Emily St. James, Woodworking

In this episode Brett sits down with Emily St. James to discuss her debut novel 'Woodworking' They talk about the title of the book and its relevance today, growing up in rural South Dakota, trans people in history, and why a sequel won't happen but what it could be.

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Transcript

Brett Benner: 0:00

Hey everybody, it's Brett and welcome or welcome back to another episode of Behind the Stack. I'm excited that you're here. This is not my normal release day, but here's the thing. I read the book of today's guest last weekend right after her book came out and I flipped over it. So I immediately reached out because I wanted to sit down with her and I didn't wanna wait till next week to get this conversation in front of all of you because I think that the book is so incredibly special and so incredibly timely, the book is Woodworking. The author is Emily St. James. A little bit about Emily, she's a writer. Cultural critic, and this is her first novel. Her journalism and criticism have been featured by the New York Times Vox and the AV Club and her writing for television has been featured on the Emmy nominated series, yellow Jackets. She lives in Los Angeles with her family, so please enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack. I am so thrilled to be sitting down with Emily St. James for her phenomenal book, woodworking. I know you could probably tell that.'cause I was just, I've been tripping and going crazy for this thing and posting about it. On Instagram and over on YouTube as well. I just, I loved this so, so much and truly it's, it's, it's one of the best things I've read this year. I, I just I. I knew it was gonna be good, but I, I have to tell you, like I read it last weekend in like almost one failed swoop and I found myself laughing so much, but also crying and I was so moved by it. Probably in no small part too because of everything that's happening right now. But even separate from that, it's just such a well-crafted and beautiful story. So congratulations.

Emily St. James: 1:57

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm glad you I'm glad you liked it.

Brett Benner: 1:59

So before we get into the book I just wanted to do a little background on you.'cause now you grew up in South Dakota where this book is. I

Emily St. James: 2:07

did, I, yeah. I was born in Michigan, but two months into my life I moved to South Dakota. I, I don't remember, I didn't remember Michigan. So I consider myself a South Dakota native, but by strict Associated press standards. I am not a South Dakota native, but I, I spent my entire childhood adolescence and I also went to college there. So I, I was, I was there a long time. I grew up there. I grew up trans there. It was it was a very isolating place in ways that I are good and bad. You know, there's times that you like to be a little bit lonely and South Dakota's good for that. But also when you're queer that can be very isolating.

Brett Benner: 2:46

Yeah, and I think the way of communicating, it's not like. Now where people would have access to so much information that was disseminated to even get out there? Yeah. Or to find out who was out there.

Emily St. James: 2:58

Yeah. You know, I, I was a teenager a young teenager when the internet sort of entered our lives. And you know, that was really kind of the first place I started figuring out. Some of this stuff, like I, I had, I had done the classic trans girl thing of trying to like come out at like three or four, which went poorly. That was in the eighties. And then when I was a teenager we got the internet and I started kind of like making friends from all over, mostly with. Cis girls. But you know, I, I certainly like, would enter spaces online as a girl and sort of felt like that was more me. I didn't entirely put together all of the, the, the puzzle pieces there. I certainly. But certainly by the time I, I was nearing the end of high school, I sort of had this loose plan of how I was gonna transition and then it took me a long time to get there, so.

Brett Benner: 3:51

Well, did you, but did you also, when you said you were three or four, and how did that present? Was it just. Wearing clothes or wanting to, what was your understanding of that? I'm so curious.

Emily St. James: 4:00

I, you know, I was, I was like, I was so young that I don't have like a strong memory. Yeah. And it was very, it was very harshly policed as you'd sort of expect in the eighties. But it, it was you know, it, it was very much saying that, you know, I hoped I grew up to be a girl. You know yeah the, the classic putting on of the mother's clothes, that sort of thing. That was, yeah, that was all present. And it was very much me saying to people that I wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be named Jessica, which I'm glad I didn't get my way because I don't, I'm glad I'm not a Jessica. I don't think I could have pulled it off. But that was, you know, that that was, that was what was happening. And it was it was the eighties. It was. Small town, South Dakota, people didn't entirely know what to do with that. So I, I just like shoved myself in the closet.

Brett Benner: 4:46

I imagine too small town, everybody knows everybody's business as well.

