| | | Casey Wilson on phone-throwing rage; Hanna Rosin on learning new tricks, and more. | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | June 21, 2016 | Letter No. 39 | | | | | | | | | | | | Hey Lennys,
There's so much going on in the world right now that can and should stoke simmering, white-hot anger: the deaths of so many brave LGBTQ people in Orlando; the stream of disgusting, toxic, frankly un-American statements coming out of Donald Trump's mouth; the fact that you can buy a semi-automatic rifle in less time than it takes to order a bear claw at a Dunkin' Donuts drive-through.
But I'd be lying if I said I didn't also get little rage spasms at way less earth-shattering events. I'm about nine years pregnant right now, so lots of minor inconveniences — someone cutting me in line at the grocery store, a dude reading John Updike in hardcover who didn't offer me his seat on the packed subway even though my enormous belly was hovering next to his face — inspire private outbursts when I get home involving creative insults (threats to "cooter stomp" my enemies, that sort of thing).
What happens when those outbursts spill out in public? That's something the writer and actress Casey Wilson explores, hilariously and poignantly, in this week's Lenny. Casey grew up in a family prone to very public tirades — both her mom and dad would spar with strangers — so it makes sense that her reaction to some jerk who tipped her in pennies when she was working as a waitress would be a loud, verbal drubbing. Casey makes the case that female anger isn't as acceptable as male anger (true), but that as she got older, her public rage was something she needed to get under control (also true).
Also in this week's issue: a piece by the brilliant Hanna Rosin about starting out in a new field in your 40s. Hanna's not only my friend, she's also my mentor: when she was my boss at Slate, she taught me most of the things I know about writing, editing, and humanity. If you don't know her work already (where have you been?), she's one of the country's preeminent magazine journalists, and she gave that up to cohost the NPR podcast Invisibilia, which just returned for its second season. Hanna's essay proves that even the smartest and most accomplished among us can still learn new tricks, if we're open to it.
Then we have Marin Cogan's insightful interview with Anna Kaplan, an Iranian Jewish immigrant who is running for congress in New York's third district (and is appalled by Trump's stance on immigrants); the novelist J. Courtney Sullivan's delightful ode to the Baby-Sitters Club series of books, which still resonate for a generation of adults (I'd like to think I'm a fun, cool Stacey, but I'm probably really just a bossy, organized Kristy at heart); and finally, Jenny Bahn's interview with the photographer Tria Giovan, who chronicled Cuba in the 1990s, when it was a much more closed society than it is today.
Like Casey Wilson says, women have anger. It's human, and normal. But let's spend this week channeling that rage productively. Last week we put some links in our intro about ways to help Orlando victims. This week, here are some ways to fight for better gun-safety legislation.
*Donate to Everytown for Gun Safety.
*If you text DISARM HATE to 644-33, Everytown will keep you updated on gun-safety legislation.
*Check this infographic to see if your congressperson received donations from the NRA, and click this link to see how your senator voted on a recent background check law (if they voted no or received $$ from the NRA, give 'em a call).
To paraphrase Julianne Moore in her essay about gun safety for Lenny, I don't want to explain another Orlando to my kids. And neither should you.
Jess, editor in chief | | | | | | | | | | | | CASEY WILSON IS ANGRY | | | | By Casey Wilson | | |
"Men have anger." That's a phrase my dad used to say to me whenever he had a random tantrum over losing his keys or an altercation with a meter maid. He would say it casually, after whatever incident had run its course. After, say, I was still struggling to process why my dad had, in short succession: sped in front of a driver who had cut him off, only to then stop short, blocking the other driver from getting away, turned off his ignition, rolled down the window, and dangled his keys out of it as if to declare, "You wanna keep honking, we'll just keep sitting here."
"Men have anger."
I've thought about this a lot as I've grown up and the conclusion I've come to is that:
SO. DO. WOMEN.
At least I do. Here are things I have done in crazed fury, in no particular order:
When I was a waitress and a man tipped me in pennies, I addressed the entire restaurant and pointed at his wife and announced: "I just had to spend an hour, but I'm so sorry you have to spend a lifetime with him."
I tripped my college roommate after I overheard her say she didn't think I was "fun."
At sixteen, when my parents told me I couldn't go out, I pulled two heavy brass sconces out of the wall by hanging from them, leaving only dangling wires in my wake.
I have seriously contemplated driving my car through my home for "effect."
And yet I seem so mild mannered and sweet on the surface. But just underneath, I'm seething.
I didn't always label it as anger. My dad says as a child I was "challenging." A "handful," raved my grandfather. "Emotional," enthused my aunt Ann. I paid no attention to my mom's dog-eared copy of Raising Your Spirited Child. I was too busy firing the fellow nine-year-olds in our neighborhood who hadn't learned their lines for my backyard production of Cats: The Sequel (rights pending).
