Zibby speaks with debut novelist Sarai Johnson about GROWN WOMEN, a stunning, tender, elegant novel about how four generations of complex Black women attempt to heal old wounds and redefine happiness for themselves… as they raise a new generation together. Sarai shares how her own complicated relationship with her mother and a desire to depict Black motherhood with nuance and depth inspired this story. She also shares her writing process, literary models, and best advice for aspiring authors.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Grown Women. Debut novel. Very exciting. 

Sarai: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: You're so welcome. I feel like we are, we are deep in the mom space. You've just had a baby two weeks ago.

Your book is all about mothers and daughters and my whole life is about like motherhood. I feel like right, especially right now. Okay. Tell the listeners what your book is about, please. 

Sarai: So grown women is about four generations of mothers and daughters in a black family, Evelyn. Charlotte, Corinna, and Camille.

The story sort of opens with Charlotte, who is pregnant and teenaged and newly fled from an overbearing mother named Evelyn. She does not originally intend to keep her child, who she names Corinna, but she does, and unfortunately makes a lot of mistakes in raising her. It's not until Charlotte becomes a grandmother to Camille that her life is truly changed.

Camille. offers her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother an opportunity to sort of rethink and redo their trauma and their relationships while they attempt to collectively raise her. 

Zibby: Wow. Excellent summary. You know, you really speak in the book to the ambivalence of motherhood, of what it means to be a mom, how some moms are ready, quote unquote, right?

And some are excited and some aren't, and it takes time. And sometimes being a grandmother is the thing that can make you feel more ready to be the mother all along. The way that you write is absolutely beautiful, truly, and You conjure up these women in such detail. They're so visual and there and you talk about sort of the, the golden glow of not Corinna, the mom, the older. 

Sarai: Charlotte 

Zibby: And the role of education.

And I mean, there's just so much in this book. Okay, so where did the idea for the book come from for you? 

Sarai: So it comes from sort of two places. I, you know, I'm a reader, obviously, but I read a lot of books that I felt like represented Black women and Black moms, in particular, in sort of flat, sort of, either they know all the answers, they're sort of saints, or they are evil, or essentially really deeply troubled with no sort of dimension to them.

And I was frustrated in not seeing sort of a nuanced portrait of Black women and black motherhood. It also comes from a very personal place of trying to sort of figure out my own relationship with my own mother and While I was writing this I became a mother and I was asking myself like what do I do with the difficulty of my own relationship with my mother as I sort of Attempt to build this relationship with my daughter.

Zibby: So tell me more about your relationship with your mother Let's just go right there. Pretend I'm your therapist. Okay. 

Sarai: So, it's a, it's a difficult relationship. There's a lot of, how do I say, critique. A lot of judgment, criticism. As I sort of grew older, it became more difficult to connect to her in a sort of meaningful way.

My therapist would say there's a lot of jealousy in the sense that I've more educated than her. I just generally have more than her, but it took a long time for me to sort of understand that someone hurt her, you know, she, that she was hurting in a way. She sort of projected that onto me and I was trying to figure out what to do once I got to this place of like understanding that's where this comes from.

And I realized I could either stay angry or sort of try to do something with that information and think through like, why did she make this choice? And how can I make different choices? And what does that look like? And in many ways, that's how grown women came to be. 

Zibby: Well, this is great. And now I think I need your therapist.

Sarai: I have a great therapist. It was like for 10 years. 

Zibby: Oh, that's amazing. 

Sarai: It's a lot of therapy. 

Zibby: There's one, it's a particularly powerful, I mean, there are a lot of powerful scenes in the book, but one in which, I know I shouldn't get all the C's mixed up and I know that's even like a joke in the book when she's debating naming the daughter and she's like, aren't these C's going to be confusing?

And she's like, no, it's fine. But when her daughter gets pregnant at about the same age as 17 that she was pregnant, she immediately asks her daughter. Okay, well, you know, how do you, when do you want to get rid of it? Do you want me to make you the appointment? Do you need money? Blah, blah, blah. And I think it kind of knocked her off her, you know, knocked her backwards and how can I not knock her?