Emily St. James: 4:50

Yeah. And it was you know, I, I was a precocious child. So certainly I, and I loved writing stories, so I think certainly there was a sense that I was like, making things up. You know, that the classic now, now when people are like, well, how can a kid know. They're trans.'cause yesterday they said they were a dinosaur. And it's like, yeah, they did. They kid. But kids know the difference between themselves and make believe. You know, your kid is almost certainly not feeling intense bodily. Discomfort at the fact that they like, haven't grown a tail or like spouted sharp teeth. They might be that, you know, you're not allowing them to present in a fashion consistent with their, their internal gender. And the thing that we, from all the research we have, like gender seems to turn on somewhere between two and three, there's this part of your brain that's like, this is who I am. And then there's outside societal conditioning that is like, this is how you are. If you're a girl, this is how you behave. But there is some core innate thing in your brain that says, this is what's going on. This is, this is who I am. I'm watching it with my own kid right now. As they are they're, they're almost two and a half and like those things are starting to like. Click on in a way that I find really fascinating from my perspective as someone who didn't entirely know what she was going through back in the day to watch it happening in a child. But it is, I think I. I think that because childhood involves a lot of imaginary play, there is this temptation and understandable temptation to sort of say this is, you know, you're just, you're playing, you're playing a game, you're pretending to be someone, but there is this very deep, innate sense of self that is in all of us, and that I think a lot of people are scared to examine because they might find. It doesn't entirely line up with who they're supposed to be. And I think that is true of literally everybody on the planet. Like the, the, if you are a cisgender guy or woman there are things about how society has presented that gender to you that you are uncomfortable with and you would rather not deal with. And I think, but I think like. When you're close enough, there's a better sense of going along to get along. And I think that that is a thing that is transness reminds everyone that we, we can make our own decisions about our own bodies and our own lives. And that's very threatening to certain subsets of people.

Brett Benner: 7:12

now was your family, was your family very religious, conservative?

Emily St. James: 7:16

Yeah. So I grew up very evangelical Christian, but I think, not in the sense that people think of Evangelical Christian now, which is a big mega church somewhere in the south. This was a it's a church similar to the one in the book Living Waters, where Isaiah Rose preaches. It's kinda way out in the middle of nowhere and. It's like got a very firebrand preacher and then it has, you know, a pretty consistent congregation. And it's very much engaged with Christianity as a force for politics in many ways. Hmm. I I don't know that we would've thought of it that way when I was growing up. Certainly people there. Supported Republican candidates. Pat Robertson the 700 club guy had his, his short-lived presidential run in 1988 and people there were very excited about that. I remember it's one of my first political memories how like I was like, pat Robertson go.'cause I didn't know any better. And it was it was a time that that. But it was a space that was going to evolve into what we now think of as the very politically active evangelical church. But it was also like a space where people were speaking in tongues. They were laying hands on each other for healing. They were being quote unquote slain in the spirit, which is like when you're, you fall over'cause you're so overcome with religious ecstasy. So yeah, I grew up in that space. It was, it was not a very queer affirming space to put it mildly. It's, it's very

Brett Benner: 8:42

theatrical. It's extremely

Emily St. James: 8:44

theatrical. It's, and you know, I think that I remember there was sort of this, this concern that this this girl part of me was demonic in some nature that, you know, I had like, like some sort of demon had hitched a ride on my subconscious and was like a demon named Jessica, which is very funny to me. And it was, was along for the ride. And that was, I eventually just sort of learned to shunt all of that stuff off to the side. But also like the first, the first time I, I kissed a boy, it was somebody I met at church, so it was it was this thing, you know?

Brett Benner: 9:18

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I grew up in a very it wasn't evangelical, but it was, you know. We were Presbyterian, it was wasps, we were very Presbyterian. Sure. However, it was the same kind of thing. And you know, I knew early on I couldn't put a name to being queer yet, but I did. Mm-hmm. Absolutely know that something was different. There's something wasn't tracking, which I was seeing other people track with. Yeah. And when I got to college, I was a theater major. Everybody was. You know, you can do the math, but I went to an evangelical church at the time and it was complete, the charismatic thing and the laying on the hands and speaking in tongues and yeah, All of that kinda thing. I went to church camp and you know, God knows like so many queer kids, I tried to pray away that gay Yeah. So badly. And until I finally was just like, this is just not it. And like, I, I, you know, I, this is not it. So, yeah. I think. So many people on the spectrum have gone through that same kind of fire test in a way Yeah. To, to come out the other side. And again, there was no one I could necessarily recognize. I do remember one camp counselor who at and looking back I was completely in love with, who was very sensitive and very loving. Mm-hmm. And very appropriate. But there was nothing, and I didn't even know in terms of his sexuality, but I remember feeling this intense longing and trying to verbalize that and now, and it's, it's so interesting with. Trans individuals because I've said, you know, it's not that there's more than there were. It's what there is is we now have language to put to it, and people are beginning to understand and be able to verbalize, Hey, this is what it is that I'm. Feeling, and I'm seeing other people now, and I'm recognizing other people now, and I can say, I feel this way too, or I am this as well. Yeah. I mean, that's my own opinion on it, but yeah.