My parents begged me to go easy on Amy. Her parents had recently gotten divorced, and her dad was living on a houseboat. Did I have to use the word fired? Couldn't she have some part? "Fine!" I yelled. "She can play the telephone." Amy would go on to dazzle the citizens of Alexandria, Virginia, with how long she could remain crouched down stage right with her arm draped over her head as the human receiver and allow me to talk on her. I had — naturally — replaced her in the starring role. Anger, I realized, could mean power.
It could also be exciting. I grew up in a spectacularly heightened household where joy and anger mingled seamlessly. My parents were highly successful, funny, passionate people who taught me life should be lived out loud and all big feelings felt. My mom once tried to throw a dining-room chair at my dad's head, and I barely looked up from Mr. Popper's Penguins. My dad was arrested for screaming at a maître d' because they wouldn't seat an elderly woman. Later, she told my dad that while she was grateful he had stuck up for a stranger, they hadn't seated her because she was waiting for someone. (Oops.)
I'm positive we all went to the movies after both incidents as if nothing had happened. Popcorn and a dark theater: a great post-rage landing spot for our family, even if my mom was often asked to leave for laughing too loudly. Which also made her furious. "We're Italian," she explained with a shrug.
She called it "Italian"; my now-husband called it "actress" when we were dating. And as an actress, anger had actually served me fairly well, as it can be galvanizing and motivating. But I just wasn't sure what I was so angry about. It wasn't a constant state of being — in general I am quite upbeat. Rather, it felt like a tidal wave waiting in the wings that threatened everything in its path. I had no control over it. Did I want to yell to a woman at a Beverly Hills salon who was rude to the valet "YOU ARE DRENCHED IN ENTITLEMENT!!!" Did I want to pen "newsletters" for my neighborhood shaming a male neighbor who wrote me a nasty note on my parking job? Why, yes I did! I thought I was a vigilante! Others thought I was unmoored.
And it's not just strangers who would get the brunt of my thrice-yearly explosions. It was well-meaning boyfriends who wondered why we couldn't just "sleep on it and talk calmly in the morning?" Because I wanted to scream on it now! My prized girlfriends were patient, but I still have deep regret over the few times I turned my acid tongue on them. I think it was because I always felt like they could handle it (and they could), but they shouldn't have had to.
I've realized that anger doesn't seem to be as palatable on a woman as it is on a man. And I'm angry about that. I'm angry at women who can't access their anger, or who cover it by masquerading as little sweeties, or those who display it and are off-putting. Which are all versions of myself I have spent my life trying to wrangle and negotiate.
Even as I acknowledged that there's a degree of sexism in the way the world treats an angry woman, as I got older, I started realizing my outbursts were causing real problems. For starters, I lost a lot of phones. Whenever I would feel a flash of white-hot rage overtake me, my first impulse was always the same. To throw my phone. My phone! My very lifeblood! No available slab of drywall was safe.
Over the years, I have thrown a Mountain Dew pager out the window of my boyfriend's car on the highway en route to Rehoboth Beach. I've smashed my beloved bedazzled Sidekick into my dressing-room mirror at SNL and left a trail of crushed BlackBerrys in every shitty apartment complex in LA. I have thrown my iPhone only once, in a tequila-fueled moment (but between us, I knew I had an upgrade coming).
In the moment, these eruptions felt fantastic. Nay, important. But afterward, I started feeling disproportionately upset about my behavior, and it then became about the emotional hangover the anger wrought. Where was this all coming from? I got into therapy with the hopes of figuring it out. It's too boring to blame everything on our moms, but I wonder if, maybe, the conservative wave of the early '80s is something I can blame?
My mom was the president of the National Women's Political Caucus (an organization devoted to getting women elected) for the first several years of my life. I wonder if growing up with a mother who was so angry at the state of things she wore a pro-choice sticker while eight months pregnant with me played a role. She raised me to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. Which was liberating and wonderful. But perhaps this combination had me feeling a little too free to be me. I had become a subway ad: if I saw something, I said something. It wasn't a good look, but no amount of therapy or meditation (my mantra made me EVEN. ANGRIER.) or astrology retreats (I'm a Scorpio, doy) seemed to help with this particular issue. I couldn't get a handle on it.
Surprisingly, the things that ended up helping me the most are arguably the things I have the most reason to be angry about. I was not asked back to Saturday Night Live. My long-term relationship ended poorly. My mom passed away. And yet when I received my things in a brown box from SNL and saw that bottles of alcohol had been thrown in with photos of my mom and everything had exploded all over, I didn't feel angry. I felt sad. When the former boyfriend declined my invitation to meet for coffee years later so I could apologize, I just felt deep regret. And when the woman who did my mom's makeup for her funeral came up to me in the receiving line and asked if she could grab the number of the doctor who had done my mom's eye lift … I laughed. And gave it to her.
In the realization that life is ever tenuous, I suddenly became less angry. I found such joy in my work. I got married. I had a baby. Now, please note, I'm still an angry bird, to be sure. But now I'm acutely aware that things and jobs and people come … and go. And I can't afford to destroy what and whom I have.
