How Much Are You Like The Characters You Read About?

For over a hundred years, the world has been captivated by Hollywood. The stuff that dreams are made of. Where stars are born. Made and born! Over the world! But just beneath the stardust lie a million more fascinating stories that when sewn together form an incredible history. The Secret History of Hollywood. Available now wherever you get podcasts. If you're interested in what's happening in the world of technology, you will love our roundtable news show This Week in Tech. Hi, this is Leo Laporte. Every Sunday, I bring the best tech journalists together to talk about the week's tech news. This week, the showdown between Anthropic and the Department of Defense, Apple's big week ahead, Samsung's new phone, and a whole lot more. Join me this week and every week for TWIT. You'll find it at our website, twit.tv, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. We've got someone with us today. Rebecca, who do we have today? We have Laura McGrath, our favorite English professor, literary historian, and data scientist. She's back. She has a new article about, I don't know, readerly habits and research to share with us. Y'all have told us that you have loved the past episodes where Laura has come on. She has all kinds of data. It's true, Laura. That's so nice. All kinds of interesting data about how readers think about things, what reading habits actually look like. We did a really interesting episode back in the fall about what it means to be an omnivorous reader and whether most people are omnivorous or stick to particular genres. You can go back and find that. So we've made her our data correspondent. She's going to be here with us several times this year. Laura, thanks for coming back. Thank you so much for having me. It fills my heart with joy to know that people find this enjoyable to listen to and that they're, I don't know, happy to be wonky with me. Yeah, we've built a nerdy corner of the podcasting world here. You're right at home. Nerdy corners are the best corners, I think. You have an article that you're sort of building this off of that asks people some questions. Why don't you tell us about what's about to happen to, for, and with us over the next 45 minutes or now? Sure, sure. So kind of unplanned, this article is in many ways a nice companion piece to the episode that we ran way back when, on reader omnivorousness. And it's about the ways that we choose and select what to read, not about how we explode categories. I want to be super clear that this is not an article that I wrote, but this is really, really excellent research by Professor Millicent Weber at Australian National University and Rachel Norda at Portland State University. So your neighbor, Jeff. Weber and Norda have written this fantastic article in the journal Poetics about the concept that they are calling reader character identity interdependence, which is a really fascinating concept, if perhaps a rather wonky academic way of saying how we choose books about whom and what it is that draws us to select books. So I'm really excited to chat about that today. What I love about this article, among many things that I love about this, is they conducted a huge survey of 3,000 readers from the United States, the UK, and Australia. So hitting our major anglophone markets, all about how we choose what we read. So I wanted to start today by trying out my version of this survey on YouTube. Great. I should say, Norda and Weber did not publish their survey protocol. So this is just my assumptions of their questions. It's the reverse engineering methodology. Okay, that's good. I like it. We love that. We will. I'll get a link from you, Laura, to the article. So we'll put that in the show notes for people who want to hunt it up. Great. Great. So if anyone has any problems with these questions or the way they are worded, all of the blame is on me on this part, not on Millicent and Rachel, who've done much better. Don't send her emails. She's doing her best. Today's episode is brought to you by 23rd Street Books, an imprint of Macmillan and publisher of Everything in Color, a Love Story by Stephanie Stalvey. Interrogating her upbringing in an evangelical community, Stephanie Stalvey weaves a story of faith, alienation, romance, and acceptance in this beautifully painted graphic memoir. Stephanie grew up where love and obedience overlapped. Sin was inevitable, desire was dangerous, and her thoughts could not be trusted unless she believed the quote right things about God. As she built a life of her own and fell in with a seminarian named James, she began to question those rigid borders. Stalvey traces a journey of faith, romance, motherhood, and reclaiming a love that is healing and transformative. Everything in Color is a deeply personal and tender graphic memoir from Stephanie Stalvey, whose autobiographical comics began circulating online in 2020. They quickly resonated with readers searching for language around faith, identity, and intimacy. So make sure to check out Everything in Color, A Love Story by Stephanie Stolovey. And thanks again to 23rd Street Books for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Tin House, publishers of Kim Fu's The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts. From Kim Fu comes a brilliant gothic novel about a woman drowning in the horrors of modern life as a never-ending rain eats away at the home collapsing around her while she grieves the loss of her mother. Acclaimed writer Kim Fu, author of lesser known monsters of the 21st century, is back with this incredible new novel that has been named a most anticipated book by time by us here at Book Riot by the Chicago Review of Books and others. It's perfect for readers of Carmen Maria Mercado and Shirley Jackson and reviewers are calling it immersive and brilliantly written. Start reading The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu on sale now from 10 house and thanks again to 10 house for sponsoring this episode today's episode is brought to you by random house children's books publishers of the book thief by marcus zuzak it's 1939 nazi germany and the country is holding its breath death has never been busier and it will become busier still. Liesl Bimbinger is a foster girl living outside of Munich who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist. Books. With the help of her accordion playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. Now there is a 20th anniversary edition of this best-selling, mega best-selling book, excuse me. It includes gold-sprayed edges, a new letter from the author, details of how characters and scenes evolved, excerpts from the author's notebook, and handwritten notes from the original manuscript. So make sure to check out the 20th anniversary edition of The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. And thanks again to Random House Children's Books for sponsoring this episode. Yes. Okay, so I thought we would dive in, And I'm so excited to put you on the spot because, well, I'm just very excited about this. Okay, so tell me, what was the last book you read? I just read Kin by Tayari Jones. I just read Light and Thread by Hong Kong. Oh, okay. Looking forward to that conversation later. There's a preview of Frontless Fouillé, I guess, that we're going to do. Okay, I will put myself on the spot as well. I'm so excited that you both said the things that you both said. This will make for a great conversation. I have not finished. I'm in the middle of reading belatedly The Ten Year Affair by Aaron Summers. That is what I'm thinking. Yes, a house favorite. Yes, yes, it is a house favorite that I know. Okay, so what are the settings of the two books, the geographic settings of the books you're reading? Kin is set in Louisiana in the Jim Crow South. I assume South Korea. It's nonfiction. I'm not really sure, but I'm just making some inferences about it. It's nonfiction. She doesn't say. or she does say place names, but I don't know what they are. So I'm just making some assumptions there. Okay, Jeff, I might need you to pick something new. We might need to stick with novels here. That was my book. Oh, novels. I might need you to pick a novel, yeah. Oh, okay. What's the last novel that I read? I guess it was The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Okay, and where is this one set? That is set in and around, I think, Baltimore, Maryland. Okay, cool. I should know. Somewhere in there. Middle-delectic seaboard. Okay. I think that they specify novels, but I think for... I'm going to assume they're specifying novels. Okay. I'll ask you that, too. My apologies. And the 10-year affair is set in upstate New York. Okay. What about the race, gender, and sexuality of the main character of this book? There are two main characters of kin. They are both black women, and one is straight. One is queer but straight presenting because of the timeline. The protagonist of the correspondent is a retired cishet white woman. Okay. Straight. And