Emily St. James: 11:05

Yeah. The, the scholar Austin Hartke has done a lot of writing on trans people in the Bible, and he is sort of, what he's talking about is there's all these. Figures in the, the Bible who are what we would call gender variant, basically, they're not living within the gender code as it would've been understood at that time. Probably the, the most famous is Jacob father of Joseph, who is in the early part of his life, essentially coded female. You know, he's doing stuff around the house or whatever, and his brother Esau, his twin brother Esau, is off hunting. Whatever they hunted at that time. And it's it is very much presented as like Jacob is in this terms of his society. Shame shameful, but he's also the one that God likes more. God favors him. Mm-hmm. And so it's this, this complicated like story about this, this kid who like has to overcome his gender feels. And it's a thing that both trans women and trans men and non-binary people, it's a thing that all trans people will read that story in Genesis and be like, oh yeah, okay, I get this. And I think that like a lot of cis people have enforced a binary on that character in a way that is not necessarily helpful. But there's other figures that, like when you think about them. In terms of like historic personage there's a, there's a, in the New Testament there's a character named the Ethiopian Eunuch. And at that time, people would've understood that as a gender variant person. And I think that one thing that often gets sort of. Foist it on Hart casework from other Christians, from people who are coming at it from a more conservative angle is that he's like writing about stuff in a modern context. Mm. And forcing his modern perspective on the Bible. But I would say they also are. The people who are his critics, because they're expecting like Jesus to be in the Bible and say, by the way, if you're trans, it's fine. And here's a hotline you can call. That's right. To talk through your feelings when like they didn't have the language we have now in, in sort of biblical times. So like they had a different language for gender variance that they would've understood. That has largely been lost to us. But that like scholarship can help us reclaim. So I often say that, you know, trans people have been around as long as there have been humans and like. Our earliest works of literature have gender variant people in them including the Bible. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Benner: 13:34

Alright, so I do wanna talk about the book, but the, I do have to say the one thing, and all this is gonna tie in anyway, but I, when I was when I was looking up some stuff on you mm-hmm. My favorite thing that came up on Wikipedia was the first note that said not to be confused with Emily St. John Mandel.

Emily St. James: 13:49

Yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Yeah. Uhhuh.

Brett Benner: 13:52

Yep. I love that. Yeah. All right, so for our viewers, our listeners, do you have, like, do you have an elevator pitch for woodworking?

Emily St. James: 14:02

I am not. Emily St. John Mendel. Yes, exactly. My apologies to everyone.

Brett Benner: 14:07

This is, this is not an apocalyptic novel about the end of the world and yes. Exactly. Is

Emily St. James: 14:12

it though? No. Right, right. She's, she's one of our best living novelists and I feel very gratified to share an Emily Saint with her. Yes. Emily Saint J to be clear, a bunch of letters. I this is, it's very close, but yeah. Yeah. This is a, a book about a trans woman who comes out to herself in her mid thirties and finally sort of self accepts and is like, I am going to go on the journey, what's next? And she, the only other trans woman she knows is a 17-year-old girl who's one of her high school students. And it's about the unlikely friendship that develops between them and against the backdrop of the 2016 election.

Brett Benner: 14:50

that was very good. It was very concise.

Emily St. James: 14:52

I've gotten, I've got, I was so bad at this a year ago.

