Mindy: Today's guest is Kiley Reid, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote fellowship. She lives in Philadelphia. Such A Fun Age is her first novel. Kylie joined me today to talk about Such A Fun Age and how writing two dimensional characters, people who are both good and bad, is how to make them true to life.
Mindy: We are here to talk about your book, Such A Fun Age, and I would like first to start off just with you telling us a little bit about the book, what it's about.
Kiley: Sure. the book starts on a Saturday night in September. In 2015 we meet Amira Tucker. She is a 25 year old African American babysitter. She's a Temple University graduate, and she's at that phase in her life where she's really not sure what she wants to do. She lives in an apartment she doesn't like. But one thing she does love doing is babysitting. So Amira is babysitting three-year-old Briar Chamberlain. They're in a grocery store or they're having a good time. They're singing and dancing until a security guard and a customer upon seeing a black woman with a white child accuse Amira of kidnapping, someone else pulls out their cell phone, they record it Amira is humiliated. And Alex Chamberlain, Briar's mom feels terrible that this happened while, you know, Amira was under her care. So she tries to write the night's wrongs, but the book turns into a comedy of good intentions after that.
Mindy: Yes, very much. And that's one of the things that does make it so compelling because it's a very modern story. And it's a very much about one scene, one moment that triggers life altering events for many people. Obviously the babysitter is being racially profiled and is experiencing this, which I'm sure is not the first time in her life that she has been racially profiled. But then we have an upper class white woman who is, you know, trying to fix it. It just ends up being a kind of a tumbleweed rolling down a hill, gathering weight, turning almost into a ballistic missile.
Kiley: Oh yeah. I think there's a lot of people who have wonderful intentions both black and white, but there's a huge emphasis on them as individuals rather than a collective society. There's this overwhelming feeling of, okay, how can I say the perfect thing in this moment? How can I do the perfect thing with this racially charged incident? And there's little room for, all right, well why does, why does this incident happen in the first place? I think a little bit too much emphasis is put on the individual by many people.
Mindy: Yes, absolutely. And it also brings up the question of whether or not it's performative.
Kiley: Right? There is that that level too, I also am really intrigued by memory and memory serves a huge role in this novel and memories that people have become self-serving. They get twisted and warped. And as I think memories do often and they often kind of shape who we are, whether they happen to like that or not. And so in writing this book, I wanted to really honor the truth of memory and not always tell the reader exactly how something happened because I think the more important thing is how it happened for that character. So there's definitely some conflicting memories that the reader has to grapple with.
Mindy: That's wonderful. And it brings up an interesting question too of are our experiences shaping us and who we are? Are we or are we rewriting our experiences to fit the image of who we think we are.
Kiley: That's an interesting way of putting it. I think it's, sometimes it's both in studying memory a little bit you know, for the most part, memories come about when a really strong reaction happens in a moment. But sometimes I think when you're telling a story and you get a big reaction from it, the feeling that that emotion of feeling accepted because you've told a story also gets encoded on you in a certain way. And certain stories we tell over and over again, they get bigger and bigger as we tell them because we want a reaction out of it. So all of those things I think really factor into these characters.
Mindy: Ah, that's fascinating. I read an interview that you gave with NBC and you were talking about as a writer myself, one of the things that I really enjoyed you bringing up towards the end of the interview, and I'm going to quote you here. You say, "the characters that I enjoy the most, the author has set me up to not know how to feel about them. I think it's a bit romantic to believe that racist and homophobic individuals are those ways all of the time.”
Mindy: Which is a great way to kind of flip what we were just saying. When you have someone with good intentions trying to do the right thing, possibly it being performative or even just like an ego boost or self cleansing in some ways. And here you are also bringing up the opposite, people that truly are racist or homophobic or acting in these ways purposefully. Are they always that way? A another quote from you, you say that you "try to give each character a win, a moment when they are redeemable." And I love that. I think it's so true. I mean, you know, one of the cliches that we often hear as writers is that you don't want to write a mustache twirling villain. They are not compelling. So I mean, I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that. Seeing both sides of all of your characters, even the ones are, you know, not so easy to swallow.