the 10-year affair is cishet straight white woman. Where did I? Okay. And how about secondary characters? Same question, race, gender, sexuality of the... This will be tough, actually, for the correspondent. but the main secondary character. Sure. Most of the main characters and secondary characters in Kin are black. Almost all of them are presented also as straight. To my first approximation, I think all, I think, I can't think, I put it this way, I cannot think of anyone in the correspondent that I don't immediately know is white. Okay. I, that's, I don't know. There could be a secondary character I missed a clue or something else going on in that. Okay. Likewise for the 10-year affair, though, I should say that I have not finished it. So I don't know. I think I can tell you, Laura, that I don't think you're going to, there's going to change. The demo is not going to change much as you get towards the end. No, that'd be a surprise to me based on where I'm at now. Okay. So open-ended, a little bit more open-ended. Why did you select this book? What was it that drew you to this book? I love Tayari Jones's past work. This one is coming up next week. Actually, by the time this episode is released, the book will have come out yesterday. And so it's been on my radar for a while. And I was coming off of some other nonfiction and wanted to pick up a novel. So this was just the next thing for me. Is that too logistical? No, not at all. For me, this is one that I knew did very well as a debut novel among indie readers. Heard it talked about a lot. and I wanted to see what the deal was because we don't see debut lit fic like this get picked up. So I was like, okay, let's check this out. Yeah. And I mean, gosh, that's a different conversation to have, but what an interesting story around that book. Yes. And I picked The Ten Year Affair for a lot of reasons. One, it came very highly recommended from people whose tastes I trust, including you two. I am familiar with Aaron Summers just as a bookish person on the internet. And also this book is, I was excited about the form of the book, the kind of sliding doors to timelines. But also this book is just, unfortunately, or for better or for worse, I'm not sure, a little close to home for me. Only need look at our eyewear for all of us to feel very seen by this book. Just a Warby Parker ad happening here. I know, it's super close for me. This is, you know, a newborn and a three-year-old that this main character has. And I've had a two-year-old and a six-year-old. So this is like actually just, you know, a year and a half removed from me. which is, I mean, none of the rest of it, just at least the early middle-aged white people. I should have said about the correspondent too, Laura. I didn't think about it, but I was interested in the form. So it's an epistolary novel. And when I picked it up and I flipped through it, I was like, this is interesting. So I'll add that to my stew of reasons for picking it up too, now that you said something about form. Yeah, okay, cool. It definitely mattered for me. No, for sure, for sure it does. I think what we will run up against with any of these sorts of, any sort of research that's about your average reader is that none of us are your average reader. We're weirdos. So I think that that's there. But all of this is, I think, really important information. And they ask lots of questions of readers about what, in a very open-ended, content-neutral way, impacted their experience of reading the book. And they include several prompts, like, had you heard the author speak? Did you know something about this author's background? So all of these things are really important contexts for why we happen to pick these books. Okay, so would you say, again, this is so weird, I think this question is not applicable to the two of you, would you say that these books are fairly representative of the sorts of things that you like to read? Oh, yes. Kin definitely is for me. Interesting question. Maybe, sort of, if the book had not had, if I wasn't interested in reading what was popular or like trending for its own sake, just sort of like for professional interest, I don't know that I would have picked it up. But I liked it and I've recommended it. So I guess I should say yes, that's a long way of getting coming to grips with I'm the kind of person that liked this book and being okay with that. Things people like are good, actually, Jeff. Yeah. Well, I've got some quibbles with the book and discourse around it, but that's another conversation. It is. It is. Okay. So we've got our specific questions. These are larger questions about your reading habits that may or may not ask you to think more about Kin or about the correspondent. So do you tend, do you think if you're being honest, you tend to read books with characters whose lives or identities resemble your own? intentionally no i mean sometimes but part of book riot's mission and something that's baked into the way that i read now and and actually part of what's been always been baked into what reading does for me is other ways of viewing the world and other like engaging with other modes of experience. So no. I would say the same answer, basically, almost word for word, or spirit for spirit, if not letter for letter. Yeah, yeah. I think I'm glad that I picked the book that I picked for this conversation. I mean, it's what's currently on my nightstand. So this works really well. I think I agree with both of you spiritually in terms of what I would say about my reading habits. And yet, the book that is currently on my nightstand looks like someone who could be me very, very easily without much imagination. I mean, yeah. And if we had recorded this a week earlier, I would be talking about one of Allie Hazelwood's women in STEM romances, which is also not my life, but is closer to my life. So there are different moments where the answer is closer to yes, certainly. I do wonder too, Laura. I mean, that my nonfiction got disqualified, I think is interesting because I do, my nonfiction reading is very much other live stuff, especially memoirs. Like I'm very much looking for someone who's not like me, something I know nothing about, a profession point of view. My fiction reading may be less intentionally, I don't know, different. I don't know. I don't really break it down that way. I don't know if Rebecca wants to say about her, but I do look at my reading over the course of a year, quarter, or otherwise to see kind of how I'm doing. So that's something that probably most readers don't do is like, have I only read white people this month? Like, what am I looking at? And I think that's having looked at bestseller lists like ever in my life. That's extremely unusual for most readers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll get into the study here in a sec. But Weber and Norda are really interested in characters. And so I disqualified nonfiction because we're not thinking about character in quite the same way. Yeah. Of course, we are in terms of figures that are part of a narrative and are making choices and moving. But I think it's probably best to stay in the world of fictional characters. but this is I will write to them after we're done and ask if this was actually something that they controlled for or not and how they would how they would think about nonfiction in the context totally fair we just came off of reading the warmth of other sons which is about as close to like real character narratives as you narrative nonfiction and I mean like a perfect work of narrative nonfiction yes perfect perfect yeah um okay so uh you do not necessarily tend to read books with other characters whose lives and identities resemble yours, you value more expansive experiences, reading diversely, experiencing other worlds, experiencing other contexts. Do you think, how far away would you say you are here from the average reader? Do you think that the average reader tends to read books with characters whose lives or identities resemble their own? Well, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, given the bestseller list. Absolutely. I don't think people think about it at all. To a first approximation, no one thinks about this. Well that complicated by the data about upper middle class black women buying and reading more books demographically than other groups And I mean, we don't have data that gets that. I don't have access to data that gets specific enough to know, are they also reading the bestsellers written mostly by white people? Or are they seeking out stories by people whose experiences resemble theirs? But like, if the average reader is a middle-aged white book club lady, that certainly reflects the bestseller list. Well, I'd be curious to see, and maybe they have an answer about this, Lauren. Maybe we're going to get this in the results here. But like, if you are not represented by the mainstream publishing industry, do you tend to read into your identity or more away from your identity? I would guess