Brett Benner: 14:54

You've done it so much. Yes. You've done it so much. I mean it, it, it's literally sounds like you're just going into your pitch meeting. Originally when I, I had finished the book and then I was like, huh, I wonder why 2016? And then of course I got, I, I understood it completely. Because I, I was like, unfortunately, we're, we're here all over again. At, at, at 2024. I, I, I, I said when I finished this, I would give this book to anyone who wanted to understand what it's like for any person who was coming out as trans. Yeah. I felt it was one of the things I loved about it so much was you were on this journey. With Erica, who is our teacher. And it's so beautifully done. It's also on another side note, it's so damn funny. I mean, I have to say, Abigail, this student, you must have had the greatest time writing her, I would imagine. She, yeah, and I, and I almost feel like, tell me this, because I imagine in my mind this is like two parts. Of Emily playing out almost like you know, the journey. And also it was it a little bit of who I want to be and who I am. Mm-hmm. Is that how this was kind of structured for you

Emily St. James: 16:16

a bit, Erica? Some of Erica's touchstones are similar to touchstones in my life. She's a bit more guileless than I am. She's a bit more has, she's both simultaneously more scared than I was because the second I was out, I was like, well, I gotta do something about this. And Erica is, is taking her sweet time. I, I took my sweet time too, but for different reasons. And Abigail is much more, more jaded. She has a, a, a very different perspective on all of this. They are both like, slightly more intense than me in their feelings. It was interesting'cause I, I started the book in 2020. I came out to myself in 2018. I started medical transition later that year. And in fact, we're coming up on the seventh anniversary of me coming out to myself. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's wild to realize I've made it that far. But I, i, you know, started medical transition later that year and I immediately like had I, because I was a public figure, I was writing as a, a journalist at Vox at the time I had to like, sort of think about, okay, how am I gonna like have my public self transition? And so like. A lot of Erica's angst when I started writing the book in 2020 was so present for me and I was like able to tap into it so easily. And as I've worked on it, as I've worked on revisions, I've gotten much closer to Abigail because Abigail has been, when the book starts, she's been transitioning for a while. She's says 14 months. So of course the over the course of the book, she gets to 16 months transition and it's, it's, you know, she has a different perspective because she's been doing it for a while and now she's realized this hasn't solved everything in her life. There's other stuff going on with her trauma, with her mental health, with whatever that she has to like actually deal with. I wanted to sort of capture elements of transition that I don't see in a lot of transition narratives. Because the second I realized this was gonna be a transition narrative, I got very gun shy about it.'cause that's like the one trans story that, that cis people are like interested in. Certainly cis people have read other trans narratives, you know, that aren't necessarily about transition, but it is. It is, it is a big lift because that's the one thing cis people understand about trans transness is there's an before and an after. So I was like very cognizant of the fact that I was doing that. So I was like, what are, what's a transition narrative I haven't seen before? And it is about that period between when you come out and when you decide to like actually live your life and stuck in that. Part for the entirety of the book and Abigail's is, you know, after you've been transitioning for a while and you realize there's these things that haven't been fixed by it that you need to deal with still, and by necessity of where, you know, of how much I got further and further from my transition the early days of my transition, I just could relate to Abigail Moore as the story went on. And so I, I got very annoyed with Erica in later drafts. Like, I love her, but she is she come, will come up with any excuse to not make a choice. And that was. That was always hard to like, sort of massage and not make her unbearable. But yeah, like I loved, I loved writing both of them. I love both of them. Every time I spend time with them, I feel great about it. I'm, I'm a little sad that it's done because I don't get to hang out with them anymore. And I just, it's not a book that wants a sequel, you know? You get to the end of it and you're like, yeah, it's fine.

Brett Benner: 19:43

I don't even know right now what that sequel would be.

Emily St. James: 19:46

It would be very grim and dark because of the times we live in.

Brett Benner: 19:51

I took this quote and I thought it kind of encapsulated the two of them. It said this is Erica and Abigail in conversation, and she said, Erica listened to everything Abigail said, but if she was honest with herself, dismissed most of it. The girl didn't understand how lucky she was. She had thrown herself a rope from shore before she washed away to sea, and now she got to simply live her life. Erica meanwhile had been swimming against. The riptide her whole life and gotten too good at it. And I thought, wow, that's like on the nose. I loved that. Explain the title I mean, it, it gets explained. Sure. But could you explain that for our listeners and our viewers?