Kiley: Totally. I think that showing character strengths and weaknesses just remains so much more true to who we can be as human. When I taught undergraduate workshops at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I had students who are not writers, which is kind of my favorite student. Students who need an art credit and hope to get an a from it from an art class. And I had a lot of tendencies from my students to write these villains that were just so two dimensional - kill and steal and say bad things and are very, very rude to people. And we talked a lot about how much scarier is it when that that horrible villain goes home and plays with his children and is really loving towards them. I think that those sides can exist really harmoniously. I remember when I was a child, I lived in Tucson, Arizona, which is a very white town and I had friends who their parents loved me and they loved when I came over and I, they made me feel part of the family, but they would never allow their children to date or marry an African American man. I think that all of those, those, you know, feelings make up a human. And so I wanted to show characters that are sweet and kind and also have really terrible and harmful ways of thinking about people. Because I think that that's more true to how white supremacy can exist.
Mindy: Absolutely. Because they're not all Adolf Hitler.
Kiley: No. Yeah.
Mindy: It's the guy that came and fixed your sink and was perfectly polite to you or the woman that smiled at you and asked about your day. But you know, I mean it's, it's everyday people,
Kiley: Everyday people. Totally. And in the first scene there is this really big moment of racial bias at the same time for the remainder of the novel. And Amira is struggling to get health insurance. And I think that that's another extension of racism. Why don't domestic workers have an easy time of getting health insurance as they're working sometimes much harder and longer than other professions. And so people often ask me, you know, is this a book showing that racism is getting better or worse? And I think the only way of answering it is kind of like how humans are, is I think that it evolves in different sometimes insidious ways. And so I was hoping to show exactly how that happens with Amira.
Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also a very good way to actually illustrate a, it's a, it's a buzz word now, but systemic racism and then actually illustrating it through these everyday actions of everyday people rather than, you know, people marching with Tiki torches, you know, and it's like that's the-- while it's a horrible visual, it's also makes it easier for everyday racism to I think, hide.
Kiley: I think so too. Yeah. And I have to, I mean, as a human I'm so interested in these big socioeconomic issues, but as a reader and writer, I love the tiny little nuance to moments that do so much heavy lifting and show years and years of of history come back to one tiny moment between a woman and her babysitter. I think those moments are really fascinating.
Mindy: Coming up, working life with a living wage, representing race on the page through language choice and the truth that resides in fiction.
Ad: This episode of Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire is sponsored by Leaner Creamer. Here at Leaner Creamer we believe starting your day off healthy and lean with a cup of coffee and our creamer is the best way to begin a healthy new chapter. Our creamer is keto and paleo diet friendly. Sugar free, gluten free, lactose free. Leaner Creamer can also be use as an aide in weight loss due to the natural supplements that help boost metabolism. Visit LeanerCreamer.com now, and use promo code FIRE15 to receive 15% off.
Mindy: So you mentioned socioeconomic issues being an interest for you. You set this book in Philadelphia partly because it has a more progressive approach to setting standards for domestic workers who on average have an income of $10,000, which you obviously cannot live on. So if you want to talk about that a little bit, cause I know that you yourself had experience as a domestic worker walking away from the book for a little bit. If you just talk about your experiences as a domestic worker and then also just the plight of these people that have to live on not a living wage.
Kiley: Absolutely. I did work as a nanny for six years and Amira Tucker, my protagonist, and I couldn't be more different when it comes to personalities. But I definitely remember not having health insurance and being, having a a very, you know, mild level of panic all the time. Thinking, what if I get hit by a car? What if I cut myself cutting this birthday cake? That would change the course of my life and paying for it would set me back in a way that I may not come back from. I think emotional labor and domestic labor is fascinating and it goes back to a history of slavery, a history of not giving farmers and domestic workers the same rights as other people and farmers and domestic workers were mostly black and Brown people in the 30s. And people like Amira are still struggling with that today.
Kiley: But I will say one thing that is so uplifting for me to know is Philadelphia is kind of leading the way along with Seattle, I believe with a recent bill passed for a domestic workers bill of rights, where everyone who babysits for a family more than five hours a month is now contracted. Whether they signed something or not. And things other jobs I've had for so long, like sick days and paid leave and lunch breaks and time to get off of your feet, those things will be included. There's a moment in the novel where Amira thinks, I really want to quit and she thinks, you know, I can't just put in my two weeks notice. That's not how this works. But under the domestic workers bill of rights here in Philadelphia, that is how it works. And things like that are very encouraging. I think they're going to be hard to implement but still encouraging, nonetheless.
Mindy: I survived on a rather low income for a period of time in my life. And you are absolutely right. It is so scary if you don't have health insurance, those really simple things like cutting a birthday cake or you know, driving. I, you know, you have to drive if you're lucky enough to have a car, you know?
Kiley: Yeah.
Mindy: You could be injured. I mean, any of us, you know, I'm literally sitting in my office right now. There is no guarantee that the ceiling won't fall on me. I mean, right?