I'm now aware of the pause. The pause between one state of being and another. It's just a moment. Between life and death. Between when the phone rings and when you say hello. Between feeling and action. Loss has given me a deep awareness of that pause, and in taking it, I have finally been able to harness my anger. Or at least manage it. And take a breath. Before I look for my phone. To either throw it … or call my husband and see if he wants to go to the movies.
Casey Wilson is an actress and writer from Happy Endings, Marry Me, and Gone Girl and cohosts the podcast Bitch Sesh. | | | | | | | | | | | | Screw Mastery | | | | By Hanna Rosin | | |
I realize that leaving a job you love and do well can be construed as an act of pointless rebellion, like wearing flip-flops to a wedding or smoking in an airplane bathroom. Who are you making uncomfortable but yourself? But last year, I did exactly that. I'd been a working writer for 20 years. Hundreds of bylines plus two books easily gets me my 10,000 hours of practice. I had achieved mastery, at least by the Gladwell clock. And then, I gave it up. I dropped back to zero.
The person to blame is my friend Alix, who hosts the NPR show Invisibilia. One night late last summer, we went to see a movie together. Afterward, I mentioned a crazy experiment involving an oil rig where they trained the big men to cry and share their feelings and basically behave more like women. Alix said it would be perfect for one of her shows. Then she said: "Leave your job and come work with me."
The movie we'd just seen was Straight Outta Compton. For a moment, standing by the inky, moonlit Potomac, I thought, If Cube and Dre, why not us? I had loved the first season of Invisibilia. And maybe I was restless and needed something new to do. Whatever it was, pretty soon I had an NPR badge and was present at "listening sessions" critiquing radio stories and pretending I knew what to say.
In his new book Late to the Ball, about learning to play serious tennis in his 60s, former New York Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati asks: "When is the last time you improved at anything?" Let me reframe that for my purposes as: "When is the last time you sucked at something you had to finish on deadline?" When I started, my grasp of basic radio skills was weaker than the average NPR intern's. True, I couldn't hold a microphone properly, but I also didn't know how to write a script, or record narration, or choose music, or pretty much any necessary thing.
Early on, we all sat in a room listening to a taped interview about an old lady and a lion. When the lady said certain things, my colleagues would all light up and write stuff down. It seemed little to do with the content of her words — I had no idea what they were hearing. Sometimes I'd ask the closest person for help, and they would laugh nervously. I think this is because by your 40s, you're supposed to know things. But what else could I do?
Giving up mastery involves a series of humiliations, some of which hit you when you think you're on solid ground. For my first reporting trip, Alix and I went out together to interview some oil men. She showed me how to hold a mic, and I took it from there. I know how to extract information from people. I've been doing it for years. We sat down with a guy who'd worked on the rig. I got the guy to talk and talk and tell us some of the outrageous things the men had done on the job (teaser: foot massages). For me it was a proof-positive interview, the kind that confirms that yes, the story is true. As soon as we got into the rental car, I turned to Alix so we could squeal in mutual victory. "Well," I asked, "how'd I do in my first interview?" "Honestly," she said, "B-."
Worse than losing competence is losing the ability to even tell if you are competent or not. If you give me a draft of a magazine story, I'm pretty sure I can tell you what's wrong with it — if it's too long or too short or underreported or overwritten or if the third paragraph needs to be switched with the 17th. But with radio, my judgment was off. I'd feel delighted with an interview or a draft and then look over and see Alix with her head in her hands. Perhaps I should have been sympathetic, but instead I was cranky and defensive. When Alix said that about the interview with the oil guy, I had no idea what she meant. I told her she was crazy and then listened obsessively to the interview to figure out what was wrong.
When I was feeling especially incompetent, I tried to remind myself of what they say in the books: You will gain inner grit! Reimagine your life! Autopilot is death! And some evenings, as I was walking home from work, I could feel that these things were true. Every day I was exhausted, the way you are when you visit a foreign country. You don't speak the language and everything takes too much time and the people don't act the way you expect them to and you are functionally a child. But the days go by fast, because novelty is a kind of drug.
I learned a ton of new things about myself, in the way you can only do if you are fucking up daily. I learned that I am defensive but trainable. That I have capacity for patience but that my immediate default is speed, bluntness, and ironic distance. That although I am used to working alone, I will happily collaborate. And that I really like working with women, even if they cry more during the day.
And I remembered a really nice thing: how to be goofily, absurdly proud of myself for figuring something out, a kind of pride I usually reserve for my children. This is the best part of dropping back to zero. The list of things you have to master is endless. And when you get one right — even a little, tiny one — everyone notices and gives you an adult version of an extra candy in your lunchbox. I got a lot of help. The people I work with taught me things the way you teach a kid to ride a bicycle — they were right on top of me, day after day. Still, nine months later I listen to the shows we produced and I can completely recognize them as my own.