Emily St. James: 20:21

I'm realizing how many water metaphors I use. I'm like, what is that? What's up with that, Emily? What's going on there? Woodworking is this concept from. Seventies, eighties trans community, which is basically that you transition. It's especially prominent among trans women. I did find some instances of like trans men using it really though at the time the communities were quite separate because of the nature of. Communication at that time. Certainly like they overlapped and, and knew each other, but like their publications, which is where a lot of this information was disseminated in zines and things like that were quite separate. So it was mostly a, a term among trans women. The idea was that you would transition, you would get to a point where you passed well enough or extremely well, and you would, basically cut off all ties to your old life and disappear into the woodwork. You know, you would get married, you would get a job. You would in essence become a different person without a past, and that would be you know, how you lived your life. And that was a necessity at that time for a lot of people. They had. Families who didn't understand them, they were in danger. If they sort of lived openly as a trans person where they were. So they would just entirely disappear and build something new for themselves and just say, you know, this is who I've always been. I am a cis person. I. Although they wouldn't have used the term CIS at the time, and it like, it was a ne necessity in many cases for safety or for whatever. But it also wasn't tremendously alienating. It was this like thing that. Sort of ate away at many of them. And I did talk to folks who either had done something like that or had gone what we call deep stealth, which is like just the next step above, which is like a few people know you're trans, maybe like a spouse or a trusted friend, but for the most part you're living your life as a cis person. And yeah, there's just a lot of it that to them ended up becoming incredibly lonely because they couldn't talk about this part of their lives. And then there's sort of this window in the 2010s when it seems like transness is becoming more accepted, and a lot of those folks started talking about it either openly or to people like me. And now I'm seeing it happen all over. I'm seeing it happen with friends. Be like, you know what? It's not safe anymore. And I am going to, as much as possible, live as a, as a, a cis person, and I get the temptation. I kind like, I, I kind of, there are days I wish I could do it. I unfortunately have a Wikipedia page. So it's, it's difficult for me to do that. And also I wrote a novel about being trans. But you know, it, there there is a part of me that's like, yeah, if I could assimilate. To entirely. I get the temptation of that even as I think like ultimately that's not great for the trans community as a whole, as an individual. You do have to prioritize your safety to some extent. So I get it. And I'm also like, I think that we're gonna see, you know, 30 years from now, a lot of these folks like have just sort of intense psychic angst. Like what they had to do.

Brett Benner: 23:32

Yeah, and I, I think it was right after 45, 47 came back into office, I, I, I think it was Laverne Cox who I saw speaking and said, and I don't know if what terms she used, if it was going deep or going dark, and she said, for safety purposes, many of you may have to do this and do what you need to do. I thought of well beyond everything, but I thought of so many young people and I, I don't know, it's just it's, it, it's so horribly upsetting.

Emily St. James: 24:04

Yeah, it's I think a lot about, like one thing I thought about as I was working on the book was the degree to which everyone on the planet is woodworking to some extent. Like Erica spending a lot of the book. Disappearing into maleness. A a sort of costume that fits her poorly, but that people will accept on her is a form of woodworking and it's a form of woodworking. A lot of people who either know or suspect they're trans avail themselves of every day. And I can't say like, you shouldn't do that. You know, it's especially if it's for safety. You know, I like I think about this a lot in terms of. Needing advocates in the legal system, in journalism, in the PO political system, there are maybe just people who just like for safety are going to stay closeted and as long as they're like not making our lives actively worse, I'm not gonna like judge them for that choice at this point in time. But you know this is also a book about a woman who's pregnant and is like uninterested in being a mother, but this is the thing that's been placed upon her. And is she woodworking a little bit and pretending that this is like a thing she wants every character in the book is hiding from some fundamental part of themselves. And that, that's the thing I think is, is universally applicable. Not to be like, and cis people can enjoy this book too, but cis people can enjoy this book too.

Brett Benner: 25:30

Well, it's also what we, you know, think code switching now and, and the way that people do that, I mean, certainly as a queer person, there's been more than enough times and you know. I've been in the entertainment because I work in the entertainment business, as do you, and I've been here long enough to all of a sudden know if I'm passing in a certain room to hear certain comments being made that would they necessarily be made if at the outset everybody knew my sexuality would that, you know? Yeah. And so and that's it. It, it becomes this jarring moment of like, wow, okay, so was I wise enough to keep my mouth shut? So I got a. Insight into how these people actually think, or is it wiser to open my mouth and say, Hey, you know what, that that's not right because X, Y, Z. So, but I think, you know, people do it all the time for a variety of reasons, and it doesn't have to be gender or sexuality. It's just we're changing based on who we are and, and potentially who we're with. It's an also really interesting dynamic between Erica and Abigail because you've reversed the parent child dynamic. Yeah.