Kiley: Right, right. You never know. Yeah. It's a crazy thing, especially with domestic labor with children. It's this profession that you have such a small margin of error, not just for yourself, but for the child. If something happens to that child, that can change your life, their family's life forever and with such a high stakes situation, if you're lucky, you get paid $15 an hour. It's kind of, that doesn't make any sense. And I, and I hope Philadelphia leads the way and changing that for other women.
Mindy: You've had great luck right out of the door with Such A Fun Age. Emmy winning writer, producer Lena Waite has snapped up the film and TV rights even before publication. Reese Witherspoon has adopted it as a book club book. It has just had such a wave of enthusiasm, even pre-publication. So I know that you have gone through quite a bit of training and education in order to... You were accepted into the Iowa's Writer's Workshop at the university of Iowa, but you also had stumbling blocks before that. Again, I've done some reading about your experiences and you were rejected from nine schools that you applied to for your MFA and to have this, this experience now, I would just love that, know your feelings of the compare and contrast those different ups and downs as a writer.
Kiley: The first time I applied to grad school, I got those nine rejections and it was so difficult. So much of being a writer is having other jobs to support your writing habit as it's not, you know, sustainable for a bit. And it's really hard to know, okay, when do I pull the plug on this and say this isn't for me? And so I tried again, I had the our opportunity to move to Arkansas with my now husband and I worked in a coffee shop and I wrote copy for a few companies for, for work and wrote for a few magazines in Arkansas as I applied again. And the second time around I was so much more grounded in what I wanted to do and my sample was just so much stronger. And instead of, you know, "Oh please, let me write at your school." The second time around it was, "Hey, I write about really big socioeconomic issues down to tiny little petty instances. Let me know if I can do that at your school."
Kiley: And the second time it worked out a lot better and got into nine schools and I was so pleased to take this novel to Iowa where I completed it, but I think that rejections are part of the process. I could probably wallpaper my room with rejections, but the ones that always stand out are the good ones. I've definitely had rejections that say, "Hey, this one almost made it." And as a writer, you're like, Oh my gosh, I can, I can do this for another three months. This, this little phrase is going to carry me for a little bit. And I think that's just part of the process.
Mindy: Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. I was trying to get an agent for 10 years and that is pain, you know, and it's just, you're talking about wallpapering with rejections. I mean, absolutely. Absolutely. And you're so right about those positive rejections though because you can have that one phrase. I remember I did get a specific rejection from an agent that I really wanted and she said this isn't a good fit for me at the moment cause the genre was off. But she was like, "you are a good writer and I believe you will succeed." And there was just that one line.
Kiley: Exactly.
Mindy: And my heart leapt in my chest and it was as if she had signed me, you know, I was so happy.
Kiley: Yeah, it's nice having writer friends in those moments too. Because they're there to celebrate with you. Wait, it wasn't like a form rejection. It wasn't a dear author letter. This is amazing. Keep going. Those moments.
Mindy: Yeah. When someone on the inside of where you want to be is acknowledging that it's a possibility that you might get to be on the other side that that... I mean sometimes that's all it's takes. You're, you're right. I lived off of that one line complement for three months.
Kiley: It's amazing how long that those will take you or even just, you know, someone like when you're workshopping something. When I walked into the workshop with this novel, one of my friends said okay, I've cast the entire book. Do you want to know who should play who? Just her enthusiasm made me so excited about the book and that just gives you a little boost that you really need at that moment.
Mindy: Absolutely. And it also can reinvigorate you about your own work, I think.
Kiley: I think so too. When you see it from someone else's perspective. A workshop can be really difficult, but when everyone is getting excited and saying, Oh my gosh, at this moment I thought she was going to do this and she did this. It gives you a lot of clarity to what you've been doing in your room alone for so many hours.
Mindy: That is absolutely the best way to put it. Because you do achieve a certain amount of manuscript blindness when you're working in, you're diving so deep and digging and you're getting down into the insides of it. It loses it, it loses sometimes that personal connection, if you're just looking at it structurally or looking at the craft aspect, sometimes you lose the human angle that you had. And when other humans are then reacting to your work and giving you that feedback and you remember why you did this.
Kiley: Oh yeah, exactly. That's the best. When someone says, Hey, and this moment, why wouldn't she just close the door? And you're like, Oh wait. Yeah, she's a human. Why wouldn't I just have this person do the human thing. And it's nice to be reminded that you need other humans to write about humans. Sometimes.