Alix likes to say she gave me a mountain to climb, and that's true. I get bored easily, and she probably saw a crisis coming and saved me from it. For that I am grateful. But that way of thinking makes me tired. Who wants to spend 10,000 more hours climbing another mountain? Instead I like to focus on another gift Alix gave me, which became clear to me once I'd figured out why I got the B-. Turns out that despite two decades of interviewing people, I'm not as good as I thought I was.
I've been told more than once that I have a machine-gun style of conversation. I do it in work interviews, but also with friends, and strangers at parties: Where did you grow up? Who is your mother? Do you like her? So, hate? Why are you cutting up your meat like that, in small bits? A therapist I saw, who was a beautiful Jungian witch, suggested that perhaps this drilling was my way of preventing any real confessional moments from slipping in. I didn't believe her, until I watched Alix interview people.
In radio, information is not your goal. Someone can talk and talk and talk, but unless they talk in the right way the tape is useless to you. If they are distracted, or overly theatrical, it won't work. (That was the problem with the first oil guy we interviewed: he was always putting on a show.) The aim is to get them to relive all the emotions they felt at the time, which will translate in their voice. This can be achieved only if you are patient and open, and take the time to establish a real connection.
I made fun of Alix for how slowly she talked in interviews, how she would stretch out the word "eee-mooo-shun-a-lll-eeee" until it had 24 syllables. But secretly I studied her methods. She sat very close to people. She cocked her head when she listened. She made herself inarticulate and vulnerable and told stories about herself that were models for how she wanted stories to be told. It looked like an imitation of a slightly inappropriate life coach, but it was magical. When she started to talk, she changed the air in the room. People were present, and their words became little freight cars of feeling.
After nine months, I learned to talk to people differently, at work and in life. I try not to jackhammer questions. I try not to give off the air that I need to get somewhere else. (An hour into a recent slow, meandering conversation, my friend asked if I'd taken Tylenol PM by mistake.) I try not to clock my hours, because screw mastery. Not knowing is its own kind of perverse pleasure.
Recently Alix and I did another interview together. I sat down very close to the guy (which was weird, because he was distractingly good-looking). I cocked my head. I spoke slowly. I had ten pages of questions to ask him that I needed to get through, but I didn't let that speed up the clock. After an hour I looked over at Alix in the corner, and she had a tear in her eye like the little Jewish mother she is, because she was proud of me. She squeezed my knee under the table, relieved that she would not have to spend the rest of her days trailing me around and could finally work on her own stories. And then we both looked down and noticed the cute technical glitch: I had forgotten to press record.
Hanna Rosin is a co-host of the NPR show Invisibilia. | | | | | | | | | | | | A Mary Anne with Kristy Rising: On the Enduring Legacy of the Baby-Sitters Club Books | | | | By J. Courtney Sullivan | | |
"We are all, aspirationally, Claudias," a woman declared at a party recently. A bunch of us — all writers in our 30s — were deep into a heated conversation about which members of the Baby-Sitters Club we identify with most. I confessed that I have always thought of myself as a Mary Anne with a Dixie cup of Kristy thrown in. "You're a Mary Anne with a Kristy moon," someone said, offering an astrological assessment. "A Mary Anne with Kristy rising."
For many girls coming of age in the '80s and '90s, The Baby-Sitters Club, the best-selling middle-grade series, was a PG precursor to Sex and the City: a story of female friendship in all its complexity, it featured a cast of highly appealing characters in whom almost anyone could locate some aspect of herself. There was Kristy (president and founder), a bossy tomboy and a child of divorce. Mary Anne (secretary), the shy only daughter of an overprotective widower, and the first to have a boyfriend. Stacey (treasurer), a stylish and sophisticated New York City native. And Claudia (VP), artistic, cool, with strict parents, a genius older sister, and her own telephone line. Eventually the club expanded to include alternate and junior officers as well.
The series originated 30 years ago, but the characters remain fresh in our minds. The books still resonate. Maybe because they recall a simpler moment in life — memories of the babysitters intertwined with memories of our earlier selves. But perhaps it's also because the characters had some essential qualities that transcended adolescence. When we talk about The Baby-Sitters Club now, we don't talk about which characters we were. We talk about which characters we are.
In a recent phone interview from her home in upstate New York, author Ann M. Martin said she had relatability in mind from the start. Prior to The Baby-Sitters Club, she had written a handful of children's books and worked as a teacher and editor. In 1986, when she began writing about middle schoolers who run a babysitting business in fictional Stoneybrook, Connecticut, she wanted them to have "different kinds of families, different ethnic backgrounds, different interests and personalities." Martin knew those differences were part of what kept readers coming back. "Either they found something to relate to in each of the girls, or they strongly related to one."
She decided to thicken the plot by giving one of them a secret. Her first idea: Stacey could have a father in jail for embezzlement. When Martin's editor deemed that over the top, she settled on Stacey having diabetes instead.