Emily St. James: 26:34

Yeah. And like I was thinking, I've been thinking about how much consternation there is right now about teachers. Warping their students' minds or whatever. And this is a book where the, the student is the one who tells the teacher, you know, here's what you need to do. And like, yeah. I think that that is a subversion of what people expect hopefully in a way that they enjoy. But certainly I imagine there's some like. Like conservative, somebody somewhere who's like, oh, this is a book about a teacher and a student and transness. That's exactly what we're afraid of. But yeah, a, a thing that appealed to me was that it is a book about a mother and a daughter, but that applies both ways. Abigail knows more about being trans, and Erika does and can instruct her in those ways, but she's also 17 and Abigail's 35, or Erica's 35. Mm-hmm. And so Erica knows so much more about like life. Then Abigail does. And so there's the more traditional maternal thing. Abigail is no longer talking to her, the mother who raised her and has a variety of mother figures, and Erica sort of becomes one of those. But also, you know Abigail's there to be like give Erica a, a kick in the butt when she needs one. And that's that's a very maternal thing to do as well. So I, I liked the way that they could be. Each be both to each other.

Brett Benner: 27:52

Now, you were obviously going through revisions of this while, like the beginning of being a parent, correct? Uhhuh? Yes. Yes. And how has that experience been being a parent, being a mom and, and how, and obviously, your transness is going to influence your raising of your child just the same way any parent is who they are is. How's the experience been? You're in the fun place.

Emily St. James: 28:16

I, I, extremely fun. That's what I say every day when I wake up. No, my kid is two and testing boundaries and we love to see it. Yeah. Yeah. It's I yeah. I think that becoming a mom influenced this book in a number of ways. The first thing is like. I had, so I mentioned earlier Erica's ex-wife Constance is pregnant, and I didn't know what to do with that plot point for a long time. I like really struggled with how do I resolve this because a pregnancy is a ticking clock in a book. And like I either needed Constance to have that baby or to have an abortion. And it was a thing where I was like sort of struggling with how to resolve that. And then once I had a kid, all of that sort of clicked into place in a way that like, mm, it made more sense to me like why you would not want to have a baby. It made more sense to me. All of these sort of things in Constance brain that had felt theoretical to me suddenly felt present. So it really helped with that, but it also helped with like. I think I have a pretty strong maternal urge to like two people around me who need help. And I like sometimes overextend myself in that regard. So having a kid helped me pull back on that, but I could be maternal to all the characters in the book. I could like sort of want what was best for them while also watching them make their own mistakes. I, I'm working on the second book now. What's gonna be book two and it's, it, it is, it is very much about motherhood is involved in there a lot. I think that it is a theme that I'm drawn to. And also if you look at a lot of trans literature, it is trans by written, by trans women, I should say it is inherently engaged with motherhood. Detransition baby very much is, Nevada has that element to it. Mm-hmm. It is this thing of like. We all sort of there is this, this primal urge in a lot of us, not all of us, to have a mother or to be a mother. And then we serve in those roles, both of those roles for people in our community. And woodworking is really kind of about that and like trying to find your maternal instinct within that. But as the book ends, you know, it. It also understands these relationships are transitory. Erica and Abigail are not going to be in each other's lives to the extent they are for the period covered in the book for the rest of their lives. They're, they're different ages, they're different people. Certainly if they bump into each other and, you know, super Walmart in 10 years, they're gonna have a long conversation, but they're not, you know, meeting up to have. Discussions about like fingernail polish all the time.

Brett Benner: 30:53

You know, speaking of it, it is very much, the book is very much of a moment, right? For all of these characters. Mm-hmm. And two of the other kind of ancillary characters, both of her in Abigail's life, who I just loved so much was her boyfriend, Uhhuh and also her best friend. Yes. Who, and what I love again about the way that. You've had Abigail approach. even these relationships, and I should say their names are Megan and Caleb, but she's almost kicking her feet into all of these things. Like any kind of relationship Yeah. That she gets into. She's very resistant and untrustworthy. It's like, okay, I know what this is. Like, let's just cut the bullshit. Okay. If we need to get to like whatever it is. And I love that about her, first of all, I, Caleb was just so damn sweet that I just adored him. And I think everybody absolutely knows one of these, these boys yeah, who are just trying to figure it out and has all of these emotions that are wrapped up in this that is kind of as, as heart as leading his head they're both incredibly sweet characters.