Mindy: We are easily, easily isolated just because of the nature of what we do. And I personally live in a very rural area. I don't have the option of going to a coffee shop or something like that to work. And so I substitute in the schools simply so that I can be around people sometimes because you lose that connection, you can't write about people if you don't know them.
Kiley: I completely agree. Yeah.
Mindy: [Bell Ringing] As you can tell, I'm in this school right now.
Kiley: That's fine.
Mindy: Any thoughts then on the success that you've had? Because you've just had an enormous amount of prepublication buzz and a lot of people talking this book up and I'm personally and just like super excited about it. So not necessarily looking at it from a, did you ever believe that this is what happened to you, but more of what is the experience like?
Kiley: That's a good question. The experience is a bit surreal and it's one of those things that like I lived in in New York city for nine years and I was a babysitter for so long, but I felt like I didn't really make sense of that experience until I took myself out and took a year in Arkansas. And all of those experiences kind of made more sense to me when I stepped, stepped away. So I'll probably have more information on what's happening now in a few months. But I will say that one of the surprising and wonderful parts is the messages that I get from a lot of black women saying, you know, I read all the time and I've never read a black protagonist before. And I didn't realize it until that till now. Or when I was in the process of finding an agent, I did have some say to me, you know, we may need to pull back on the slang language that you use.
Kiley: And that was one area that I, it was a hard... I, you know, you want them to have the best book you can have. But I wanted to keep my dialogue from, you know, young African American girls to white toddlers to different friends. I wanted to keep it all extremely hyper real. And now on the other side, hearing women at every reading say these people talk like me and my friends talk. That's so wonderful. And to know like the first goal is always just to have a gripping story, but to have people see themselves in this novel has been lovely stuff. That's been a good part.
Mindy: Well, and I think even just using code switching in the book as a matter of daily course without, you know, saying this is code switching, it's honest, right? I mean, this is representation of a real world, a diverse world. And I think that of course everyone should have the opportunities to see themselves on the page. And I, I love that. You know, you stuck to your guns and you're like, no, I mean we're gonna we're going to keep this the way that it is, which honestly, your readers are gonna react to that. Lovely that the black women that are reading it can say, Oh, this is great. I identify with this. But I also think it's wonderful that a white woman such as myself could read this and be like, okay, I don't identify with the slang and the conversations that are going on here, but it's good for me to be exposed to it and I can appreciate it.
Kiley: Absolutely. That's my, I mean that's like one of the main reasons that I read is I just want to see into other, another world. And so there's so many times where I say, Oh my gosh, this is so different. Or Oh, this is exactly like what I do. And that's just part of, you know, being a reader and a writer. And so that's been really lovely. I think that I had to realize that people are bringing in all of their own stuff to my book and they're carrying a lot of experiences and sometimes prejudices and, and feelings like, or even just like, you know, not feeling well that day. All of those things are bringing into the reading experience. And so knowing that all I can do is just tell my version of the truth. My professor Paul Harding at grad school just said over and over, your job as a fiction writer is to tell the truth. And so that's always my goal and I'm glad I've been so thrilled that people are enjoying it so far.
Mindy: And I love the quote there from your professor. I am a librarian in my day life. I don't work full time, but [bell ringing] as I said, you can tell him in the school today.
Mindy: One of the easy ways that we break down the difference between nonfiction and fiction when we're talking to younger children is we say, well, nonfiction is true. And the older I get, I'm just like, you know, I don't like saying that to the kids. Because then the flip side of that, you know, and is that fiction is false. Like it's not, it is true representation. It's... The people may not exist and be real people, but you know, they are, that person is out there in the world. So I've just kind of been redefining to myself as a writer and as a librarian and someone educating children like, is saying, nonfiction is true degrading or misrepresenting fiction in some ways to these young minds?
Kiley: That's interesting. And I don't know if it, who knows if it could be, especially because when I think about my process, it's mostly reading nonfiction to become inspired for my fiction. I think that the more true elements I can insert into my fiction the better it is, and the characters that aren't real will seem even more real. And I think that fiction can often do this really special thing that the essay or the think piece can't do, where it just makes you so entranced by a person who doesn't exist. But it makes you see the world you live in, in a different way often. So yeah, we might need to redefine that for children. I don't know.
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you tell listeners where they can find you online and where they can find your book, Such A Fun Age?
Kiley: Absolutely. Such A Fun Age is available, pretty much I think where all books are sold for the most part. I can be found on Kyliereid.com and that's also where you can order the book. Twitter is not my thing. It goes a little bit too fast for me, but I am available on Instagram at, at Kylie Reed.