Scholastic originally hired Martin to write four books — one from the point of view of each babysitter. But the series was an unexpected hit. In the end, The Baby-Sitters Club went on for fourteen years and became one of the best-selling middle-grade series of all time, with 213 titles published in nineteen languages, four spin-off series, and 176 million copies sold. Eventually, a small team of writers was hired to help Martin keep pace, but she continued to outline and edit every book.
There was an official fan club, a newsletter, a show on HBO, a feature film, and merchandise that included dolls, day planners, calendars, posters, trading cards, T-shirts, jewelry, board games, fanny packs, and, of course, Kid Kits, a version of the boxes of toys and crafts each babysitter brought along on the job.
Martin became a reluctant celebrity. She is naturally shy. (She based Mary Anne on herself.) Three years into writing the series, she still babysat on occasion, for a neighbor down the hall. Suddenly, a thousand people might show up at one of her book signings. Kids wanted to know everything about her. She received a thousand letters a month on average. The only other Scholastic author who got as many was Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine. David Levithan, editorial director of Scholastic and a longtime editor of The Baby-Sitters Club, said it wasn't just the volume of Martin's letters that set them apart, but the highly personal tone.
"It was 'This is what's happening in my family,'" he said. "Some of them really thought the characters were their friends. Others knew they weren't real, but still they felt like they knew them."
The 1989 New York Times story "Inside the Baby-Sitters Club" quoted the following:
Dear Ann: I absolutely love your books … My mom won't let me baby-sit. At first she said I could. But she said no after awhile. Please write to my mom and dad—my mom so I can baby-sit, my dad so I can get a private phone.
Dear Ann: I have been having weird dreams lately about Stacey McGill. I was dreaming I went to New York to see her and she was my best friend. I don't really have a best friend, but I have friends.
Girls sometimes wrote to Martin about abuse or bullying or suicide. She replied to every letter, occasionally working with a child psychologist to craft a response. When readers sent suggestions for plots about what they were going through in their own lives, Martin tried to accommodate. A flood of requests for a story line about a friend who moves away led to #13: Good-bye, Stacey. Good-bye.
"We didn't realize until then that Stacey was the most popular girl in the series," Martin said. "We chose the wrong one. We got so much upset mail. We knew right away that we had to move her back to Stoneybrook." (Hence #28: Welcome Back, Stacey!)
The Baby-Sitters Club was perhaps the first series for girls with an entrepreneurial spirit. (Maybe it even played a small role in our generation's tendency to start one's own business and to take professional risks. Martin said one of the greatest parts for her has been hearing from librarians, editors, and authors who were drawn to their jobs by a love of her books). The series was responsible for making many of us think, for a time anyway, that there was no cooler pursuit than babysitting, even if most of us were too young for the job.
When my friends and I hung fliers like the ones in the books, advertising a way to reach several responsible sitters with a single call, we learned that there was not much demand for nine-year-old babysitters in our neighborhood. Some of us were offered the role of mother's helper, a sort of pre-babysitting, in which you were not in charge, could not raid the fridge, and did not get paid. We had no interest. We wanted power. We wanted money. We wanted to babysit.
When I finally got hired, I was ecstatic, and dead serious about it. I made my own Kid Kit. I always washed the dishes in a bid to impress the parents. I'd leave one dish in the sink, a prop, which I would be scrubbing when they walked through the door.
Once adolescence hit, my collection of candy-colored Baby-Sitters Club books was moved from its place of prominence beside my bed to a box up in the attic. Later, though, whenever the topic of childhood favorites arose, The Baby-Sitters Club was always at the top of the list.
Unlike with other cult classics — Harriet the Spy, Ramona, anything by Judy Blume — many fans haven't been content to leave the series in the past. The characters in The Baby-Sitters Club never got any older than thirteen. For years, readers have begged for a sequel, eager to know what the girls are doing now. But, Martin said, "when I think about them, they are always twelve and thirteen. That voice is the one that comes to me most naturally."
Her fans, however, have brought the characters into the 21st century. There's fan fiction online, and websites devoted to the club. A plotline involving Baby-Sitters Mystery #12: Dawn and the Surfer Ghost appeared on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt last season. A new podcast, The Babysitters Club Club, features two guys in their 30s who discuss the books in order, debating everything from the role of the patriarchy in Stoneybrook to whether the club should be considered a Marxist cooperative or just a small business with a flat management structure. An illustrator named Siobhán Gallagher mocks up book covers for The Jaded Quitters Club, which imagines each girl as a young adult experiencing existential malaise (i.e., Stacey and the Crowd of Indistinguishable Beards and Man Buns.)
In 2007, Kim Hutt Mayhew launched the blog What Claudia Wore, which chronicles the outfits of the club's most flamboyant dresser. The blog attracted a loyal following and the attention of sites like Jezebel, Nylon, Refinery29, and urbanoutfitters.com. Mayhew was surprised by the reaction. She had started the site mostly for her own amusement, after buying a few of the books in a thrift store on a whim.