you'd sort of read more into your identity. Whereas as a white cis-hest dude, I don't have to do anything to read into my identity except go to the bookstore and sort of pick what's available. like let myself be buffeted by the winds of marketing and publicity and it's going to blow me towards my own shores. I thought the white literary men have died though, Jeff. I thought they've all... Listen, Laura, we get together on Thursday nights. It's a small group. We don't have to have the call ahead for more than 10 reservations at most restaurants. You can find it at meetup.com slash performative reading PDX. Yeah, that's right. Everyone brings their bandana. It's all cute. yeah no i think those are really good i think that's a really good question especially like reading into your identity or reading away from it and and the barriers that are presented that would allow you to do such a thing right that the barriers that are in place that make it possible for someone to say um these are the sorts of books that i select intentionally or or the sorts of the books that just come to me um so we've kind of talked through several of these other questions And so I won't necessarily ask them. But what Weber and Norda are really trying to get at in this concept is how reader identity relates to character identity. And this question of who reads what and why. There's a lot of pressure that we can and should put on these questions that we can, I think, just through our conversation. But they're beginning from this premise. And you've cited some of the data, Rebecca. We've obviously been talking around these stereotypes. The idea that men are only reading books by and about men, that women are reading books by and about women, but that they are more open than men are, and that there are lots of different conditions of identity that are constraining what we're choosing and how and why. So, you know, we know and understand that the publishing industry in the United States is largely staffed by white people. And the sort of modal or average reader is a middle-aged white woman. But we don't know a whole lot or we make a whole lot of assumptions about what that woman's taste is, about what she will and will not read, about what she does and does not like to read. And in particular, how her identity does or does not constrain her reading choices. So what Norda and Weber are really interested in is this question of how identity guides our choices, if it guides our choices in the first place, how it does, but then also trying to really complicate these questions of what identity means. Identity, as we know, is not a singular thing. It's not restricted only by our race or only by our gender or only by our physical ability. But in fact, all of these sorts of different categories overlap. Marginalized and minoritized identities in particular intersect in ways that compound. And here we can shout out and thank Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, of course, for introducing the concept of intersectionality for us. So to talk about what women read or what men read or what boys read or what girls read if we're in the children's YA space is to really miss out on really complex ideas about identity and readership. And so this is kind of a first order question before we even get to the question of omnivorousness in many ways. Before we can talk about the sorts of books that you're interested in reading, how does your identity shape what you might choose in the first place? Really interesting. are you asking us no no i'm not sorry i got oh i got a sad little like my computer's kind of freaking out i'm not asking oh i got a python notification that was happening here and it just like i was like i don't know how to answer this question i was like geez let us hang there laura good lord no you said to pause for the ad breaks i was just oh yeah no that's that's that's no no It just punctuated by like the meta, meta podcasting stuff. Well, I guess one thing that just occurred to me in that pause while I was trying to think of something smart to say back to you, Laura, I wonder about an interesting, I don't know, chasm in readers is people who think about their reading at all. They think about their reading choices at all in a meta way versus just picking up book. Because I think that might be a bigger divide than any... Well, that may be an interesting divide, right? Rebecca and I are on one side of that. And maybe you are too. I don't want to speak for your own reading choices and a lot of the readers on the show. But we hear so much, so many times over the years, we get a comment like, I just want to read good stories. Sort of an antediluvian sort of, I wish I could go back to when people didn't think about any of this stuff. and in my own life, I don't know, even amongst the, I would say, active readers that I know, they're trying to find something that gets them to read first. And if they do any more thinking beyond that, I don't know that there's much there, Rebecca. I don't know. Is that unfair of our experience of doing this show? I mean, if we know that, which we do, that like a heavy reader in America, my favorite data to cite reads 10 to 12 books a year, I would suspect that most of those people even in that category are picking up like they're browsing at their local bookstore or that Barnes and Noble paperback favorites table flipping through stuff and going with what catches their attention without much consideration of you know the author's identity or the character's identities but that might be I guess what I'm trying to say is I think a lot of this is subconscious if it's happening at all well I guess that's what I'm taking that subconscious versus I don't know what the wrong Freudian thing is, but like, yeah, and purpose. I'm curious. And I don't know, Laura, if this is in the article, but I'm curious if the researchers asked, just asked people how they pick books, or did they ask, like, what is your demographic information? And what are the last five books you read? Because that would be more like I could pull up my reading spreadsheet, and we could see if the books that I'm reading actually are different from my life, or if I just want to think of myself as a person who does that. Yeah. And, you know, I think that there are limits to what identity can tell us here. Right. I don't know that character demographic is ever going to be a reason why I select books. It certainly might have something to do with what I am aware of. Right. What is available and what kind of breaks into my consciousness as a book that I want to be spending my precious time on. When I also am reading the things that I'm teaching, I'm also still a historian and still reading books that have not been published in the past year. So there's that. I also think another kind of confounding point here that Rachel Nordette and Millie Weber are not necessarily getting at is the way in which character demographic is also constrained by or conditioned by genre. right so i i did not choose to read the 10-year affair because it is about a 30-something young mom white lady wearing her warby parker glasses in a new house that's like too expensive and kind of falling down like that is my life yeah but like that is not what i chose to read but you know if you're going to tell me a comedy of manners about a a young mom and an alternate reality in which she engages in an affair that's about like the sort of elder millennial you know social class situation. Like how much of that, how is that not screaming white lady to you? Right? Like so, so many of these things that are also about genre and form and story are also matters of race, of social class, of gender that have a lot to do with the sorts of stories that are allowed to be told and the sorts of stories that have to do with the sort of access further up the pipeline. Right. Yeah. I hope that Kylie Reid is sitting somewhere working on her version of the 10 year affair because the white ladies shouldn't have all the claims to the messy elder millennial i would love to read kylie reed's origin of all fours that would be amazing um okay so let's get into the data it is because i think this is useful it is perhaps not terribly surprising but i think that it is so extraordinarily useful i mean this is like the the banner that i will fly forever it is so extraordinarily useful to actually have receipts that we can have when we talk about these sorts of assumptions, particularly around demography and particularly around identity and taste, because this is a whole mishmash of vibes. And it becomes really useful, I think, to actually get some purchase on what's going on. So in this survey of 3,000 readers from the US, Australia, and the UK, they asked readers similar questions to what I just asked you. So it began with, what was the last book that you read? So that's a really important distinction I want to make. This is not about what is available in the market. This is not about what's getting published in any given