Emily St. James: 31:56

Yeah, I, I really think of all the supporting characters. If someone were to rewrite this book from one of their perspectives, Caleb is the one who would be the most interesting for a variety of reasons, how he intersects with the story in multiple ways. You wouldn't get a lot of the Erica stuff'cause he just doesn't care about it very much. Right. But like he's adopted. I am adopted myself when I, when I moved from Michigan to South Dakota, that's why I was adopted as a baby. Caleb is a transracial adoptee. He was adopted an international adoptee as well. He's adopted from China to a white family in the United States. So that aspect of his life is very different from mine. But this idea of being adopted as a baby and moving to South Dakota is a thing that happened to me. So I could sort of like. Tap into that experience a little bit, and I was very, like a lot of international adoptees have this like. As adults, like really come to think about that experience as a traumatic one because I always hesitate to like, to like, talk about this too, forthrightly, but adoption, the adoption of a child is a, is a traumatic act for that child. And we can, they can be adopted into the best family in the world, and many of them are, and they can have a wonderful experience and they can have parents who help them deal with that, that trauma. But it's there. You know, when you are a baby, you imprint on someone and then that person goes away and suddenly are with someone else. And I do think Caleb's parents are good parents and they're doing their best and they're trying as hard as they can. I also think he's gonna get to college. He's gonna get out into the world in his twenties and be like, this thing that happened to me where I was effectively sold as a commodity is really screwed up and I really like, need to think about what that means for me. And I wanted to like nod to the fact that he has these feelings, but also that he's. 17, 17, 18 and hasn't had the space to really process them'cause he still lives with his parents. And so I, I, I hoped that I could get little, little glimmers of that. And I've heard from some international adoptees who were like very pleased with sort of that aspect of it. I, I, my, my best friend in high school, my Megan Osborn was an international adoptee herself, and she, she very much informed the character of Caleb. You know, even though different in many ways. I also think like I'm interested in the way that his attraction to Abigail makes him think about his own relationship to his sexuality, what he might think of as queerness. I think that Caleb is probably quite straight, but I also think that this is like a thing that gives him a little window into some other part of himself. I, I do think he's. Very fascinating. Oh

Brett Benner: 34:42

my God. And a hundred percent also, like, I don't know what the, the, the racial makeup of his in South Dakota, but I can't imagine, you know, I, I would imagine it's 98% white. Maybe I'm wrong.

Emily St. James: 34:52

It's, yeah, I think it's 97% white and most of the people of color there are indigenous and of course, very. Highly segregated onto, yeah. Reservations. So you, you certainly have a small commun a community of, of black people, particularly in the large cities. You have slightly larger communities of, of Asian people, but most of whom are adopted by white families. It is. It is a place where there, there wasn't a lot of immigration until very recently. So it, it's been, yeah, it, it's, it's a place that is very white and less white by the year, but certainly still that damn immigration. Yeah, it's it, it's certainly is, is a, a thing. In terms of Megan, I really like, as I was thinking about how to structure. This book, which is built around it, it's a series, a book about a series of relationships in both halves. It, it is theoretically about transition, but transition ceases to be, its driving narrative force pretty quickly, and it is much more about. A number of other things. And the Meghan thing was, I really like had these two relationships for Abigail and for a long time the book played out as like kind of a will they, won't they with Caleb, will he be into her, you know, will their relationship go public or is it gonna remain this clandestine thing? And Megan was just kind of there and I realized like in, in a way that people really enjoyed. She was always a supporting character. People were into, and what I kind of realized is like it helped both of them. If the person Abigail like glommed onto immediately it was Caleb and if like their relationship went public, goes public very early in the book. So like suddenly it's this thing that helped that plot a lot. And then if the will, they won't, they was with Megan and it was about a friendship. It was like, am I gonna actually trust a person enough? I'm gonna be vulnerable enough with a person enough to let her be my friend. And so like when you get to the end of the book, you could see which of those relationships is going to outlive the book. And I think, I thought that was, that ended up being more interesting than like. Abigail instantly decides Meghan is her friend, and Abigail and Caleb have a will day, won't they? Because like I've seen both of those before and this felt like a neat way to subvert both.