"I would reread a passage and it would be like I was time-traveling back to being eight years old, reading it with a Popsicle in my hand," she said. She found that she could often remember exactly what Claudia was wearing in a given book, down to the accessories: "It's a piece of knowledge that will never leave my head that Claudia once wore a Pebbles from The Flintstones–type outfit and had a ponytail on top of her head and there were polka dots," she said. "Some of those themes were just too wild to ever be pushed out of my mind by more relevant information, like my Social Security number."
Martin appreciates all the love, though she doesn't engage with it. She is on to new books. And she's decidedly low-tech. She still listens to music on a Discman. Someone else manages her social-media presence. "I've never seen Twitter," she said. "I'm not even entirely certain what it is."
In 2013, she donated her papers to Smith College, her alma mater, where they joined the collections of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. Martin Antonetti, Smith's curator of rare books, has called the Martin papers "the single most noteworthy acquisition we have made." He recalled via email that it was a student intern, "who had grown up and read Ann's books (mostly in Hindi) in remote Lesotho, who first made me aware of the remarkable influence and ubiquity of the BSC."
For a time, the books went out of print. Scholastic brought them back in 2009, with the addition of a prequel by Martin, after fans demanded their return. Some just didn't want to live in a world in which The Baby-Sitters Club could not be had. Others were mothers now, wanting to pass their passion for the series on to their daughters.
Since their rerelease, the books haven't reached the level of popularity they once had. But when Scholastic hired best-selling graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, 38, to adapt the series, her version took off. At one point earlier this year, four of the top ten paperback graphic novels on the New York Times best-seller list were The Baby-Sitters Club. Telgemeier grew up reading the BSC. It seems fitting that one of Martin's original fans is responsible for introducing the books to a new generation.
As for those of us who have loved them from the start, the books are still with us, popping up in conversation at cocktail parties, conjuring the best parts of childhood whenever we see them on a bookshelf.
Last month, Martin and Telgemeier appeared on a panel together. The crowd was mixed — seven- and eight-year-olds had come to see Telgemeier. Women in their 30s were there for Martin, still hanging on her every word.
J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the novels Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements. | | | | | | | | | | | | The First One in the House | | | | By Marin Cogan | | | |
During this nightmarish election season it's hard to imagine, but politicians of all stripes used to celebrate immigrants coming to this country. Even Ronald Reagan, a man worshipped by conservatives, did: "Call it mysticism, if you will, but I have always believed there was some divine providence that placed this great land here … to be found by a special kind of people from every corner of the world, who had a special love for freedom and special courage that enabled them to leave their own land, leave their friends and their countrymen, and come to this new and strange land."
Flash-forward to 2016, and the standard-bearer for Reagan's party has turned immigrant status into a dangerous weapon, calling undocumented Mexicans "rapists" and advocating for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Donald Trump's rise — and his threatening behavior toward marginalized communities — has made the voices of immigrants more important than ever to our political discourse.
Anna Kaplan is a Jewish Iranian immigrant who has been living in America for 37 years. She's a town councilwoman in Long Island, New York, in the midst of a tough five-way Democratic primary to determine who will face the Republican candidate, Jack Martins, in November, when voters will decide who they want to represent New York's third congressional district. Her primary is June 28, but Kaplan made some time to sit down with us and discuss her candidacy, her life story, and why she wants to be a voice for all immigrants in Congress.
Marin Cogan: What do you remember of your life in Iran?
Anna Kaplan: I was born in a small city called Tabriz, which is near the border of Iran and Turkey. We moved to Tehran when I was about five years old.
For the most part, I think Iranian people are wonderful people, but there was anti-Semitism. We didn't advertise that we were Jews. Once, my mother took me to a supermarket, and I saw the owner turn around and say to a woman, "Don't touch the fruit. Tell me what you want and I'll put it in a bag for you." I didn't understand.
Afterward I asked my mom why he had done that, and she told me that the shopkeeper knew the customer was Jewish. He didn't mind selling to her, but he didn't want her to touch the merchandise. That was a very eye-opening experience. Obviously it made an impression, because I still remember it so many years later. I'm truly honored and privileged to be living in this great country where we all have the same rights and the same freedoms.
MC: I'm guessing you probably haven't had an opportunity to go back. But would you ever want to?
AK: Since I came here seeking political asylum, I cannot go back as long as this regime is in power. I would love to go and visit my family, but definitely not right now.
MC: Why did you get involved in public service?
AK: I've gotten involved for many reasons. In Iran, as Iranian Jews, we never got involved politically, because of persecution and threats. We didn't have a voice.
I'm not a very public person; I'm very private and traditional. But I see that as elected officials, we make really a huge difference in people's lives, people who don't have a voice. Children, veterans, seniors. Every time I've been helpful, it has made me feel good about what I do. I'm blessed to be able to do something for someone else. I think the joy of giving is sometimes so much greater than receiving.
MC: Now that you're running for Congress, what is it that you're fighting for? What are the issues that really animate you in this campaign?
AK: One of the main things that I've been hearing is affordability — living affordability and also college affordability. I know college affordability is a bipartisan issue. This is the only way our children can further their lives and give back to their communities. We are responsible for doing whatever we can to enable them.