What's that expression? Knocked her off her feet or whatever. Surprised her. Whatever. It doesn't matter because I don't think her first reaction was to necessarily get rid of the baby. And she was asking her mom then, well, did you want to get rid of me and how did I come to be? And in truth, she had wanted to, you know, not keep her originally and yet ended up keeping her and it sort of in that moment it became clear I think to her that that was not the original plan necessarily and that it was definitely an option and and then when she comes around and says no I'm going to be here for you and she's so She said, why, it's the right thing to do.

And she was still so surprised that that was the path that her mom took, even though it was right. Like, that she knew right and wrong and all that. Tell me about that scene and painting that portrait and, you know, what that does to both parties in that moment. 

Sarai: So I think Charlotte's initial reaction was actually to sort of protect Corinna from sort of living her life.

Life in a way, but also I think Charlotte also is more clear headed at this point in her life than she was when she became a mother and is able to sort of think my daughter is not an extension of me, you know, and I think that is such an important sort of period of motherhood is realizing this child is not me.

This is a completely different entity and sort of realizing I can do. Something for my daughter here and being the support that I did not have and Corinna realizes she, well she, I think she knew all along that she was not necessarily wanted, but she realizes that she, Is a source of pain for her mother in a way that she did not know and she sees an opportunity also, I think when Charlotte comes to her and says, we're going to do this together, sort of an opportunity to connect, which is something that Corinna like desperately, desperately wants is connection.

Zibby: Yeah, well, and tell me about sort of the legacy of education, right? Because they start off with Evelyn, who is. Um, is the, from the family of well known physician and they come from one sort of station in life and then there's the lack of education sort of as the generations unfold and, well, for a little bit, talk about the role of education and, and how it affects the women and is there that same jealousy?

Sarai: So the, it's really interesting, I wanted to do something interesting with education and sort of the lack of education and sort of the way that people can sort of rise without it. based on sort of choices that they make. So we have Evelyn who has a PhD in literature, she's a writer, etc. And she pursues academia at a time when women, Black women especially, were not necessarily embraced in that world.

She encourages Charlotte to do something similar. Charlotte I don't think has a mind for it in the same sort of way, and that frustrates her and Charlotte's pain sort of causes her to sort of, I wouldn't say fail, she doesn't fail, she struggles deeply, and she, I don't think she wants the same thing for Corinna and she, the way she responds to that is not necessarily the right way to respond to that, it's not the right way to sort of push, you know, a child forward, I would say, and Corinna also does not have sort of the same sort of drives that Evelyn has, but she has a different sort of desire to succeed that she pursues through the cocktail mixology and she sort of rises through that without a traditional education, but also sees that Camille.

Life would be easier for Camille if she sort of pursues a more traditional education, which she, she does, but not quite in the way that Corinna envisioned. And again, it's about the way that our children are not an extension of us and the choices that we make or what we want for our children do not necessarily always line up with us and our ideals.

Zibby: I remember when my parents got divorced when I was 14. I promise there's a reason why I'm saying this, but I felt like my mom felt like I was an extension of her, like how I looked and how, you know, and I was like, what could I do to make her the most angry to show just how mad I am. And I was like, I'm going to gain a lot of weight and I'm going to show her.

Anyway, this is my maturity. Yeah, we do what we can. 

Sarai: Definitely, definitely. I understand. 

Zibby: And even Charlotte was upset that her daughter wasn't even as traditionally beautiful as she had hoped, too. There was also that, which I found very interesting. You know, you don't often see that where the mom is like, well, she's not cute.

I mean, that's not exactly how it was portrayed, but. 

Sarai: Right. And Corinna has this, she understands that she doesn't look like her mother. And that's also like a source of frustration for her. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Sarai: And that. That's my experience. Also, I do not necessarily look like my mother and I could tell that that frustrated her and it was just like a push and pull.

Am I part of her? Am I not part of her? What disappoints her about me? You know, that sort of thing. 

Zibby: Interesting. But you're beautiful, though. So I'm sure that wasn't the thing. Oh my goodness. So when you were writing, tell me about the process of writing the book, and I know you teach and you edit and you do all these amazing things and, you know, your education is like off the charts.

Talk about writing it, how long it took, the process, like all the behind the scenes. 

Sarai: So the process is not very straightforward. So I actually had been working on something about the Camille character for a long time. I'd written several short stories, like in grad school, trying to figure out like who Camille is, what drives her, where does she come from?