year. This is about the last book that someone read and someone chose. Why it's super useful, right, that the 10-year affair happens to be on my bookshelf or why it's super useful that you picked Kin by Tayari Jones. These are just the things that are coming to us rather than, you know, how representative those books are of any particular industry choices. They asked information about the title, the author, the character demographics, the author demographics, about the book's setting and use of language. I mean, I think based on our conversation already up front, you can tell that this conversation is going to be about identity. But, you know, your book is set in the South, Rebecca. Your book is set in Baltimore, Jeff. My book is set in upstate New York. You know, I guess Baltimore is probably the furthest from where you live. You're not terribly far from Louisiana, Rebecca. I'm not terribly far from upstate New York. So, like, Jeff, you're the only one that's really reading outside of your region here, I suppose. good for you. Yeah, a gold star for you. But anyway, that's there too. That wasn't of super interest to them as things progressed. But it might matter if you were talking about nation, for instance. Think about the uptake of something like A Guardian and a Thief in the United States. Or if Jeff had been reading Hong Kong's fiction instead of nonfiction and we were talking about South Korea. They asked about publisher info, which I cannot imagine had any sort of information any sort of relevance for the average reader. Yes, it was published. Yeah, if they could get like one person out of 3,000 civilians who was like, here's the imprint that published my book. I know, sidebar, I have the world's most perfect and on the nose Halloween costume and like no one else would ever think it's me. I want to be Leslie Knopf. What is it, Laura? Wouldn't that be just the funniest thing? What does that cost? any further than that. Is that a Parks and Rec soft mashup, Laura? Is that what you're doing right there? Amazing. Never change, Laura McGrath. Just the stupidest typo I made one time while I was typing. I wrote something about Blanche Knope. It was like, wait a minute. Hold on. Blanche Knope. Would it be great? It would just be like Leslie Knope looking very good. It needs to be one of those parties where you can just put on a name tag and help people out, you know, Leslie Knopf. But I think YouTube might be the only people that would laugh at that. Like I would go to that party and people would be like, wait. There are some nerds listening to this show that are appreciating this. I don't know. Yeah, that's a Venn diagram of diminishing returns That is a Venn diagram that has meat in the very middle. Yeah, that's, yeah. It's like, we're just like sardined in there. This is one of the ways the internet is still magic, that the three people who appreciate this joke have found each other. Thank you for laughing at that. I've been really waiting for people to think that's funny. It's good stuff. It's really good stuff. Okay, so Leslie Knops. Okay. Publisher info, that was not of relevance to their results. And then they asked other information that would contextualize. So in what format did you read? Were you listening to the audio book? Did you hear the author speak somewhere? Had you seen an adaptation of this book? So did you go read Wuthering Heights because you watched the adaptation for it? Yeah. Boy, are you in for a surprise. So yeah, it was asking a lot of those questions as well. And then they also asked everyone a really open-ended question, which is, which features were important to your experience of reading the book and why? So not about why they selected. They actually are not asking any questions about why or how readers selected this book. They want to ask questions about what they are reading. The selection is the part that I'm really fascinated by. but they're asking really you know what have you read what features laura i don't even know if i would know how to answer that like um it's short it was cheap it was available to buy it was no i'm serious like it was uh i it was it came up on my libby hold uh my mom gave it to me i found it somewhere like that because it's so open-ended it seems like from the results that they end up quoting people took this as an opportunity to say basically what you just said earlier jeff which is I wanted to read about a good story. I wanted to read a good story. These questions of identity didn't matter to me. Several people responded and said, you know, this main character's experiences seemed a lot like mine and that was really relevant. I wanted to learn something new. The readers were cued to the sorts of questions that the researchers were asking around identity and relationship. And so at least the relevant quotations for this article are quotes that are talking about those those features of the book. So it would be for kin, like, my assumption is that Oprah is going to pick kin, we might know that by the time this episode airs. So I might a future version of me might be like, because I saw that Oprah picked it as a book club book, and I had a copy already. And I know that Tyari Jones can tell a story and write a great sentence, that kind of, you know, I asked you why you picked this book, which was perhaps unfair. but even the way that we answered about what we chose, right? So Jeff, your experience of reading The Correspondent may be impacted by the fact that it's an epistolary novel. The fact that this novel received so much buzz that it was this kind of surprise runaway bestseller, that really impacted your experience of reading this novel. Yeah, I mean, if you think about the negative case of something that could have fit a lot of the other things I said about The Correspondent, but I didn't pick up, say, alchemized, right? Similar kind of story, huge hit, a little unusual. I picked that up, like, not for me. So I think there's a lot going on in that not-for-me-ness that people are including myself are using or the this sounds like something that I'm going to like. There's a lot of unarticulated assumptions, bias, predilection stuff going on. Vibes. Yeah, that's like for me versus not for me. So this is an open-ended question in the most open-ended of ways, which is a great kind of open-ended question. Right, yeah. It's like your therapist just sitting there waiting for you to say something. This is the say more about that. Say more about that. so their participants were 35 of them identified as black or indigenous people of color 67 identified as women or gender non-conforming 14 identified as lgbtqia and about 42 identified as having a disability or chronic illness and no age everyone's 18 and up to participate in the study and they're evenly split through the three nationalities so about a thousand participants from each country. And again, those are the UK, the United States and Australia. So based on what these readers reported, this is just these, there's two types of results here that I'm going to talk about. The one is just about the characters of the books that people selected to read. We don't know why they selected it, but just based on the books on their nightstand or recently put back on their shelf, what do the characters look like? What is just this random sampling semi-random sampling they found that only 47 of the main characters of the books because remember they asked about main and secondary characters only 47 of the main characters were women non-binary or gender non-conforming so uh somewhat evenly split but more male characters or or for those kids so they have to be one of just one of those just one of those so women or gender non-conforming so most of the books were men yeah most of them were men even though 67% of the participants are women or gender non-conforming right so we see an over-representation of male main characters relative to the readers who were asked while 30 zero surprise rebecca on scale of 110 or zero no i'm uh i'm saving my soapbox for later i will register some surprise on this on this result yeah yeah okay mostly because of the sad literary men discourse right The idea that like, whatever. The internet is not real life. Well, whatever. We don't have to talk about that right now. Today's episode is sponsored by HarperCollins Leadership, publishers of Moms in Labor by Daphne Delvaux. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition. Read by the author, employment lawyer Daphne Delvaux, Moms in Labor empowers women to protect their careers when they become mothers. Drawing on 15 years of fighting workplace discrimination, Delvaux breaks down the laws that safeguard pregnant and working moms shares practical scripts for tough conversations and offers strategies to secure leave and flexibility Blending legal insight with candid personal stories this audiobook equips mothers to advocate with confidence. It's read by Daphne Delvaux herself and delivers her legal expertise with conviction and clarity, making the guidance feel really personal, urgent, and empowering. Moms and Labor is available everywhere you read and listen today. Thank you once again to HarperCollins Leadership for sponsoring today's show. just starting out, there's a place for you here in the time machine. So join me every Friday on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube for a brand new topic. See you there. Bye. So the other results, I'll leave my sad internet men. Let's just stay here for six hours. I'm keyed in. Okay. So while 35% of the participants identified as BIPOC, only 23% of the main characters were so out of this 3 000 readers only 23 of main characters were black or indigenous people of color black indigenous or people of color okay might have expected lower to be honest with you yeah given stats out of the industry yeah and that's still just main characters and then only 10 of the main characters of the books that have been selected were disabled or chronically ill which that actually is something that visibly so that actually seems high to me against base rates in fiction? Yeah, I don't know actually a ton of, I don't have a ton of information or a ton of statistics about disability. And that's something, actually, can I say this? If you would like to write in, I would love to know more. If you have any research or have seen any sort of report around representation of disability in literature, I would love to know more quantitatively. And that's just kind of outside of my experience right now. Okay, but then interestingly, what did align pretty consistently with the percentage of participants and the percentage of main characters was lgbtq and ia main characters that there was about 14 of participants identified as lgbtq plus and that was the same with with main characters of books yeah okay so that's about our main characters where there is however much more diversity is in secondary characters so yes i totally so there might be more main characters main characters who are white, but they may have a magical black auntie or a sassy black best friend that's reinforcing these stereotypes around the kind of central white protagonist. So they're not necessarily just books that are buying about exclusively white people, but we see more diversity amongst secondary characters. So you can hear, I mean, yes. Well, can I pause there just for a second? I mean, some of that might just be numbers. there are more secondary characters than protagonists in a given book. So you can have six or seven secondary characters that's available for someone to think of. So we're still really not sure like representation across available characters at the same time. So anyway, I just thought I would, there's not one main, they're not saying about Batman and Robin, there's Robin and the Joker and everybody else and the full retinue. The ensemble cast. Exactly. And I mean, you can hear from my editorializing in the way that I described these characters. Sheer representation is not a net good, right? Like the fact that someone exists who is a person of color does not mean that they are represented in a way that is reflective of anything positive or is not just like reinforcing negative racial stereotypes. Yeah. Needs to be good representation. Well done. Right. Responsible. All those things. Or even sophisticated or just name check or sort of throw away. I mean, the help fits this category, right? Of a white main character that you might read. and also a very large cast of black characters, almost none of which are represented in ways that even slightly begin to acknowledge their full humanity, right? Okay, I'm finding my way in my notes here. Okay, yeah, so, and interestingly, the representation of people of color amongst the secondary characters was greater than that of the participants. So almost all of the participants were reporting some level of secondary characters that were not white, And for all of the reasons that you mentioned, Jeff. So on the one hand, this is really promising. But on the other hand, it's hard to read much into this because we don't really know much about the quality. The sheer number doesn't do much for us. So the important caveat, this is not asking questions about what is available. This is a different measure than what is published in any given year. It's about what people are reading. and and where this survey stops and where i would like to continue it or where i would like someone else to continue it is to ask like what what actually made you choose this book right what governed your your principle of selection um how does genre interface with with these particular issues and and there's you know a million different ways to talk about that it's super interesting and it feels like this dovetails with i mean our ongoing conversation about all of the vectors that will go into addressing the diversity problems in publishing, that it's not just the hiring pipeline, and it's not just the editorial pipeline to make sure that books by minoritized and marginalized people are being published, but that there is a point at which it's readers responsibility to pay attention to those things. And, you know, not just because we need to develop market forces that reinforce the industry for producing those kinds of books, but also that if you don't pay attention to it, like our working assumption is that if you don't pay attention to it, most people will default by virtue of what is largely available to reading books by and about white people. And that it requires, you know, active, deliberate attention to do otherwise with your reading life. Yeah, I think this is getting at the interplay too, with personal choice and availability, right? Is this a matter of preference for like, I'm actively choosing books this way, or I am open to and that has everything to do with what comes into my sphere of attention, right? So this also speaks to the question of the pipeline that you're talking about, Rebecca, which is like, how are books being marketed? What is the sort of money? What is the sort of energy that is going to raising awareness and raising attention about any book that you may or may not come across as a matter of course, you know, and the importance, I think, of mediation, of mediators and critics of thinking about how to direct attention, right? It really demonstrates, I think, the power of directing attention toward different books. Yeah, I mean, I think about this all the time. And Jeff, I think you do too, when you're like in Target or Costco, or airport bookstores, like the places that really casual readers bump into books and have to make a decision about what to read next, where availability really constrains. It really matters. I was in Costco the other day and like they've shrunk the books down. And I didn't do I didn't need to do a spreadsheet, Laura, to tell you that the demo was a little tough when it came to people of color. Like zero zero for 50 or something. Yeah, there's a huge last time I was in my airport a couple of weeks ago. There was a big standee at the entrance to the Hudson News. And it was like 25 different Frieda McFadden paperbacks. And like, OK, good for Frieda McFadden and her publisher, I'm sure, paid for that feature. but that's 25 slots that are all going to books by one single white author who also has a lot of exposure. And I'm sure that it's an effective sales technique, but I couldn't help but wonder like, what if those were 25 contemporary novels by a bunch of different kinds of authors? And you had Frieda McFadden and you had Angela Flournoy and you threw Jasmine Guillory up there. And what about Abby Jimenez? And then readers would get more choice, but that availability in those really casual places has a huge impact. Probably one reason Laura and I'll say Rebecca and I too are so interested in what got people to buy something is that it's not, it often is the case that it's maybe just what's there. But the reason there's 25 Freedom McFadden things is because the person who's going through Target has probably heard about it in some way, right? They have something floating around in their mind that's ready to attach it to their next book purchase. And there it is. I've heard about what's the deal with this. I saw it or my mom was reading this or I saw it on the plane. And they have sort of ambient awareness of some books. And then what book is available for them at the moment they're ready to buy it for whatever reason, impulse buy or whatever, that's how you get a giant hit, right? Those things then start to feed on themselves over and over again. Because Rebecca and I were doing the Joy Luck Club episode about Amy Tan, right? Interesting book, a lot of different kinds of representations there. But it gets to a point, all of these things become a phenomenon and they feed against each other, right? And there's so much friction for marginalized, minoritized people to get into that flywheel of momentum. And I don't know how, I mean, we've talked about a lot about how we don't know how that