MC: We just witnessed another really horrific mass shooting in America last week, the deadliest mass shooting in our history. What can we do to prevent these types of atrocities from happening in the future?
AK: It really is a devastating time for all of us. As a mother, as a human being, my heart goes out to every single family that has lost a family member. My heart goes out to the whole LGBT community. I hope that everyone comes out in solidarity with them.
I'm a big believer in tougher gun-control laws. I think we need to realize, as American citizens, that it's not 50 years ago. We need to adjust with time, make purchasing guns tougher, and make sure that we have background checks. We need to do more to ensure the safety of our communities, our homes, and our children.
MC: How should the United States approach the Iranian regime?
AK: I was not for the Iran deal. As much as I love the Iranian people — I think they are good people, and a lot of them love America — the rhetoric that I was hearing was, "Death to America and death to Israel." A lot of my residents and constituents wanted me to voice their opinion that this was not the best deal. Having said that, the deal was reached. We live in a democracy. I believe in moving forward. I've worked very hard to say, "Now that we have a deal, we need to make sure that every part of that agreement, every condition, is being met."
MC: Is Donald Trump's rhetoric about immigrants of concern to you?
AK: Absolutely. If Donald Trump was in the White House and I was in Iran, and I wanted to come here, I might not be able to. I am so grateful for this country for opening its arms to me because we feared persecution for our religion. When we start excluding certain groups, I think it's a very wrong path. It's very un-American.
MC: What does Hillary Clinton's presumed nomination — the first female presidential nominee of a major American political party — mean to you?
AK: It is a huge, huge victory for a lot of women. I think, as women, we bring a very different voice. I don't have anything against men, but we look at things very differently and we solve issues differently than men do. As over 50 percent of the citizens, we need to have a voice. The fact that there's only 17 percent women in Congress in 2016 in the United States means a lot of people are not being heard. In my own race, as the only woman, the only refugee, and the only immigrant, I bring a voice that none of the other candidates bring.
MC: What message would you give to people immigrating to America now?
AK: I would like everyone to know that we're all immigrants, whether we are first generation or third generation. We are the tapestry of America. We are what makes America so special. We come from all over, with our own traditions, our own food, our own way, and to include that in this country and be part of this is a great honor. We are the reason why we are who we are. I would like every immigrant to know that in me, they will have a voice. I will make sure there is always a seat for them at the table and that they will be heard. The things that are important to them are the things I will work hardest on.
Truly this country is great because of all people coming from all over and trying to achieve their goals and dreams, putting their best foot forward. I hope in return, when they succeed and make their dreams come true, that they give back to this country, because that's what it's all about.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Marin Cogan is a writer for New York Magazine. She writes the Mariner, a weekly newsletter rounding up her favorite articles, songs, and recipes. You can subscribe here. | | | | | | | | | | | | The Photographer Who Captured Cuba in the '90s | | | | By Jenny Bahn | | |
| (All Images by Tria Giovan. Santa Maria Del Mar, 1990) |
Photographer Tria Giovan sometimes wonders where the children in her portraits are today. She photographed them in Cuba in the 1990s. She's heard a handful of them have made it to Europe — Spain, Germany — though she doesn't know how. Passports would have been an issue. Money presented its own problems. At the time, Cuba was a place where very little seemed possible.
Giovan, then a young photographer based in New York City, started what would be a thorough and comprehensive documentation of a country in the throes of severe economic depression. In 1989, Cuba began to unravel amid fraying financial and diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Cuba was left without the safety net of trade agreements that bound it to other socialist countries. The result was disastrous for the island. That time became known as the "Special Period."
But Giovan wasn't there for the politics. She traveled to Cuba as an objective observer, fascinated by a place that was difficult to get to and relatively undeveloped. What started as one trip facilitated by the Center for Cuban Studies turned into a series of monthlong sojourns taken over the course of six years. In that time, Giovan took around 25,000 photographs, 100 of which made it into the pages of Cuba: The Elusive Island, her 1996 book published by Harry N. Abrams. Until recently, many of the other images sat in storage, still in negative form. Giovan has smartly scanned the whole lot, in a digital catalog dubbed "The Cuba Archive." A book of 200 of these images is set to be published by spring of 2018.
Twenty-six years after Giovan began her documentation, a new Cuba has emerged. Though not without difficulty, the country has since come to support private enterprise and open itself up to foreign investment. In 2014, Cuba's relationship with the United States, frozen since the Cold War, began to thaw. Barack Obama recently became the first sitting US president to visit Cuba in 88 years. The Rolling Stones, too, have just made history, playing their first show on the island. In the middle of the set, Mick Jagger, in magenta satin, said in Spanish to a massive crowd, "It was difficult to hear our music in Cuba before, but here we are, playing for you guys now."
I talked to Giovan about her experience with the old Cuba, from smuggling aspirin to becoming a de facto carrier pigeon between two countries, the resourcefulness of Cuban women, and what might happen now that Cuba has opened itself to the world.