And I started working on something. Probably like in 2019 that I was, I was going to write the origin story of Camille and I showed it to someone and they were like, I think this is a book. And for some reason I was like, I'm going to do that. That was like a great idea. So I actually left a full time job to work on sort of a outline draft.

Well, my husband was like, I'll cover our living expenses and you can figure this out for a little bit. And I wrote the outline. In a very sort of fits and starts sort of way, I realized, like, there's a lot of advice about, like, you set aside two hours in the morning and two hours at night, and you just write, or you have, like, a word count that you meet, and that was not working for me.

So I, I, I did other things while I thought about the book, and I only wrote when I was, I was clear headed, like I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, and when I was doing other things, I was also, you know, of course, thinking about it. reading books that felt in a similar sort of genre, similar themes to what grown women eventually turned out to be, which would be like Cora Hedora is probably by Gail Jones, one of the number one, Beloved, White Oleander, et cetera.

And I read like I was in school, like, you know, highlighting, Figuring out, like, what I wanted to say, what themes didn't sit right with me, what tropes didn't sit right with me, what I wanted to convey based on sort of older text and what I wanted to avoid and all that kind of stuff. So I spent very little time actually writing and a lot more time thinking and reading.

And it took probably about a year or two before I was ready to submit to agents. I had. I was sharing with friends and my husband listened to me read numerous drafts and At that point, my current agent asked me to make some revisions and I think they signed me in 2021. So I think it took about two years.

Zibby: Wow. So do you ever regret your decision when someone told you it should be a book? 

Sarai: I don't know what I was thinking sometimes, like, I kind of jumped over the like literary magazine submission era and went straight to the book. And I think a lot of that has to do with like, I don't necessarily gravitate towards short stories.

I'm much more like a novel person. So when I think about writing a short story, it's not as easy to me. Like it doesn't necessarily make as much sense, even though there's some stunning short stories out there that I really love and appreciate, but novels. I love and sort of have spent more time with, so I understand that more, I think.

Zibby: What are you reading now? 

Sarai: I just finished, it's by Etef Rum. Uh huh. Her first one, A Woman Is No Man. Yes, that's right. Just finished A Woman Is No Man and I just started The God of Small Things. 

Zibby: Mm, amazing. I feel like there's some similarities with your book in Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. Have you read that book?

I have not. It's a multi generational, it's more siblings than moms and daughters, but it's the same like complicated relationships and over time, I don't know, there's some, the pacing even a little bit. Anyway. 

Sarai: I listened to your interview about it. Oh, thank you. That's so nice. I'm very flattered. But I have, I have it on my Libby 

Zibby: list.

Excellent. I look forward to getting to it. Excellent. Amazing. And what are you working on now, aside from having a, an infant and a toddler? 

Sarai: I am thinking about, I have written parts of it. It's about a young black millennial woman who sort of rejected her mother for being kind of a simple housewife, instead of As she perceives is the correct way to be a woman, you know, pursuing a career and, you know, goals outside of the family, but in the book, she's going to sort of move back towards understanding her mother and appreciating her work in the house.

Zibby: Amazing. Wow. Well, hat's off to you. I mean, I was not, my brain was so fried after my kids when I had a newborn, so. 

Sarai: I was, when I was pregnant, my brain was not functioning at all, and as soon as I gave birth, I was like, oh, I can get back to thinking. 

Zibby: Okay. Well there you go. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Sarai: I would say. It's important not to keep your work close to your chest for too long. If you're working on it sort of in a solitary way, it won't progress in the way that it needs to. If you are to share it with readers, other writers, I shared it with just like my friends. And the more that I was able to sort of talk about it with other people, the more it made sense.

Mm hmm. So I think often. It's maybe it feels embarrassing to sort of share, especially early works with others, but it's better to share, to show it. Better to reveal it to whoever you can, whoever will read it or will listen. 

Zibby: Excellent. Amazing. Well, Sarah, congratulations. I really thought your book was beautiful.

I love the way you write. I really do. Even like how each, at the beginning of each chapter, you have like such a punchy line and you know, the smell of the catfish and I don't know. You're just It's, it's very, you're a very good writer, but you probably know, but I agree with the consensus. Best of luck.

Sarai: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. Take care. Bye bye.