can change, right? And once you're on it, it's hard to get off of it. Hard to get off, yeah. I made a shtick several years ago of sending Jeff a photo anytime I'm traveling and someone is reading the seven whatevers of Evelyn Hugo, and I'm still sending them to him every time I'm in the airport. There's somebody. like here it is in another seat back pocket that flywheel is like it's so persuasive and really persistent i guess i have this other thought lauren i'm curious what you think about this of like rebecca and i talk about this too about our own reading lives and what we'd like to see in the bestsellers like what we'd feel like there's been progress made that like bestsellers award winners sort of generally represent we'll use the u.s for a moment the demographics of the u.s as a whole that's like that seems like a reasonable kind of endpoint how you get from there on the other hand I think it is reasonable for people of all kinds to be mostly interested in stories about things that seem relatable to them in some way. How we connect those two things, I think, is the art of the matter, right? It makes sense that I'm going to read about my life and things that I'm aware of and questions that I have or problems that I have, life experiences that I have that I'm interested in other representations of, but how do I then not make that the boundary fence to my yard, Right. Where I can hop over that and explore and be interested in other people, too, at the same time. And I find that friction and that tension hard to reconcile. Yeah. And I think there's, you know, we talked. There's another set of results here that we can chat about in a sec. But, you know, the question of, you know, I just want to read a good story. It was something that you raised earlier, Jeff. And that was something that a lot of the respondents here in their survey wrote about. You know, I think our idea of what a good story is, is likewise culturally conditioned. is likewise conditioned by race, gender, sexuality, that this question of why we come to books in any given way, it's entirely impossible, I think, to separate them from our own subject positions. And so learning about something different, learning about someone or an experience or a place or a culture that's different is one reason why we might come to books that might be rooted in our own subject positions and identities. But even the I don't want to do that, that I want to, you know, Ceteris Paribas, I'm setting all of that aside, I just want a story that's good. Even that is coming from that same vantage point and that same background, or at least one that's been equally shaped by our own backgrounds, if not the exact same way. Yeah, and I think, you know, largely unconscious, as we were saying, but since you referenced the help, I think that's a perfect example that they're like, that book flew off shelves. I was a bookseller when it was out. And it was mostly middle aged white ladies going to their book clubs reading this book that they thought was just this wonderful story. And not subjecting it to deeper analysis about are the black people in the story presented as anywhere close to being fully human and complicated and all the ways that humans should be. And I'm sure that many of them after the fact would have said like, I didn't think about it. And it was still a good story. disrupt my sense of power. Or this did not disrupt my sense of my own centrality in the world, that whiteness remains normalized and naturalized from which kind of everything else moves or deviates, right? Yeah, I mean, these other results are cool. But like, we're just on this point that I think is really important. I mean, I think this also gets at this question of, you know, why should we read books about people who look different than we do? Should we do that? Is that something that is good? I mean, I think this gets at our question of what we expect reading to do for us and what we expect reading to do for the world, right? Like why it should be important or meaningful that we actively seek out books or that we don't, but that just as a matter of course, we might come across books that do not center whiteness in some way. And I think that's a question that we have to constantly be asking and answering again and again and again. I've been really, I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm teaching a young adult class this semester. I've been really influenced by this scholar and former president of the MLA, Chris Neufeld. And he doesn't talk about YA and he's not really talking about book banning or anything of the sort. But he's made the point and I can send you the link to this podcast, which was talking about it. But he made the point, you know, in many cases, you know, I think that and he thinks I agree. In many cases, conservatives or people who are particularly invested in book banning or challenging, let's say, they're telling a much more powerful story about what literature can do. than a lot of humanities professors. Yeah, we say this all the time. When I say down and I say, well, listen, I know a whole lot of well-read assholes. Like reading doesn't make you more empathetic. Reading doesn't make you like more people in the world. Like what am I, I'm doing nothing other than selling literature short and selling its capacity to change us and to expand our world so short. Meanwhile, they think it can turn you gay. I wish it could. And I don't know, make you a murderer. And it can. Perhaps that's a really good thing. Maybe not the murderer part, but like if you're reading of a novel can fundamentally change your sense of self and how you occupy the world. Like that, that is a novel that has done good. Right. And I think we miss that story. And so I think, you know, as we, I at least feel very convicted as a professor who likes to, you know, be, teach my students to be very sophisticated, which is also a way of teaching them that books shouldn't make them more empathetic or don't have the capacity to do this. I don't know. I just feel I, when I think through this research again and again, I have to wonder about the story I'm telling about books and reading. Yeah, I think that's interesting, because I don't know that we take it implicitly on this show, Rebecca, that reading is good. I don't think we believe that sort of of itself, right? Like, we think other kinds of artistic experience can do similar kinds of things. But in aggregate, it can be an avenue to thinking, feeling, being, and knowing ways that aren't just sort of readily available to you or given to you off the shelf in whatever that looks like in your life, right? That can be a way of breaking outside of... I've talked to too many authors who going to the library as a kid and having the freedom to pick whatever they want to read was super formative for them, right? That freedom of being able to have some... Even if it's a weirdly passive agency where you're just sort of consuming something else someone's written, you do that enough, you get a sense that the world is big and messy, and there's a lot of different kinds of people in and a lot of different ways of being in it. And whether that's good or bad, like you can still know a lot of well-read assholes. Are they really well-read? But also just because that's sort of true on the margin doesn't mean it's, if 10% of the people are well-read are assholes, that means 90% aren't. That's the story you need, right? Laura, here's your study. How many book people are assholes? How do you consider yourself well-read and are you an asshole? And then you can just sort of see, you know, does it line up? I'm so delighted that this is the phrase we've landed on because I just guested on the Reading Glasses podcast for an episode that's coming out next week about the idea of being well-read. And I said this exact sentence a lot of, like, you can still be well-read and be an asshole. I mean, I think the thing we care about on the show, or as people, and the thing that I will say, is I care about living in a world where people are interested in and curious about the world and interested and curious in other people's experiences and engaged with the world of ideas. I think all kinds of art can do that. And in my experience, books do that in an especially powerful way. If people can achieve that without reading, I'm like more power to them. That's great. I don't care specifically that people read. And certainly you can read without achieving those goals. But I think we the three of us share a lived experience that books are a vehicle for that way of engaging with the world. Absolutely. I know we are toward the end of our time, but the actual purpose of this article was less about what characters people have chosen to read and more about this question of reader character interdependence, which is about the relationship between readership and identity as it is very multiple and ever evolving and the readers of books. And what they found is that while this is really strong for gender, that