Brett Benner: 37:16

And I love the idea of what you just said, of a life that exists for these characters beyond the, the last page. Yeah. And those are the two that you think, yeah, these girls will exist beyond these pages in some capacity. The,

Emily St. James: 37:28

the one, the one thing where, like, when I think about the future versions of this book, the one thing I wanna see are more Abigail Meghan scenes, because I think. They are such an interesting duo and like a, like who are they when they're in their senior year of college and like what is what is happening with them? You know, it's it's a really cool, sweet relationship. I, my, I remember my note to the person who does the audio book on Megan was, she thinks she's Leslie Note, but she's actually Tracy Flick and like, I think that's that's my favorite kind of person.

Brett Benner: 37:57

Yeah. I love that. I would almost love to see like a standalone of what happens to Megan when she grows up in terms of her journey, her, if it's her sexuality, what her relationships look like.

Emily St. James: 38:08

When when I have, I, I, I can't believe I keep talking about a sequel, a thing I will never write when I have thought about like what a sequel might look like. It is like basically a short story collection about interesting, the supporting characters. Interesting. But all of them are like. In different genres. That's, that is one thing I kind of have enjoyed about this book is that as much as all these characters are in the same book, they're all kind of in different stories. And like I, you're writing

Brett Benner: 38:31

your own, you're

Emily St. James: 38:32

writing your own sound fiction stories, but Yeah. You know, I think, I think like a Kelly Link style story starring Constance. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. A very like Aaron Sony politics story with. With, with Helen, the, the candidate like, would make a lot of sense. Then Ruth Caleb's sister, I want like a die hard style, like she has to take out a bunch of terrorists. Like that feels like what she would get up to.

Brett Benner: 38:53

So, okay, so I know we were talking in the beginning you said, you know, I didn't like set out to write a, a political book that, that everything's political and reading is political, but is there something that you hope the book can accomplish?

Emily St. James: 39:04

I hope that this book goes and finds people who have as the Bible would have it ears to hear people who are willing to listen to its story, to understand that these are just. People who have this, this thing in their lives that they're just trying to deal with is the wrong word, but it's the one that comes to mind there. People with this aspect of their lives that is important to them but is not frightening in any way, is maybe a better way to put it, that there there is a lot of consternation around trans people and around us being frauds and around us, like sneaking into spaces to, do something untoward to, to create a to create bad situations. And that couldn't be further from the truth. And also, you know, in many senses makes literally no sense as just like how people behave or like how it, it would even function. So I hope that people who maybe don't know a trans person but are curious. And willing to listen, find this book and read it and hopefully take something from Erica and Abigail. I also hope it finds trans people who are feel lost in the dark and are either in a place where they don't get a lot of affirmation or are in a place in their lives where they've been. Hiding for whatever reason from themselves whether they transitioned 30 years ago and have been woodworking, or they just came out a month ago and don't know what to do next. I hope it, I hope it finds them and I hope it speaks to them.

Brett Benner: 40:37

That's, that's amazing. And one thing, and I will post this as well in the show notes is the, the website for assigned media, which is fantastic and you have spoken about that before, which is a great news source for trans people, but for everyone I. Which is giving factual coverage of what's happening to and with trans people. Yeah, so it can kind of separate the wheat from the chaff and so you know, actually what's happening and not what the spin is or what's being told for, like, for politics.

Emily St. James: 41:02

And they are very good at going into like studies and going into data and being like, okay, yeah, this like. Cuts against the prevailing trans narrative or, you know, in, within the trans community. Like this is a thing we need to talk about. Like, they have done a lot of research into actual rates of detransition, which is not as big of a problem as the media would, would have. Its be, but it's not as though there are no people who detransition. But they've gotten into like the complexities of what that means, how those people relate to the trans community in a way that's so much more nuanced than anything you'll read in you know, a, a more mainstream publication.

Brett Benner: 41:36

Yeah. Well, this was fantastic. You're a joy and hilarious the book again, please, people go get it or get the audio by Independent if you can. But it's, it's truly a special, special, terrific book and congratulations.

Emily St. James: 41:52

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I, I do one of the voices in the audio, so, oh. You do? I do one, one of them. I'm, I'm not gonna say who, but now that, now that I'm not gonna say who. You probably know who.

Brett Benner: 42:04

Well, now I'm going back to, I've gotta go get it. I mean, now I have to absolutely listen to it. so if one of you listeners or viewers out there hear it before I do, tell me who she is. All right, thanks. And, uh, I'll be back with another episode next week.