someone is gonna break into.

And I've learned that I also have this. This need to hold on to objects too. So it is about the ways that we understand each other, even when I don't think we understand each other. And I'm very close to my dad and it was an interesting challenge to write about that. I don't know if you, if either of you felt this way, but it was easier for me even though it was the hardest thing I've ever written when I wrote about my mom who by the way, I'm in a good place with her now which is an extraordinary thing, but I really love my mom a lot and our relationship is complicated and I love my dad a lot. But I'm really close with my dad and I found that it's hard, it is really hard to write about someone you are close with. And so that was such a challenge as a writer, but a good challenge. And I enjoyed that challenge.

Zibby: I was sitting reading these and I was thinking, what essay would I have written? What story? And I feel like of course, that's probably what we're all thinking when we read a collection like this. Like what stories would I write about my dad and should I go write them? And I probably should, but I'm not going to, but da.

And then I went, anyway, whatever. 

Michele: And that's what I'm hoping will happen as people are reading this book, like what would they say about their dad? 

Zibby: Do you feel like a sense of relief or like, how do you all feel having gone down this path and explored not only the many things you could have written about, but what you ended up 

Michele: saying.

I, I personally feel if you ask me a year from now, my story is gonna change just like I would change the essay in my first book. And I feel like our relationships to our parents are constantly evolving. And so who we are a year from now might transform what we would say, even if I am happy with what I wrote, but as a writer I'm always thinking about the evolving relationship too.

What do you both think? 

Joanna: It's, I might be slightly different 'cause my father passed away in 2010. So it's been some time, but, and yet my relationship with him and my mind and my understanding of who he is has changed a lot, especially over writing this book and the endless research for it and uncovering things about him that I didn't know, which we won't discuss.

Some good, some bad. But I wrote, I had a lot of trouble writing this essay. As in, I wrote the first part and I knew what the framework would be, and then when it got to the point where I had to go deeper to the actual heart of the essay, there was something stopping me. I would sit at my desk and then be like, why not clean the kitchen now?

And you guys all know what this is like. And I eventually, my closest friend. As a country house and was like, you're coming to my country house for four or five days and you're writing this essay. You have to write this essay. And so I did and it was much easier in that setting. And I remember when I finished it.

I almost felt I don't know, like I'd run a marathon or I'd slept for a week, or there was this a feeling that I haven't quite had with other essays in which I suppose what it was simply that I felt that I had worked something out for myself, that I had figured something out that I hadn't known before.

And when you write essays, there are always things you don't know, but sometimes you know a lot more. And with this one, I think I really didn't know fully what the story was until it was done. 

Zibby: Definitely we were just at the LA Times book festival and Jordan Blum Meti was one of the editors on one of the panels, said he's found as an editor that often the last sentence of an essay is exactly where it's supposed to begin.

Joanna: Yeah. That was when my, when I worked as a magazine editor, I would often, even with reported stories, I would be like, you can all of this, my boss Blake Eskin, who founded The New Yorker online used to say to all of us Subeditors, sometimes the whole piece is just throat clearing. Until the final graph.

Zibby: Yes. 

Joanna: And you have to cut the throat clearing. Oh. So maybe that was what he was talking about. 

Zibby: Maybe he was quoting that. Okay whatever. Yeah,  Same concept. What did you think? 

Kelly: Oh yeah, I think essay is my primary form of writing. It's the way that I work things out. I think that sounds very similar.

This was tricky because usually I think about when an essay occurs to me, it's because of some darker tension, and I didn't know when I started this essay. Where it was going to go. And I think in one moment when I was interviewing my mom I had a moment where she said to me, he never really had a father.

And I realized she could have been talking about either my father or my grandfather, and. I'm so glad that I understand that now while we still have time to open those conversations and have those conversations to talk to my sons who are now 13 and 15 about that sort of fatherhood legacy and it really, it gives me some relief as a single parent that I can change the legacy.

It, it feels empowering and I'm glad that I have that now to know, to, to have a new understanding of what he had to work against to parent in the way that he did, and I'm glad that, I wish I had it when my kids were much younger and I felt so hopelessly, underwater with everything.

But I'm so grateful now that I have it. 

Zibby: Amazing. Thank you so much to all of you and to all the contributors for contributing to what my father and I don't talk about. Congrats. 

Michele: Thank you. 

Zibby: And thank you to everyone in the audience. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you. I hope you had fun.