women, gender nonconforming people, LGBTQ plus people tend, or sorry, not LGBTQ plus people, people who identify as women and gender nonconforming tend to read books about women and other people who are gender nonconforming. Likewise with men, although women read more expansively. This is especially strong when it comes to race what they found in their results Wait say that again Say that what especially selecting books in which the character identity resembles your own um so it especially strong with race so amongst their participants bipoc readers were really demonstrated a real preference for other books with bipoc characters but also white characters their white readers were selecting almost exclusively white main characters. So it's less about gender being the identity vector that really guides selection and more about race that they found in their results. And importantly, readers who have, who identified with some minoritized or marginalized identity are more likely to read books about characters who are otherwise minoritized or marginalized, whether or not those things align. But that there was a general openness to reading about difference in that regard. So I raise that. It feels like kind of a bummer to end there, as we were extolling the virtues of curiosity to end on like, well, it looks like people aren't actually that curious. But I think that it emphasizes the importance of production. And it does emphasize the importance of representation at that level of production, rather than just at the level of reception or circulation, which is to say we need more books by and about Black people and people of color. If that is, in fact, the principle of selection for many readers, we need to be servicing those readers in a way that we are currently doing. Yes. It's good and it's good for business. I think it's necessary, but not sufficient, I guess, to use that language at the same time, because one thing we've talked about of late, especially in the world of the algorithm, and I was going to ask you about the date of this survey, Laura, about when this actually happened. But the thing that's happening now is that algorithms are especially sensitive to these kinds of selection biases and we'll solve for them over and over and over again and reinforce them. And in that kind of a world, it doesn't matter how many books are out there. Well, it does matter. But there's diminishing returns to how many books are available by non-white people in a, let's say, in a majorly white environment, whatever that thing looks like, right? Because I can tell you this right now, there are way more books by people of color than there were when I was 25 that are available in the marketplace. And if you told me these numbers you gave me were exactly the same as they were now as in 1995, I would believe you. And I think it's about things, and again, this is something I think, and I talk to people in publishing all the time, and they have their own biases like I do. But they kind of want these same things, right? And there is a marketplace here. It's necessary to have better and more books by people of color in the market. But once it's in the market, one thing I know about publishing, if they could make hits, they would, right? If they could do this, they would do it. So there's some other feature going on. And I don't know what the answer is. I don't want to let publishing off the hook. But I don't think they're the only thing on the hook, is what I'm saying. Like, the industry itself is not the only thing on the hook. It's just everybody climb up onto the hook, please. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, to the date of this, this article was just published this month. So the survey was conducted very recently. On this algorithmic question around kind of what everyone's being served, that's making it harder for anyone's attention to expand beyond their own, like, deeply ingrained Instagram, you know, demos. I will ask Rachel and Millie about that because I think that's a really important historical factor that's impacting readership and taste that I don't think we're really accounting for really well. Rebecca, you brought up The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo as an airport read. I had a student last semester who wrote this brilliant paper about BookTok for their senior thesis. And part of the claim that they made was about the role that BookTok played with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in promoting this as a queer novel that was in many ways closeted. right that like that you could buy this book without having any awareness or understanding that you were buying a novel in which the the central character's sexuality is the main kind of point of her own internal transformation right is her coming to sense uh of her own queerness and and figuring out how to make a life for herself within the constraints that she lives in right um yeah yeah no no no that's all i just it's such an interesting way i think to think of how algorithms have created, have limited our choices, and yet at the same time also surfaced for us books that might otherwise have. Well, I think it's my experience of this too over time, and Rebecca, I think you'd agree with me, is like, I think people will like all different kinds of books if they actually give them a shot, right? Like, I think a lot of people, if you told them, say, the synopsis of Heated Rivalry, right? Because that was a hit as a book before, they'd be like, I don't know. But then it becomes a thing that's in the culture, people will give it a shot like the joy luck club or anything else or you know i was there's this really funny uh stand-up bo johnson who does the thing about fourth wing like i'm just gonna pick this up because my girlfriend really likes it and he's like oh my god and he's like but then he keeps reading and he stays up he would have never picked it up on himself right but there's something about the reading experience that like so it's it's sort of the friction to even turn the first page is really what i think as being the the battle frontier to that end and the algorithm of it all there's a lot of incentive to have books that do this kind of, you know, more expansive representation, but that aren't marketed that way. And that's also a disservice to those communities to not market those books that way. Like if it has to be like, slipping the pill in with the cheese, we're doing a disservice to a lot of people. And it's interesting. I think that's a fascinating point your student made about Evelyn Hugo's success. Like you we have to wonder if the book were marketed as being about a woman's journey to understanding herself as queer, would it have been as successful as it had been? Would it have picked up on TikTok? Like, in my own very anecdotal experience, my mom asks me for book recommendations all the time. You know, 70 year old white lady, like, she's pretty liberal and open minded, but also like, kind of set in her ways with books. And I just started slipping her stuff, you know, that didn't look overtly anything to see what would happen. And sure enough, like if it has a good story, it doesn't matter what the, you know, demographic makeup of the characters is, but the getting over the hump of the pitch to that can be something for readers. And I think that's where like intentionality comes into play. And also where the industry has to do the really challenging dance of market this in a way that will reach the widest possible consumership or market it in a way that acknowledges the complexities of identity and tries to reach people that have been less represented in fiction. Yeah. The challenge is the heuristic people are using to evaluate whether or not they're going to a like a book. Can we decouple does the main character kind of look like I do? Because I don't think that actually is true for most people. I don't know how correlated they would have their experience of similar books that have sort of the same sort of quality rating or story rating or whatever that actually requires them. But I think in their first pass filter, which most people don't know much about the books that are out there and they're sort of buying it at Target or whatever. One of their filters are using to, will I like this is how undifferent from me is it? Because that just seems friction to me liking it, which I think that's sells themselves and the books and storytellers. Sure. And I do want to just flag for, for Weber and Norta, the question for them is about congruence and it's about the relationship. What are people doing that? this question of selection is my particular bugaboo here. Like I want to understand what. Yeah. Right. No, I agree with you completely. I agree with you completely. And, and, and that I think is a much bigger, much more, much more nuanced and maybe less empirical question than, then some of this can get up. Like, how would you even do that, Laura? Like you're a data scientist. Like if say, say you got the