Jenny Bahn: What prompted you to start the series back in 1990?
Tria Giovan: I was always a bit of an adventurous traveler. I liked the idea of going somewhere where not everyone could go that easily. I think it was also because I had grown up in the Caribbean — in the Virgin Islands. As beautiful and lovely as that is, it also had become very developed, which was difficult to see happen over the course of a young person's lifetime. One of my impulses was to find a place that hadn't had that happen and hadn't been homogenized by development. Certainly, in that respect, I found that in Cuba.
JB: With relations opening up between the US and Cuba, do you feel that sort of homogenization is bound to happen there?
TG: I think that there's a very strong cultural identity in Cuba, a strong sense of a need for preservation that will maintain the integrity of the culture and the landscape to a certain degree. There's been development going on there since Cuba started opening up to foreign investment outside of the US, obviously. A lot has changed, and, with the new policies with the US, Cuba will certainly continue to change, probably at a more accelerated pace.
JB: Do you remember the process of physically getting to Cuba? Would you typically travel with a group or by yourself?
TG: There were chartered flights in Miami. You'd have to be in line at four or five in the morning, and you never left before the middle of the day, and it was so restricted who could get on those flights.
On my first trip, I met another photographer, a woman named Janis Lewen, who'd also done some really great work there. The first three or four times, we went back together. We'd travel and drive all over together, sharing the costs, et cetera. There was absolutely no way to get money in Cuba if you ran out. No way to cash a check, no credit cards. There was no banking exchange with the United States. You just had to bring enough cash to cover yourself for a month, which was not always easy to figure out. One time I had to call a friend and ask her to get some money for me and give it to somebody we knew that was coming down.
JB: What stood out to you the most in those first trips?
TG: My initial interest going down was the diversity of the architecture and the state of it. But I ended up finding that the portraiture and people — the daily life there — was equally as interesting. There was such a really lovely quality to the people.
JB: Is there a subject within the series that means the most to you?
TG: I find when I look back that I took more pictures of women. The women are really striking and strong. Those are the ones that I find stand out for me.
JB: I love the one of the women in the beauty parlor. It so beautifully captures a universally feminine moment.
TG: Thank you. I think that one says a lot about time and culture and beauty and people's conceptions of it — to what length people go …
JB: That they're in the depths of a depression and everyone still needs to get their hair done and look presentable …
TG: They were so resourceful, too. They had these plastic flowers, and they would melt those down and use them for nail polish.
JB: Were there things you remember being in short supply?
TG: Pretty much everything. In the early '90s, they would shut the power off in Havana for hours at a time to save oil in the middle of summer. It was unbelievably hot. People would save all this food in their freezers and then the power would shut off. It was rough. They were on the brink. And they got through it.
JB: Traveling back and forth between the States, were there things that you realize you had taken for granted?
TG: Yes, certainly. Every time I would go to Cuba, I would bring down bags of aspirin, deodorant, shampoo — things that were really difficult to get there. There was no medicine. Even though health care was free, there was no medicine. So that was a big part of bringing things down for people that you knew. And letters. You couldn't even mail a letter. I would take five letters from people in Cuba that would go to Miami, then those people might send me letters to take back down. You were always bringing money back for people too.
JB: Did you stay with a host, or would you stay in hotels?
TG: You had to pay for your hotels from the States. It's not that it's illegal to travel to Havana, it's illegal to spend money in Havana. That's — quote, unquote — "trading with the enemy." In going legally, you would have to book all your hotels through Marazul Tours in New Jersey, who, as far as I know, were the only game in town, and pay for it all before you went. But you kind of figured out different ways to switch things around once you were down there.
JB: By the end of your travels there in the late '90s, had Cuba changed in any noticeable way?
TG: They were just starting to allow some small private businesses. Before that, you weren't even allowed to sell your own eggs if you had chickens. In 1999 to 2000, it was just starting so that people could have restaurants in their houses, sell vegetables, sell their own crafts. That was when it was starting to take hold, but then [the government] would say, "Yes, it's OK," and then pull back and say, "No, too many people are doing this, now you can't do it anymore." It was always one step forward and five steps back, which was really disheartening for people to deal with.
JB: Do you have plans to go back?
TG: I don't. I might, but I feel I spent so much time there and there are a lot of other places to go. I'm a little scared that it would just be sad.
JB: Is there a memory from the trip you're most fond of?
TG: There are a lot of great memories. These lovely guys took Janis and me into the mountains camping. Janis had met them at a concert or something. I think they were between the ages of 12 and 17, and they said, "We want to take you to our special camping place in the mountains," and we said, "OK!" The camping place was basically a concrete slab. To get there, you had to get on a boat and go across this lake. They'd drop you off, and you'd climb into the Escambray Mountains. There were waterfalls and some coffee farmers — that was it. We stayed there for three days. Just a delight.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Jenny Bahn is a freelance writer and editor living in New York City. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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