same 3000 people back on the email, right. And you could ask them one more question that was selection oriented. what would you, would it be open-ended therapy talk? Like, why did you pick, how did you, how did you pick this book? Or would it be like, here's eight possible things. Like, was it TikTok? Was it Target? Was it your book club? Was it your mom? Was it, you know, Is Laura about to solve the entire selection problem of publishing? what would you even ask? Yeah, no, I think I would be really interested in asking that empirical level first. And, and to get a sense of the one that you just asked, like in the ranked choice, like where did you learn about this book? Who, you know, we know, and there's been so much just, recently going around about the, as Book World was eliminated, about the work that reviews do and don't actually do and what sort of weight we place on reviews as campaigns are constructed. And I say this as the person now who is like anxiously waiting for my publicist to get back to me about the review coverage. And so I love you, Alyssa. And so I think, you know, I'd be really curious to know, like actually where that level of first contact is happening. And then from there, I'd be curious to know about the what, what drew you or what hooked you? What was the pitch? We will look forward to that episode of the Book Riot podcast. Yeah, speaking of bookbosity, Laura, tell people about the book they should be looking for it. It's coming out in April. You can put it on hold, I guess, or pre-order it or whatever you want to do. Pre-order it. Tell your library to do it. It's also great. Yeah, pre-order it. Yeah, the book is called Middlemen. Yeah, there you go. So her name is Laura McGrath. Yeah, so the book is called Middlemen, Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction. And it is about the role that literary agents have played as the very central and first and I think perhaps most important gatekeeper of the publishing industry since really the 1950s with the advent of the first book auction. And so it looks at the history of agents, how they came to go from being outsiders and pariahs to the biggest fish in publishing. the New York Times was calling them in 1989 and how the choices that they make these really small scale choices about any individual client can give us something down the line downstream like the canon and add up to something like questions of race and representation the rise of the debut novel the number of New York novels that exist in the world how American literature is perceived abroad things like that that was the sound of all of our dopamine firing wait was that more exciting than Leslie Knopf because that was the best I could possibly give to you. That was a hell of a pitch. And listeners, Laura will be back on this show in April. We'll be talking about something specific to her book and histories of short stories in particular. And she might be making an appearance on Zero to Well Read as well. Where can people find you in the meantime? After they pre-order your book, where can they find you? Where they can also pre-order my book. I am. that's how you hustle I write a substat called text crunch which is largely about what we did today so academic data for people who can use it about book publishing and reading thank you so much for having me always a pleasure thank you so much Laura just programming notes for other people this is coming out the next episode Rebecca is going to be out Sharifa is going to be joining me next week for a regular news show I don't know where I'm in space and time and then we will have the It Books of March It Books of March will be up next after that Laura thank you so much shoot us an email podcast at bookriot.com you can find show notes at bookriot.com slash listen thanks to Thriftbooks we got a little front list for you snuck in there we'll talk about Light and Thread and Rebecca I'm sorry I'm now blank oh The Kin by Terry Jones as you just mentioned I think there's a lot to talk about with both of those I would imagine stay tuned thanks to Thriftbooks for sponsoring the Book Riot podcast. Laura, pleasure as always. Thanks, Laura. Thank you for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook of Moms in Labor by Daphne Delveaux, sponsored by Harper Collins Leadership. So with this book, I'm here to do two things. Inform you of the truth and empower you to take advantage of every legal right you have. When we do this, it works. I've seen it happen for so many moms. When I share my teachings, I am met with two responses. I'm so happy I met you. Or, I wish I'd known this when I had my babies. In fact, I have a folder on my phone entitled, You Saved My Leave to hold the many stories I received from parents, thanking me for the time off with their babies they took because of me. That folder has thousands of screenshots and counting. That's thousands of babies. I have another folder called Flex and Mamas, with stories from many mothers I've helped with flex or remote work accommodations. Another folder is called Mama Got Paid because so many women shared how I helped them get a raise or negotiate a severance while protecting their reputation. Here are just some of their stories. I just returned to work today after 10 months of benefits. HR didn't tell me about them. You did. I got my leave extended by five weeks thanks to you. I never would have known and my employer never offered. had no idea that this was my right. I'm now working from home three days a week with my reasonable accommodation. So very thankful. I was about to quit breastfeeding because pumping was impossible. Then you taught me how to work with my employer on getting my needs met, and now we're back on track. Nursing my baby is my favorite moment after coming home from work, and it's all because of you. You're truly an angel on earth. You're doing God's work. I was about to quit my job and was experiencing so much stress that my doctor was telling me it was impacting my pregnancy and baby. Because of you, I was able to calmly request my needs in a way they couldn't say no to. And now I'm able to work from my bed. I'm so, so relaxed. All while knowing my job will be there when I return. Thank you on behalf of me and thank you on behalf of my baby for giving her a relaxed mommy. I'm kind of dumbfounded that I had options I didn't know about. Now I know that the law has my back and I should not be fucked with. The world is a better place because of you. I shared my story with my state representative. They voted for paid leave in our state and the bill passed. Thank you for giving me the courage to use my voice to not be scared and to fight for change. these stories represent my proudest achievements because allowing babies to come into the world to parents who can enjoy a stress-free and supported bonding experience prevents generational trauma so that's what we will do in this book i promise that you will learn something you did not know which will make you feel less powerless and less hopeless because if we feel disempowered we act accordingly. Instead, this book is the consolidation of my secrets as a trial lawyer protecting employees at work from exploitative and demanding expectations. I will share a lot of stories about my cases and trials, and I will be sure to share plenty of positive stories as well because the good truly does outweigh the bad. No matter what the outcome, however, these stories will show you the bravery of my former clients. I hope you let their courage inspire you. What I will not do is teach you how to sue your employer, but rather how to prevent legal conflicts entirely. How to be a powerhouse at work, someone to be respected, even feared a little, because you know your rights and you know how to advocate for what's right. I will be that protective shield between the forces of capitalism and you and your baby. Think of me as Arya Stark just back from Braavos. Crazy skills and able to fight in the dark. My goal here is to protect your pregnancy and baby bubble. And I will do that through a combination of education, step-by-step roadmaps, hot takes, and snackable success stories. One final note before we get started is that I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer. This means that you will use this information as a source of inspiration, not as a strict constitution. As the law is nuanced and complex, it is always wise to consult with a local attorney if you're unsure of the particulars of your personal issue. So, come here, my dear friend. Grab a warm beverage. Put your phone in another room. Let me teach you my secrets. Let us outsmart them together. It can be done, and I know that because I've done it a thousand times. The patterns are the same. There is a method, and you can learn it. You will never regret advocating for your rights. And you will never regret advocating for your baby. because you are not lucky to have a job that's some bullshit no your job is lucky to have you and so is your baby let's get started